BloodhoundBlog

There’s always something to howl about.

Author: Greg Swann (page 63 of 209)

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

March 24, 2010

My kind of doctor: “I am responding to the situation created by this new law by exercising my right not to participate in any health insurance program.”

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A letter from a sane doctor, posted at The Corner on NationalReview.com:

March 23, 2010

My Dear Patient,

As you must know, Congress has just passed extensive legislation governing health care delivery and insurance systems. Whether you agree with what it does or not, we are all now subject to this law and its sweeping changes.

I have always conducted my medical practice with my patient’s best interests as my first priority. Although not legally obliged to do so, I have routinely provided you with a receipt that has all the codes necessary to bill your own health insurance company for any reimbursement to which you are entitled. Until now, that insurance company was a free enterprise despite the fact that it was heavily regulated by state and federal laws. Now the situation is quite different. Through the new law’s mandates, regulatory powers and reform, health insurance is and will be largely a government activity which will have an ever larger jurisdiction over how doctors practice, make clinical judgments and are paid.

The new law provides for about 150 new government agencies, many of which are designed to be ‘oversight’ bureaucracies which will have the right to decide what medical care is legal to provide through insurance. Among other things, they will have the right to review my medical care of you and read your medical record. Now, as soon as you submit our economic transaction to your insurance company for reimbursement, you have involved me in these regulations and put me in the jurisdiction of government for my activities, decisions and behavior as your doctor.

No one can have two masters. Either I can serve you as my patient or I can serve the government. Either I can continue to make your welfare and health my only concern, including the protection of your privacy and medical records, or I can abide by ever-increasing amounts of government regulations and dictates to my decisions. I can’t do both. I choose to continue to follow my conscience and practice medicine to serve you.

For this reason, I am responding to the situation created by this new law by exercising Read more

March 24, 2010

BloodhoundRealty.com’s Greg Swann and Canadian real estate investor Bill Chipman featured today on an NPR Radio story on Phoenix rental-home investing for buyers from Canada.

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Click on the embedded audio player below or read the story on-line. Reporter Peter O’Dowd — a genuine born-here Phoenician and a Brophy Prep alum — spent about four hours, total, with Bill Chipman and me, an amazing commitment of effort. And that photo above? That’s what paradise looks like. We have plenty to go around…

March 24, 2010

Historian Robert Higgs: “Citizen, be careful what you wish for; the government just might give it to you good and hard.”

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Nothing Outside the State

by Robert Higgs

A popular slogan of the Italian Fascists under Mussolini was, “Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato” (everything for the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state). I recall this expression frequently as I observe the state’s far-reaching penetration of my own society.

What of any consequence remains beyond the state’s reach in the United States today? Not wages, working conditions, or labor-management relations; not health care; not money, banking, or financial services; not personal privacy; not transportation or communication; not education or scientific research; not farming or food supply; not nutrition or food quality; not marriage or divorce; not child care; not provision for retirement; not recreation; not insurance of any kind; not smoking or drinking; not gambling; not political campaign funding or publicity; not real estate development, house construction, or housing finance; not international travel, trade, or finance; not a thousand other areas and aspects of social life.

One might affirm that the state still keeps its hands off religion, but it actually does not. It certifies certain religious organizations as legitimate and condemns others, as many young men discovered to their sorrow when they attempted to claim the status of conscientious objector during the Vietnam War. It assigns members of certain religions, but not members of others, as chaplains in its armed services.

Besides, isn’t statism itself a religion for most Americans? Do they not honor the state above all else, above even the commandments of a conventional religion they may embrace? If their religion tells them “thou shalt not murder,” but the state orders them to murder, then they murder. If the state tells them to rob, to destroy property, and to imprison innocent people, then, notwithstanding any religious strictures, they rob, destroy property, and imprison innocent people, as millions of victims of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and millions of victims of the so-called Drug War in this country will attest. Moreover, in every form of adversity, Americans look to the state for their personal salvation, just as before the twentieth century their ancestors looked Read more

March 21, 2010

You’re going to have to jail me, President Obama: I might be a sucker, but I will not be a blood-sucker

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Kicked back to the top from last Ocotober. –GSS

 
I don’t go to the doctor very often. I don’t get sick much, and, even when I do, I’m not always willing to make time to do anything about it. I work very hard, and all I want to do is work, and I don’t want to have to take time to slow down even when my body really needs to slow down.

In consequence, I am the perfect stooge for the ObamaCare scheme that Americans seem hell-bent on ramming down each other’s throats. Welfare scams only work when there are people willing to produce wealth long after it has become obvious that working hard is for suckers — when all the clued-in people have already jumped on the gravy train.

In the case of socialized medicine, the clued-in people will discover more and more things wrong with their health. Why not? It will be people like me — who don’t get sick and who refuse to let illness keep us from working — who will be footing the bill.

