Comments Posted By Freedoms Truth
Displaying 11 To 20 Of 112 Comments
"Are we going to let American citizens die for lack of medical care? That’s the core issue. "
Like they do under the British single-payer system ...
http://www.nationalcenter.org/ShatteredLives.pdf... once ObamaCare is implemented and we suffer a 'lost decade' of no growth due to Obama's economic mismanagement, thereby forcing 'needed cuts' in the various programs? ... You Betcha!
Comment Posted By Freedoms Truth On 13.11.2009 @ 15:39
#11
"You would have next to no contact with any government."
Many people had plenty of contact with Govt back in 19th century, that they didnt desire, that's why they escaped to the US as immigrants."In 2009, you live in an single family home with about 5000 people living within that 100 acres."
Only in Manhattan do you find 50/acre densities ... come to Texas, you can get your own 100 acres outside of town for less than the price of a Manhattan condo." You can’t even shoot a gun"
Come to Texas. Concealed carry state."electricity, sewers, police and fire."
And a gazillion other things provided via the free market, private-sector economy. Electricity provided in the US mostly by private sector utilities, and other 'necessities' like food, telecom, housing, are largely private, with Govt mainly involved via redistributing in some sectors.Govt is over-involved in 2 sectors of the economy: Education and healthcare. Curiously, those are the two sectors of the economy that suffer from an inability to improve cost-effectiveness and cost-efficiencies, despite the obvious opportunities due to the information revolution.
" You come in constant contact with government: speed limits, sales tax, gun licenses."
If that's all the Govt did, it could live off of less than 1% of our GDP.Point well taken that urban Government is more involved than rural Govt, but there too you have only another 1-2% of GDP for sewer, trash, parks, police, etc. That's 'some' Government (and local Govt too, the less intrusive kind), not the Leviathan Government like we have now that is consuming and spending 27% of a very huge $13 trillion GDP.
The Leviathan Government has nothing to do with our daily interactions with Govt in order to live peacably together. What that Leviathan Government is (aside from about 20% for DoD) is a massive amount of wealth distribution, from young to old, from taxpayers to welfare-takers, from consumers to farmers, from those who work to those-who-have-a-friend-in-Congress, etc.
The idea that 'right-wing' America is 'anti-Government' ergo doesnt want local police is just a red herring and sophistry. The REAL issue is this: Do we want the 'limited but effective Government' that sticks to the sewer/police/protect-the-border basics, or do we want the Leviathan Government that does that AND takes on managing industries (banks, GM), healthcare, energy, etc. AND redistributes wealth massively.
The real dividing line is not Government vs no Government (pace the Somalia Red Herring), it's Redistributionist-Socialist Government vs Limited Government.
"Overall I’ll take 2009. Bring on healthcare reform."
While we all will take today over yesterday, the false choice here is that implies support for Redistributionist-Socialist Government over the Limited Government vision.
The size of Federal Government relative to economy was smaller in 2008 than in 1945, and it was fairly even from 1960s through until 2 years ago... now it has spiked up and Federal Govt/ GDP is higher now than in 60 years. Is that the "future"? Inevitably Big Government?
Why bring on a 1945-era style of Government control - like ObamaLosicare - instead of something more modern, grounded in market-based choice, and leveraging modern technology? In reality, ObamaLosiCare is a THROWBACK to the mindset of the post WWII British socialists. The whole push to 'single payer' is based on a mindset locked in paradigms that are out of date.
Didnt fall of USSR, and socialist economic basketcases warn us off that kind of path? If the future is Big Government, then the future will look much like the failed visions of Socialism Past.
Comment Posted By Freedoms Truth On 13.11.2009 @ 15:36
#7: On Constitutionality ...
"The argument falls apart quickly when you consider that the individual mandate is a tax of a sort, which is constitutional."
