Empire of the Iguanadons

(Signed PDF copy of the above)

As you should all know by now, President Obama's healthcare bill (aka Obamacare) is coming up for a vote today in the House of Representatives. Our country now stands at a crossroads of history the likes of which we've not seen since World War II or 9/11. The political wrangling over this bill has been going on now since the day Obama took office and handed them the legislation to consider. Almost from the beginning, Republicans have been steadfastly opposed to this bill because of the enormous cost it would impose and the enormous damage it will do to our deficit. Some waffling went on back and forth which ended up allowing a floor vote in the US Senate in December of 2009 where the bill passed on a straight party-line vote of 60-40. However, because the bill the Senate passed was not the same as the one the House had passed before that, it needed to be reconciled. That debate has now been going on for the last three months.

I doubt I need to go into the myriad of back room deals, closed door meetings, and outright bribery that's been going on to get this thing to where we are today. That we are even at this point is terrifying enough. A health bill in which all Americans will be mandated BY LAW to purchase coverage or face fines imposed by the IRS, whether or not they can actually afford it. Never before in the history of the United States has the Federal government ever amassed the kind of power this bill would give them over our lives. The fact that Congress had to pull all sorts of shady deals such as the Cornhusker Kickback, the Louisiana Purchase, and other forms of bribery and extortion to get this to this point should have told them something that's been loud and clear for the last 15 months: The American People don't want this bill.

Polls show that the majority of Americans do not support this bill. So why are the Democrats trying so hard to shove this down our throats despite the overwhelming opposition? It's part of their progressive agenda. If you don't believe me, then perhaps Nancy Pelosi can fill you in herself. Oh really now? Suppose we don't want that either, are you going to resort to the same dirty back room tactics you had to use to push Obamacare to this vote? Will you end up simply deeming future bills to have passed, like you stopped short of this time?

I will concede, we need reform of the current system in this country. What we don't need is Cuban style socialized medicine to do it. Why not instead attack the problems with Medicare? Implement tort reforms to bring down trial costs for BS lawsuits. Start deporting the illegal aliens, who are ultimately the real cause of why our medical system is in such disarray. I might even be willing to go so far as to allow government to subsidies drug research so that the costs of medications can come down, and shorten the time it takes to get FDA approvals. Surely there has to be something we can do to fix the government run system we already have that doesn't require a nearly 3,000 page bill nobody has read to create an entirely new system.

Whatever you Democrats decide to do, just remember, we voters have a long memory, and many of you are hurting badly in the polls already and only hurting more as time goes by. Pass this bill, and watch your majorities vanish come November. To John Boehner and the Republicans, stand fast, we're behind you on this one all the way.
.........................
"It is pointless to resist, my son." -- Darth Vader
"Resistance is futile." -- The Borg
"Mother's coming for me in the dragon ships. I don't like these itchy clothes, but I have to wear them or it frightens the fish." -- Thurindil

Well. I guess that's that then.

But you accept a figure of 45mil as correct because it fits in with your own declared biases? At least be consistent here, you can be both at the same time, either ALL estimates are incorrect and junk science or the science is ok and its just the methodology used which is junk.




Again consistency, are thy junk science or good science, because they cannot be both at the same time. You accept them as true but call them junk, so which is it?




I accept your bias, but i don't accept an inconstant position, you accept the value of 45mil because it fits your bias against Latinos, you support it with studies that by your own admission are junk science, which were performed by a group of people whose bias is driven by fear and hate or Latinos, while rejecting any other study as junk because of the methods used and because the people conducting them are biased. Talk about flip flopping about.

When people quote the figures on the number of illegals they usually say something like BEST estimates, you know why they say that, its because they are at best, the closest we will ever get to fully understanding the extent of the problem, no one quotes these number as exact. And just because the numbers are not exact does not mean they do not have significant value. But you argue about exacts, exacts number to the person are just not needed, 10% either way is neither here nor there in the scheme of things.

Even in Conner's roach scenario, if it was estimate the number of roaches in his house to be 100 and there were in fact 115, does it really matter all that much in the scheme of things, the fact that the result is close enough to the actual number statistically means nothing.

Take the size of the earth as another example, everyone accepts that the earth is X km across, but no one has taken to it with a tape measure, so by your reckoning, this is junk science and should be discarded. Same with E = MC^2, Einstein, by your logic has to be wrong because you cannot directly measure the speed of light, and this list could go on and on and on, because often times, a proxy is all we have to determine something that is unknown.



The ones that deal with high rise buildings, sewer systems etc will use various methods to determine the extent of a problem before going off willy nilly spraying shit all over the place. Mostly it is done with rodent problems, where spraying does not work and for effective control using traps and baits you need to know how many you are dealing with.



This will fail to give an accurate result for the following reasons, 1. as the fire takes hold many roach will escape the building and head for the hills, 2. the bodies of those in the fire will be destroyed and you cannot count them, which still leaves proxy methods as the most accurate way to determine the population size.

And again what you continue to overlook is that the models used are built up from experiments done on a KNOWN population.

What can be done? Filing lawsuits is a good start. Blocking the legislation from being implemented, getting it thrown out as unconstitutional, etc.

If the IRS can't enforce collection, don't pay it. Though it appears as though they'll just steal your tax refund if you don't, effectively forcing you to pay anyway. So it will affect us all via losing out on our refunds, because you sure as hell won't win a fight to get that back.

If you're currently on Medicare/Medicaid, count on that being ruined entirely. You may as well not bother getting on those because you'll still be expected to pay for coverage you can't afford.

Supposedly there's a waiver you can apply for to become exempt. If you aren't willing to stand on Constitutional grounds and not pay, file away, but nobody knows who qualifies for one.

Every member of Congress is exempt, surely you knew this though. Oh yeah, wonderful legislation. Wrote in their own exemption from the system. I doubt anyone else is already exempted.


Defend your academics all you want, I live in the real world, not the theoretical world. Population estimates are junk science. Count them or don't. You cannot make any guesses about the size of an unknown population... wait for it.... because it's UNKNOWN.

