2 PARAGRAPHS 4 LIBERTY: #196 "IT'S ABOUT WHO WE ARE"

      Last August Reason magazine editor Matt Welch commented in an editorial in the New York Times about the teachings of the late Senator John McCain on the subject of torture.  He said that McCain taught us that torture “produces faulty intelligence, that ‘every man has a breaking point,’ (and) that military personnel derive a motivational pride from America having higher moral standards than its debased adversaries.  ‘Your last resistance, the one that sticks, the one that makes the victim superior to the torturer, is the belief that were the positions reversed you wouldn’t treat them as they have treated you.’”  But we must continue to learn from McCain, because interest in this important issue appears to have waned.  And it should not because, as Mc Cain says, “This is a moral debate.  It is about who we are.”

     The prison at Guantanamo is still open, much to our discredit!  And, although President Obama banned torture as soon as he took office, our present president has stated publicly that torture “absolutely works.”  Furthermore, our government even under Obama has continued secretly to send terrorist suspects off to third-party countries to be “questioned.”  So do we care?  Have we learned from Senator McCain that unaccountable power behaves unaccountably?  Yes, we know that after Osama bin Laden was located and killed, many officials in our government widely spouted that this never would have happened without using “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques.”  But was this true?  Ask McCain, who subsequently wrote: “In truth, most of the C.I.A.’s claims that abusive interrogations of detainees had produced vital leads to help locate  Bin Laden were exaggerated, misleading, and in some case, complete bullshit.”  But even if it worked, the very soul of the United States of America is its Freedoms and its Liberties.  Do we not believe that our soul is under direct attack if we do not treat everyone in our custody humanly?  Of course, we should also define what we mean by the word torture because there is a significant difference between breaking bones and subjecting people to sleep deprivation and loud music.  But in the end, it is not about other people, other countries or even the Geneva Convention, it’s about who we are!  

Judge Jim Gray (Ret.)

2012 Libertarian candidate for Vice President, along with

Governor Gary Johnson as the candidate for President

Thought for the week:  Technically Moses was the first person with a tablet to download data from the Cloud.

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2 PARAGRAPHS 4 LIBERTY: #195 "A BETTER FORM OF HEALTHCARE"

     Last week’s edition attacked the direction we are presently going toward, which is socialized medicine.  This edition outlines a better way, which would be to reduce the involvement of government for people who are able to take care of their own healthcare needs simply to requiring each of them each year to invest about $5,000 in a Medical Savings Account.  This would be a separate ATM-type account that they would use to pay for their own healthcare needs.  In addition, they would be required to purchase catastrophic healthcare insurance, which would basically be insurance with a $5,000 deductible.  Research shows that most people spend less than $5,000 per year for their healthcare needs until reaching the later years of their lives.  So if they have an incentive to spend their money wisely, and know that the remaining amount will be rolled over into the next year’s account and eventually be available for their retirement, they will do just that.  This program will produce at least three beneficial results.  The first would be to increase competition for healthcare dollars, which will bring down those costs.  The second would be that the amount of money paid to healthcare professionals would be materially increased, and the amount paid to administrators and bureaucrats materially decreased.  And the third would be once again to encourage people more to act as active partners with their healthcare professionals in their own health.   All of these are good results.

       But what about people who are not able financially to take care of their own needs?  They would be provided with government-paid vouchers which could be used by them to pay for their own healthcare needs as well as insurance.  These vouchers would be provided on a sliding scale based upon each person’s financial condition, but there would always be some form of co-pay, however slight, to encourage responsible purchases.  This approach would then furnish the same basic results as set forth above.  Thus everyone would be encouraged to spend their money/vouchers productively thus bringing costs down.  In addition, more of the money would go to healthcare professionals and less to bureaucrats, which would also reduce fraud in medical billing.  And this approach would also remove inequitable tax breaks for employer-based insurance plans, and encourage everyone to act as partners in their own healthcare.  So what’s not to like?

Judge Jim Gray (Ret.)

2012 Libertarian candidate for Vice President, along with

Governor Gary Johnson as the candidate for President

Quote for the week:  “The trouble with the rat race is that, even if you win, you’re still a rat.”  Lilly Tomlin

                                                                              

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2 PARAGRAPHS 4 LIBERTY: #194 "MEDICAL INSURANCE: WHAT HAVE WE WROUGHT?"

     As we all have seen, over the last few decades the costs of medical care have quadrupled in the United States as a percentage of our GDP.  How and why has this happened?  That is an easy question to answer, because as the costs have become less transparent, they have risen – enormously.  And how has this come about?  It began during World War II, when the wages that employers could pay their employees was frozen.  So how could employers entice more skilled and able employees to work for them if they couldn’t increase their salaries?  The answer was to offer the employees benefits like medical insurance that were in addition to their wages.  And this situation was compounded again under President Nixon’s system of wage and price controls.  So now, as we know, a large percentage of employees have their health insurance paid for by their employers. 

