30 January, 2013
24 January, 2013
I think this is an interesting double standard. Chick-Fil-a's CEO made a controversial public statement earlier this summer and criticism, boycotts and protests ensued. John Mackey's comments, however, do not receive nearly the same attention or vitriol. Could it be that liberals like Whole Foods, and they do not like Chick-Fil-a? Could it really be that simple?
Whole Foods' CEO Mackey Is Right—ObamaCare Is Like Fascism
By ROBERT ROMANO
Investors.com
Posted 01/22/2013 07:01 PM ET
In 2009, when Whole Foods CEO John Mackey in a Wall Street Journal op-ed compared the health care "public option" then under consideration by Congress to socialism — a nationalized economic system wherein the government owns the means of production — hardly anyone batted an eyelash.
Sure, at the time, the left-wing site Daily Kos called for a boycott. And a Facebook group at the time managed to find a couple hundred users angry about the characterization. Whole Foods set up a special forum for customers to express their views on the op-ed.
But it was hardly the response Whole Foods got when on Jan. 16 in an NPR interview, Mackey was asked a follow-up question on what he thought about the current law.
After all, the "public option" was never adopted. What came afterward, now known in popular vernacular as ObamaCare, was a mishmash of mandates, regulations and price controls — but fell short of an outright nationalization of the insurance industry.
That was when Mackey used the F-word. No, not that one. The other one.
"Technically speaking, it's more like fascism," Mackey said in the NPR interview, adding, "Socialism is where the government owns the means of production. In fascism, the government doesn't own the means of production, but they do control it, and that's what's happening with our health care programs and these reforms."
That set off a firestorm, largely again from the political left all but calling for Mackey's head.
Since then, Mackey has walked back his statement, calling it a "bad choice of language," but all the while sticking to his essential point.
He explained, "I was trying to distinguish it between socialism so I took the dictionary definition of fascism, which is when the means of production are still owned privately but the government controls it — that's a type of fascism. However, I realize that that word has so much baggage associated with it from World War II, with Germany, with Italy and Spain, that's a very provocative word, so I regret using it."
Fair enough. On one hand, fascism certainly is a controversial term. And on the other, what Mackey described certainly would fit well within the academic definition of fascism. Or more specifically, corporatism, which was the economic theory that undergirded the fascist ideology.
The fascist strain of corporatism was the brainchild of Alfredo Rocco, a key figure in Benito Mussolini's fascist regime in Italy in the 1920s and 1930s.
It called for the organization of the economy into corporate sectors that would cooperate with the government in implementing state policy.
Its tenets, neatly defined by Roland Sarti in "Italy: A Reference Guide from the Renaissance to the Present," called for "uniting workers, entrepreneurs, and government officials in economic activities, carried out in the public interest or the interests of the state ... (and) eliminating conflicts of interest among labor, business and government."
Or as Rocco put it, "For Fascism, society is the end, individuals the means, and its whole life consists in using individuals as instruments for its social ends."
Certainly, that's what ObamaCare — with its individual and employer mandates to respectively purchase and to provide health insurance — seeks to accomplish.
It guarantees customers to large companies, in this case insurance providers that supported passage of the legislation, and in the process cartelizes the system.
In other words, private profits are being embedded into the law, and enforced by the bureaucracy, which will levy fines on individuals and employers that fail to comply with the mandates.
The purpose, ostensibly, is to reduce health care costs, a stated goal of the legislation, by increasing the pool of the insured.
When that fails, as surely it will, whoever cannot afford the insurance will then be subsidized through the state and federal-run exchanges — monies that of course will pass directly to the insurance companies and health care providers.
But the level of state control in this new system, and insurance industry participation in implementing it to its own benefit, is undeniable. It is corporatism defined.
One could compare it to the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 that implemented the National Recovery Administration, which may have been patterned after Mussolini's labor laws, as summarized in a 1991 Yale Law School study by James Whitman, before it was subsequently overturned by the Supreme Court.
