Rick Perry’s Big Government Vaccine Mandate

I originally wrote this for another website so I toned it down some. I actually think I’m being too nice to slick Rick. 

In the Tea Party Express sponsored presidential debate earlier this week, Texas Governor Rick Perry came under fire for an executive order he issued which mandated the Gardasil HPV vaccine for all six-grade girls in the state. Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul made strong cases against the government health care mandate stating that it was a violation of parental rights and liberty.

Rick Perry admitted that his executive order was a mistake and he “would have done it differently.” He added, “I would have gone to the legislature, worked with them.” The vaccine mandate, however, was rejected by the conservative Texas legislature who eventually overturned the executive order. Rick Perry is correct to denounce his executive order but he has yet to reject the actual policy to my knowledge. As Rick Santorum said, “he believes that what he did was right. He thinks he went about it the wrong way.”

Both the health care policy and the way he bypassed approval from the legislature are wrong. It is immoral for government to force an individual to get a potentially dangerous vaccine that goes against their beliefs. According to Perry’s executive order, any six-grade girl who did not receive the Gardasil HPV vaccine was not allowed to enter her public school classroom. Unlike many communicable diseases such as measles, preteens are just not at risk of the sexually transmitted HPV in their six grade classrooms.

The decision on whether to get vaccinated for HPV should be left between the girl, her parents and doctor. Rick Perry claims that his executive order allowed parents to opt-out by filling out an affidavit objecting to the vaccine for religious or philosophical reasons. But as blogger Michelle Malkin correctly contends, “requiring parents to seek the government’s permission to keep an untested drug out of their kids’ veins is a plain usurpation of their authority.”

Rick Perry still alleges that his health care mandate had good intentions. He told New Hampshire voters that he just “hates cancer.” Everyone hates cancer but true limited government conservatives aren’t supposed to love government mandates. Remember what Nobel-Prize winning economist Milton Friedman said, “whenever we depart from voluntary cooperation and try to do good by using force, the bad moral value of force triumphs over good intentions.”

The Texas Governor has a disturbingly close relationship with Gardasil’s maker Merck & Co. Merck’s PAC has donated almost $30,000 to Perry’s campaigns since 2000. Reports show that the giant pharmaceutical company donated $5,000 to his campaign on the same day that Merck held a meeting to discuss the vaccine with Perry’s staff in 2006. Rick Perry’s former chief of staff Mike Toomey now happens to be a top lobbyist for Merck. One of Rick Perry’s biggest donors is the Republican Governors Association (RGA) who gave him at least $4 million over the past five years. Merck has given the RGA more than $380,000 since 2006.

The Big Pharma company Merck would have cashed in big time if Perry’s executive order was not overturned. The Examiner columnist Timothy Carney writes that, “Perry’s action as governor suggest that for him, ‘pro-business’ means corporatism.” He goes on to further say that, “Perry is pro-Merck, pro-Boeing, pro-Mesa, pro-Texas Instruments, pro-Convergen, and pro-dozens of businesses that donate to his campaigns and hire his aides as lobbyists.”

Unlike Mitt Romney who has not condemned RomneyCare one bit, Rick Perry has at least partially apologized for his health care mandate mistake. He claims that, “the fact of the matter is I didn’t do my research well enough to understand that we needed to have a substantial conversation with our citizenry…I will tell you that I made a mistake by not going to the legislature first.” In my eyes, Rick Perry has still not acknowledged a problem with mandating the HPV vaccine just the way he bypassed the legislature to do it.

He should take it a step further and denounce all big government health care mandates. Americans would be wise to take a closer look at Perry to see if his limited government rhetoric actually matches his record.

Social Security is a Mandatory Ponzi Scheme

Originally posted at FreedomWorks.org.

Rick Perry made headlines for calling Social Security a “Ponzi scheme” in last night’s presidential debate. Mitt Romney and statist media sources predictably attacked this position claiming that the insolvent program is A-Okay. To be fair, Rick Perry isn’t the only Republican candidate with the courage to speak truth to fiction about Social Security. Ron Paul has likely been calling the entitlement program a Ponzi scheme long before I was even born. It’s suddenly become popular to call Social Security out for what it really is: a compulsory Ponzi scheme.

Social Security is the definition of a Ponzi scheme with a few notable differences. Charles Ponzi started a money making scam that would later be known as a Ponzi scheme back in 1916. He persuaded people to allow him to invest their money but he never made one investment. He simply transferred money from his later investors to his earlier investors. The unsustainable system inevitably collapsed. Charles Ponzi was then convicted of fraud and spent years behind bars.

Social Security has many similarities to a Ponzi scheme but it’s even worse. The main difference is that Ponzi schemes are voluntary and Social Security is mandatory. Everyone is forced to pay Social Security payroll taxes whether they want to be part of the system or not. Just like Charles Ponzi’s fraudulent scheme, money from “later investors” or young workers is transferred to “earlier investors” or retirees.

Ponzi schemes are always great for earlier investors but rip off those who invest later on. The number of retirees is growing far faster than the number of new workers. The ratio of workers to retirees has grown from 42 to 1 in 1940 to just 3.3 to 1 today. Social Security is facing more than $20 trillion in unfunded future liabilities. Young people actually believe that they have a better chance of seeing UFOs than a Social Security check made out to them when they retire.

Some people especially those on the left wrongly call us “cruel.” But think about it: how cruel is it to force a young person who believes they will get nothing in return into a system? Why should young workers who are just starting out in their careers be forced to pay for the Social Security benefits of elderly millionaires and billionaires? Seniors are much wealthier than young people on average.

Individuals should be free to opt-out of Social Security if they wish. People could then stay in the insolvent Social Security system or invest on their own. If Social Security is so “great”, why is it mandatory? Private sector retirement plans can provide safer plans with higher benefits than Social Security. Unlike Social Security, the assets in the private retirement plans can be rolled over to a surviving spouse or other family member. We need more retirement choices instead of being forced into a terribly mismanaged government monopoly.

The Venn diagram above made by The Examiner’s Tim Carney shows the difference between Ponzi schemes and Social Security. Bernie Madoff, who was responsible for the largest Ponzi schemes in history, was sentenced to 150 years in prison back in 2009. But the federal government’s Social Security scheme is somehow mandatory. Politicians who criticize Social Security are indeed considered pariahs. Think Progress says that it is “nuts” to even compare Ponzi schemes and Social Security.

The Social Security scam disproportionally hurts the working class and African Americans. Tim Carney says that, “given that black men have a lower life expectancy, they get shortchanged on the benefits end.” The life expectancy for an African American male is just 69.7 years—versus 75.5 years for white men. The Social Security retirement age is 65. This means that close to half of African Americans males will die before every receiving a dime of Social Security benefits despite paying into the system all of their working life. How is that for cruel?

Social Security is a compulsory Ponzi scheme. As Cato Institute scholar Roger Pilon says, “a private company that ran such a scheme would be prosecuted in less than a New York minute.” Social Security is a hopelessly bad deal for today’s worker. Americans should be allowed to invest in their retirement as they see fit—not be forced into a mandatory Ponzi scheme against their will. We need more presidential candidates with the guts to propose allowing individuals to opt-out of Social Security.

Rick Perry is NOT a Conservative

New video I did on Rick Perry’s record. Not trying to tell you who to vote for– just know all the facts on all the candidates’ records before you do.