However, if you're going to ask a laymen like myself what they think is true, expect an answer that may not fit with academia's delusions of grandeur. Most of us here in California would dispute the claims that all 10 million illegals live here, and we all see the news reports from places like South Dakota where even they're having to pass laws to boot the bastards out.

Re: what happens next, some of y'all may find this calculator useful. It's from the Washington Post, so if you don't trust them to have looked at parts of the bill and reported them here to the best of their ability, don't bother.

I've also found this chart useful, though it only talks about individuals and not small businesses. Again, LA Times, if you do not trust them do not bother, etc., etc.

I agree that the nitty-gritty details of this plan have not been made as clear as they should have been. What I do know is that some provisions are kicking in in six months (such as the provision banning insurance companies from dropping people when they get sick and the one providing that adult dependents may stay on their parents' insurance through age 26), others (such as Medicaid expansion) are going to take through 2014 to phase in.

(edited because I wrote Medicare when I meant Medicaid)

Using the Washington Post's little survey thing, I plugged in:

* No Insurance
* 1 person household
* $10,000/yr income.
* Single

The results:



That will effectively fine that person even though that's well below the poverty line. Further, the form says that person won't be eligible for Medicaid until 2014.

Poking around a bit, $9400/yr is enough to get you slapped with that same $695/yr penalty. Incidentally, that's the same penalty assessed if you make $250,000/yr. So... uh... tell me again how this was supposed to help the working poor?

Basically, Joe the Plumber is subsidizing your health care to the tune of $695 per year because he is most likely to have better coverage and you are paying $695 to have basic coverage. So Joe the Plumber will hide a portion of his income to cover this new expense, just like he has been doing forever to avoid paying income tax essentially making him an exploiter of the system and paying nothing.

All this sounds a bit like how our public health system operates, with the exception being that it does not kick in till about 30K a year and scales up from there.

Dodging around most of this, since I'm more or less with Fury, as you well know, on the information sources thing. This whole denunciation of commonly acknowledged as legitimate sources as illegitimate thing drives me crazy.

However, I do owe Conner a couple of replies, so:



So true. So true. Although, for my money, we have yet to top the Revolution, in general, for excellent rhetoric and slogans, although World War II and the Civil War do their best.



Fair enough, although I'll note my disagreement. As I said, I've had my ass (and wallet) saved fairly handily by insurance some four or five times since I've moved to CT. Not that I really love paying the $100+ per month that I pay for the stuff, but I'd love paying several thousand dollars in car repairs a whole lot less. I'll admit, however, that when I lived in OR, the need was much less apparent to me, since the ratio of insane drivers was far, far less.



Here's the thing, though. We'll have to see how this plays out, since it's going to be 2014 until the mandates kick in at all, and 2016 until they kick in full force, but given the idea of tax credits for insurance and subsidies and increased availability of Medicaid and the like, nevermind the waivers, I'm not as worried.

The bill, for the record, is here, and there's a summary here. The relevant section on mandates, which is 5000A in Chapter 48 on page 126+ of the PDF, is a little opaque, but would seem to state that the worst they can ever ding you for is the payment, and that again, there are several ways out of it. Seems like a pretty reasonable effort to me, but YMMV.

I suppose you can always choose as Samson apparently wants to to skip those bits entirely and skip to trying to go to jail, but that seems to me a rather harder way to go, given the realities of prison life. Not the sort of stand on principle I'm really fired up to take, you know?

And just for the record, I say all of this not to be a dick, but out of a certain amount of puzzlement over the lack of any seeming attempt to note any of the possible safeguards and checks built-in. I mean, the President hasn't exactly been shy about a lot of this stuff, at least in general terms, and especially lately. I'm not sure why I'm the only one who seems to know about it though.



It's not that I'm trying to deny the idea that illegals are a problem here and elsewhere, but, ok. Several things here:

- Not that I'm not in the same boat at the moment you are, but I and most people of my aquaintance prefer to see a doctor if we're that sick. So we ought to be able to. Thus the idea of expanding coverage. I could go into a bunch of stuff about the fundamental reason for the existance of the state being to enhance the lives of its citizens, and it being hard to imagine a more purposeful existance than providing said citizens the right to life, but I'll skip the political theory for the moment and note that:

- Eventually you become my (or somebody else's) problem anyway, assuming you ever do end up in a hospital, which most of us eventually do one way or the other, and wishes to the contrary aside, I can conjure up several ways in which you might. Again, most people choose this route. If we accept that health insurance of some fashion is the only sane way to cover the costs of coverage for individuals (see also what I said about car insurance), then the only way any of it works is to either go real socialist and do government run, or require mandates just as a matter of necessity.



The less, I think, that we talk about my adventures with educational bureaucracy, the better.

That said, with the exception of Regina, I've probably had the most recent experience with public schools of any of us, and with the exception of godawful inner city, etc. environments and media/parental hysteria, it's by and large not an apocalyptic hellhole, although HS certainly seemed that way to me at the time.

Thing about the news and schools is, and I've noticed this for a long time, they love to cherry pick the worst cases they find and handwring about them, ignoring actual (teenage especially) reality. I say this having been in HS during both the Kip Kinkel and Columbine shootings and having watched that whole media circus. Not to demean the problems that exist, and they certainly do exist, but I have a hard time taking very seriously the idea that school is a hugely violent environment in that way, outside of a few obvious examples.

Although I guess I should note that I have a fairly healthy distrust of home schooling and really anything outside of the traditional public/private domain. But.



Sarcasm. I did write that post at an ungodly hour on little sleep, so, you know. For that matter, this one as well, so, you know.

Imagine how people like me with common sense feel then when folks who blindly accept government backed studies based on ancient data feel when we're constantly told the sources are legit when that little voice in our brains is saying "fuck no, not even".


No need to, this one statement of yours alone tells me you're either a Socialist or a Marxist. I can't tell which yet, but you seem to be of the opinion that my money should be used to pay for your healthcare, so I'm leaning toward Marxism.

