Monthly Archives: September 2009

Spooky Logic

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Here is a letter I recently sent to the Midland Daily News:

In a recent letter, Carol Buller states that “[p]remiums for individuals as well as out-of-pocket deductibles and co-payments are often significantly higher than those of people who get insurance through group plans. This is not equal-opportunity insurance” (Make affordable care a reality, September 29).

If receiving a discount on bulk purchases of insurance is considered a violation of equal-opportunity insurance, I may be in trouble! I recently purchased candy in bulk for this upcoming Halloween season at a significantly lower per unit cost than the kid who purchased a single candy bar in the next checkout lane. I am clearly in violation of equal-opportunity candy!

Kurt Bouwhuis

Wild Hogs

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There’s an old story worth retelling about a band of wild hogs which lived along a river in a secluded area of Georgia. These hogs were a stubborn, ornery, independent bunch. They had survived floods, fires, freezes, droughts, hunters, dogs and everything else. No one thought they could ever be captured.

One day a stranger came into a town not far from where the hogs lived and went into the general store. He asked the storekeeper, “Where can I find the hogs? I want to capture them.” The storekeeper laughed at such a claim but pointed in the general direction. The stranger left with his one-horse wagon, an ax and a few sacks of corn.

Two months later he returned, went back to the store and asked for help to bring the hogs out. He said he had them all penned up in the woods. People were amazed and came from miles around to hear him tell the story of how he did it.

“The first thing I did,” the stranger said, “was clear a small area of the woods with my ax. Then I put some corn in the center of the clearing. At first, none of the hogs would take the corn. Then after a few days, some of the young ones would come out, snatch some corn and then scamper back into the underbrush. Then the older ones began taking the corn, probably figuring that if they didn’t get it, some of the other ones would. Soon they were all eating the corn. They stopped grubbing for acorns and roots on their own.

“About that time, I started building a fence around the clearing, a little higher each day. At the right moment, I built a trap door and sprung it. Naturally, they squealed and hollered when they knew I had them, but I can pen any animal on the face of the earth if I can first get him to depend on me for a free handout!“

- From Lawrence Reed’s Piece: Are We Going the Way of Rome?

The Battle of Rowton Heath

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Phoenix Tower and poem

England, September 24, 1645: Parliament and its Scottish Covenanter allies are embroiled in a war for political and religious freedom against King Charles I. King Charles’s hope for winning the English Civil War is to invite the Irish to his side, but the last port that the Irish could enter at is under siege by the Parliamentarian army. Chester, situated on River Dee, is the last Royalist outpost to the English Chanel, and it is vital for the King to break the blockade. On the side of liberty, Parliament must knock out this last western defense, or risk losing responsible English government to the absolutism held by the Stuart kings. If Charles is allowed his Irish army, the war might escalate to dreadful ends.  Read more on Landmarks of Liberty.

E. Wesley – Mackinac Center Intern

Health Care Nonsense

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Here is a letter I recently sent to the Midland Daily News:

Carolyn Lutz recently stated in her letter on health care that “[a]ccess to appropriate care for everyone makes good sense. We all have a better chance of staying healthy if others in our community are kept as healthy as possible” (“Opportunity to be a leader,” September 20).

A potential improvement in health does not justify government in forcing individuals to devote more time or resources to health. If this logic were consistent, it would also be viable to enact a government mandate requiring everyone to eat healthy, exercise, and stop smoking.

Kurt Bouwhuis

All For One And One For All!

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Kurt Bouwhuis, Mackinac Center Intern

I recently reread this old blog post by Mario Rizzo at ThinkMarkets and found an excerpt that is very insightful:

Do we, as a Nation, “think” that We ought to save more? Or that We ought to increase public borrowing for economic stimulus? Do We believe that government (taxpayers’) resources ought to be injected into failing American automobile manufacturers? Should more money go, instead, to save homeowners from foreclosures? Should more money be sent to save starving children in Africa?

The simple answer is: The questions are senseless. We all don’t have the same priorities. The idea of a Nation’s priorities among these options is a fiction designed to give the impression that the political system expresses some inner national character or some rational assessment of alternatives…

…Once we leave the realm of those relatively few rules that sustain social cooperation – those that benefit each and all – we enter a world in which political priorities are set by special interests motivated by their partiality and avidity. In this world what counts is the political manipulation of the hapless guy.


The Ultimate Chain Letter

Posted on by razma766
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Kurt Bouwhuis, Mackinac Center Intern

Here is a great essay that is a bit more lengthy than most of my posts that is definately worth your time to read!

By: Russ Roberts

The other day I had to get some important tax receipts to my accountant. He’s in St. Louis, it was getting close to April 15, and it was very important that the papers didn’t get lost. To give my accountant plenty of time, I wanted the papers to arrive the next morning.

So what did I do? My first choice was to get on a plane and deliver the letter myself. Too expensive. Too much time.

So I did the next best thing. I went down to the airport and found someone headed to St. Louis. I told her how important it was for my accountant to have my receipts by the next day. Fortunately, she seemed really nice. She said she’d be happy to help me out. I sealed up the envelope, and she promised not to open it after I left.

I guess I’m naive. I know it was foolish to trust a stranger with something so important, but she seemed very honest. She smiled a lot, but I suppose a good thief could learn to do that.

