Libertarians believe that the initiation of force
is wrong. So do the overwhelming majority of nonlibertarians. They,
too, think it is wrong to commit offenses against person and
property. Sheldon Richman believes libertarians make a
self-defeating mistake in assuming that their fundamental
principles differ radically from most other people’s principles,
and says that libertarians would have an easier time if they
realized everyone else is not so different from them.
Earlier this week, I wrote a column
for Time about the controversial “Got Insurance?” ad campaign
created by two Colorado-based nonprofits. Here’s
a snippet:
Is massive stupidity covered under Obamacare? What about sexual
promiscuity and heavy drinking? Those are some of the questions
raised by a controversial ad campaign that aims to encourage
younger Americans to sign up for health-insurance plans created by
the Affordable Care Act.
But there’s a deeper issue that the new “Got Insurance?”
campaign ignores completely: Why should young and relatively poor
people be forced to sign up for insurance that charges them
above-market rates to subsidize rates for old and relatively
wealthy people?
In this sense, Obamacare is simply
the latest instance of generational theft being perpetrated against
younger Americans. It’s a feature and not a bug of the President’s
signature health care law that insurance premiums for those under
30 are likely to increase significantly to allow premiums for older
Americans to fall. Indeed, the whole plan hinges on getting 2.7
million whippersnappers out of a total of 7 million enrollees to
sign up in the individual market during the first year. If too many
older and sicker folks flood the market, the system will crash even
faster than the HealthCare.gov website….
Since the Net’s dial-up
days, social critics have lined up to tell us about the supposed
dark side of digital technologies. For just as long, a different
group of pundits has suggested the exact opposite: that digital
technology will revolutionize the economy and society for the
better. Clive Thompson has a foot firmly planted in the optimist
camp, Adam Thierer reports, but his new book, Smarter Than You
Think, stakes out a reasoned middle-ground position.
You want a truly bipartisan outrage? Consider the abysmal and
ongoing treatment of the nation’s veterans by the Department of
Veterans Affair (VA), which was made a cabinet-level agency in
1989.
It doesn’t seem to matter much which party runs the White House
or Congress. Despite
an annual budgetaround $90 billion, the agency continues
to do terrible work when it comes to taking care of the men and
women who fight the government’s wars. And after a decade-plus of
fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, there are 2 million recent
vets.
Here’s a Reason TV video that explores what’s wrong at VA,
who gets hurt the most, and what can be done to make things better.
Original release date: November 10, 2013.
Over the last 12 years, more than two million Americans have
been deployed to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. But for thousands
who return home with injuries, another battle is just
beginning – this time, with the Department of Veteran’s Affairs
(VA).
Upon enlistment, service members are promised that, should a
service-related injury occur, the US government will provide them
with care and financial compensation. The VA is responsible
for providing this care but have been unable to render these
services in a timely manner. The average wait time for a veteran to
receive his or her benefits is one year.
President Obama sounded the alarm during a speech in August
2010, stating that it was the country’s “moral
obligation” to provide veterans with timely compensation.
Under VA Secretary Eric Shinseki, the Obama administration promised
that all claims would be processed within 125 days and with a 98
percent accuracy rating by the year 2015.
Despite Obama’s speech, the backlog continued to grow, reaching
a peak of nearly
900,000 pending claims with 70 percent backlogged in March
of 2013. This past August, the numbers dipped slightly: nearly
800,000 pending claims with 63 percent backlogged.
The administration points to the August numbers as a sign of
improvement, but reports of
processing errors reveal a poor quality
of work, with mistake in 30 percent or more of the claims
that they process. Unfortunately for those waiting for assistance,
when a mistake is made, the veteran must appeal. Once an appeal is
filed, the average waiting time for the veteran is another four
years.
About 4 minutes.
Produced by Amanda Winkler. Camera by Joshua Swain and Winkler.
Narrated by Todd Krainin.
For more links, resources, and downloadable versions,
go here.
from Hit & Run http://reason.com/blog/2013/11/16/it-takes-about-one-year-for-dept-of-vete
via IFTTT
You want a truly bipartisan outrage? Consider the abysmal and
ongoing treatment of the nation’s veterans by the Department of
Veterans Affair (VA), which was made a cabinet-level agency in
1989.
It doesn’t seem to matter much which party runs the White House
or Congress. Despite
an annual budgetaround $90 billion, the agency continues
to do terrible work when it comes to taking care of the men and
women who fight the government’s wars. And after a decade-plus of
fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, there are 2 million recent
vets.
Here’s a Reason TV video that explores what’s wrong at VA,
who gets hurt the most, and what can be done to make things better.
Original release date: November 10, 2013.
Over the last 12 years, more than two million Americans have
been deployed to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. But for thousands
who return home with injuries, another battle is just
beginning – this time, with the Department of Veteran’s Affairs
(VA).