     How has that raised prices?  Again an easy question to answer.  Today, for example, if people covered by health insurance see their doctor about a knee problem and the doctor asks them if they want to have an MRI, what goes through the patients’ minds?  ”Well, I have health insurance, and the co-pay for me will only be about $30, so why not?  I might as well get the best.”  But if those patients actually paid their own money for the MRI, what would they be asking?  “Okay doc, what will the MRI show us and how much will it cost?”  But unfortunately today cost is not even a factor, to the extent that most of the time not even the doctors know what the cost is.  So that is how the costs have skyrocketed.  How can we bring them down?  Bring in Liberty, which will have patients pay for their own healthcare.  That will not only make the patients larger partners with their doctors in their own healthcare, but it will bring in competition back into healthcare which will, in turn, bring costs back down.  How can this be done?  It’s not that hard.  Just bring in a system of medical savings accounts for those of us who can take care of our own medical needs, and combine it with a system of vouchers on s sliding scale that will address the medical needs of those who are not so financially secure.  And we will discuss this approach next week.

Judge Jim Gray (Ret.)

2012 Libertarian candidate for Vice President, along with

Governor Gary Johnson as the candidate for President

Sign on the wall I say in a dining room at a lodge I stayed at in the Boundary Waters area between Minnesota and the Canadian border that was 30 miles away by canoe from the nearest competitor: “Two choices for dinner: take it or leave it.”

Like everyone else there, I took it.

By the way, these columns are now on Facebook and LinkedIn at judgejimgray, Twitter at judgejamesgray, and wordpress at judgejimgray@wordpress.com.  Please visit these sites for past editions, and do your part to spread the word about the importance of Liberty.

2 PARAGRAPHS 4 LIBERTY: #193 "THE 'TRANSFER STATE' IN ACTION"

 Recently I read the book Your Money or your Life: Why We Must Abolish the Income Tax by Sheldon Richman (The Future of Freedom Foundation, 1999), which discusses how we have spawned such an expensive and intrusive federal government, and what it does to repress Liberty.  It truly is worth the read in itself. But he wrote the following three paragraphs, beginning at page 93, that I simply had to pass along to you.  Please think about this situation and share your thoughts with others.

“The irony is that even people who claim to support limits on government power play the transfer game.  The late libertarian teacher Robert LeFevre used to ask conservative businessmen to list the government activities they liked. These people, who claimed to favor limited government, would each write a short list of programs.  The lists would differ, though; so when they were consolidated, the result was a government that had its hands in many areas of the economy.  The point of LeFevre’s exercise was that the political process can produce big government even when self-styled limited-government advocates are calling the shots.

“Observe the transfer state in action.  Social Security imposes taxes on working people and hands the money to retired people.  Medicare does almost the same thing, except the money goes to doctors and hospitals.  Agricultural programs take money from taxpayers and consumers and give it to farmers for not growing or for growing particular crops.  Welfare programs give the taxpayers’ money to people who do not work. Subsidies reward well-connected business people with the hard-earned money of the middle class and working class. Foreign aid indirectly subsidizes particular American businesses by giving tax money to foreign governments that will buy American products and services.  Government cultural agencies transfer wealth to artists, musicians, broadcasters, and humanities scholars.  The education bureaucracy subsidizes trendy social experiments on children.  The defense bureaucracy floods contractors with cash for equipment that is not needed and for missions that are improper.  The list goes on and on.

“In each case, people seeking reelection and aspiring to prestigious ‘public’ careers extract wealth from the general population to finance their schemes and benefit those with the time and resources to gain influence.  The textbook model of democratic government responsive to the people is not found in the real world.  Rather, government is a vast auction hall (to use Mencken’s metaphor) in which people enter bids for access to politicians and the vast booty collected by the tax system.”

Thomas Jefferson famously said that we should have a bloody revolution every generation to keep the vested interests at bay.  Well, our Constitution can keep it from being bloody, but how long has it been since we had a revolution?  The 1860s when the Republicans took over from the Whigs?  So maybe it’s long since time! And the Libertarian Party is the only hope in sight!

Judge Jim Gray (Ret.)

2012 Libertarian candidate for Vice President, along with

Governor Gary Johnson as the candidate for President

Quote for the week by Author Unknown: “Dreams don’t work unless you do.”                                                                                

By the way, these columns are now on Facebook and LinkedIn at judgejimgray, Twitter at judgejamesgray, and wordpress at judgejimgray@wordpress.com.  Please visit these sites for past editions, and do your part to spread the word about the importance of Liberty.

