What do the MA schools teach their kids?

Memorial Day, a day for remembrance.  All the politicians come out and try to out speech the one before them showing themselves to be the one most supportive of our troops.  Families make trips to the cemetery to put a small flag on the grave of a father, grandfather or some other loved one who fought in a past war.  Towns put on Memorial Day parades and other observances.

 And to our south, MA kids take pot shots at our veterans with eggs.

 When I read that story I thought to myself how on earth could two 13 year old kids be so disrespectful of our military on of all days Memorial Day.  Then I read that it happened in MA and I fully understood.  Only in a state that elects and supports a politician who out right spit on our Vietnam veterans could I see something like this happening.  Only in the most liberal state in the nation would I expect something like this to happen.  Sad!

Telling Fire Fighters How to do Their Jobs

Imagine waking up to the sounds of your fire alarm, rushing out the door to safety and calling 911 on your cell phone. Your next door neighbor being a fire fighter rushes over to help. You hear the screams of your child who couldn’t make it out. You turn to your neighbor for help and he sits down on the lawn saying he has to wait because legally he can’t act to save your baby yet.

Sounds unimaginable right? Guess again. Lawmakers are currently discussing a bill that could very well make that situation true.

HB842 states:

“ A minimum of 4 trained and fully equipped firefighters shall be on-scene prior to initiating any activities under IDLH conditions.”

IDHL = “Immediately dangerous to life and health”

And…

“Firefighters shall operate in teams of 2 or more while exposed to IDLH conditions.”

Fire fighters are trained professionals who know how to do their jobs. They put their lives in danger to protect us not because they enjoy unnessisary risks. This bill does nothing but tells them how to do their jobs and personally I find it insulting to their professional ability to be able to determine for themselves.

It is your typical union kiss up bill that is why we have situations we all joke about where you aren’t aloud to move a chair from one room to another without calling in a $50 an hour maintenance person from the union. It’s going to tax towns unnecessarily (unfunded mandate) and tell professionals how to do their jobs.

Problems with Government Run Hospitals

I found an article that clearly demonstrates the problems with a government run healthcare system so in light of some of the recent conversations I though I’d share with everyone for sake of discussion.

Sally Pipes in an article found here writes about some of the problems already found in our government run VA hospitals:

Only 19 percent of drugs approved by the FDA since 2000 are listed on the VA formulary, and only 38 percent of drugs approved in the 1990s are listed.

The cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor, for example, isn’t on the VA’s list, even though it’s shown remarkable success at lowering the risk of heart attack and stroke.

Similar cholesterol-lowering statins are on the formulary, and Pelosi would likely suggest directing patients to one of them. But what about patients who have adverse reactions to the other drugs? The fact is, in medicine, one size doesn’t fit all: Patients react to different drug variations in different ways.

In the six years before the formulary was introduced in 1997, both overall U.S. male life expectancy and veterans’ life expectancy increased significantly. From 1997 to 2002, though, while overall U.S. male life expectancy continued to rise, growth in veterans’ life expectancy came to a halt.

When a single buyer must meet the needs of 4 million people, the result is predictable — rationing. That’s because the buyer, in this case the VA, tries to control costs by limiting the availability of certain drugs.

With its enormous purchasing demands — and backed by the overwhelming financial and regulatory power of the federal government — Medicare would simply dictate prices, distorting drug markets on an unprecedented level.

As a result, drug manufacturers would be forced to sell drugs at below-market prices. In Pelosi’s economic fantasyland, that doesn’t matter because drug companies have infinite profit margins. No matter how much we squeeze profits, this magical theory says, the companies will keep on inventing new cures out of the goodness of their hearts.

But in reality, it costs a company hundreds of millions of dollars to develop a new drug and see it through the FDA approval bureaucracy. And sometimes, that research and development is fruitless. In early December, after spending nearly $1 billion, Pfizer decided to halt clinical trials on its latest cholesterol-lowering drug.

Government intervention has already choked off drug innovation virtually everywhere else. That’s why people the world over use cancer and AIDS medications invented in the United States.

Hard to Defend Free Speech

I think we can all agree that those who protest outside funerals are vial and disgusting people. Personally when I read about the group who protested outside the funeral of some of the VT students and outside the funerals of some of those fallen in Iraq I had hoped someone would give them a swift kick in their backsides but as vial and disgusting as I found their behavior and as much as I found myself turned off by it they have the right to freedom of speech.

Politicians however wish to create a line limiting speech. The union leader this weekend ran an article discussing a bill (SB223) that would create “a state ban on funeral protests would mirror federal legislation passed just last year.”

As much as I agree with the sentiment of this bill I cannot support it as it does create the line in the sand allowing a limit on free speech. And the fact Bush signed a similar bill into law on the federal level shows what most of us already know, he is a complete and utter dunce with no understanding of the Constitution. But I digress. The first Amendment states:

“ Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

The NH Constitution Article 22 states:

“ Free speech and liberty of the press are essential to the security of freedom in a state: They ought, therefore, to be inviolably preserved.”

So while I would agree one hundred and ten percent that I would not want some ding dong protecting outside any funeral causing more grief to families who are already suffering, any law prohibiting such would be an out right violation to our US and State Constitutions. I would hope our lawmakers understand this and while they may want to do something and feel this is the right thing to do, it’s unconstitutional and shouldn’t be done regardless of how honorable it may seem. As much as I’d like to be able to argue otherwise, the right thing to do would be to either remove the amendment from this bill or vote it down.

This is one of those cases parents always tell their kids about, saying no isn't meant as punishment as much as because they love you and while it is hard to sometimes say no it is the right thing to do.  So my advice to state reps reading this, say no if you love the Constitution as much as I'm sure you'd like to say otherwise.

For Your Own Good Top 10 List

We live in a time in which anything a legislator can make an argument is “for your own good” can be pushed to be made law. Whether it’s banning food additives (trans fat) or forcing you against your will to buckle up as long as they can argue it’s for your own good they’ll look to write law forcing their will on you. This is a dangerous practice for our government to enter into. For starters where do you draw the line? Should certain sports and physical activities (like say mountain climbing) be outlawed since people could get hurt? Regarding food, to which point should the government force you to eat healthy?

Ben Franklin once said “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Now ironically some of these same politicians who push to limit our freedoms of choice for “our own good” and safety used this quote to attack Bush and republicans with their enforcement of the patriot act.

Based on this I put together a top 10 list based on this type of thinking, enjoy...

10) Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. – C. S. Lewis

9) If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that, too. – Somerset Maugham

8) It is not the responsibility of the government or the legal system to protect a citizen from himself. – Justice Casey Percell

7) No one can read our Constitution without concluding that the people who wrote it wanted their government severely limited; the words "no" and "not" employed in restraint of government power occur 24 times in the first seven articles of the Constitution and 22 more times in the Bill of Rights. – Edmund A. Opitz

6) I believe that every individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruits of his labor, so far as it in no way interferes with any other men's rights. – Abraham Lincoln

5) It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones. – Calvin Coolidge

4) I'd rather live free with some peril than be a protected slave of government. – Dave Duffy

3) The ideal tyranny is that which is ignorantly self-administered by its victims. The most perfect slaves are, therefore, those which blissfully and unawaredly enslave themselves. – Dresden James

2) Each and every time someone says "there ought to be a law" they are saying that men with guns should enforce their will on innocent others. – Michael Barnett

1) "For your own good" is a persuasive argument that will eventually make a man agree to his own destruction. – Janet Frame