Ray of Light

THE PHILLY STRIKE: GUTLESSNESS REAPS ITS REWARD

By Bradley Harrington

"Every strike is an act of coercion, a form of
extortion, a measure of violence directed against all
who might act in opposition to the strikers'
intentions." --Ludwig von Mises, "Socialism: An
Economic and Sociological Analysis," 1922--

Philadelphians certainly had a rude awakening Tuesday
morning, thanks to a sudden strike by the Transport
Workers Union Local 234: "The Philadelphia transit
system's largest union went on strike early Tuesday
over wage, pension and health care issues, stalling the
city's bus, subway and trolley operations and forcing
thousands of commuters to find other ways to get to
work--and to Election Day polls." (Kathy Matheson,
"Philly transit strike a tough sell in down economy,"
Associated Press, Nov. 3rd.)

Apparently, an average salary of $52,000 per year--with
the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority
(SEPTA) offering to increase that by 11.5% over a five-
year period--just isn't good enough for these workers:
"'We can't allow SEPTA to hide behind the economy for
not giving us a fair contract,' said Local 234 president
Willie Brown. 'We're gonna be out here as long as it
takes to get a fair contract.'" (Vince Lattanzio, "SEPTA
workers walk off the job," www.nbcphiladelphia.com, Nov.
3rd.)

Fair? What is "fair"? To be determined by whom?

In a free market, it is freely-floating wages--as
determined by supply and demand--that determines "fair."
Employers who underpay their workers find themselves
with a poor labor force and high turnover rates, neither
of which are conducive to good business. Conversely,
workers who demand more than market-level wages find
themselves unable to gain employment at the inflated
levels they are demanding.

In either case, it is the MARKET--not "management" and
not "labor"--that makes the final call, as all
businesses operate in the wider context of that market.
Brown, with his accusations against SEPTA of trying to
"hide behind the economy," is merely revealing his
abysmal ignorance of economics: for it is PRECISELY
"the economy" that serves as the backdrop for wage
determinations.

The Local 234 transit workers, quite obviously, are not
interested in such facts of reality: all they want is
their (ever-growing) piece of the pie, and to hell with
all the people--hundreds of thousands of them--who are
stuck walking, biking or hitching rides to work. What do
all of these transit workers REALLYy deserve? To be
fired immediately and sent packing. Then they can find
out whether the market supports their incredible
demands--or not.

The transportation situation in Philadelphia, however--
mirrored in nearly every major city in the United
States--is anything but "free." SEPTA, itself, being a
government entity, is hardly fertile ground for
capitalist economics. Created by public charter in
August of 1963 and governed by a 15-member board of
directors, all of whom are appointed by various other
government bodies, SEPTA is hardly in a position to
respond effectively to the profit-loss signals of the
marketplace, and is governed in the same fashion as all
other such entities: by pork-barrel politics.

Is it any wonder that most Philadelphians find the
employees of this organization to be less than service-
oriented? "Service," it should be remembered, is a
function of market-oriented business operations--not
government-run monopolies. "'Everybody hates SEPTA, and
this is why,' said Ranisha Allen...'These people go on
strike and they don't think about people they hurt,
people who can't get to work, kids who can't get to
school.'" (AP article continued.)

And, because SEPTA is not a market-oriented institution,
the chances of the striking workers being fired for
dereliction of duty are small: bumbling bureaucrats
afraid to bear the responsibility for a decision are not
exactly the epitome of confident resistance to labor-
union gang-rape. As proof, consider the following
comment by Richard Maloney, SEPTA spokesman, as the
AP article continues: "We're very anxious to get back to
the bargaining table, ASAP. We haven't heard back from
them." Why should he be hearing from them? The Local
234 knows a gutless, spineless puddle of quivering
flesh when it sees one.

The long-term solution to the problems Philadelphians
are experiencing in regard to their mass transit issues,
therefore, would be to privatize the entire operation:
sell it off on the free market. Let people who
understand transportation and business take it over and
run it for a profit. Not only would taxpayers save
millions of dollars in the process, but such people
would pay a lot more attention to consumer needs and
demands than SEPTA does, of that you can be sure.

