United Liberty

In a special podcast, Jason discusses the latest details of healthcare reform with Michael Cannon, the director of health policy studies at The Cato Institute and the co-author of Healthy Competition:  What’s Holding Back Health Care and How To Free It.

Their discussion includes the use of reconciliation to pass the latest healthcare reform bill amd the hurdles that procedure faces, the bill’s cost and new taxes, and health savings accounts (HSAs).

You can download the podcast here. The always lovely Aimee Allen graces us with “Silence is Violence” in the music that opens the interview.

You can subscribe to the RSS of JUST our podcasts here, or you can find our podcasts on iTunes here.

In the State of the Union Address President Obama again attacked banks and proposed a special tax on those businesses because of the big bonuses they are giving out:

To recover the rest, I have proposed a fee on the biggest banks. I know Wall Street isn’t keen on this idea, but if these firms can afford to hand out big bonuses again, they can afford a modest fee to pay back the taxpayers who rescued them in their time of need.

Attacking banks for giving out big bonuses is simply ridiculous, and here’s five reasons why:

1) Unless you have ownership in the company, it shouldn’t matter to you
Let’s say that a company like Home Depot decides to pay out big bonuses to their managers. The only people who should be upset are the stock owners. These owners could have received some of this money as dividends but instead it was used to pay big bonuses to the managers. This should be the same concept related to the banks: their bonuses really have nothing to do with you, unless of course you are owner of the company stock.

2) But the taxpayers own part of the banks!
Yes it is true that we “bailed out” the banks. Here’s the problem: Americans should be upset at the government for being irresponsible with their money. If the manager of your investments put a high percentage of your cash into a company that was likely going to fail sometime soon, wouldn’t you be upset? That’s what our government did: bailed out failing companies. If anything your anger should be directed at our government for even MAKING us owners of these failing institutions.

General Motors announced this week that anybody that owns a Toyota vehicle will receive a $1,000 “incentive” to trade said vehicle in for a GM product.

Editor’s Note:  Ford has since matched the $1000 offer.

The supposed e-mails and calls mentioned are in relation to the recent widespread recall on many Toyota products due to a faulty gas pedal that has led to at least one death. Toyota is working feverishly to find a fix but has yet to do so which has stopped production and sales of their most popular models including the Camry and Corolla.(as of this writing, a fix has been announced)

If this were General Motors declaring “war” on Toyota at their most vulnerable I would say go for it. I’m all about free markets and the best product usually succeeds. Hence Toyota outsells most if not all GM car models. But that is not what is happening here.

General Motors is now majority-owned by the Federal Government and Barack Obama is essentially the C.E.O. To believe that GM “CEO” Edward Whitacre Jr. didn’t get a thumbs up from President Obama on this is far beyond naive, it borders on gullible.

Jason, Brett, and Eric got together for this week’s podcast to discuss:

• Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize award.
• The ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
• Update on Georgia pastor killed last month by police in Toccoa (mystery woman speaks out)
• America’s “War on Drugs”
• Kentucky police’s warrantless use of GPS devices to track locations and travels of suspects in ongoing investigations.

You can download the podcast here (just over 64 minutes/59 MB). The intro music is once again “Silence is Violence” by Aimee Allen.

Would you hand over your car keys to a stranger with a drinking problem who had a history of smashing his own cars into telephone poles?

Neither would I. Which is why I am puzzled as to why there is so much excitement over handing health care over to the federal government, thereby giving them responsibility over roughly 1/6th of the nation’s economy.

Before we hand over the keys, let’s go back to the scene of the accident. That accident, of course, is Medicare, a monopoly program that drove private insurers out of the market for the elderly population and is facing huge deficits. If a government takeover of the entire health care system would be so successful, why is Medicare so bent out of shape? Looks a lot like a broken telephone pole with red white and blue paint scraped all over it to me.

The editors of the Washington Examiner ask the same question:

Dr. Paul, once again, outlines the real culprits of the current economic crisis, and points to the real solutions- less government, lower taxes, decreased spending, the end of devaluing the dollar.

H/T: Matt Chancey

And you really want government run healthcare?

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While this interview focuses on South Carolina politics, Governor Sanford answers questions regarding Obama's "spendulous" bill.  Calling the stimulus package a temporary fix, he believes it will create more long-term problems.