I have a right to have your rights ... even if that's wrong

"Does anyone here think I'm a strong adherent of the North Korean form of government? That I want all of you to be wearing similar-colored pajamas?" he asked some New Hampshire school kids last fall. After they finished laughing—the inevitable response—he explained that "democratic socialism" is just a kind of friendly neighborhood clubhouse where everybody's welcome: "a government which represents all people, rather than just the wealthiest people, which is most often the case right now in this country. And it is making sure that all of our people have health care as a right, education as a right, decent housing as a right, child care as a right."
https://reason.com/archives/2016/04/14/the-sanders-surprise

If you have a "right" to health care, education, decent housing and child care - that is to say you are as entitled to those services as you are entitled to personal safety and to the fruits of your labor - then there is no such thing as a right.  You cannot have a right to something that is the right of someone else.  If you have a right to housing - did the workers who built not have the right to be compensated for their work?  If you have a right to health care - did the providers of that care not have a right to be compensated for their life energy that went towards your care?  If you have a right to education - do the educators have a right to be paid for educating you?  If someone has to take good care of your child, how can you have a right to their good care?  This is a nonsense game.

What's that?  The rich should pay for all of your rights?  You don't have a right to the life energy of an educator, a doctor/nurse, a construction worker or a child care provider - you have a right to the earnings of the wealthy!

First off, that's not going to last long.  The earners are smart enough to avoid such a fleecing.  Second off, what gives you a right to anything that anyone else gave their life energy to create?  If you are entitled to the life energy of another person, there is no such thing as a right.

The joke is on anyone who believes this silly BS.  Bernie can talk about making sunbeams out of cucumbers all he wants, but wait until he tries to make it happen and his delusion is finally confronted by reality.  His ideas are as coherent as a soup sandwich.

For example:  This glib disregard of troublesome facts runs through many of Sanders' economic ideas, sometimes to the point of outright falsehood. Remember that wealth tax he's so enraptured by, the one "similar to those that exist in most European countries"? A 2014 European Commission survey of the continent's tax policies found just three European countries with something like it: Spain, France, and the Netherlands. "Several countries abolished their wealth tax," the commission reported, "because of the fact that the taxpayers were able to move much of their wealth out of reach of the wealth tax." That is, when a government tries to seize rich people's money, many of them leave.

Or:  Which brings us to the delicacy of Sanders' plan for tuition-free college. His funding plan makes no allowance for a crunch in endowment investments, nor for the probability that once stock trades are taxed, investors will start making fewer of them, which will reduce the money gained from the tax. And then there's another probability: that once tuition is free, more students will want to attend college, requiring more professors and more buildings. Once you've got less money than you expected but more students, the whole thing starts unraveling like a Kmart sweater.

Putting a Finger on It

The bedrock issue here is that the federal government owns more than 80% of the state of Nevada. This is true across the western states. To an astonishing degree, those states lack sovereignty over their own territory. Most of the land is federal. And the federal agencies that rule over federal lands have agendas. At every opportunity, it seems, they restrict not only what can be done on federal lands, but on privately-owned property. They are hostile to traditional industries like logging, mining and ranching, and if you have a puddle in your back yard, the EPA will try to regulate it as a navigable waterway.

That is only a slight exaggeration.

One could say that Cliven Bundy is just one more victim of progress and changing mores. The federal government has gotten more environmentally-conscious, and now we really, really care about desert tortoises. (It was the designation of desert tortoises as an endangered species that gave BLM the opportunity to squeeze Bundy in the early 1990s.) But here’s the thing: the Bureau of Land Management–the federal government–is not necessarily anti-development. Rather, its attitude depends entirely on what sort of development is in question.

Thus, BLM has developed a grandiose plan to develop vast solar energy installations on federal land across the Southwest. Wind power projects are favored, too. In fact, the same BLM that has driven Nevada’s ranchers out of business has welcomed solar projects with open arms. Some have claimed that Harry Reid is behind the BLM’s war against Cliven Bundy, on the theory that he wants the land for a solar project in which his son Rory is involved, along with the Chinese. I don’t believe this is correct. The solar projects are located north of Las Vegas, 30 miles or so from the area where Bundy ranches.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/04/why-you-should-be-sympathetic-toward-cliven-bundy.php

Limits? What Limits?

