For a Healthy, Well Regulated Society Where Every Action is Regulated, Illegal or Mandatory

We live in the era of rule by bureaucracy. The path to this impossibility was a quick slide down a slippery slope of lazy politicians. At some point in time, the early 1960s is my best guess, our elected officials found an easier way to make laws while not needing to understand or research the particulars for the application and implementation of said laws. Their new operational model was they simply passed new legislation that gave a somewhat malleable and vague definition of the target ideas and ideals the legislation was targeted to produce and then assigned to different cabinet departments, cabinet Secretaries, select committees, or even in extreme cases some NGO to make the necessary regulations in order to fulfill the requirements stated and set in the legislation. Never in the wildest imagination of any conspiracy theory was there a more powerful way to slide down the slippery slope to a society where any and every act is either illegal or required or, in the best of cases, both. The epitome and perfection of this procedure will be taking effect throughout the rest of the year and is scheduled to be complete and workable by January 2014; but trust when we tell you that there will be more regulations spawned by this legislation in every year going forward for as far as one can envision. This strangling legislation is the Affordable Care Act which is better known as Obama Care. Most of us probably thought that everything would have been fully fleshed out and completely defined and everything that could possibly be required described in full and complete detail somewhere in the many hundreds of pages of the bill. After all, were we not told by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi that we had to pass the bill in order to see what was in the bill? Well, that probably meant something quite different than was understood by most of us.

 

The reality is that within the legislation were hundreds of pages enacting or setting in place the requirement for many items which had absolutely nothing to do with healthcare while also not defining definitively much of anything and simply left amorphous definitions of intent of coverage and systems and left much of the filling in of details and regulations up to Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius. What is even more worrisome is that when these laws are passed such as Obama Care there is no date which prevents new regulations from being added past that point. This was a peculiarity which President Obama decided provided an unintended plethora of new regulations. In order to mine this gold mine that never stops giving technically, President Obama made a position named Regulations Czar Cass Sunstein with the given job description of reviewing government regulations in order to delete those regulations which are no longer deemed to be fulfilling any necessary purpose. The actual work being performed by Mr. Sunstein is to review all legislation passed into law over the entire history of the United States mining them for potential application of new regulations which serve the intents and ends of the Administration’s legislative and policy aims. Since any new regulations, or any regulations, which are written in order to fulfill the required implementation of passed legislation does not require debate or even the knowledge of Congress and can be completely enacted and implemented by the Administrative branch of the government. Simply put, if the President can produce justification for any regulation within any piece of existing law, then the regulation can be written, implemented, and enforced without the knowledge or action from any other branch of government. If this worries you, welcome to the scariest of secrets with which the Federal government is being grown beyond the wildest dreams of the most ardent fascist or other big government advocate.

 

Now for the really worrisome part of this story, Obama Care. Just imagine what a policy wonk given unlimited power to write regulations with the intent of controlling all actions over such areas as diet, exercise, habits, risky behavior, participation in dangerous sports, accident avoidance, and virtually anything one can imagine a person either participating or avoiding in their lives as long as these regulations can be tied in any manner to healthcare costs. We have seen a small example of such in New York City with Mayor Bloomberg and his smoking ban, trans fat ban, salt limiting, and attempted soda size limitation. When addressing all things which can be considered as potential health risks, where risk is defined as requiring healthcare expenditures, and you quickly realize that everything in life is now legally defined as something that government may choose to regulate. With government health care where the government decides what care you as a patient are entitled to receive, just imagine what requirements can be placed on one so that they can qualify for the best possible care allowed. Your diet can be controlled by requiring a scientifically specified diet with excessively restrictive meal plan. You might also be required to perform specified physical exercise routine. Should your weight deviate from the governmental norms for BMI you could be placed on an even more restricted diet to address your potential health risk. You like trail biking, sky diving, scuba diving, or any other potentially dangerous or injury prone activity? Not if you want healthcare to cover sprains, broken bones or other injuries which could result even if one does not participate in any injury risk behavior. Or perhaps in order to enjoy such activities one would be required to be licensed after taking required instruction which is required for your own good and would presumably teach you the safest manner to participate in your selected activity. Of course the fee for the licenses would be directly proportional to the risks involved in the particular activity. In all honesty, nothing in life is beyond being controlled in order to assure you remain in tip-top healthy shape in order to minimize the likelihood for you to require other than normative healthcare treatments. There is already a system which will likely be the eventuality of Obama Care which is known as the Complete Lives System. This system sets up formulae which are to be used to determine whether or not it would prove to be cost effective for government to provide healthcare services depending on the cost of the care required, the prognosis for success, the age of the patient, and numerous other cold, hard facts which then make the determination whether or not you will be treated. This system almost guarantees that there will be nothing beyond the most basic care provided to the elderly and high cost procedures would also not be approved for youth, especially if the problem will require continued care. This is as impersonal a system and arbiter for the dispensing healthcare as one could ever imagine, but then government has never been accused of being emotional or particularly caring. The future under universal government healthcare, which is inevitable under Obama Care, will result in a tangled web of regulatory requirements and restrictions which will ensnare every life and strangle from them any deviance from whatever is determined to be governmental norm. The other unavoidable result will be the absolute and complete end to personal privacy as in order to assure your life meets all health requirements, your life will necessarily have to be totally monitored. The amount of privacy that remains today, as restrictive as it may seem, will seem like unbelievable freedom in a decade or two when the government has reached the point where it must regulate all activities, diets, exercise, and all else in order to assure the healthiest of populations under its care. After all, it will be for your own good, honest.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Why Are There No Longer Prophets?