And that’s just the way things are in the welfare-state we have made of this once-free country. Working women defer motherhood so welfare moms can pop out kid after kid, each one endowed at birth with a tax-funded sinecure. Conscientious parents pay twice for their children’s education, once in taxes to pay for useless public schools and once again in tuition for the private schools their children actually attend. If you refuse to live on the dole, you have to save for two retirements: One that you won’t take and one that you will have to guard, night and day, so it won’t be taken from you.

That’s what we are, by now. Suckers on one side of the room, proud but tight-lipped. And blood-suckers on the other side, belligerent and bellicose, constantly demanding more and more largesse from the stoical, stolid suckers.

Fine. It is what it is, and nothing is going to change any time soon — except for the worse. But as much as I might be in this mess, as much as I might Read more

March 21, 2010

SplendorQuest: Redemption is egoism in action: Even if other people are criminal, I am not — but I will not cause them to become good by becoming a criminal myself.

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I wrote this a dozen years ago, and I’ve posted it here before. It’s apposite today, because, to all indications, we are all about to be involuntarily inducted into a cannibal cult. My question for you: Will you choose to be devoured by your neighbors, or will you elect to devour them instead? –GSS

 
What I want to discuss is Socrates’ question about whether it is better to inflict an injury or to have an injury inflicted upon you. It’s a favorite of sophists and sophomores, I know, but I think it strikes at the very core of justice. The justice I seek and seek to defend is not “out there”, apart from myself. Justice (or injustice) is not what others do to me, it’s what I do to myself and to others. Where I find myself availing myself of the fallacies tu quoque or two wrongs make a right, I am rationalizing injustice, and the worst havoc I am wreaking is upon my own ego.

The Nazarene’s answer to Socrates was this: It is better to have an injury inflicted upon you, because redemption is still possible to one who has not inflicted injury upon another. I don’t believe in an afterlife and I don’t believe redemption hinges upon any one event. But I do believe that a “justice” that is itself unjust is vain at best and evil at worst.

We can make a joke by saying, “Political philosophy is the means by which ethical systems betray themselves.” There are actually a host of reasons for this, and all of them are amusing to me. For one, a political system has a meta-goal apart from the ethical system in which it is rooted: It must function in the real world.

Moreover, the political system itself has a meta-ethical or even extra-ethical goal in that its proponents will tend to imbue it with what they view are essential survival characteristics even if these betray the ethical system in which the political philosophy is putatively based. Any form of argument that the polity can or should or must do what it would be immoral or Read more

March 20, 2010

So there’s this huge interent scandal at the NAR, except there are no details about why it’s a scandal, and the “researchers” behind the claims are keeping their names secret. Want to know more? All you have to do is cough up twenty bucks a month.

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Do you want potent evidence that the #RTB movement has nothing to do with actually raising standards of service and care among Realtors? The organizers of the so-called Raising The Bar push did not try to enlist our support here, even though BloodhoundBlog is by far the loudest voice on the net on the subject of real estate professionals bringing better value to consumers.

In the same respect, I am deeply suspicious of putative anti-NAR movements that do not contact us. This is the philosophical home of the idea of supplanting the NAR. Doing anything to undermine the real estate vampire cartel without us is a non-starter.

So I didn’t know, at first, what to make of NARScandal.com, a web site that spammed me this afternoon. I tried reading the articles, but they’re all implication with no actual details. The word “scandal” is thrown about liberally, but I saw no evidence of anything even remotely like a scandal on the site.

As an example, the implication is that RPR is some kind of evil scheme concocted by arch-villains like Dale Stinton — who goes about cleverly camouflaged as a fat old dotard to confound his enemies. I’m a beta tester for RPR, and I can tell you with confidence that RPR is reasonably interesting as yet another Realty.bot and extremely boring as the lynchpin of a conspiracy plot. Do not ever expect me to say anything good about the NAR, but RPR, for what I’ve seen of it, is tapioca in technicolor, no threat to anyone, not even to Zillow or Trulia.

So where’s the scandal? Moreover, who is the scandal-monger? I dug all through the site — and its whois record — and could not find anyone willing to stand up on his hind legs and claim to be the creator of the site or the author of all the going-nowhere “exposés.” One could argue that Stinton and other NAR poohbahs have a libel claim, except that nothing potentially libelous — or even interesting — is published at the site.

So I kept digging and finally came to this:

Of course…

The NAR is a criminal conspiracy Read more

March 19, 2010

Noble savages not so noble? “There are all these aspects to our lives that just seem to work, because we are not actually baboons.”

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We have been cursed, as a civilization, because so much of the social sciences side of the university quadrangle has for so long been in the thrall of Marxism. It has been difficult for intellectuals to see the world for what it is, so avidly have they sought to portray it as the product of their preconceptions. Nothing changes quickly, but it is nice to see academics actually testing their theories in reality, rather than just blathering on out of prejudice.

