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The Future of Hunting and Cass Sunstein Regulatory Czar

Posted by liberalturnedconservative on Friday, September 11, 2009 8:16:07 AM
My father has been a life-long hunter since his boyhood when his own father introduced him to the craft.  Every fall for as long as I can remember and then again in the spring my father prepares for his venture into the woods.  He has practiced his skills as a hunter intently.  I remember life-size deer and turkey targets placed carefully around the yard for target practice, new bows purchased almost every year that promised a more accurate shot, disgusting smelling laundry detergent that promised to mask my father's scent in the woods, and bottled deer urine to lure the biggest buck his way.  My father has a collection of split arrows he maintains from his target practice to show off his Robin Hood like skill to every friend I have ever brought home.  He has read multiple books and magazines on hunting skill and conservation efforts.  My dad is intent on killing his deer and turkey with dead on accuracy to minimize the amount of suffering they experience.  He dutifully buys his permits to kill only what allowed so deer and turkey populations are maintained and not depleted.  He leaves no trace of his activities in the woods.  Most of his days hunting in his youth were just spent walking through the woods, enjoying the peace of nature. 
 
I was taught growing up to deeply respect nature and that most hunters respect it the most because they have more first-hand knowledge of it than anyone.  Hunting is a necessary skill that has fed humans since the beginning of time.  Humans have canine incisors with which to chew meat.  This is the greatest argument out there that humans have always been meant to be part of the food chain, the meat eating top really.  Yet all true hunters know that nature exists in balance.  To hunt too much, you deplete animal populations to extinction levels.  To hunt too little, and overpopulation threatens sickness, starvation and the very real threat that a deer will die an uncelebrated death by wrapping its tasty body around a car. 
 
Liberal hippies like Cass Sunstein don't understand the art and skill of hunting.  They were never taught the beauty or the necessity behind learning to hunt.  It is a skill humans desperately must maintain from generation to generation so that, God forbid, if something goes wrong within our country to where we cannot obtain food for our families by going to the grocery store, we may still feed our families and human civilization will continue on.  I greatly opposed Cass Sunstein for the position of Regulatory Czar because, he views hunting as an aberration that should be banished, as animal cruelty.  He believes the killing of animals for food is the same as the Holocaust for humans in Nazi Germany.  Can this guy possibly be for real?  What planet does he come from?  Has he ever gone hunting with a real hunter?  Has he ever spoken to the hunting organizations that have worked tirelessly with conservationists about their mutual purposes regarding animal populations? 
 
I am still not sure what a Regulatory Czar will be in charge of.  Will he have the ability to make it more difficult for hunter's to get licenses to hunt?  Create rules that have nothing to do with preserving healthy animal populations?  Will he make it more difficult for farmers to farm?  He believes every rat that gets killed is a brutal slaughter so, does that mean that every time a wheat crop is harvested, a farmer must harvest in such a way as to not kill rats in with the wheat?  From what I understand, rats are routinely swept up into the big wheat harvesting machines and ground up.  Even you vegetarians out there are still eating some form of animal in with the bread you consume, you know. 
 
Cass Sunstein is also against the interpretation of the 2nd Amendment that every individual citizen has the right to buy guns.  He believes only militias should be allowed to purchase guns.  Half of all hunting done is done by rifle or shotgun.  I would love to have a discussion with a liberal like this to tell him of my experiences with hunting and hunters.  Even better, I wish I had a time machine to take them back to my childhood where they could learn the deep respect for nature, the reality of hunting to combat his imaginary brutality of animals.  If hunting were ever taken from my father, I am not sure if he would ever be the same.  If the hunting skill is bred out of mankind, we could face the very real threat of extinction....well, people like Cass Sunstein would face the very real threat of extinction.  My dad and I would just go hunt us some big juicy meat. 
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You Lie! A cry that made my heart leap with joy...

Posted by liberalturnedconservative on Thursday, September 10, 2009 1:13:59 PM
South Carolina Senator Joe Wilson shouted "You lie!" during President Obama's joint Congressional speech on health care reform.  It was rude to interupt the President at all, much worse to shout out an insult.  The President has said that no illegal aliens will receive coverage under his bill and insists that this is true only because there is no line in the bill that says "illegal aliens may not purchase any form of government insurance."  However, if the Space Amendment gets shot down from HR 3200 (to set requirements on verifying citizenship before issuing insurance) then it stands open to reason that insurance companies/the government will let illegal aliens purchase it. 
Do you get asked when you go to buy car insurance if you are an illegal alien?  Do you get asked for concrete proof of citizenship i.e. passport, photo id, green card?  I don't recall ever being asked anything about my citizenship to purchase car insurance.  If specific language is not put in the bill to barr illegal aliens from access, then they will gain access, just like with our borders.
 
