Senator Bayh:

I have included a detailed analysis in this correspondence as to the impacts of the current health care reform bill being worked on by our Congress, a bill that will eventually reach you and your colleagues in the Senate. The impact study is provided below:

 

http://www.liberty.edu/media/9980/attachments/healthcare_overview_obama_072909.pdf

I urge you to not only vote against the Senate version of the bill, but use whatever power and influence you may have to convince your colleagues to vote against this issue as well. My outright hope is that you find a way to make sure this never even comes to a vote and is rejected before reaching the Senate floor. The health care bill proposed by the current Congress is not a bill that can merely be adjusted and fixed; it's an abomination that is beyond hope for fixing our problems. If anything, the problems will only worsen if this bill passes.

It isn't just a matter of monetary cost; this bill will cost real lives and cause real pain in real people. As a US Senator, you are a representative of the people and are expected to act in our best interest. It is clear that this bill is not in our best interest.

I've heard the supporter's claims on this bill, including our President's, and after reading the bill in its entirety and fully digesting the impacts, which are best summarized in the link posted above, it is clear we are not being provided an honest assessment of what we will be forced into. I am reluctant to say this, but the authors and supporters of this bill, including Mr. Obama, are lying to us and I expect you, as my representative, to call them out on this and fight against this bill at every turn.

The health care system in our nation is a mess, I agree with this; however, no one has bothered to properly study the issue to be able to offer any solutions. Increasing costs and an increasing number of individuals who are uninsured is not the problem itself; it is the symptom of the problem.

The American medical system is a sick patient and Congress is currently behaving like a new age medicine man who adorns his trailer park office with printed "degrees" from the Internet in strange holistic medicines. You cannot just start simply throwing cures at the patient. You first need to understand why the patient is sick. There exists no medicine that treats fever, there are numerous maladies that cause fevers and each of them requires a different treatment.

Numerous factors cause prices to increase and access to decline. Like any other product or service, medical care is a business that exists in the market and operates on the same market laws that economists have understood for centuries. When a price increases, that means either supply is restricted or demand is artificially increased, or a combination of the two. The US medical system suffers from both.

Further, Congress, including your Senate colleagues, fails to identify what the end result is to be. "Access to all" is a vague promise. Without clearly defining what your end result should be, it will most likely create problems. The current health care bill only exasperates existing conditions that are creating the problems in our health care system since the bill fails to provide access to all and does little more than restrict supply via Federal blocks on hospital expansions and reducing the incentives to enter into the medical field via salary caps without concern for specialty. It also will drive up demand by adding 47 million citizens and countless non-resident aliens, legal and otherwise, into an already strained system.

Once the problem is identified and an end result is formulated, THEN a plan of action can be built to bridge the problem to the solution. Currently, Congress wants to build this bridge without concerning itself where it should be built from and where it should be built to or even considering what the terrain of the riverbed terrain.

I am a financial auditor by trade and am well versed in the realm of economic thought. While I am still young and have not established a name or career, I can still offer my detailed analysis of the cause, effects and possible solutions to our health care problems.

You are free to contact me at my home phone listed in the correspondence form or via cell phone at [edited] if you are interested in discussing, in detail, my analysis of our health care system and what I believe are viable solutions.

The President is right on one matter, the health care reform Congress ultimately passes will be historic. The question is whether history will remember that as the pivotal point where the great American experiment in liberty and freedom died or the day that very experiment was saved. I would like you to be remembered in history books as the man who saved the Republic from its destruction and proved Dr. Alexander Tytler's prediction that all Democratic nations are doomed to fail wrong and I would like to be a part of that by providing the support necessary, either by my words here or a deeper and more important role in shaping these issues.

Regards,

Justin Murray

Fishers, IN

This is a small study I did exactly one year ago today. I will post the original, brief summary as well as a few other observations in regards to gun control.

