02-09-2009, 08:07 AM | #41 (permalink) |
Super Moderator
Location: essex ma
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keep in mind that the english healthcare system is only one option, and it's not the best one. check out the french system sometime if you want an example of a more differentiated, and far more effective, alternative to american-style barbarism on health care.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite |
02-09-2009, 08:20 AM | #42 (permalink) | ||
Junkie
Location: bedford, tx
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-----Added 9/2/2009 at 11 : 24 : 03----- Quote:
do you think in the universal system you are wanting, these questions will not be asked?
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"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him." Last edited by dksuddeth; 02-09-2009 at 08:24 AM.. Reason: Automerged Doublepost |
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02-09-2009, 08:26 AM | #43 (permalink) |
Lennonite Priest
Location: Mansfield, Ohio USA
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The one thing I truly do not understand is how do you justify raising taxes on something like tobacco products and expect more income from that?
You get people who will refuse to pay the prices and quit, thus in actuality lowering the revenue you counted on. From there what? Do you continue to raise those taxes until you have totally abolished that revenue? And if you do, then what? Do you start taxing other things the government deems "unhealthy" into a black market and where no revenue to speak of comes from? I question government's true agenda when things like this are done, because it does not help revenue in the long run, it seeks only to control behaviors through taxing. By trying to control behavior through taxation, smacks our forefathers in the face and takes away the civil liberties and freedoms that they risked everything to fight for in building this country. Ah, but what did they know? Those principles and ideas are outdated. To me freedom is never outdated and taxing behaviors out of the hands of the people is no, not, never freedom. It is the beginning of tyranny and a self righteous government that will crush anyone who questions it.
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I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?" |
02-09-2009, 08:28 AM | #44 (permalink) | ||
Junkie
Location: bedford, tx
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since you're neither pro or anti gun and most likely do not follow that issue, I'm not surprised that you've not heard of it happening. It's simply not on your radar.
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"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him." |
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02-09-2009, 08:29 AM | #45 (permalink) |
Super Moderator
Location: essex ma
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well, dk, things have changed since world war 1, like it or not.
it makes no sense to allow your strict construction position to run you in this direction on questions of social welfare. at least with guns, i can see why you do it--but on this question--which i expect also extends in its basic logic to objections to national income taxation--you end up detaching from reality. i suppose that underlying this strict construction business is another position that you've not explained--so what do you imagine the functions of welfare to be? what is your position in relation to it as a way of dealing with those functions? what alternative would you prefer to see? this beyond the pseudo-legal response above please.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite |
02-09-2009, 08:30 AM | #46 (permalink) | |
Junkie
Location: bedford, tx
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nice, no rhetoric involved there, eh?
-----Added 9/2/2009 at 11 : 37 : 50----- Quote:
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"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him." Last edited by dksuddeth; 02-09-2009 at 08:37 AM.. Reason: Automerged Doublepost |
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02-09-2009, 08:49 AM | #47 (permalink) | |
Crazy, indeed
Location: the ether
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It has been well established that provision of insurance generally only takes place when they can estimate the risks associated with any person. As you can imagine, insurance companies are not mandated to ask any sort of questions. They do because that is how they can best operate in a free market. To defend a free market for health care and then complain about how it asks unfair questions is simply short sighted. But let me make the argument more explicit for you. It is an argument that won a few economists the nobel prize: when you can't differentiate between people who are low risk and people who are high risk, you have no way of determining the adequate price each should pay. If they charge the "low risk" price out of everyone, they will go broke because high risk people will drive costs up. If they charge the high risk price, or even the "average" price, out of everyone, they'd be essentially overcharging low risk people, who would either migrate to a company that recognized their status as low risk by asking intrusive questions, or would forgo insurance altogether. So you end up with a situation where the company that doesnt differentiate between low risk and high risk clients ends up with only high risk clients. That is why private healthcare advocates defend those types of questions. Otherwise, it really isnt a free market (which is why I find it ironic that you complain about that and defend private insurance at the same time. There is a reason all insurers ask that question). And I have lived in countries with universal healthcare and visited many. None ever ask about guns, and generally only ask about lifestyle questions when its relevant. -----Added 9/2/2009 at 11 : 51 : 25----- I am curious as well. Any evidence of doctors changing diagnostics based on gun ownership? It is not on my radar, but it would be nice to have a concrete example at least, instead "it happens and I know because I am pro gun." Last edited by dippin; 02-09-2009 at 08:51 AM.. Reason: Automerged Doublepost |
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02-09-2009, 09:04 AM | #48 (permalink) |
Super Moderator
Location: essex ma
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dk--i don't know what you're talking about above. could you explain it more please?
