The Urban Grind

Hat tip: Ron J.

Not surprisingly, universal lefty idol Fidel Castro’s overseas “free” medical care program for South America’s poor, is falling apart. (Now since the article requires a subscription, I am including the entire text of Ron’s message to me.)

Fidel Castro’s vaunted overseas “free” medical programfor the poor, which sent doctors to the slums of Caracas and
elsewhere, is falling apart as doctors choose defection, says Investor’s Business Daily (IBD).

In Bolivia, at least 30 Cuban doctors out of 719 defected to freedom, according to Bolivian media.

In Venezuela, 4,000 Cuban doctors out of 15,000 also fled the country, Union Radio reported. The result of the defections can be seen in the remnants of the program:

In western Caracas, a red-brick octagonal medical kiosk, the visible symbol of Castro’s Cuban doctor operation, is boarded up; it was installed supposedly to provide 24-hour medical service to poor areas, but the doctors are gone.

Along the old Caracas/La Guaira highway, three more of the distinctive Cuban brick compounds, one after another, also were recently seen boarded up.

In the truly poor Caracas slums, known as ranchos, where cardboard boxes and corrugated steel serve as
housing, no Cuban doctor kiosks are there at all.

It’s no surprise why they did it, says IBD. Defecting doctors say they are essentially there for a political purpose rather than to
practice medicine. Their “free” medical care amounts to industrial “dumping,” putting real doctors out of business in places such as Venezuela, Bolivia and Central America.

Instead of showing the “humanity” of socialist medicine over the profit-driven capitalist kind as Castro intended, the current fiasco has shown that “free” medical care is as muchin shortage in Caracas as it is in Havana, explains IBD.

Source: Editorial, “Doctors Flee South America Sick Man,” Investor’s Business Daily, July 15, 2006

I once read someplace that insanity is doing the same thing over and over yet expecting a different result. Still, the Castro admirers will insist until they’re blue in the face that it can be done.

On another note, does this concept of “industrial dumping” seem familiar to you? It should, as that is what our own government is allowing to happen to legal, taxpaying citizens, in favor of the illegal aliens.

But reading stuff like this reminds me of the character of Dr. Hendricks in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged when he explained why he quite medicine to Dagny Taggart:

I quit when medicine was placed under State control, some years ago,” said Dr. Hendricks. Do you know what it takes to perform a brain operation? Do you know the kind of skill it demands, and the years of passionate, merciless, excruciating devotion that go to acquiring that skill? That was what I would not place at the disposal of men whose sole qualification to rule me was their capacity to spout the fraudulent generalities that got them elected to the privilege of enforcing their wishes at the point of a gun. I would not let them dictate the purpose for which my years of study had been spent, or the conditions of my work, or my choice of patients, or the amount of my reward. I observed that in all the discussions that preceded the enslavement of medicine, men discussed everything — except the desires of the doctors. Men considered only the “welfare” of the patients, with no thought for those who were to provide it. That a doctor should have any right, desire or choice in the matter, was regarded as irrelevant selfishness; his is not to choose, they said, only ‘to serve.’ That a man who’s willing to work under compulsion is too dangerous a brute to entrust with a job in the stockyards — never ocurred to those who proposed to help the sick by making life impossible for the healthy. I have often wondered at the smugness with which people assert their right to enslave me, to control my work, to force my will, to violate my conscience, to stifle my mind — yet what is it that they expect to depend on, when they lie on an operating table under my hands? Their moral code has taught them to believe that it is safe to rely on the virtue of their victims. Well, that is the virture I have withdrawn. Let them discover the kinds of doctors that their system will now produce. Let them discover, in their operating rooms and hospital wards, that it is not safe to place their lives in the hands of a man whose life they have throttled. It is not safe, if he is the sort of man who resents it — and still less safe, if he is the sort who doesn’t.”

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison has reversed his decision to donate 100 million dollars to Harvard University in light of their dismissal of former president Lawrence Summers.

Oracle spokesman Bob Wynne said Ellison reconsidered his decision to fund a program at Harvard to study the quality of governmental health-care problems worldwide because Summers’ participation was critical.

Serves Harvard right!

So lefty billionaire Warren Buffet is going to be giving the bulk of his 44 billion fortune to charity. 30.7 billion of it will be going to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The 75-year-old head of the US investment firm Berkshire Hathaway said that the death of his wife, Susie, two years ago made him realise that he should donate his money now rather than after his death.

