Firstly I did this all on a normal Fedora 13 box…nothing fancy.  I installed Fedora in the normal manner and the followed with an install of apache and php.  Everything from this point is done as root.  To start just do:

yum install httpd php5

You’ll likely get a whole bunch of dependencies that need to be installed.  That’s okay, just install it all.

After that’s done, we also will need a C compiler because the OCI8 php module gets compiled as part of the process.  So now do:

yum install gcc

This will also produce a laundry list of dependencies that need to be installed.  Just go on with that and install everything yum says you need to.

Next you need to install the Oracle instant client.  You can download it from the Oracle website.  The download site is here.  You will need to download two RPM’s to install: the Basic instant client and the SDK package that has “devel” in the filename.

Once both those packages are downloaded to our Fedora machine, install each of them with:

rpm -Uvh “the filename”

After those RPM’s are installed, you’re ready to install the OCI8 php module.  We’ll do that through PECL.  It’s pretty simple.  Just do:

pecl install oci8

You should get a big laundry list of stuff telling you that the source is being downloaded.  At some point it should stop and ask you for the path to the Oracle home directory.  Although it says ENTER will just do an autodetect, that never worked for me.  I had to specify the path manually. So, on that line enter:

instantclient, /usr/lib/oracle/11.2/client/lib

That path should be right but double check that your version is 11.2 and that that path exists on your machine.  If there are a bunch of *.so files in there you should be good.  After a bunch more stuff detailing what’s happening you should get confirmation that the OCI8 stuff installed okay.

Now, at this point php was still not able to load the OCI8 module correctly for me.  I wasn’t really sure why but I found in the httpd log complaints from PHP that it got permission denied to load the OCI8 module.  I did two things and am not sure which one fixed the problem.  Firstly, I changed the ownership of /usr/lib/oracle to apache:apache with:

chown -R apache:apache /usr/lib/oracle

Next I disabled SELinux by editing the /etc/selinux/config file by setting “SELINUX=disabled” and rebooting the machine.

Now, like I said, I’m not sure which of the above fixed my problem but after doing these two things, the system worked.  I was able to create a phpinfo script and saw that the OCI8 module had loaded.  It’s possible I killed a gnat with a howitzer here…not sure.  If you know of a better way to make it work, feel free to leave a comment as I’d be interested.  This worked for me though and I don’t need the detailed security of SELinux.

Hope this helps someone.

Chipper

Bernanke Signals Fed is Ready to Prop Up Economy

I love that!  I wanted to add a few more:

• Mafia Boss Ready to Administer Humanitarian Aid
• Enron Executives Named Heads of SEC
• Mark McGuire to Investigate Steroid Use in Baseball
• Bill Gates Book Details Struggles of Living in Poverty

Anyone else find ALL these headlines (especially the one from the New York Times) absurd?

If the healthcare bill passes, it’s likely that more people in the USA will work for the federal government than any other employer in the country.  If that happens, how likely do you think getting representatives elected that want to ACTUALLY reduce the size of government is going to be?  “Let’s see…vote for someone who wants to eliminate my cushy government job…no thanks!”

Point 2:

If the healthcare bill passes and a majority of Americans are working for the government, that means that the majority of people are going to be making their livings at the expense of the minority.  That almost sounds like a return to slavery.

This whole thing is crazy.  Make no bones about it…healthcare in the US is screwed up.  But folding it into the already out-of-control federal government is like trying to put out a fire by pouring gas on it.  I can’t wait.

http://www.allgov.com/ViewNews/Swine_Flu_Stirred_Profits_but_Fewer_Deaths_than_Predicted_100131

Hang on a second.  I would advise all my Republican friends (and remember here that I am a Conservative) not to get too excited about all this.  As of late, Republican control of power hasn’t been a lot better than Democrat control.  I’d say it’s been “less bad”.  Remember the under Republican leadership we had:

1. The Patriot Act.  The single biggest erosion of personal liberty ever enacted into legislation.
2. Tax cuts yes, spending cuts no.
3. Deregulation of the securities market with deference to huge banks that transformed investing into essentially gambling.
4. Monetary policy that promoted inflation and economic bubbles. Can you say Greenspan?
5. Policies of intervention in the affairs of other countries that have cost lives and untold billions of dollars.
6. Little to no progress on freeing us from foreign oil dependence.  “Drill baby drill” isn’t a long term answer.