Upon enlistment, service members are promised that, should a
service-related injury occur, the US government will provide them
with care and financial compensation. The VA is responsible
for providing this care but have been unable to render these
services in a timely manner. The average wait time for a veteran to
receive his or her benefits is one year.
President Obama sounded the alarm during a speech in August
2010, stating that it was the country’s “moral
obligation” to provide veterans with timely compensation.
Under VA Secretary Eric Shinseki, the Obama administration promised
that all claims would be processed within 125 days and with a 98
percent accuracy rating by the year 2015.
Despite Obama’s speech, the backlog continued to grow, reaching
a peak of nearly
900,000 pending claims with 70 percent backlogged in March
of 2013. This past August, the numbers dipped slightly: nearly
800,000 pending claims with 63 percent backlogged.
The administration points to the August numbers as a sign of
improvement, but reports of
processing errors reveal a poor quality
of work, with mistake in 30 percent or more of the claims
that they process. Unfortunately for those waiting for assistance,
when a mistake is made, the veteran must appeal. Once an appeal is
filed, the average waiting time for the veteran is another four
years.
About 4 minutes.
Produced by Amanda Winkler. Camera by Joshua Swain and Winkler.
Narrated by Todd Krainin.
For more links, resources, and downloadable versions,
go here.
from Hit & Run http://reason.com/blog/2013/11/16/it-takes-about-one-year-for-dept-of-vete
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Magic mushrooms – and other psychedelic drugs – aren’t just for
laser-light shows anymore. They are in fact on the cutting edge of
medical research, where scientists are rediscovering how drugs used
for centures (if not millennia) can help people live better
lives.
Here’s a video produced by Reason TV’s Paul Feine and Alex
Manning that was originally released on November 4, 2013. It
documents how researchers such as Roland Griffiths of Johns Hopkins
University and Robin Carhart-Harris of Imperial College London are
making real progress by using substances that have been demonized
and written out of polite (and sometimes simply legal)
conversation.
Magic mushrooms have been used ritually by the native people of
Mesoamerica for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. In the 1950s,
R. Gordon Wasson and his wife traveled to Oaxaca, Mexico and
participated in a mushroom ritual. That experience led to a 1957
Life magazine article titled “Seeking the Magic Mushroom.” The
following year, the Swiss scientist Albert Hofman, who had been the
first to synthesize LSD in 1938, identified psilocybin and psilocin
as the active compounds in magic mushrooms. In 1960, Timothy Leary
and Richard Alpert founded the Harvard Psilocybin Project to study
the effects of psilocybin on humans. Harvard University famously
fired Leary and Alpert in 1963.
Serious study of magic mushrooms essentially ended when the
compounds psilocybin and psylocin were listed as Schedule I drugs
in 1971. However, people around the world have used magic mushrooms
with the goals of expanding consciousness and achieving spiritual
growth ever since it was popularized by the hippies in the the
1960s.
Despite its illegal status, researchers have once again started
studying the effects of psilocybin on humans. The results so far
have been intriguing. ReasonTV caught up with Roland Griffiths of
Johns Hopkins University and Robin Carhart-Harris of Imperial
College London at the Psychedelic Science 2013 conference in
Oakland, CA to learn what’s happening at the cutting edge of
psilocybin research.
Approximately 5 minutes. Produced by Paul Feine and Alex
Manning.
Go to http://reason.com/reason.tv for
downloadable versions and subscribe to Reason TV’s YouTube Channel
to receive automatic updates when new material goes live.
Feine and Manning are the makers of the great new feature-length
documentary, America’s Longest War. It’s available on DVD for
$11.95.
Go here for more details and to purchase.
from Hit & Run http://reason.com/blog/2013/11/16/the-science-of-magic-mushrooms-researche
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By means of the Trans-Pacific Partnership
Agreement (TPP), President Obama is making a vigorous international
push that has the potential to shift economic power dynamics,
rewrite intellectual property laws, establish new labor and
environmental regulations, and affect the authority of Congress.
And, the White House hopes to have all this sorted out by the
end of this year. Zenon Evans argues that although it is presented
as a “free trade agreement,” the TPP has little to do with tade and
works contrary to freedom.
By means of the Trans-Pacific Partnership
Agreement (TPP), President Obama is making a vigorous international
push that has the potential to shift economic power dynamics,
rewrite intellectual property laws, establish new labor and
environmental regulations, and affect the authority of Congress.
And, the White House hopes to have all this sorted out by the
end of this year. Zenon Evans argues that although it is presented
as a “free trade agreement,” the TPP has little to do with tade and
works contrary to freedom.
Libertarians believe that the initiation of force
Earlier this week, I wrote a column
In this sense, Obamacare is simply
Since the Net’s dial-up
By means of the Trans-Pacific Partnership