--
Bradley Harrington is a former United States Marine
and a free-lance writer who lives in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

ON PRINCIPLES AND PREGNANCIES

"Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny." --Robert Heinlein,
"Time Enough For Love," 1973--

In January of 1991, in the midst of the Eastern European
collapse of communism, Soviet troops assaulted the
Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, and took over several city
locations in an attempt to crush the revolution. The
targets? Not armories, nor troop concentrations--but the
central publishing house and the TV tower, in an attempt
to suppress the nationalist media.

In March of 2003, as part of a crackdown by communist
Cuban state security, the house of Pedro Alvarez,
Secretary-General of Cuba's CUTC, a prominent trade
union, was raided; Alvarez was arrested and state-
threatening materials were seized. The weapons? Books,
computers, radios and fax machines.

Why is it that despots consider the transmission of
information to be deadlier to their tyrannical ends than
stockpiles of guns and bombs? Because their propaganda-
driven policies of aggression and enslavement cannot stand
the truth of exposure. The "samizdat," for instance (the
network of illegal and underground publications of banned
books, thoughts and materials in the post-Stalinist Soviet
Union), was a significant thorn in the side of Marxist-
Leninist agitprop for decades--and its activities, when
coupled with new, incoming Western technology
throughout the 1980s, played a significant role in the fall
of  the Iron Curtain.

President Obama, of course, is more civilized, and does it
differently. Instead of installing murderous thugs in
positions of power in regard to the news media, he merely
installs those who IDOLIZE murderous thugs: Anita
Dunn, interim White House Communications Director, is
on record as having referred to Red China's founding
dictator Mao Tse-Tung--known primarily for the slaughter
of over 50 million people--as one of her "favorite political
philosophers" (St. Andrews Episcopal School graduation
speech, June 5th).

And, instead of dispatching hordes of storm troopers to
seize recalcitrant media outlets, Obama and his minions
merely denounce them from their White House bully-
pulpits: first, Dunn accused Fox News of being "the
communications arm of the Republican Party" (CNN,
"Reliable Sources" interview, Oct. 11th), to be followed
shortly thereafter by White House senior advisor David
Axelrod's comments that "It's not just their [Fox's]
commentators, but a lot of their news programming, it's
not really news. It's pushing a point of view." (ABC, "This
Week" interview, Oct. 18th.)

So, Fox's breaking of the ACORN videotapes story--
ignored completely by "mainstream" media outlets such
as the New York Times or MSNBC, and only covered
belatedly by them after the scandal had erupted from
coast to coast--isn't really "news," but just a "point of
view." The same for the story on self-avowed communist
Van Jones, I suppose; that, too, apparently, was just
more Fox News bias in action.

Yet observe that it is not bias, in and of itself, that appears
to be the problem: for MSNBC, decidedly biased to the
left, reaps no scorn from the Obama administration. Isn't
the lesson clear? You can have all the opinions you want--
provided they are government-approved and non-
derogatory of the Obama administration. In that case, you
are no longer worthy, being nothing more than a shill for
the conservatives. So much for objectivity and the
freedom of the press.

And, while there is a huge difference between the actions
of seizing a news outlet through military force and simply
criticizing its content, the underlying principle is the same--
and principles, like pregnancies, have a nasty habit of
becoming more and more pronounced over time. For an
ongoing example of how state criticism evolves into state
takeover, one need only look as far as Venezuela: "The
recent closure of 32 privately-owned radio stations and
a proposed law to punish 'media crimes' are signs that
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is moving to quash
criticism of his government, according to a recent U.S.
intelligence report." (CNN, "Chavez moving to silence
media critics," Aug. 18th.)

The White House's war on Fox News should give all
liberty-loving Americans pause to consider: for what is
the Obama administration so afraid of, that it seeks to
silence denunciation of its policies, personnel and actions?
If what Fox News is broadcasting is not true, the White
House should refute it. And if it IS true--don't we have a
right to know about it? Last time I looked, that was what
the "freedom of the press" was all about; and, should that
freedom disappear, how much longer do we seriously
think we will hold on to any of the rest?