The state does not exist to enhance my life, that is not its purpose. Just the mere thought of that is enough to make me wish I owned many guns and lots of bullets so that I'm prepared for when they come to "enhance" it some more.

Just a few samples from the angry masses. I really do think the Dems have badly underestimated things by selling their souls to Satan for universal healthcare.

How about neither Marxist or Socialist, it is very likely that he is a Utilitarian or Liberal.





See, you can be either of these and not be a Marxist or a Socialist.

Well the problem with both of those is that he's squarely in favor of the forced redistribution of wealth - which is a fundamental tenet of Marxism.

Taxes are the forced redistribution of wealth, but i am sure you will agree, that the benefits gained by having a working sewer system and clean drinking water outweigh the costs of dying of cholera. So then some forced redistribution of wealth is necessary for us all to live happy fulfilled lives.

People seem OK with taxation for police, army's, fire services, etc, which all provide a public good, but on health care they go fucking nuts, see i just don't get that mentality, because health care provides a public good. Its not like your house burns down twice a year, so you really don't need a fire services, but you are likely to get ill twice a year and need a doctor, in fact you will access health care more times in your life than you will all the other services combined.

See, like Dwip, i see the states role as one of making rules that provide better outcomes for it citizens, and better health care for all certainly falls under that category IMO. Under the old system you, yourself had no coverage, preferring to front at the emergency room because by doing that you did not have to pay, get a few million others doing the same and you have an emergency system in overload, and this has nothing to do with illegals, its got to do with the fact that Joe Honest has no access to basic health care which should be fundamental to all. And isnt basic health care for all what this system provides, even you Samson.

According to that calculator.. I am covered, the kids are covered, and because our only income is my disability Conner will be covered by 2014 on Medicaid and have no penalties...

Hey dwip how old are you? and how old do you think I am? I was in high school during that time too.. I remember being at the college during 9/11... ok I looked it up.. Columbine was April 1999.. So I was not in high school still I was in the middle of getting my GED.. but same thing... I started college August 2000 and got my degree April 2003...

@The_Fury: You seem to be confusing taxes that were imposed with the consent of the people with this healtcare bill which was forced on us despite 75% of the people not wanting it.

Police, fire, highway service, and a whole host of other things are not handled by the federal government. Taxes for those are raised at the state and local levels, and are almost always voted on directly by the people. Our Constitution even goes so far as to expressly prohibit the military from being used as a police force.

You are apparently misunderstanding the concept of Marxism. Marxism takes money from the rich and hands it to the poor in the form of welfare payouts until everyone but a few elites at the top of the heap are all dirt poor together. Which is what this healthcare bill falls under, since the penalties for not paying in are forced upon you by the government. Medicare and Social Security also fall under this as well, because I am not given a choice as to whether I pay in or not. That money is stolen from me if I'm working and I don't get to tell them to stop. In all of these cases, the IRS will fine me for non-compliance and if I refuse to pay the fines, I end up in prison.

As for getting ill, I catch the average number of colds. Two or three a year. I ride them out without going to the doctor. I did so when I was still working and had coverage too, because it wouldn't have done any good to waste the time. I'm also fairly certain I've been the victim of food poisoning on a number of occasions, and I've never gone to see a doctor for that either. They would have done nothing more than give me a prescription for a bottle of pills anyway. In every one of these cases, vitamin C in huge doses and bowls of hot chicken soup fixed me up.

So on balance, it's cheaper for me to spend the $92 for a trip to the urgent care facility on the rare occasion I need something like an antibiotic. Like for that sinus infection I had last year. If I need to go to the ER, chances are I got into some kind of accident, and it won't matter if I have private coverage, Medicaid, or Obamacare, I wouldn't be able to pay for that. Obamacare is a classic 80/20 plan, just like the private plans out there. You're going to have the same problems as before, only instead of stiffing a private company for the bill, you're stiffing Uncle Sam. Stiffing the private company doesn't generally carry a high penalty other than the potential to ruin your credit report. Stiffing Uncle Sam can land you in prison. I'm fully prepared to land in prison if that's what it takes. I'll get 3 free meals a day, cable TV, internet, and healthcare too. It's almost tempting enough to go rob a liquor store and then wait for the cops.

Granted, but that difference becomes quite a bit more noticeable when you're dealing with hundreds of thousands or millions instead. If you estimate 10,000,000 but the actual number is 11,500,000 that's quite a distinct difference.


Do we actually know that no one's ever taken a tape measure to it? Seriously, there's a difference between facts that we all accept because the entire scientific community has accepted them even after decades of dozens of scientists actively trying to disprove them and some "fact" that's based off a report that's headed with "based upon an estimation".


But you said earlier that this was done for roaches, now you're saying it's only done for rodents. There's that 'insignificant' difference again. In a rodent population within even a high rise you're dealing with a scale in the hundreds or maybe even thousands, but in even a small dwelling you could be dealing with hundreds of thousands of roaches.


Ah, I've got you. My method is fool-proof, my friend, what you're failing to realize is the simple obvious fact that once the remains are all that's left, the number of roaches within the walls becomes elementary - it's zero.


See, this is where you're arguing apples to oranges. The whole issue is an unknown population to begin with.

Samson/Regina/The_Fury: Dragona already tried the calculator and reported the results a moment ago, but the results might be slightly different if we include the income I have from rent on my old house since I sold it with what amounts to owner financing and the slight additional income I make from odd computer consulting here and there, but they should still be pretty close. Thank you for providing us that link Regina, it's appreciated. For what I can see so far, I'm not actually going to be one of the ones truly hurt by this, which may make my position on the matter seem really strange, because I'm still very opposed to it. You see, even if it does ultimately help me, it hurts others badly and will bankrupt many states and, ultimately, is a clear example of our government overstepping their authority.


It's true, and while that did come immediately to mind for me when I read what you'd said, I couldn't think of any others that were nearly as good. So, if we're going just on catchy slogans, yes, the commies had us beat easily hands-down. Lately politicians have been so lazy about coming up with good PR slogans, it's really almost as shameful in itself as most of them prove to be in office. ...you don't suppose there's a correlation to that, do you?


