Few people would predict that I would agree with Howard Dean as often as I do, fewer still should be at all surprised that I agree with him when he says of the Health Care Bill: This is essentially the collapse of health care reform in the United States Senate. Honestly, the best thing...
photo credit: Trypode This question is framed in terms of employer sponsored health care benefits, but it really applies to any employer/employee interaction. Are you working with your employer, or are you competing with your employer? To put it another way, is your employer working with you, or simply working you? I ask this...
I found Power, Authority, Legitimacy at Electric Politics to be a very interesting article. It talks about these three important elements to effectively government and how they interact with each other. The focus is on legitimacy, but George Kenney also explains how power and authority can be in place without bestowing any legitimacy. As...
I have been wanting to talk about the meaning of personal or individual independence for a while, especially in light of recent discussions – that was even before I got this comment from Charles that captured the debate in a nutshell: If you are a collection of random individuals each committed to making your...
Last month, in response to a comment that: more often than not it seems the only choice we have in our candidates is a choice between horrible and horrible. I wrote back saying: That means that you need to get in earlier in the process – before there are only two candidates left –...
I have called David Goldhill’s How American Health Care Killed My Father a must-read for anyone who wants to speak up in the health care debate. The New Yorker also has a must-read article on the issue called The Cost Conundrum. In that article we are introduced to the town of McAllen, Texas where...
photo credit: Stowe Boyd By “too rich to go bankrupt” I don’t mean someone so rich that they never will go bankrupt. What I mean by that is someone so rich that them going bankrupt would destabilize our economy and thus they deserve a bailout if bankruptcy ever threatens them. (Think Bill Gates plus...
My post on fundamental assumptions generated some good discussion which began waxing economic in flavor. As part of that discussion I had a new idea about a more reasonable approach the federal government could take to soften economic hard times without outright manipulating our expectations of reality as they do now. I should start...
photo credit: quarksteilchen In the midst of a recent comment the author revealed a fundamental assumption that he and I don’t share that clearly explains why we have differing views on government: Federal mandates are about the only power the government has to prevent a race to the bottom. . . THE only way...
The Health Care Issue as a Catalyst for Debate
photo credit: the queen of subtle When I saw that Jim DeMint had written an article titled Our Health Care Mess Is a Symptom of a Much Bigger Problem my interest was piqued partly because I like DeMint as a senator and partly because I had just been saying the same thing in a...
Read more »