The list goes on and on.  So, I would advise my Republican friends to dispense with the excitement and stay focused.  Republicans are doing no better guiding this country than the Democrats are.  We need Conservative leadership that will

• Actually cut spending significantly rather than just cutting taxes and growing deficits
• Restore a focus on limiting government that includes personal freedom.
• Revise monetary policy so as not to allow government inflation of the currency.
• Focus our military efforts on defending the US, not nation-building overseas.  We don’t have the money for all these wars.
• Return power to the states where it belongs.

My frustration is that this will probably never happen.  If it ever did though, I’d be as giddy as the talk radio pundits are right now.

Are you following these issues closely?  If so, you’re like so many others who are, at least in my opinion, ignoring the one singular issue that ties it all together - The Federal Reserve and monetary policy.

Yes it’s a boring topic but my belief is that the only policy decision that really matters these days is monetary policy and, by extension, the Federal Reserve.  Why is that?  Because all of these other issues stem from our monetary system and it’s enabling effects on the government.  You see, when you have a fiat currency model like we have here in the US, the government is able to produce money out of thin air to fund all the things it wants to do but is unwilling to tax the populace to achieve.

Government run healthcare?  Wars overseas?  Building a new energy infrastructure?  These are all things that the government can not afford to do.  In fact, it can’t afford to do anything.  Our debt right now is essentially unserviceable.  Our government is living off of money printed out of thin air and then borrowed from the Fed or from other countries.  Everything it’s doing these days, it’s charging on a huge credit card.

And the most sinister part of it is that, while we all argue about whether or not there should be a public option in the upcoming healthcare bill, the banking elites that are lending us all this money just get richer and richer.  And that’s the point that we’re missing.  All these issues are fundamentally dependent on our government’s ability to spend almost limitlessly and pile debt on our children and grandchildren because of our monetary policy.

So what do we do?  If you want this insane, never-ending expansion of government to stop, focus on getting rid of the Fed.  Focus on reforming our monetary policy.  Contact your congressman and senators and insist that they support HR 1207 and S 604 respectively.  Those bills would require an audit of the Federal Reserve, a meaningful first step in dismantling that organization.

America is in trouble here.  Our very currency is held hostage by a private banking cartel called the Federal Reserve.  Our government is borrowing and borrowing and borrowing, getting itself so in debt that its only option will be to devalue our currency, destroying your and my savings in the process, so that the value of our massive debt is reduced.  And while all this happens, we’re all sitting around arguing about public options and the Taliban.  Let’s focus our energies on repealing the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 and implementing a new monetary policy that constrains out of control government spending and forces fiscal discipline.  Until we do that, our government will continue to expand and expand along with our debt and our dollar will continue to decline in value, leaving all US citizens except for a tiny percentage at the top of the socioeconomic scale poorer and less empowered.

The problem is that this short commentary misses a couple of key points and I want to respectfully disagree with the underlying premise that this now viral commentary makes: that we are surrounded by government effectiveness and that it works great and that we should therefore have no fear of government run healthcare.

First, let’s be clear that there is a difference between “government regulated” and “government run”.  The article points to the FCC, the FDA, the DOT and other regulatory agencies as a means for supporting the idea that a government-run healthcare system would be great.  Anyone who knows what those departments of government actually do would have to concede that the FCC does not broadcast anything, the FDA does not produce food or medicine, and the DOT does not actually pave roads.  Those agencies regulate broadcast media, regulate food and medicine, and regulate and award funding for road projects respectively.

And this is where I want to make my first point.  As it relates to healthcare, I don’t believe conservative opposition to President Obama’s ideas is rooted in the desire for a laissez faire healthcare market free of any and all regulation.  Rather, it is rooted in the fear of turning over management and maybe even delivery of our healthcare to the government, making it much more than a regulator and much more than any of those agencies currently is.

Next I want to hit on a huge error in this article, even though it isn’t necessarily healthcare related.  The writer sites the “federal reserve bank” as being part of the government and another example of the government providing an effective service. I hate to tell you this but it isn’t.  The Federal Reserve System, as it is correctly referred to, is a group of private banks that create our currency.  They create it out of nothing and loan it to us, at interest, to use.  The Federal Reserve System is a banking cartel that siphons wealth away from you and me (assuming you’re a US citizen) by charging us interest on the very money we must use by law.  I’ve written about this extensively on this blog.  If you’d like to hear more on this topic, read my posts about “How to Fix the Economy in Three Steps” or “Some Things You Should Know About Our Monetary System”.  The bottom line is that in this case, the government has actually privatized the one thing it never should: monetary policy.  So here, the author is just plain wrong.