Now, what I did was plugged this chart into the handy-dandy regression analysis program provided in Excel to run a Statistical approach. The formula spat out is the following:

Homicide Rate = 61.8873%-0.0355%(Gun Ownership Rates)

What this means is that if the mathematical comparison is good, Texas, which has a gun ownership level of 39.5% should have a homicide rate of 60.4851%. The actual homicide rate is 64.9727%, making Texas slightly more violent than the predicted value. Now for Washington DC, the predicted rate is 61.7523% whereas the actual rate is 80.0333%. A comparison going the other direction is New Hampshire, which has a gun ownership of 30%, which predicts 60.8218% homicide rate but the actual is 41.3900%.

The big deal is the t-value of -0.3585 and the p-value of 0.7214. This means that there is a 72.14% chance the prediction will be rejected and there is no reasonable comparison between the dependent and independent variables.

Basically, what this says is there is absolutely no correlation
between gun ownership rates or gun restrictions and homicides. Criminals still kill, guns or no.

So, since the level of gun control, where low ownership and high restriction Massachusetts and high ownership low restriction Alaska have the same murder rates, we can safely say that removal of firearms restrictions is a reasonable decision. When the number of weapons in circulation have no impact on crime and homicide rates, there simply is no reason spending billions of dollars regulating laws that clearly have no impact on criminal activities.

I then ran the same numbers with reading at a 4th grade level and that comparison only has a 34% chance of being rejected. Being able to read a newspaper has a stronger bearing on firearms violence than gun ownership does.

A few more numbers:

Homicide Rate vs International Education Score scores:

Rate = 231.46 - .317(International Score)

p-value = .001
t-stat = -3.39

The p-value shows that there is a strong correlation between International scores and homicide rates, but the t-score shows it isn't. The t-stat score has to be high and the p-value low for it to be a good comparison. Still, education based on international scores have a stronger argument against crime rates.

Homicide Rate vs Poverty

Rate = 34.1+176.42(Poverty Rate)

p-value = 1.71e-5
t-stat = 4.78

The p-value is incredible and the t-stat supports this, but it is somewhat weak. Still, poverty is intricately entwined with homicide. However, see the next one...

Homicide Rate vs Median Income

Rate = 80-.0004(median income)

p-value = .02
t-stat = -2.34

Decent p-value support but t-stat shows otherwise. Money isn't a key determinant in homicide rates, which means people are poor for the same reason they're more suceptable to criminal activity. This means simply giving away money to reduce poverty levels won't solve anything.

This next one is rather entertaining, Homicide Rates vs Percentage of Population Living in a Metropolitan Area:

Rate = 34.1 + 176.42(Percentage of Population Living in a Metropolitan Area)

p-value = .01
t-stat = 2.55

Again, not a strong t-stat, but there is a correlation between living in a city and homicide rates. While somewhat weak, it does show that close living conditions have an impact on whether firearm violence will occur or not.

Homicide vs Gross State Product

Rate = 57.44 + 1.11e-5(Gross State Product)

p-value = .01
t-stat = 2.57

A stronger economy results in a better homicide rate.

Northern Illinois University - A Case Study as to Why Firearms Controls Fail

NIU, latest notch in the violent crime spree committed by a disturbed person belt. With the actions, there have sprung the predicted and usual cries of more gun control. The problem? Illinois is already as strict as you can get. Handguns in many municipalities are outright illegal, rifles have to be registered with the state, full background checks are performed (including mental heath) and concealed carry licenses are outright denied to everyone. To top things off, NIU is a "gun-free" zone, like Virginia Tech was when it was victim to its own shooting spree.

What I have to ask those calling for more gun control is this - what more can you actually do? Your state already has the strictest penalties against firearm ownership, harshest laws in place to outright promote not owning a gun and heavy fines for those that break even the most meager of laws. You've disarmed those dangerous CHL owners other states allow. By the way, CHL owners are the safest people on the planet, with violence rates lower than that of those "enlightened" people in Britain that have outright banned all guns.

