Lux Lucet

I know. I know. I’m late with my Week In Review. I could tell you the dog ate my homework, but I don’t think that that would fly.

Actually, I blame it on the IRS.

You see, as is the case with most folks who work in finance and accounting, during the first quarter of every year I get monkey hammered at work all for the purpose of meeting some arbitrary government deadline. Oh well. At least the over time’s good money.

And not only am I late this week, but I’m also going be short owing to another government program, Daylight savings time. I have to admit I do like the late sunsets, but that whole spring forward thing? It just kills me.

So without further ado and so I can get to bed at a decent hour, let’s look at some of this week’s top stories.

Is Healthcare a Right?

This week the Republicans announced their plan to replace the much hated Obamacare program, but their efforts have drawn the scorn of many free market commentators.

To paraphrase Nancy Pelosi, I have not yet read the bill to know what’s in it. I haven’t even read any detailed commentary on it.

But rather than diving into the details of this or that government health care bill, I thought it would be worthwhile asking a fundamental question: Is healthcare a right?

This is basic to the whole debate about Obamacare, and how one answers that question will go a long way to determining whether he believes government ought to be involved in the medical industry.

The short answer to that question, the question whether healthcare is a right, is of course not.

Human rights are derived, not from nature, but from the law of God. And the law of God nowhere authorizes governments to take money by force from one person and give it to another to pay his doctor bills.

Socialized medicine is not a form of charity. It is theft.

If the Republicans were really serious about repealing and replacing Obamacare, the best thing they could do for everyone – patients, doctors, and insurance companies – is to stop subsidizing and regulating the medical industry and let the free market do its job.

For an excellent refutation of government-run health care, please see John Robbins’ essay The Ethics and Economics of Health Care.

The Ides of March Are Upon Us

A couple of weeks back, David Stockman warned that March 15 could well be the beginning of the Big One, the economic collapse that many have been warning about for years.

Stockman’s reason for picking this date was that it represented the end of the budget ceiling holiday agreement struck by Obama and John Boehner in the fall of 2015.

On that date, the nation’s rapidly growing debt hits a hard stop. The question then becomes, how do we deal with it?

Does Congress agree to hike the debt ceiling as they have time and again since the end of WWII? Does the debt ceiling holiday get extended. Or the politicians, bureaucrats and central bankers find some new, creative way to kick the financial can a little while longer?  Or do the President and Congress get into a long, drawn out showdown that drags on for months as Stockman posits?

But the end of the debt ceiling holiday is not the only event on March 15.  On that day, the Federal Reserve meets and almost certainly will hike interest rates.  This is a move has the potential to disrupt the bond market.  Whether it will is another story, but it bears watching. 

Also on that same day are the Dutch elections, which likely will leave Geert Wilders, a staunch opponent of Islamization and the EU, in charge of the Netherlands. Whether or not Stockman is ultimately right about the long-term significance of the March 15  I do not know.  But at the very least it likely will prove interesting in the short-tem. 

Trump with portrait of Andrew Jackson.

Andrew Jackson Redux?

According to an article by Valentin Katasonov, “When [president] Trump moved into the White House on 20 January, he immediately hung a portrait of Andrew Jackson in the Oval Office.” As the piece goes on to explain, Jackson is Trump’s role model and idol.

Further, Katasonov tells us that Trump is attempting to reverse a decision made during the Obama administration to remove Jackson from the $20 bill

Why is this important? Above all, Andrew Jackson is remembered for shutting down the Bank of the United States (BUS), which functioned much like the Federal Reserve Bank does today. That is to say, it was a 19th century version of a central bank.

As all good central bankers are, the fine folks at the BUS were money printers and inflationists. But Jackson believed in honest money, limited government and no debt.

In one of the great showdowns in American political history, Jackson defeated the pro-bank forces and shut down the BUS.

It would seem that with their decision to remove Jackson from the $20 bill, today’s central planners are trying to erase the memory of one of their most effective opponents.

It appears that Trump, on the other hand, may be trying to send them a message.

This may get interesting.

Campus Cult Marx Craziness

Back in the day when I was in college, the whole PC craze was in its infancy. In fact, I don’t think the phenomenon had even been named when first I entered the hallowed halls of higher education.

But now a full thirty years on, the whole PC Cultural Marxist Industrial Complex has hit a new high in both absurdity and aggressiveness.

Last week, students at Middlebury College in Vermont disrupted a lecture by Charles Murray, who stated he was physically assaulted and commented, “I’ve never encountered anything close to this, both in the open-ended protest – not letting me speak at all – and the ferocity.”

This follows on the heels of a riot at Berkley in February in protest of the appearance of guest speaker Milo Yiannopoulos.

The Cardiff Metropolitan University in Wales has notably hopped on the PC bandwagon, presenting the university’s professors with a list of banned terms such as waitress, forefathers and sportsmanship. “Mother” and “father” are frowned upon also.

The attempt by the PC crowd to control language is really an attempt to control thought.

Rebel that I am, I shall follow in the footsteps of my forefathers and say waitress at every opportunity.

And if the snowflakes don’t like it. Well, they’ve always got their safe spaces and Play-Doh.

WikiLeaks Vault 7

Last but not least we come to the latest WikiLeaks data dump.  Highlights from the Vault 7 release which focuses on the CIA ,include: 

• The CIA employs 5,000 hackers. 
• The CIA can hijack your cell phone, your Samsung “Smart” TV, and webcam to  spy on you. 
• The CIA can hack cars for assassinations.
• The CIA can mimic the hacking techniques of other countries, thus making their activities appear to be the work of others.

This stuff is straight out of 1984 and has been the subject of rumors for years.  Now we have confirmation that it’s true. 

In his memoirs, former president Harry Truman listed his decision to create the CIA as one of his regrets. Well, he’s not the only one.  

But perhaps the bigger story in this whole affair is that not too many people seem to care that the federal government in general, and the CIA in particular, have gone rogue.  

FBI director James Comey recently said that American’s do not have an absolute right to privacy.  It’s not clear to me exactly what he means by this turn of phrase, but it doesn’t sound promising.  And as WikiLeaks has shown, he’s not the only government official with little regard for the privacy of his fellow Americans.