?Our kids are great. It?s neither right nor rational to be flooding them with money,? he told Forbes magazine. ?Dynastic mega-wealth would further tilt the playing field that we ought to be trying to level.?

Since when is it the job of any individual to “level the playing field,” whatever that’s supposed to mean?

Also, James Taranto notes that Buffet is an avowed opponent of the death tax, but only for other people’s money.

Mr. Buffett could have let the government take its share of his estate after he dies. But just as Mr. Buffett has accumulated his vast wealth without paying much personal income tax, he has found a way to avoid the tax man in this maneuver as well, even writing in his letter to Bill and Melinda Gates that a condition of the gift is that the foundation “must continue to satisfy legal requirements qualifying my gifts as charitable and not subject to gift or other taxes.”

On the estate tax, watch what Mr. Buffett does, not what he says. The Gates Foundation isn’t the only recipient of his largesse–three foundations headed by Mr. Buffett’s three children, Susan, Howard, and Peter, will get hundreds of millions of dollars. Tax documents show that in 2004, Peter Buffett and his wife Jennifer each took a $40,000 a year salary for what they reported was 30 hours a week each of work on the foundation.

Do you believe the nerve of this man?

Unfortunately, being a lefty Hillary Clinton supporter, among other things helps a lot.

His activism for Democrat and far-left causes is well known:

# He has called for unilateral nuclear disarmament and has donated heavily to this cause.

# He actively backed Hillary Clinton’s bid for the U.S. Senate and helped her raise money.

# In May, Buffett wrote an op-ed piece in the Washington Post criticizing President Bush?s proposed cut in the dividend tax as a change that would benefit the rich.

Furthermore, Mr. Buffet believes that California residents are not paying *enough* in property tax:

Forbes’ prediction came true Friday, when Buffett told the Wall Street Journal that property taxes in California are too low and suggested that Prop. 13 ought to be undone.

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He failed to mention California’s heavy burden of other taxes and fees, including state income tax, fuel taxes and the car registration tax, which Davis just tripled.

For Republicans, Prop. 13 is a sacred benchmark by which most candidates are evaluated by donors, party leaders and many of the party’s most loyal voters. Prop. 13 rolled back property taxes and limited their annual increase to 2 percent, passed 25 years ago with 65 percent of the vote.

Typical behavior for liberals. Do as I say, but not as I do!

They have just voted to reject efforts to cut the death tax!

A 57-41 vote fell three votes short of advancing the bill. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said the Senate will vote again this year on a tax that opponents call the “death tax.”

“Getting rid of the death tax is just too important an issue to give up so easily,” he said.

How useless can these people be?

The home owners at the center of the Kelo vs. New London case will be evicted from their homes.

The city council voted 5-2 to evict homeowners Pasquale Cristofaro and Susette Kelo from their riverfront homes. The motion instructed city Law Director Thomas Londregan to proceed with the process of obtaining the properties and to “obtain past due taxes and rents collected from third parties and/or reasonable use and occupancy fees.”

Too bad it’s nearly impossible to impeach our Supreme Whore Justices.

The MSM is in a tizzy over the possible repeal of the death tax. In fact, the Washington Post is referring to it as a reward for the hereditary elite. (How keeping what you’ve earned is a reward is not something that’s explained.)

Anway dear readers, since I have low blood pressure I have decided to take apart their drivel for you.

It doesn’t matter if you are liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican. There is no possible excuse for doing what Congress is poised to do this week: Abolish the estate tax.

Oh yes it does matter! No true conservative would be for penalizing years of hard work and success by approving such a punitive tax.

The federal government faces a future of expanding deficits. Thanks to the baby bust and medical inflation, spending is projected to rise by nearly 3 percent of gross domestic product by 2030, a growth equivalent to the doubling of today’s Medicare program. What is the dumbest possible response to this? Take a source of revenue and abolish it outright.

This is a typical example of the liberal mentality. Some would argue that they are against religion. But big government IS their religion. And ?the economy? is their vengeful, hungry god that requires the constant sacrifice of people?s hard earned money exactly as the old Aztec gods required human sacrifices.

Another thing. Why is our budget deficit the fault of ordinary productive American citizens. *They* weren?t the ones taxing people up the wazoo and spending money that was not theirs to spend. So why penalize them?