Oh, I've had a few cars in the past that I've enjoyed the benefits of car insurance on myself, and I've enjoyed being able to use insurance to pay a doctor bill before as well, but let's be honest, when was the last time your home owner's policy (or renter's policy if you're not a home owner) actually paid you? How about flood insurance? Life insurance? (Okay, maybe that one's not fair, you're obviously still alive and posting...) Have you, over the years, paid into car insurance what those few instances would've cost you? I know that I sure have, but I've also been insured a bit longer than you have.


Fair enough, we've got roughly four years to see how it all plays out, we don't need to be in a panic state just yet. By then Obama's not even likely to still be in office.

Nice links, but that pdf is a bit much to actually try to read through. Yes, it does seem like a reasonable effort, but I've not seen reasonable being the slogan of this administration and it follows suit a bit too closely with the Marxist plan I spoke of earlier. Frankly, if it's really that reasonable, an awful lot of very politically astute people have got their panties in a wad over nothing.

No, if it comes down to facing jail, I'm not enough of a protester to not fill out a form requesting a waiver, but mainly because I'm not in a position to be able to afford that possibility right now. I would be willing to take a much firmer stand in an actual shooting war, but in a straight litigation war.. well, I've got to be here for my disabled wife and our kids.

The problem is that we all know the bill was submitted to congress in a document that was so large that even the folks voting on it didn't bother to read the whole thing, Hell, Obama admitted he hadn't read it, how do we actually know all these built-in checks and safeguards are really there? And that's even aside from the fact that, pure and simple, it's beyond the scope of our federal government's authority.


Yes, you ought to be able to, and for the fee that the doctor in question is charging, you can, even without insurance. Amazing how capitalism lets that happen, no?
See, this is where I disagree, I saw no place in the declaration of independence that I linked earlier nor in the constitution where the forefathers even implied that our country should have a government that existed to enhance our lives. This just isn't what our country's about. The government is supposed to exist to ensure that we each have life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness available to us, take note that that's the pursuit, not outright happiness. If you'll skip the political theory, so will I.

Yes, it's quite likely that I'll eventually end up in the hospital at some point (or the mortuary) and become someone else's problem, but that someone else should be my own family, not you. By mandating insurance, you deprive my family of the things our pittance of income could otherwise provide them and by going "real socialist" you remove our liberties to believe what we want.


Aww, you mean you're not going to go and demand a refund for them failing to teach you about drugs, murder, rape, gangs, etc?

Admittedly, the media does cherry pick the worst school incidents to publicize, but how many really positive incidents would they find if they tried to cherry pick the other way? Worse still, how many papers would they sell by reporting only good news, eh?

I don't know, the schools I attended for high school (there were two, on opposite coasts actually) both had their share of problems that I could see while I was in them, and they were nothing compared to what my family/friends tell me they hear about locally from their kids' schools, let alone what the media tells me about the schools these days.

Samson would probably say that your distrust of home schooling stems from your public school indoctrination. I also was public school educated, albeit years ago, and was leery of home schooling at first, after all, it went against everything I'd been taught in school. But I watched my sister home school her daughter for years before I decided to try it with my own kids. My niece is in college now and doing better by far than my eldest son who was public school educated, our other kids who are being home schooled test each year at their grade level in their weakest subjects and far above their grade level in their stronger subjects, and, perhaps just as importantly, they know the religion we want them to know, they don't know anything about gangs, drugs, or other criminal aspects of life beyond what they see on television and what we choose to share with them from the newspaper (admittedly it's generally an online newspaper in this house) and they are happy and getting to spend lots of time with their family.


Understood. I read it and thought 'that doesn't sound like Dwip', so I knew it had to be one of the two and I was banking on sarcasm, but had to ask to be sure.


Sadly, I'm with you there, but I also know, without a doubt, that no matter how many guns and bullets I could own, the government's got far more of them and, more importantly, far more bodies to use them with than I do.


A few of those are nearly priceless.. 'Obammy'


Damn, it's amazing how many terms we can come up with for forms of government and political preference. When I went to school (and I dare say you're about the same age so when you did too) those two terms didn't exist and, frankly, both would've fallen under the auspices of either Socialism or Marxism or Fascism. Guess I'm getting old... but at least I get to know that makes you getting old too.



No, taxation shouldn't be a forced redistribution of wealth. A working sewer system and clean water are great, but should only be paid for through taxes on the folks using them. For example, I don't pay taxes out here on sewage because I have a septic tank and don't live where there are sewers, I do pay taxes on the water that my household uses though because that's part of my water bill each month, but it's not part of my property tax bill. My government is certainly no Robin Hood though.


Again, that's not how taxes work over here.. at least, not exactly, when it comes to those sorts of services. We do pay for our emergency services here in two ways, we pay for them through a piece of our property taxes and again through a surcharge on our telephones that have access to the 911 response number. Military we do pay for through income tax which violates our original constitution in several ways, but you're right that no one really wants to see that go right now. Incidentally, because I pay for fire/police/rescue through my property taxes, I'm only paying my share for the folks that man the stations that service my house, not Samson's nor Dwip's, nor..


Again, as I already said to Dwip, the fundamental flaw in that is that my country isn't socialist/communist/fascist and wasn't established to provide a better outcome for anyone. Again, the problem isn't about providing basic access to health care for all, the government simply doesn't have the authority to do that, that's what we all had mommies for during our initial two decades of life, give or take a few years for most of us.


Yes, I'm lucky enough to have a young nerdy wife to keep me young..


Think twice on that one, Samson, it's not as 'nice' as the television paints it, really.

Ok, I must have missed this in the chaos of quotes being flung around, but....

1. The size of the Earth can be directly measured today with satellites in orbit. Nevermind the fact that there is well founded math that can be proven to work to measure it's size by calculating angles and so forth.

2. The speed of light can and has been directly measured. The e=mc² part is certainly more theoretical, but you can test it with concrete and validated methodology that doesn't result in wildly different figured. It's also based on a known quantity. You know the mass, you know the speed of light. If energy is truly equal to the formula, there's no denying it.