Most who have read or even have the slightest familiarity with the Bible, in this case particularly the Old Testament, know that long ago great Prophets were born in many generations who were able to warn the people of the dire consequences of straying from the ways of the L-rd. Not too surprisingly, they were proven right with the passage of time. Modernists explain that the Prophets talked in such general terms that of course the events they predicted would come true sooner or later. It would be like explaining to the people of New Orleans, which many prophetic engineers had warned, that a sufficiently powerful hurricane would come and breach the levy system if they were not upgraded and maintained. Not much soothsaying happening there, but still, that prophecy did indeed come true with devastating results and footage on the nations television news for months. The same could be said for the Biblical predictions of conquering invading armies when a neighbor was noted to be expanding and building their military. Warning that straying from the chosen path and not also training an army to defend G-d’s precious gift, the Land of Israel, would lead to a devastating foreign conquest and being enslaved did not exactly require rocket science to predict.

So, why did there stop being Prophets? Perhaps it was because the people grew so tired of Prophets that they became seen as doom-sayers and were simply no longer welcome. Whatever the reason, once Rome was finished with the Hebrew people, for a Prophet to rise up amongst them after their dispersal to the far corners of the empire became improbable if not impossible. Now, with about half the Jews we know about in the world living in Israel, and most of the other half in the United States, once again the conditions exist for a Prophet to arrive. The problem today is that nobody would believe or even care should a Prophet rise from among the people. Such a person would be at best ignored, even placed in protective custody, or even assassinated, as was Rabbi Meir Kahane. Currently, we would like to believe we are above such primitive superstitions and the truth lies in scientific proofs and not from Biblical sages. Personally, I think that is sad as we are so very in need of a true Prophet to guide and inspire us.

Looking at the situation in Israel today, a familiar pattern is emerging mirroring many periods from Biblical antiquity. The people are quietly becoming more observant and turning to our Jewish source of saving grace through all times, G-d and the performance of Mitzvoth. But, in the other end of Israeli society is an excessively boisterous minority of what are called post-Zionists who view Israel as just another multi-cultural country amongst an enlightened world of multi-cultural states. Many in this group see holding Israel to be the Jewish State as provincial and archaic. They do not hold with the idea that Israel is a place of special merit where Jews can live up to their Biblical obligations and practice those Mitzvoth and customs that were difficult for us during the nearly two-thousand-years in the Diaspora. They do not hold that Jerusalem is Holy ground, G-d’s City, and a blessing to be treasured and kept whole and cherished with special prayers and loving care. These post-Zionists have no clue to the importance of our Biblical lands and the Holy City of Jerusalem. They see the stories from the Bible of the varied and numerous events that took place in the Judean Hills as well as in the plains between them and the Sea as our rightful claim to the land. To these secularists, everything is negotiable and may be traded for the chimera of peace that will only result if we hold to our traditional lands and our traditional ways. They do not believe the predictions made by Prophets over two-thousand-years ago of the great conflagration that will follow the dividing of the land and Jerusalem will bring down upon us again.

