Re: How to be an RSG liberal

William A. T. Clark wrote:
In article <X4udnREdDta1_jrUnZ2dnUVZ_uudnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxx>,
BAR <Screw@xxxxxxx> wrote:

William A. T. Clark wrote:
In article <DaqdnWUahfJG0DjUnZ2dnUVZ_trinZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxx>,
BAR <Screw@xxxxxxx> wrote:

William A. T. Clark wrote:
In article <8JqdncglptKEPTnUnZ2dnUVZ_orinZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxx>,
BAR <Screw@xxxxxxx> wrote:

.. . . snip, snip . . .



Why, Why, Why ???

Because, apart from the stuff I posted, the rest is silly nonsense.

That's where your problems start. Seek a counselor.

- Show quoted text -
Market forces have been allowed to work. It's not government that has
caused the run-up in healty care costs. It's the fact that 40m people
don't have health insurance, so the industry passes on the costs of
treating them to all the rest of us.
If you show up at a car dealer and take a car without paying for it you are stealing.

If you got to a grocery store and take food without paying for it you are stealing.

If you got to a retail store and take items without paying them you are stealing.

But, if you go to a hospital and receive medical treatment and you don't pay for it they government says have a nice day.

Call me heartless and cruel all you want. But, stealing is stealing regardless of whether it is a DVD or medical treatment.
Indeed, so why not just let them die? What an excellent solution that would be.
It is their choice to seek and pay for their own health care. You have no right to health care.
Especially if they do not have the money in the first place? Right. I am not sure what you mean by a "right" to health care, but it seems to me that any civilized society has an obligation to take care of the sick.
Without food you die. Am I obligated to buy you food?
Our society clearly regards providing food as an obligation, otherwise we wouldn't spend tax dollars on agricultural subsidies. So, yes, you already ARE "buying" food.
An obligation according to whom? Have we moved to an ethical and moral obligation.

An obligation according to anyone who would like to maintain some social order in society. It is simply a matter of self preservation.

You and I come from two different schools of social thought. You want to take care of everyone with other peoples money. I want everyone to take care of themselves with their own money.

If so, what is ethical and moral about compelling your friends and neighbors to support your causes at the point of a gun?

Nothing - so why are we in Iraq, "compelling our friends and neighbors there to support our cause at the point of a gun"?

Oil. If the idiots would let us drill here in the USA we wouldn't have to protect the oil flow from the middle east.

This whole BS about "reliance on foreign oil" is just a canard. They don't wan't us using oil regardless of where it is drilled.

It is in our own interests after all.
It is in their own self interest to take care of themselves. We should be teaching our children to be self supporting rather than sticking their hands out. When someone is down on their luck and needs assistance I am willing to help them get back on their feet if they are willing to get back on their feet. But, if all they want to do is to have me provide for them for the rest of their lives then I am under no obligation to help them in any way.
You need to grow out of the "undeserving poor" mentality. It's Victorian and it misses the mark for the majority of those struggling, especially in today's economy with job losses and unemployment.
By what right do you obligate the fruits of my labor to your causes. You are free to do whatever you want with your property and I should be free to do whatever I want with my property. You chaff at the bit when someone tries to push their moral and religious views upon you but you have no problem pushing your views upon others. Why?

Which would be fine if the "fruits of my labors" were not supporting some fraction of yours through my taxes. You can't really be dumb enough to believe that you can operate independently of society, can you?

Should the goal be that you keep as much of your money and property as you can and I keep as much of my property as I can.

But it is good to know that you really would just let them die. At least you are honest about your intentions.
If they do not want to help themselves why should I help them?
You have no evidence that most of these people "do not want to help themselves". Just your own self-centered prejudice. This is the kind of thinking that justified the Holocaust.
And you have no evidence that they want your kind of help either.

I don't need any - my reasons for offering what support and help I can out of my good fortune are not predicated on being flattered by receiving their grateful thanks. I don't need that. You seem to have difficulty seeing that anyone's motivation might differ from your own.

Great do it with your own money and leave me to do with my money what I want. Or do you subscribe to the liberal view that I can't be trusted to spend my money the way the liberals believe that I should sped it? Bill Clinton vocalized that and never recanted. No one else on the left ever stated that it was incorrect.