This does not therefore mean that you can sample an unknown population of people/roaches/rodents and then make any kind of verifiable guess as to how large the entire population is. Nor can you guess at what everyone in a state thinks politically because you polled 800 people for their responses. It simply doesn't track.

No, actually I'm willing to grant him that they've got valid methods out there for accurately determining a rat populace based on a sampling or, as he keeps referring to it, a shit count, but that still doesn't mean I'm willing to extend those methods to the much more wildly active population growths of roaches or people. This is the very reason that we conduct the census every ten years in this country, because there's no reliable method for determining how many people live here without actually counting each one. Though, we are getting better at forcing people to have birth and death certifications and at using computers to tabulate such things so the census is more and more being conducted for other data research/tabulation instead now. The reason it's only done every ten years instead of much more frequently is that the numbers are high enough that it takes quite awhile to actually count the results still. If we ever figure out how to conduct the census electronically and still have it reliable enough that folks can't/won't hide from it, inflate numbers for it, or otherwise intentionally falsify the data, I imagine we could find the census showing up quite a bit more frequently.

Actually the census is taken every 10 years because that's how often the Constitution says it needs to be done. Ironic that this is one of the few things the government still obeys.

Ok. On this whole Marxism thing...

Marxism states that there shall be no private property. And under this health care bill, insurance continues to be offered by private companies, the government continues to make money by taxing private companies in their status as private companies, and individuals and families who do not qualify for Medicare/Medicaid/SCHIP are expected to buy plans with the money which they have earned and kept through the fruits of their labor OR to buy them through their employers, who are, generally speaking, private companies. So no, the bill is not Marxist, because there is more to Marxism than redistribution and the health care bill does not meet those further requirements.

Our people demand the quote post button, apparently. Also a button that makes me stop forgetting to put words in.

Far, far longer Regina, here:



Well, ok. Two things, here. Well, actually three:

- Dear self: Sentence construction. Meditate deeply on the virtues of it. That is all.

- In the you vs. Fury on the size of the illegal population thing, I haven't really done any of the checking, because I just don't care to that much, but I'm with Fury insofar as this:



Precisely correct, and whatever else you may say for my academic training, one of the things they were fairly serious about were the ideas of academic rigor and evaluation of sources. Fury's gone to a good deal of trouble to establish ways in which the idea of 45 million is ludicrous on the face of it, and to provide credible sources to suggest a rather lower number.

Beyond that, this:



And there's the thing, really. I've said this to you in the past several times, but it's increasingly difficult to hold a conversation with you on anything political, because a vast majority of the time you'll refuse to accept the legitimacy of a source unless it agrees with you. No acknowledgement that academics might be serious people trying to do a serious job, or that reporters might be serious people trying to do accurate reporting. It got to a point where I couldn't give you links to non-Fox sources for simple things like quotes and video of people saying things, because you wouldn't accept them or you'd just call them Communists. It's pretty hard to work in that kind of environment.

That having been said, I'm being slightly unfair to you based on this thread. This particular rant has been building since at least the 2008 election discussions, though, so take that as you will.

Now, forth the train of thread derailment, and I'm going to talk at some length because I'm sick and goddamn tired of being mischaracterized in this way, and frankly your continued attempts to label me (and others for that matter) in the following way righteously piss me off:





Basically this, and the entirity of the follow-up comment. Not that I'm particularly interested in labeling myself, but I generally hold the following to be true, and I forget which Enlightenment philosophy I'm jacking, but probably Locke:

- There are two basic possible purposes for the existance of states. One is the perpetuation and enrichment of the state and governing oligarchy. I tend to lump Third World dictatorships and the like in this category. Actual governance occurs only insofar as is necessary to maintain the rule and enrichment of the oligarchy.

Alternately, the state exists to provide benefit of some kind to the governed people. This is inherent in the US system, expounded most notably in our Declaration of Independence. I take very seriously this idea:



Now, where we're going to differ is that I take a generally pretty broad view of the role of the government in providing for these things, and very specifically the Federal government as opposed to the several states and various corporate entities.

To make this very clear, all of the things listed by Fury's definition, "constitutions, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights, free trade, secularism, and the market economy." are important to me. I'd go further to say that it's also important that there balance among these, and I'll expound on that further in a bit.

To shift to what might be termed Utilitarianism, I think as I do because I have some small amount of training in history, both in the history of this country and others. I've got a pretty good idea what practiced Marxism/Communism looks like, and I've got a pretty good idea what unrestrained free market capitalism looks like. Walking down the line:

- Briefly, constitutions and the rule of law are self-obviously important to provide for the protection of the common man against both the powerful man and the state. Just as important is the commitment to the nonpartisan rule of law that is one of the fundamental cornerstones of American life. It is of no good to make laws if one does not follow them, which distinguishes me from, among other people, Communists.

- Liberal democracy and free and fair elections are, again, self obviously important, and a cornerstone of the American way of life. It has its faults, but representative democracy remains the greatest system of government ever devised, and one of the things that makes me proud to be an American is that our history can be seen as one of creating a democracy that encompasses all Americans. Again, this distinguishes me from, among other people, Communists.

- Human rights, among them those to life, liberty, happiness, and property, are again self-obviously important, and again a cornerstone of what it means to be an American. One of the great and inspiring things about this country is the saga of our journey towards the provision of basic rights for all Americans, and one of the greatest things about America is our expressed commitment and our actions towards providing them to people around the globe. Conversely, of course, one of our greatest tragedies is that we sometimes act in opposition to that commitment, and that more than anything else damages us around the world precisely because our commitment to human rights is our most looked up to achievement. Thus the arguments against torture, among other things. I don't think I need to tell you how this makes me differ from Communists, among other people.

- The free market and free trade are also to me self-importantly obvious, and here I veer into Utilitarianism by stating that that's because they so obviously work better than any other economic system for providing for the whole life/liberty/happiness thing, which Communism pretty self-obviously does not. That said, there are some caveats that I'll get to later, since I am, as you know, in favor of regulated free markets.

