Right to Opine

…after collecting a ransom. Continuing a craven policy that only encourages more piracy.

Your safety is your responsibility. An estranged husband barged into a small New Jersey church and killed his wife, injuring a couple other people in the process.

[…] active restraining orders had been issued in California and New Jersey against him after domestic violence complaints by his wife, who had moved recently to New Jersey.

Those orders obviously protected her, eh? If you need a restraining order, you need a plan for your own personal defense. The courts won’t protect you. The police won’t protect you. The responsibility really is yours.

[Note: the biggest mistake this woman made, sadly, was that she moved from one gun grabbing state to another. Both CA and NJ make it very difficult for people to legally provide for their own defense in public. She was obviously in danger and should have moved to a gun-friendly state where she could protect herself.]

Once more demonstrating that gun free zones aren’t we have a fatal shooting in a mall in Tukwila, WA. The Southcenter mall is owned by the Westfield Group, an international real estate giant whose shopping centers all have an official “no guns” policy. That worked really well today, now, didn’t it?

“Clearly, such a senseless act in our community heightens everyone’s state of awareness and concern. Our security precautions reflect that heightened state,” mall management said in an unsigned statement Sunday.

And those “security precautions” won’t do a single thing to make the mall safer. Thugs who have ignored the posted signs and mall cops to this point aren’t going to be swayed by more rules, more signs, or more flashlight-toting insecurity officers.

For those who think the police are the answer:

SWAT teams from all over Puget Sound converged on the mall, which was locked down for six hours. Store employees and customers were allowed to exit in groups and Murphy said the shooter “must have got out with the crowd.”

Yep. Loads of officers showed up but the perp got away. The police can’t be everywhere, folks, and by the time they do arrive, the damage has already been done. When the shooting starts, if you’re relying on the police for protection you’re already a victim. Safety, both public and private, begins with personal responsibility.

New methods are being developed to fight malaria. Of course, they’re in limited supply and rather expensive. You know, we already have a sure fire way to make a huge dent in this major killer. It’s called DDT, and if it weren’t for environmentalists who care more about harming animals than the deaths of almost 900,000 humans annually, this wouldn’t even be an issue.

One round to the good guys. This is exactly the correct way to combat piracy. Kudos to the Indian Navy for taking their responsibility seriously. The Brits took out a pirate vessel a week ago, too. Her Majesty’s Navy is laudable, but don’t tell that to English bureaucrats. The marine director of the International Chamber of Shipping (London) would rather have the pirates arrested and taken to court. Why, exactly? The traditional penalty for piracy is death, a fitting end for these scum that would not be meted out by England’s legal system.

Some, however, aren’t getting the message. The CEO of a Norwegian shipping firm says his company will reroute their ships around the southern end of Africa, at significant expense. He bemoans the lack of action by international authorities but can’t seem to see the obvious solution: take responsibility for your own safety and arm your ships!

Choosing to settle a lawsuit over homosexual matchmaking, eHarmony has caved in to the gay “rights” movement. Some details of the settlement can be found in the article, but what bothers me most is the precedent. eHarmony has been one of the biggest success stories in online matchmaking, largely due to its foundation on Christian principles (note that doesn’t mean it caters only to Christians or somehow excludes other religions or atheists). It would have been better to follow the lead of the Catholic Church, which stopped providing adoption services in Massachusetts when that state required that the Church allow gays to use its services. eHarmony should have simply ceased accepting applicants from the state of New Jersey and closed its business there, taking the financial loss rather than compromising principle.

Call me ill-informed, but did you know that in England you can’t be a member of one political party if you’re a police officer? Yes the British National Party is racist (whites only), but making it illegal to be a member? We should be thankful for our freedoms here in the U.S. Why in the world is the left so enamored of Europe? Political correctness run amok.

The California State University system is in a pinch. Due to budget constraints they’re going to cut freshman enrollment by 10% this year. The state simply can’t afford to lay out more money for the system. There is an alternative, though: raise tuition. Currently the state pays about $2.97 billion versus $1.5 billion paid by students. If the average cost of attending a CSU school is $3,800 would raising it by even 50% deny anyone an education? The real problem is that CA residents have come to expect such low rates and rely on the government to provide the bulk of funding. Note to CA residents: your state is broke. It’s time to move away from that nanny state mentality.

A recent survey indicates that almost half of America’s primary care physicians would leave medicine if they had the opportunity. The main reason given was “red tape generated from insurance companies and government agencies.” Per the same article another survey shows less than 2% of medical students are going into primary care. Insurance payments are going down and Medicare/Medicaid just don’t pay. The solution to this problem is obviously not to increase the involvement of insurance and government—the plan proposed by our next president—but to reduce it.

One step in the right direction would be to have patients pay more (or all) of the fees for primary care and to reduce (or eliminate) the share paid by insurance. A number of benefits would immediately accrue. First, physicians would receive more immediate payment (increased cash flow) and be encouraged to stay in primary care. This is crucial to avoiding a critical crisis in our health care system. They’d have less paperwork to deal with and be far less dependent on prompt payment by insurance or Medicare/Medicaid. Second, with patients responsible for a higher share of the payments they’d become more cost conscious, generating competition and driving down costs. Additionally, insurance premiums would come down as the industry moves toward plans that cover mainly, if not exclusively, major medical (e.g., surgery, chemotherapy) rather than primary care.

The current system doesn’t work. The fix is not to add more of the same (by making insurance available to everyone) but to make a fundamental change toward individual responsibility.

Are we even seriously considering bailing out the U.S. auto industry? Their financial woes are largely of their own (and unions’) making. Where does this insanity end? You make bad decisions, you suffer the consequences. Every industry has ups and downs. Even in a strong economy it’s a bad idea to prop up poor management. In a downturn it’s disastrous. What’s next? The mining, timber, electronics, and semiconductor industries are hurting as well. I suppose it’s only logical that we should shell out billions to keep them all going as is instead of forcing them to make tough (i.e., good) decisions and restructure their businesses.

At some point we have to make grown up decisions. If the domestic auto industry completely tanks, there will certainly be a lot of people hurt. We must,however, get away from the welfare mentality and ask what’s good for the country. Corporate welfare is not, particularly when it comes at the cost of continually increasing federal debt and placing that burden on future generations (since ours certainly won’t be able to pay it off).

Back to basics, folks. Personal responsibility. Consequences.