A Doctor’s Plan for Legal Industry Reform

Dr. Richard B. Rafal, a radiologist in New York City, has written an interesting and spirited op-ed for the Wall Street Journal. He writes, “Since we are moving toward socialism with ObamaCare, the time has come to do the same with other professions—especially lawyers. Physician committees can decide whether lawyers are necessary in any given situation.”

Following are highlights of a proposed bill authorizing the dismantling of the current framework of law practice and instituting socialized legal care:

• Legal “DRGs.” Each potential legal situation will be assigned a relative value, and charges limited to this amount. Program participation and acceptance of this amount is mandatory, regardless of the number of hours spent on the matter. Government schedules of flat fees for each service, analogous to medicine’s Diagnosis Related Groups (DRGs), will be issued. For example, any divorce will have a set fee of, say, $1,000, regardless of its simplicity or complexity. This will eliminate shady hourly billing. Niggling fees such as $2 per page photocopied or faxed would disappear. Who else nickels-and-dimes you while at the same time charging hundreds of dollars per hour? I’m surprised lawyers don’t tack shipping and handling onto their bills.

• Legal “death panels.” Over 75? You will not be entitled to legal care for any matter. Why waste money on those who are only going to die soon? We can decrease utilization, save money and unclog the courts simultaneously. Grandma, you’re on your own.

• Discourage/eliminate specialization. Legal specialists with extra training and experience charge more money, contributing to increased costs of legal care, making it unaffordable for many. This reform will guarantee a selection of mediocre, unmotivated attorneys but should help slow rising legal costs. Big shot under indictment? Classified National Archives documents down your pants? Sitting president defending against impeachment? Have FBI agents found $90,000 in your freezer? Too bad. Under reform you too may have to go to the government legal shop for advice.

• New government oversight. Government overhead to manage the legal system will include a cabinet secretary, commissioners, ombudsmen, auditors, assistants, czars and departments.

• Collect data about the supply of and demand for attorneys. Create a commission to study the diversity and geographic distribution of attorneys, with power to stipulate and enforce corrective actions to right imbalances. The more bureaucracy the better. One can never have too many eyes watching these sleazy sneaks.

• Lawyer Reduction Act (H.R. -3200). A self-explanatory bill that not only decreases the number of law students, but also arbitrarily removes 3,200 attorneys from practice each year. Textbook addition by subtraction.

Citizens and experts across the nation are throwing up evidence as to why nationalization of health care is wrong and impractical. But it really all comes down to one central point: government is far less efficient than the free market. While the latter leads to prosperity and innovation, the former is the path to stagnation.

Diversity Czar Threatens Free Speech

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No Risk, No Reward

Has any society ever recovered from an economic recession by holding what ground it has? Absolutely not. Progress requires forward movement, no man has ever reached his destination by standing still. The prime example of a society that stood still in order to save its economy is Soviet Russia. An example of a society that pulled itself out of recession by unleashing the force of individual ambition is the United States following the Great Depression. No, it was not the New Deal or World War II that facilitated economic recovery, it was the forward movement of risk takers that drove innovation and production. Now, in the midst of another severe economic downturn, we are once again embracing a “hold the line” mentality, and rejecting ambition as the motor of economic success.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Just when the economy needs risk-taking the most, risk-takers are under the most threat. The Treasury now wants venture-capital firms declared as systemic risks and put under tight restrictions as part of the broader re-regulation of financial firms. Venture capitalists argue that since they don’t use debt and their firms are comparatively small, they shouldn’t come under rules designed for highly leveraged, too-big-to-fail banks.

How this debate turns out matters, because some 20% of U.S. gross national product is created by companies that were formed through venture backing. They include Intel, Apple and Google. How policy makers treat venture capital is a measure of the amount of innovation and enterprise that happens in an economy, with more regulation leading to less innovation.

This is a good time to recall that the venture-capital industry was born as a reaction to New Deal regulations that stifled capital and prolonged the Depression. The country’s first venture-capital firm (other than family-run funds) was American Research and Development, planned in the 1930s and launched after World War II in Boston.

Its leader was longtime Harvard Business School professor Georges Doriot, who is the subject of a fascinating recent biography, “Creative Capital,” by Spencer Ante. Mr. Ante, a BusinessWeek editor, tells me that as he researched the topic “one of the most surprising things I learned was how concerned financiers and industrialists had become about the riskless economy in direct response to the New Deal. Even in the 1930s, people understood that small business was the lifeblood of the economy.”

American Research and Development backed early-stage companies deemed too risky by banks and investment trusts at the time. The firm was an early investor in Digital Equipment Corp., the Boston-area company that revolutionized computing.

Uncertainty about which regulations applied to early-stage investing slowed the growth of venture capital. It wasn’t until deregulation in the late 1970s that the industry took off. The capital gains tax rate was cut to 28% from nearly 50% in 1978, and for the first time pension funds and other fiduciaries could include venture capital as part of an overall portfolio. During this vital period venture firms began to nourish what are today’s high-tech leaders, from information technology and the Internet to genetic research and health care.

