My pal, the blogress diva extraordinaire Joy McCann yesterday posted this image, quipping “Sometimes the little man makes sense.” So much sense does he make below that I felt it incumbent upon myself to download the image and repost it here:
Reflect upon Dr. Paul’s words as you consider the impetus behind the Democrats’ program to overhaul our nation’s health care system through greater regulation and higher taxation.
Now, the system of course was never perfect. No human institution ever is, but, in trying to fix the small problems of that imperfect, improving and basically good system, our supposedly well-meaning legislators made the whole system worse.
Its problems (prior to the enactment of the Democrats’ overhaul) are not so much attributable to free markets as they are to the layers upon layers of government regulation implemented over the years.
In short, the Democrats tried to fix problems created by government programs with more government programs.
Ron Paul has a good point – and he’s right. But most people in those days didn’t think that government should compel taxpayers to provide birth control pills to law students at Georgetown.
well, the nutcase is supposed to be a damned good doc too.
hmm…thinking on it, the three docs I know that are in office are all very much against this.
r∃VOlution? I hate the word “love.” As a political ideal, it typifies exactly what is wrong with politics, i.e. that people “think” about it emotionally instead of rationally. I would prefer whatever the cerebral counterpart to “love” is, if one exists.
On topic though, Ron Paul has a lot of good ideas. It is just that the bad ideas outweigh the good ones. And his supporters are often overly zealous in their support of him to the point where it’s creepy.
Democrats have long since stopped being concerned about helping people via healthcare YEARS ago. Their main objective for years has been simply to expand programs and get as many people on the government dole as possible.
…the Democrats tried to fix problems created by government programs with more government programs.
Well, the RINOs all those–and these–years were actively complicit. Not only the Progressives need to be fired this fall–and for lots of election cycles hereafter.
On the larger question of what government can
get away withdo, a commenter on Bill O’Reilly’s site found this: http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=5u03KAcEbEoEric Hines
“Don’t talk of love,
But I’ve heard the words before;
It’s sleeping in my memory.
I won’t disturb the slumber of feelings that have died.
If I never loved I never would have cried….”
Who knows what era Ron Paul was talking about what policies these evil Democrats enacted to change things? He doesn’t specify, and unsurprisingly, no conservatives responding to the post can help on that front either. It’s just those evil, big government Democrats, it’s always those evil, big government Democrats.
Never mind that Republicans have been control of government about half the time for the past 30 years or so. And Reagan the conservative superhero is included in that run, too! No matter – it’s the vague, government regulation of the Democrats that has caused healthcare to become the problem that it is.
Of course, the rest of the civilized world doesn’t have the same terribly inefficient healthcare system that we do, and it’s not because other governments aren’t regulating. There’s no sugar coating it, if you can look at the costs and results of other Democratic countries’ healthcare systems and still believe that too much regulation is the problem, you’re too stupid for politics and should probably stick to collecting Pokemon cards.
When will you people realize that attaching a profit motive to everything isn’t the solution to all of our problems? Anyone can see that the problem with healthcare isn’t government interference, it’s the huge amount of overhead that insurance companies take on in order to increase the bottom line. But whatever, just mumble something about taxes, go on a diatribe about small government, and think you’ve made a point by saying the same thing you say in every situation. Sounding like a broken record makes you look smart, yes it does!
Levi – medicine was different within living memory. My father is a physician. I remember his practice from when I was a kid in the 60s. He and his partner had one part-time nurse who was there during office hours and an office manager who did everything else.
In later years, they had several clerks and a computer system to manage the paperwork. In the bad old days, patients paid for the basics (over time as needed and not at all if unable) and insurance paid for the big stuff. My dad and his partner took patient calls at home and made house calls. When Medicare kicked in, docs saw huge increases in paperwork. As costs rose, doctors had to start seeing more patients just to keep things going which is why house calls are unheard of and your time with the doctor is now a couple of minutes.
The problem now isn’t profit motive (or lack thereof). It’s the involvement of third party payers in every transaction and the disconnect between the patient and the cost of treatment (plus lawsuits for every bad outcome and pervasive cost shifting). As Mark Steyn has pointed out, patients no longer know or care about costs; they only care that the gatekeeper, insurance, Medicare, or Medicaid allows the service.
Other reasons for increased costs that are seldom mentioned are social issues like unwed motherhood, urban crime, drug use, and illegal immigration. Another cost driver is the fact that we now survive illnesses and injuries that, not all that long ago, we’re alway fatal. Just a few years ago, an AIDS diagnosis was a death sentence; just a few decades ago, cancer meant getting your affairs in order and waiting for the end.
Obamacare solves none of those issues and given the enthusiasm shown by people like you, it’s obvious that you see it as another free ride. Obamacare is the worst of all worlds: cost-shifting and a wider gulf between what the patient wants and what it costs and even more bureaucracy (which consumes a lot of healtcare dollars now).
I will never understand the faith liberals have in big government. We may well be idiots but the runaway welfare state you pine for has become an existential threat in a lot of those countries you hold up as a model. May you should look up from the Pokemon cards.
”If some men are entitled by right to the products of the work of others, it means that those others are deprived of rights and condemned to slave labor.” – Ayn Rand
If you can come close to comprehending the above quote, you can also understand that health care is not a right and should never be a right and yet progressives are determined to enslave the providers.
I remember when people didn’t have medical insurance except, perhaps, in the event of catastrophic insurance. Even a woman giving birth remained in the hospital for three days and the family was able to pay the bill usually within a matter of weeks.
In the late 50s and early 60s if we went to the doctor our mother paid a nominal few dollars for the office visit. The physician had a nurse in attendance and not a cadre of office workers, and he treated us himself.
If pressed to say when this all began to change, I would have to say with Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society.” Another power-mad social engineering “progressive.”
My Dad worked for a defense contractor in those days. That was my introduction to how government involvement in anything automatically drove up the price…the inflated cost of hammers and toilet seats for these projects never ceased to infuriate my father.
I managed to get through my entire 17-year education without the benefit of a Department of Education, too. I’m pretty sure that’s another example of government screwing up something that wasn’t broke in the first place. You would be hard-pressed to convince me that isn’t good money being thrown down a rat-hole.