It's a monster

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-f-will-carol-bond-case-showcases-government-run-amok/2013/11/01/9146cdf8-4276-11e3-a624-41d661b0bb78_story.html

This term the Supreme Court will rule on important subjects from racial preferences to restrictions on political speech, but its most momentous case, to be argued Tuesday, concerns the prosecution of a Pennsylvania woman who caused a chemical burn on a romantic rival's thumb. The issue is: Can Congress's powers, which supposedly are limited because they are enumerated, be indefinitely enlarged into a sweeping police power by the process of implementing a treaty?

Limited government was the idea - is it even possible now?

Limited Government

We know better now, even the most deluded of us. We’ve read the text messages, heard the tapes, followed the paper trail, met the hundreds who were deceived or diminished or destroyed by their association with him. The evidence is overwhelming: He simply robbed our city blind.

And we know that, however unwittingly, we were coconspirators as well as victims, because we empowered him. That’s the downside of living in a democracy, where elected officials can betray only what voters have entrusted to them.

Kilpatrick is still a mirror, but instead of reflecting our lofty hopes and dreams, he reflects our gullibility, our vulnerability, our desperation. It’s not a pretty picture, and we are impatient for something more attractive to look at.

http://www.freep.com/article/20131010/COL04/310100165/Brian-Dickerson-Happiness-Kwame-Kilpatrick-our-rearview-mirror-video-

Limited government.  Less power, less abuse of power.

The NSA Is Spying On Us? duh

Repeat after me: Government is power. Government is not to be trusted. Ever. Even if you believe that some government is and will always be necessary, that 'necessary' piece of government should always be regarded as a prudent lion tamer regards the big carnivorous cats that are 'necessary' for him to make a living. To imagine that seemingly subdued purring lions can be trusted to be dealt with in any ways that do not include the use of strong cages, leashes, ceaseless and deep suspicion, and escape hatches is the height of romantic absurdity - wishful thinking of the most extreme and inexcusable sort. Government is by its very nature a dangerous, untrustworthy, dishonest, arrogant, slippery entity - characteristics that are by no means reduced anywhere near to insignificance by a wide franchise, regular elections, and sturdy ink-on-parchment documents called "constitutions."

Unless you are a high-ranking government official, government - no government - is ever "Us." It is always "Them." And They are not to be trusted. Ever.
http://cafehayek.com/2013/06/some-snowden-links.html

Dr. B says it like few or none can.

Will's Contempt For Obama

Before Berlin, Obama set his steep downward trajectory by squandering the most precious post-election months on gun-control futilities and by a subsequent storm of scandals that have made his unvarying project - ever bigger, more expansive, more intrusive and more coercive government - more repulsive. Then came Wednesday's pratfall in Berlin.
There he vowed energetic measures against global warming ("the global threat of our time"). The 16-year pause of this warming was not predicted by, and is not explained by, the climate models for which, in his strange understanding of respect for science, he has forsworn skepticism.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-f-will-obama-hits-a-wall-in-berlin/2013/06/20/bfff0426-d9df-11e2-a016-92547bf094cc_story.html

My goal is to avoid experiencing contempt for anyone, but Mr. Will has a different perspective. What we both see clearly, though, is the absurdity of an ever expanding, ever incompetent federal apparatus that is unresponsive to anything but political expediency, unaccountable, and does so many things (for inexplicable reasons like those that drive AGW hysteria) it does none of them well.

The Great Mystery

"The great mystery of recent elections, including last fall's, isn't why Barack Obama won reelection despite a terrible economy and a feckless foreign policy. It's why the Republicans-ostensibly the party of smaller government and the champion of individual liberty-ever lose elections. According to Gallup, for the last decade, a sizable majority of Americans "think the government is doing too much," and half see themselves as economic conservatives. If the GOP is losing elections, it's precisely because, as Paul put it at CPAC, the party "is encumbered by an inconsistent approach to freedom." Independent voters are generally turned off by a party that seems fixated on yesterday's social mores. Growing majorities of Americans are totally fine with legal pot and gay marriage; fully 80 percent of us believe that abortion should be legal under some circumstances, with 61 percent saying it should be unrestricted in the first trimester of pregnancy. Similarly large chunks of voters are turned off by crony capitalism, industry-specific bailouts, the president's top-down health-care plan, a reckless disregard for civil liberties, and a foreign policy that seems largely indistinguishable from that of George W. Bush."
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/05/15/rand-paul-plays-the-maverick-at-cpac-and-the-evangelical-in-cedar-rapids.html

Finesse?