So Obama supports and the House just passed a tax on millions and millions of American citizens, making middle-class wages ... fascinating.The problem with your argument is that taxes are taxes on an economic activity ... You are basically saying THE DEMOCRATS HAVE PASSED A TAX ON BEING ALIVE. It doesn't compute.
"Then there’s mandatory auto insurance, which is constitutional,"
False analogy. That is required by STATES not the Federal Government.
" and my favorite — the Americans With Disability Act — which requires businesses to install handicapped ramps and such even though the Constitution does not address the issue of entryways."
Well, that sure dances on the edge of constitutionality, but the Commerce clause is roped in via the fact that these are 'public' facilities. As of yet, commerical buildings not homes are required. Same with business mandates, I suppose.But let's get to individual mandate.
Let's cut to chase of the Constitutionality question - what provision in the Constitution allows for the individual mandate?
Honestly, without the fig leaf of the commerce clause, and without the phony subterfuge of 'it's a tax' (if you can tax being alive, then you have indeed turned the Constitution into TP), ... there's nothing there.
Comment Posted By Freedoms Truth On 13.11.2009 @ 15:12
#7:
Excuse me, but it is the Left who has been using the phony "health care is a right" mantra. I am only exposing the contradiction between Socialized Medicine and that terminology. Socialized Medicine and "health care rights" are incompatible, inherently so.One good example of this in action came from England- A woman was refused the right by the NHS to augment her approved treatment with certain life-saving drugs to treat her breast cancer - EVEN IF SHE PAID HER OWN WAY. You see, that would lead to dreaded inequality, and you can't have that, can you? The restrictions on care is due to bureaucratic cost reasons - as explained here:
"Based solely on cost, Britain’s National Health Service has for years denied
the four best available drugs to kidney cancer patients in Britain, leaving as
many with the choice only of Interferon, to which as many as three-quarters
do not meaningfully respond,6 or essentially being left to die. In 2007, the
Times quoted a Birmingham oncologist saying of Nexavar: “Patients with
this cancer tend to die quite quickly but I know from my own patients who
were on the trial how well this drug works. They are still alive two years
later.”7
http://www.nationalcenter.org/ShatteredLives.pdfAll real rights are freedoms. Expressions of 'right to ..' especially in our Bill of Rights are rights of property, conscience and action that Government may not interfere with. They invariably limit Government action NOT our own liberty.
Your rights ends where the wallets of another begins.
So let's be clear about what "Providing decent health care to all Americans " ... Are you a doctor? Are politicians doctors? No. So this is not about 'providing' care, its about funding care via redistribution of wealth. It's "taking from the pockets of one group in order to give to another group". Redistribution of wealth by force of Government dictat is the opposite of 'rights' and 'freedoms'. It denies rights and denies freedoms. It also is INHERENTLY LIMITED by the economic sustenance of the society's economy. It does NO GOOD to tax people to the point where the economy suffers, and leave less resources for the very care you are trying to secure.
Properly understood, the debate here is between socializing healthcare further, in the interest of providing healthcare 'security' to those who might not have it, versus a more market-based system of greater choice, liberty and inequality. Given that Medicaid and Medicare has already sufficiently socialized the system to address most of those 'in need', it begs the question of why go with the folly of MANDATES, when it is crystal clear that this attack on our liberties buys us SO LITTLE in beneficial improvement in health-care security. We know now that the 45 million uninsured is largely mythological, that in reality the need gap is more like 10-15 million, excluding illegal aliens and those with sufficient means to take care of themselves.
Few Americans who are currently 'in the cracks' will have better healthcare due to this bill, and those that do could benefit from a simpler addressing of the 'pre-existing conditions' issues; meanwhile millions of Americans will have higher-cost health insurance, worse benefits, and other things taken away. For me personally, the House bill is a blow, as our family uses health savings accounts to manage medical expenses - they are limiting that reasonable and responsible program below what we use. So this bill worsens me personally (and will likely do even worse if/when we are forced into a govt-run program like millions of others) squeezing out folks like me to garner pennies. It's a recipe for disaster on multiple levels.