--
Bradley Harrington is a former United States Marine
and a free-lance writer who lives in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

"GRAB A MOP AND GET TO WORK"

By Bradley Harrington

"We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free,
and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live
in." --Thomas Paine, "The American Crisis, No 4," 1777--

President Obama, in his massive push to complete the
process of health-care nationalization begun decades
ago, has not been happy with his Republican critics as
of late: "'What I reject is when some folks sit on the
sidelines and root for failure,' he said...'I'm busy,'
he told the crowd...'Why don't you grab a mop? Why don't
you help clean up? ...Let's get to work.'" ("'Grab a
mop,' Obama tells health care overhaul critics," Matthew
Jaffe, ABC News, Oct. 16th.)

Get to work doing WHAT? The president proposes, not to
mop up the mess, but to dump the rest of the filthy
water out of the bucket and onto the floor. At that
point, mops will no longer be good enough; bilge pumps
will be the order of the day, and the Republicans are
right to reject such measures.

Anyone, however, can criticize the stupidity of
government-mandated slavery when they see it: what are
the Republicans FOR?

This would be the perfect time for some right-thinking
Republicans, should any be looming on the horizon, to
stand front and center and articulate the merits of
establishing a complete free-market system in health
care. Such proposals would include, but not be limited
to:

(1) Abolishing medical licensing requirements; such
licenses have merely stifled competition by being
repeatedly used by groups such as the AMA to limit
access to medical schooling and restrict the number of
new MDs. As Milton Friedman once observed, "Licensure
has reduced both the quantity and quality of medical
practice. It has retarded technological development both
in medicine itself and in the organization of medical
practice." ("Capitalism and Freedom," 1962.)

(2) Scrapping Medicare and Medicaid. These socialist
programs have been with us since LBJ's "Great Society"
and have near-completely destroyed the normal market
process of payment for services rendered. Both programs
have proven to be dangerously more expensive than they
were ever supposed to be and have done nothing more than
create a dependent class of beholden-to-the-state serfs
out of millions of our elderly and disabled. A better
solution would be to "charge premiums, proportionate to
lifetime earnings, for all parts of Medicare; allow
seniors to opt of Medicare without losing their Social
Security benefits; replace Medicare with a prefunded
system where workers invest their Medicare taxes in
personal accounts dedicated to their health needs in
retirement; and grant all Medicare beneficiaries a
voucher used to purchase a health plan of their choice."
("On Health Care Reform," The Cato Institute, 2009.)

(3) Dissolving the tremendous mass of regulations that
dominate all aspects of health care and--especially--
getting rid of the ban on purchasing health insurance
across state lines. "A 2004 study by eHealthInsurance
found monthly premiums varying widely across different
cities. In their study they found that for a family of
four an insurance product with a $2,000 family
deductible and 20% co-insurance could be had in Kansas
City, Mo. for a monthly premium of $171.86, while that
same coverage in Boston would cost $767.30." ("Costly
Mandates Price Many Workers Out of Health Care
Insurance," Council For Affordable Health Insurance,
2005.)

(4) Promoting individual-based health care plans
instead of employer-based plans by terminating the tax
credits for employer-based insurance. "Thanks to
wartime wage and price controls imposed by the Roosevelt
administration in 1943, employer-provided health
insurance became tax-free to the employees. That benefit
tied health insurance to employment, gave the power of
choice to the employer, and denied portability when
employees changed jobs." ("Health Care and the Free
Market," John McLaughry, The Bennington Banner, Oct.
20th.)

(5) Implementing tort reform on frivolous malpractice
suits. "The malpractice system is supposed to compensate
victims of medical errors for their injuries and
discourage future errors by medical providers. It does
both jobs poorly and it imposes large costs on doctors,
employers and patients." ("Medical Malpractice: 10 Steps
to Tort Reform," John C. Goodman, National Center for
Policy Analysis, 2008.)

So, you disapproving Republicans, "grab a mop" and
"let's get to work." A thoroughly appropriate request,
if you ask me: since it was, after all, the gutless GOP
politicians, who have always been too afraid to stand up
consistently for true capitalism and freedom, who are
the true architects of this health care debacle to begin
with.