The nation faces rising inequality. Since 1980 the gap between the earnings of the top fifth and the bottom fifth has jumped by almost 50 percent. The United States is by some measures the most unequal society in the rich world and the most unequal that it’s been since the 1920s. What is the dumbest possible response to this? Identify the most progressive federal tax and repeal it.

Ah, the mantra of equality of outcomes. These cry babies conveniently ignore the fact that the supply of people in the ?bottom fifth? is always changing, as people get educated, get jobs, and move up in their professions.

The nation faces the prospect that inequality will damage meritocracy. When the distance between top and bottom widens, it becomes harder to traverse the gap; people of low birth are stuck at the bottom, and human talent is wasted. What is the dumbest possible response to this? Take the tax that limits what the super-rich pass on to their children and get rid of it. Send a message to hereditary elites: Go ahead, entrench yourselves!

It?s really too bad that this type of dreck is the main source of news for most Americans.

Anyway, ?stuck at the bottom? would not be an issue for people who stay in school, get jobs, stay in them, and refrain from belting out babies they can?t afford to support.

For most of the past century, the case for the estate tax was regarded as self-evident. People understood that government has to be paid for, and that it makes sense to raise part of the money from a tax on “fortunes swollen beyond all healthy limits,” as Theodore Roosevelt put it. The United States is supposed to be a country that values individuals for their inherent worth, not for their inherited worth. The estate tax, like a cigarette tax or a carbon tax, is a tool for reducing a socially damaging phenomenon — the emergence of a hereditary upper class — as well as a way of raising money.

Was regarded as self evident by whom? Democrats??? Also, why are entire businesses and livelihoods expendable, but our government, which is supposed to serve us, is not? And if the government is so big that it requires 47% of all assets, then it needs a good shrinking. As the main character of Ayn Rand?s masterpiece ?Atlas Shrugged? said to Mr. Thomas ? ?fire them all.?

Obviously some people will never understand the concept of private property. If you earned the money, you can dispose of it any way you see fit, whether that includes spending it all, or giving it your heirs.

But now the House has voted to repeal the estate tax, and the Senate may do the same this week. Republicans are picking up support from renegade Democrats, such as Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Bill Nelson of Florida, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Max Baucus of Montana. Several more may go over to the dark side if a “compromise” bill, which would achieve nearly everything that abolitionists dream of, is introduced in the Senate. President Bush, who has already muscled a temporary repeal of the estate tax into law, would be delighted to sign a bill making abolition permanent.

Too little too late!

If the abolitionists succeed, some other tax will eventually be raised to make up for the lost revenue. So which tax does Congress favor? The income tax, which discourages work? A consumption tax, which hits the poor hardest? The payroll tax, which is both anti-work and anti-poor? Really, which other tax out there is better?

So now the Washington Compost is against taxation??? Make up your minds already!

The abolitionists don’t respond to this question because there is no convincing answer. Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman, has written that “we would be hard-pressed to find evidence that, compared with the alternatives, a reasonable estate tax significantly discourages work or innovation or savings.” In other words, killing the estate tax and raising some other tax instead would damage the economy. And that’s before you take into account the positive distortions introduced by the estate tax, such as more social mobility and higher charitable giving. Charitable bequests will fall by at least a fifth if the estate tax is repealed permanently.

Like I?m supposed to take the word of a man hired by that disgraceful Jimmy Carter as gospel??!!??

As for charitable donations, why are these big bad rich people obligated to act as a giant tit?

People often remark on the perversity of popular support for estate-tax repeal. A majority wants to abolish the tax, even though only the richest 2 percent of households have ever had to pay it. Yet this shoot-your-own-foot weirdness is easily explained: Most people just don’t know that, under the law’s current provisions, a couple can bequeath $4 million without paying a penny to the government.

People are against it because it?s morally wrong to force businesses to liquidate their assets all for the sake of sacrificing for ?the economy.? After all, this is income that has been taxed every year.

But I’m fascinated by the spectacle of elite support for this policy. How can the president and the abolitionists in Congress, who understand the tax and its details, possibly want to kill it? They all say they accept the principle that the tax system should be fair — Bush officials are constantly claiming that their tax cuts are progressive. They all accept the principle that free trade and competition get the best out of American firms, so what about subjecting rich heirs to competition from ordinary Americans?