It is time to admit that the concept of gun control is an outright failure. Stricter controls wouldn't have stopped the shootings. The individual would have still obtained his weapons, he was an otherwise sane individual before the event. He was a graduate student, had good grades and was thought of highly and by all accounts a peaceful member of society.

Things like this will happen, they will always happen. Laws are intangible pieces of paper that are only as good as the will of the individual to follow them. The question you have to ask yourself is do you want to be a victim or do you want a fighting chance in the odd chance encounter with one of these individuals choses to not follow a written decree you pass down? These events are surprise attacks, someone will always get hurt and almost always die. These actions are also fast, no matter how quickly the authorities show up, the event will always be over before then.

Ignore the sensationalism made out around the NIU shootings. I know it is hard, especially for those intimately involved, but it is important to keep a rational head. These shootings were not stopped, the gun laws didn't work, adding more won't change the results. It is time to understand that the NIU shootings were more than likely made worse by those laws and reevaluate the future of firearms regulations with that in mind; and understand that these events are exceedingly rare and there is no cause to be fearful of it happening again, just be prepared to respond if it does. Don't go down like the NIU students, arm yourselves, protect yourselves, because the police will never be able to save you if an armed lunatic bursts through your classroom or workplace door, flaunting the laws that you erected to keep him out.

I was digging around the net and notcied this piece of news:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/05/05/dc-council-approves-recognize-sex-marriages-performed/

After reading about it, all I could thing was, "Well, this is ridiculous." However, the reasons may surprise those who immediately assume anyone opposed to legalizing gay marriages is a Catholic Scooby-Doo (those meddling kids!). I oppose it for a wholely different reason. Why should we create laws to legalize something that is already a natural right?

A basic natural right is freedom of association. Another natural right is the freedom to enter into contracts. This is, at the very core level, what marriage is - two individuals freely associating with one another and entering into a mutually beneficial contract. So the question remains, why should this be legalized when it is already "legal" by a higher authority?

Marriage in America has deteriorated into a mess, not because same-sex couples want to utilize the term to describe their relationship, but because it is being used as a means of convenience, even by the "traditional" couples. Marriage is, in the American legal system, little more than a means to consolidate tax filings and the application of a one-size-fits-all relationship contract. All of this is allowed by the blessings of your local elected (or appointed) bureaucrat. Marriage isn't just going to your religious building of choice (or some other locale for your non-religious types) and engaging in a ritual of binding; it's also about going to your local government office, filling out the paperwork for permission to marry and paying out your required tribute to the state. Is this America, the land of the free, or some tribal village where the State is the parent and you have to pay up your dowery for the bride?

That being said, the reason I oppose gay marriage is because I oppose the entire concept of a legally sanctified union performed by officials of the state. The Gay and Lesbian community should be extra insulted, not supportive, of such acts. These individuals seem to be more concerned the approval of the ever watching eye of the state more than simply attempting to convince close friends and family of their deepest feelings.

Furthermore, like any other civil "right", the group that is granted those rights is a de-facto second class citizen. While everyone else has natural rights, those covered under civil rights only have those rights due to the "generosity" of the legislative body currently in power. As the old saying goes, if government can give it to you, government can just as easily take it away.

Gays should outright reject the legalization of marriage and support the elimination of the state in the institute of marriage entirely. Instead of merely being satisfied with the inane act of some legislative body giving them something that is theirs in the first place and accepting all the strings of any government granted "right", they should be demanding to be allowed to engage in whatever relationship they so chose without having to reach out to those in power for approval. This means gays, like the rest of us, should be fighting against special legal priveledges granted by our ruling authority in the realm of marriage (and anywhere else), eliminate the income tax system (a key reason for even having government regulated marriage) and dismantling the destructive family court system and engage in freely associated marriage contracts that each couple can tailor to their own unique situations and needs.

Gay marriage, just like any other civil right, is a travesty of human dignity. Apart from giving up your life and thinking your freedoms only exist because of the decree of the ruling body, anyone who accepts a civil right, gay marriage or otherwise, is admitting that they're sub-human and that, without those laws and without giving up their sovreignty to a government, they aren't really endowed with natural rights.

