The Conservative Political Action Conference is an annual event that usually hosts some of the most nationalist and socially conservative Republicans the nation can come up with, but this year the choice of the voters in the straw poll was none other than my favorite libertarian rebel, Ron Paul.

In the speech, he does a good job of explaining why he feels his preference for a non-interventionist foreign policy is actually more consistent with conservative values than any policy or war Bush introduced to the Republican party. He even dares to go so far as to call for a greater tolerance of individual lifestyle choices that Republicans might not personally agree with. Shocking stuff, but don’t take my word for it! If you’ve got half an hour, its worth hearing what the Republican party should be saying if they want to have a chance with the younger generations:

But those younger generations aren’t the only ones voting or showing up at the CPAC this year, so not everyone in the crowd was happy to hear that Ron Paul had won the straw poll. Among older Republicans, Ron Paul is seen as little better than a Democrat – or as bad as a downright traitor.

Why the venom? Well, Ron Paul is more concerned about actual freedom than any kind of partisan power. A strong Republican party could start whatever wars it likes and enforce its own vision of ideal social regulations, but a Ron Paul Republican party would be more concerned with the liberty of the individual citizen and the financial position of the nation as a whole.

A response to E.J. Dionne

Extend coverage to 35 million Americans?  Don’t you mean forcing me and millions like me to buy an insurance product we can’t afford and/or don’t believe in?

I’ve got a fairly common and easily treated immune condition, but for 97% of us who share the disease, American doctors can’t seem to find it!  Instead, it manifests into diabetes, cancer, whatever… (source U Chicago: http://www.celiacdisease.net/ ) When I was a kid and teen under my parent’s expensive insurance plan and “no cost is too great” mentality, I was always sick and the doctors always had an expensive plan to make it better.  Well, it didn’t make anything better but they would inevitably dream up a new expensive plan that seemed to rely on a completely new set of assumptions…  Eventually, each symptom was so bad that it warranted its own specialist and prescription.  I don’t think my liver could have taken that for too long, and my mind rejected it with a nervous breakdown.

When I turned 18 I could have stayed on that “gold standard” federal employee Blue Cross Blue Shield plan that had billed ten$ of thou$and$ “on my behalf,” but I had no faith or energy left for a medical system that treats sick people like ATMs.  Luckily, my skepticism led to a pursuit of truth, and it wasn’t too hard to find a scientifically verified method of treating my symptoms and improving my long-term survivability without spending a penny. Anyway, now I’m proudly uninsured and healthier than I’ve ever been…

Not too surprisingly, publicly run medical systems in Europe are generations ahead of us in treating Celiac Disease.  There’s a big difference between a system designed to minimize costs and a system designed to maximize profits & transaction volume.  That doesn’t mean there isn’t room for both as in France or many continental European states, but this bill has the proportions completely backward.

We hear so much about people who die because they don’t have care, but how many people does our medical system kill with the “care” or “services” they do sell (and “up-sell”)?  How many of your neighbors and coworkers are shuffling around under the influence of psychoactive prescriptions?  How many doctors are glad to prescribe medication to cover up symptoms that are consequences of our horrendous diets?  Whats the true economic costs of ignoring what our bodies and minds are trying to tell us about modern society?

Whats rotten in our health system isn’t something that can be fixed with a universal application under the threat of tax fines or jail time.  The reality is too warped, the answers too disturbing and complex.  I certainly don’t have all those answers, but the stunningly obvious part is that we won’t get meaningful reform by caving in to the same insurance, pharma, and lawyer lobbies that have run things for the last 80 years…Then again, maybe the cancer has spread so deep that there’s nothing else left inside.

I say, scrap the whole thing and invite a panel of doctors to study international systems.  The current proposal is probably the only thing that could have possibly be designed to be worse than the miserable status quo.

While its always been difficult to get political debate past the point of pre-defined partisan bickering, things seem to have taken a more extreme turn toward crazy in the last few months.  And although a lot of this crazy seems to be coming out in relation to healthcare, I don’t think the issue originates or stops there.

Team Loyalty

The root of the problem is the type of loyalty people have for their political parties:   the us vs. them  mentality is hardly different than any sport rivalry.  No election can settle the battle for good, because we know that there will be a rematch next year or even four years later.

