The Washington Times: Cigarettes & The Nanny State

Source: The Washington Times.

Source:The New Democrat

I'm against the nanny state as well because it implies that government or elitists in government know best how to manage individuals lives for them. That the individuals themselves including people they do not know very well. That individuals are basically stupid and too dumb to decide for themselves what to eat, drink and manage their own personal affairs. And we have a long history of nanny state politics going to the Great Depression with alcohol prohibition and perhaps even further than that.

But what separates me from some on the Right who claim to be against big government and the nanny state until they are in favor of it, but then say "this is not big government, but good responsible government looking after the welfare of everyone" is that I'm against big government and the nanny state, period. I do not say I'm against it except when I'm in favor of it. I don't defend Americans right to drink or smoke, eat junk food why I'm telling Americans who they can sleep with. Or what music they can listen to, or what TV and movies they can watch.

To be against the nanny state you have to be against the nanny state. And that night sound like an obvious statement, but there are people both on the Right when it comes to alcohol, tobacco and junk food to use as examples who claim to be against the nanny state and looking after our individual freedom while at the same time are trying to ban homosexuality, or pornography or other forms of entertainment they personally do not approve of for the good of our general welfare.

There are three options when it comes to the nanny state.

1. You are in favor of it whether you are on the Right or Left.

2. You are against it whether you are on the Right or Left.

3. You are selectively in favor of it and against it whether you are on the Right or Left. You like the nanny state over here while you are against it over there.

But don't try to convince people of your opposition to big government and the nanny state on one hand while you are embracing it on the other hand.
Source:The Young Turks

The Washington Times: David Keene: A Better Way to Help the Dangerously Mentally Ill

Source:The New Democrat

This may be the first post on The New Democrat about an article in the Washington Times.  I'm not sure.  The Times is one of two small right-wing newspapers in Washington, D.C.  They are small compared with the progressive Washington Post, one of the most important big city news papers in the country, if not the most important.  The Washington Times, even with their supposed reporting, sounds, a lot of times, like the FOX News of print, a partisan political operation trying to pass themselves off as a news organization but really just repeating stuff from Republican or Tea Party sources and reporting things that really aren't news.

But today, David Keene writes what could be called a "compassionate conservative" piece about mental health care in America and what is wrong with it.  We lock up people who otherwise would be classified as mental patients who should be institutionalized but, since they were convicted of committing felonies, we put them in prison.  The prison staff isolates them in indefinite solitary confinement so they can't hurt anyone.  This is understandable, from the staff's viewpoint but it  treats the symptoms instead of addressing the underlying problems that cause these people to act out in the first place.

We have an underfunded mental health care system in America that results in a lot of damage to society, including the loss of innocent lives.  We have mental patients who are on the street when they should be institutionalized for their own good and for the good of society, not in prison but in real mental hospitals or, at the very least, in outpatient care with medication and regular appointments with  caregivers.  This is self-inflicted wound.  We've shot ourselves in the feet.

We have the resources in this country to fully-fund mental health care.   We should've done that as part of the 2010 Affordable Care Act.  Even some Congressional Republicans who, at the time, were in the minority in the House and Senate believed that we should have addressed this problem.  Even with all of the  shootings, post Gabby Gifford in Tucson, we have failed to act and, as a result, our country is still in danger of more shootings by mentally disturbed people who have no business being in possession of firearms.

I'm in favor of background checks to make sure that anyone attempting to buy a firearm does not have a mental health or criminal record but that, alone, won't solve the problem because as long as there are mental patients on the streets with access to firearms, either through the legal or black markets, we will remain at risk of further gun violence in this country.

Along with background checks on gun purchases we need to make mental health care part of health insurance for both private and public insurers.  People in mental hospitals should be eligible for public assistance while they are institutionalized to cover costs that their health insurer doesn't cover.  We need to make sure that, in the future, mental patients are not released because their hospital can no longer afford to treat them. 

Washington Times: 'An Addiction Democrats Can’t Kick'

Source:The Washington Times- with an editorial about the Democratic Party and tobacco.

Source:The FreeState 

"The backrooms of American politics are not so smoke-filled now, but hypocrisy hangs as thick as ever over Washington. President Obama, who has been a three-pack-a-day man for most of his life, declares smokers Public Enemy No. 1 in his latest budget. He wants a near-doubling of the federal tax on cigarettes, to $1.95 a pack, all to pay for a universal preschool program for 4-year-olds. It’s the Democratic schizophrenia on tobacco.

If liberals believed their own rhetoric, they would call for an outright ban on tobacco, not a Mike Bloombergian half-measure, such as ordering retailers to keep the packs out of sight. The would-be successor to New York City’s nanny-in-chief, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, called for raising the minimum age for buying tobacco from 18 to 21, as if this would prevent youngsters from lighting up.

In Maryland, a Democratic state senator from Baltimore County unsuccessfully sought earlier this year to fine drivers $50 if caught smoking with a passenger under the age of 8. If someone of tender age shouldn’t be subjected to secondhand smoke, why exclude 10- and 12-year-olds from protection? Indeed, why not ban smoking entirely? 

There’s a simple answer: Liberals and Democrats can’t call for a neo-Prohibition ban on cigarettes because they’re addicted to tobacco revenues. Taxes on tobacco finance too much of their social spending to allow such a drastic move. The precursor to Obamacare, Hillary Rodham Clinton’s State Children’s Health Insurance Program, enacted in 1997, was financed with a tripling of the tax on tobacco. Her opponents pointed out how this wouldn’t work, because the sales of tobacco would fall, and so would the tax revenues that the program was intended to depend on.

Economists know this as the price elasticity of demand, which shows the responsiveness, or “elasticity,” of the quantity of a good or service to a change in its price. It’s simple. As the price of a product goes up, the quantity of it sold goes down. The higher taxes raise the price of tobacco, sales decline, and so do the tax revenues." 

From The Washington Times 

What the Washington Times is arguing here is that on one hand leftist (instead of Liberal) Democrats are arguing that tobacco is so bad for you, that we need to essentially tax the hell out of it, to pay for their social programs. 

So on one hand Democrats are saying that tobacco is bad for you, but if you smoke, we'll take that money to pay for their social programs. And I agree with everything that The Times is saying here. I would just replace liberal with leftist or some other left-wing, because the nanny state and big government in general, is as illiberal (not liberal) a government philosophy, that one could possible dream up.