Or the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, which gave privately owned banks the power to appoint regional Fed chairmen and outsourced creation of the public currency to a banking cartel.
Or more recently, one might examine the Troubled Asset Relief Fund (TARP), Dodd-Frank's "orderly liquidation fund" and the Fed's continued mortgage-backed securities purchase program — all bailout programs that privatize profits and socialize losses in the financial sector. More corporatism.
In that context, ObamaCare actually fits in a long line of fascist-like ideas being implemented in the U.S. that feed the bottom lines of very large companies — all at public expense.
To be fair, corporatism does predate fascism as an idea, but it heavily influenced that ideology and its policies that were implemented in Italy, Germany, and elsewhere such that, today, they can almost be used synonymously in an academic sense.
Mackey obviously does not prefer this approach to economic policy, and so chose the highly charged fascist label. He could have just as easily called it corporatist and would have been equally accurate.
In short, Mackey was spot on. Perhaps the only thing he really regrets was telling the truth.
Whole Foods' CEO Mackey Is Right—ObamaCare Is Like Fascism
By ROBERT ROMANO
Investors.com
Posted 01/22/2013 07:01 PM ET
In 2009, when Whole Foods CEO John Mackey in a Wall Street Journal op-ed compared the health care "public option" then under consideration by Congress to socialism — a nationalized economic system wherein the government owns the means of production — hardly anyone batted an eyelash.
Sure, at the time, the left-wing site Daily Kos called for a boycott. And a Facebook group at the time managed to find a couple hundred users angry about the characterization. Whole Foods set up a special forum for customers to express their views on the op-ed.
But it was hardly the response Whole Foods got when on Jan. 16 in an NPR interview, Mackey was asked a follow-up question on what he thought about the current law.
After all, the "public option" was never adopted. What came afterward, now known in popular vernacular as ObamaCare, was a mishmash of mandates, regulations and price controls — but fell short of an outright nationalization of the insurance industry.
That was when Mackey used the F-word. No, not that one. The other one.
"Technically speaking, it's more like fascism," Mackey said in the NPR interview, adding, "Socialism is where the government owns the means of production. In fascism, the government doesn't own the means of production, but they do control it, and that's what's happening with our health care programs and these reforms."
That set off a firestorm, largely again from the political left all but calling for Mackey's head.
Since then, Mackey has walked back his statement, calling it a "bad choice of language," but all the while sticking to his essential point.
He explained, "I was trying to distinguish it between socialism so I took the dictionary definition of fascism, which is when the means of production are still owned privately but the government controls it — that's a type of fascism. However, I realize that that word has so much baggage associated with it from World War II, with Germany, with Italy and Spain, that's a very provocative word, so I regret using it."
Fair enough. On one hand, fascism certainly is a controversial term. And on the other, what Mackey described certainly would fit well within the academic definition of fascism. Or more specifically, corporatism, which was the economic theory that undergirded the fascist ideology.
The fascist strain of corporatism was the brainchild of Alfredo Rocco, a key figure in Benito Mussolini's fascist regime in Italy in the 1920s and 1930s.
It called for the organization of the economy into corporate sectors that would cooperate with the government in implementing state policy.
Its tenets, neatly defined by Roland Sarti in "Italy: A Reference Guide from the Renaissance to the Present," called for "uniting workers, entrepreneurs, and government officials in economic activities, carried out in the public interest or the interests of the state ... (and) eliminating conflicts of interest among labor, business and government."
Or as Rocco put it, "For Fascism, society is the end, individuals the means, and its whole life consists in using individuals as instruments for its social ends."
Certainly, that's what ObamaCare — with its individual and employer mandates to respectively purchase and to provide health insurance — seeks to accomplish.
It guarantees customers to large companies, in this case insurance providers that supported passage of the legislation, and in the process cartelizes the system.
In other words, private profits are being embedded into the law, and enforced by the bureaucracy, which will levy fines on individuals and employers that fail to comply with the mandates.