I wonder if the people who are so enamoured of the healthcare systems in other countries could tell me why the “elite” from those countries come here for their care. Do not try to tell me that they do not because I am a physician and have seen this happen time and time again.
Remember when it was fashionable to bitch about HMOs? Wasn’t that a creation of Teddy Kennedy?
So enlighten us then. What have the democreeps done that has been so damn wonderful?
It’s pretty damn easy to contain costs when you let people die instead of saving them, ain’t it? How long before we have an NHS style “death pathway”?
And if our system is so damn horrible, why do folks like Canadian politicians come here for treatment?
I’m mystified about the gushing-praise for the impending expansion of Medicare. Here in NJ it’s more and more difficult to find Doctors, Dentists and other Medical Specialists…even Pharmacists…who will take Medicare, Medicaid or TriCare (the military insurance) patients. Even Seniors are finding it difficult to find adequate local care unless they also have supplemental insurance like AARP that makes-up some of the shortfall in reimbursements.
No, big government Republicans are just as guilty.
I am a Canadian, and if you’re going to reform the healthcare system in the US (which should happen, in my opinion), Canada’s model is possibly the worst one to look to. My Aunt had to wait over a year and a half for surgery (such long wait times are quite common). I frequently hear of shortages of doctors. The hospitals are crowded. And, like anywhere, the cost of running the healthcare system is steadily rising (and it will continue to do so as the baby boomers age). Unlike the universal healthcare systems of many other countries, Canada’s is almost completely government run (private heath care is restricted mostly to things like prescriptions and dentists).
Also, many other problems with government-run healthcare are conceivable. When the government pays for healthcare, it suddenly has a good reason to be concerned with what people eat, how often they exercise, and how healthy their lifestyles are in general. I assume people like Levi consider this a good thing, but it suddenly make sense for the government to control people’s lives to keep healthcare costs low. But another problem with that is that the additional bureaucracy required to monitor people’s lifesyles adds additional cost to the healthcare system. And even if the government doesn’t have any control over people’s lifestyles, taxpayers who take care of themselves are forced to pay for other people’s unhealthy lifestyles.
As far as I’m concerned, the only reasonable option for healthcare is to get the government out of it completely.
“Of course, the rest of the civilized world doesn’t have the same terribly inefficient healthcare system that we do, and it’s not because other governments aren’t regulating. ”
This is total bullshit that can only be written by a simpleton like our regular leftist here. I am european and I have lived and worked in 4 different west EU countries. Mine is first hand information, not bullshits that you read in the daily kos. List the number of other countries you have lived in or shut your mouth, all the statistic in the world do not compare having lived within the system.
In the MAJORITY of socialized countries you BUY extra insurance ON TOP of the taxes that you pay for national health care because those services are overabused from the muslim family with 4 wives and 12 children and the usual leftist hangers on that do not work. The queues, the shortage or doctors and hospital machines are things that you notice EVERYDAY.
And we are talking about countries that have a VERY limited population compared to the USA.
Not to mention the other factor. When a doctor works for the government, he takes his salary regardless, so more often than not, you find yourself (as a relative of a sick person) or the patient treated like a number and denied professionalism, information and basic mercy.
Finally, yes, even from EU countries the ‘hope trips’ to try to cure deadly diseases is done to the USA, not to some socialist paradise you love so much.
Levi, you do not give a damn about ‘poor people’ not receiving health care. You are a scrounger who wants to live off other people’s back and wish that more and more people become poor in order to feel equal to them.
Truly a masterpiece of a comment.
Bravo, susan.
Serenity, I’m just going to assume that video had absolutely nothing to do with susan’s comment (it had racism in the title, and charges of racism are almost always non sequiturs).
@Rattlesnake: Your choice I suppose, but anyone who declines to partake in the awesomeness that is Avenue Q is just depriving themselves.
The main reason these Big Government Utopian Schemes fail is because they focus only on the demand side. By lowering the perceived cost of health care to zero, they remove any incentive to consumers to look for ways to save costs. So, demand necessarily increases.
At the same time, to control costs, they limit supply. Which means fewer doctors, nurses, beds, operating rooms, equipment, medicine… et cetera. The UK has literal Death Panels (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence or NICE) that determine what services will be denied and when health care is cut off.
ObamaCare, like its socialist cousins, does nothing on the supply side. Instead of encouraging more doctors, hospitals, insurance plans and so forth, it actively seeks to make fewer of them through limited pay and onerous regulations.
This stems from an idiotic piece of progressive emotionalism: “It’s wrong to make profits from health care.” This is the heart of the progressive assault on free market health care and it couldn’t be more wrong. We should want health care to be a hugely profitable industry. Profits draw the best minds and the best innovators, who in return develop better products, better outcomes, and more efficiency. We should want there to be more people in the health care market; more doctors, more nurses, more insurers, more hospitals, more clinics. Because abundance and competition lower cost; and high profits lead to abundance and competition.
I love it when Levi pretends to know something. He’s invariably wrong, thus proving Reagan’s statement.
Given that he blames the current recession on Clinton, he apparently knows what bad policies Democrats made, but doesn’t want to share. Now Hush Levi, the adults are talking.
And yes, HMOs were the response to government intervention. Sure enough, the market adapted to the new rules and the artifical cost savings shifted back to normal.
And in talking with my doctor, the first time the ‘doc-fix’ is not passed and not passing it is part of the Obamacare estimates many doctors/hosptials etc are DONE with Medicare.
(Standard disclaimer: I work for an insuance company. I sure as hell don’t speak for ’em, nor do they want me to.)
If progressive leftists like Levi and Insipidity could get over their loathing of people who make more money than they do, we could solve a lot of problems.
Addressing Levi, Susan said,
Assuming that you now live in the US (as I do), and having read some of your previous comments, I would not rely on anything you have to say about the system here, or in any country you lived in previously. In fact, my first assumption would be that you are wrong until proven otherwise. I would much sooner rely on statistics, with the caveat of being vigilant about the source(s).
Forbes has an interesting article that reports this:
Socialized medicine is stultifying: it is restrictive, repetitive and risk averse. It is largely judged by the statistics of the number served and the costs involved. Patients are lined up to wait for available services which they receive when their turn occurs. The ailment, meanwhile, may not respond accordingly by waiting patiently for the available treatment.