The proposal now to tighten how venture firms operate suggests that we are in a stage of the regulatory cycle closer to the New Deal than to the entrepreneurial era that followed. Adding regulatory burdens would do nothing to help the investors in venture funds who are willing to take the big risks, knowing that about half of venture-backed companies fail. It would only increase the costs of doing business and make risk-takers more risk-averse.

No venture capital firm has asked to be bailed out, and none are too big to fail. As hard as it is for regulators to understand, the nature of venture capital is such that it should not even aspire to be a low-risk enterprise.

The practical arguments against further regulation (particularly of small businesses and risk takers) are overwhelming. From a philosophical standpoint, we have to ask the question: by what right? Was the U.S. not founded on the belief that every individual should be free to stand or fall, succeed or fail on his own merits and by his own strength?

Once again, the U.S. government is punishing individuals for showing initiative and daring to succeed above and beyond their fellow man –individuals who have asked nothing of society beyond the freedom to live their own lives.

In Amerika, Health Care Reform You!

At what point did it become acceptable for the President to warn citizens that they are “on thin ice” in regards to exercising their First Amendment rights? The Huffington Post reports:

The White House struck back hard on Friday against conservative pundits and town hall protesters who have compared the President to Hitler and his policies to Nazism, saying that the critics are “on thin ice” and should “take that temperature down a bit.”

Recently, the AFL-CIO sent union members to town hall meetings to counter conservative activists. Ostensibly, there is concern about potential violence on the part of health care nationalization opponents. But if there is a legitimate concern for the safety of town hall attendees and members of Congress, why not dispatch law enforcement?

The answer is because there has been no widespread trend of violence on the part of these outraged citizens. There have been isolated incidents of violence, but these – as of yet – seem to have arisen mainly from the typical tension of large, politically charged crowds and not from any involved plot. The debates are certainly heated, but we’ve seen several YouTube videos documenting the phenomena and very few show actual violence. If legislators have a problem with angry constitutents, perhaps they should rethink their agenda.

The real problem is not the tone of the debate – that could be dealt with by a larger security presence at these meetings – but the reaction from the White House. There is now a government-sponsored method to report “disinformation” or “fishy” reports regarding President Obama’s health care plan. As much as I am opposed to our President’s collectivist agenda, I take pride in not falling prey to any kind of ridiculous “Barack Hussein Obama is the anti-Christ!” mentality. But when I see the Executive Branch setting up a system for citizens to report one another to the federal government, I can’t help but see flashes of hammers and sickles in my eyes. Union muscle sent in to counter disgruntled citizens, Lenin-esque “Hope” posters, un-elected “Czars” accountable only to the President, and now admonishments to report dissenters — I must admit to being a little scared.

Democrats should be listening to their constituents instead of attempting to play Chicago-style hardball politics. President Obama isn’t shy about throwing his political weight around, but Congressional Democrats should remember that they have midterm elections in 15 months. If the economy doesn’t improve by then (and I doubt it will, given all of the economic theory against the President’s policies), voters might opt for a change in Congressional leadership. And if a more conservative Congress manages to reign in government growth and spending between 2010 and 2012, President Obama might be in for a tough fight – especially if he has to face a candidate with a strong economic record.

The Times They Are A-Changin’

It’s my opinion that most Americans view the state of freedom as natural, while slavery (by which I mean any forced subordination to a higher temporal power) is viewed as an aberration.  This is wildly inconsistent with the record of history – as I fear the United States of America will soon be living proof of.

“The biggest problems that we’re facing right now have to do with George Bush trying to bring more and more power into the executive branch and not go through Congress at all. And that’s what I intend to reverse when I’m president of the United States.” – Sen. Barack Obama, March 31, 2008

To say President Obama failed to follow through on this promise is an understatement. By appointing a virtual army of “czars” — each wholly unaccountable to Congress yet tasked with spearheading major policy efforts for the White House — in his first six months, the president has embarked on an end-run around the legislative branch of historic proportions.

To be sure, the appointment of a few special officers to play a constructive role in a given administration is nothing new. What is new is the elevation of so many czars, with so much authority on endless policy fronts. Vesting such broad authority in the hands of people not subjected to Senate confirmation and congressional oversight poses a grave threat to our system of checks and balances.

At last count, there were at least 32 active czars that we knew of, meaning the current administration has more czars than Imperial Russia.

Full article: “Obama’s 32 Czars”

This article brings to mind a quote from President Ronald Reagan:

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children what it was once like in the United States when men were free.

Barack Obama has shown very clearly, through his various acts as President, that he does not value individual liberty. But he is not the problem, only a symptom. Americans have taken liberty for granted, and as such they have not sought to understand the underlying principles that are essential to the continued existence of liberty. Without a basic understanding of these principles, we have for too long been willing to elect politicians that do not put these principles into practice. Both sides of the aisle have been complicit in this. The political ideology of collectivism is a cancer that has been growing in this country for many years – one that we’ve ignored. And, like all cancers, pretending it does not exist in no way detracts from its malignancy. How do you rid a body of cancer? Cut it out at the source. What is the source of the collectivist cancer in our society’s ideology? The removal of principles from our consciousness. Until and unless we once again become creatures of the mind rather than our feelings or impulses, we will never again know the liberty that has made this country great.

Who are Obama’s czars?

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