Aug 27

Newborn Baby born in Government Health Care System Eaten to Death by Rats

worship2_dees

Here is a blurb about the single-payer government healthcare system in India. According to Tom DiLorenzo:

Healthcare Socialism in India is as awful, or worse, as socialized healthcare anywhere else. As just one recent example, a newborn baby in an incubator in a government hospital in India was eaten to death by rats. The government hospital administrator “consoled” the father by saying not to worry, “you have another son.” No wonder about 70 percent of the Indian people use private-sector health care providers.

Aug 27

Fake Science: The Majority of Experiments by Government-Supported University Psychologists Cannot Be Replicated

Karl Marx

Most government-supported universities are dens of pro-government sentiment masquerading as social science. Government “research” funding supports thousands of university psychologists who churn out studies that–unsurprisingly–support various socialist and pro-government theories and expansive welfare-state economics.

Pro-government voices in academia are becoming increasingly shrill. Witness some of the hysteria surrounding the government’s “manmade-global-warming” claims. See here.

But science must be repeatable to be valid. A scientific experiment should produce the same or similar results each time it is conducted.

Now a major study has tried to repeat some of the most important studies published in the most prominent psychology journals. And shockingly: “a whopping 75% of the social psychology experiments were not replicated, meaning that the originally reported findings vanished when other scientists repeated the experiments.”

See here.

An international team of experts repeated 100 experiments published in top psychology journals and found that they could reproduce only 36% of original findings.

The study, which saw 270 scientists repeat experiments on five continents, was launched by psychologists in the US in response to rising concerns over the reliability of psychology research

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Aug 23

The Medical Industry is Now So Overregulated that Even Government Hospitals Can’t Fill Job Vacancies

dyingfreedom

American health care is so overregulated that the VA SCANDAL THAT BROKE LAST YEAR is still not resolved–and never will be.

In order to “fix” the Veterans Administration health care problems that were much publicized last year, hundreds of new doctors, nurses and staff needed to be hired.

But it turns out that hiring such people is impossible. They don’t exist due to burdensome licensing requirements.

Read this column Cortney O’Brien.

O’Brien indicates that nearly 1 in 3 important positions in VA hospitals are currently vacant. And filling them is impossible or almost impossible.

Several factors play a role in the employee shortfall: The 9 percent attrition rate, lower pay than the private sector, the implementation of Obamacare, which is creating an imbalanced supply and demand environment in medical care, and the burdensome application process, just to name a few. Jean Schaefer, a spokeswoman for the Phoenix VA, said hiring just one person can be an egregiously long process – one that can include up to 18 steps.

Today, more than half of all U.S. doctors are over the age of 50. Young people interested in joining the field are turned away by the mountains of regulations and licensing obstacles. This problem will get worse as rules and regulations drive out future doctors and nurses.

Aug 22

Venezuelan Government Declares Martial Law to Fight “Smugglers”

fear

Every economic regulation–whether laws governing labor, product quality, or prices of goods or services–creates a black market. And socialist countries which seek to regulate everything suffer (or, rather, experience the comforts and joys of) black markets in every commodity and industry.

Here is a recent BBC story about efforts to thwart free-market transactions in Venezuela–a land of great natural riches which has made itself poorer by years of socialist election victories.

The government of Venezuela is now posting military troops at traffic corridors and border points–and otherwise imposing martial law–to fight “smugglers.”

And, as the BBC reports, the poorest among Venezuelans are suffering most.

Aug 20

Climatologist Patrick Michaels: Private Citizens Should Closely Monitor the Government’s Temperature Claims

BOSTON 2015

Climatologist Patrick Michaels recently notified the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA, the government agency maintaining certain government thermometers) that the agency’s thermometers at Reagan National Airport were reporting temps that were 2 degrees hotter than the agency’s thermometers at the Dulles airport (also in Washington, D.C., just miles away). Michaels had tracked this 2-degree difference for more than a year. See here.

The 2-degree difference could not have been real; both airports are located in the same weather system. NOAA quickly admitted that the temps being reported at Reagan National were inaccurate, and adjusted the digital thermometer “sensor” at National to more closely match the thermometer at Dulles.

But the agency announced that it would not “adjust” the past year’s temperature record. The record would stand as it had been reported–admittedly hotter than real temperatures for at least a year.

The government has, however, “adjusted” temp records where it suits the government. NOAA climatologists have been systematically “adjusting” the temp record for earlier decades to make that older record appear colder than the actual temp readings. See here, here, and here.

The lesson is that the public should do its own temperature and weather monitoring–and should constantly check and challenge the government’s reported temperatures. Join us on Sunday, September 13 at Glacier National Park for our glacier-photographing trip. See here. And here.

Aug 19

Government Universities Continue Their Suppression of Dissenting Opinions

pigs_dees

The brilliant Walter E. Williams has written another essay about the embarrassing state of ideological oppression at America’s government-sponsored colleges and universities. See here.

For example, Oberlin College and Georgetown University have both issued “trigger warnings” to students prior to campus visits by the noteworthy scholar Christina Hoff Sommers.

According to the dominant government-supremacist culture that now controls such campuses, Sommers’ “very presence on campus” was “a form of violence” and she was threatening students’ mental health. At Oberlin, 30 students and the campus therapy dog retired to a “safe room” with soft music, crayons and coloring books to escape any uncomfortable facts raised by Sommers.

