Adam Bender, 8, is one of several kids who plays catcher in Southeastern’s rookie league at Veterans Park. What makes Adam stand out is that he plays one of the toughest positions on the field with only one leg. … — Lexington Herald Leader

Click here for the videos, and here for news stories.

(via Rossputin)

Do we need death?

No. Next question.

All right, seriously folks, why would anyone think that that we need death? Pro-mortalists generally fear that longer lives will result in a nursing home world, filled with aging, miserable, debilitated people draining resources from the young to keep themselves alive. Second, they worry about the social consequences of longer lifespans.

In his lead essay, Aubrey de Grey ably demolishes the nursing-home-world dystopias. The point of anti-aging research is not to make us older longer, but to make us younger longer. Enough said.

So what about the social consequences of radically longer and healthier lives? In that regard, Diana Schaub in her reaction essay raises many questions for reflection about those consequences, but curiously she fails to actually reflect on them. Schaub isn’t “willing to say that agelessness is undesirable,” but she simultaneously “can’t shake the conviction that the achievement of a 1,000-year lifespan would produce a dystopia.” She then simply recapitulates the standard issue pro-mortalist rhetorical technique of asking allegedly “unnerving questions” and then allowing them to “fester in the mind.” Sadly, all too many bioethicists think they’ve done real philosophic work by posing “hard” questions, then sitting back with steepled hands and a grave look on their countenances.

(OK, the image of Mr. Burns is the closest I could find, even though his fingers could be more steepled and expression more grave.  I hope to live long enough to see better matches.  Do send!)

But when will Americans have the choice to serve or not? In his speech he outlines several new government-run tax-funded service programs.  But when do we have the choice whether to fund these or not?  When does he ask us, and when do we have a chance to say “no”?  Or is Obama saying he wants to take our money without asking, and then with it create government programs that give others the opportunity to serve?  If so, why doesn’t he say that?

Perhaps this passage explains it:

There is a lesson to be learned from generations who have served - from soldiers and sailors; airmen and Marines; suffragists and freedom riders; teachers and doctors; cops and firefighters. It’s the lesson that in America, each of us is free to seek our own dreams, but we must also serve a common purpose, a higher purpose.

“We must also serve a common purpose, a higher purpose.” Says who?  Why?  Who determines what this common purpose is, and what “higher” means?  What happens to Americans who peacefully refuse to cooperate with this?   For example, those who “must” fund the programs Obama suggests?  What powers does he grant law enforcement to do to those who do not cooperate?

Here are some selections from his speech:

…I won’t just ask for your vote as a candidate - I will ask for your service and your active citizenship when I am President of the United States.

This will not be a call issued in one speech or one program - this will be a central cause of my presidency. We will ask Americans to serve. We will create new opportunities for Americans to serve. And we will direct that service to our most pressing national challenges. …

We need your service, right now, at this moment - our moment - in history. I’m not going to tell you what your role should be; that’s for you to discover. But I am going to ask you to play your part; ask you to stand up; ask you to put your foot firmly into the current of history. I am asking you to change history’s course.

And some of his proposals on how to spend taxpayers money without their consent:

As President, I will expand AmeriCorps to 250,000 slots, and make that increased service a vehicle to meet national goals like providing health care and education, saving our planet and restoring our standing in the world, so that citizens see their efforts connected to a common purpose….

I will launch a new Social Investment Fund Network. …

We’ll expand USA Freedom Corps …

We’ll call on Americans to join an Energy Corps to conduct renewable energy and environmental cleanup projects in their neighborhoods …

And we’ll also grow our Foreign Service …

We’ll enlist them in our Energy Corps,…we’ll expand the YouthBuild Program

Wow, what a great guy!  Dear President, do relieve us of starting our own charities or figuring out which one we should donate to!  I mean, one could argue that your programs unfairly compete with these charities, and to remedy that, taxpayers should receive a full tax credit for every dollar they donate to a non-government charity, and a competing government charity loses that dollar.

Sure, voters could hire someone one, like an investment adviser, to advise him how to donate money based on their own personal values and whether the charities actually do a good job.  You know, just they do for their financial investments.   Similarly, these are investments in non-profits.  That is, if they don’t like Charity Navigator or GuideStar’s ratings.

But hey, we don’t want to give taxpayers too much choice, do we?  The political ruling class knows that voters cannot handle that.  They need to me led, and told how to donate to charity!  Even after all they learn in government schools, they cannot handle the responsibility.

But wait, doesn’t Obama mention a tax credit?  Yes, he does, but it’s different:

For college students, I have proposed an annual American Opportunity Tax Credit of $4,000. To receive this credit, we’ll require 100 hours of public service. You invest in America, and America invests in you - that’s how we’re going to make sure that college is affordable for every single American, while preparing our nation to compete in the 21st century.

In other words, unless you do 100 hours of public service, the IRS will “ask” you for $4000 in taxes.  If you don’t pay, you end up in prison.  If you want it back, you must do 100 hours of public service.  How is this different from legalized extortion?

Ari Armstrong has similar comments here.

Self-defense is a fundamental human right. Now the Supreme Court has affirmed what most Coloradans have long held and what our state’s constitution also strongly protects: the individual’s right to own a gun.

The June 26 ruling on District of Columbia v. Heller overturns Washington, D.C.’s handgun ban and requirement that guns be kept inoperable in the home. Gone is the fantasy that the Second Amendment protects only state militias.

Ari has additional comments on it at FreeColorado.com.

