I swear, I can't leave you people alone for a second. I take one little week off, then come home to discover no one has killed cap and trade or health care reform yet. In fact, the march toward statism is so far along I wonder if the whole concept of freedom is starting to sound like just a rightwing rant.
Newsweek has put Al Gore on the cover (again), this time with the heading "The Thinking Man's Thinking Man" with apparently no clue of what absurd territory they've wandered into. The article is all about how his thinking has evolved to the point where he now believes we can save the planet by allowing people to make money on green technology. The tone is one of hushed reverence the magazine usually reserves for President Obama:
Dressed in blue jeans and a button-down shirt open at the collar, Gore looks younger than his 61 years: the mountain-man beard he grew in the wake of the Florida recount debacle of 2000 is long gone, and the extra weight, which hung on several more years, is nowhere in evidence. Nor are the trappings of office, unless you count an electronic gate at the bottom of his circular driveway in the wealthy Nashville neighborhood of Belle Meade. When he travels—as he does about one quarter of the time, often to train volunteers to give the slide show that formed the core of An Inconvenient Truth—it is with no more than one aide, and he pulls his own luggage.
Geez. He pulls his own luggage! What a planet-saving titan! In the meantime, health care reform has passed the House and now will be taken up by the Senate:
The Senate bill would have major areas of overlap with the House's: Both would expand Medicaid coverage for the needy, provide private-insurance premium subsidies for people of modest means, and set rules to make it harder for insurance companies to deny coverage or charge higher rates to people based on their medical status or history.
Both bills would require everyone to have health insurance and set up an insurance exchange to offer affordable policies for small businesses and individuals not covered by their employers. Both bills would include one government-run public option among the choices. But Reid has said that his bill would allow states to opt out of offering the government plan.
We will be required to have health insurance. This isn't like making us get insurance if we do something dangerous scary like running a playground for kids or having mandatory insurance as part of an implied contract, as when driving on public roads. We would be required to have insurance simply because we are alive and on the planet. This is crossing a line between the individual's rights and the state's prerogatives that I never thought we'd even get close to in this country.
Oh, well, that's what you get when liberals and leftwing advocacy groups get near something they've been salivating over for years. Nothing like an exaggerated threat to the planet or the well-being of the people to help them get their way.
Just having a little fun there. The "salivating" is actually being done by neocons and rightwing advocacy groups, explains a helpful professor who tells us that the "threat" of an electromagnetic pulse taking out the country's electronics is being "greatly exaggerated" by all those evil hawks who just want to get back into building up our missile stock again.
One of the books I read on vacation, by the way, is "One Second After," an apocalyptic novel on the order of "On the Beach" and "Alas Babylon," but about the after-effects of an EMP attack rather than an atomic war. The author does seem to stretch a point now and then, but that's what such novels do, isn't it? And he could have used a good editor to help him deal with commas, typos and the occasional choice of the wrong word. But the novel does illustrate a potential threat much more likely to cause us harm than climate "change" and one that can be addressed without economy-crippling taxes and nation-changing rules (and without a lot of new missiles, either).
But we're only dealing with leftwing fantasies these days, apparently. The righwing ones will have to stand in line.
Comments
It's an interesting strategy for solving "societal problems" which, once solved, gives government greater license to work on our individual imperfections.
Homelessness? Create a new housing benefit, of uncertain usefulness and unpredictable cost, and order everyone to sign up or prove they already have a home. Fine and, ultimately, imprison, those who don't cooperate in accepting the benefit. No more homelessness.
Illiteracy? Same deal. Indeed, all of the big societal problems can be "solved" with a few million keystrokes and the willingness to put a gun to the head of the uninsured, the homeless, the hungry, etc. Time to move on to eradicating improper ideas.
Yeah, "statism" is just awful. Just ask all those disgruntled old people who have to put up with those awful Social Security checks and that dreadful Medicare free hospitalization. How do they stand it? It's easy to see why every other industrialized nation has fallen completely apart, since they all provide universal coverge. But here in the United States, nobody ever goes bankrupt because they get sick and can't pay for it. Nope, no problem here. Keep fighting that "statism." And of course, when your house catches on fire, be sure to send the tax-paid firefighters away. You have a garden hose, don't you?
Hey Einstein, you know where the money came from for those S.S. checks and that "free" (ha!) medicare hospitalization? It came from an involuntary "whack" on your paycheck your whole frickin' life, imposed upon you by an imposing government, and it's a pittance of what you paid in.
If you like being told when to sh&t and where, then you should be very happy as this all escalates. The socialist security ponzi scheme is drying up, the post office is 10 billion in the red, Amtrak is always 30 billion off in the red, you can't get a swine flu shot cuz the feds missed the mark by 90 million doses...every single government program ever created in this country has NEVER come in at or on budget.
And you want these morons to tell you when and where you will receive treatment? It's like taking your car to a service shop that never fixes your car properly, charges you 3 times more each time, and takes 6 months to do it wrong.
If someone or something has a proven track record of never doing anything right, why on Earth would you keep dreaming up even more things to screw up?
Gosh, all angry again. The sarcastic "Einstein" really isn't necessary, Tim. I'm all too aware of my own intellectual shortcomings. I'm pretty much an idiot. That's why I count on you to point out amazing facts, such as the fact that government services are paid for with taxes. Who knew? I sure didn't.
Nothing's free, of course, but medical care is pretty much free for Americans 65 and older. Younger wage-earners pay for it. But with luck, they'll be old someday themselves. That's what I meant by free.
Sort of like the protection you get from the police and fire departments is free. You pay taxes, of course. But if you're robbed or your house catches fire, there is no fee for those services.
Serious question Tim: Do you think police and fire departments should be privatized for the sake of lowering taxes? What alternative would you propose? How about the military, which represent a huge chunk of the federal budget? Just curious, since I clearly lack your perspicuity regarding these matters. I guess I'm probably less educated than you.
Thanks in advance for your help.
Littlejohn
Lemme 'splain it to you, you are confusing (or conflating) services paid for by taxes and services paid for by your own lifetime contributions in a ponzi-like savings account.
General taxes are collected from everyone in the community(well they used to be anyway) for general services like police & fire & military etc.
Social Security & Medicare withholding were/are automatically "whacked" from your paycheck with the sole intent of the funds (well it was supposed to be) never going anywhere else but back to you when you reach the "magic" age. Medicare & SS is nothing more than the feds slowly doling back out your own frickin savings account back to you in drips. And since you paid into it all your life (a sizeable sum) when you use medicare, it's not free, you have paid through the a$$ for it all of your life in real dollars.
Your problem is you don't/can't/won't quantify the real "cost" because (I guess) your perception is since you aren't writing a check today for services provided it is somehow "free".
That's what everyones perception has become today, if you don't have to hand over "cash" for something on the spot, it's free. Nothing could be farther from the truth, unfortunately there is a cost for everything.
Glad I could help Littlejohn.
relax Tim...go sell a few more houses and don't worry about the money!