This whole Obamacare fiasco is over some squishy number that is supposed to represent a population of uninsured. I have been unsuccessful in pinning down what that number is. It seems to range between 10 million and 30 million and sometimes includes “undocumented” aliens and sometimes does not. The point is that 2 trillion dollars is a hefty price to pay for health care for whatever the size this group may be.
There is no body of evidence that people are being made indigent by health care costs or dying for lack of treatment or being denied basic medical care.
Obamacare is a complex and largely unknown “solution” to a non-specific problem. It is a bureaucratic nightmare and a bureaucrats Disney World for those who love to shovel steam and direct unicorn traffic on the public payroll.
Levi says our health system is a shambles. Perhaps he can bring to us a list of anecdotes of people he knows who are suffering from medical inattention due to a lack of responsive medical agencies and services. I seriously doubt he can. They always have more folding chairs in the emergency room waiting area and the triage team is pretty effective.
The point is, we have had a system imposed on us through pure chicanery in Obamacare. What we do not have is any study that remotely indicates that Obamacare solves any urgent medical crisis or that it improves the medical delivery system in the US in any manner, whatsoever. It was supported by the medical insurance industry which made good and sure that their futures were brighter in the final analysis. How somebody like Levi can praise the fox guarding the hen house is a mystery to me.
The economists are beginning to understand that 75% of the cost of the Obamacare tax will be paid by people earning $120,000 per annum or less. Forget the “not a single dime of tax increase” on those under the $250,000 threshold. This is the largest single tax increase on the middle class ever. And, the same taxpayers will have another large tax increase when the Bush “tax-cuts for millionaires” expire.
Obama has managed to walk away with all the gold medals in the tax and spend and rocket the deficit olympics. What a guy. What will he do when he can’t get China to pony up any more money? What will he do when he has quantitatively eased the value of every pension and retirement portfolio to peanuts and the millionaires have all outsources to Singapore?
“Anyone can see that the problem with healthcare isn’t government interference, it’s the huge amount of overhead that insurance companies take on in order to increase the bottom line.”
This statement speaks volumes.
Another uninformed liberal who can’t make the distinction between health care costs and health insurance costs. ACA does nothing to reform health care costs. It will increase health care costs. It is designed to increase health care costs. It is designed to increase health insurance costs.
Businesses reduce overhead in order to increase profit.
ACA has 1,500 pages of new reporting requirements for health care providers.
ACA has another set of new reporting requirements for health insurance companies.
ACA has another set of new reporting requirements for employers.
All of these are new overhead costs.
Our current system restricts the sale of multi-state policies (except of course for unions and other large corporations). Therefore, health insurance companies must report to 50 different state insurance departments. At the federal level for government programs the overhead rate appears to be low (basically they are just a reimbursement agent), however, once you factor in the front line state costs, the overhead rate for government programs skyrocket.
I am continually amazed by how little critics of our current health care/health insurance system actually know about our system
I can’t say I find it all surprising that so many of the conservative retorts are about how much I want to live off of other people’s productivity and leech wealth out of the system, because I must be a fat, lazy, jobless slob that gave himself Diabetes and wants a bailout, right?
What a stupid thing, to assume so much about someone you don’t know as the first counter to their argument. If I say I support gay marriage, I must be a promiscuous hedonist with no morality. If I support public healthcare, I must be sickly and unable to provide for myself. If I support welfare programs, I must be a welfare queen that uses food stamps to buy cigarettes. I wonder if I’d stop getting those responses if I told you all everything about myself, or if this really is the only argument that you have against any kind of public service?
Any, I’m sitting over here with the truth and every time you yokels spout out with this nonsense, it erodes whatever shards of credibility you think you have left that much more. Come up with something else, anyone? Is anybody even trying?
A prodigious lack of self-awareness on the part of the ‘person’ that posted this howler.
It’s what YOU do EVERY time you set those mangy paws of yours to your mommy’s keyboard, you insufferable twerp.
You may be sitting with the truth, but you’re sure as shit not listening to ANYTHING it’s saying to you.
Try again later, little boy.
Doubtful, Richard Rush.
You see, statistics show that the problem with overusing expensive emergency room care, for example, is not due to the uninsured, who in fact use the emergency room less and pay a higher portion of their costs, but the fact that people on free government insurance use them at a far higher rate and pay a smaller portion of the costs.
And that mandates, instead of fixing the problem, only make it worse.
The statistics are there, yet you and your Barack Obama and Barack Obama Party screamed the opposite. Therefore, what becomes quite obvious is that you DON’T look at statistics, and are in fact just lying up a storm to push your ideology.
And now, since your Obama Party screams and cries about “freeloaders”, let’s talk about you and your friends like Bareback Joe Jervis, who refused to wear condoms and refused to stop having promiscuous sex, and who are now costing us billions of dollars in “free” health care, pills, and disability checks, all without having to pay a dime themselves.
Tell us, Richard Rush; why should people who are careful and responsible and who don’t have promiscuous bareback sex be forced to pay the bills and give welfare to those who weren’t and did?
FIFY
Shorter Levi.
“I can’t refute the facts presented, so I’ll just address posts that don’t exist.”
Now hush Levi, the adults are talking.
Like it or not, these are meta-level problems that are strangling our civilization and they’re not going to solve themselves. There are ways to marshal the resources of government to combat these problems without trampling on people’s freedoms, but we can’t even get that far because conservatives shit their pants anytime someone suggests doing anything with tax dollars that doesn’t involve dropping bombs on Arabian schoolchildren.
In truth, the people with the entitlement problem are the conservatives who are too stupid to realize how much of a return they get from paying taxes into things that benefit the community. We’ve built up a lot of wealth in this country and there are many layers of luxury that even the poorest among us can enjoy. The government is responsible for the biggest part of that, but the linkages are are too far removed from their daily lives that conservatives think the government had nothing to do with it. And for you all to be strutting around, pretending like you did all the work yourselves and that nobody ever helped you and Ayn Rand quote is worse than an over-inflated sense of entitlement, it’s suicidal hubris.