it looks like you're not answering my question and instead are repeating the outlines of a strict construction "problem" with everything that's happened legally since 1789. as for the american health system as barbarism--actually it isn't particularly rhetorical. within this system, the lives of the children of the affluent are worth more than the lives of the children of the poor, if you measure it by access to basic health care, which is obviously a significant factor in determining quality of life. that's barbarism. nothing rhetorical about it.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite |
02-09-2009, 09:21 AM | #49 (permalink) | |
Young Crumudgeon
Location: Canada
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A universal healthcare system makes a lot of the currently asked questions irrelevant. If your insurance company doesn't have to pay for the treatment of your gunshot wound, they don't give two shits about how many guns you own. Assuming you lot were to institute a system similar to ours, my thinking is that you'd get hassled less about your guns. Just sayin'.
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I wake up in the morning more tired than before I slept I get through cryin' and I'm sadder than before I wept I get through thinkin' now, and the thoughts have left my head I get through speakin' and I can't remember, not a word that I said - Ben Harper, Show Me A Little Shame |
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02-09-2009, 09:23 AM | #50 (permalink) | ||
Junkie
Location: bedford, tx
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"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him." |
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02-09-2009, 10:02 AM | #51 (permalink) |
Super Moderator
Location: essex ma
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dk--to be clear, the logic of these responses from you is very simple and clear. so much so in the way of simplicity that i have a hard time imagining that you actually think this way---whence the responses from me. i'm trying to figure it out, how this position you occupy holds together. i don't think it does really, but that's a different matter, for another time or not as the case may be.
in the case of guns, your strict construction viewpoint is coherent because it is either a screen for or an aspect of a political viewpoint that is entirely outside the arguments that you make about the constitution---in that, you argue for the narrowest possible (tipping into the arbitrary) interpretation of the 2nd amendment because you are freaked out about change to it--and so are freaked out about the constitutional system in the name of the constitution. so i assumed that there was something comparable on welfare programs, that the real issue for you is outside the argument that you're making, but shapes that argument by giving it a direction. my sense is that you don't want to come out and say why you oppose welfare programs, if you in fact do, on other than strict construction grounds--but i've found in general that's typically the case for folk who occupy that position on the constitution. it lets them argue against things without avowing where that argument's coming from, what animates or shapes it. but it's hard to say the extent to which this is speculative (the motive business just above), so i just put it out as a reading of your sentences with no particular weight beyond that.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite |
02-09-2009, 10:14 AM | #52 (permalink) | |
Location: Washington DC
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Another small but symbolic change:
Quote:
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"The perfect is the enemy of the good." ~ Voltaire |
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02-09-2009, 10:23 AM | #53 (permalink) | |
Junkie
Location: bedford, tx
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-----Added 9/2/2009 at 01 : 24 : 29----- I look forward to seeing how this turns out. Hopefully the far left groups and politicians can avoid creating another joe the plumber.
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"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him." Last edited by dksuddeth; 02-09-2009 at 10:24 AM.. Reason: Automerged Doublepost |
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02-09-2009, 10:27 AM | #54 (permalink) |
Super Moderator
Location: essex ma
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i just wondered, dk, where you were coming from on this.
to go further would probably be a threadjack, so i'll leave it at this.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite |
02-09-2009, 02:09 PM | #55 (permalink) |
Junkie
Location: Detroit, MI
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I used to work for Fedex in my early college days, a job which would take me as a delivery driver into some of the poorest parts of town. I was always amazed by the number of high-end $50k SUVs and late-model Cadillacs in the driveways, especially in the trailer parks. Those folks sure love them some Cadillac, with 2-tone Earl Sheib paintjobs and 22" chrome spinner rims you could see from orbit. I would see these same cars everyday, at the same time of day: mid-mornings and mid-afternoons.
