Benefits for Freedom

(c) Copyright 2015 Despair.com

Today, many people are signing up for lots of government benefits.  And our leaders in Washington, both those on Capitol Hill and in the White House, keep lining up bills to protect us from threats that are both real and imagined, and along with each protection comes a list of things that ordinary Americans can no longer do without breaking the law.

I call this exchange of government benefits for our freedoms, Esau's Bargain.  This is based on an event that is described in The Old Testament.

Esau Selling His Birthright by Matthias Stom, 17th Century

 ... Esau came from the field, and he was faint: And Esau said to Jacob, Feed me, I pray thee, with that same red pottage; for I am faint... 

     And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright. 

     And Esau said, Behold, I am at the point to die: and what profit shall this birthright do to me?    And Jacob said, Swear to me this day; and he sware unto him: and he sold his birthright unto Jacob. 

    Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentiles; and he did eat and drink, and rose up, and went his way: thus Esau despised his birthright.

Genesis 25:29-34

Later on, when Isaac, Esau and Jacob's dad, wanted to give his son's a blessing all this came back on Esau and he got pretty angry about it.  So angry, that Jacob had to leave home for quite a few years before his brother Esau cooled down about it.

So, what Esau despised when he was hungry, he valued later on.  But, then it was too late.  The deal was done, and he could not reclaim his birthright.

Today, we are giving up our birthright as Americans, the freedoms we enjoy under the Constitution, in exchange of a big bowl of government sponsored benefits soup, just like Esau did.  And as each freedom is taken, we are not likely to be able to get it back, just like Esau.

I could point to all the body searches we now go through just to take a flight today, but as intrusive as that is, it won't be going away anytime soon.  Since Esau didn't ask to borrow Jacob's sword, let's look at the bowl of soup instead.

Obamacare - quaintly called The Affordable Care Act is one of the biggest exchanges of benefits for freedom in the history of our country - so far.

A few years ago, if you were young and healthy and didn't feel the need to buy health insurance, that was your choice.  Starting this year, the government will be getting reports from all the insurance companies listing who are their customers.  The IRS will cross-check those lists with tax returns.  If they find a taxpayer who doesn't have health insurance, they will impose a fine on that taxpayer.

Last year, the fine was pretty trivial and it was only levied on those who didn't have insurance and told the government the truth.  This year, the fine gets a lot more severe, and Uncle Obama has a way to see if you are lying.

A few years ago, if you didn't need or want maternity insurance - which was generally only purchased by folks who were planning to have a baby, you didn't have to get it.  Considering the fact that a huge segment of our population today is made up of Baby Boomers, thousands of whom reach retirement age each day, there are a lot of folks who aren't going to have any more babies.  And yet, we all get to pay for Maternity Coverage, because those are the rules imposed on us by our people in Washington.

To be very blunt, the whole case for health insurance is totally messed up.  I would use stronger language, but I try not to use foul language.

The first problem with health insurance is that most people totally misuse it. And, that makes the costs for insurance to shoot through the roof.

Insurance companies are better than the best professional gamblers.  They hire super mathematicians called actuaries to sit around all day and calculate the odds for and against them having to pay a claim for any given condition, disease or event.  If the actuaries do their job right, and they do, the insurance company takes in more money in premiums than they pay out in claims.  A little known fact is that those insurance companies then invest the difference between what they pay out and what they take in and they make money on their money.  That is how they stay in business.

Ordinary people have totally screwed up health insurance, because instead of using it as a safety net against some really big, bad event, they have used it like a Christmas Club.

You may (or may not) remember the Christmas Club your bank or credit union used to offer.  The idea is simple.  In January, you figure out how much you are going to spend at Christmas and then each month you deposit one twelfth of that amount into a special savings account.  Then, when Christmas time comes, you close out your special Christmas Club account and spend your money.

This is what people have unwittingly been doing with their health insurance.

Remember what I told you about what actuaries do?  If the bank were using actuaries to see what money they could make on Christmas Club accounts the actuaries would tell the bank that the odds that the Christmas Club accounts will survive beyond a year are something only slightly higher than zero.  This means that the bank cannot afford to put that money into a loan to some customer unless the loan will be repaid before the Christmas Club account is cashed out.

Let's go back to Maternity Coverage again.