What is the conservative solution to people getting sicker and fatter and unhealthier? Oh god, who knows. Preach personal responsibility I guess? Wait for the free market to invent a magical pill that obsoletes exercise and eating healthy? Meanwhile, you advocate taking representative government, which is the greatest problem-solving engine ever devised, and putting it on the sidelines because you’re worried that people’s freedoms are being encroached upon if they have to pay 5 more cents for a soda. If your advice is to just sit on our hands while all these problems add up, why don’t we all just kill ourselves tonight at midnight?
Yup.
Because, Levi, we can show that you are currently using taxpayer dollars to buy liquor-stocked private airliner travel and lavish parties for multimillionaires who can presumably pay their own bills, but won’t.
And also because we can show that you are already spending massive amounts on free health care and welfare checks to fat, lazy, jobless slobs giving themselves health problems.
That is the truth, Levi. The linkable, referenceable, it’s-clearly-happening truth.
You fling a lot of poo, but can’t seem to find any basis for it in reality.
Furthermore, you’re not going to answer this. You’re going to slink away, whining and crying to yourself, and then come back like nothing has happened on another thread.
And we will be there to smack you down with facts and humiliate you one more time.
Make them pay for their own health care, so they would be incentivized to stay thinner and healthier.
I know, it lacks the gratification that liberals derive from controlling other people’s lives, but it is cheaper and more effective.
Ah, but you see, Levi, screaming bigot boy, we know better.
Here are some statistics, Levi:
– Gay sex has pushed the rate of HIV in this country among children and teenagers to twice that of sub-Saharan Africa
– Gay sex increases your likelihood of contracting damaging, disabling, and lethal diseases over forty times
– HIV infection, as spread by promiscuous sexual practices, costs billions of dollars annually in direct health care costs and welfare payments, as well as billions of dollars in indirect cost of productivity loss.
So what are you doing? Promoting promiscuous bareback sex with your Obama supporters like Kevin Jennings, who tell teenagers to go to bus station restrooms and have sex with anonymous adults.
In short, Levi, you don’t care. Indeed, you and your fellow pig leftists actively ENCOURAGE what by any statistic is “damaging behavior”, and reward it by providing free health care and welfare checks for people whose behavioral choices make them sick and cost others money.
Furthermore, Levi, you have already stated that “representative government” is a failure when it comes to conclusions that you don’t like, like Proposition 8 and DOMA.
In short, you’re a pathetic fascist control freak who is flailing around looking for any excuse possible to rule over peoples’ lives, and is making a complete fool out of yourself in the process. You don’t believe in personal responsibility because people who are personally responsible don’t need you and won’t easily submit to your control, and that’s all you care about — power and control.
Facts are killing you, Levi. We provide them, we demonstrate them clearly, and you continue to scream and flail and refuse to provide links, evidence, or backup for anything you say.
Pray tell, what problems has representative Government “solved?”
Ah, but you see, V the K, if that were done, then people like Levi and Michael Moore would have to pay more for health care than thin conservatives like Ann Coulter.
They can’t tolerate that. So screaming obese pigs like Levi and Michael Moore whine and cry that it’s “unfair” that they have to pay more, and that thin, healthy people who exercise should be punished with higher rates in the name of “fairness”.
Liberals are so amusing. They rant and rail about poverty, then make it more profitable to be on welfare than to have a job. They whine and complain about obesity, then allow you to buy fast food and soda with food stamps.
This is only comprehensible if you realize that liberals’ goals have nothing to do with solving problems and everything to do with making people as dependent on government as possible for everything.
Why? Because if the government is buying you food, you are the government’s slave. You cannot say no to anything the government tells you, or you will starve.
This is the way Levi’s mind works. Levi is a wannabe fascist plantation owner who wants nothing more than a life of luxury at the expense of everyone else’s labor.
WTF is wrong with people that they think there is virtue in using Government to force other people to buy stuff for them?
Well, those who know better and are elite to the people who are getting sicker and fatter and unhealthier absolutely must take these people under their absolute control and impose the politically correct “solution” on them by taking power over their food supply, their activities, their lifestyles in order to force them to be less sick, slimmer and healthier.
Who better to do this than Levi and his merry band of government bureaucrats? They know what must be done and who it must be done to.
The Progressive “solution” is to prohibit, ban, regulate, demand, scold, hector, blame and nanny.
The conservative “solution” is steeped in personal liberty and helping the individual to control his own destiny. Conservatives offer free market solutions to those who care to take them.
You first.
Stupidity, I understand my statement hit home, since I heard here that you live in Londonistan… were you part of that charming lot rallying “behead anyone who insult islam?” or you are one of the second or third wives?
everytime there is a debate over Canadian healthcare, just read the National Post. Everyone may have “access” without paying directly, but it comes at a cost. Here’s an example. The guy comes directly from Canada and doesn’t like the healthcare, but it seems some responders refused to give him the right to have criticisms over the system.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/homo-consumericus/201206/don-t-romanticize-the-canadian-healthcare-system
and here’s an example of the National Post
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/01/04/overcrowding-forces-b-c-hospital-to-treat-patients-in-lobby/
“What is the conservative solution to people getting sicker and fatter and unhealthier?”
Simple… Adopt one of Japan’s national health plan rules. On a regular basis, government health workers come to your place of business. The measure your waistline, not your hips, your waistline (one inch below the belly button). They have a baseline for men and women. If you are above the baseline, you pay an an “tax”/”penalty” into the health care system. Also, your co-workers in your unit can also be assessed a “tax”/”penalty” because of your waistline. I believe the baseline for men is 34 inches. Liberals like national healthcare plans, but I have never heard of a liberal advocating for the “painful” parts of national plans. Let’s adopt the Canadian payment feature, the VAT. Anyone who buys anything in Canada pays into the healthcare system. I never hear liberals advocating for everyone to pay into the system.
Personally, I think there should be a 5 or 6 point health measurement system of controllable health issues (smoking, weight to height, resting heart rate, drug use, tobacco use, etc). Your insurance premium gets to be adjusted downward based upon your “health score”. I maintain my home, my homeowner’s insurance goes down.
