www.editedforbias.com » constitution

Beware low bridge ahead…Constitutional views from the left

Ed F Bias — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 02:00:35 +0000

Today Mark Levin scared us all with a reading from Time magazine’s Managing Editor. I felt required to make sure this article was posted with the necessary and obvious rebutles. I was happy to see that a equally angered Conservative (@AaronWorthing) was faster at the keyboard than I and had already done the bulk of my work in his piece.

Please give him the courtesy of reading his post. He obviously spent a great deal of time finding the proper references to trounce the editor. This is precisely the kind of article and factual rebuttal that I wanted this site to bring to the fore. I still have not reached those lofty goals but still plan to build that platform. People like Aaron prove the will and articles like this one from Tinme continue to prove the need.

News Busters also covered this as well here.

Health care is a right?

Ed F Bias — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 05:30:51 +0000

So many Democrats refer to Healthcare as a right and justify the need to cover 100% of the American populous (including illegal residents) and to vilify those that appose their agenda. I oppose this bill in many ways but not the least of which is that healthcare IS NOT a right and in fact is in conflict with the Declaration of Independence.

“A right” is defined by our Declaration as “endowed by their Creator” unalienable due to their life and “that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” So is Healthcare an element of our right to Happiness or one not listed but still “among” those granted as a birth right?

Health equals Healthcare?

Though itmay seem logical that Health is an extension of Happiness. It does not hold as strongly when you consider that Liberty/Freedom and Happiness themselves are specifically listed. If my freedom and happiness is fulfilled by eating pizza and chocolate for breakfast with a cigar chaser, this would probably diminish my health. If I decide to continue this life-style and enjoy the 50 years of shorten life-span, is that not my right a free person pursuing my own happiness? I am not a fan of this destructive life-style. But I reject with vigor the government control and monitoring of individuals dietary intake.

Before you answer with the health care costs of such a diet, here is a basic truth. Everyone dies and everyone incurs the majority of those expenses in the later years of life. In this example those years will come earlier and more rapidly that the norm. This does not mean that the expenses would be any higher. Some studies indicate that the lifetime health costs are actually lower for the unhealthy versus the extended senior years of the continually healthy. This is likely because the unhealthy tend to die quite quickly of heart attacks and strokes. While the healthy eventually come down with cancer or degrade slowly causing extended long term care and/or hospice care. Again, I am mot promoting that government fatten us all up for heart attacks, but it might actually have a long term savings.

Healthcare is a service

So if health is not a right, is it healthcare that is the right? This would seem to maintain your freedom to do as you like but to be able to access healthcare to maintain your happiness. But in that “access” the problem arises. For you to require access for all Americans, you by extension must require other Americans to provide that service. You must also at some level require what services they must offer and in what locations. This requirement of employment, location, and including price, violates those Americans right to pursue their career chose, their freedoms and their own happiness. Allowing them to maintain their freedoms will create shortages in providers by price, specialty and location. In a free society, price is the agreed exchange of money for service at a rate that is deemed acceptable by both parties. No individual has the right to demand service from another American at a price of his own choosing. Therefore, no government established by the people and for the people should demand price and career controls over other Americans on their behalf.

Healthcare is not a right

Trying to make is so does not change this simple reality. So what we must do is endeavor to create a market in which access to services and unfettered competition create an environment in which the patient and the doctor can come to an equitable transaction at lower costs.

Changes are needed and control by insurance companies is no different than government control. I am a fan of HSAs and patient managed plans (see other posts) and believe it is headed in the right direction. It is not yet a complete solution but the contrary violation of the Constitution and the rights of one group of Americans for the benefit of another should be unacceptable to us all.

Dear Mr. Obama: Interest is the “penalty” for borrowing money.

Ed F Bias — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 05:27:31 +0000

In President Obama’s push for a “fee” on banks to recoup losses from the TRAP plan. He and his administration continue to confuse economics and with wealth redistribution and to play pretty loose with the facts. Let’s look at this speech in a little more detail.

Losses in TARP plan.

These losses are not caused by the companies in question. The companies currently in the administrations cross hairs have paid back there TARP loans with interest…technically since they were forced to sell stock, the repayments are dividends (Nasdaq: Banks participating in TARP have so far paid the U.S. Treasury more than $4.9 billion in dividends). The loses in TARP come from the banks that failed, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and government take-over of the car industry. Charging these banks for those failed government investments is simply wrong.

According to the President’s argument, recovering from the brink, repaying your loan including additional dividends and then trurinign huge losses into profits, puts you in hot water. There was no mention of the failures and those still in trouble, especially those government run entities that continue to bleed tax payer dollars. If the bailouts were not supposed to help the banks get back on sound footing, why did the government force them to take funds? The logical conclusion from these arguments is that the bailouts were not supposed to fix the banking sector but only to provide the government control over the banks. Repaying the loan should have released the banks from their obligations and the control of their debtors. But it does not and new controls must now be out in place.

This kind of action would never be accepted in any private transaction. Imagine, once you have paid a loan in full and closed out you account, they call you back and let you know that they do not like you and have decided to reopen your account and start charging you fees. That your ability to repay the loan has proven to them that you are dishonest and these fees are needed to cover losses on other accounts on which they cannot connect.

That stubborn piece of paper.

That is exactly what the President is doing to these banks. But he goes beyond that and goes after other banks as well. Others that never took bailout. I would even wager some that were not involved in trading “toxic assets” in the first place.

Lucky for many, if they have the guts to fight, our founders had been fighting against just such political action. It is called a “bill of attainder“. A brief definition: A bill of attainder was a legislative act that singled out one or more persons and imposed punishment on them, without benefit of trial. Article 1 section 9 of The Constitution specifically states, “No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.”

These actions by the President mirror those of the King of England that we created a country to stop. He is charging them a fee for the perception of dishonest practice. It is simply political action to penalize a particular group for which he has contempt. I do not pretend that there is not a lot of contempt among many Americans as well.

As Washington stated, “We are a country of laws, not a country of men.” Our laws protect us from the emotion of a given time or given issue. The Constitutional protections have been used to protect U.S. protected citizens when congress made it a crime for members of the Communist party to serve as officers of a labor union. I find it ironic that the same protection that preserved the rights of communists is now needed to protect the rights of capitalists.

Conclusion

Those dividends and the loan repayment is the penalty paid by the banks to the US taxpayer. Our most sacred laws are the U.S. Constitution and if those can be ignored by the emotion of the situation we are all in trouble. We may distrust the bankers but unless we are willing to try them in court for specific or perceived crimes (i.e. Bernie Madoff), we have to let them move on with their business and we should get one with ours.