Why am I in such a celebratory mood? Anthropologists in Canada have discovered that the so-called “noble savage” is quite a bit less than noble, while the much maligned greedy capitalists of the West are in fact kinder, gentler, more trusting people. This is the sort of thing that should be obvious to anyone with eyes, but it takes an effort, apparently, to get a social scientist to take note of the territory instead of insisting on the sacred validity of the truth presented by the map.

From Canada’s National Post:

Free-enterprising, impersonal markets may seem cutthroat and mean-spirited, but a provocative new study says markets have been a force for good over the last 10,000 years, helping to drive the evolution of more trusting and co-operative societies.

“We live in a much kinder, gentler world than most humans have lived in,” says anthropologist Joe Henrich of the University of British Columbia, lead author of the study that helps topple long-held stereotypes.

The finding, reported in the journal Science, suggests people trust and play fair with strangers because markets and religion — not some deep psychological instinct inherited from our dim tribal past — have helped shape our neural circuitry over the eons.

More:

The study found that the likelihood that people “played fair” with strangers increased with the degree people were integrated into markets and participated in a world religion. Participants in the larger-scale societies were also more likely to punish players who did not play fair.

The hunter-gatherer and tribal societies studied are known for sharing among family and close acquaintances. But the researchers found fair play in monetary transactions with strangers was almost an alien Read more

March 16, 2010

SplendorQuest: Xavier’s destiny

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A Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie story

“Madre de dios…!”

Mrs. Marquez said that, and it seemed a fair estimate to me. Everywhere we looked in the overlit room we saw things of wonder and beauty and uncontested menace. Despite the din, I heard myself groan, and I wasn’t utterly sure I’d done the right thing. Walking through the valley of the shadow of death in a grade school cafeteria is one thing. Pushing an underfed eight-year-old boychild ahead of you is another.

The road I walk is the path that separates the straights from the crooks, the pencil-fine line that splits the people we call “decent” from the sneaks, the freaks and the side-show geeks. I have a scruple or two, painted and waxed, so I don’t quite fit in among the bungled and the botched. And yet I do have an itinerary, and I don’t have much of an agenda, so the quality folk are never dismayed to see the back of me. Neither fish nor fowl, always on the prowl, quick to resign from any community that would even consider having me as a member. This is the life I’ve chosen for myself, after all, and I’d be daft to beef about it.

Still, there are Other Matters to consider. Among them: I’ve been nineteen-years-old forever, but I’ve been nineteen for a lot of years. I’m making a buck or two more than I ever have before, and staying in one spot a day or two — or a week or two, or a month or two — is not only more desirable than it ever was before, it’s suddenly financially possible where it never was before. Plus which, I don’t love the cold and I do love the sweet smell of orange blossoms. And to make a belabored excuse slightly less laborious, I’ll just come out with it: I hung out in a half-big town halfway from nowhere for so long that I got myself well and truly hooked in a scheme straight out of the handbook of the straights.

I was renting week-to-week at the Orangeview Estates, and my next-door neighbors in the Read more

March 7, 2010

Reflecting His Radiance . . .

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A Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie story

“Imagine yourself larger,” said His Radiance.

Stopped me in my tracks.

“Imagine yourself larger. You are everything you’ve ever hoped to be, but you’re afraid to let yourself be it. Free your mind. Imagine yourself larger.”

I imagined myself warier. Hanging around in a college town you’ll pay if you let your guard down. Things are not always what they seem, after all, and that’s the point. The bohemian enclave on the left bank of every university in America is a little Accidental Disneyland where distraction is the main attraction. So even as I approached His Radiance, I backed off mentally.

He was not a pretty man, particularly, but something inside him was beautiful and subtly seductive and, I thought, very, very dangerous. He was Hispanic, and he held himself like a king. He was wearing a radiant white linen suit in the hot summer sun, and the contrast of the bright white against his brown skin was stunning. His sleek black hair was swept straight back from his forehead and his teeth were straight and white and perfect.

In truth, he made me think that this might be what god would look like, if any god of any religion had ever managed to grow beyond the age of three. I called myself an idiot for thinking that, but I thought it anyway.

“Imagine yourself whole. Rid yourself of every drain on your energy. Purge yourself of doubt and fear. Stretch yourself to reach the completion of your life’s destiny.”

He was standing in a little cobbled alleyway between a New Age bookstore and a fern bar, and I wasn’t sure whose wares he’d been sampling.

“Imagine yourself glorious. You are an immense soaring bird, and the Earth is your toy, not your tether.”

And you can only spit so much before you hit your own shoe: I wasn’t buying a word of it, and yet I sat down on a bench to hear His Radiance out.

“We are not here to crawl. We are not here to grovel. We are not here to plead and suffer and mourn.”