- Last but not least, I believe very strongly in a secular government as defined by the First Amendment. Both the Founders and I had a good understanding of the destructive influences of government and religion on each other - the latter corrupting the former through domination and persecution, the former corrupting the latter by causing them to crazy things in persuit of power. It's very hard, I think, to come away from any work dealing with the interactions between Constantine-era Christianity and the Roman state and feel very impressed with what that transformation wrought on both parties. Similarly, the persecution of many of our forefathers by religious states ought to serve as a warning to us to keep the influence of religion, any religion, firmly out of our government.

Which is to say that I differ from the evangelicals in this country, nevermind Al Qaeda. Now, I'm personally an agnostic, but where I differ quite heavily from the Marxists is, they want(ed) to shut down religion entirely. I don't want that, and I'll be the first to admit that religion can be a very powerful force for good in people's lives. Just not for me. I want them to be free to do their thing, and I want to be free to do mine, and yes that's going to mean a government that doesn't neatly conform to some people's religious ideas.

Now, here's where I start getting Utilitarian. So, as far as Marx goes, I've read a bit of him and Engels, along with some Soviet and Chinese stuff. And here's the thing. All that business about revolutions and workers' uprisings and Stakhanovites and what have you is so much bullshit I can't even begin to tell you, and you're not going to catch me arguing for the glorious people's revolution to redistribute the means of production to the worker, because have you got any IDEA how bad collectivization was in the Soviet Union? Do you have any idea how bad the Great Leap Forward was? I mean, never mind the millions dead, the economic effects were ruinous.

That said, Marx and Engels did have something of a point, insofar as they illustrated well the equally destructive effects of unrestrained free market capitalism. We have some pretty obvious examples in our own recent history, and thank you for that 2000s, but the big one in my mind is the general godawfulness of the effects of the Industrial Revolution in this country, as typified by the whole of the Gilded Age. Unrestrained capitalism is not a moral force, and if the 19th century shows us anything, it is that if left to their own devices, capitalists WILL rig the system to their own benefit, with detrimental effects on the common man. Look at company stores and the killing of labor organizers and common workers during that era, and tell me it's better. Can't be done.

I'm in favor of a strong central government, and for that matter so were a lot of the Founders, because it's the only way we've really got to provide many things for the common citizen. I just talked about the unwillingness of corporate interests to do it, and my problem with the states is that a lot of the time they're just about as bad. Plenty of barely regulated states that tolerate any level of damnfoolery, and the less said about the state record on civil rights, the better. You know and I know that absent a strong federal government, we'd still have slavery and segregation, about as immoral things as have ever been created.

Veering further Utilitarian, I've said I'm in favor of widescale health benefits because I believe in life, liberty, and happiness, and because this is the best way we've got to do it. Likewise, I believe in federal income taxes (and state for that matter), because it's about the best revenue method we've got, and because in any case I believe in the provision of plenty of public services because we're worse off without them. I believe in federal regulation of commerce and things like the FDIC because what we had before was so much worse.

Now, a brief note (if anything in this volumnious epic can be brief at this point) on the idea of calling people Socialists and Marxists. Now, I'll cop to a level of socialism, because any provision of public services at all ever is going to require some wealth redistribution, so whatever. As to the Marxist thing, and let's throw down fascist and Nazi too while we're here because your use of those terms similarly annoys the hell out of me, let's be pretty clear what those groups were about:

For the Marxist/Communists:

- Dramatic levels of forced income redistribution via collectivization of workers, farmers, and industry;
- Liquidation (read killing) of the wealthy and "kulak" classes;
- Oligarchic control of the state apparatus by a single party with no opposition allowed;
- Strict control of information and the interactions and movements of people;
- Insistance at all levels of society of rigid adherance to a single type of political thought;
- Abolition of religion;
- Forced reeducation via intimidation and gulags.

I could go on, but that's enough. Fascism has a good chunk of those things, plus militant nationalism and a couple other things but minus the religion bits, and change the collectivization to heavily state run capitalism with enforced labor and some other things.

With that in mind, attempts to paint me (or Obama, for that matter), as Marxist, Communist, or fascist is utterly absurd to anyone who knows anything about the subjects, and makes you sound like a jackass. Particularly regarding me, since we've been doing this sort of thing for not quite 15 years now and you know reasonably well what I'm about.

I trust I've cleared things up and put the rest of you to sleep. On with the show.



I meant the American Revolution, by the by, if I wasn't clear. But yes, Soviet propaganda in particular is great in one way or the other. One of the best things about taking a class on Stalinism in college was picking up the ability to make ridiculously long statements about the glorious workers' peoples' struggles against the rightist capitalist running dog lackey imperialist enemies of the glorious workers' peoples' struggles by Stakhanovites in service of the Soviet collectivization for our glorious leader Stalin.

One of the things about good rhetoric is that you don't usually get it unless you're in one of those times that's just completely larger than life, when you get people are who are similarly larger than life. Our current problems, whatever you may say of them, lack a certain life and death quality necessary for excellent rhetoric.

That said, say what you will about the politics of the President, he's one of the best modern orators I can think of offhand, granted that the field in these benighted times is pretty dismal. It's not Kennedy or FDR or Lincoln, for sure.



To be fair, here, and mea culpa, but I made my comments thinking about who I consider to be the usual political commentators here, roughly Samson, myself, Conner, Regina, and more recently Fury, all of whom except Regina I either know or have readily inferred as being older than myself.

That said, I'm 29. I graduated HS in 1999, and I was in college from September 1999 to June 2004. I'm also the son of a high school secretary, and spent some more time in high school when I thought about going into teaching in 2005, so I've got a little bit more knowledge than average, I think. Certainly no expert, though.



One of the things I've noticed about educational institutions that hasn't held true of any other corporate or government institution I can think of is that they're greedy bastards. Say what you will about the IRS, they'll give you a tax refund. Colleges, man? You give them a dime and it's gone. I don't think I'd have much luck trying.