Perhaps we can “tolerate” Oberlin’s and Georgetown’s repression. They are, after all, private institutions which have the right to promote their own socio-religious worldviews.

But even the University of New Hampshire–a government institution which is subject to the equal-protection and free speech clauses of the Constitution–has recently suppressed anti-government-correctness speech. UNH has published a “Bias-Free Language Guide,” which “is meant to invite inclusive excellence in (the) campus community.” Terms such as “American,” “homosexual,” “illegal alien,” “Caucasian,” “mothering,” “fathering” and “foreigners” are deemed “problematic.” Other problematic terms include “elders,” “senior citizen,” “overweight,” “speech impediment,” “dumb,” “sexual preference,” “manpower,” “freshmen,” “mailman” and “chairman” are described in the Guide as problematic.

Florida State University–another government school–has an “Equal Opportunity and Non-Discrimination Statement,” which actually infringes on equal opportunity and promotes discrimination. “Behavior that may be considered offensive, demeaning, or degrading,” says the Statement, “will not be tolerated.”

In practice, such government-approved “Statements” foster a climate of fear and discrimination against anti-government voices and those who distrust expansive government.

Aug 17

Whole Foods CEO: America’s professors tend to hate capitalism because they subconsciously envy business leaders

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John Mackey is the cofounder and CEO of a Fortune 500 corporation, Whole Foods. As many libertarians know, Mr. Lackey identifies as something of a libertarian, and he has made a number of fairly courageous statements about various state-authoritarian policies (such as the government’s slave-plantation healthcare).

Here is a decent interview of Mr. Mackey by Reason Magazine.

What is most interesting about the interview is Mr. Mackey’s insight into the totalitarianism of “intellectuals” in academia. Academics tend to identify with the state, and to promote the state’s agenda of government control over individual autonomy and choice.

Mackey suggests that professors at most government-approved universities hate capitalism largely because the professors are subconsciously jealous of successful businesspeople. Business leaders, after all, gain riches by pleasing and helping people, while the officials of the state tend to achieve “success” by hurting and controlling others.

Aug 15

New Study: For Every New Dollar a College Receives in Student Loans, a College Raises its Tuition by 65 Cents

helmet

We all know that the Federal Student Loan Program has driven up college tuition costs because the Program subsidizes artificial demand.

Now a New York Fed study has found that:

for every new dollar a college receives in Direct Subsidized Loans, a school raises its price by 65 cents. For every dollar in Pell Grants, a college raises tuition by 55 cents. This is one reason tuition has outpaced inflation every year for decades, while the average borrower now finishes college owing more than $28,000.

See here.

These words are taken from a column by economist John C. Goodman, who provides several other interesting facts:

* The U.S. has the most expensive higher education in the world.

* Middle class families who “save” for their children’s higher education are punished severely–by the combination of high taxes on savings, artificially-low interest on savings, and skyrocketing tuition rates. In fact, for every dollar saved, MORE THAN A DOLLAR IS LOST TO this combination of factors!

* And Government “support” for higher education has produced devastating results for poor people. “Low-income students in the United States often end up with the short straw: no degree, no job and a bundle of debt that they must pay anyway.”

* and finally, for-profit schools that do not take or accept government subsidies (such as Lysander Spooner University) are far cheaper than those which do!

Aug 14

Reason Magazine: When Government Gives Diet Advice, You Should Always Do the Opposite

tvdees

Generally speaking, every government in the world seeks to increase its advantage over its subjects (and therefore, to increase the DISADVANTAGE of its subjects in comparison to the state).

Thus, one should generally do the very opposite of what government advises–especially regarding investing or nutrition.

For years, observers have noted that the government’s “food pyramid”–which every school kid is forced to digest (no pun intended) from an early age–is largely a product of lobbying interests, such as Iowa grain growers.

Now Reason Magazine has insightfully pointed out that a prudent person would be wisest to do THE VERY OPPOSITE from whatever the government advises with regard to nutrition.

See here.

Aug 13

Government-supported universities continue censoring and suppressing individualist ideology

dd3s22

Whenever you walk from the free world onto a government-supported college campus, you are entering a world where products and services are more expensive and where your freedoms are decreased.

Everything at most modern government-supported colleges is more expensive than off-campus. In Bozeman, Montana, for example, parking is free everywhere. Except in one location: the campus of Montana State University. At Montana State University, you can buy a sandwich for 7 bucks that would cost 5 bucks elsewhere in Bozeman.

These high costs are directly attributable to the Student Loan Program, which artificially boosts demand and fills students’ pockets with artificially-available cash.

Here is a column by Walter E. Williams about the University of California. It is a public institution, which presumably is subject to the Bill of Rights, including the First Amendment. Yet the California university system has put out a list of disfavored (pre-banned?) statements; which students are warned not to utter.

The disfavored statements include:

* “America is the land of opportunity.”
* “I believe the most qualified person should get the job.”
* “Everyone can succeed in this society, if they work hard enough.”

See here.
Of course, these statements are statements of political ideology, so California’s public universities are unconstitutionally censoring the expression of certain–especially individualist, free-enterprise, capitalistic–ideas.