Anyway, every columnist has made this point.  I listened to Barack Obama give his speech and I heard him pull to the center, then veer far left to attack the Republicans, veer to the center again, then veer far left in his "I still want the public option" gambit.  I did hear lies, multiple times and not just on abortion or illegal aliens.  He also lied when he said the majority of the public is in favor of the public option.  The last polls I read said 52% were against a government run health care plan.  The majority want health care reform, but most would really rather the government stayed out of it.  I heard him say how we have all these people dying, that with all the money we spend, we still die sooner than in other countries.  Of course, he forgot to mention that we are more obese than any other country in the world, all of which accounts for heart disease, diabetes and cancer but we are more likely to survive longer of those diseases than any country in the world.  To me, the only difference in people dying with a government option is that a bureacrat will determine my health care is too expensive for me to have instead of my pocketbook.  I'd rather take the chance with my pocketbook.  Bankruptcy sounds great if it means I get to survive cancer! 
 
So, when the representative from South Carolina could no longer stand the lies, when that shout "You lie!" ripped from him, I excitedly jumped to my feet!  It was honest.  It was truthful.  It was a real expression of someone who, I think, gets the vast quantity of people like me that think Obama only talks from the center, that his real spirit and soul rest with the far left radicals that would expand government into death panels, health care for illegals, taxpayer funded abortions and the drive toward a single payer system.  It was like after all these times of me yelling at liberals on television, you're lying!, my voice actually traveled into the television set and invaded a member of Congress.  It was astonishing that just once a member of Congress lost it the way so many of us feel we are losing it watching the news every day from our homes. 
 
I think the SC rep. will pay a steep price for his comment because nobody speaks out against the Obama cult without paying a severe penalty, nobody.  However, I got online and contributed $25 for his re-election campaign and I sure hope a bunch of other people do as well.  We need representatives that speak for the majority, that call out a liar no matter the price, that feel passion at the disintegration of American principle and economics.  You can make a contribution for him at joewilsonforcongress.com.  I know it's rewarding bad behavior but at least he's a guy that spoke for me!  He wasn't our President that pretended to pander to me all the while Pelosi smiling in the background says she is going to get her public option.  Is it so wrong to want health care that the government isn't involved in?  Open up competition across state lines, tort reform, tax benefits for individuals and businesses to supply health care?  Why can't we just try that first before saying we have to throw in the towel and go socialist? 
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Suddenly I'm patriotic.....

Posted by liberalturnedconservative on Monday, September 07, 2009 9:13:41 AM
If there is one thing I am grateful to the current administration for, it is my recently awakened passion for patriotism.  I always looked at the Americana home decor, the flags hanging from balconies and in front of doors and rolled my eyes.  I always thought, yes we all know what the flag means but I just didn't see its purpose being prominently displayed when there were so many other pretty outdoor and indoor decorations one could choose for one's home.  Yes, I know, that is pretty ignorant and stupid on my part.  I was young though, teens and early 20's, coming from a college campus that, as far as I can remember, didn't display the American flag at all or talk about the American flag except right after 9/11. 
 
As our "hope and change" dictator continues to try to steamroll American policy into some distorted communist and fascist nirvana (communism=taking wealth from one class to pay for health care for another.  fascism=taking taxpayer money and using it to bail out irresponsible businesses and thus owning parts of those businesses) I continue to think more about what America means.  I try to remember my youth in terms of the freedoms I always took for granted.  I think about a future for my children where they will be responsible to pay back enormous debt they didn't create.  An America where half or more of what my children earn may be taken from them.  An America where bureacrats decide whether they get treatment for a deadly disease instead of being able to use money derived from their own, best initiatives.  The battle for America is really over whether we remain a country where personal responsibility dictates whether you have the money to afford a certain lifestyle or whether we turn to big government to provide the lowest level of comforts for all.
 
The America that I grew up with being poor was not a reason to perform poorly in school.  I grew up in a white-trash trailer.  My dad worked two jobs for more than 7 years, commuting 3 hours a day to his first job in corrections and still coming back to do janitorial work at night so my sister and I could have decent clothes for school.  My mother pitched in to help my father every Sunday as did we kids when we got old enough.  She was a secretary for an electric company (they didn't get called Administrative Assistants in the old days).  We never had enough money and my parents were always stressed. 
 