Continue reading →

The Star-Spangled Banner

Posted on by ewreynolds
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4_mural_fort_mchenryThat evening the firing stopped, only to resume again at 1:00 am on the 14th in full vigor. From behind the battle, Francis Scott Key, Skinner, and Dr. Beanes were forced to watch the battle with utmost anxiety. Long before daylight, the British had stopped their guns. What could that mean? Had the British taken the fort so effortlessly? Oh how Key must have strained in the darkness to catch a glimpse of what flag hung on the fort’s flagpole! Then, the morning swept in, and the breeze caught the first rays of light and hope, reflecting a star-spangled banner. At last, “the flag was still there!”

Read how America’s national anthem was literally pulled from a breeches pocket on a September morning!

E. Wesley – Mackinac Center Intern

Unintended Consequences

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Here is a letter I recently sent to the Midland Daily News:

Unintended Consequences

Most advocates of Obama’s health care reform dislike the employer paid health insurance system. Their disapproval of this system is rational – Just imagine if your house, car, etc… were all supplied by your employer and revoked upon leaving the company. I would, however, have a great deal of disagreement with many advocates of Obama’s health care reform over the origins of this faulty employer paid health insurance system.

The employer paid health insurance system is not the result of the free market, but rather, an unintended consequence of price controls placed on wages during World War II by the Roosevelt Administration. These price controls made it illegal to pay employees more than a government determined wage. As a result, businesses began to offer free health care on top of the maximum legal wage limit in order to attract the most valuable employees (as it was illegal to attract the best employees through wages).

The government propped up employer paid health insurance even further by altering the federal tax code. The federal tax code was changed to exclude, without limit, the value of employer paid health insurance from both income and payroll taxes. Although the price controls from the World War II era have been revoked, the employer paid health insurance tax exemption is still in existence today.

With every single piece of legislation enacted by government, there are unintended consequences that negatively impact society. These negative impacts are then ‘remedied’by further government intervention, which, it is argued, are ‘necessary’to solve the problem. This creates a cycle that is especially noticeable in both the health care and financial sectors of the economy, where government intervenes most.

Kurt Bouwhuis

Is Health Care a Human Right?

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Kurt Bouwhuis, Mackinac Center Intern.

Here is a letter I recently sent to the Midland Daily News:

Is Health Care a Human Right?

The revival of the idea of government run health care in the United States has once again ignited a debate over whether or not humans have a right to health care. In order to validate health care as a human right, it is necessary to understand the difference between negative rights and positive rights.

Negative rights are those which pertain to freedom from the uninvited interventions of others. Respect for negative rights require the inaction of the individuals around you, or put another way, require individuals to refrain from pushing other persons around. Examples of negative rights include property rights and the right to your own life.

Positive rights, on the other hand, require actions from other persons. Respect
for positive rights require an authority to force individuals (usually through taxes) to give up a portion of their property or lives in order to serve other persons. If positive rights are valid, no individual would be justified in refusing to service
the positive rights of others, nor would they be justified in opting out of their own positive rights. An example of a positive right is health care.

Unfortunately, if negative rights are valid, positive rights cannot be. If you truly have the right to your own life and your own property, there is no authority that can justly require you to sacrifice your own property or alter your own life goals in order to fulfill the rights of others.

The declaration of health care as a human right will result in further violations of every individual tax payer’s property rights by requiring the sacrifice of larger portions of income (property).

If nothing else, remember that an increase in positive rights will result in a loss of negative rights.

Kurt Bouwhuis

Source: http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/the-perils-of-positive-rights/

A Tribute to a Founder

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September 15, 1794: A signer of the Declaration of Independence parishes after a life of preserving liberty.

“As to my title, I know not yet whether it will be honorable or dishonorable; the issue of the war must settle it.”

“If we continued in the state we were in, it was evident we must perish; if we declared Independence we might be saved – we could but perish…”

“A few weeks will probably determine our fate: perfect freedom or absolute slavery…”

“Our fates are in the hands of an Almighty God… All His designs will be accomplished.”

The hero’s tombstone reads:

Firm and decided as a patriot,
zealous and faithful as a friend to the public,
he loved his country,
and adhered to her cause
in the darkest hours of her struggles
against oppression.

Read more on Landmarks of Liberty.

E. Wesley – Mackinac Center Intern

Change Indeed

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Tired of being plundered.

Don
http://www.cafehayek.com/
http://marketcorrection.powerblogs.com/
…………………………

……….

12 September 2009

Editor, The Wall Street Journal
200 Liberty Street
New York, NY 10281

To the Editor:

So the Obama administration will force Americans who buy automobile tires from China to pay a 35-percent surcharge for the privilege of doing so (“U.S. to Impose Tariff on Chinese Tires,” September 12).

No delusions should remain that the most recent presidential election has “transformed” politics into anything grander than what it has always been: a ‘spoils exchange’where A and B shamelessly collude to rob C and exchange the plundered proceeds with D in return for D’s commitment to help A and B retain their seats on this exchange.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030Chnge

The battle that saved Michigan

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battlel_oval

1813: The British have possession of Lake Eire until American Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry blocks the British supply line.  The British storm the American fleet until Perry’s own flagship is in ruins and four out of every five men aboard Perry’s ship are dead or wounded.  The destiny of Michigan, Ohio, and the entire Northwest Territory depends on Perry’s next move…  Read more on Landmarks of Liberty.

E. Wesley – Mackinac Center Intern

A Treaty that Changed the Western World

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PreliminaryTreatyOfParisPaintingSeptember 3, 1783: A document is signed that grants America eternal independence, gives Great Britain the peaceful conditions needed to enter the modern world through its industrial revolution, and leaves France left with a financial crisis that will only be solved with the guillotine.  Read more on Landmarks of Liberty.

E. Wesley – Mackinac Center Intern