Environmentalism - the Art of Compulsory Conservation

The world is a dirty, disgusting place. I become increasingly aware of that daily. My childish naivete yields to an increasing realization that it is more and more difficult to find any honor, any integrity, any transparency. I have become more suspicious and cynical. I feel that I've had to. You can't trust anything. And so, when I read this story from the Wall Street Journal about Richard Sandor, the so-called "Father of Carbon Credits", I felt that my suspicions about the Enviro-Banshees were at least partially confirmed.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120535230851631199.html?mod=%2528_pageid_%2529_topbox

Let me explain how it works, for those of you who (like me) didn't really quite get how this shell game operates. With the government's assistance, or better yet at the insistence of foreign powers (See Kyoto Treaty), arbitrary caps are set on how much carbon (in the form of CO2, especially) can be emitted by a particular company. If they fail to meet those standards, then they must buy additional carbon credits to avoid penalty - ultimately from Dr. Sandor and his cronies at the Chicago Climate Exchange. If a company does well and emits less than the standard, then they have some "carbon credits" which they can sell to a needy company to bring them into compliance. Either way, the Chicago Climate Exchange makes lots of money - either through the creation and subsequent direct sale of this new arbitrary and previously worthless currency, or through fees on the carbon trades between companies. It gets better. The caps get progressively lowered so that fewer and fewer companies are able to win, requiring them to go groveling with greater frequency to the economists, politicians, and academics at the Exchange, kissing the ring and begging enviro-indulgences. And it doesn't end in Chicago - the same bunch of mega-rich All Stars have identical trading centers across the world. Quite a racket, eh? They appear to be off to a champion start. The Exchange was opened in 2003. Dr. Richard Sandor made an estimated $260 million last year alone.

Biography of Dr. Richard Sandor:

http://www.milkeninstitute.org/about/about.taf?function=detail&Level1=ProStaff&Level2=Bio&ID=37&cat=Staff

Dr. Sandor is a recent convert to the worship of Mother Gaia, but appears to have always gravitated toward green of a different sort, at least generally. He was one of the original proponents of applying the futures market concept to interest rates. He was also instrumental in a past environmental "cap and trade" futures trading scheme similar to today's carbon trading, but during the last much over-heralded Apocalypse of the Universe, the Acid Rain scare of the 1980s.

Now I am not claiming to have any sort of special knowledge about the environment. I will tell you that as someone who is trained to read and interpret scientific studies as part of my job, I believe that there appear to be some serious flaws in the methods, results, and conclusions of those studies. The thing that bothers me about the scenario I describe above, however, is that it simply looks bad. Allow me to explain.

If a doctor accepts a pen or a dinner from a pharmaceutical representative, he is increasingly accused of being in the tank, or at least of questionable, if not unethical conduct. This is because people are very suspicious of doctors and drug companies right now. Part of that is medicine's fault for not being more critical and discerning when dealing with our partners in healthcare, the pharmaceutical companies. Part of it is the fault of over-zealous attorneys who exaggerate the problem in order to personally profit. And part of it is simply misinformation and ignorance on the part of those who make the accusations. What is the end result? I have to consider carefully how what I do with respect to pharmaceutical reps will look to the public.

I believe that there are those well-meaning souls who truly believe with every fiber of their being that our planet is perched on the edge of ruin because of man-made pollution. I respect that. I disagree, but I don't condemn them for their beliefs. But in the same way a physician has to be wary of the image he presents to the public, the growing and strengthening environmental movement should use extreme caution before making bedfellows of the kinds of people I now find are at the heart of the movement to mandate cap and trade for all industries. They, along with the ultimate self-servers, Albert Gore, Inc., are causing the environmental "Movement" to appear less of a cause and more of a cash cow for a few wealthy industrialists and Technocrats.

It is clear to me that until assurances can be made that we are not all simply being duped by Sandor's pals into funding their (and their great grandchildrens') retirements in the name of Environmental Protection, it is my duty as a responsible American and taxpayer to be resistant to the idea of making these carbon limits mandatory.

