Someone once observed that the problem with conservatives is that they want to ban anything that they don’t like and the problem with liberals is that they think anything good ought to be subsidized by taxpayer dollars. And so it goes with needle exchanges. Too many jurisdictions ban needles from stores. And then the liberals who fight the bans want to leap over to government funding for needle exchanges. It is as if no one has considered the idea that the government should just stay out of it altogether.

In a speech yesterday in defense of his health care plan, President Obama used an interesting analogy to dismiss criticism that the inclusion of a government-run insurance option could undermine private insurers:

“UPS and FedEx are doing just fine… It’s the Post Office that’s always having problems.”

Comparing the USPS with a proposed government-run insurance plan is probably counterproductive for the President’s aims. But making the analogy and deriding the government-run mail carrier — while acknowledging that private-sector UPS and FedEx are “fine” — provides some nice ammo for those of us who think the government should be less involved in both health care and mail delivery.

Now I understand that comparing the USPS to FedEx and UPS isn’t exactly apples to apples. But that’s due at least in part to the fact that the USPS has a government-granted monopoly on first (and third) class mail. When it comes to mailing a letter, there is no private option for Americans.

Last week the Government Accountability Office reported on the state of Government Mail and the situation isn’t pretty:

USPS projects for fiscal year 2009:

• a net loss of $7 billion, even if it achieves record savings of more than $6 billion;
• an increase in outstanding debt to a total of $10.2 billion; and,
• despite this borrowing, an unprecedented $1 billion cash shortfall.

USPS projects cash shortfalls because cost cutting and rate increases will not fully offset the impact of mail volume declines and other factors that increase costs—notably semiannual cost-of-living allowances (COLA) for employees covered by collective bargaining agreements. Compensation and benefits constitute close to 80 percent of USPS’s costs—a percentage that has remained similar over the years despite major advances in technology and the automation of postal operations. Also, USPS continues to pay a higher share of employee health benefit premiums than other federal agencies. Finally, USPS has high overhead (institutional) costs that are hard to change in the short term, such as the costs of providing universal service with 6‑day delivery, a network of 37,000 post offices and retail facilities, and a delivery network of more than 149 million addresses.

It’s time to give Americans a private option for sending mail, with privatization of the USPS being the ultimate goal.

Whole Foods founder and CEO John Mackey has an op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal titled, “The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare.” Let’s just say Whole Foods may not be asked to cater any Democratic Party gatherings any time soon:

While we clearly need health-care reform, the last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health-care system. Instead, we should be trying to achieve reforms by moving in the opposite direction—toward less government control and more individual empowerment.

Mackey then lists several alternatives to ObamaCare, including broader health savings accounts, letting people purchase health insurance across state lines, giving people who purchase their own coverage the same tax status as employer-sponsored insurance, and Medicare reform.

Mackey shows little patience for those who claim we have a right to health care:

At Whole Foods we allow our team members to vote on what benefits they most want the company to fund. Our Canadian and British employees express their benefit preferences very clearly—they want supplemental health-care dollars that they can control and spend themselves without permission from their governments. Why would they want such additional health-care benefit dollars if they already have an “intrinsic right to health care”? The answer is clear—no such right truly exists in either Canada or the U.K.—or in any other country.

Man, what a neanderthal. He must be anti-reform. Except:

Health-care reform is very important. Whatever reforms are enacted it is essential that they be financially responsible, and that we have the freedom to choose doctors and the health-care services that best suit our own unique set of lifestyle choices. We are all responsible for our own lives and our own health. We should take that responsibility very seriously and use our freedom to make wise lifestyle choices that will protect our health. Doing so will enrich our lives and will help create a vibrant and sustainable American society.

How will the White House Snitch Project grapple with this one? Claim that the founder of Whole Foods is in league with the insurance companies? In thrall to Big PhRMA? No, wait, that’s the Obama administration.…

A classic health care protest:

Read about it in David Hyman’s book, Medicare Meets Mephistopheles.

