There was an interesting video item yesterday on Fox News. An economics professor, Jack Chambless, of Valencia College in Florida, via essay took an informal poll assessing his students’ opinions on the role of the federal government in their lives.
In a Fox News interview, he reported that about 10% of his sample said that they wanted the feds to stay out of their lives as much as possible. But about 80% said that they wanted the feds to supply jobs, housing, free education, money for retirement, and other goodies. Professor Chambless theorized that his students felt this way due to lessons they had been taught in K through 12.
They called it Generation “Gimme.”
Click here to view the video and see the interview with Professor Chambless.
Remember back in the 1990s, when Hillary-Care was being bandied about as a program to provide free medical care for all Americans. During that debate I thought it was only a matter of time until someone went further and started pushing, seriously, for a program advocating free food for all. Perhaps we’ve reached that point.
Per an article at GlobalGovernanceWatch.org, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations recently produced a five volume guide entitled the Methodological Toolbox on the Right to Food, the contents of which are very interesting. Let’s discuss how the implementation of this publication’s call-to-action could lead to free food and, with it, economic instability in the food industry and perhaps social uncertainty.
The article on the Global Governance Watch site states that, since the United Nation’s founding in 1948, it has been a goal of the UN that individuals worldwide have the right to an adequate standard of living. In the United States, we call this the “pursuit of happiness.” Global Governance Watch (GGW) also says that in 1999, the United Nations clarified this position with General Comment 12 of the UN’s International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights:
. . . the right to adequate food is realized when every man, woman and child, alone or in community with others, has the physical and economic access at all times to adequate food or means for its procurement.
As I interpret this quote, its key idea is that governments create an environment where individuals have economic access to food or access to its means of procurement. Very reasonable. In simplified terms, we can call that access a politically-supported environment where those who want a job can have a job so that they can economically access and procure, i.e., buy, food. Again, you have the right to the pursuit of happiness. I support that wholeheartedly.
But GGW reports that in 2005, the game began to change at the United Nations because in that year the General Assembly passed a resolution calling:
upon States to implement legal and political strategies to ensure that the right to food was not compromised.
Hmm. That’s a bit of a shift in thinking, isn’t it?
GGW says that for the UN to give “traction” to General Comment 12 and the 2005 resolution, the UN produced the aforementioned Methodological Toolbox on the Right to Food. The Toolbox was recently published (October 23, 2009) and in its website article about the Toolbox, GGW calls specific attention to the first of the five Toolbox volumes. The first volume is entitled “A Guide on Legislating for the Right to Food. In its synopsis of the Guide, GGW interprets the Guide as saying that:
. . . States must incorporate the right to food into national constitutions . . . (and) they must establish a “framework” law on the right to food, which sets out obligations for state authorities and private actors and establishes “necessary”
Continue reading Free Food is Next on the NGO Agenda
As we watch the media during this current health care debate, we can see that health care reform activists and progressives are driving the debate with a recurring mantra: high-profit health insurance companies are evil. It’s a well-worn, yet still effective tactic, that of activists and NGOs painting the corporate ogre as a greedy, highly-profitable, money-grubbing villain in a drama sure to tantalize. For an example of this type of tactic, let’s take a look at a recent AFL-CIO blog post.
On October 7, 2009, the AFL-CIO Now Blog posted “Health Care Action: Union Activists Visit Congress, Deliver Letters from Consumers.” In the fifth paragraph of this blog post appears this phrase, “insurance companies that put their profits far, far above the people they are supposed to serve.” The AFL-CIO blog perpetuates and exploits the drama to which I referred above and in doing so via this phrase they express two opinions: 1) that health insurance company devotion to its customers is lousy; and, 2) that the insurance companies are overly profitable.
For another example of the tactic of painting a money-grubbing ogre, there is also this passage from The Progressive which in an article titled “Health Care Reform on the Homestretch” dated September 13, 2009 said “Kucinich begins hearings tomorrow in the domestic policy subcommittee entitled ‘Between You and Your Doctor: The Bureaucracy of Private Health Insurance’ with a witness list that includes the family members of patients denied needed care because the industry needs to maintain its high profit margins.” Again, here they are going for the tactic of painting the health insurance industry as money-grubbers with attention to sacrificing customer service in favor of a buck.
Well, I’m not going to tackle the customer service/attention issue. That one can vary company to company, and certainly service at many companies just plain stinks. But I will tackle the assertion by activists, NGOs, and progressives of a health insurance industry that is “highly” profitable. How will I tackle that? I’ll use some facts.
In Fortune Magazine’s list of the Global 500 appears a ranking of the 35 most profitable industries. In looking at the rankings for 2008, we see the following listing for return on revenues:
1. Mining, Crude-Oil Production 19.8%
2. Pharmaceuticals 19.1%
3. Tobacco 12.3%
Now, those are very good profitability numbers. I wouldn’t call them obscenely profitable, but I would call them very good.
But hold on. Where is the health insurance industry? Let’s continue farther down the list.
13. Beverages 4.2%
14. Health Care: Insurance and Managed Care 3.7%
15. Metals 3.7%
There it is. The health care insurance industry’s profitability is ranked #14 out of 35 industries ranked. I wouldn’t call that 3.7% wildly profitable. Even in this relatively stagnant stock market we now experience, the health insurance companies could just exit the market and stick their money in moderately aggressive investments and do at least as well. They could even stick their money in long-term CDs and do much better.
To see
Continue reading Activists Attack The "Highly" Profitable Health Insurance Industry
Activists and companies used to fight like cats and dogs. Apparently, that cliche can no longer be used as a rule.
Per a recent opinion column on FoxNews.com, groups traditionally seen as left-leaning are getting together with big business and government to hammer out environmental policy.
Hey. What happened to the rights of the voter and the shareholder in determining environmental policy?
According to the Fox News article written by Tom Borelli, the coalition We Can Lead is a broad-based coalition of activist groups and energy and technology companies. Among the companies in the coalition are Hewlett-Packard and Duke Energy. Among the left-wing activist groups, reportedly, are CERES and the Apollo Alliance. The former is reported to be a coalition of investors and labor/environmental organizations that push companies to further environmental policies. The latter is reported to be a coalition of business, environmental, labor, and community leaders. The board members of the Apollo Alliance are according to the article members of the United Steelworkers and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).
In the race to look more “green” than their competitors, companies are throwing in with activists and, as Borelli pointed out in his article, after years and years of fighting the activists, companies have apparently decided to “switch rather than fight,” in a take-off of the old Tareyton cigarette commercial.
Okay. Ecology is good. I’m not in favor of wrecking the Earth. But is all this action on behalf of Mother Earth really necessary? And who decides if it is necessary? Who decides if the decisions made and campaigns pursued by We Can Lead are the right way to go? The left, in social media, likes to support the concept of crowd-sourcing, democracy in action via new technologies. But do we see any truly democratic action from groups like We Can Lead on behalf of the people for whom they ostensibly act?
Where do the shareholders, the owners, of Duke Energy and Hewlett-Packard stand on the issues for which We Can Lead advocate?
Where do the constituents of the politicians who We Can Lead lobby stand?
And who told We Can Lead that they could lead? Yes, they can lead. But who told them they could or should?
And has anyone given any thought to what the throwing in of the green does to the economic process?
Leftists and big business . . . now that’s a dangerous combination.
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About  Here at " Richard Telofski on The War on Capitalism," I discuss and analyze the individuals and groups conducting campaigns against capitalism. In the articles on this site, I provide analysis on lesser known facts about this movement. More . . .
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