“Yeah? What we here for then, stick?” The Gangster Read more

March 6, 2010

The regal, indomitable arrogance of a healthy, normal Bloodhound

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[Teri mentioned this old post (from June 2007) to me on Friday, and I’m revisiting the third act because it’s pertinent to some new business I want to take up tomorrow or Monday. –GSS]

 
Extracted from BloodhoundBlog post #1590:

This came in as a comment last night.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to be[Teri mentioned this old post (from June 2007) to me on Friday, and I’m revisiting the third act because it’s pertinent to some new business I want to take up tomorrow or Monday. –GSS]

 
Extracted from BloodhoundBlog post #1590:

This came in as a comment last night.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to be competitive and wanting to win, but, reading your posts the last few weeks, you ego is a little bit too big at times. Yes, you are a heck of a writer and you have one heck of a blog and you have assembled a heck of a team of contributors, but your ego is getting a bit cocky.

This is ad hominem, so it violates our comments policy, but I’m not averse to discussing the issue it raises in a general way.

[….]

A Bloodhound’s virtues are genetic accidents, but that doesn’t make them less than perfectly admirable, whether evidenced in the dog or anthropomorphized and expressed in thoroughly conscious human behavior. Brought up right, a Bloodhound is a natural alpha, regal and indomitable. The dog will move with a lanky, un-self-conscious arrogance that is simply heart-breakingly beautiful to look upon: This what a thriving organism looks like.

I am steadfastly, philosophically opposed to the idea of humility. I think it is one of many evil ideas foisted off on us by malefactors who love us best at our absolute worst. To say to me, “You’re arrogant,” or, “you have a big ego,” is no reproach. On the one hand, it is a statement of obvious fact. But on the other, it puts me on my guard against you. A healthy, normal human being moves and acts and thinks and speaks with the lanky arrogance of a healthy, normal Bloodhound. When people don’t behave that way, I want to know why. When Read more

March 3, 2010

Computer “expert” insists, in 1995, that, “No online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.”

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Technology “expert” Clifford Stoll precisely 15 years ago in Newsweek:

After two decades online, I’m perplexed. It’s not that I haven’t had a gas of a good time on the Internet. I’ve met great people and even caught a hacker or two. But today, I’m uneasy about this most trendy and oversold community. Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic.

Baloney. Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.

Consider today’s online world. The Usenet, a worldwide bulletin board, allows anyone to post messages across the nation. Your word gets out, leapfrogging editors and publishers. Every voice can be heard cheaply and instantly. The result? Every voice is heard. The cacophony more closely resembles citizens band radio, complete with handles, harassment, and anonymous threats. When most everyone shouts, few listen. How about electronic publishing? Try reading a book on disc. At best, it’s an unpleasant chore: the myopic glow of a clunky computer replaces the friendly pages of a book. And you can’t tote that laptop to the beach. Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we’ll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Internet. Uh, sure.

Wicked stupid, huh? It gets better:

Then there’s cyberbusiness. We’re promised instant catalog shopping—just point and click for great deals. We’ll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obsolete. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet—which there isn’t—the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople.

It’s interesting to me to note that the predictions Stoll is denouncing were Read more

March 2, 2010

SplendorQuest: Should we celebrate John Galt Day on June 1st?

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I wrote this coming on four years ago, one of my last posts to PresenceOfMind.net, my philosophical/political/literary home on the web. The planned strike of our undocumented friends has come and gone, but the underlying idea — a strike against the looters on June 1st — still resonates with me. What say you? Is this something worth pursuing? –GSS

 

Francisco looked silently out at the darkness. The fire of the mills was dying down. There was only a faint tinge of red left on the edge of the earth, just enough to outline the scraps of clouds ripped by the tortured battle of the storm in the sky. Dim shapes kept sweeping through space and vanishing, shapes which were branches, but looked as if they were the fury of the wind made visible.

“It’s a terrible night for any animal caught unprotected on that plain,” said Francisco D’Anconia. “This is when one should appreciate the meaning of being a man.” –Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

The photo above is the Sonoran Desert, a vast unpopulated wasteland in the midst of which is Metropolitan Phoenix, home to three million children of Cain.

Contrary to popular opinion, the desert was not designed by Walt Disney, and it will kill you with a blithe indifference if you make even one small mistake. If you have never been to the desert, you do not have a referent for solitude. Far more than the serenity that comes from a fundamental awareness of your own aloneness, true solitude must carry with it at least a tinge of fear. When you experience a silence so total that you can hear the footfalls of a tiny lizard fifty yards away, you also come to realize that no one, no one, no one will hear you if you shout for help. Twist an ankle and you die. Lose the path and you die. Misjudge the weather and you die. Set you hand where you should not — and you die.

And yet I can go to the desert on a lark, armed as a child of Cain with nothing but two bottles of water, a tank Read more

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