Pretending that those against the destruction of health-care freedom are simply hard-hearted is wrong. It is also folly to pretend there is a free lunch involved in this 'more security at high cost' type program.
If ObamaCare was being sold HONESTLY it would be the "More Equality, Less Liberty, All-Inclusive Healthcare Government Insurance Program" ... and it would get that 40% support of pro-socialists backing it up, with 60% of Americans aghast at the prospect.
Comment Posted By Freedoms Truth On 13.11.2009 @ 15:01
"America still does have a soul"
The soul that is in our Constitution and our laws and culture has been eroded and has been under attack by 1960s leftists who disparage the pillars of American traditions, values and freedoms. The Obama agenda
is rooted in the 1960s new left and is like acid poured on America's soul."people with enough clout believe that being able to get decent care when you become sick or diseased is a right"
Such a belief is an oxymoron. No economic good is a 'right'. Such blather
does injustice to the real issue and challenge, and is precisely why the blather polls better when its abstract than when its real and concrete. Economic goods have limits, and *ANY* government program that tries to 'solve' the problem of market/cost-limited healthcare will REPLACE it with bureaucratic limits (the road to 'death panels' and QALY ratings is paved with good intentions).
If society should provide healthcare to the level society can afford rather than an individual can afford, state it that way. stating it as a 'right' is selling a promise that NO Government program can possibly keep. For example, if healthcare is a 'right' than what right does the Government have dictating those terms of care - in qualified plans?
What give Government the right to deny healthcare choices, including the choice NOT to take up health insurance? Why the heavy hand of Govt ready to fine and jail people for the 'crime' of not choosing what the Government dictates?So in the end, they (the ObamaCare folks) are selling a lie. it has to be a lie, just based on iron laws of economics (it cant get fixed by renaming government-run healthcare into some euphemism, or hiding hundreds of billions of 'doc fix' costs in another bill). As people figure out that not only is it a lie - it has to be a lie - that support falls away.
After all, the old on Medicare are already on alert that they WILL will paying the price for ObamaCare through getting the screws applied. People have figured it out - Obama does not have a magic pixie dust solution to throw millions more into Government healthcare burden without it (a) costing a lot more (b) adding to the deficit (c) hurting those currently in Medicare etc. and (c) causing huge job-killing taxes, fees and regulation burdens on individuals and business. We know now that ALL of the above WILL happen.
But it's worse than merely selling the lie and airbrushing limits. What's worse than that even is that American rights and freedoms are being crushed left and right in this mad rush to turn more and more of the healthcare industry over to Government control. They are now asking Congress-critters "Say, is it Constitutional for the Federal Govt to force individuals to have health insurance?" Instead of the correct answer ("No, I guess not") we now have videos of Congresscritters shrugging off Constitutionality ... ah, and archiac scrap of paper barely of relevance to 21st century Governance.
That is the America-soul-killing thing.
As stated ... "We are about to hand government an enormous amount of power along with the ability to control our lives in ways that can only dimly be glimpsed at this point." ... only glimpsed because this 2,000 page Godzilla of a bill is only the prelude to literally TENS OF THOUSANDS of pages of health care regulations that the DOZENS of bureaucracies will be writing up
We will 'accept' it, the way we 'accept' gridlock rush hour traffic, the common cold, bad TV sitcoms, and the existence of endemic corruption in politics. "It's just the way it is" it will become an awful restriction on our freedom, an anchor on our economy, and a boon to much that is disreputable and base in politics (pandering, corruption, and self-interested taxpayer-raping-for-special-interests galore). But it will be like some ugly furniture that we cant seem to give away - and so it will stay.