I rarely saw my dad for the first 10 years of my life.  But my dad took pride in the work he did and he didn't begrudge the fact that he had to work so hard to provide for us.  He just took it as his duty as a father and as a citizen.  I remember him telling me more times than I can remember that I had to choose a job or a job would choose me.  He took responsibility for making bad choices in his life that forced him into working in prisons with the scum of the earth.  Both my mother and father dropped out of college, my father due to a long struggle with alcoholism he finally conquered when I was born.  They didn't look to the government for free lunches, free health care for us or them, free transportation, free college education, free anything.  They paid taxes, even on their meager incomes.  My father didn't serve in the military but his brothers did and fought in the Vietnam War and the Korean War.  My parents never trusted the government, citing history as the reason.  Absolute power corrupts absolutely.  And they had too much pride to accept a handout.  Where has that pride gone in America?  Why are more and more people so willing to sacrifice freedom, the ability to make something of themselves on their own, for government support?  Have we lost our pride forever?  If we have, I believe we have lost America. 
 
So, kindof a tangent blog.  I just redid my son's room.  We got him a big boy bed.  He has a red, white and blue plaid quilt as his bedset and I'm researching Americana knick knacks and pictures of the flag to hang over it.  I bought an American flag to hang outside my front door.  I get it now.  I get everything my parents did for me and how American my parents really are.  My childhood and the futures of my own children are the reasons I so desperately want this assault on American pride and self-reliance to fail.  I don't want guaranteed success for my children.  I want them to know that it is American to have to work for it.  Failure breeds future success and I don't want them to be scared of it.  I want them to know I will support them joining our military ranks, will encourage the sacrifice of their youthful years if they so choose because doing what's hardest, what's most difficult, is the most beautiful American thing one can do.  My flag will hang proudly and soon, I fear, in defiance of a government intent on tearing it down. 
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Private competition versus public option?

Posted by liberalturnedconservative on Sunday, September 06, 2009 4:55:10 PM
Call me stupid but I just don't get the debate on whether we should have private competition or a public option in health care.  There are several reasons for this.
 
1.  Televisions, pharmaceuticals, furniture, cars, and clothes.  What do these items have in common?  Well, common sense can tell you that we have wide-spread choices in the private market on what we want for any of these items.  The quality (except for clothes where quality often matters less for fashion followers than the current trends) of the items have all come way up over time and the prices have come way down.  The profit motive is the main contributing factor for this.  Just to take televisions for example.  A few savvy companies rolled out black and white rabbit antenna tv's back in the day, made wild amounts of money as tv's are a product everyone wanted from day one.  When their profits got high enough, in a free market, other entrepreneurs enter the game to try to win a slice of the profit pie.  Prices come down as more people compete, quality comes up as each entrepreneur tries to win and keep more of your business.  Companies fail as a handful float to the top for the quality of the product offered.  Prices start to come back up.  When the profit motive is high enough again to entice free market entrepreneurs to want to compete with a better product, the entire cycle happens over again with the product being offered just getting better and better and better. 
 
2.  Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, the USPS, Amtrak.  What do all these have in common?  All are programs that either are currently or will be in the future running deficits.  For business people, that means they aren't bringing in enough money to fund their operations.  When a company doesn't have money to fund its business, it has several choices.  It can 1) raise prices to try to make up the difference in funds from their customers, 2) reduce staff and work to eliminate waste (otherwise known as trimming the fat), or 3) go bankrupt and either eliminate the business altogether or reduce the debt on their balance sheets but also destroy their capital raising capacity within the near future.  In the private market world where reality reigns and not lollypops and rainbows, the business owner knows that number 3 is a wealth killer.  A business owner wants to keep their business to keep their wealth and their potential for more future wealth.  As bankruptcy destroys credit scores and the potential to borrow enough capital for the business to survive, it is a terrible, last resort option.  A business owner equally knows that if the free market does not support charging more for its product or service, they may lose more customers and lose even more money in the future.  If another competitor decides to open up a shop across the street because they see you are overcharging your customers, you will go out of business.  A private business owner knows that option 2 is the only way to continue to grow their business.  Profit must be created to be used to enhance the future interests of the company, whether that be for research and development, starting a new division in another area, rolling out a new product or service, more advertising to increase the scope of customers, etc. 
 