People who buy Maternity Coverage are usually planning to have a baby.  Actuaries know this, so the odds the insurance company will have to pay a claim to someone who takes out the coverage is pretty close to 100%.  It is only reduced by the probabilities (which the actuaries will calculate) that a person cannot have a baby, or dies before they have a baby.

What this means to the insurance company is that they have to charge more in premiums than they believe they will have to pay out in Maternity  Coverage claims.  So, what you get when you buy Maternity Coverage is a Christmas Club, with a surcharge (because the insurance company still has to pay it's people and make some profit, even after they pay out your claim).  With this Christmas Club, you pay in for about a year and at the end of that time, if all goes according to your plan, you get to come home from the hospital with a baby and without a big hospital bill to go along with it.

Of course, instead of paying the surcharge to the insurance company, you could have found out what it would cost for the doctor and hospital for a delivery, divided that figure up by at least 9 months, and then opened a savings account where you deposited that money each month.

Then, in about a year, you could come home from the hospital with a new baby and no big hospital bill, because you had the money to pay in cash (and it is less than what the insurance company would have been forced to charge you).

But, what if something goes terribly wrong?  THAT IS WHAT INSURANCE IS FOR!

At the same time that you are putting aside money each month, you should also be buying a Major Medical insurance policy.  These policies will pay your medical bills if something unexpected happens.

Those crafty actuaries calculate the odds that something will go wrong, and tell the insurance company how much they need to get to hedge their bets.  And they are betting that nothing major will go wrong - and most of the time they are right.  Because they are right most of the time, the insurance company makes money and can keep offering major medical insurance policies.

I could show you how this same thing applies to dental insurance and vision plans as it does to Maternity Coverage.  But, the chances are if you haven't gotten my point by now, you won't.

And here is point #1 - the whole scare about the spiraling costs of health insurance is a manufactured crisis that has its origins in people being ignorant about how they use their health insurance.  Yet, this was one of the main drivers the folks in power used to convince folks that forced insurance (socialized medicine) was a good idea.  Never mind the fact that it pretty much stinks everywhere it has been implemented.  Its only fans tend to be the politicians who put it in place and the bureaucrats who make their livings running it.  Even the doctors and nurses hate it.

Point #2 - those in power want more power.  Some of them want it because they think they are so much smarter than everyone else that they have an obligation to protect us from our own foolish actions.  They take away our freedom of choice for our own good.  Unfortunately, that has several really bad consequences.

A) People who are temporarily saved from the consequences of their own actions begin to believe that there are no consequences for bad choices, and so they make more bad choices.

B) People who get power by helping others avoid the consequences of their actions get reinforcement that they are doing something good when they look at all the bad consequences they have helped people avoid.

C) Bad consequences are eventually going to happen, no matter what.  And the natural law called the Conservation of Energy says that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction - this ensures that when the bad consequences finally do happen, they will be really big, because they will contain the built up energy from all the consequences from bad choices that were temporarily avoided by some government program.  And when that stuff finally hits the fan the people who have been trained to make poor choices are going to blame the people in power for the pain they are feeling for the consequences of their actions and they are going to be very hurt, very angry, and a whole lot of people.

And when "C" finally happens, there will very likely literally be blood in the streets, only it will be on a scale that will make the riots in LA and Ferguson look like a Sunday picnic.

It is because I want to avoid that really bad pile of consequences that I am urging people now to make good choices and choose to defend our constitutional rights in every way we can and on every front.  Don't surrender your freedom for a bowl of government benefits soup.

By the way, if you think I am making all this insurance crap up, I'm not.  I have spent many years working in the insurance business.  Or, if you don't believe me, call up your insurance agent and ask him if I am giving you the straight scoop.  If he's honest, s/he will tell you what I just did.

Tom Sheppard is a business consultant and coach to small business owners and individuals. He is a recognized author with dozens of titles in business and fiction to his credit. One of his endeavors is to help those who want to see their own book in print. He does this through his trademarked Book Whispering Process (TM). The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein. 

The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein.

Visit Tom's Amazon.com Author's Page

(c) Copyright 2015 A+ Results LLC. All Rights Reserved. 

 Your comments are welcome... Please observe some ground rules. No profanity, vulgarity, or personal attacks. Profanity, vulgarity and personal attacks not only betray a lack of vocabulary and imagination, they also are the hallmarks of bigotry, and bigotry is the hallmark of someone who is fundamentally insecure in their views. Facts are always welcome.