Independence Day Self-Examination

First, I would like to wish everyone who reads my blog a very happy Independence Day. The fact that I can sit here writing my unvarnished opinion on all these matters is truly a miracle, especially when you consider the series of events that had to occur in order for this to come to be.

Consider, for a moment, what was involved in that statement, the Declaration of Independence. In fact, you don't have to look much further than the title of the document itself. What does it mean to "Declare one's Independence"? One part of it is easy - we Americans have mastered it. It means, in part, to declare that you will no longer answer to authority. The first Americans stated plainly that they would rather suffer grievous loss - even die - rather than to continue to pay homage to a distant, foreign, and almost tyrannical ruler. Amazing. This collection of farmers and merchants (actually only about one third of the total population actually supported the Revolution) declared for the first time since Spartacus that they would no longer bow to the authority of their masters. No doubt many of them assumed that they would soon share Spartacus' fate.


But there is another, often overlooked element to a declaration of one's independence. Independence does not make one free from obligation, responsibility, duty, or toil. A person who is independent is simply not dependent on another. Somehow, over time, we've forgotten this critical element of our Liberty. We are great at refusing to pay homage - we are less great at actually being self-sufficient - independent if you will.


In fact, as a people, we are more dependent than ever. We depend on others for our food, for our fuel, for our security, for our retirement needs, for our health care, and even, in some cases, for our shelter. Our most basic human needs are being assumed by the Collective. I wonder, with shame, if the men who so bravely signed a defiant letter to the most powerful king on the planet at the time could have possibly foreseen a nation so socialistic, so weak, so...well...dependent. Would they be proud of us? Would they be proud of me? Would they be proud of you? Would they even recognize us? Or would they repudiate us in disgust for our failure to keep the Revolution alive?


The Revolution continues. In truth it never really ended. Even when the seeds of our Republic were sown, there were already those who felt that without a strong central government, the sheep could not survive. But that is not what I believe. I believe that there will always be a nucleus - often quiet, as now - who believe that it is the individual's responsibility and right to be truly free and responsible. I literally hope and pray that those people will rise up and reclaim what is rightfully ours - our precious, dearly-bought, God-given Liberty.


I invite each of you to examine yourselves, as I am doing this Independence Day. I beg you to measure yourselves against the bravery, selflessness, and long-sightedness of those original Patriots who first articulated our precious beliefs. And try to make our Fathers proud of you. I pray that you all have a safe, happy, and blessed day. May God Almighty bless our dear Republic, and may we continue the Revolutionary Struggle against tyranny in all its forms. Amen.

The Hyper-sensitive Beefcake - and Other Children's Moral Tales

I've never really liked Governor Jesse Ventura. Which is odd, because there are several things about him - at least the Cliff's notes version of him - that I should have liked. We are both veterans - he is a former Navy SEAL and I am a former Marine. We are both small-government guys. We both like underdog political candidates because we think they are, in theory, good for the system. Then I heard him on Fox News this morning on the way to work, and it all became a little more clear for me.

"Fox and Friends" is sort of a goofy show. I know that. And the blogosphere is all lit up with complaints about them. But that is just their shtick - they are silly. I can appreciate that. If Iran shot all their nukes at us, I probably wouldn't turn to Steve, Gretchen, and Brian for their reportage. But if I'm looking for something kind of light in the morning on the way to work, and still want to know the headlines, they are a good choice for me. So it is in that context that I heard the wrestler this morning.

I had always assumed that Minnesotans voted for Jesse out of a sense of their own masculine inadequacy - sort of a Stockholm syndrome thing. But it turns out from listening to him this morning that he was actually a good choice, because he may be the biggest liberal, conspiracy-theorist clown in the whole state. I was stunned to hear him suggesting 9-11-01 as an "inside job" wouldn't surprise him, and using his past as an Underwater Demolition Team (UDT) member as some sort of credential for this conclusion. His statement was that his government had lied to him so many times in the past that they'd lost all credibility.

The thing that really gave me a clue into his personality, however, was what he did next. I preface this with a little story. In the Marines, we were all brothers of a sort. And although we were supposed to refer to each other as Rank and Name (example: PFC Smith), in privacy, we would "break the rules" and call each other by our nick names. There were those, however, like a certain Sergeant I remember, who were so empty inside and so dependent on their rank for their self-worth that they required everybody to call them by their rank and name.