2 PARAGRAPHS 4 LIBERTY: #191 "DRUG PROHIBITION KILLS AGAIN!"

      Many prior 2 Paragraphs editions have outlined how our government’s policy of Drug Prohibition is killing people, both through the absence of quality control as well as the rampant violence of Mexican drug cartels and juvenile street gangs which emanates from the sales of illicit drugs.  But now we can update those unnecessary deaths with the current so-called opioid crisis.  Yes, drug “overdose” deaths have increased recently, many coming in combination with alcohol and other substances.  But a closer look at the news reports shows that many of these deaths are caused by the synthetic form of heroin called fentanyl.  This is manufactured in Mainland China that is as much as 50 times more potent than heroin, such that a sugar-packet-sized bag of it is strong enough to kill 500 people!  But, since it is so potent, only small amounts are needed, and they can be shipped into our country without detection fairly easily.  So it is the absence of quality control and accurate labeling caused by the illicit market spawned by Drug Prohibition that is killing so many people.            

     As reported on October 21, 2018 in the Orange County Register, the Zheng drug trafficking organization in Shanghai advertises and sells fentanyl and its synthetic cousins quite cheaply and openly in 35 languages on the internet.  And since the DEA is now monitoring our country’s medical doctors so strongly when they prescribe narcotics as pain medication, many doctors are hesitant to provide them to their patients.  So this either leaves the patients in needless pain, or forces them to seek relief from street drugs, like heroin.  And the result?  Last year there were 28,826 recorded deaths in our country from overdoses linked to synthetic opioids, mostly fentanyl, which is up from “only” 3,100 such deaths in 2013.  But in countries that do not prosecute the possession and use of heroin, such as Portugal and the Netherlands, fentanyl is virtually unknown.  So, for all of the potential harm that can be caused by heroin, don’t you agree that the quality control and death prevention efforts would be better left in the hands of a legal market overseen by medical professionals, than an illegal one overseen by mobsters?  In other words, the term “Controlled Substances” is the biggest oxymoron in the English language.  Why?  Because as soon as we prohibit a substance, we leave all of the control regarding quantity, quality and age restrictions in the hands of the bad guys!  There must be, and is, a better way!

Judge Jim Gray (Ret.)

2012 Libertarian candidate for Vice President, along with

Governor Gary Johnson as the candidate for President

The quote for the week comes in the form of a poem written at the Terezin Nazi Concentration Camp in what is now the Czech Republic by a 12 year-old boy, who soon was killed. It brought tears to my eyes.  

                                By the way, these columns are now on Facebook and LinkedIn at judgejimgray, Twitter at judgejamesgray, and wordpress at judgejimgray@wordpress.com.  Please visit these sites for past editions, and do your part to spread the word about the importance of Liberty.

2 PARAGRAPHS 4 LIBERTY: #192 "MAKE THE SYSTEM WORK"

     Those of us who are citizens of this great country are blessed because this brings us many benefits.  But it also brings responsibilities, and this edition of 2 Paragraphs will briefly discuss four of them.  The first is not only to vote, but first to prepare so that we are educated about the candidates and the issues.  The second is to serve on juries when called upon to do so.  That means that we, as civilians, will in many ways have the final say about how various civil and criminal disputes are resolved.   And by doing that we sometimes can exercise great civilian control over our governments.  Thirdly, we should pay our taxes.  Of course, I’m a libertarian and believe those taxes are much too high, but that is a subject for another day.  Fourthly, and no matter what social or economic position we are in, all of us are sometimes in a position in small and even large ways to Make the System Work. 

       For example, if we see some people who are being mistreated, cheated or humiliated, and they are unable to defend themselves, we should, as citizens, step forward and help them.  I’m not saying that we should unnecessarily put ourselves into danger, or be busybodies, but sometimes the situation calls for involvement by third parties, and we should be those people.  Or if we see potentially dangerous conditions either on public or private property, we should report it so that the chances of injury to others or damage to their property will be reduced.  Most of the time things like this don’t take much effort, but they can be effective.  As an illustration, recently when I had a speaking gig at Columbia University in New York City, I noticed that Grant’s Tomb was just a few blocks away.  So I went back to see it.  Inside it was still clean and impressive, but outside there was a beautiful tile bench that went about 270 degrees around the tomb that had weeds growing all through it.  And the National Monument sign from the US Park Service was also sitting on its side.  So I took some pictures of the situation and sent them along with a letter of complaint to the Head of the Park Service, which quoted Bob Dylan that we are “either busy being born or busy dying.”  And, since that is true both for individuals as well as countries, I didn’t want anyone “on my watch” to think our country was busy dying.  This was not a question of money, it was a question of caring.  Happily, I received a letter back about two weeks later saying that the problem was fixed.  The sign was up and the weeds were gone.  (I verified this later with my contact at Columbia.)   Yes, this is just a small thing, but I think it helps  And all of us are sometimes in similar positions to make the system work and, in my view, our obligations as citizens demand it!

Judge Jim Gray (Ret.)

2012 Libertarian candidate for Vice President, along with

Governor Gary Johnson as the candidate for President

   (Silly) Thought for the week: “If you don’t pay your exorcist you can get repossessed.” 

   By the way, these columns are now on Facebook and LinkedIn at judgejimgray, Twitter at judgejamesgray, and wordpress at judgejimgray@wordpress.com.  Please visit these sites for past editions, and do your part to spread the word about the importance of Liberty.