I?ll answer the question once and for all. The anti-death tax people are not a bunch of resentful, whining cry babies who are chronically jealous of those more successful than themselves. They don?t believe in penalizing hard working successful people for the sake of promising their constituents (mostly welfare recipients, felons and illegal aliens) a big giant, unearned, never vanishing government tit.

Hat tip Ron J.

Tutoring.

It was almost 3 a.m., Alex Del Monte recalled, and he was cramming like crazy. He gulped can after can of Red Bull to stay awake, but the George Washington University sophomore knew he would flunk his Statistics 52 exam later that day if he didn’t call his tutor for help.

But so late at night? Not a problem if your tutor works 8,500 miles away and 9 1/2 hours ahead in Bangalore, India.

In an hour-long session that cost just $18, the Indian tutor, who said his name was Mike, spent an hour walking Del Monte through such esoteric concepts as confidence intervals and alpha divisions, Del Monte recalled. He got an A on the final exam. “Mike helped me unscramble everything in my mind,” the 20-year-old said.

Thousands of U.S. students such as Del Monte are increasingly relying on overseas tutors to boost their grades and SAT scores. The tutors, who communicate with students over the Internet, are inexpensive and available around the clock, making education the newest industry to be outsourced to other countries.

Naturally, the bolshevik public school educrats and their powerful unions are not happy.

But educational outsourcing has sparked a fierce response from teachers and other critics who argue that some companies are using unqualified overseas tutors to increase their profit margins.

“We don’t believe that education should become a business of outsourcing,” said Rob Weil, deputy director of educational issues at the American Federation of Teachers. “When you start talking about overseas people teaching children, it just doesn’t seem right to me.”

Unqualified my foot!

Speaking from my personal experiences attending “good” public schools, I have witnessed quite a few disasters going around calling themselves “teachers.” These cantankerous (mostly) women seemed to hate young people. And looking back, I think they were only in it for the air tight job security, the summers off, and the generous tax payer funded benefits.

Years ago I remember reading an article in US News and World Report about a motivated young math teacher in some public school. (Sorry, I don’t have the link.) Anway, she must have been doing a great job because her students were doing very well. So to challenge them, she decided to teach them an advanced math course not offered by the school. Needless to say, the other teachers and the unions were dead set against it, even though the woman offered to get trained on her own at no cost to the school. So all this blathering on the part of public school educrats about “unqualified people” is nothing more than a bunch of complacent people getting hysterical about possibly being replaced.

The U.S. demand for overseas tutors is creating a thriving industry in Asia. About 80 percent of India’s $5 million online tutoring industry is focused on students in the United States, according to Educomp Solutions, a New Delhi tutoring company.

When Studyloft.com, a Chicago-based tutoring company with more than 6,000 clients, advertised in Bangalore for tutors with master’s degrees, more than 500 people applied for 38 spots, according to Bikram Roy, the firm’s founder and chief executive. “There is just a huge hotbed of talent there in math and science,” he said. “India has the best tutors — the best teachers — in the world.”

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Educational outsourcing has become even more contentious as companies try to tap into the millions of dollars available under the No Child Left Behind Act to firms that provide remedial tutoring. Both Studyloft.com and Growing Stars hope to qualify for those funds.

Teachers unions are vigorously lobbying for legislation that would make it more difficult for overseas tutors to receive No Child Left Behind funds. Weil, of the American Federation of Teachers, said after-school tutors should be required to pass the same rigorous certification process as public school teachers.

They obviouly don’t want any competition.

Speaking of competition, why is it that an inept government monopoly on our children’s education is deemed a sacred cow, whereas as profitable companies like Microsoft are ruthlessly hounded “for being a monopoly?” And for that matter, isn’t OPEC a monopoly as well? I haven’t read of or heard of any complaints about them being a monopoly.

Two liberal groups, ACORN and WARN have expressed opposition to the formation of a Wal-Mart bank. This time, they are kvetching that Wal-Mart will circumvent the Community Reinvestment Act.

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., “wants to do an end run around the Community Reinvestment Act, which requires banks to make at least some credit available in low-income and minority communities,” said Alton Bennett, spokesman for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN).

“History shows what the effect will be,” Bennett added. “If you remove the money from our most distressed neighborhoods, they will even become worse.”

Typical liberals! When in doubt, do as the public school educrats do. Whine for more money.

In terms of “distressed neighborhoods,” here’s a novel suggestion. How about taking some responsibility by not belting out a gazillion babies out of wedlock and going on welfare to support them? Or how about staying in school and applying yourself so that you can get into a good college and eventually get a good job? Nah!!! Too racist to even think about!