As for Obamas performance so far, he's sure doing a lot of talking. |
02-09-2009, 03:01 PM | #57 (permalink) |
Junkie
Location: bedford, tx
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are you simply being obtuse? or are you really missing the point?
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"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him." |
02-09-2009, 04:40 PM | #60 (permalink) | |
warrior bodhisattva
Super Moderator
Location: East-central Canada
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Or that relatively few people who own luxury cars actually do without financing them, making them "affordable" so long as you have the monthly cash flow? Maybe I'm obtuse.... What's the point?
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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing? —Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön Humankind cannot bear very much reality. —From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot |
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02-09-2009, 05:33 PM | #62 (permalink) | |
Junkie
Location: In the land of ice and snow.
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One would have to be pretty obtuse to think that the only people who own nice cars in poor neighborhoods are people who are cheating welfare. |
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02-09-2009, 06:17 PM | #63 (permalink) |
Junkie
Location: bedford, tx
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oh, i get it. because someone didn't bring in signed affidavits, sworn on some sort of bible, testified in a court of law, broadcast it in the media, it obviously doesn't fucking happen. Because I see someone in a grocery store line using food stamps to buy milk, bread, and cereal while wearing more gold chains that Mr. T, leather jackets that cost as much as two months of my car payment, and load those groceries up in a Lexus to take home to a run down trailer park, I should just assume that they know how to manage their finances or some stupid shit. get fucking real for a change.
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"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him." |
02-09-2009, 06:26 PM | #64 (permalink) |
Junkie
Location: Detroit, MI
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You people come fly in to Detroit this weekend and I'll take you on The Tour, as my ex-fellow employees used to joke about. Block after block of neigborhoods with cars worth 1/3 to 1/2 the cost of the houses they were parked in front of. I'm not saying they're all owned by welfare kings and queens; there's probably a middle manager or boss' kid in their somewhere...
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02-09-2009, 06:29 PM | #65 (permalink) | |
Darth Papa
Location: Yonder
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Forgive me, but I'll go with her anecdotal evidence over yours. |
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02-09-2009, 06:41 PM | #66 (permalink) | ||
Crazy, indeed
Location: the ether
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2- This idea that welfare recipients are somehow all swimming in cash is beyond ludicrous and poorly evidenced. Anyone who knows how much people on welfare actually get, and how many requirements and regulations there are for actually getting welfare, would know how cases of abuse of the system are so few and far between. -----Added 9/2/2009 at 09 : 43 : 03----- Quote:
Last edited by dippin; 02-09-2009 at 06:43 PM.. Reason: Automerged Doublepost |
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02-09-2009, 07:01 PM | #67 (permalink) | ||
Junkie
Location: In the land of ice and snow.
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If every time you happen to notice that someone who lives in a poor neighborhood has something nice you think to yourself "welfare cheat," then you are an idiot (and I'm not saying that you do). Quote:
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02-09-2009, 07:33 PM | #68 (permalink) | |
Living in a Warmer Insanity
Super Moderator
Location: Yucatan, Mexico
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Not sure about your wife's experience but in mine the people turning these cheats in are other program "customers." Partly I suspect due to jealously but largely due to, as one lady told me- "They're going to fuck it up for the rest of us! I'm doing job training from 6am til 3pm and then pumping gas until midnight just to keep my kids health ins. going. And that SOB is going to get this program shut down. Fuck that noise."
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I used to drink to drown my sorrows, but the damned things have learned how to swim- Frida Kahlo Vice President Starkizzer Fan Club |
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02-09-2009, 07:46 PM | #69 (permalink) |
Junkie
Location: bedford, tx
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you people crack me up. If this was a republican president and republican majority congress, y'all would be ripping it up and down.