He (Jesse) stopped the interview to ask them, in his characteristic "'-roid voice",

"Do you call all former Governors by their first name, or is it just me?"

Are you kidding me??? Ummmm. Aren't you that jack-ass that used to dress up in a fur stole and tights and prance around before your wrestling matches? I'm sure that he would play it off as a joke, but I heard something a little too familiar in that. You might be able to fool a lot of people, JESSE, but you can't fool a fellow Vet. At least not all of us. I know where you were coming from. You are just a scared little boy in that beefy, steroid-laced body. Take away your little titles and you fall apart, don't you?

The morals of this story are (1) that you can't trust your government, no matter what, (2) that former SEALs are experts on how 100-story skyscrapers are supposed to fall, on architecture, on physics, on aerodynamics, on meteorology, and on rules of etiquette, (3) don't ever criticize a main-streamer. Not so much a free-thinker as much as just one more authoritarian schoolmarm who knows what others are supposed to do because he is a know-it-all.

Fun With Drug Testing, Volume 2

The call was routine. At least it should have been. You know the old saying about how "no good deed goes unpunished"? It's true. It wasn't even my case. My comrade at our other clinic was out of town, so his drug test reviews fell to me. Just my luck. The donor had popped positive for methadone. At this point I should make a confession about something. I know less than I probably should about methadone. For example, having never prescribed it myself, I know less than some about its effects on the patient. I have to assume that it has some effect. Otherwise there would seem to be little reason for prescribing it. There are two main reasons for taking methadone - that much I do know - (1) chronic pain that is poorly-treated with more traditional narcotics, and (2) management of opiate addiction. There are those who believe that methadone is as close to a harmless medication as exists. I have found that these people are generally the doctors who prescribe it and the patients who take it. On the other hand, the Department of Transportation forbids its use in drivers. Somewhere in the middle is the probable truth. If the reaction of the drug testing donors is any indication, however, then it probably needs to be better regulated. They display many of the same denial characteristics as those who take the drugs commonly abused. This brings me to my story. The donor was very cordial. I went through my routine with him; he acknowledged the use of methadone. He gave me the prescription number and the name and phone number of the pharmacy where it was filled. I thanked him and hung up. Only one little red flag went up - he had a loudmouth wife in the background. She kept interrupting him and I could tell that she was disappointed with the fact that he wasn't giving me the earful that she wanted to. I called the pharmacy to verify the prescription, and it got interesting. The prescription was six months old. Methadone should not be prescribed for "as needed" use. Whether for pain management or opiate addiction, it should be taken constantly to provide a baseline level. I called him back and asked him about this. It was really a moot point anyway. His job called for him to perform safety-sensitive duties - driving a forklift, working 50 feet or more above ground, etc. His company would not have hired him even if he was taking it appropriately. He tried to explain that he hadn't needed it for a long time, then he began having some acute knee pain so he took a couple. This may have been true - he may have been that boneheaded. Or it may have been a lie. He may have been taking illicit methadone for months. Either way it was not good. I reported the result as "negative" but recommended against his working in safety-sensitive duties. About 30 minutes later, he called me back. Actually his wife called me back. And she was not happy. I was not able to tell her that I couldn't discuss his test results with her because she wouldn't shut up telling me what a sorry S.O.B. I was. Eventually he got back on the phone. She had apparently done a superb job of spurring him into action. He was very believable as a creep. "I've gotta work. You are gonna cause me not to get this job. I'd looove to be sitting up there where you are, bein' the doctor, tellin' people whether they can work or not. But I'm just a construction worker, tryin' to make a livin'..." I imagined him - eight feet tall, massive, but with chronic, crippling back pain and tobacco-stained lips and hands. All the while, I could barely hear the harpie in the background. "You tell him it's your medicine, and you can take it any way you damn well want!" "You tell him he just cost you a job!" "You find out where he is!" Eventually, even I'd had enough. "I'm not going to listen to any more of this. I didn't make your back hurt. I didn't make your knees hurt. I didn't make you take methadone. I didn't tell you to take it wrong. In fact, I didn't even call you positive, although maybe I should have. I just said it wasn't safe for you to do dangerous things while taking methadone. So I think we're done talking now." And that was that. I'm sure that in his mind, I do have a pretty great job. If he only knew what it feels like to be in constant fear and real jeopardy of some dead-end loser taking everything my family has for something like that. I have to content myself with knowing that I may have saved his co-workers from injury due to his inattention while taking massive doses of narcotics. They will never know. All they'll think about is what a jerk the "company doctor" is the next time they lie to me and I call them on it. God, I wish I could escape this sometimes. I'd just take back the $250,000, turn in the license so dearly purchased, and stop being everybody's favorite target.