I also think all children should be covered by a national plan. However, the annual deductible should be based on the income of the family. The same should be true for people over 65. National plan, deductible based upon lifetime earnings not retirement income.
Levi, I wouldn’t talk about sounding like a broken record if I were you. Of course, if I were you, I’d be incapable of hearing the irony.
You think it’s coincidence that medical costs started to rise faster than the inflation rate in the mid to late 60’s? I wonder what medical-interference programs might have been passed around then…
“What is the conservative solution to people getting sicker and fatter and unhealthier?”
I know at least 3 different people that died of lung cancer when they were around 50 years old. Those 3 people were NOT smokers. What is the cause of multiple sclerosis? Aids is a different matter. You can easily AVOID to get it.
Not all deadly diseases come from some specific action, you cannot control the whole world, life sucks and is unfair. An infant can be diagnosed with leukemia, what do you do? you cannot legislate against life’s unfairness. Conservatives understand exactly this. No amount of money and class warfare directed by the left can change what life has in store for you.
Susan @42: “(Y)ou cannot legislate against life’s unfairness. Conservatives understand exactly this.”
That’s the absolute truth, Susan, and it’s what liberals, leftists, and fascist morons like Lamebrain Levi and Stupidity NEVER get through their thick skulls.
Our problem is that we have way too many idiots like those two breathing free air.
“Assuming that you now live in the US (as I do), and having read some of your previous comments, I would not rely on anything you have to say about the system here, or in any country you lived in previously. In fact, my first assumption would be that you are wrong until proven otherwise.”
Typical, because only a leftard tells the truth.
What is your next answer? bring your hands to your hears and scream ‘LALALALALA, I can’t hear you…’?
No wonder people like yourself vote for obama. You deserve each other.
You first, Levi. I’m right behind you. No, really!
Here’s another example of that wonderful state-run health care Levi and Insipidity are so crazy about:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9370376/Man-22-who-died-from-dehydration-in-hospital-rang-police-for-a-drink-of-water.html
It gets worse. After her son died of neglect at the hands of NHS, a nurse asked his mother “Have you finished seeing your son yet? Can I bag him up now?”
Why are you progressives so hell-bent on inflicting this standard of care on everyone?
Props to Levi #30
So Cinesnatch, when do you intend to start handing over all your money and property to the government?
Because, as you say, props to the idea that the government can invest it and use it more wisely than you can.
And since you believe that the government can invest it and use it more wisely than you can, any money or property that you retain for your own use is wasted and used selfishly.
Ah, the benefits of collective farming. Ask the kulaks how that one turned out.
“We’ve built up a lot of wealth in this country and there are many layers of luxury that even the poorest among us can enjoy.”
another leftist feel-good sentence.
Hypocrite, nobody is preventing you from taking out $$$ from your own pocket and let the poorest among us enjoy your many layers of luxury.
I am not talking about organized charity enterprises. Take you $$$ from your own bank account and deliver it directly in the hands of the next beggar you see, invite a homeless person in your house PERMANENTLY. This is the real deal, the rest of what you write is feel-good bullshits to stroke your ego.
Too easy from the top of your self-righteous tower demanding that OTHERS pay.
Vince is apparently easily impressed by hackneyed, easily refuted talking points.
Question for Vince, Levi, Insipidity, and the other progs… why do you want people to have sh-tty health care?
I had no idea what Avenue Q was until I looked it up, and it is a musical. Not interested.
Who’s been blasting people into oblivion with drones the past few years? Who’s been POTUS while more American soldiers are dying than during the liberation of Afghanistan in the first place?
Credibility? Dipshits like you marvel at countries where seasoned citizens are allowed to die to control costs. You skeet all over yourselves when a millionaire fat bastard show’s how wonderful health care in Cuba is for cryin’ out loud.
You gotta be pretty damn stupid to miss the revenues, lower deficit and lower unemployment we enjoyed with lower taxes during the Bush administration. Why are liberals so hellbent on preserving the misery with Trickle-up Poverty?
When we have liberals in charge, problems don’t get solved. More often than not, “problems” are created and the masses are fear mongered into believing that they’re too fucking stupid and ONLY Uncle Sugar can protect them. They give up their liberty and security so rich liberals can make more money and the people wind up worse off than they were in the first place. It’s happening with Medicare/Medicaid, it’s happening with Socialist Stupidity, it’s happening with food stamps etc. Where’s the exit strategy for the War on Poverty?
Be my guest. There’s a Darwin Award in it for you.
Sh-tty health care borne on the backs of the poorer folks. The rich bitch liberals are exempt.
Even if you aren’t like that, there are people who are.
That’s exactly what I’ve been arguing all along. And that is why I favour sweeping, fundamental reform of the government (any government) into something that exists to do nothing more than ensure no-one’s fundamental rights are infringed upon.
Such as?
Thanks to the private sector. In anticipation of what I’m expecting the response to that to be, I’m going to say that the poverty line in places like the US is a function of relative income and not absolute income, so even people under the poverty line are relatively wealthy (in terms of what their income can purchase) compared to people in the third world and to past Americans because a) thanks to the free market and the innovation it engenders, slightly out-of-date technology becomes more affordable over time and b) said innovation and the resulting business requires employment for expansion and creates wealth in general. The government doesn’t create wealth, it only redistributes it.
Simple: under a free market system, people with unhealthy lifestyles must pay more out of their pockets for healthcare, and that acts as a disincentive to have an unhealhy lifestyle. And even if that doesn’t happen, I really couldn’t care less if people are fat and sick. And if people got that way because of their own irresponsibility, I’m sure as hell not going to pay for their healthcare without saying something about it.
Levi, I notice your comments usually consist of calling conservative positions dumb without providing any evidence or reasoning to back that up, or misrepresenting conservative positions.
Oh yeah, people with unhealthy lifestyles paying more for healthcare would be unfair. Excuse me while I flog myself 20 times as punishment for my thought crime. Hopefully that will appease the fairness gods and they won’t send the thought police after me.
As insufferable as Levi is, I’m uncomfortable with statements like this. Just for the record.
Cinesnatch, there was a time when I thought you were okay. But you’ve been very petulant lately, and now you’ve completely lost any credibility you might have had before. Also just for the record.