Lafayette Theater Shooting and 4 Dead Marines in Chattanooga - Fear and Anger, An Obama Master Stroke?

At breakfast, my wife and I were talking about the recent killing of four Marines and one Sailor in Chatannooga Tennessee and the shooting last night in a theater in Lafayette, Louisiana.  She mentioned that with Obama's directives that our military aren't allowed to carry firearms on base, that he was making our military into soft targets for terrorists.  She speculated that he is trying to arrange things to create a culture of fear and anger.

That got us talking and thinking.  What is to be gained by inciting the average American to fear and anger?

The fear part seems clear to me.  

Obama's former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel is credited with giving voice to the horrifyingly crass idea that politicians should, "never let a serious crisis go to waste."  This remark is so notorious that it has now been labeled "Rahms Rule."  And it means that

"Major crises can provide cover for distributing benefits to targeted special interest groups. The greater the magnitude of a given crisis and the shorter the interval for forming legislation to deal with it, the larger the spread of pork that can be packed into the final legislation." 

It is a very short step from using crises for political gain to creating crises in order to leverage them for political gain.  Of course, creating crises means that the one taking advantage of the crises must appear blameless in causing the crises.  Which is one of the reasons why plausible deniability is so important to politicians.

Getting the American people whipped up into a state of fear makes them more willing to accept tighter limits on their freedoms "to keep them safe."  Don't believe me?

Consider the fact that when you want to fly these days, you willingly submit to x-ray scans and body searches that are more universal and intrusive than the targeted "stop and frisk" program that caused such outrage over invasions of privacy and public humiliation in New York City.

Glen Beck wrote a novel that explained this principle of using crisis to change our view of what is acceptable in fairly large increments.  His book, The Overton Window, was a fun read, but I am afraid too many readers may have enjoyed the story so much that they missed the prime point he was making.  I hope I am wrong on that last point.

The anti-Second Amendment crowd has relentlessly used crises such as the Sandy Hook school shooting, the SC Church shooting and now the Lafayette Theater shooting as rallying cries for greater restrictions on gun ownership.  They certainly won't let any crisis go to waste in their unrelenting campaign to transform us from citizens into subjects by disarming us first piecemeal and then wholesale.

The angry part is less clear to me, and much more dangerous to all concerned.  

I guess the most logical way to use an angry American people is to get them to take the streets in violent protests.  Such widespread violence, regardless of its direct cause, would provide an excuse to implement martial law and immediately suspend nearly all civil rights.  Then, we could, almost in an instant be transformed from a Representative Republic into a dictatorship.  After all, with widespread unrest, we couldn't be expected to be able to hold elections, right?  So, we would have to continue with the crowd we have until things are settled enough (by the standards of those in power) to hold elections again.

And what would have to occur before things are "settled" enough?  Likely that would entail the suppression and elimination of those elements in society deemed as destabilizing.  In other words, all those opposed to the current power elite.

Under this state of fear and anger, troops would be authorized and used to actively attack groups and individuals all over the country until everyone finally got the message that you better toe the party line, or risk being named an enemy of the state and either killed or imprisoned.

By the time the majority of the people realized they had been hoodwinked, it would be too late to do anything about it unless they were willing to see lots of people die to change things.  All your guns would, at the least be registered, and the worst they would already be confiscated.  And peaceful and passive forms of resistance and opposition would be handled with the same level of ferocity and violence accorded those "subversive" actors who the military had been called in to put down.

It is instructive to note that "the shot heard 'round the world" at Concord and Lexington was fired when the "federal" government of England moved to confiscate the guns and ammunition of the civilly authorized militia.  The English Generals and Governors recognized that if their subjects retained their arms and ammunition, they could not be easily forced into compliance with laws dictated by a monarch and his parliament that were increasingly arbitrary and hostile to the best interests of the people.

I mentioned that the anger part is much more dangerous to all concerned.  

What I am thinking of here is that while the people are angry, individuals and groups often do things that, in a more rational moment they would never consider.  As was seen in the "Rodney King Riots" in LA and the more recent riots is Ferguson Missouri and the Baltimore Riots of 2015, a rampaging mob of people protesting violence against blacks is as likely to destroy black-owned businesses as they are to destroy those of whites or asians.  The looters really don't care who owns what they are stealing.  They just want to take things without paying for them, and then sell them for a 100% profit.