There is actually a world of difference between taking a car, which is a free and conscious choice, and getting ill, which in almost every case is not. Our refusal to confront universal health care means that the poor generally only use medical facilities after they have become chronically ill, and so very expensive to treat, rather than being nicely middle class and being able to pay to go to the doctor for the regular check ups that allow for early detection and so pre-empt chronic disease.
Who is going to arbitrate the cause of your illness or injury and determine if it is self inflicted or accidental?
Self inflicted or accidental have nothing whatever to do with the point being made. Nice try at deflection, though.
Sure it does. If a block falls off a building and lands on a guys foot and breaks his toe it is an accident. But, if a guy kicks a building out of anger and breaks his toe it is self inflicted. I am more inclined to help in the former and in the latter tell the guy to suck it up learn from his mistakes.
So all smokers should immediately be denied health benefits for smoking related illnesses. Anyone who participates in sport or exercise should be denied health benefits for any injuries, and so on. See what a blind alley you end up in with this kind of thinking?
All people should either pay for their medical needs from their own pockets or purchase insurance to cover their medical needs. It is the same as life insurance. It is a matter of choice. Damn that choice word bit you in the ass again. You make your choices and you suffer the consequence of your choices.

So you think people "choose" to be unemployed? You think that those retirees from Delphi who have now had their health insurance pulled out from under them have any "choice". This "choice" crap is just another wingnut excuse to justify the Bush "I've got mine, you can drop dead" mentality that has bankrupted this country.

Nobody ever said life was fair.

When you coddle people for too long they become dependent. The Democrats have been coddling people for far too long. Turning a great, independent and self reliant people into a bunch of babies who cannot and will not do for themsleves because they have been told that mother government will take care of them from craddle to the grave.


If you want health care then you should pay for your health care. Why should I be compelled at the point of a gun to pay for your health care? We should be searching for was to reduce health care cost rather than trying to figure out how to confiscate money from everyone to pay for ridiculously increasing costs.
So if you want to drive a car, you should build your own roads? If you want to be safe in your town, you should form your own police force? Really? The fact is that, as pointed out above (and carefully ignored), we will save money by treating everyone early enough to prevent easily curable afflictions from developing into catastrophic and extremely expensive ones.
I pay for the roads and police with the taxes I pay when I purchase the car and with the taxes I pay when I fuel the car.
Exactly. You endorse funding these community services from your taxes, paid according to income, but somehow health care is different? Strange planet you live on.
If I don't use the roads by owning a car or purchasing gasoline then I don't pay for those services because I do not need those services.

But you do own a car, and the gasoline tax does not cover the costs of maintaining the roads network. Even if you don't own a car you still pay for the roads in other taxation. You are just being dishonest to try to wriggle out of this contradiction.

It shouldn't be that way. The roads should be self supporting.

Yes health care is different.

No it is not.

Nice explanation.

I have a friend who is involved in just such charitable activities. He works all around the world providing vaccinations and basic medical care for people who can't afford it. But, it is coming from private resources not government funds. How much had you donated?
If you really think anyone is going to give you a donation figure on a public forum then you are even dumber than I thought. Let's just say that my conscience and I are at peace on this one. Or perhaps you can get the ball rolling by declaring your charitable donations here?
I am not asking for a donation. I am not advocating spending your money or anyone else's money. I want you to spend your money as you see fit and I want to be left to spend my money as I see fit.

Very nice, but unfortunately not possible, unless you adopt the mountain man lifestyle. Once you emerge into society in general, you acquire certain obligations that constrain this ideal.

Buy me a new car. You have more money than me so you can afford it.

I typicaly donate twice as much in a single year to my charities than VP Joe Biden has donated to charity in the last 10 years combined.

Terrible thing to have to brag about your donations in public. I would hope you had more class than that.

Isn't it sad to find out the President of the US donated used underwear to Goodwill and took a tax deduction for it. Isn't it sad that Al Gore, the inventor of the Internet, gave a whopping $300 to charity one year while he was VP? Isn't it sad that Joe Biden the current VP gives a measly $350 a year to charity while admonishing people that it is their patriotic duty to pay taxes.

What great examples these self described compassionate leaders are to the rest of us.

It sure as hell is government's fault for the run up in health care costs. When your force, via law, those who provide health to give it to some for free and make others take up the slack for those receiving it for free.
How many poor physicians do you know?
Well, how many?
It is irrelevant.
No, it is absolutely relevant. Doctors make a lot of money. High salaries can be justified for the best in any field, but there are a lot of mediocre doctors earning way above their due. That and over-specialization have a lot to do with excessive health care costs.
I will take this as an admission that you disagree with Congressional Democrats and Dear Leader Obama that limiting CEO's to salaries of $500,000 is just plain old stupidity.

No, I think that $500,000 a year is a high enough salary for anyone to do their job.

Why? Why should your ability to earn be limited by some arbitrary number that is based on nothing but jealousy?