Gays and lesbians need to demand their natural rights, and this starts with demanding government get out of the marriage business. They're human just like the rest of us and life preferences, especially those that don't infringe on the life, liberty or property of another, don't preclude their natural rights.

The newest story de jure in the news today is the impending vote on the Employee Free Choice Act. While this act has absolutely nothing to do with free choice, it creates a further burden on those who don't want to be unionized, it highlights a major problem in a America, the idea that unions somehow have rights.

The basic reality is that our rights extend to life, liberty and property. Unionization does not fall under any one of these categories as they're being formed not as a means to petition government, but to make unilateral demands of a private entity. While people can get together, off company time, off company property, to form an organization that they may pool resources for legal actions or in the hopes that their workplace may agree to deal with the chosen representative for the block of employees who chose to join the agreement, there is no right to an expectation that the company will accept the official into the building, let alone annual meetings with company executives.

Currently, many states and soon to be a nation wide Federal requirement require companies to allow union representatives a company provided space, in convenient reach of all employees (this usually means free reign of the facility) to be paid on the company dime. Should enough workers simply vote for unionization, companies are then required to burden their facility space with a permanent union office presence, frequent demands, strikes from which workers cannot be fired for non-performance of their job and a burdening of the company's payroll department to account and pay out union dues through employee paychecks. Many states, also on the Federal agenda, require that employees who do not want to unionize be pulled into the fold unilaterally and have their pay subjected to an additional tax called the union due. Unions also impede company improvements by blocking labor, time and productivity improving devices like automation and force companies through unilateral hiring and firing rules to continually employ excess and/or obsolete employees at the jobs for which they were originally hired.

On the basis of private property rights, this entire process and the simple fact that unions are given special protection when engaging with private enterprise is a flagrant violation.

Workers, who did not risk resources to form the company, buy its equipment, rent or purchase the building it is in or create the supply and customer chains required to function the building, do not have a right to vote on the operations of the company, their personal pay or benefits and do not have a right to not lose their job if they chose to throw a hissy fit (striking) if they don't like the contract they signed upon being hired if they think they want it amended in their favor. Workers do not have a right to strike on private company property or hinder its operations and the police force is obligated to arrest anyone who does so and our court system is obligated to award damages to the company from each and every individual striker who impedes company operations or trespasses on company property.

Because I fully reject the notion that unions have rights does not mean that I think the worker does not. However, those rights only extend so far as what was in the employment contract signed. Your salary, your benefits package, the working conditions, everything, is included in the employment agreement. If the employment agreement does not include these aspects, you cannot expect to be given what you personally consider adequate in these avenues. Once this contract is signed, you have only three options:

1. Work under the conditions of the employment contract. You signed it, you abide by it, be an adult.

2. Request with your employer to amend the contract. If your work is producing a value to the company at or below what you requet, they will likely agree to the amendment, if you overvalue yourself, the company is fully in its rights to deny your request without debate. It requires an agreement to amend the contract, not a one-sided demand.

3. Quit your job.

If you'll notice, getting a union representative and a court order demanding that you remain employed and have a paycheck while you refuse to work, picketing the company plant, physically abusing replacement workers (aka scabs) and any of the other vile things unions are legally allowed to do is not included in the list of things you can do.

If the company violates your contract by unilaterally dropping your pay, increasing the danger level of the workplace, reduction of benefits, abuse that goes counter to the rules you agreed to and the contract provisions you signed do not include a company unilateral readjustment of the terms without notice (do not work at a company that allows itself to do this or request amendment to the contract to remove this provision), you then have a legal recourse as the company has now violated the contract it has signed for you.

Simply put, you have rights so long as the company does not violate your life, liberty, property or the terms of the agreed-upon contract. Unions do not have rights that are extended into your workplace. They are permitted to create a block lobbyist to petition the government and can fund your legal actions, but they do not have a right to force your co-workers who chose not to be represented by the union to pay dues and accept union concessions, enter your workplace, demand meetings with your boss nor do they have a right to impede the operations of your employer.