Mobocracy is both violent and mindless.  Its creators aim it in the direction they want it to go, and then they work the edges to either take advantage of targets of opportunity, or to push the mob closer toward the ultimate target.  Just to be clear here, when I speak of the creators of mobocracy, I am not usually referring to the people who actually started a rally or a march.  Those folks are often innocent pawns of those who use the rally or march to start violence.

Blacks in this country historically should be most opposed to mobocracy.  Mobocracy is what the KKK relies upon to achieve its ends.  After all, two of the appealing aspects of being in a mob is strength in numbers and the anonymity of the crowd.  Covering your face with a mask and then roaming the streets with a bunch of similarly masked people is the essence of public Klan action.  It also marks the activities of many Anarchists.  And, it is what was used to faciliate the lynching of countless blacks in the South right up through the Civil Rights era.

The issue here, for ordinary Americans, is to not allow the anger and fear of the moment, or even of the moments, to be used to drive you into supporting action that will ultimately turn you and the rising generation from citizens into subjects.

The Crisis Users like Rahm Emmanuel and his former boss, Barak Obama, and their allies jump on a crisis with both feet.  They make public statements that are filled to the brim with emotion.  They decry the tragedy and call for laws that will prevent such tragedies in the future.  And the laws are never aimed at the root causes of the problem, rather, they are aimed at the leaves of the bush of evil and are calculated to reduce the freedoms of law-abiding citizens rather than actually punishing the wrong-doer.

What do I mean by leaves and roots?  Renowned US author Henry David Thoreau is credited with saying that, "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root."  When politicians call for stricter gun laws in the wake of a shooting, they are functionally blaming the car for the deaths caused by a drunken driver.

Why would they make such a silly and egregious error as to blame a car for the actions of a drunk driver?  Why would they blame guns for the actions of a deranged person?  Clearly, there are only two reasons any reasonably intelligent person would blame an inanimate object for the actions of a person.  Either 1) they believe that Stephen R King's horror story "Christine" about a car with a mind of its own was a true story rather than a novel and these inanimate objects are actually animated by some ancient spirit and we are about to be overrun by Killdozer. Or 2) they have a hidden agenda which involves restricting the access of law-abiding people to inanimate objects which they are lawfully entitled to have and use.

Why do I say they have a hidden agenda?  Quite simply because they are not being open and honest about their motives.  If they were, they would say things like, "there is no reason any person outside of the military or law enforcement need guns, so I want to take them away from everyone who is not using them for military or law enforcement as part of their job."

You won't find many (if any) politicians who will be this open about their objective, because they know that Obama was right when he said that Americans cling to their religion and their guns.  Although he was totally wrong when he ascribed that behavior solely to folks who are bitter, unemployed, or racist.  Americans cling to their religion because it has a proven track-record of keeping this country from becoming as self-serving as the nations of Europe.  And they cling to their guns because they know that responsibility for feeding the family and protecting the family ultimately rest with the family, not with the police or any other arm of the government.

So, now that another lunatic crashed a car into a store trying to kill people, don't let the politicians and mainstream media brainwash you into accepting the hare-brained notion that banning cars will keep lunatics from killing.  Oh, excuse me, rewrite the above and replace "crashed a car" with "used a gun" and replace "banning cars" with "banning guns."  Other than that, the arguments are the same.

Don't let fear and anger take over.  Instead, call, email, fax or write your elected officials in Washington, citing the news stories, and tell them to stand firm in defending the rights of law-abiding citizens to defend themselves against gun wielding lunatics by doing away with legalized "soft targets" in the US.

After all, what crazy killer is going to go into a theater to shoot people, if he knows that half the folks there are carrying concealed and for every one round he sends downrange, he will see four or five coming right back at him?

Tom Sheppard is a business consultant and coach to small business owners and individuals. He is a recognized author with dozens of titles in business and fiction to his credit. One of his endeavors is to help those who want to see their own book in print. He does this through his trademarked Book Whispering Process (TM). The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein. 

The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein.

Visit Tom's Amazon.com Author's Page

(c) Copyright 2015 A+ Results LLC. All Rights Reserved. 

 Your comments are welcome... Please observe some ground rules. No profanity, vulgarity, or personal attacks. Profanity, vulgarity and personal attacks not only betray a lack of vocabulary and imagination, they also are the hallmarks of bigotry, and bigotry is the hallmark of someone who is fundamentally insecure in their views. Facts are always welcome.