Beat Up on the Debt Ceiling

The media really beat on the Tea Party during the debt limit debate. The movement likely suffered a loss of political capital for very little gain.

The Tea Party got beat up because they let the left choose the issue. The debt limit was a crisis because the Pelosi/Reid Congress failed to raise the debt limit to match their spending.

The Pelosi/Reid Congress could have used their super majority to raise taxes or raise the debt limit. Pelosi/Reid chose to put our nation is a terrible spot hoping to gain political points by pushing our finances to the brink.

I hope that the budget fiasco made it clear to leaders of the Tea Party movement that they cannot simply let progressives define the battlefield and expect to win.

To restore American freedoms, the Tea Party needs to choose the issue.

The most powerful issue is Health Freedom.

The Health Freedom debate must start with fundamentals. It cannot start with the assumption that employer based insurance is health freedom.

Employer based health insurance was designed by progressives in decades past as part of the path to socialism. In the Carter administration, I attended lectures during which the professor put forward the notion that the first step to socialism was to convince Americans that group funding was the only way to pay for health care.

The professor instructed young activists to promote employer based health care.

I figured that if supporting group-funding of health care was the first step to socialism; then the first step to the restoration of liberty would be to promote self-funded health care.

While working in the insurance industry, I carefully deconstructed a group insurance pool and created a viable alternative to insurance called "The Medical Savings and Loan."

I developed the Medical Savings and Loan as a business model (not as a political platform).

However, I believe that this business model could play a vital role in the restoration movement.

The fact that the MS&L is important. It actually shows how the free market creates new businesses and new jobs.

BTW, the idea that austerity measures lead to prosperity is paradoxical until one realizes that government is, by nature, in a negative space.

Government, by nature, places constraints on the market. The argument for limiting government is a argument for limiting the constraints.

The argument for limited government is convoluted because it argues for a negative. Conservatives seek to place limits on the ability of the government to limit.

Adding the Medical Savings and Loan into the puzzle creates a mechanism in which one is arguing a positive.

My argument is that we should create the Medical Savings and Loan as an alternative to employer based insurance.

The Medical Savings and Loan, at this point, is simply a logical structure for self funded health care.

If the Tea Party argued for this new logical structure in conjuction with the argument for limited government, then they would have a complete system which shows why constraining government leads to prosperity.

Much as I would like to move on to different topics, I think I will continue to pound the drum for the Medical Savings and Loan through 2012.

Talk Positively About Freedom

The Wealth of the Nation is produced by the people ... not by the government.

Our intellectual and ruling class tend to ignore the people and focus exclusively on the the the government.

The intellectual class has the hubris to assume that whatever economic policies were in place at a time of growth was the cause of the growth, when the cause of growth and decline usually is the result of changes in demographics, technology or the moral character of the people.

A few people in Washington get it. They understand that the Wealth of the Nation is the people and that the best government is that which governs least.

Unfortunately, when all of the talk in political circles is about government programs and government budgets, the sound argument for fiscal conservatism gets lost.

In order to win the day, folks who support limited government need to change the narrative from government programs and budgets to a broader discussion about how the people can live their lives in ways that create wealth.

To win 2012, the Tea Party needs to move beyond simple agitation about excessive government and re-ignite a discussion about personal finances and the role that the individual plays in a free and prosperous country.

My gig is the Medical Savings and Loan. This is a conversation about how individuals can self-finance their health care.

If anyone engaged in this conversation, then the health care debate would change from a debate about what the government can do for the people to one about individuals living positive healthy lives.

There are many other forms that this conversation can take. The Object Tax that I described in one about changes to the tax laws that empower people with their finances.

The Tea Party would win if the Tea Party started talking positively about freedom.

Agitation against Barack Obama will not restore freedom. If the Tea Party fails to engage in a positive discussion about liberty, then the most it can help to accomplish is to engineer a swing of big government back into the hands of the corrupt Republican establishment ... a group committed to crony-capitalism and not the free market.

Booked a Room

I booked a room at the Extended Stay Hotel in Phoenix.

I've been in a funk for the last few days. I learned about the Tucson shooting seconds after publishing my last post about the decision to attend the Tea Party Summit in Phoenix.

After writing the post, I did a Twitter search on "Tea Party Az." Although the police had not released information about the suspect, the real time search stream was filled with people trying to associate the shooting and the tea party.