Actually, after one of the conservative commenters on here disclosed a picture of Levi without his consent, he was revealed to be decidedly NOT obese
Obama is in the process of bringing down the deficit from the 16% bush high back to the 5% bush low
An insane comment. Bush’s deficits were never 16% of anything. 16% of GPD? Nope. Obama’s deficits, at 9% of GDP, far exceed Bush’s 1-5% of GDP on that score. 16% of revenues? No again. Obama’s deficits, at 60% of revenue, again far exceed anything Bush ever did on that score.
Perhaps “Obama is in the process of bringing down the deficit from the…bush high back to the…bush low” in the same sense that a crack addict, by his massive and costly use of crack, brings his ex-wife’s drinking habit down from 2 drinks a night, to 1 drink a night. (I.e…. he doesn’t. Except maybe by impovershing her.)
And before you try to give the FY2009 budget to Bush: Kindly remember that he never signed it. The Democrats in Congress specifically refused to send it to him, for his signature. They wanted to hold it open so that the Lightworker could, after His election victory, further increase spending (over what Congressional Democrats had already increased) in that same budget. Which He proceeded to, in early 2009. Which means: He owns it. His signature is on it, not Bush’s.
Bush’s highest deficit was just over $ 400 billion. Obama’s current deficit is over $1 trillion and climbing. Tell us how that works, Cinetwat.
Considering Obama’s 2011 and 2012 budgets contained vast increases in Federal spending and were voted down 97-0 and 99-0 respectively in the Senate, it is ridiculous to assert that the SCOAMF is doing anything at all to reduce the deficit.
Is Vince really stupid enough to believe Obama is doing anything to reduce the deficit?
And since Vince is somewhat confused on the matter, that Obama’s budgets were voted down by 97-0 and 99-0 is a FACT. David Gergen’s inane opinions are NOT FACTS.
Do try and learn, Vince. You might actually be able to participate intelligently someday.
#65 – The latest lefty talking point (which Cinesnatch appears to repeat) is that Bush did have one deficit over $1 trillion, because FY2009 should count as his. But it shouldn’t, for the reasons I gave. FY2009 was all Democrats’, right down to Obama’s last-minute addition to it of hundreds of billions in new spending.
Obama has lowered the annual debt percentage per capita of GDP back to 8%: the % for half of Bush’s presidency:
http://www.skymachines.com/US-National-Debt-Per-Capita-Percent-of-GDP-and-by-Presidental-Term.htm
The only yearr Bush’s presidency ever saw a deficit anywhere near the Clinton/Republican Congress years was 2001. Then, up, up, and away. Obama still has a ways to go, obviously.
AND, one of Bush’s three lowest deficit years was during a Democrat congress (2007).
Under Reagan, the deficit INCREASED, almost doubling Carter’s, until, by the end of HIS presidency, he was able to bring it back down to Carter’s levels UNDER a DEMOCRATIC Congress. Bush Sr. increased it yet again and even Clinton started to bring it down under a DEMOCRATIC congress. It wasn’t until the Republicans took over that they and Clinton worked together to bringing it down to record levels.
The budget for FY2007 was passed in 2006 by a Republican Congress. The first budget passed by a Democrat Congress (FY2008) immediately tripled the deficit.
Vince would know this if he weren’t stupid.
I may not be the smartest person, but are you reading your chart right?
You said
Then you said
Not quite sure you’re reading it right.
Looking at the first chart, 4th column (from 2001 to 2011):
Bush 5 / 8 / 8 / 8%
Bush 8 / 6 / 6 / 16%*
Obama 15 / 14 / 8%
*Please help provide link if possible (I’m trying to find one) on who signed 2008 budget and the details behind it
The second chart correspondingly trends in a simliar fashion up and down.
I probably am reading it wrong.
It still doesn’t answer how the deficit go out of control under Reagan. Do we blame the Democratic Congress?
Well, that’s just it, isn’t it? Remember what you said here the next time you complain about the liberal media bias and how Barack Obama is such a liberal and how the Democrats blame Bush for everything. Obama’s doing exactly what Bush did, and if there were any justice in the world (or at least, if we followed our own laws) Obama would be getting arrested for war crimes right along with the Bush administration.
So impressed.
So Bush lowered the deficit, is that what you’re saying now?
Additionally, it’s not all that hard to generate a little short term economic growth by completely compromising the economy’s long term stability. Whoop-Dee-Doo, Bush started a bunch of wars, handed out a bunch of tax cuts, and turned a blind eye to financial malfeasance that for a few years generated some illusory economic growth that was all swept away by the time he left office. Sorry, but if you’re judging a President by how well he manages the economy for a few months in the middle of his term, you’re assessing things incorrectly. Dude left office with the country in its worst economic state in a century, but you want to give him some gold stars because things were kind of okay, briefly, for a little bit? That’s stupid.
Again – the most recent Republican President left office after blowing a trillion dollar hole in the economy and with 2 wars in the Middle East that were nowhere near finished after a decade and will have us entangled for decades more. Furthermore, Bush gave us the Patriot Act, giving the government an unprecedented amount of power to gather information on its citizens, and authorized blanket warrantless wiretaps, allowing the government an unprecedented amount of power to spy on citizens directly. Here you are creating fictions about how liberals want to control people’s lifestyles while Bush left office with nary a peep from the conservative movement over his numerous, brazen power grabs. So what is this nonsense about liberals not solving problems? What is this nonsense about people giving up their liberty and security to the Democrats? Look in the mirror before you start accusing the other side.
hmmm
Is this correct:
2008 budget under Democratic Congress was signed by Obama 2009, because Bush 2008 refused to sign it. This would be projecting the budget into the future.
And 2007 budget under Democratic Congress was actually signed by Republican congress. This would be a retroactively signed budget.
So, what about all the years under Reagan and the Democratic Congress. Did Carter sign all those budgets for eight years?
Actually that’s not waht he said. He said the deficit was lower than it is now. Then agian, you’ve recently blamed Clinton for the current economic problems, so we know how you and reality don’t talk to each other.
And Levi resorts to his lies again.
Now hush Levi, the adults are talking.
Oh, forgot to add.
Levi voted for the admitted criminal who helped write the Patriot Act.
