From Tom at Radio Free NJ

Morons,

There is no money. There is no one else’s pocket left to pick. You can’t borrow anymore, you can’t print anymore, and you can’t steal anymore from anyone else. The people who will be paying the bill to keep you from reentering the 15th century are, unlike you, working very hard. They deserve better than you spoiled pampered children are giving them.

You object to the bond market, but the bond market is just the voice of reality calling. It’s telling you that 2 plus 2 is still 4, no matter what your union bosses would have you believe. Your bosses tell you that ‘the people’ didn’t spend the money, but it’s not true. That’s exactly who has wasted the money, and now the bill is coming due. Right now the Bond Market is actually your very best friend. It’s telling you what a horrible mistake you’ve made, and giving you a chance to undo it, before it’s too late.

The standards that the Germans are living by right now are unsustainable in their own right, but they are a lot closer to reality than you are. At the very least you should pull up your pants, wipe that stuff off your face and be responsible enough to live at that level. Since it’s they who will be coming up with the bulk of your shortfall you should do it out of good manners if you can’t manage any other reason. And once you do, the rest of us will step up and pull you back from the brink.

But the truth is, we’re not going to pull you that far. If you continue to make no contribution to productivity, your life from here on out will be one of relative hardship and poverty. And frankly that’s how it should be. You can live your lives any way you like as far as we’re concerned, but no one is going to reward you for getting drunk on the beach anymore. In the modern world you’ll only get out of the system what you put into it. Either work – or learn to live without.

Socialism always was (and frankly – still is) a horrible idea. It’s the reason you’re in this embarrassing position in the first place. In the eyes of the world you all look just as stupid and spoiled as can be. You could be protesting in diapers and demanding that ‘the state’ wipe your behinds and it would only marginally affect your public image. You need to accept the fact that there are no circumstances under which politics can arrange for nothing to be equal to something. You can not make a contribution of zero and expect to get a benefit greater than that.

You’ve thrown your bottles, burned your flags, waved your signs and had your fun. Now it’s time for you to learn the lessons of history and abandon this idiocy before we finally lose our patience with you. Grow up – and get back to work.

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/64663

The effort, loosely called e-Health or e-Care, combines health-care technology with 21st-century Internet connectivity. It will allow doctors to interact with their patients through innovations such as video chats, telephone health checkups, and home-health monitoring devices that relay data over wireless Internet connections.

“The development of the broadband network and health information technologies has the potential to truly transform health care and simultaneously enable better outcomes and lowering costs,” said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine).

One of the new health technologies on display last Thursday was an automatic drug dispenser that can monitor and adjust medication dosages wirelessly, allowing doctors* to tailor dosages of drugs such as insulin without having to schedule in-person visits with patients.

“What we’re talking about, folks, is using a device like this one,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said, as he displayed the small device. “It attaches to the patient’s skin and is loaded with drugs that are administered in the exact way that the doctor* prescribes – wirelessly.

“That means that a doctor* can vary the doses based on the information the doctor is receiving [from the monitor]. The patient doesn’t have to go in to the doctor and then the pharmacy to change his or her prescription,” he said.

The data recorded by such devices would be automatically uploaded to a patient’s electronic health record, which could then be reviewed by a doctor* from a computer or smart phone, allowing the doctor* to monitor a sick patient in almost real time.

* or Government Death Panel. Ahem.

It’s our only hope, apparently

Everyone thinks the Fed’s job is to fight inflation, but right now the Fed is actually doing everything it can to cause inflation.

Why?

It part to help the economy get cranking again.  Inflation provides an incentive for people to spend cash rather than saving it, because if they save it, the cash will lose value rapidly.

Inflation also helps solve another problem, though–our debt problem.  The more inflation we have, the less our dollars will be worth.  Because our debts are based on a specific number of dollars and not a specific value, the less our dollars are worth, the easier it will be for us to pay off our debts.