“Wal-Mart says they should not have to follow the rules of the Community Reinvestment Act because they will only provide ‘selected core banking services’ and not make loans,” Smith said.

This is America we’re talking about. Not North Korea! Businesses have a right to sell or not sell whatever products or services they want to. These mealey mouthed liberal groups, as well as other consumers are free to make use of Wal-Mart’s services or take their business elsewhere, if that’s what they desire. Wal-Mart is in business to make money, not to be a sugar daddy. That’s what capitalism is about.
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Still, in terms of being harmful to the poor, this article shows how lower income consumers can benefit from a Wal-Mart bank, as opposed to traditional banks (assuming they did do loans).

Mortgage lenders who surprise their borrowers with last-minute junk fees.

Banks that nickel and dime their small account holders to death.

Auto lenders who add discriminatory surcharges on loans to black and Hispanic buyers.

Credit card companies that use every excuse to jack up rates.

Check cashers and payday lenders that levy usurious charges on their customers.

Prices for Wal-Mart’s current services are as follows:

A wire transfer to Mexico costs less than $10, compared to $14.99 at Western Union.

Money orders are less than 50 cents, compared to a buck or more at many banks.

Checks are cashed for $3, and customers aren’t unknowingly steered into short-term loans at 300% to 1,300% interest rates, as happens at some unethical check-cashing outlets.

As I see it, all this protesting about Wal-Mart is a perfect example of what Nathaniel Branden referred to as the divine right of stagnation in Ayn Rand’s book “The Virtue of Selfishness.”

As an example, Branden wrote the following:

The denunciation of capitalism for such “iniquities” as allowing an old corner grocer to be driven out of business by a big chain store, the denunciation implying that the economic well being and progress of the old grocer’s customers and of the chain store owners should be throttled to protect the limitations of the old grocer’s initiative or skill — this is the doctrine of the divine right of stagnation.

Sounds exactly like what’s currently going on with Wal-Mart.

The Senate has approved CAFTA by a vote of 54 to 45, setting the stage for a final battle in the House, which should take place mid to late July. For a *very* brief description of what CAFTA is about, click here.

The American Resistance writes here about how CAFTA will outsource U.S. jobs to Central American and erode U.S. sovereignty. They also believe that CAFTA is nothing more than a giant foreign aid scheme.

Pat Buchanan believes that CAFTA will bring about a dramatic trade deficit and even more illegal immigrants from Mexico.

Tom Tancredo believes that CAFTA is a thinly designed immigration accord, and that it will erode U.S. sovereignty.

CAFTA would do more than just phase out tariffs and open new markets —- a lot more. For example, buried among its nearly 1,000 pages, the agreement contains an expansive definition of “cross-border trade in services.” This definition would give people in Central American nations a de facto right to work in the United States. CAFTA is more than a trade agreement about sugar and bananas. It is a thinly disguised immigration accord.

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What those provisions mean is that a foreign company would be empowered under CAFTA to challenge the validity of our immigration laws. If an international tribunal rules against us, Congress would then be forced to change our immigration laws or face international trade sanctions. These tribunals have the authority to rule that U.S. immigration limits, visa requirements, or even licensing requirements and zoning rules are “unnecessary burdens to trade” that act as “restrictions on the supply of a service.”

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If CAFTA were really just about trade, the agreement would be little more than a few pages long, declaring that tariff treatment for U.S. and Central American goods will be on a reciprocal basis. But it isn’t. In reality, CAFTA is about expanding a growing body of international law that supersedes our own.

Sounds like a one-world government in the making.

At least that’s what Congress is attempting.

The House on Thursday approved by a 231-189 vote a bid by conservative Scott Garrett, R-N.J., to bar federal transportation funds from being used to make improvements on lands seized via eminent domain for private development.

Legislation in the works also would ban the use of federal funds for any project getting the go-ahead using the Kelo v. City of New London (Conn.) decision

Not as good an an impeachment but better than nothing. Of course Nancy Pelosi is not pleased:

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California says she is opposed to any legislation that would withhold federal dollars “for the enforcement of any decision of the Supreme Court, no matter how opposed I am to that decision.”

Of course you’re opposed, Nancy. After all anything that interferes with government milking taxpayers like cows is EEVIL!