Understanding the choice:  http://news.investors.com/article/616497/201206281813/roberts-ducks-another-bush-gore-with-court-ruling.htm 
Well told by Mr. Krautthammer.

The government was so unbounded previously that this was a fait accompli anyway.  As I wrote to a friend yesterday, the sin of slavery baked in the Constitution's weakness.  It got to the point that one half of the nation could go to war to compel the citizenship of the other half, and kill a half a million or more people in the process, and feel good about it.  After that, what would restrain the governmet from doing whatever people would feel good about? 
Curse the fact that slavery was baked into the founding of this nation.  Curse the fact that it took the destruction of the limiting force of the Constitution and the death of federalism and the death of 500,000 people to end the legal practice of human ownership of other humans, and to begin to undo the wrongs that were done via that practice.  Curse the Fed and the resulting economic swings of the 20's, which made the US government's subsequent interventions seem like necessary evils.  Curse the Presidents of the time that made the US appear so weak - via the economic meddling they directed that did in fact make the US military weak - that the Japanese believed they could defeat us. 
A few not so brilliant predictions.  The thing called Obamacare is going to have some monumental negative unintended consequences.  These NUCs will become the basis for even more intrusive legislation.  The government will be mired in fiscal paralysis trying to pay for what it has promised - although frankly, it already is, no great insight there.  The young will increasingly resent the inefficiency in the way the costs of the old are coercively extracted from the young.  The power of the US military will diminish annually - certainly not all bad but most likely what the average US citizen would like were they asked. 
I dream of a new amendment which spells out something along the lines of this: "The purpose of the commerce clause is not different than the the purpose of the other components of the Constitution - it is to defend the rights of the People to cooperatively trade with each other across state lines, without coercive intervention by the States." 
Another amendment would direct the government to practice social security only if it can be done on a voluntary basis, and pay what is owed to those still alive who want out.
Another amendment would require that medicare and medicaid be voluntary or end.
Whenever we get serious and have ourselves a Constitutional Convention, I'll be there.

Self Defense? Or Attack?

The president is evading federal law on the use of the military by having the now-paramilitary CIA kill people in foreign countries with drones and disrupt a foreign population with a cyber-war. And he is violating the Constitution and federal law by starting wars on his own. But the loudest and most sanctimonious of politicians are not demanding that the president follow the Constitution and the laws he has sworn to uphold. Rather, they are demanding to know who told the media about the president's war making.
http://reason.com/archives/2012/06/14/why-leaking-is-a-lesser-crime-than-wagin

What say you dear readers?

"Whoa Nelly!"

Remember that in past history other governments have tried to force Christians to huddle and hide only within the confines of their churches like the first disciples locked up in the Upper Room.

In the late 19th century, Bismarck waged his “Kulturkampf,” a Culture War, against the Roman Catholic Church, closing down every Catholic school and hospital, convent and monastery in Imperial Germany.

Clemenceau, nicknamed “the priest eater,” tried the same thing in France in the first decade of the 20th Century.

Hitler and Stalin, at their better moments, would just barely tolerate some churches remaining open, but would not tolerate any competition with the state in education, social services, and health care.

In clear violation of our First Amendment rights, Barack Obama – with his radical, pro abortion and extreme secularist agenda, now seems intent on following a similar path.

Now things have come to such a pass in America that this is a battle that we could lose, but before the awesome judgement seat of Almighty God this is not a war where any believing Catholic may remain neutral.

http://www.thecatholicpost.com/post/PostArticle.aspx?ID=2440

On the one hand, he's right as rain about the tools the tyrants have used in the past to seduce and compel those they must subdue.  Once government controls the delivery of health care, they have us all by the "dangling reproductive organs."

On the other hand, as near crazy as this sort of talk can seem to those on the outside of this person's interpretation of his faith, it's even crazier that the natural implications of his perspective are never realized.  The natural conclusion is "men should not be empowered to act as gods."  Goverment should have a clear, defined, limited, early purpose, otherwise, it will be coopted and corrupted by men, who are fallen.  The government's purpose should be nothing more, and nothing less, than to defend individual rights and to allow for the group to defend themselves from an outside invader.

