Have a nice day!

(By the way, if you are going to resort to your ludicrouly pompous tirade about someone else being “ignorant”, you would be wise to learn how to spell that word correctly).

As a matter of fact, I have traveled out of the country, and have personally experienced the cost of medical care in other countries. In those countries, with socialized medical care for their citizens, I have found medical care to be quite affordable — even without insurance. Yes, indeed, there have been tremendous advances in the field of medicine since the 1950′s. However I have a hard time believing that the cost of purchasing and operating new types of equipment in the United States would be (conservatively) 5 or 6 times the cost of purchasing and operating the same equipment in another industrialized country. Check out the comparisons on the internet. As to drug company charges, on one visit to a European country, I found it necessary to refill a prescription because of an extended stay in that country. The cost of the medication there was one-eighth of the cost of the same (exact) medicine that I purchase regularly in the United States.

What in the world does auto maintenance and insurance have to do with a this discussion? Are you trying to compare the health and maintenance of a car with the health and maintenance of a human being? (By the way, “brakes” is the correct spelling for the device that is used to stop a car, while “breaks” is the spelling used for describing a traumatic injury to a bone). Perhaps if you had given more respect to the “academic” who must have struggled with teaching you in second or third grade, you would be able to spell with more accuracy.

How typical of you to jump to the conclusion of telling someone what his or her profession is — when you know absolutely nothing about that person, and to automatically label all academics and government workers as parasites. That is truly a sign of a pompous, narrow-minded, hypocrite who has no knowledge of anyone else’s field of endeavor besides your own (if, indeed, you even have an area of endeavor).

Your quote, “going to any government service is notoriously a joke to nearly 100% of Americans.” proves that you really know how to throw percentages around and make it seem as if you might know what you’re talking about, at least to yourself, although I seriously doubt if anyone else is any more impressed with your intelligence than I am. What in the world are you basing your opinions on in that paragraph? I have no idea what you are even trying to say. When most people go to the DMV, they go there to get a driver’s license, which the DMV employees provide after checking documents and testing the applicant. If you went to a bookstore to try to get your driver’s license reinstated, I can certainly understand why you are so disgruntled — poor Bobo

First off, charities and church organizations ARE private. Sorry, they are.

Second, only an ingorant big government leftist could harken back to the good ole days of pre-1950 medical care because there was no “evil profits” in your opinion. Fact is, ANYONE objective would look at the immense progress in medical care since the 1950′s and without question, would immediately know that such progress was initiated with the private incentive for profits. And America led the world for decades (and still does somewhat) in medical and pharmaceutical innovation. This is NOT a deniable fact.

It’s clear that you are either an academic or a government bureacrat or some other parasitic profession, but you certainly are NOT a business man. You would have failed at that long ago, for certain. The profit incentive IS the main driver behind innovation and the main driver behind cost cutting for competitive survival. Witness the following example:

Car Insurance – Car Insurance is what we call REAL insurance. It doesnt pay for your maintenance, breaks, tires or gasoline. It only pays when you have a large expensive or catestrophic loss. You bear a little burden in your pre-agreed upon deductible, they pick up the rest. The market is quite efficient and cost effective. If you are a bad driver with higher risks, then you pay more. Good driver, low risk, low premium. Very simple. Auto repair is exceptionally competitive and cost effective, as well.

What do you think the cost of car repair and car insurance would be if they also had to pay for your oil changes, breaks, tires, routine repairs, and gasoline? Then, place the industry under the watchful eyes of government bureaucrats, whose bureaucracy must be paid for some how. Add to that, the fact that both State and Federal governments must be involved in oversight and the costs of the “oversight” increase even more. Every repair results in a mountain of paperwork by the mechanic’s growning adminstrative staff so that the customer can only pay $5 for his oil change and the mechanic will have to file papers to collect the other $25. When he does, the insurance company disputes his charge for the oil change saying that it is not “ordinary and customary”. So his admin has to fight it to collect.

I could go on and on and on and on with this example, but any reasonable thinking human being NOT committed to socialist ideals would understand that under the scenario of making auto insurance and auto repair follow the same model as government controlled health care, costs of auto insurance and auto repair would necessarily SKYROCKET! Just like healthcare costs have skyrocketed with the involvement of more and more government.

Does ANYONE seriously believe that auto maintenance or auto insurance would be cheaper with more government involvement? You cannot say so with a straight face. Sorry. You cannot.