Hmm, looks like the cat’s out of the bag, finally. The federal government is going to inflate its way out of debt. Remember two things. First, inflation is a completely manufactured phenomenon. It only happens because the people who control the currency want it to. Second, inflation is a tax on wealth. If you have cash, inflation makes it worth less. If you have debt, inflation makes that worth less, too. Now consider who has more debt than they can ever pay off and absolutely no cash? DING DING DING! The federal government!

So inflation is an important tool in getting us out of this mess.  It’s painful and unfair–those who have been responsible and saved money will pay the price for those who borrowed money, racked up huge debts, and spent more than they could afford.  But it’s what the Fed is (quietly) aiming for.

With inflation, those who have been responsible and saved money will lose money to the direct benefit of those who have been irresponsible and racked up debt. It doesn’t get any clearer than that. And that is EXACTLY what our government is trying to do to us right now. There’s no justice. Playing by the rules and being responsible is discouraged. This is the moral hazard that occurs when money has to inherent value and political elites are given control rather than relying on laws and markets.

Might as well load up on non-perishables, because saving money is a pretty stupid idea right now.

From the No Shit Department

The new federal health-care law has raised the stakes for hospitals and schools already scrambling to train more doctors.

Experts warn there won’t be enough doctors to treat the millions of people newly insured under the law. At current graduation and training rates, the nation could face a shortage of as many as 150,000 doctors in the next 15 years, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

That shortfall is predicted despite a push by teaching hospitals and medical schools to boost the number of U.S. doctors, which now totals about 954,000.

The greatest demand will be for primary-care physicians. These general practitioners, internists, family physicians and pediatricians will have a larger role under the new law, coordinating care for each patient.

The U.S. has 352,908 primary-care doctors now, and the college association estimates that 45,000 more will be needed by 2020. But the number of medical-school students entering family medicine fell more than a quarter between 2002 and 2007.

A shortage of primary-care and other physicians could mean more-limited access to health care and longer wait times for patients.

I don’t know where to start.

You can’t add tens of millions of people to our health care system without causing shortages. Any private system dealing with a huge increase in demand would struggle meeting that demand. As a result, prices MUST go up, and resources will become more scarce. The situation is even worse when the government controls the system because the government is the most inefficient organization on Earth.

If resources are scarce and prices start to skyrocket, the government will set price controls on what doctors and hospitals can charge. That will drive more doctors and hospitals out of business, increasing the shortage. In response to the emergency, the feds will start rationing. And thus: Death Panels.

“Health” “Care” “Reform” (to quote Mark Steyn) wasn’t about health or care. It was about establishing fascist, authoritarian control, fundamentally altering the relationship between citizens and their government, establishing more dependency and undermining individual liberty, and destroying any remnant of free-market economics in the health care system.

It should have been friggin obvious.

Rich taxpayers in Maryland are vanishing

Illinois Governor Pat Quinn is the latest Democrat to demand a tax increase, this week proposing to raise the state’s top marginal individual income tax rate to 4% from 3%. He’d better hope this works out better than it has for Maryland.

We reported in May that after passing a millionaire surtax nearly one-third of Maryland’s millionaires had gone missing, thus contributing to a decline in state revenues. The politicians in Annapolis had said they’d collect $106 million by raising its income tax rate on millionaire households to 6.25% from 4.75%. In cities like Baltimore and Bethesda, which apply add-on income taxes, the top tax rate with the surcharge now reaches as high as 9.3%—fifth highest in the nation. Liberals said this was based on incomplete data and that rich Marylanders hadn’t fled the state.

Well, the state comptroller’s office now has the final tax return data for 2008, the first year that the higher tax rates applied. The number of millionaire tax returns fell sharply to 5,529 from 7,898 in 2007, a 30% tumble. The taxes paid by rich filers fell by 22%, and instead of their payments increasing by $106 million, they fell by some $257 million.

John Galt must have passed through. The smartest thing a state can do is to lure rich, successful people to the area with low tax rates. It builds the tax base and it increases entrepreneurship.

(On the other hand, statists will likely try to enact more laws preventing private parties from leaving an area, or forcing them to pay taxes on capital leaving their localities. Or equally as likely, the feds will begin setting blanket interstate tax policy, which would prevent the competition of ideas between states.)