The argument heard instead is the incessant "If good people like us can just get control of government, think of all the good we can do!"  This lament is heard on all sides and by all parties because they all believe in the rightness of their own cause, and are willing to do what is required - starting with lying, cheating and stealing - to achieve it. 

The pundits blather about the heated, impolite nature of politics today but never stumble across the obvious - if the government is endowed with so much power that it can lay hands on and run 16% of the economy of our nation (health care), it simply must be fought over.  There is no alternative.  It's never going to be the case that so much power will not be mightily contested. 

You want politics to be less divisive?  LIMIT GOVERMENT'S POWER.  Asking to have politicians running our lives coercively, but insisting that it be done with polite kindness is too ridiculous for characterization. 

"Why can't we just all get along?"

"Dysfunctional Politics"

A big part of the reason analysts at Standard & Poor's pulled our AAA rating back in August was our dysfunctional politics. Democrats and Republicans didn't address the issues. And they didn't merely kick the can down the road -- they held all of us hostage to 11th-hour brinkmanship as the debt ceiling approached to score points with far-left and the far-right extremists.
http://money.msn.com/investing/us-barrels-toward-a-fiscal-cliff-mirhaydari.aspx

This is a funny one!!  Who does he think politics is for? 

It's for the politicians, stupid.

They keep getting elected, even when they make absurd laws, lie to us about why they made those laws and which ones should be made in the future (its' darned rare they get excited about 'unmaking' laws), and lie to us when they pretend to know they supposed good that previous lawmaking accomplished ("TARP and the stimulus fended off a depression").  Then they "retire", sell books and gain employment with the connected, live well on our labor, and regail us all with stories of all the great things they did with our money. 

While they fool us into thinking they are on our side, and we must really want to believe it, they take the money and the lobbying from those with money and power to spare and the incentive to do so, and keep writing laws that benefit those "clients." 

I would ask - how else could "our" politics work?  It works perfectly and in accordance with the incentives that exist for it to work as it does. 

What are the incentives for less government restriction and meddling? 

Pidding - in comparision to the incentives for politicians to make laws that benefit their "clients." 

In other words, our "democracy" functions just as a democracy should be expected to function when the government is not sufficiently limited such that it cannot be utilized by Peter to get something from Paul.

"That's Not Enough For Me"

Considering the ACA's glaring -- and predictable -- economic and political shortcomings, why did Obama make it his first-term centerpiece? The answer seems to be his obsession with securing his legacy as the president who achieved the liberal grail of universal coverage. In his book "The Escape Artists: How Obama's Team Fumbled the Recovery," Noam Scheiber recounts a telling incident. Obama's advisers tell him he can be known for preventing a second Great Depression. "That's not enough for me," Obama replies.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/03/26/obamas_ego_trip_113601.html

No matter how bad this law will be, it would be a legacy any Democrat would be proud of.  That's how governments work, that's how politicians think.  That's why the idea was that our government should be severly limited so that our lives and our opportunities should not be shaped by the egos of the political class.

I hope the SCOTUS's actions in the next few days preserve what is left of those limits.

Better Politicians?

The result of all this can kicking is that Congress must make all those decisions by January 2013—or defer them yet again. If the House and Senate don't act in time, a list of things will happen that are anathema either to Republicans or Democrats or both. The Bush tax cuts will expire. The temporary payroll tax cut will end. Unemployment benefits will be severely curtailed. And all on Jan. 1, 2013. Happy New Year!
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304459804577281233569546496.html

Statements like this make some people think "If only we had better politicians, this kind of governmental disfunction wouldn't happen, and we could regulate and legislate our way back to the good old days of (fill in the blank here for whatever is wished for - international military power, financial power, or being loved by all the little children of the world, especially Iranian and North Korean children)."

I don't see much reason to believe that is true.  First off, no one or group can run an economy, or a government, much less, when they dance to the tune of the re-election song (and they all do or they become "former politicians"). 

Second off, the system produces the politicians.  The folks that are comfortable speaking in half truths and platitudes and at the same time are able to project a sense of purpose and meaning in those half truths are the people who can survive a political arena.  Those devoted to truth never win - with a few glaring exceptions. 

