Category Archives: personal responsibility

AT&T and Mordecai Alpert again

[Moved to Jan 15, 2010 so it shows up lower on the site]

After numerous calls over the last few months, including several emails to privacy@att.com and assurances from them that they do protect client privacy, AT&T sent us Mordecai Alpert’s payment information from today.  AT&T has still refused to answer questions regarding how little they are doing to protect Mordecai Alpert’s privacy.

Thank You
Hello MORDECAI ALPERT,

Your payment has been received and will be applied to your wireless account.

  • Amount: 142.49
  • Date: 01/22/2010
  • Confirmation number: QPCODT618700871

We appreciate your business.

Thank you,
AT&T

This e-mail was auto generated. Please do not respond.

In order for collectivists (socialists, progressives, fascists, communists, etc.) to check their morality…

In order for collectivists (socialists, progressives, fascists, communists, etc.) to check their morality, they need only remove government as the intermediary of their programs. When they are exposed as clubbing other people for “charity,” housing rights, medical rights, job rights and all the other rights inimical to the right to self-ownership, property, and the liberty to use it, their brute force will lay naked for all to see. That they rely on government agents to do their mugging for them is an indication of their bravery. At least union members do not hesitate to threaten or use force, but they too often rely on paid goons. ~ Bill Holmes

Health Insurance penalties

In the health care bill passed last Tuesday (10/13/2009) by the Senate Finance Committee, adults who do not purchase health insurance would face an excise-tax penalty of $200 a year starting in 2014 and rising gradually to $750 in 2017.

Let’s analyze this.  You can pay whatever you are paying per month now for insurance or you can forgo buying insurance and pay an annual penalty knowing that you can buy insurance later when you need it.  Simple trade-off there.  Pay $500/month for health insurance now or pay $200/year penalty and only pay the $500 when you need it.

If even a percentage of people wait until they are sick to get coverage, costs will go up on the people who do not try to cheat the system.

The Federal government has one method of making a “universal coverage” mandate viable:  huge taxes that everyone has to pay followed by jail if they don’t.  Every other method can, and will, be gamed.  Look at all the other government programs that people cheat on: from military purchases, to food stamps being, to Social Security (relatives of the dead still collecting), to Medicare, to Medicaid (dump your assets so you qualify) to taxes.  Government socialized health care will be no different.

Even ignoring the Constitutionality of it, do we really want jail time for not having health insurance in what is supposed to be free country?

Energy Secretary Dr. Steven Chu says we are “teenage kids”

The American public…just like your teenage kids, aren’t acting in a way that they should act. The American public has to really understand in their core how important this issue is. Dr. Chu, September 21, 2009

When government runs and funds sciences, the sciences are lost.  No more scientific inquiry.  Too much time licking the boots of their masters.  Remember there can be no scientific inquiry when the government controls you.  Government scientist is a contradiction in terms.  Let’s make a few points clear here:

1. You first, Dr Chu.  Then Al Gore, Prince Charles and all the other blow-hards running around in private jets, multiple huge houses (and so many some Members of Congress “forget” about them). You try it first.

2. It is none of your business what we do, this was founded as a free country with strict Constitutional limits of the powers of government.  Dr. Steven Chu needs to read his American History before he continues to spout fascist-socialist nonsense.

3. Fascism, statism and socialism are not what we want here.

4. Double-speak, thought police, might be acceptable in a totalitarian regime, but not in the United States.

5. Look at sunspots.  Read this [Climate modeling], and this [Al Gore’s house], and this [each leader at U.N. Climate Summit has convoy of vehicles].  “Do as I say, not as I do,” seems to be the motto.

We are not children, Dr. Chu.  We are a country of free individuals and taking orders from crack-pots is not in the plan.

Dr. Steven Chu needs to start with examining his history, his facts, and the Constitution.  After he is done all that, come back and talk to us again.  But the next time Dr. Steven Chu speaks to or about the American people, Chu better do it as equals.  An elitist, authoritarian, imperial set of rulers in Washington?  Is that what you want?

Race not overriding issue.

Are there people out there who don’t like me because of race? I’m sure there are.  That’s not the overriding issue here. – President Obama in CNN interview, September 18, 2009

Giving credit where credit is due here.  Unlike former President Carter, at least President Obama has a clue on this.  Race may be an issue to a small minority, but for the vast majority it is disagreement on freedom vs statism.

Who is being sold out? The unemployed and the rest of the country!

“If anything, this debate underscores the necessity of passing comprehensive immigration reform and resolving the issue of 12 million undocumented people living and working in this country once and for all.” President Obama, September 16, 2009

Now, in Washington-speak “undocumented” means that they are here illegally – they broke the law of the United States to get here.  So 12 million people came here seeking freedom and opportunity that they didn’t have in their own country, but their first act here was to break the law.

Now consider that approximately 13.2 million people were unemployed in April 2009 and around 14.9 million in August 2009 for a 9.7 percent unemployment rate.

14.9 million minus 12 million equals 2.9 million.  What is the unemployment rate then?

There is nothing wrong with immigration, but make it legal.

Rancor in politics means not compromising on freedom

The Politico states that Obama’s “gift for healing words would combine with the power of his biography to transcend the rancor of modern politics.” (http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=9C86A356-18FE-70B2-A8CD0AA335449DD4).   Rancor in politics is caused by one group attempting to gain power over another and that group fighting back.  To take freedom and turn the United States into a socialist paradise.  To take our liberty for what they claim as a good purpose.  The Founders knew this which was why they enumerated powers in the Constitution.  The authoritarians knew this too and since at least the 1930s have attempted to pit one group against another for the aggrandizement of their own power.  Group politics and group envy is the basis of those power hungry groups who only care about one thing – their own power.

Should the North avoided “rancor” with the South in April of 1861?  Should Roosevelt should have avoided “rancor” with Japan on December 8, 1941?  Should the Africans who were being sold into slavery by their own people to the Europeans have fought or should they have avoided “rancor” in politics?

Anyone who is being sold into serfdom should fight back to preserve their freedoms.  Rancor is perfectly fine. Rancor is good, it means you are engaged and care about being free or being serf.  Rancor means not compromising when it comes to protecting your freedoms.  Rancor means that power-hungry authoritarians are not getting their way.  Rancor means that the line of liberty in the sand is drawn and defended.  Rancor means that the defenders of liberty are not willing to compromise their liberty away bit by bit.

Freedom implies free markets.  Freedom implies free minds.  Freedom implies the freedom to make good, and bad decisions.  Every compromise is a grain of sand dripping out of the hour-glass of freedom.  It may only seem like a single grain, but given enough time eventually the top of the glass will be completely empty.

Town Meeting/Town Hall Slogans

Back in April we had Tea Party Slogans, now here are some town meeting slogans:

Obama Lies, Grandma Dies!

Your health plans make me sick!

If socialized medicine is best…why didn’t Ted Kennedy go to Canada?

If Congress likes Obamacare so much, why don’t they test drive it first?

[] Universal Healthcare [] Freedom.  You can only pick one!

Stop!  You’re starting to scare George Orwell!

I am sick and tired of people who call you unpatriotic if you debate this administration’s policies.  We should stand up and say, we are Americans and we have a right to debate and disagree with any administration! – Hillary Clinon

You can’t fix stupid, but you can vote it out!

It doesn’t matter what the sign says, they’ll say its racist anyway!