__________________
"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him." |
02-09-2009, 07:49 PM | #70 (permalink) |
Super Moderator
Location: essex ma
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this makes me laugh.
poor petit-bourgeois conservatives, the ultimate victims....everyone takes advantage, and none more than those undeserving Others living in that lap of luxury that is welfare. but no, this is not being made up: any one of us can go on a "see what you want to see" tour of detriot for "evidence" of what would otherwise be nothing more than a tiresome repetition of an old school far right canard, a limbaugh special, that kind of lovely stuff that makes racism seem respectable and class biais disappear. why that's just the way the world is and you, dittohead, are the ultimate victim of a malicious system gone mad. the good old days, that's what we want, when everyone knew their place and stayed there, "when the movies were in black and white and so was everything else," like gil scott-heron said once. funny that this would come up in this particular thread. it's hard not to wonder about the connections and what's really being said here. maybe it's better not to think too hard about it lest things get ugly.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite |
02-09-2009, 07:58 PM | #71 (permalink) | |
Junkie
Location: bedford, tx
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Quote:
__________________
"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him." |
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02-09-2009, 07:59 PM | #72 (permalink) | |
Living in a Warmer Insanity
Super Moderator
Location: Yucatan, Mexico
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Can't speak for "you people" but I know I've been ripping on the GOP's spending for years. They took tax and spend democrat and made it worse... borrow and spend GOP. Bush vetoed how many spending bills? Now we're in a shit hole and almost every recognized economist I've heard or read seems to think only the federal government has the power to stimulate the economy enough to pull us out of this nose dive. Obama's been in office less then a month. I'm willing to give him a little time and support. And even though I supported Obama I would have been willing to support McCain and hoped he succeeded had he won.
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I used to drink to drown my sorrows, but the damned things have learned how to swim- Frida Kahlo Vice President Starkizzer Fan Club |
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02-09-2009, 08:03 PM | #73 (permalink) | |
Addict
Location: Cottage Grove, Wisconsin
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Does that comfort you? The whole argument is absurd anyway. John Thain and his ilk were scamming you for millions and billions with the aid of yourveryownpreznitbush and you're worried that some sortafancy car in youridea of a bad neighbourhood belongs to someone who might be a Welfare Scammer? And how many Caddies could be bought with the money dumped down the shithole in Iraq and Afghanistan, money that would have been better spent on buying the whole country drugs -- the buzz being more real than any benefit derived from Iraq or Afghanistan adventures -- or even simply burnt in an immense potlatch? |
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02-09-2009, 08:06 PM | #74 (permalink) | |
Crazy, indeed
Location: the ether
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I think people here are being fairly consistent. I think that the really inconsistent position has been the republican one (and Im no democrat), who, after 8 years of uncontrolled spending during an expansion, who, after requesting more pork to approve their own president's bail out plan, have suddenly remembered that they are against spending just as the economy takes the worst nosedive in 30 years, a nose dive that next month should reach levels not seen since the great depression. I can't think of a worse timing for rediscovering one's own claims to fiscal responsibility. |
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02-09-2009, 08:09 PM | #75 (permalink) |
Super Moderator
Location: essex ma
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dk...i wasn't addressing you in particular.
we all know what is being said here. i'm just waiting for the mistake to happen.
__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite |
02-09-2009, 08:37 PM | #78 (permalink) | |
Junkie
Location: Detroit, MI
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Last edited by powerclown; 02-09-2009 at 08:40 PM.. |
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02-09-2009, 08:44 PM | #79 (permalink) | |
Location: Washington DC
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Voodoo economics redux.
__________________
"The perfect is the enemy of the good." ~ Voltaire |
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02-09-2009, 09:58 PM | #80 (permalink) | |
Junkie
Location: In the land of ice and snow.
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What does the value of a person's house have to do with the ability of someone living at that house to afford a quasi-luxury automobile? -----Added 10/2/2009 at 12 : 59 : 59----- Well, if you look at the car value/house value ratio in the years following the great depression you'd see that the New Deal only served to prolong the general economic malai-blahblaladsaghsds fsdajlfsdkgndaskgndsklgndsal;ngdslk;sdng..... Last edited by filtherton; 02-09-2009 at 09:59 PM.. Reason: Automerged Doublepost |
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obama, performance |
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