People may even choose a party against their own individual interests – because of other conflicting interests.  It is not uncommon for pressure from family, friends, and even employers to influence how someone speaks about and gets involved in politics.  Depending on where one lives, and what sector or industry he/she works for, political loyalty to a particular party maybe in their professional self-interest.  For example, politics and business run closely together in the south, so even if someone opposes Republican policies on a national level, their personal career will be furthered by participation in local Republican events and organizations.  An inverse situation could easily exist for people who identify with Republican policies yet dwell in Democrat strongholds.

And of course, if you proceed to recommend something outside the scope of Democrats and Republicans, you’re likely to get a negative response regardless of the business or regional political climate.

From Within a Narrow Field:

The media’s coverage of the health-care debate can be summed up in a single question:  “Should the bill include a public option?”  This one question has pre-occupied political journalists for months, despite a 1,000+ page quagmire of proposed funding, and cuts, and regulations.  Yet while the public option is a fairly specific issue to focus on, it makes an attempt to address the issue at hand.  How are we going to keep private health insurers competitive relative to their potential and relative to competing forms of healthcare delivery around the world?

But instead of a competing vision, we get talk of deathpanels to people shouting “Obama wants to kill your grandma!” No one on the right seems to want to even entertain the question of whether or not we should have a public option. Indeed, the debate has been fairly well stifled for all the free speech people claim to be exercising.  You’re either in favor of this leviathan of murky reform or you’re siding with the crazies!  Either or… us vs. them…

Who Trusts Congress?

According to Rasmussen reports, a minority of likely voters.

So even if we can agree that healthcare in this country is out of control, who really trusts Congress to fairly address the issue? If Congress were a good way to implement an efficient regulatory regime in the first place, we wouldn’t have inherited the current mess.  In some places, there are protections from competition among the health insurance providers, and in other places there are generous tax-related subsidies designed to encourage large corporate purchases of these private insurance products.

The Republicans have completely abandoned their role as a rational counter-balance to the ruling power, so we can’t trust them to give a fair analysis of the proposal.  In effect, there’s no group in a position to really critique the strengths and weaknesses of the current legislative draft.  Can we then trust the Democrats to get everything right, without anyone really checking over their work?

So the status quo didn’t spontaneously spring up from a free market – it has been patiently guided into its current place by indirect government interventions.  The policies encouraged a proliferation of regional insurance cartels, and now that they’ve strangled out the competition they’re leveraging their political power in order to capture the customers who aren’t yet signed up.  With or without a public option, the legislation currently being floated around in Congressional committees will increase total sales for insurance, pharma, ambulance-chasers, and medical coding admins.  As a percent of GDP, the amount we spend on the entire circus will probably go up while more patients show up for the same number of doctors and hospital beds.

Treating Symptoms vs. Curing Disease.

50 million uninsured isn’t the disease – the disease is the state of American medicine that has caused so many people to feel like its simply not worth the cost to purchase insurance.  While the television runs nonstop with ads for soma-like mood enhancers and beauty treatments that require a prescription and close medical oversight, America falls behind in the detection of common and chronic illnesses while reporting some of the world’s highest rates of depression and obesity.

Sure, the doctor can’t make everyone eat right and exercise, but if you do you’ll be subsidizing those who don’t anyway.  And you can fight that greedy self-interest with mandates, but those who are currently opting out of medical coverage also realize that a American medical insurance is a risky “investment.”  Many providers are looking for any excuse they can to drop expensive customers while raising rates on the healthy.  Of the Americans who have gone bankrupt from medical bills every year, a majority of them dutifully paid health insurance.  Forcing everyone in may lower the per capita cost, but only by as much as it decreases services rendered. The output of product remains constant, but government intervention increases demand.

Universal, multi-payer …

Yet Congress may be on the right track.  A public option combined with coverage mandates would achieve universal coverage with a non-profit competitor.  It might actually be destructive to the established providers in the long run (they can’t be efficient at a 30% overhead rate).

If we address the supply of new doctors with some sort of tuition assistance or an equivalent “public option” in medical licensing, we would be investing in something that makes the total outcome better for all patients.  If we address doctor insurance costs by reigning in rampant lawsuits, the cost of a procedure will immediately fall.  Yes, yes – the poor lawyers will have to find new work, cry me a river.