America has been backwards for way too long on this matter. Unions do not have rights, end of story.

In my relatively short time in observing and commenting in the political circles I have noticed a rather interesting trend. The trend centers around the odd notion that when one idea fails, pick the most apparent opposing alternative. If the opposing alternative fails, go back to the first failed idea. Doing this in just about all aspects of life would brand the individual as insane and untrustworthy. If you fail out of the business school and enter the engineering school but fail out of it, what will going back to the business school accomplish? If your first husband/wife beats you or cheats on you then you pick a second that does it worse, does that mean you should go back to the first? Most reasonable people would agree that doing these, among other silly concepts, is ludicrous and would never resort so such back and forth, only A or B in a world that has infinite options. But, why is it we do this with our leadership?

Back in 1980, the American public was fed up with the Democratic party. The party had meddled and experimented America through a Great Depression, a Great Society, an oil crisis and Stagflation.  The public, mostly confused as to what the role of a president is, elected Ronald Reagan.  Then again in 1994, to add more of the American's distaste for the Democratic party, removed the power from their clutches and gave the Congress to the Republicans, but, again, failed to understand the role of a president and removed the first Bush (not that I particularly disagree with the first Bush removal, but the alternative was particularly vile, even before we had the benefit of hindsight).

Over the next 12 years, the American public was handed a boat load of lies and deceit as everything that was promised by the savior Republican party was ignored and all the same policies dreamed up by the Democrats since their Knight in Shining Armor, FDR, were kept in place. Sure, we had a small nibble with welfare reform (as opposed to actually shuttering that revolving door practice) but nothing else vanished. We were told it was because we failed to elect a Republican president to avoid a veto.

Then America finally gave the Republican party what it wanted, full control of the executive and legislative branches. Now America would finally see the promises of an eliminated Department of Education and a legitimate shrinking of the government, not just a slowing of its annual growth. Instead, what we got was more of the same that was started with Herbert Hoover, a continual expansion of government. Republicans not only failed to shut down cancerous growths on the American brain, but it expanded them. The Department of Education was not shut down, it was given No Child Left Behind. Medicare wasn't backed out, it got the Prescription Drug Plan. Republicans refused to use political muscle to fix Social Security, too afraid of their next election (in a rather odd claim that if they did so, they'd get removed from office and the policies reversed, so we might as well just keep them in office because a Democrat doing it is worse than a Republican doing it). The US government expanded at a rapid pace and was saddled with an additional problem of rampant debt and massive currency debasement. Nothing that the Republican party promised the American people was done.

Fast forward to 2008.  The Democratic party, promising to undo the damage the Republicans wrought by doing nothing more than doing what the Democrats have been doing for 60 years by, of course, acting like Democrats. All the same policies that America rejected as failed, as proven by the continual deterioration of the nation over the 60s and 70s, are now being picked up again.

Americans are apparently masochists. 97% of the American public, by example of the voting trends of the last election cycle, are apparently unaware that there are more than two choices, that the Republican and Democratic parties are little more than the same stupidity with a different brand name. They're Valvoline motor oil vs Mobil motor oil. It's the same oil, they're the same parties.

I still don't think that the American public is stupid, but with this continued trend of the party see-saw is beginning to make me think otherwise. The Democratic party abused the American people for decades and we finally had the nerve to divorce them. We married the Republican party, which proceeded to abuse us just the same. Now we're back with the Democratic party.

It isn't a mystery that I equate Barack Obama and the new Congress with a scene from South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut where Saddam Hussein sings a song about being a changed man. "I can change," Hussein sang to Satan with a seductive dance. Satan knew perfectly well that Saddam wouldn't change, but was convinced anyway. Obama is Saddam from the South Park movie, complete with the "Change" mantra, confusing Americans to return to the abusive party they left long ago.