That matters little however, since even if the truther tellers were elected, there would still be the problem stated in the paragraph prior. 

Partisianship?  Thank goodness, it saves us from a lot of do-gooding.  Rancor?  The more the better.  Infighting?  Bring it, and thanks.  Political maneuvering which serves parties and politicians but not the People?  Of course, inevitable, that's why the government is supposed to be limited.

Hope For Those Who Oppose Coercion

Some hope, and what a marker for the cause of liberty of the SCOTUS makes the call.
http://spectator.org/archives/2011/11/23/the-bell-tolls-for-obamacare

Cooperation or Coercion? That Is the Question

Dispersed, cooperative knowledge works in economics as it does in evolutionary biology, to accelerate advancement of the human species. Thus two disciplines are joined in Matt Ridley’s book, The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, for which he received the Hayek Prize this evening from the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.

Friedrich Hayek was, of course, the Nobel economist who pioneered work in what Ridley, in his acceptance lecture, called “bottom-up” economic and social development. (The $50,000 prize is given annually to a book author who best incorporates the late Austrian’s insights.) Hayekian thinking challenges central planning, based on isolated or centralized knowledge, as a fatal conceit.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timferguson/2011/09/26/science-and-economics-meet-at-hayek/

Which Narrative?

Forgive for a moment the author's ideation of a human - a remarkable human for sure - which CW uses to give an emotional boost to an impassioned argument.  But note the contradictions. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/26/opinion/martin-luther-king-jr-would-want-a-revolution-not-a-memorial.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

CW expresses a belief that democracy is the ideal we should strive for, but cites not a single example in which it has worked well.  Pure democracy does not work well, which is why the Founders left us with a democratic republic.  They also left us a government designed to be "of the People, by the People, and for the People" but incomprehensibly defined out of that meaning people who were "owned" by other people.

CW complains that we use too much coercive force through our invention of the "drug war."  CW thinks we deprive too many people of their liberty for victimless crimes such as drug use.  I agree.  CW's solution, though, is to ramp up the use of coercive force.  The underlying thought is seemingly "We'll get this right next time."  I get it.  There's an ideal in which smart, informed, good people win elections and take the best of actions with gilded intentions and create a world of justice and equality for all, even folks that take drugs and drink intoxicants and display all the other manifestations of human frailty.  CW does not think this vision utopic.

CW's prescription:

King’s response to our crisis can be put in one word: revolution. A revolution in our priorities, a re-evaluation of our values, a reinvigoration of our public life and a fundamental transformation of our way of thinking and living that promotes a transfer of power from oligarchs and plutocrats to everyday people and ordinary citizens.

Well, sure, let's change our values, our public life and the ways we think.  This is sure to work - if we all change our values and thoughts so that we think as the author does.  If we do, his utopia will be manifest.  In short, if we just do things like the author wants them done, we'll get a precise, effective and useful result from the use of coercion. 

CW points to the crime of militarism, as do many libertarians, but misses the lesson - if a government is not limited, it will abuse the power it holds.  CW wants more coercive action by government.  There's no shortage of that now.  CW thinks the coercive actions should be different coercive actions, not the ones that have delivered us to our present circumstance.  By what means does CW think this may be accomplished?  Is there any reason to believe that, by empowering men to coerce other men through the sanction of the state, men will do a better job next time?  CW implies that it is not the use of force that is incorrect, rather that is was not used properly.  "We just didn't pick the right horses."  Instead, we should pick folks like the following, who really love to throw around government's monopoly on coercive force:

In concrete terms, this means support for progressive politicians like Senator Bernard Sanders of Vermont and Mark Ridley-Thomas, a Los Angeles County supervisor

Does CW give us any reason to hope that power will not be abused?  Does CW even have awareness of the issue?  Has there been a case in which government power has not been abused? 

Instead of articulating a radical democratic vision and fighting for homeowners, workers and poor people in the form of mortgage relief, jobs and investment in education, infrastructure and housing, the administration gave us bailouts for banks, record profits for Wall Street and giant budget cuts on the backs of the vulnerable.

The summary of CW's lament:  IF I WAS KING I COULD MAKE IT ALL BETTER

This is what every tyrant thinks, and it is what I think.  There's a significant discriminator between the notional Apollotyrant and other would be tyrants.