But getting back to the actual posting…at the end of the entry, the writer mocks the conservative belief that “the government can’t do anything right”.  Can it?  Well, in some cases yes.  I would argue that in regulation the government, while often overreaching, is usually more right than wrong.  Our foods and medicines are relatively safe.  Our building codes are pretty good.  Our workplaces are not overtly hazardous…just as the article says.  Those things are true.

But again, did the government produce the food, medicine, houses, or businesses in which we work? No.  And that’s where the problem is for conservatives like me.  While the government has a place in regulation, I believe it has no place in delivery.

Why is that?  Because it simply has no incentive to do anything efficiently or effectively.  It has no competition.  And on top of that, if it runs over-budget, it just prints more money to pay for itself.  The end result is that, absent a competitor, any service or product delivered by the government will be of inferior quality to one produced by the free market.  And beyond that, if the product or service is produced over budget, the government just piles more debt on you and me to pay for whatever it is that it’s doing.  That’s the problem.  Need proof?  Consider these programs: the post office, medicare, social security, Amtrak.  Any of those operating efficiently?  Any of those running on a balanced budget?  The post office lost billions last year.  Medicare will be bankrupt in a few years.  The social security trust fund is full of IOU’s.  Amtrak has never made a penny.  I could go on.

So the issue here is not that conservatives can’t accept government doing what it is supposed to.  It’s that we can’t accept it doing things it shouldn’t.  And to a large degree, managing delivery of goods and services is not something the government should do because it has no incentive to do it well.

Now, healthcare is indeed broken.  Reform is clearly needed.  I want to be loud an clear on that.  The current system we have is a complete mess.  We pay TONS more than other countries for our care and don’t get care that is significantly better.  “Well that makes the case that the government should run healthcare,” you may say as you reason that many of the countries we compare ourselves to have socialized healthcare.  I would argue that, while there is some truth in that, our system could be even better than anything out there.  I believe that a truly market based system with minimal government intervention would work better than anything currently in existence.  If we removed government from the equation and allowed a truly free market for healthcare to thrive, with appropriate regulation of course, I am convinced that costs would come down and choice would increase.  This has been proven time and time again and is a basic tenet of capitalism.

“But”,  you may say, “what about people with health problems that wouldn’t be attractive to insurance companies or hospitals because there is no way to make money off of them?”  Well that is a real issue.  My thought on that one is this…maybe there is a role for government here, but not in creating something.  Rather, the government could incentivize the private creation of philanthropic medical outlets that would care for those that “fell through the cracks” and couldn’t get health insurance or afford care.  Think that couldn’t work?  Then explain St. Jude.  Explain the Shriners Hospitals.  Explain the Ronald McDonald House.  I have personal experience with each of these and know that they provide outstanding care and services while operating on charitable contributions.

But there is a bigger issue here, one that extends beyond any single issue and that is the role of government in our lives.  I contend that the more power that we give the government, the more it will take away from us.  This country was created to be free, to be a place where individuals thrive on their own ingenuity and hard work.    Thomas Jefferson wrote:

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

I agree with him.  So why would we willingly hand over our healthcare and a huge slice of our economy to those in power?

So there you have it…my take on the “I am an American Conservative”.  If you’ve read this far, thanks for taking the time.  Again, I want to stress that I will never use this blog to berate or belittle those who do not agree with me and I would encourage my fellow conservatives out there to take that position as well.  I hope to persuade, not alienate.  So if you are persuaded, leave a comment and let me know.  If not, tell me why.  I’d love to hear from you.

Thanks.

Chipper

Well, I finally got crazy enough and installed Ununtu 9.04 on my laptop, not with a dual boot - 100%.  And to cut right to the chase, I love it.  The install was a piece of cake.  EVERYTHING works.  The wireless network works.  The volume up and down buttons work.  Oh…the fingerprint reader doesn’t work.  But, I never used that before so no big deal.

And on top of that, the desktop is beautiful and the open source applications I’m using, like OpenOffice.org and Firefox, are every bit as good as anything from Microsoft.  And for those Windows applications I have to have, I setup a Virtualbox install of Windows.  And that works great too.

So in general I am really pleased.  I get all the reliability and free-ness of Linux in a beautiful, first rate package that works great.  If you’re a nerd, I’d recommend you give Ubuntu a try.  You can get it at www.ubuntu.com.  If you try it and need some help, shoot me an email.  I’d be glad to lend a hand.