It's telling that the anarchist shooter had an obsession with mind control. The game where people seek to associate their friends with positive images and enemies with negative ones is the most common form of political mind control. That so many people engaged in the practice was scary.

Anyway, I was excited to go to the Tea Party Summit because I've been hoping to get out of the toxic environment of Salt Lake.

This shooting means that Phoenix itself will be extremely ugly during the summit. Progressive protestors will be more vile than usual, and the MSM will pull every propagandist technique in the book to associate speakers at the meeting with the shooting.

But I am not going to Phoenix to talk to Phoenix. I am going there to see if there is any interest among the Tea Party leaders in the Medical Savings and Loan.

It is my belief that, for the Tea Party to succeed in its goal of restoring health care freedom, it must switch from the activist/agitation model to a discussion of ideas. The Medical Savings and Loan is a structure that allows for the open discussion of ideas related to financing health.

The Tea Party was correct in using the activist/agitation model in its effort to stop the passage of ObamaCare. After all, the progressives used this very model to build their supermajority. Obama was a Community Organizer weaned on Alinsky.

Using the weapons developed by progressives against progressives was an acceptable trick in the effort to stop ObamaCare.

The agitation model of discourse is not an adequate tool for restoring freedom. If the Tea Party continues on the activist path, it will become just another progressive group in the grub for base political power and will stop being a force for restoring liberty.

To restore liberty, the Tea Party must find higher ground.

The Medical Savings and Loan is higher ground. A debate that compared the Medical Savings and Loan to insurance would show that our health care woes are the result of attempts to use a group funding mechanism for individual consumption. Such a debate directly attacks the mandates of Obamacare and can serve as a basis for showing why these health exchanges are such a horrible idea.

The best, if not only, hope the Medical Savings and Loan has is for people in the Tea Party to take interest.

The activist/agitation model was developed by progressives. Progressivism is an extremely ugly and divisive way to undermine real discourse. Progressives developed other techniques such as framing and projection. When the Tea Party uses the activist/agitation model, it allows progressives to project the ugliness of their methodology onto their opponents.

Although it is fun to use the techniques of progressives against progressives, the technique ultimately fails because it allows progressive to project their techniques onto the opposition.

For the Tea Party to prevail, it must find a different path.

I booked a room at an Extended Stay Hotel to give myself time before and after the meeting to develop contacts with the hope that I can find someone in Arizona who wants to move in a positive direction.

From now to the Summit I will be working on ways to pay for the trip and on an outline for a Medical Savings and Loan Conference, as I think that might be the best way to introduce the idea.

My heart goes out to those hurt in the Tucson shooting and pity to those set on using the attacks in their agitation efforts. Anarchists kill to stop discourse.

I hope and pray that the Tea Party kicks its fascination with agitation and becomes an organization dedicated to the ideas of liberty and not simply the partisan grub for political power.

Winning Ideas

Larry Margasak, reporting through the AP Press has it right.

Right now, the tea party has a toe hold in the Republican power structure and Republicans have control of one house of Congress. That is not much of a political base.

Progressives still control the presidency, the senate, the universities, the public schools, the unions, the big banks, Wall Street, the big insurance companies, and the press.

If the tea party is to succeed in its goal of restoring freedom, the next two years must be about ideas and not about policy.

IMHO, the tea party must transition from simple obstructionism to full engagement in the war of ideas. The tea party most go beyond slogans for limited government to a discussion of how and why freedom works.

The tea party must press on issues to show why progressive constructs like the Federal Reserve, government insured mortgage backed securities, CDOs, credit default swaps, employer based insurance, etc., continue to fail.

This game where progressives create failed systems then project the failures on the free market is absurd.

To restore freedom, the Tea Party movement must engage full force in the war of ideas and demonstrate how and why a free market out performs a controlled market.

The tea party must come up with true free market alternatives to the contrivances of the progressives.

Simply winning a few seats during a midterm election is not enough to stop our nations progress on the road to socialism serfdom.

If the tea party fails to engage in a discussion of ideas, the fruit of the 2010 tea party will simply be that the progressives in the Republican Party will grab power from the progressives of the Democratic Party.

That is not much of a gain.

Unlike socialism, freedom cannot won through a partisan victory. It is won by the way people choose to live their lives. To restore the American espriement of a free society, the tea party needs to move beyond simple obstructionism to a broader discussion of the way freedom works.