--
Bradley Harrington is a former United States Marine
and a free-lance writer who lives in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

PEACE AT ANY PRICE?

By Bradley Harrington

"Wars are the second greatest evil that human
societies can perpetrate. The first is dictatorship,
the enslavement of their own citizens, which is the
cause of wars." --Ayn Rand, "The Wreckage of the
Consensus," 1967--

While the Nobel Prizes in the fields of physics,
chemistry, medicine/physiology, literature and
economics have had their questionable years (Marconi
and Braun vs. Tesla in 1909 for the Physics Prize,
for instance), there has never been any serious doubt
in regard to the honor and prestige these Prizes
bestow upon their recipients.

The Peace Prize, however, is quite a different story,
and the choice of its recipients have often been
embroiled by major controversy. Recipients such as
Yasser Arafat, international terrorist (1994), Jimmy
Carter, international appeaser (2002), and Al Gore,
international advocate of global warming junk
"science" (2007), have obliterated any meaningful
honor and prestige the Peace Prize might ever have
carried.

Any residual particle of remaining respect, of course,
disappears completely in the face of this year's award
to President Barack Obama. While bestowing the 2009
Prize to Obama "for his extraordinary efforts to
strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation
between peoples," the Norwegian Committee also made no
bones about the fact that this award is nothing more
than a blatant attempt at international manipulation:
"For 108 years, the Norwegian Committee has sought to
stimulate precisely that international policy and
those attitudes for which Obama is now the world's
leading spokesman." ("The Nobel Peace Prize for 2009,"
Norwegian Committee press release, 2009.)

Having taken quite a lot of heat since their
announcement for precisely that reason, though, the
Committee was quick to respond: "Alfred Nobel wrote
that the prize should go to the person who has
contributed most to the development of peace in the
previous year," said Committee chairman Thorbjorn
Jagland. "Who has done more for that than Barack
Obama?" (Associated Press, "Nobel jury speaks out in
defense of Obama prize," Oct. 13th.)

Observe the flawed premise at work in such a
statement: i.e., that peace can be achieved by
"cooperation," conciliation, renunciation and
demilitarization.

It was not "cooperation" and demilitarization on the
part of the United States that prevented Germany and
Japan from wiping us out during World War II, but
their exact opposites: confrontation coupled with a
massive arms buildup that gave us the power to crush
our enemies. How well would "those attitudes" have
fared us on the beaches of Dunkirk? Cooperation with
tyranny? Sure. Tell it to the 2,400 people blown to
smithereens at Pearl Harbor.

No, free countries do not "cooperate" with tyrannies,
any more than property-holders cooperate with thieves;
such actions only embolden the thugs at the expense of
their victims. For proof of this point, observe the
policies of Iran and North Korea: while the West
prattles about "cooperation between peoples," they
seek nuclear domination. The only rational policy to
take in the face of such threats is to maintain a
sufficient policy of deterrence of attack through
overwhelming strength. Yet it is not military strength
that Obama is advocating as he dismantles ABM systems.

It just so happens that peace is impossible while the
planet is rife with despots, for the same tribal
premise at work in the domestic policies of a
totalitarian state--the belief that some men have the
"right" to control other men--works on the
international level as well, permeating all the
actions such a state engages in. A nation at war with
itself is necessarily at war with the nations around
it. Yet it is not resistance to such despotism that
Obama is advocating as he travels abroad kissing the
rings of dictator-kings.

The promotion of peace can only make sense when rooted
in the advocacy of liberty; the two go hand in hand.
Yet how many of the "peace" promoters advocate it?
Preferring instead to whitewash or promote the
omnipotent policies of statism and government control
that breed wars, both at home and abroad, these
muddleheaded leftists, while possibly well-intentioned,
are actually laying the foundations for the next major
war.

No, peace cannot be bought at any price, as Neville
Chamberlain's policies of appeasement in regard to
Hitler eloquently demonstrated--but only through a
consistent and reasoned championing of freedom and
individualism both here and overseas. But this,
tragically enough, is a strength that the United
States itself has lost. And, meanwhile, the clouds
gather...