You might be surprised, I think, but I don't disagree with you.



I should probably qualify myself a bit, here, and say that I don't have an unabashed loved of public schools, and, you know, do what fits the child and all, but even with all the stuff that went on in my school (mild - the usual hazing, bullying, and the like), it was a pretty reasonable experience looking back on it. To qualify it even further, I essentially home schooled myself in history - no access to AP classes - into college. For that matter, I didn't get a lot out of the late stages of my K-8 experience, either.

That said, in my area, the home school/charter school stuff was pretty much a way for the crazy fundie types to make their kids crazy, too. And, in fact, this is essentially what happened. They got crazy, they got dumb, and they missed out on the socialization experience public school provides, which at least in my case was distinctly positive, although I was in a pretty rural school district, and my class stayed about 75% the same from K-12, so we were relatively close-knit. Not going to get that everywhere.

Too, I've got enough self-introspection to know that I'm not well-rounded enough to have any business teaching my future children much beyond history, computing, and a little literature, master's degree notwithstanding. I find it difficult to believe that lots of parents could be truly comfortable teaching to an HS level in several subjects.

One does attempt to not let one's biases color one too much, however, but on the whole I'd rather do public school or the more traditional private experience rather than the alternatives. We'll see when and if I need to put a kid through school, though.

That said, a big and fundamental difference between us is probably that, while I had a lot of parental closeness growing up (and still do, for that matter), the information controls were pretty much nonexistant. Learned about a lot of crazy and bad stuff early, and think I'm better for it and the questioning of it. Pretty sure I want the same for future kids. Milage varies a lot on that score, however, as Regina could probably tell you.

Did I even say a word about health care anywhere in here? Did anyone even read this far?

I somehow missed a bit. Sorry about this, Oblivion thread.



Renter with no renter's insurance, as it happens. Although if I could afford it I'd get it - this house is not the best, and there's no way I could afford the thousands and thousands of dollars worth of stuff I'd have to replace. Flood probably ditto, if I were in a place prone to it. I can't really speak to most of the others, since I'm not in a position to have thought very hard about them. I can see cases where life insurance might be wise to have, but not for me, and certainly not mandated, which it isn't.

For my car insurance as a whole, more has been paid into it than out of it. For my CT insurance in particular, I'd have to look but it's probably the other way around - the car, if not me, has been in at least one accident per year in the 4 years I've been here, which is pretty high. But, as I say, I can better afford that than a couple few thousand bucks in one lump sum, so I'm fine with it. Certainly if medical costs were ever involved.



It's a big thing, isn't it? The second I mentioned isn't super long, though. Something of a guide.

I think I've said enough about Marxism today already, but having watched a lot of the process over this, it seems to me that if there's one thing we can count on, it's for the Republicans to come out against whatever it is Obama's doing, no matter what it is, and no matter how much some of them were for it previously. But best not to get me started, especially after having just recieved an earful from my Republican-voting mother about Republican obstructionism. She's...unhappy, let's say.

Nice post Dwip, i wish i had your skills with written language.



Obama has a mandate to institute change because of his majority in the house. The people said we like your vision for the future more than we like the vision of the other guys, so they voted for him with a resounding majority, that is called a mandate.




Just this week there was a televised debate on health between the prime minister and the opposition leader here in Australia, the government plans to take over health from the states and has been working on a plan to get the states on board to support the idea, this will cut 3 layers of bureaucracy out of the system and make it run much more efficiently and provide better outcomes for all.

While this debate was running on all TV networks, members in the studio audience and a certain number at home had approval rating devices (We call it the worm) to show how much they approved of what each person was saying and it was graphed in real time. The PM used very positive language and was very optimistic about the future, while the opposition leader pretty much tried to bash everything the PM said, the PM graphed well and the opposition leader graphed well until he started on the negative attacks then he graphed poorly.

It would seem, currently, in both our countries we have similar things happening, the government is being positive and up beat about the future and the opposition is being very negative about everything the government is trying to achieve. The PM said a number of times to the opposition leader to come on board and work together on this to bring about the best outcomes for all Australians, he refused, it would seem party politics is more important to him then the good of the people.

I think the same can be said of the Republicans on this health proposal, Obama was going to go ahead with it weather they joined in or not, they could have joined and worked together on it for better outcomes or they could do as they did (from my observations) and play party politics and look like spoiled children who did not get what they wanted so wont play.

People generally across the world are looking for positivity from their governments and they are wanting both teams to work together on issues, now is not the time for ideology and thankfully the whole militant nationalism of the past decade has started to subside and we can get back onto the business of being happy again.

Wow, only three posts to respond to this time, and it's still going to be quite a large one...


My understanding is that the founders established it as every ten years because, even with the small population at the time and much smaller area to cover, they had to do it by horseback or afoot so every ten years was the most frequently that was practical, as our modes of transport got better, and our nation got larger, our populace grew even faster so until recently it was still impractical to think it could be done any more frequently. Even today, doing it largely by mail, they're still sending out census takers to remote areas and expect the census to take from Fall of 2008 through April of 2011 according to http://2010.census.gov/2010census/how/key-dates.php which seems likely to include only valid information. (Well, ok, the actual census taking is only expected to take 9 months since they started mailing out forms in March and have to return the counts to the President for apportionment by December.)


Ah, but our current administration has not only demonstrated, but even promised, that this is only the first step toward their goals. Their actions towards banks and automobile manufacturers speak loudly of government taking over private companies at will, and the new health care law has already been shown, by you in fact, to be meant to envelop great masses of people who were never before qualified and add them to Medicaid which will certainly not be privatized any time in the foreseeable future. So, no, on it's face it's not true Marxism, but even Karl Marx didn't plan to change America overnight but rather over a long period (it's been a hundred years and counting so far) and through subtlety and subterfuge rather than outright open warfare.

(You'll forgive me if I gloss over the discussion between you and Samson about Fury's number arguments and Samson's labeling/discrediting, since I'd prefer to think I'm not actually directly involved in either of those. Though I will agree that a quote button, especially if it had multi-quote capability would be nice...)


