Solution to the Obesity Problem in U.S.
Obesity among Americans is in the
news again. Dr. Oz recently called obesity the greatest threat to U.S. national
security. Everybody’s getting fatter, it seems. Of course, those who think that
government can actually solve problems want politicians and bureaucrats to do
something.
For once, I think that these people
are right. I think the government should
do something, and I have the perfect plan. We know that ObamaCare will make
health care much more expensive and much less effective, because government
programs always cost more and give worse service than private solutions.
Therefore, let’s take advantage of the Law of Unintended Consequences. Let’s
create ObamaCare for food. We’ll call it ObamaFare. Food will become much more
expensive. Supplies of it will become uncertain.
People will be forced to eat less. Obesity problem solved.
Labels: government meddling, ObamaCare, obesity
Which 2102 Presidential Candidate?
The quadrennial conundrum is upon
us again. Which of the crummy big-government candidates is worse?
Mitt Romney would make a fairly
bad president. He inflicted RomneyCare on the citizens of Massachusetts In
addition, Obama called Romney’s advisers who helped Romney design the state
program. He’s also a hawk who will pursue the same kind of interventionist
policy that every Republican in my lifetime has practiced. Romney is not as
blatant some Republicans in the “culture war” department, but he’s no laissez
faire freak either.
On the other hand, Romney does
seem to believe in capitalism and free-ish markets. He has been a successful
businessman, which means he’s had to deal with the massive regulatory state. He
at least has some knowledge of economics. Romney has at least addressed the
danger of the monstrous national debt, though he’s unlikely to do more than
slow the increase.
Current President Barack Obama is
a disaster. He inherited Bush’s recession and immediately amped up all the
wrong big-government meddling and deficit spending that Bush had done. For
those who believe that Bush was a small-government deregulator, remember that
he signed such dreck as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the Energy Independence and
Security Act (the lightbulb law), and Medicare Part D. Obama and his cronies
have given us Dodd-Frank, the CARD Act, and of course the totally partisan,
unworkable, expensive and unconstitutional ObamaCare. They waste your money on “green”
energy, which is green for the recipients of government largesse, but red ink
for the rest of us. I heard one speaker at the Democratic convention bloviating
about “a woman and her doctor don’t need government interference”. What? This from
a party hack who likes ObamaCare? And finally, Obama has been spending us into
perdition at the rate of about $45,000 per second of borrowed money. In other
words, he increased the national debt by over $5 trillion in less than four
years.
So the obvious choice is
Libertarian Gary Johnson. He’s a former governor of New Mexico who cut
government, cut taxes and vetoed dumb legislation. Unfortunately, the Big Two
have passed enough campaign “reform” law that minor parties are frozen out, so
there’s little chance Johnson will win.
I live in the “battleground”
state of Colorado. If the polls show that one of the Big Two is statistically
ahead, I will definitely vote for Johnson. If the polls are close, I might vote
for Romney, because Obama is the worst president of my lifetime – and that’s
saying a lot when you consider such contestants as LBJ, Nixon, and George W. Bush. We simply can't endure four more years of Obama's Hype and Chains.
Labels: presidential candidates 2012
Millennia of Debt
The national debt has just surpassed the astounding figure of $16
trillion, more than the US GDP. This occurred, rather appropriately, during the
Democrats’ national convention. Of course, having this milestone pass during
the Republican convention would be about as appropriate. But to the Republicans’
credit, they have at least made an issue out of this disaster, though their
“solution” is a miniscule lowering of the proposed increase in spending. That
is a “cut” in Washington. (Such a “cut” makes the GOP Nazis, baby-killers and
grandma-under-the-bus maniacs in the eyes of the Democrats.) The Big Two
political parties have created all this debt on our behalf, and neither will do
much about it.
Perhaps the public doesn’t understand the magnitude of this debt. To
put it into perspective, let’s look at the time it takes to spend (or pay off)
trillions of dollars.
Suppose (miracle of miracles) the government stops borrowing tomorrow
and starts paying off at the rate of $1 per second. Well, paying $1 trillion at
$1/second takes about 31,700 years. That’s right – 31,700 YEARS for each
trillion. 16 x 31,700 is just over 500,000 years. So the government has callously
mortgaged the taxpayers for half a million years for the explicit debt.
But wait – there’s more. The unfunded liabilities, for Medicare,
Medicaid, Social Security, government pensions and the like is over $119
trillion, per usdebtclock.org. So that’s another 3,750,000 years. Our total
debt, if paid off at $1/second, will take about 4,250,000 years.
And even that’s not the end of it. The budget proposed by congressman
and vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan will supposedly balance the budget by
2040. Assuming (second miracle of miracles) that this wimpy budget is adopted
and assuming a straight-line decline in deficits, over $20 trillion will be
added to the explicit national debt during the next 33 years. Even if the
unfunded liabilities don’t increase, we’ll owe $139 trillion by 2040, or about
4,406,300 years of indentured servitude to pay our debt at $1/second.
Our “public
servants” have become our masters and sold us down the river into fiscal
slavery for 4,000+ millennia.
Labels: national debt, servitude, unfuded liability