A public option, as far as I can tell, would never work because taking profit out of any business model stifles innovation.  If there is no extra money for all items listed above, business owners/government cannot continue on our current path toward finding the cures for many major life-ending diseases.  The additional profit hospitals make from charging what they do might pay for a new wing for the hospital, more doctors and nurses as needed, trying out new, costlier products/machines that may save them more money over time but that cost more upfront. 
 
I do agree that insurance companies making a huge profit while dropping sick customers is a problem that needs to be remedied, but, as the small owner from Nevada recently shouted at a townhall event, would this not at least partially be resolved by letting 1300 insurance companies compete for her business instead of just 6?  Governments can't run operations efficiently because there is no profit motive.  There is nothing that makes the government trim the fat, reduce staffing, consolidate paperwork, improve quality. 
 
And if governments provide stiff mandates on what doctors make, be prepared for doctors to leave their field of practice.  If you spend 10-12 years educating yourself for one of the most stressful, mentally and emotionally difficult job, you expect to make a good living at it and to be able to make the decisions you need to make to help your patients. 
 
I am all for the government mandating that everyone have health insurance, at the very least catastrophic coverage.  I am all for them saying that insurance companies cannot drop someone who has faithfully paid their premiums, gets sick and then is "too expensive" to continue covering.  Insurance companies should be held to a moral standard of delivering on their promised contracts.  Do I want a government that manages the DMV and the Post Office to manage my health care?  (Last time I went to the Post Office, the woman I spoke to was beyond nasty and the time before that where I went to the DMV, same thing.)  You want insurance companies to deliver more bang for our bucks, force them to compete across state lines. 
 
Create some simple contract standards (key:  NOT 1000 pages of them) so that insurance companies will deliver what they promise. 
 
Maybe we could find a way to help the insurance companies help ourselves.  Maybe we could mandate that all doctors clearly post pricing for all procedures performed and insurance companies could promise to lower premiums by X percent if we chose doctors that would save them money for our procedures.  Then you can allow consumers some power in saving themselves money and still maintain the insurance companies we have all become accustomed to. 
 
Tort reform is a no brainer.  Money given for mistakes needs to be based on real life productivity lost.  No more pain and suffering payouts.  If you make $30,000 a year and a mistake a doctor made cost you 1 month of work, then you should get $2500 and the cost of your attorney fees.  It is still painful for the doctor and a mistake that should be part of a doctor's public record of service but won't cripple the doctor if an honest mistake was made.  If you try to sue a doctor on a bogus claim and you lose, then you pay the doctor's legal fees and court fees.  Imagine how this would lower the cost of private practice for doctors?  There are many alternatives and sound economic principles behind fighting a public option.  I just am bewildered that no one takes the time to simply think through it and explain it so the everyday liberal can understand it. 
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response to mcdonnell article

Posted by liberalturnedconservative on Friday, September 04, 2009 10:34:31 AM

I worked for 6 years in property management of luxury apartments after college.  I was as liberal as they came in college and would, in all my youthful ignorance, have agreed with the Post's assessment before having my own family. 

I tried to work full-time and raise my family up until July of this year, was exhausted and stressed all the time.  My house always seemed to be a mess.  We ate takeout three to four nights a week.  I never made it to the gym so I gained some weight and felt terrible.  We made a lot of money which helped us pay for an aupair instead of putting our children into a daycare setting.  They did love their au pair but I felt like I was missing so much.  Now that I stay home, my house is a lot cleaner, we eat better, I've lost weight by going to the gym and, to be honest, my s*x life with my husband has greatly improved.  (TMI, I know, but hey, all benefits of stay at homes should be examined.)  We do have less money but as most liberals sneer up their noses at capitalism, you would think this would be a plus for them.

Also, I'm sure if you asked McDonnell what he thinks of stay-at-home dads as an alternative to stay-at-home moms, he would probably tell you that's great as well.  The point is that someone is home.  Any study you read will tell you that a home with a parent in it is far less likely to have a troubled teen in it.  All the trouble I got into as a kid pretty much came from coming home to an empty house for two to three hours before my parents got home from work.  If my parents weren't so keenly involved with all of my friends and activities, I would have gotten into far worse with both of them working.  I think my mom would have been a lot happier had she stayed at home but they didn't want to make the financial sacrifices. 

Why can't conservatives and liberals find some middle ground?  This really bothers me.  My sister is a liberal and she and I generally can find a middle ground acceptable for us both.  Why can't we debate issues sensibly, based on societal results of what works, and find the best common ground for our country?

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