At his town meeting in New Hampshire, President Obama urged people not to listen to those who seek to “scare and mislead the American people.” Meanwhile, his new White House website “Reality Check” — your tax dollars at work, folks, on political propaganda — warns supporters that “the road ahead will surely reveal more aggressive efforts from defenders of the status quo to confuse and scare Americans with half-truths and outright lies.”

I immediately thought of former Attorney General John Ashcroft’s notorious declaration in December 2001: “to those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve.”

Presidents and their teams don’t like criticism. They have total access to the media — primetime, nationally televised speeches and press conferences, weekly radio addresses, websites, massive party and political organizations, journalists at their beck and call. Their every passing comment is news. Their speeches dominate the headlines. They set the agenda, whether it’s the Patriot Act or health care bills. And yet they can’t abide criticism.

And when the criticism is effective, they lash out. They denounce their opponents for seeking to “scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberties” or “confuse and scare Americans with half-truths and outright lies.” (Quick: which one of those was 2001, and which was 2009?)

But the fact is that the Bush administration’s actions after 9/11 really did result in a loss of liberty, and the Obama administration’s plans for our health care really should scare Americans. And libertarians have been, and will continue to be, in the forefront of Americans resisting intrusions on liberty by administrations from both parties. They won’t be dissuaded by Nixonian claims that dissent and criticism are divisive and damaging to national unity.

Today’s Wall Street Journal editorializes against the price controls that President Obama would impose on health insurance, noting that such controls have proven a disaster in the states that impose them.

The Journal offers an alternative way of covering people with high-cost conditions:

University of Chicago economist John Cochrane also argues that in a more rational individual insurance market, people could insure not merely against medical expenses but also against changes in health status. This kind of insurance would cover the risk of premiums rising as you get older and your health condition changes.

In turn, that would free insurers to compete for the business of all patients, including those with pre-existing conditions, because then they could charge enough to cover the costs—instead of passing them to others.

You can read about Cochrane’s approach in his February 2009 Cato Institute policy analysis, “Health-Status Insurance: How Markets Can Provide Health Security.”

The Obama administration’s pay czar is busily making plans for America’s financial companies:

Kenneth R. Feinberg has the unprecedented task of deciding executive compensation at seven companies that received large government bailouts. His meetings with American International Group, Citigroup, Bank of America, General Motors, Chrysler, Chrysler Financial and GMAC have been conducted in secret, with neither Feinberg nor the companies willing to say much in public.…

Feinberg, who has sole discretion to set compensation for the top 25 employees of each of those companies, has 60 days to make a determination after the proposals are complete. Under the administration’s initiative to curb excessive pay practices, each of the seven companies must also receive his approval for how it pays the rest of its 100 most highly compensated executives and employees. The companies must submit pay plans for these employees by Oct. 12.…

During the videoconference with AIG employees, Feinberg mostly avoided giving them detailed answers to their questions. Many of the employees left frustrated because he gave them no sense of whether he would seek to modify contracts that promise them upcoming bonuses, said people familiar with the session.…

Senior Treasury Department officials say they do not want Feinberg to set precise prescriptions for how companies compensate employees. Instead, his task is to evaluate pay according to several principles. For instance, does an employee’s compensation reward short-term, risky business behavior? Or, on the contrary, is the compensation tied to longer-term performance goals? Does it allow the company to remain competitive and recruit top talent?

Note also: “Mr. Feinberg’s decisions won’t be subject to appeal.”

Classical liberals often talk about “the rule of law, not the rule of men.” This isn’t even “the rule of men,” it’s the rule of one man. Let us hope that Kenneth Feinberg is a wise, merciful, and incorruptible ruler.

NOTE: I recognize that Feinberg’s authority extends only to companies that have received large government bailouts, and there’s a certainly a case to be made that if companies take taxpayers’ money, they can darn well live with government salaries. But it’s just that kind of political intrusiveness — along with demanding that auto firms keep all their dealerships, or make “green” cars, or build their cars in this country, or whatever — that makes government-run or ‑dominated companies inefficient. So as Gary Becker says, it’s a “fatal conceit” to assume that Kenneth Feinberg knows better than the market how much top talent should be paid. And some of the people who support the idea of a “pay czar” want his authority to extend beyond the government-supported companies.