--
Bradley Harrington is a former United States Marine
and a free-lance writer who lives in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

THE POST OFFICE: PUBLICLY PAID PARASITES

By Bradley Harrington

"Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state.
They forget that the state lives at the expense of
everyone." --Frederic Bastiat, "The Law," 1850--

In today's economic reality of downsized sluggishness,
most of us who are gainfully employed are thankful to
even have a job. There's just no way, you'd think,
that anyone could possibly afford to pay an employee
to simply sit around all day--much less thousands of
them, right?

Wrong: "The U.S. Postal Service, struggling with a
massive deficit caused by plummeting mail volume,
spends more than a million dollars each week to pay
thousands of employees to sit in empty rooms and do
nothing." (Gregg Carlstrom, "The Federal Times," Sep.
7th.)

Yes, you read that correctly: "It's a practice called
'standby time,'" the article continues, "and it has
existed for years--but postal employees say it was
rarely used until this year. Now, postal officials
say, the agency is averaging about 45,000 hours of
standby time every week--the equivalent of having
1,125 employees sitting idle, at a cost of more than
$50 million per year."

Shucks, it took ACORN 15 years to blow $53 million in
federal funds; the Post Office, by spending that much
on "worker" vegetation in one single year, wipes out
ACORN's flush factor by a ratio of 15-to-1. Who says
the Post Office has no efficiency?

This is what happens when what could be--and should be
--a viable enterprise is insulated from the rigors of
free-market competition. With thanks to the Private
Express Statutes of 1792, the Post Office has enjoyed
a monopoly on first-class mail delivery for 217 years.

You'd think that with such an ironclad guarantee of
business, anybody could make money at it, but you
would be severely underestimating government's ability
to achieve the exact opposite of its stated goals--and
the USPS, as it turns out, has other problems: "A
thicket of union rules prevents managers from laying
off excess employees," the article states. "A recent
agreement with the unions, in fact, temporarily
prevents the Postal Service from even reassigning them
to other facilities that could use them."

Just in case you might think that all that free time
is a license for goofing off or doing something
productive like reading, playing pinochle or catching
up on your latest soaps, however, better think again:
"In some facilities, the employees aren't allowed to
do anything they couldn't normally do on the job. That
means no books, no playing cards, no watching
television."

So, what DO these employees do? Just sit there like
rocks, apparently: "'We want to make sure they uphold
the rules and regulations of the Postal Service,' said
Edward Jackson, plant manager at the mail processing
facility in Washington, D.C."

"Rules and regulations"? What an absolute farce. Does
it need to be pointed out that a REAL business, with
no guarantee of a market and no unions throttling its
decision-making processes to death--a business that
must remain productive or go bankrupt--could never fall
victim to such a fate? In the real world, a business
that lost 12.6% of its revenue--the volume loss of
first-class mail delivery in the last year--would lay
off employees and scale back its operations. Welcome to
the Post Office world, where you simply holler to the
federal government for a $4 billion subsidy. Could you
imagine Wal-Mart ponying up a megabuck a week to
station living statues in standby rooms? I don't think
so. No, the only thing that could ever allow this to
occur, is a complete divorcement of business operations
from the profit-and-loss-signals of the marketplace.

This story, as it turns out, received very little play
in the press; a Google search of the news on this
topic, as of this writing, yielded a whopping four
results total, despite the fact that the Federal Times'
story has been out for weeks. To what other events was
our left-leaning mainstream media devoting its time
and energy? "Gay weddings in Washington by winter?",
333 articles; "Panel finds no fault with Obama system
of policy czars," 158 articles; "Doctors: health care
system is broken, it's time to fix it," 801 articles.

And, speaking of health care: if you think the Post
Office model of "business development" is a classic
example of government bureaucracy run amok, just wait
until the same principles are applied to the care of
your life instead of merely delivering a letter.