The purpose, ostensibly, is to reduce health care costs, a stated goal of the legislation, by increasing the pool of the insured.
When that fails, as surely it will, whoever cannot afford the insurance will then be subsidized through the state and federal-run exchanges — monies that of course will pass directly to the insurance companies and health care providers.
But the level of state control in this new system, and insurance industry participation in implementing it to its own benefit, is undeniable. It is corporatism defined.
One could compare it to the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 that implemented the National Recovery Administration, which may have been patterned after Mussolini's labor laws, as summarized in a 1991 Yale Law School study by James Whitman, before it was subsequently overturned by the Supreme Court.
Or the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, which gave privately owned banks the power to appoint regional Fed chairmen and outsourced creation of the public currency to a banking cartel.
Or more recently, one might examine the Troubled Asset Relief Fund (TARP), Dodd-Frank's "orderly liquidation fund" and the Fed's continued mortgage-backed securities purchase program — all bailout programs that privatize profits and socialize losses in the financial sector. More corporatism.
In that context, ObamaCare actually fits in a long line of fascist-like ideas being implemented in the U.S. that feed the bottom lines of very large companies — all at public expense.
To be fair, corporatism does predate fascism as an idea, but it heavily influenced that ideology and its policies that were implemented in Italy, Germany, and elsewhere such that, today, they can almost be used synonymously in an academic sense.
Mackey obviously does not prefer this approach to economic policy, and so chose the highly charged fascist label. He could have just as easily called it corporatist and would have been equally accurate.
In short, Mackey was spot on. Perhaps the only thing he really regrets was telling the truth.
Shopping Around for a Better Life
Shopping Around for a Better Life
By John Stossel - January 23, 2013
Thanks, California! Thanks for your monstrous spending and absurd regulatory overreach! America needs you. We need Connecticut and Illinois, too! We need you the way we needed the Soviet Union, as models of failure, to warn us what happens if we believe those who say, "Government can."
Moving to California was once the dream for many Americans. Its population grew at almost triple the national average -- until 1990. Then big government, in the form of endless regulation and taxes, killed much of the dream. In the last decade, 2 million people left California.
Many of them moved to Alaska, Florida, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington or Wyoming. More on what makes those states special in a moment.
When the USSR died, overthrown by its own citizens' hatred of central planning, I assumed the world would acknowledge that big government is a nightmare. But people don't. Our brains are programmed to believe that "next time, central planning will help." So, many people forget the lesson of the USSR.
Fortunately, they can still watch what's happening right now in California, Illinois and Connecticut. OK, those states are not totalitarian dictatorships, but they tax and micromanage so much that they will soon approach bankruptcy, cut services and stagnate.
And Americans have an advantage Soviet citizens never had: 50 states. If we live in a big-government state, we can move. I did.
I grew up in Illinois. It was nice enough (except in winter). But gradually its politicians gave away its future.
I moved to New York City, no political paradise, but where the big TV news jobs are. And maybe New York's promises to unions won't bankrupt us too soon.
I could always move again. I would still be smothered by federal rules, but at least I can move to a place with fewer onerous state rules.
A group called the Free State Project invites us to move to New Hampshire to help create "liberty in our lifetime." It's too early to see how that will work out, but that state now has a booming population of libertarians and anarchists. One even got elected to the state legislature after running against his own roommate, also a libertarian, whom he accused of not being anti-government enough.
Americans who want to escape state income taxes and live near better job prospects can move to one of those nine states that I mentioned above.
It's no surprise they produce more jobs. Without an income tax, those states were forced to limit the growth of their governments, so they did. Every state has schools, social service programs, prisons, etc., but those states find a way to fund those things for less. Then they reap benefits.
Last decade, those nine states gained population and increased jobs by 4.9 percent; jobs in the rest of the states declined by 2.6 percent.
It's good that we have places like Texas and New Hampshire to which fed-up citizens can escape. In Europe, you'd have to leave your country to escape its worst laws.