Health Care: Rights and Responsibilities - Part II

Here is a quick recap of yesterday...

The belief held by many that health care is a right is plagued by some inherent difficulties. Among these are the following:

(1) Health care is difficult to adequately define and as such is difficult to promise to anyone.

(2) Freedom from illness has not traditionally been considered a "right", as health is impossible to guarantee, even under ideal circumstances.

(4) Universal health care, like the partially-socialized plan of today, would suffer from serious inequities in the real world, with a small group paying most of the bill and a different minority reaping most of the benefit.

(5) In order to guarantee this benefit, the government would have to crush the objections of the practitioners - through force if necessary.



It is primarily for these reasons that I do not believe health care is a basic human right. Instead, I believe that it is up to each of us individually. Admittedly, my way is not perfect, and I will discuss these weaknesses of my position today.



If health care is not guaranteed, then what are we to do with the uninsured?

I admit that there is no perfect answer to this question. Almost immediately, though, I am reminded that ours is not a perfect world. Historically, though, these less fortunate citizens were cared for by private citizens and their organizations. I believe strongly that they do a better job of dealing with specific issues than the government does. The government requires, by its nature, a large beauracracy for even the smallest task. This causes the work of the government to be particularly wasteful. A church or civic organization, on the other hand, requires almost no additional manpower, is quick to act, and by acting, strengthens its community in ways the government can not hope to.

What about the children?

Children, due to their vulnerability and their inability to completely care for themselves, must be cared for by others when things go wrong. Continuing to care for all children without other resources under the age of 18, even expanding coverage for them, seems to be the right thing to do. I am a capitalist, but I am not heartless.

By requiring all able-bodied adults to care for themselves, it allows them the opportunity to make conscious decisions about their health, not just their health care. Worrying about one's health and taking proper steps to ensure it should never be the responsibility of some third party. Why would it be? This mindset betrays the worst sort of authoritarian parentalism in our government. If I were a cynic, I might think that the people who want to create this sort of dependency for even the most personal of matters are only trying to create a large segment of the population who will continue to vote for the person or the party who will continue that life-support. If I were a cynic.

The notion that the medically indigent are somehow unwitting victims of circumstance is held only by some of those who have never actually worked with this population. The generations of dependency have caused them to be completely irresponsible, in many cases, making poor lifestyle choices and further increasing their need for health care. It is a vicious cycle. They choose cigarrettes instead of medicine, then complain about the limits on the numbers of medicines they are allowed under the Program. This is ridiculous. I am exhausted, both as a hard-working taxpayer and as a physician. It is high time for us to begin the process of withdrawing benefits - not just for financial reasons, but because it is cruel to continue to convince people that the government can do a better job taking care of them than they themselves can.

Health Care: Rights and Responsibilities, Part I

At the heart of the current debate about health care is a fundamental, although oft-overlooked central question. Each person must answer this question carefully, because there are ramifications involved in the choice, many of which are unpleasant. The question simply put, is this:

"Is health care a right?"

In order to fully contemplate this question and formulate an individual answer, we must first examine it, dissect it, and try to truly understand what it is, exactly, that we are asserting with our answer. There are two main terms in this question, namely "health care" and "right", and we will examine them in turn.