Oh, and don’t forget that great conservative burner of children who supported the patriot act.
And here’s more conservative critiques of the Patriot act.
Now hush Levi, the adults are talking.
Whew!
Seeing Levi and Vince tangle with deficits and who caused what is like listening to the people smashing Reginal Denny’s head into the pavement as a clear cure for their disagreement over the Rodney King verdict.
The deficits are with us. They have skyrocketed. They are eating us alive. Obama has not brought the deficit down and the Obamacare tax is clearly going to add more than one thin dime to the deficit.
Levi and Vince would rather dispute who did what to cause the deficit to metastasize and obscure the issue than to step up to issue at hand. Obama want’s to take what he can get through taxation to ….. what? ….. pay down the deficit? I would like a reference for that.
Bagels.
Seriously, if you want an answer that makes sense, give me a question that makes sense.
Which is exactly why you’re not enjoying life.
As usual, “progressives” assume that everyone else is as miserable as they are.
Maybe Amy would prefer Avenue Q in those internment camps she supports?
The_LiveWire #83 >> Your links didn’t work. 🙁
At Thanksgiving every year, I travel up to Northern California where my second family of sorts holds a sing-a-long after dinner. One of the staples of the evening is their son (he has Down Syndrome) and I doing “If You Were Gay.” I play Rod and he plays Nicky and the joy it brings to the whole room is immense. One of the highlights of my year. And the success of Avenue Q has helped bring back puppetry to live theatre, as we have seen in War Horse most recently and in smaller venues like D Is for Dog, which I caught at the Hollywood Fringe Festival this year.
http://cinesnatch.blogspot.com/2012/06/theatre-review-d-is-for-dog.html
Ah, that explains it: Cinesnatch, you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about, or what you were looking at in that chart you linked.
The 16% number in the chart you linked doesn’t refer to “the annual debt percentage per capita of GDP”. I’m not even sure what that is. It’s a nonsense phrase.
The 16% number refers, rather, to the YoY (year over year) percentage growth in the national debt. Under Bush, the debt grew something like 5-9% per year in 2001-2007, mainly around 6%. (For which Bush, and both parties in Congress, deserve criticism.)
Then in 2008, and largely because of the recession and financial crisis, the debt grew 16%. And in 2009, 2010, and 2011, it grew 15%, 14% and 8% as Obama insisted on “stimulus” and running deficits well north of $1 trillion per year.
To the extent that you have a point, it would be to put lipstick on a pig: you want to look at Obama’s massive ongoing deficits in terms of the *growth rate* on the national debt.
It’s true that if the debt starts as $5 trillion and you add $1 trillion more, you have just grown it 20%; whereas if it starts as $10 trilllion and you add $1 trillion more, you have “only” grown it 10%. But so what. That’s a cheap trick of arithmetic. It doesn’t count for sh*t. The problem is still that YOUR DEBT IS GIGANTIC, and BALLOONING EVEN MORE.
Bush added $5 trillion to the debt, in 8 years. Bad. He deserves censure. Now Obama adds $5 trillion to the debt in 3-4 years… with no end in sight. Class, which is worse?
(continued) The point is that Obama should be REDUCING the debt, by running a budget surplus. Or at least not adding to it, by running a balanced budget.
Instead, Obama adds around $1.4 trillion to the debt every year… where Bush tended to add around $0.4 trillion to it every year. If Obama’s next $1.4 trillion in debt appears as a “lower growth rate”, it is only because Obama is starting from such a high base – having added so much to the debt. Bad!
Thank you for the second-to-last-paragraph. I think we’re on the same page now. However, taking the percentage down from 16% to 8% was no small feet, no? I understand that Obama is spending more than Bush, yes. However, there is also the exponential circumstances to consider. Everything is getting more expensive. Bush was spending $0.3T – $0.6T for most of his administration. Could Obama (or Romney or anyone ever again) reasonably get back to those levels? Because of inflation, tt would seem to me that a comparative range for today’s times would be more like $0.4T – $0.7T.
Bush was up to $1.4T his last year. Obama’s spending was down to $1.1T by his third year. Still an incredible amount, but how do you stop a speeding train? It can’t be easy or simple. I believe Obama is trying to get back to a more manageable range. And, like Clinton, with a Republican Congress, perhaps they can if they start working together and both sides stop politicizing matters.
On the contrary: It was no feat at all. As I explained, it is meaningless, like saying “Obama put 16% more yellow in the White House color scheme. No small feat, eh?”
As I explained, what counts is (1) how big the total debt is, and (2) the fact that Obama is taking us in exactly the wrong direction, continuing to add over $1 trillion per YEAR to it, EVERY year.
And more: they could, should, and eventually must/will uld eliminate the deficit entirely. The question to ask is: how much longer can the U.S. survive on deficit financing? Obama is hastening the day when everything collapses.
Weird. The first link isn’t working (an old NRO post pointing out how Jawn Karry helped write the very act that Levi hates), but the others worked for me.
Only if you embrace the fiction that the FY2009 budget — passed by a Democrat Congress, larded up by a Democrat stimulus, and signed by a Democrat president… was a Bush budget.
From the 29th of December 2007 until the 31st of December 2008, spending was $1.4T. And that gets labeled a “Democrat” action by VTK.
Yet, whenever ILC comes qualifies’ Clinton’s low deficit with “a Republican congress,” VTK remains silent.
Now, how does that work again?
Bringing the spending down from $1.6T to $1.1T is a significant qualification. We’re currently at $0.7M for six months, which is not a good thing.
The basic problem is this, ILC and V the K: Snatchy is screaming that adding $0.4T to the debt every year creates financial ruin, while adding $1.4T to the debt every year is sunshine and roses.
The ignorance is stunning. For example:
Simple.
The Federal fiscal year is not a calendar year; rather it starts on October 1 of the preceding year.
Thus:
– The period October 1, 2008 forward would be considered FY 2009.
– Bush was not given the budget for that period to sign. The Obama Party-controlled Congress resisted passing a budget until Barack Obama was enthroned — and Obama promptly larded it up even more.
