My View

Random thoughts from a warped and fevered mind...


Dr. Donald Berwick is a Massachusetts physician who has been nominated by the Obama administration to be the Director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). As the name implies, CMS is in charge of running the Medicare and Medicaid programs that currently cover 100 million Americans and under the nationalized healthcare program will cover an additional 15 million people. This nomination has received scant attention in the mainstream press, but you should be paying attention to the debate over Dr. Berwick and his views on running an integral component of our nations healthcare. Dr. Berwick has gone on record to say that wealth should be re-distributed to fund healthcare; that all healthcare decisions should be centralized in one decision making body; and that private enterprise, especially in the healthcare sector, represents a "darkness" that must be overcome. Personnel is policy when it comes to the implementation of government programs. If Dr. Berwick is confirmed as the head of CMS, the policy will be socialism that results in the loss of control over your healthcare decisions.


You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.


Fiat currency is not money that you use to buy an automobile. It is a currency that is issued by a government that is backed by the "full faith and credit" of that particular government. Like the U.S. dollar. There is no other backing- no gold stored in vaults, for instance- to say that a currency is worth what is printed on the face of the bill. The U.S. dollar used to be on the gold standard, meaning that each dollar that was printed had to have a corresponding dollar's worth of gold to back it up. This changed in 1971, when the President Richard Nixon took the U.S. off the gold standard. We in this country have been very fortunate in that the dollar is still the world's reserve currency, because we have financed our massive amounts of debt through the foreign purchases of our dollars. But know this: fiat currencies have difficulty surviving. Politicians see to that. Since they no longer have to have a corresponding amount of gold for each dollar printed, governments are free to print as many dollars as they want and ultimately spend more than a nation can afford. We are doing that in the United States, and one day the weight of our profligate spending will create enormous havoc for our dollar.


Isn't polynesia memory loss in parrots?


There is no doubt the the BP Deepwater Horizon rig explosion and the resulting oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is an environmental disater of untold proportions. BP, in my opinion, will have been found to be playing loose and lax with safety requirements. The environmental mess, however, is just one aspect of this disaster. The other is the political aspect. Already, the Obama administration is posturing to further curtail drilling and production of oil within our our borders and territorial waters because of the Gulf spill. In the name of "protecting the environment" this administration is attempting to intitiate steps that will cost jobs and lower the standard of living for all Americans by making our energy costs soar. BP should be made to fully pay for the cost of the clean up in the Gulf, and they should make whole the individuals and businesses whose livlihoods have been harmed. BP should not, however, be used to bludgeon Americans into a lower standard of living because of boneheaded energy policies.


Summer is here, and gosh is it hot. I was outside the other day and it was so hot I saw a robin holding his worm with a pot holder.


And that, my friends, is my view.