... but it doesn't HAVE to be that way. ObamaCare is NOT inevitable, even at this late hour. Only partisan blindness and this "idee fixe" of the Democrats that this is magic elixir for their majority (nope, its poison). Should the Dems pass it, Republicans will win back the House next year and the Senate and White House in 2012. And the Democrats will be discredited and tossed from power for another 10+ years. Perhaps they will realize that this Big Bad Bill is the wrong bill at the wrong time. Perhaps they will come back from the brink and do something appropriately incremental rather than a socialist rewrite of socialism... but who'm I kidding? Like the scorpion who stung the frog that carried him across the river and made them both drown - "It's in their nature".
Comment Posted By Freedoms Truth On 13.11.2009 @ 12:41
OBAMA'S "CHALLENGER MOMENT" AT FORT HOOD
One more thing - "United States Army Major Nidal Hasan proclaimed himself a "soldier of Allah" on private business cards he obtained over the Internet and kept in a box at his apartment near Fort Hood, Texas."
... wow, the guy has a Jihadist CALLING CARD fer cryin' out loud, one has to be blinded by ideology (liberal "hear no terrorism, see no terrorism" ideology) not to see this as an apparently willful act of terrorism.ABC News - "Many ties to Jihad web sites"
Comment Posted By Freedoms Truth On 12.11.2009 @ 17:10
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/hasan-multiple-mail-accounts-officials/story?id=9065692&nwltr=blotter_featureMore
Coeection: We have *now* plenty of evidence for the political/jihadist motivations. We know now of Hasan’s strange and angry outbursts to others in the military, his contacts and conversations with Al Qaeda members and radical Imams, etc.
Comment Posted By Freedoms Truth On 12.11.2009 @ 17:05
#20: "A central element of terrorism is that it is an attack on non-combatants for the express purpose of causing terror in a civilian population and effect political changes that benefit a particular ideology."
We have no plenty of evidence for the political/jihadist motivations.
we know now of Hasan's strange and angry outbursts to others in the military, his contacts and conversations with Al Qaeda members (!) and radical Imams, etc.As for the 'civilian' caveat, it's invalid -
MR REYNOLDS: ARE YOU SUGGESTING THAT THE 9/11 ATTACK ON THE PENTAGON WAS NOT TERRORISM?!?
After all, every person killed there was military.#27 "I am just saying that it is disengenuous to eliminate the possibility of terrorism just because the victims were military."
Absolutely correct. This domestic Army base required members of the military (except MPs) to be unarmed. They are certainly 'non-combatants' when it comes to their relationship with a *fellow officer*. There was zero expectation of any 'enemy'.
And if 9/11 attack on Pentagon was terrorism, what's the difference with Major Hasan in terms of targets? ? If Major Hasan flew a Piper cub into the Fort Hood cafeteria, killing 12, instead of shooting at people, killing 12, shouting the same words the 9/11 hijackers used in their final moments, would Mr Reynolds admit it was terrorism?
Done Dare Call it Terrorism:
http://travismonitor.blogspot.com/2009/11/none-dare-call-it-terrorism.htmlTerrorism is a specific form of violence that harms innocents in order to attack our wider society and to advance a political agenda. Major Hasan's murderous rampage is an apparent act of terrorism, based on the evidence we have seen so far.
Comment Posted By Freedoms Truth On 12.11.2009 @ 17:03
#3 ", and an individual programming capability that allows us to choose entirely for ourselves what we will or will not see. At this time in history critical thinking, a basic grounding in epistemology, and some moral foundation in the central value of truth, is absolutely vital."
Profound comment that I riffed on in another context over here..
http://travismonitor.blogspot.com/2009/10/education-revolution-about-to-hit.html
Comment Posted By Freedoms Truth On 22.10.2009 @ 13:46
"global warming from the standpoint that it should be less political"
Then you would wish for the UN IPCC to cease to exist. The UN IPCC in effect politicized the entire science on it, thereby turning gold into lead, scientifically speaking.
Comment Posted By Freedoms Truth On 22.10.2009 @ 13:03