Health care is a bit of a loaded term. It is subject to variation in definition depending on the age, race, geographical origin, language, and even life experience of its user. With such a wide range of interpretations, it is daunting to attempt to assign a value to this commodity which has been increasingly regarded as something to which all should have equal and unquestioned access. And it is this exact obscurity that fuels the continued debate about what that free access would mean, both to the recipient and to the person or people who are made responsible for the provision of that service.

There is an inherent "slippery slope" element to the definition of universal health care. Even nations with the longest history of mandating this service continue to grapple with the issue of what, exactly, constitutes the "health care" to which they assert their citizens have a "right". For example, most universal health care proponents would argue that routine obstetric care should be provided. What is less clear is whether there is an equal right to elective pregnancy termination. Similarly, although one of the commonly claimed benefits to society stemming from the provision of universal health care is the reduction in cost to society that is gained by providing previously inaccessible preventive care to the people, thereby reducing expensive management of chronic diseases. But what is society willing to do to those who knowingly reject this preventive care and opt instead through action or inaction to get what would have been a preventable disease? Will that person be removed from the rolls of the covered? That seems incredibly unlikely.

Boiled down, the basic principle behind the desire for universal health care by those who support it for the right reasons, is a genuine altruistic desire to create equity in a system that is used by so many. The unfortunate reality is that providing any need-based service is inherently inequitable. Those that use more of the services are always going to gain more, and pay less. Those that benefit the system most, by working hard, doing well for themselves, paying a much higher tax-rate, making good decisions, and taking care of themselves, will pay more and benefit less. Even among the utilizers of the system there is inequity. One need look no further than the current Medicaid system to see that there are those that overuse, even abuse the system to the detriment of both the system and to those who are more responsible users. Partial solutions to these problems have already been tried to very limited success. In Alabama, for example, in a failed attempt to save the cash-strapped system, a system of limits on numbers of visits and types and amounts of medications were put in place. This had several consequences, none of which had the desired effect. First, there were those for whom the restrictions on the numbers of medications had dire effects. It is not at all uncommon, as any family doctor or internist will tell you, for a patient to require many medications to regulate their numerous chronic health problems. The poor medical control of chronic health conditions that resulted, contributed to by the limit on the number of covered visits, caused the system to fail to do its most basic jobs - provide adequate care and reduce the cost to society from untreated patients. It is a devil's game - pay until there is no more money and nobody gets care or reduce what you will pay for and only a few get care in a system that could accurately be described as unfair.

To be sure, there are also those who support universal health care for wrong reasons. There are those who would love to be the gatekeepers between the citizens and something they need as desperately as they need health care. Only the power to regulate food and the ability to regulate energy would be greater powers, and there are some who are suggesting that too.

But what of this notion of health care as a right? What exactly constitutes a right? Who gives these rights? Should health care be considered a right?

A person, we would all agree, has a right to walk, unmolested, down a street. His right is protected by the Law, but there is no guarantee that he will, in fact, be able to make it down the street. If another person hits him with a rock, then that person has violated his rights. He is breaking the Law, along with the first man's skull. The Law may punish the second man for violating the first man's rights, but the Law can do nothing to unhit the first man, or to make it never have happened. That one is easy, but is also silly. It does demonstrate an important point, however. Whether you believe that we derive our rights from a Creator, as the founders did, or from some Universal Source otherwise undefined, or from our historical, evolutionary ability to live together in groups, the bottom line is the same. There are rights, but there are no guarantees. I have what I believe is a God-given right to live unmolested by others, work for my livelihood, start a family, raise my children, and enjoy the fruits of my labors. I have absolutely no guarantee, however, that those things will definitely happen. God, or the Universe, or evolution, or bad decisions, or plain old bad luck may prevent me or not allow me to have those things I listed. I may not be attractive to the women I like, and may stay single. Surely the need to procreate and continue our species is in the same category of importance as the need to be healthy. Strangely, however, the government has not yet promised Universal Relationships in the same way they've promised Universal Healthcare. Is not procreation a right? What about couples that remain childless, despite their best efforts? This is a devastating situation. Don't they have a right to produce children? Perhaps their fertility treatments should be fully funded as well? If not, then why not?