Well, ok, if we're going to fall back to Locke, then yes, there are only two forms government can take and ours is not yet fallen to the level of the third world dictatorships. I will also stand corrected, I hadn't recalled that liberalism existed way back in the 1600s, if not necessarily by that title and will say, in my defense, that I honestly don't recall being taught about it as such in school.


Damn, Dwip, I've got to say that once we get you fired up enough, you do write a mean essay...

Let's see, where to start.. aside from the fact that you directed this segment to Samson from what I can tell.. you do make a very valid argument for most of your points and I'll concede most of them. Where I differ is in a few points, so I'll really only address those if you'll forgive me for preserving your entire statement to address only a few points of it but I did so because I was impressed with this segment as a whole and didn't want to break it down to "talking points".

I've already said that I don't think the government's role is to provide for our happiness but merely to ensure that we have enough fairness to all be equally able to pursue happiness.

I understand and will respect your desire to not be labeled as a subscriber of a particular political view because you feel that you, not unlike myself, actually subscribe to only segments of each of a collection of political views, though in my own case I'm willing to wear the label of Republican rather than true independent because these days independent is a political party in itself which I don't subscribe to per se.

I do disagree that attempts to paint Obama as a fascist or socialist is utterly absurd because I honestly think that is exactly what he is and that he is in fact following the Marxist Plan in an attempt to solidify the socialism that already exists in this country into a solid socialist or fascist state.

I was going to say more, but my kids are going nuts already and I've still got quite a bit of your post to wade through yet...


No, I knew that you meant the American Revolution, but it's hard to argue that point with you and more fun to compare the Russian slogans.

You're probably right about the rhetoric, and certainly right about the oration. Obama's strongest point, as acknowledged by countless already, is his oratory skill, but he's definitely not Kennedy, FDR, or Lincoln.


I'll leave most of this to Dragona to respond to since it's directed at her and so little gets directed to her here, but I believe she was excited to think she'd found someone her own age here, not criticizing you.


Ain't that the truth! :sigh:
But I still thought it was a pretty funny concept, especially regarding high school which, in this case, was at a public institution.. in a manner of speaking, you got what you paid for out of it, no?


Nah, I thought it was a pretty solid argument to begin with. The media is the real in most things, especially political, but they are often enough the only information outlets available.


Sadly, this does still happen, but there's no real reason for it. Many home schoolers organize so their kids can get the socialization aspects and often home school kids are enrolled in girl/boy scouts (brownie/cub too) and other organizations so they don't miss out there either, I've even known home school kids who were part of public 'school affiliated' sports teams, especially at the little league levels. As far as the crazies, you're telling me you didn't know any kids in public school who were a bit addled because their parents were? I sure did. It's not a home school thing, that's a parent thing.


I'll be the first to admit that it's not an experience that's a right fit for everyone, but neither is the military, or even college for that matter. It's tough to teach subjects you're not good at yourself, but we've got so many resources available to help us, including the internet, that many of my public school teachers didn't have and I watched several of them fumble through classes I was in were I wasn't the only kid in the class who clearly knew more about the subject than the teacher. I think the real biggest requirements for home schooling are having the desire to try to teach your kids what you want them to learn and having the patience to put up with your kids when they could be away at school.


Actually, I had that too, but being raised Jewish in a rather strongly prejudiced district, I learned bad things early on that I don't want my kids to have to learn, at least not that way. I may be better for having learned early on the need to protect myself, along with other stuff, but I'd rather instill that in my kids without them having to actually get hurt first if I can. Probably just a difference in circumstances but I also raised several kids before making the decision to start home schooling the others.


Actually, yes, you did, but not really in context per se, more in this relates to it.. Yup, and from what my RSS feed tells me, I've yet another whole post of yours to find by refreshing my browser before I can actually post this...
Damn, figures, I refreshed to get Dwip's other post and Fury snuck one in too.. hope y'all enjoy my response since it's taking this freakin' long to get posted.


That's an understandable, and probably pretty common, position. But while you feel more secure in knowing you've got these insurances (that is what they're really selling, security), even you've already admitted that you've spent more on insurance than you've gotten from it. That's the case with most people, it's how insurance works. If, instead of carrying insurance, you'd kept making those same payments each month/year to a special bank account that could only be withdrawn from for the same things your insurance covered but with the difference being that it'd be "umbrella insurance" and entirely accessible as retirement funding, you'd be doing fairly decently at retirement in all likelihood, the insurance companies are wagering that way too.


It really is, and it's quite understandable why none of the folks who voted on it actually read it entirely for themselves, except that it was their duty to do so.
Yes, the second link was much easier.


Sorry to hear that you got berated at the home front about all this too. Actually, as I mentioned before, I enjoy getting you fired up, it's quite a pleasure to read your extremely long but excellently written rants.
No, the open killing hasn't started yet, that I've seen, and, yes, we all know that the republicans as a whole are going to complain about everything Obama does, but that doesn't mean they're all wrong each time they do either. Kind of like the old quip that just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that they're not out to get you.


Indeed, he does have a beautiful grasp of writing skill.


The only problem with this is that the people didn't actually say they liked his vision better because he very carefully ensured that during his entire campaign he never revealed what his vision might be, only that he represented change and hope, not even what the hope might be for or what sort of change he planned.

Damn it, Fury, I finally got through that huge post and you went and edited yours....


Yes, overall people are sheep and will side with whoever can make things sound more positive.

The republicans did try to offer input and were told no, there won't be any compromises on that, over and over, especially at the President's special health care event he held specifically to supposedly make peace with the republicans. So, not quite exactly the same thing over here, but very similar.

I was only wondering cause i know that most of those here are older then me... That was all...
I will be 28 next month

Like I mentioned before, I'm blessed with being lucky enough to have found a wife who's young enough to help keep me young while still nerdy enough to relate well with me and who enjoys playing the same games I do and even prefers to play them with me.

I hope y'all may live long enough to be so blessed as well, and I mean that most sincerely and in only the most positive of ways.