In short, Snatchy, you are deliberately commingling two separate budget years in order to blame Bush for spending over which he had no control and to shift blame from your Barack Obama, who endorsed, supported, and signed the FY 2009 budget that creates the deficit you are decrying.
Now, puppet, please explain why you made such an easily-detected mistake. Are you repeating Obama talking points?
Federal FY’s run from October to October. If you weren’t stupid, you would know that.
The Democrats became the majority party in the house and Senate in January 2007. Therefore, the first Democrat Budget was the FY2008 budget, since the previous FY2007 Budget had been passed by a Republican Congress. If you weren’t stupid, you would know that.
The Republican FY2007 budget had a deficit of ~160 Billion. The Democrat 2008 Budget had a budget of >$430 Billion. The Democrat FY2009 Budget… passed by Democrat majorities in House and Senate and signed by Obama on March 11 2009 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_United_States_federal_budget) had a deficit of $1.4Trillion. If you weren’t stupid… or lying… you would admit that.
One begins wondering whether there is any point in presenting someone as determinedly stupid, ignorant, and dishonest as Vince with actual facts.
VTK, please explain then why you keep repeating yourself over one point I’m apparently too stupid (or dishonest) to understand, yet, you won’t even touch comment #71.
Huh? If I’m so STUPID, answer that.
I don’t dispute that Reagan increased the deficit, but it’s not relevant to the current situation. Tu quoque is an argumentative fallacy used by idiot progressives to deflect responsibility for the bad policies enacted by their little mahogany godlet.
I do note that you admit to being too stupid to understand the Federal budget process. Perhaps, in the future, you should not offer opinions on topics you are woefully ignorant about and too dim to comprehend.
“..begins wondering…”?
Anyone just entering that stage who has any length of experience reading and/or responding to that crowd is woefully slow on the uptake.
But there are still too many nice people here who get their panties in a bunch over what they perceive as ‘bad manners’ or ‘poor etiquette’ in posting comments. Pardon me while I gag on your attacks of the vapors.
When are they going to wake up and realize that it’s existential at this point: either the leftist/fascists going to win (which they’ve been doing incrementally since Woodrow Wilson) and your hopes of a return, in any degree, to an actual ‘constitutional republic’ will be flushed down the hopper for good, or folks who claim the ‘conservative’ mantle are going to step forward and start kicking the living s**t out of miscreants like Levi and Stupidity; miscreants who wouldn’t bat an eyelash at the thought of having you and I exist with their jackboots planted firmly on our necks.
They couldn’t care less about the ‘human toll’ of their positions and policies, so what makes you think that they’ll be persuaded by facts? If they were that amenable to factual presentations most of them wouldn’t hold the views and positions that they do IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Here’s the correct and true answer: they won’t EVER be persuaded by facts, and unless and until enough ‘conservatives’ get this through THEIR thick skulls, this country is going to keep being steamrolled by leftism.
And please, spare me the BS about the voting booth and institutions as the proper responses: too many recently relied on one of those venerable institutions to stem the leftist tide, and they rendered their verdict last Thursday morning.
Tell me how well that worked out.
If liberals like deficit spending so much, why are they always arguing that Obama hasn’t spent very much and Bush did?
Again, you completely mis-use the lingo… not knowing the difference between spending and deficit. You really have no idea what you’re talking about, do you Cinesnatch?
Actually, the wars didn’t have as much to do with it as liberals want us to believe.
http://www.pdfio.com/k-1596865.html#
And who was it that “turned a blind eye”???
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgctSIL8Lhs
And then Clinton did more to contribute to the collapse with his CRA mandates.
In other words, a liberal flung the shit at the fan. Republicans tried to stop it, but liberals kept blocking them and propelling the shit forward. Once it hit the fan, liberals want to disavow any repsonsibility and blame anybody and everybody else: Bush, wars etc. It’s how they treat the American people like shit and deflect attention because that’s the ONLY way they’d get any votes or even the time of day.
Oh look! Just what I always wanted! A Fox News report about the financial crisis that is fair and balanced!
And you misunderstand, the wars and all of Bush’s other national security policies helped grow the economy during the early years. That’s what government spending does.
And fanatical regulation, hostility toward free enterprise, and threats of tax increases and more regulation shackle economic growth. That’s what taxing and regulation do.
No, that’s a Keynesian myth. I reject it.
Keynesians believe in make-work. Keynesians would have people believe that producing objects (one can’t call them “goods”) that are specifically meant to be destroyed, and/or to destroy other people and their wealth, is a good thing because it produces useful employment. Paul Krugman is a leading example. Krugman claims, falsely, that WW2 got the U.S. out of the Great Depression and that, today, if only we could have an alien invasion scare to boost defense spending, it would be good for the economy.
Here’s the truth: The economy is supposed to produce goods, thus raising people’s living standards. Giving people “jobs” in which they complete only useless or destructive tasks, or produce only useless or destructive objects, does not raise anyone’s living standards.
Defense/war is an expense. It redirects productive capacity away from raising people’s living standards. Note: It may be a necessary expense. Bush’s defense policy was, sadly, necessary. I speak up for it, on those grounds. But I do not claim that it was some kind of economic advance. Only Keynesians – that is, left-wingers like Paul Krugman – would do that.
And to bring it back to Obama: Hey lefties – if Bush’s wars were so bad and unnecessary, why hasn’t Obama done anything about them, except follow timetables laid out by Bush? Why has your Dear Teleprompter validated and upheld virtually all of the Bush security position?
Levi and Vince appear to be in a contest to see who can be the bigger dumbass, and they’re both winning.
Can you disprove it or just bitch about it??? Can you show where Bawney Fwank was demanding Bush put a stop to his boyfriend’s bullshit?
Otherwise, STFU.
How about C-Span? It’s not hard to find liberals denying there was a problem and that something should be done. All one has to do is look beyond the MediaMorons and ThinkPropaganda. The Young Turds don’t do you any favors either.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxMInSfanqg
TGC,
Note how Levi fails to reply to posts with links. He can’t even bring himself to admit he supported an admitted war criminal.
I think the key is to not get mad at him. Levi’s like a puppy that tears up your slippers. You can’t get mad at the puppy, any more than you can get mad at Levi for getting on a computer his mom left on.
heh 🙂