When elected "Master of Space and Time" I will force you to decide for yourself, be responsible for yourself, and suffer the consequences if you treat your friends and family like dirt and have nothing to fall back on.  I will trust you to do the best you can for yourself and others, realizing that utopia is not an option, and that pain and suffering are here with us to stay.  I will insist that your respect the lives and property rights of your fellow Americans, and prosecute you to the limit of the law if you do not.  I will insist that, as Master of Space and Time, I limit my activities to the legitimate actions of the Supra State - which are to defend your rights and your neighbors' rights.  There would be no coercive government "welfare", no coercive government "social security", and very little talk about how great our nation is.  There would be no minimum wage, since you would be expected to decide for yourself whether to work and at what compensation level.  There would be no connection between government and unions, except to ensure that no union could interfere with your liberty to enter into a working relationship with any employer.  The government would not steal money from any citizen in order to fund another citizen's education, but given the passion most citizens have, I suspect each child would be educated, and likely in a better school than the ones we see now.  No money would be coercively removed from one citizen's pocket in order to pay for another's health care.  But given the same commitment to health care for all that Americans say they believe in, I have no concern, as there are any number of systems by which people could voluntarily support those in need, and for a fraction of the supposed cost of the present system of health care, which is completely divorced from any notion of value by the coercive interventions of the government into the provision of health care services today.

Not that I really want the job of MoST, but I have no doubt you'd live a better, fuller richer life with a limited government than were you so unlucky to be stuck in CW's tyranny.

Which narrative do you believe?

Making the Connection

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/08/18/rick-perry-outflanking-george-w-bush-on-the-far-right.html

The author of this piece goes on and on about just how incredibly horrible Perry is, and expresses his dismay that such a man might be elected President.  Perry's crimes include - and this is truly wretched, as I'm sure you agree - saying:

-that he's not entirely sure anyone really knows exactly how old the earth is

-he thinks that AGW is a hoax perpetrated by grant chasing researchers

-the President is not respected by the military

-that Bernanke's committing treason through his manipulations at the Fed

Of course, the author will never make the connection that, assuming he's right on all counts about how wretched Perry is, that is exactly why we need a limited government.  People elect wretched people to be their political leaders.  Always have.  Always will.  On what rational basis could we possibly think otherwise?  That truth underlies the point of limitied government, for those who can make the connection.

Harrop on Federalism, States' Rights

Well done, Ms. Harrop, and thank you for writing this.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/08/16/letting_states_make_policy_110895.html

"Of course, such states' rights arguments have been used to defend such evils as legalized racial discrimination."

While true, that does not mean it has to be that way.  It is a legitimate function of the Federal Government to defend individual rights - easily defined as "my rights end where your nose and property begins."  The Federal Government should step in, and should have stepped in, in defense of individual liberty, anytime a state government fails in its perogative to defend the rights of individuals.

It Isn't Supposed To Be Pretty - It WAS Supposed To Be Limited

Now that Congress is finished displaying its one unquestionable skill — conniving at ideological extortion, with the household budgets of millions of Americans hanging in the balance — the time has come to calculate the damage done to U.S. fiscal policy by the debt ceiling deal reached this week.

The toll can be measured in several categories. One is the way the debate elevated deficit panic, an entirely fabricated issue in terms of today's policy necessities, to legitimacy. Another is how even within its own fantasy universe the agreement targets spending that isn't a significant problem in the federal budget, while ignoring the chief driver of deficit growth: healthcare costs.

The outstanding irony of the entire debate is that, despite the participants' declared intention not to merely "kick the can down the road," that's what they've done.

http://www.latimes.com/health/healthcare/la-fi-hiltzik-20110803,0,2472202,print.column

I love the writer's style, even if I disagree with his assumptions (but of course he's right on the money regarding budget cost drivers).  I am amused that he continues to place his faith in the same buffoons - that he so capably lampoons - to run health care and to run a retirement system and to do all the other things which would be above the heads of any mortal.  I guess if we just keep electing people we'll eventually get the right bunch that is good enough, smart enough, and selfless enough to do the right things for the right reasons and make it all wonderful for the rest of us (in other words he's still suffering from the fatal conceit).  Too bad he's unwilling to examine all the ways our government has made our health care system to unnecessarily costly.