A walk through the Jewish Bible one finds unbelievable miracles that came to the Jews, both individually and as a people, when we valued the L-rd, performed Mitzvoth and lived a life of Torah. Such evidence and purpose has begun to grow amongst the Jews in Israel as well as among some in the Diaspora. This is a positive sign as Israel has flourished when the L-rd our G-d was our inspiration and the ways of man were a secondary consideration. This aggravates the secularists who place mankind and the laws of men above all else. This is where a modern day Prophet would come against their most difficult of obstacles. Upon first glance, a religious Haredi and other Orthodox Jews appear to exist in such a structured society that deviations would seem impossible while the secular Jews appear to be a varied conglomerate where open-mindedness is claimed to be a central tenet in their lives. Yet, upon closer evaluation, quite the opposite is found to be the truth. Where the religious Jews wish that their fellow secular Jews would realize their error in not living a life of Torah, they do not wish them ill will or out of hand dismiss everything they stand for. Even the most strident of the religious Jews look upon all Jews as their brothers and sisters and pray for the best for them. On the other hand, among the secular community you find many who have open contempt and even hatred for the very religious Jews. The secularists oppose almost everything they believe the religious Jews stand for. They ridicule the religious as living in an archaic past with little or no connection to the present and often blame them for many of the problems Jews face from anti-Semitism and other sources. The most extreme of the secular Jews who would be classified as post-modern and post-Zionist live by standards that tolerate absolutely no deviance from their “known truths”, tolerating no debate, no questions. Any person, say a politician, who presents a logical argument may find debate for the most part from the religious Jews with only a few unwilling to listen. On the other hand, a Prophet would not be allowed to even make a presentation and would likely find a riotous mob waiting to violently prevent him from even appearing, let alone speaking. Perhaps this is why we have no Prophets any longer. Maybe such persons of vision can see the futility and have decided they have better things to do. Maybe they exist but end up preaching to the choir not being allowed any venue outside those who believe.

Beyond the Cusp

The Repealed DADT Military

Reactions and predictions of the consequences for the Military as a result of the repeal of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) policy that will allow openly gay personnel to serve in the Military has run the gauntlet from cataclysm to no big deal. Those supporting this social experiment with our national defense see no problems while the opposition is sounding the alarm of a coming apocalypse in our defense forces. A reasonable expectation would be a result somewhere between the two extremes. A good amount of the result will depend upon the actions of the gay enlistees, whether they try to adapt to the Military culture that already exists, or will they flaunt their lifestyle in an in your face attitude making the transition problematic.

It will come down to the attitude of both gay and straight members of our Armed Services. First, the gay people joining the service can either try to fit in and do their jobs professionally or they can push an agenda of we’re gay and we’re here to stay. The straight members of our Armed Services will also need to see which direction each gay enlistee takes towards their attitude of service and accept them if they show an honest effort to blend rather than being openly confrontational. If the new openly gay service members simply do their jobs, then their sexual preference should not present any difficulties and things should not differ in any drastic manner from under DADT.

My expectation is that the majority of gay enlistees will quietly fir in and try to make their sexuality a nonissue. Unfortunately, I fear that initially there will be a number of openly gay who will use their enlistment as a venue for their activism and gay agenda. These will be the troublemakers who will be no different than other people who due to personality or other problems who simply are unable to get along with the other members of their unit. Troublemakers is not something new to the Military and they have a way of weeding out the worst of them during basic training, unless things have changed even more drastically than when I served. Hopefully, after some rough periods accented by the aforementioned troublemakers, an equilibrium of professionalism will take over and problems will be limited to the normal number of enlistees that simply do not belong in a Military regimented lifestyle. The best indicator of whether this unnecessary social experiment will work or if adapting will be too much to expect will be in the combat units where unit cohesion is of life or death importance. I want to be optimistic, but for some reason I see only problems coming from this ridiculous challenge that has been burdened on our Armed Forces.

Beyond the Cusp