Let me get this straight. We're going to be "gifted" with a health care plan we are forced to purchase and fined if we don't, written by a committee whose chairman says he doesn't understand it, passed by a Congress that hasn't read it but exempts themselves from it, to be signed by a president who also smokes, with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn't pay his taxes, to be overseen by a surgeon general who is obese, and financed by a country that's broke. What the hell could possibly go wrong?
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I can see November from my house :-)
Absolutely. We should get rid of the police, public streets, water, sanitation and everything else govt. does since by your logic, there is nothing that govt. can do. It's strange that you use a network that was created by govt. fiat.
Let me get this straight, you didn't get mad when.....
You... didn?t get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President.
You didn?t get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate energy policy.
You didn?t get mad when a covert CIA operative got ousted.
You didn?t get mad when the Patriot Act got passed..
You didn?t get mad when we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us.
You didn?t get mad when we spent over 600 billion(and counting) on said illegal war.
You didn?t get mad when over 10 billion dollars just disappeared in Iraq.
You didn?t get mad when you found out we were torturing people.
You didn?t get mad when the government was illegally wiretapping Americans.
You didn?t get mad when we didn?t catch Bin Laden.
You didn?t get mad when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed.
You didn?t get mad when we let a major US city drown.
You didn?t get mad when we gave a 900 billion tax break to the rich.
You didn?t get mad when, using reconciliation; a trillion dollars of our tax dollars were redirected to insurance companies for Medicare Advantage which cost over 20 percent more for basically the same services that Medicare provides.
You didn?t get mad when the deficit hit the trillion dollar mark, and our debt hit the thirteen trillion dollar mark.
You finally got mad when the government decided that people in America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick.
We had a banana republic for eight years under Dick and W, but now you get mad!
Yes, illegal wars, Yes lies, Yes corruption, Yes torture, Yes stealing our tax dollars to make the rich richer, are all okay with you, but Americans helping other Americans? oh hell no.
Except that, for all its spending, the federal government doesn't do any of those things you listed, nor should it.
In fact the federal government spends all of its revenue--$2.1T--on wealth-redistribution, funding ponzi schemes and poverty programs that increase poverty. (We've spent a fortune on poverty since 1964 (roughly $16T), making every aspect of it worse. Is that a proper role of government?)
All other programs--$1.4T, half for defense, half for everything else-- are currently funded by borrowing. So, all the types of things you're talking about are insignificant, about 20% of total spending.
We once had a revolution crying "No taxation without representation." We recently had an absurd health bill imposed on us that no one was allowed to read, not even the people voting for it. That's representation?
Accrding to this graph, Clinton improved things and got the percentage belwo the poverty line as lows as it has ever been, but Dubbya did then make it worse (as Republican administrations seem to be required to do by their ideological baggage).
Most other countries - Burma perhaps excepted - think that it is. When that arch-socialist, Bismark, introduce "national insurance" in Germany he did it in part to steal some of his socialist oppositions more attractive policies, but in part because the idea of keeping the work force healthy through economic downturns did make sense.
The German work force is now rather more productive than yours, and their industry sustains a postive trade balance second only to China's, with a tenth of the population. If your social welfare schemes don't work (as you claim) the most likely reason is that the Republican Party has never wanted them to work, and systematically sabotaged them when they don't have the legislative clout to actually dismantle them
20% isn't insignificant, where I come from.
You could do with a considerable dose of electoral reform. At the moment your electoral system is basically a competition between well- funded candidates to work out who can afford to spend more on short and mindless television advertisements. You've still got first past- the-post voting in local electoral districts, each one of which can only return one candidate.
Australia is marginally better off with the single transferable vote - each district can still only return one candidate to the lower house, but at least you can rank the candidates in order of preference, leaving you free to register your first preference for whichever candidate - no matter how unelectable - who takes your fancy, while devoting your second preference to the major party candidate whom you find least repulsive. The down side is having to spend the time indicating which are your third, fourth and fifth preferences, all the way down to the bottom of the (alphabetical) list, but the major parties distribute how-to-vote cards, and you can always be a donkey voter (going from top to bottom - some 10% of the voters) or a reverse donkey voter (going from bottom to top - around 5%). Voting is compulsory - you get fined if you don't vote - but its a secret ballot so you can't be fined for donkey voting.
The Netherlands - like most of Europe - has the distinctly better proportional representation system, which gives your real multi-party democracy. No single party ever gets to rule on its own, which means that every government is a coalition, and all the silly promises that each party made in the hope of attracting the voters have to be reconciled with the promises made by the other coalition partners, which is done by rational argument.
Obviously, since you aren't any kind of fan of rational argument, you won't see the advantage of this, but for those of us who enjoy sensible government the advantages are more apparent.
This is really cool...after denying that Obamacare increases costs, then threatening to punish companies that said that, Health Control Overlord Sebelius is now quietly exempting companies from complying with Obamacare so that workers won't lose their health insurance, just in time for the election.
Who got the biggest exemption? See the last paragraph for the punchline:
The whole situation is so sad that it defies all attempts to comprehend it. The worst bit of government corruption in ages, done right in front of the voters who don't seem to undersand what is going on.
Isn't it cool that you don't have to obey the law any more? Bureaucrats who work for the President can grant you waivers, if you can make it worth their while.
"The biggest single waiver, for 351,000 people, was for the United Federation of Teachers Welfare Fund, a New York union providing coverage for city teachers."
I guess I don't understand your question. This union's insurance is illegal under the new law, and they didn't want to buy the more expensive required coverages, so they complained and got a waiver.
Note that this vote-buying maneuver also wrecks the already horrid economics of Obamacare. Obamacare counts on shearing the young sheep to pay for the old. They've just waivered a million mostly young healthy people, low-cost people they'd counted on making obscene profits from, but who are now exempt. Ooops.
I know what sort of insurance the UFT has (or had). I guess I'm confused about how such a platinum plan could be "illegal" (as you point out, "illegal" is not normally judged by a bureaucrat).
Do you still think he has any grounding in reality?
Their plan had a respectable cap on annual benefits, but it wasn't gold-plated enough for Obamacare. That's now illegal. Obamacare's mandatory higher cap costs more (naturally), the teachers couldn't afford that, they're a union, there's an election close, so they got a waiver 'til past the election. Next year, they're screwed.
So, it *does* cost more, though the Prez said the opposite, you *can't* keep your plan, though he promised you could, it *will* increase the deficit massively, though he said it wouldn't,
and so forth. Almost nothing he said was true.
It's a giant mandatory plateful of steaming, budget-wrecking dung-- fewer people will get care, and it will cost them more as a result.
America paid for hope and change. We got a used car, with a monthly payment plan.
Mr. Obama? Not w.r.t. money--he hasn't a clue. He couldn't make his personal ends meet with two kids, a condo, and >$200K in income-- that's public record. (He was borrowing against the condo, HELOC'ing* out the equity during the housing bubble to fill his deficit. Then he got elected and cash rolled in.)
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