In addition, its rather important that any taxes or mandates be funded by a progressive tax as opposed to the regressive payroll tax.  This stuff is just “Common Sense,” even Adam Smith saw the logic in a progressively scaling tax scheme.  People who work for a living in the modest pay ranges should be the net beneficiaries of tax policies – we don’t want to nickle and dime them until they come looking for food stamps.

Its possible that honest debate is so hard to come by that we’ll be better off accepting a less than ideal step in the right direction.  Its possible that step may be in the wrong direction, because we failed to exercise due diligence.  Either way, I have a hard time being optimistic about the near-term prospects for political progress.

North Korea has been grabbing headlines as usual, and the nation’s recent actions have been described as erratic or irrational. Some speculators have suggested that the leader’s advancing age and failing health has inspired him to the ultimate confrontation, but he is probably instead trying to secure his legacy and the ascendancy of his chosen heir.

Defensive Paranoia

Understanding North Korea’s fear of invasion requires a look back on the last few thousand years of the region’s history. Before the Korean war split the peninsula in two, the Korean kingdoms had been invaded by Japan, China, Mongolia – just about any neighboring state has made some attempt at capturing the Korean provinces.

This 19th century cartoon depicts Korea as a fish being hunted simultaneously by China, Japan, and Russia.

For the Southern Republic, U.S. intervention in the cold war was an assurance of territorial integrity.  North Korea similarly enjoyed Soviet protection, but the collapse of the U.S.S.R. left North Korea on its own and in need of a defensive deturrant.  While many think of China as North Korea’s natural ally, the relationship between the two is actually rather strained as there are some debates over the historical boundaries that seperate the two cultures and their derivative states.

As iron and uranium are the primary natural resources available in North Korea, it should not be a surprise that these have been utilized as defense.  Iron-clad ships originated in Korea, so it should not be a surprise that they have retained the desire to stay cutting edge in their military options.  Failure to do so has historically meant a loss of sovereignty and paying tribute to foreign powers.

Nuclear Sabre Rattling

With a domestic supply of uranium and a history that promotes defensive paranoia, it was probably inevitable that North Korea would develop nuclear weapons.  Recently announced tests may have proven a partially-functional bomb, but the actual potency of Pyong’yang’s arsenal is unknown.  Kim Jong Il, of course, would like everyone to think they have full nuclear capabilities.  Chances are, the intent is to create a defensive deterrent.  While North Korea controls a large army and long rang bombing capacity, they have no hope in a direct war against either neighbor.  A fight with China or a U.S. backed South Korea would be extremely bloody and destructive on both sides, but even scenario would end with the defeat of North Korea through attrition.

Legacy and Inheritance

A few months ago, the missile launches, bomb tests, and threatening announcements were gaining momentum.  Some people thought he was trying to challenge Obama as a new president, and others suggested he was simply out of his mind.

What didn’t get a lot of coverage before North Korea faded to the back of the news again, was that Kim Jong Il had named one of his sons as a successor.  And suddenly after naming an heir, the rocket launches and nuclear bragging seemed to quiet down.  So what I see is a public display of power for the purpose of securing a legacy – not the behavior of someone who wants to commit national suicide.

Indeed, the latest announcement was that Kim Jong Il would be re-opening the contested border with South Korea.  After decades of seperation, the reclusive state will be allowing travel along the Korean peninsula.  Tourism and family reunions are expected to be on the top of the agenda as Koreans seek to reconnect with their own kin and cultural history.

Cultural Momentum Favors Unification

To paraphrase Lao Tzu, a storm or movement that appears suddenly cannot last for long.  Conversely, a thousand years of shared language and history is unlikely to remain divided because of fifty years of seperation.  Indeed, Korea has spent periods longer than this under outside control.

Kim Jong Il’s heir is his youngest son, a twenty-something with a decent education and a reputation for partying.  He may not have the ability or even the interest in keeping the North isolated, and he may realize that the corporate world even more favorable to building family fotures than the current dictatorship.  With the borders opening, trade is almost certain to follow.  So while I don’t believe the new leader will give up his clan’s prominent position, I do think he will be more open to tolerating a more open and competitive system.  Of course, all I can do is speculate baselessly, as the heir’s own words and actions will define the ultimate course of Korean politics.  But I will say, that despite all of the saber rattling and threats being exchanged, the actual chance of a military confrontation are falling quickly.