French actor Gerard Depardieu just moved to Belgium to escape France's proposed 75 percent tax on the rich. Years ago, high taxes in Britain drove Rod Stewart to move to Los Angeles. But by 2010, California's taxes had risen, and Stewart moved back to England. (He doesn't claim the reason was taxes; he said his child could get a better education in England.)
Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute summed up California's situation for me. "The politicians want to get re-elected, and the state government workers want to get as much as they can before the whole house of cards comes tumbling down. California is Greece -- the Greece of America."
I hope all Americans watch and learn from states like California. But if we don't, and if people keep electing big-government politicians, at least Americans, unlike the Greeks, can hop around between 50 states, trying to stay one step ahead of bad laws and ruin.
By John Stossel - January 23, 2013
Thanks, California! Thanks for your monstrous spending and absurd regulatory overreach! America needs you. We need Connecticut and Illinois, too! We need you the way we needed the Soviet Union, as models of failure, to warn us what happens if we believe those who say, "Government can."
Moving to California was once the dream for many Americans. Its population grew at almost triple the national average -- until 1990. Then big government, in the form of endless regulation and taxes, killed much of the dream. In the last decade, 2 million people left California.
Many of them moved to Alaska, Florida, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington or Wyoming. More on what makes those states special in a moment.
When the USSR died, overthrown by its own citizens' hatred of central planning, I assumed the world would acknowledge that big government is a nightmare. But people don't. Our brains are programmed to believe that "next time, central planning will help." So, many people forget the lesson of the USSR.
Fortunately, they can still watch what's happening right now in California, Illinois and Connecticut. OK, those states are not totalitarian dictatorships, but they tax and micromanage so much that they will soon approach bankruptcy, cut services and stagnate.
And Americans have an advantage Soviet citizens never had: 50 states. If we live in a big-government state, we can move. I did.
I grew up in Illinois. It was nice enough (except in winter). But gradually its politicians gave away its future.
I moved to New York City, no political paradise, but where the big TV news jobs are. And maybe New York's promises to unions won't bankrupt us too soon.
I could always move again. I would still be smothered by federal rules, but at least I can move to a place with fewer onerous state rules.
A group called the Free State Project invites us to move to New Hampshire to help create "liberty in our lifetime." It's too early to see how that will work out, but that state now has a booming population of libertarians and anarchists. One even got elected to the state legislature after running against his own roommate, also a libertarian, whom he accused of not being anti-government enough.
Americans who want to escape state income taxes and live near better job prospects can move to one of those nine states that I mentioned above.
It's no surprise they produce more jobs. Without an income tax, those states were forced to limit the growth of their governments, so they did. Every state has schools, social service programs, prisons, etc., but those states find a way to fund those things for less. Then they reap benefits.
Last decade, those nine states gained population and increased jobs by 4.9 percent; jobs in the rest of the states declined by 2.6 percent.
It's good that we have places like Texas and New Hampshire to which fed-up citizens can escape. In Europe, you'd have to leave your country to escape its worst laws.
French actor Gerard Depardieu just moved to Belgium to escape France's proposed 75 percent tax on the rich. Years ago, high taxes in Britain drove Rod Stewart to move to Los Angeles. But by 2010, California's taxes had risen, and Stewart moved back to England. (He doesn't claim the reason was taxes; he said his child could get a better education in England.)
Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute summed up California's situation for me. "The politicians want to get re-elected, and the state government workers want to get as much as they can before the whole house of cards comes tumbling down. California is Greece -- the Greece of America."
I hope all Americans watch and learn from states like California. But if we don't, and if people keep electing big-government politicians, at least Americans, unlike the Greeks, can hop around between 50 states, trying to stay one step ahead of bad laws and ruin.
Something to be celebrated?
- I think it is sad we believe this "anniversary" should be celebrated.
- Is this supposed to be funny? Why would you treat the "right" to kill an unborn child like it is a relationship to be commemorated with flowers and romance? Hopefully even those who support a woman's right to choose would agree there's something very strange about this presentation.
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