Why does it cost a hospital $50 to give a patient an aspirin? Why does the physician have to order what appear to be unnecessary tests?
It doesn't - they are operating a gray market universal health care system. How much better to put the whole thing on a properly structured footing, so that the costs of treating the indigent doesn't fall solely on the backs of those that have health insurance.
When you receive an aspirin at a hospital it does not cost you the $.07 it costs you when you buy it at the drug store. You want the same people who buy $600 hammers and $2000 toilets to run health care.
Excuse me? When I get a hip replacement, the hospital charges me $16,500 for the prosthesis, which I know for a fact costs at most $500. Seems to me we are way past the $600 hammer already here.
$500 in material maybe. But, the prosthesis didn't just jump out of the mold. But, of course you know about the cost of research and development and hos the research and development costs are recovered over time. But, you are a magnanimous person so I assume that you do not copyright any of your work or have anything patented, why would you, it just increases the cost to the end-user and that is wrong by your own admission.

No, the materials cost less than $25 per pound, so $500 is the suppliers cost to the hospital, and includes all their recovered R&D. The additional $16,000 was added on by the hospital, not the manufacturer, and goes to the hospital, not the manufacturer or the surgeon. Clear, now?

What was the total cost, excluding the surgeon's and anesthesiologist's, fees?

For my oldest daughter be in the Neo Natal ICU after she was born cost $25,000 per month. This didn't include any equipment, services, drugs, nurses or doctors fees.

Here is a novel idea. As Obama has stated we do health care the same way he has said that we do Congressional appropriations. Pay as you go.

If you are so passionate about extending health care to everyone why don't you get involved personally and start up a charity that will pay for health care for those who can't afford it. Why does the government have to do it. Surely you an intelligent man such as yourself can do it better than everyone else.
Again, then why does the government have to build roads? Have a charity do it. Why does it have to fund a police force? Have a charity do it. There will always be charities rightly helping to provide services to the poor, but the baseline should be the responsibility of the community as a whole. It is in our interests if we ever want to control these out of control health care costs.
Let's return to the days of toll roads. You wouldn't mind paying $1 for the trip form your driveway to the main road would you?

Now you are just being silly for the sake of getting off this nasty hook.

What is wrong with Pay-Go, Dear Leader Obama is a big fan of it in word if not in deed.


As always you are looking in the wrong direction. But, its a nice try at class warfare, Billy. By the way, aren't you overpaid? Why should you receive as much as you do? Surely you could get by on quite a bit less.
Class warfare has nothing to do with it, although I can see your desperation to try to cloud the issue. I could certainly get by on less than I am being paid, which is why I exercise what I see as an obligation to donate as much as I can to causes that help others who are less fortunate. I am sure you do the same. However, what I earn for what I do and contribute pales in comparison with what many others earn for doing far less that is of value to society. You are headed down yet another silly cul de sac with that particular tack.
Class warfare has everything to do with it. Obama's rant last night on national TV was all about class warfare. The mean evil banks, the evil 2% top wage earners. Tax the rich.
I can well understand that the spectacle of a President who can eloquently form and express ambitions and ideas is foreign to you, especially after what we have endured for the past eight years. But please try to think about what he says, rather than simply reaching for the cliche bottle. You sound like a talk show blowhard with this stuff.
Reality is a concept that escapes Dear Leader Obama. Obama is only interested in getting re-elected in 2012, whatever happens past that is beyond his concern.

Right. As you say, he has no interest in getting us out of the shambles that his predecessor left him and us with.

Do grow up.

Clinton left Bush a pile of crap. Bush I left Clinton a pile of crap. Carter left Reagan a pile of crap. Nothing new its what happens and it is part of the play book on setting expectations. Always claim that you predecessor left everything all screwed up. That way anything you do is looked upon as an improvement.

You are all talk and no action. You talk a big game but when push comes to shove you step out of the way and want someone else to do the heavy lifting and that someone else is always government.
Ridiculous, simply ridiculous.
True.

Me I would like to get government out of my life. Let me live my life the way I want to, just as our founding fathers wanted to when we threw off the shackles of our British overlords.
Fine talk, but you can't. Not without heading for a cabin in the hills and living off the land, anyway. My taxes subsidize things you benefit from and vice versa. That's just the way it is.
The is a balance and we have gone past the tipping point to too much government control and interference.

Been listening to too much Limbaugh, have we?

Sounds to me like you know more about what Limbaugh is saying than I do.

Please remember that this country has been independent for over 200 years. It is long past time that you got that chip off your shoulder, even if you do speak English :-)
I don't speak English I speak American.

Sorry, but you don't. There is no such official language - you speak English. Too bad for you - but Spanish is still available.

Nope I speak American.
.

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