--
Bradley Harrington is a former United States Marine
and a free-lance writer who lives in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

ON SHOOTING OURSELVES IN THE HEAD

By Bradley Harrington

"Ideas cannot be fought except by means of better
ideas. The battle consists, not of opposing, but of
exposing; not of denouncing, but of disproving; not
of evading, but of boldly proclaiming a full,
consistent and radical alternative." --Ayn Rand, "The
Cashing In: The Student 'Rebellion,'" 1965--

If you have ever wondered what is wrong with our
country and our world, and how both got that way, a
"double-header" of noteworthy events--Pittsburgh's
G-20 summit and New York City's United Nations
General Assembly--have recently conspired to give us
the major reasons.

In regard to the United States' economic relations
with the rest of the world, President Obama made it
crystal-clear at the G-20 summit what he views our
role to be: "We will shift more responsibility to
emerging economies within the International Monetary
Fund, and give them a greater voice. To build new
markets, and help the world's most vulnerable citizens
climb out of poverty, we established a new World Bank
Trust Fund to support investments in food security
and financing for clean and affordable energy." (New
York Times, Sep. 25th.)

Why is it the business of the American taxpayer to
fund "emerging economies" throughout the world? Obama
gave no answer. In what way would the American
taxpayer benefit from such economies having a "greater
voice" in regard to such "investments"? No answer. The
last time I looked, an "investment" was something
someone did with their own money in order to reap a
profit--which, of course, are terms that do not apply
to these instances. So, how would anyone ever expect
such actions to "build new markets" or "help the
world's most vulnerable citizens climb out of
poverty," since legitimate investment by profit-
seeking capital is the only path to either of those
goals? No answer.

And the realities? The "emerging economies" of the
world lack markets and remain poverty-stricken because
their governments, ranging in collectivist degree from
"welfare" states to totalitarian dictatorships, have
chosen to abolish individual property rights, thereby
stifling all the capital formation and accumulation
that such rights create; production ends where a gun
begins. And more: handouts from the United States, in
the form of foreign "aid," far from halting that
downward spiral, actually hasten it by entrenching the
looters' rule.

In regard to the geopolitical realities of nuclear
proliferation by rogue states who care nothing for
their own citizens, much less the citizens of other
countries, President Obama had the following to say to
the United Nations: "But if the governments of Iran
and North Korea choose to ignore international
standards...then they must be held accountable." (Los
Angeles Times, Sep. 23rd.)

"Accountable"? To whom? To the OTHER rogue states that
enjoy UN membership, such as Red China, Libya, Sudan,
Cuba and Syria? And what "international standards"
would our president be speaking of? The "standards" of
the meetings of Tehran, Potsdam and Yalta, which
legitimized Soviet Russia's seizure of Eastern Europe
during World War II? Those "agreements" sanctioned the
communistic enslavement of 300 million Eastern
Europeans--and the establishment of the United Nations
charter ("to save succeeding generations from the
scourge of war," believe it or not) perpetuated that
tyranny for nearly 50 years. And we wonder why the
rule of brute force continues to rise in the world?

Historically, it is worth noting that it was not the
United States' current approach of renunciation,
appeasement and "cooperation" that finally ended the
UN-sanctioned subjugation of Eastern Europe--but the
policy of confrontive "peace through strength" of
Ronald Reagan that did the job instead ("Mr.
Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"). If the goal is the
promotion of liberty and prosperity, one does not
achieve it by granting gangster governments any kind
of financial or ideological seal of approval
whatsoever.

It is the ideology of collectivism that has brought
both the United States and the world to a level of
corruption, poverty, death and destruction
unparalleled in our history--and it is only the
ideology of freedom, capitalism and individual rights
that can reverse those trends. America needs to
proudly assert her right to her national sovereignty
and independence and reject the "one-world" syndrome
in any and all of its manifestations--and act once
again, as we did in the 19th century, as a beacon of
hope and aspiration for liberty-loving peoples
everywhere. THIS--not the senselessness of leading
ourselves to the slaughter--is the role we still have
to play in human affairs, and anything less is simply
shooting ourselves in the head.

--
Bradley Harrington is a former United States Marine
and a free-lance writer who lives in Cheyenne, Wyoming.