My point is simply this. We have a right to "pursue happiness", not a right of guaranteed happiness. Similarly, we all hope and pray that we have good health. But this good health is not a guarantee. It is a blessing, or a stroke of good luck, or good karma, or whatever you believe. It is no more government's to give than it should be theirs to take away.

What of the people who provide this health care if it is a right? If access to health care is to be guaranteed, how is it to be guaranteed? What if the health care providers refuse to work under the new circumstances? It is already clear how the government responds to the physicians that provide their services to the currently governmentally-insured. Medicare reimbursements continue to drop at the same time that costs are going up. Many physicians are opting out of Medicare for this reason. So what if the same happens on a larger scale under the Socialized System? It seems to me that if that guarantee is to be made, there are only two options for the guarantor.

They can agree to pay more under duress, in which case they are at the mercy of the health care providers. This exact problem in other countries has caused many of the governments with Universal Health care plans to literally outlaw the practice of medicine outside the government system. This is horrifying to me. Just think about what this means. The people who have made a conscious decision to seek health care they pay for themselves are prevented from doing so by the government. In this sense, the government, rather than being the vehicle by which the people are able to exercise their rights in safety, becomes a literal obstacle to the free exercise of the right to buy something you want to buy. And all because they want to be, they must be the only provider of the health care "right" if the Socialized System is to succeed.

The other option for a government faced with physician resistance is to force compliance. Once health care is promised, it must be delivered. If physicians are not willing to work for little or nothing, then perhaps they must be forced to. Compulsory service was outlawed in this country centuries ago. I pray that we are not heading down that road. Many would love to see a world in which the people who are perceived to be "rich" are brought low - made to suffer. But think about that for a moment. How many generations of gifted doctors do you think it would take for those with gifts in the medical field to choose not to enter a field in which there was a real possibility that they might be disenfranchised, or even forced to work for no profit? Those people would choose other, less dangerous work. I really can't imagine what sort of person would be attracted to a job where there was no chance of making a living. But somehow we expect this of these "physicians of the future".

For my own part, I feel that health care, like health itself, is not a right, but is instead a blessing, and one's own responsibility. I say this, fully realizing that this, too, carries with it some problems.

Fun with Drug Testing, Volume One

You know, I've been a Medical Review Officer for a little while now, and from time-to-time I begin to think that it is fairly routine. Then someone pulls a new one on me. This happened yesterday.

I wrote a couple of days ago about the cocaine-user personality type. They are usually the most violent in their protests, and therefore are usually the most fun. Marijuana users, however, are normally quite complacent and resigned, zen-like, to their fate. Now I don't claim to know which is the chicken and which is the egg in this scenario. Are laid-back, complacent people attracted, naturally, to cannabis? Are intense, aggressive personalities are already primed by nature for cocaine use? Or is it the substances themselves that impart these personality traits? As an aside, I find this fascinating. Occasionally, however, I run across someone who seems to have chosen (or been chosen by) the wrong drug.

The call is made. The donor answers. I explain the purpose of my call. I verify her identity. I note that she doesn't seem all that surprised to hear from me - never a good sign. I inform her that her drug test is positive for THC (marijuana). Then all Hell breaks loose.

She moans loudly, as if in anguish. It's almost more of a screech, really. She begins to protest.

"But I'm not a user! I don't use marijuana! That's impossible!"

"Ma'am, it is not my place or my desire to accuse you of anything. I am simply notifying you that, for whatever reason, there is marijuana residue in your urine."

"But I don't use marijuana!!!" Now it gets interesting.

She muffles the phone just enough to make it obvious that she is telling someone what is going on.

"The doctor says my drug test is positive for marijuana!"

"What? But you don't even use marijuana!"

The unexpected appearance of this new player in our little game catches me a little off guard, but is almost immediately funny to me. I instantly imagine a number of different comedic scenarios where two potheads hatch this little plan. I imagine their rehearsals - "No, you have to speak more clearly for him to hear...". Eventually, she admits to the old stand-by: second-hand exposure. Incidentally, this doesn't work, so I don't know why people still try it. This further validates the result, at least in my mind. As usual, I picture a room or a car, filled with cannabis smoke, and the innocent donor, just trying to have a good time, but passing on grass. Right.