…tens of thousands of people who lost their homes in Hurricane Katrina and are still living in federally owned trailers will be forced to find a new place to live. After nearly three years, the federal government’s temporary housing is coming to an end.

These folks are not going to have an easy time of it, because affordable housing in the Gulf Coast region is scarce. The problem has persisted despite billions in government aid – and the efforts of large private developers – because of a shortage of skilled laborers and sky-high insurance rates.

Yet now there is hope, in the person of John Sawyer. Not only does this 64-year-old Bostonian believe he can build houses people can afford to buy and insure; he says they will withstand the next big storm. And, by the way, he intends to makes a tidy profit. …

Virtually no one else has been able to do so, it should be noted, even with existing tax incentives and other programs. The Mississippi Development Authority (MDA) is preparing its latest attempt to tackle the problem by allocating $350 million in federal money to developers to build “affordable homes.”

But according to MDA officials, these developers will import many of their workers. Inevitably, this will drive up the cost of construction. And it seems unlikely that any of them will be building the cement fortress that has elated insurance broker Sneed. In short, insurance rates will be high. MDA officials suggest that their subsidies will make these homes cheaper to buy and this will enable homeowners to fork out more for insurance.

One consortium of well-respected, nonprofit developers, which includes Enterprise Corporation of the Delta and Enterprise Community Partners, has already run into problems. In the wake of Katrina, they used both local and imported labor to build modular homes along the Mississippi coast. The cost to buyers ranged between $83 and $115 per square foot.

The houses were made of wood (not concrete), which is probably one reason they cost between $3,000 and $5,000 a year to insure. Recently, this same outfit applied for an MDA loan to develop a 1,100 acre property in Biloxi, Miss. But several officials involved in the project told me that the deal may fall apart, largely because of the cost of labor and insurance.

HT, my mother-in-law (as of this autumn, formally).

Re: “Who has your health at heart?” May 22 guest commentary.

AFL-CIO executives John Sweeney and Mike Cerbo perpetuate the big lie behind politician-controlled medicine: that the free market is not working and that costs have been spiraling out of control because of markets.

But costs have been increasing precisely because of the employer-based insurance they espouse, which is a consequence of a biased and non-free-market tax code. It favors employer-based insurance and penalizes other types of medical insurance.

We consume medical care like a business traveler dining on the company’s expense account: Since someone else pays the bill (insurers), patients need not shop around, so providers don’t compete on price. Why?

Tax-discounted insurance encourages us to buy more costly insurance than we probably need, hence penalizing saving for future medical expenses. Our “insurance” has become prepaid health care.

Employer-based insurance also coddles insurance companies, which have little incentive to please consumers. They know we’re essentially locked to our employer and the costly insurance plans they offer. To buy a competitor’s product, we must change jobs or pay a stiff tax penalty.

The AFL-CIO should be ashamed of promoting self-serving policies that both empower labor unions and result in expensive medical care and insurance.

For a way out of this policy mess, see Michael Cannon’s piece on Large HSAs here and here. He compares it with McCain’s plan here.

If you can name it, presidents are responsible for it. The name for this is infantilization. “The average American,” said President Richard Nixon, “is just like the child in the family—you give him some responsibility and he is going to amount to something.” Vice President Al Gore said the government should act like “grandparents in the sense that grandparents perform a nurturing role.”

Such demented talk encourages presidential candidates to make delusional promises—energy independence in eight years (Mike Huckabee), “an excellent teacher in every classroom” and “every school an outstanding school” (John Edwards, who presumably knows how every school can stand out when all are outstanding), a “perfect” nation (see above) and so on.

The last presidential candidate to talk sense about the office was fictional. In an episode of NBC’s “The West Wing,” the Republican candidate, who was not the hero, was asked, “How many jobs will you create?” “None,” he replied, adding: “Entrepreneurs create jobs. Business creates jobs. The president’s job is to get out of the way.”

An occupational hazard of the inflated presidency is a hazard to the nation. It is what Healy (borrowing a term from psychiatry) calls Acquired Situational Narcissism. As repositories of absurd expectations, and surrounded by sycophants, presidents become deranged. Inevitably, the inflation of expectations causes what Healy calls an “arc of disillusionment” that diminishes one president after another.

For a summary of the book, see Healy’s article in Reason magazine.

The real issue is that Messrs. Obama and McCain are telling us Americans that our normal lives are not good enough, that pursuing our own happiness is “self-indulgence,” that building a business is “chasing after our money culture,” that working to provide a better life for our families is a “narrow concern.”

They’re wrong. Every human life counts. Your life counts. You have a right to live it as you choose, to follow your bliss. You have a right to seek satisfaction in accomplishment. And if you chase after the almighty dollar, you just might find that you are led, as if by an invisible hand, to do things that improve the lives of others.

The article is here.

Darla Stuart (Speakout April 22) writes that since “Colorado’s citizens and businesses deserve to know the real cost of the health-care insurance,” politicians should force insurance companies to provide “transparency.” But we really deserve to know how politicians have inflated insurance costs in the first place.

Tax policy encourages employer-based insurance, which essentially chains us to one insurer. Shielded from competition, insurers need not compete on price very much.

State-level bureaucrats succumb to special interests by burdening small-group policies with many benefits we do not need. The Congressional Budget Office reports that such mandated benefits increase premiums by at least six percent [p. 16, 20], and possibly more than ten. It also reports that community rating laws increase premiums by nine percent [p. 16].

What’s becoming increasingly transparent is where allegedly well-intentioned controls like House Bill 1389 will lead: politician-controlled health care and insurance where bureaucrats make decisions that rightfully belong to you and your physician.