Your faith in government is wildly misplaced with this notion that they are accountable to the citizens. Like HELL they are. Since when has any overly bloated government bureacracy EVER been accountable to citizens? They are overly bloated precisely BECAUSE they are NOT accountable to the citizens. You are living in a pipe dream. That’s like saying the State DMV gives you better service than your local bookstore. Bullsheet! Show me one socialist government, or even one socialist program or government service that is better than any local business! You show me that and I’ll show you a business that has/will be going under. Fact is, going to any government service is notoriously a joke to nearly 100% of Americans.

Now, this is not an argument for anarchy (like Somalia). We do need government. You leftist nutjobs assume that because we conservatives recognize the pathetic record of government services that we dont believe in any government at all. Nothing could be further from the truth. The hard part is balancing the necessary evil of government with the protections that prevent it from consuming everything in our private lives as it grows beyond control. And that is where we are today. A government that has grown so large that it is consuming our economy.

Like I have said in multiple posts before, the debate we need to have is over what we believe the proper role of the Federal Government should be in America. We have a Constitution that defines this question very well. You guys on the left don’t like the constraints placed on government. Fine. But we conservatives know that all government devolves toward tyranny to the degree that it gets bigger and bigger and “provides” more and more “services”. It is the natural order of things.

Hope this clarifies some things for you, hil.

Have a nice day!

Your logic is non-existent. You latch onto one point that you happen to consider useful for your purposes and then ignore all the steps in-between and jump to whatever conclusion you want to draw — including telling me what I think. But then, I guess that’s part of the paranoia of the voices in your head that tell you that you are always correct in your thinking, and anyone who disagrees with you is wrong. If you had read my earlier replies to you, you would know that I have faith in government BECAUSE of its accountability to private citizens. Therefore, I feel that government can exercise more control over unreasonable pricing for necessary services for all people (like medical care) than is possible with a “for profit” corporation.

Your statement that “government is an utter failure at running anything” is mind-boggling. If that is your true feeling, why do you remain in this country? Why not move to someplace like Somalia, where there is no government? It is true that forms of government do evolve in order to meet the needs of citizens. They don’t immediately get things right in the process of evolving. However, the citizens in a democracy have a right to voice their opinions, and, when something proves unsuccessful for the majority of the people, adjustments can, and are, made, and the people and the government survive. If we continue on the current path of privatization of the health care field, it will not be long until only the people in the top income level will be able to afford health care. The top income levels would be faced with an unhealthy population to draw on for workers, and they, too would suffer from such an outcome.

To borrow a phrase from your messiah, Obozo… Let me clear! You say that “1950 was BEFORE privatization was initiated”. How dumb can you be? Your implication is that prior to 1950, healthcare was NOT private. That is patently false. It has been since the beginning of time in America. If it was not private BEFORE 1950, what was it exactly? Explain, you dope!

While I know you like to avoid the central theme of this discussion with typical leftist topic changes, I’ll keep you focused on the original point. Your point, NOT MINE, was that government control over healthcare was good and that privatization was bad. By implication, your belief is what it is because you think government can run it better. If you think government can run it better, the only reason you think that is because you have more faith in government than private citizens. My questions were designed to elicit a response from you about why you have this faith in government? Despite the proof to the contrary where we have seen the utter failure of government run anything, you still have this unwaivering faith that defies objective analysis. Why?

Awaiting your response I remain….

Have a nice day!

And while you cite The Commerce Clause as the only lever for the government to excercise control over people, that is entirely NOT true. The 16th Amendment gives Congress the power to tax income. That’s the single biggest influence on our lives. The manipulations and gyrations of human behavior that has become our leviathan tax code is the single biggest influence over American life.

Even though most of the Constitution outlines limited parameters of what the government can do and lots of parameters about what it cannot do, the problem has become that those parameters have been largely ignored with the justification of the Commerce Clause and the freedom to screw the people through the tax code.

You leftist nutjobs, for 100 years, have been using limited components of the Constitution as justification for saying the rest of the document doesnt matter. This is where we differ. The rest of the document DOES matter, and it’s about time that we begin to reexamine exactly what the Constitution says and what it means. And have a debate in America over what is the proper role of the Federal government, and what is not.

Our Fed Gov’t is too large, consumes way too much of our economy (closing in on 30% of GDP now with Obozo in charge), and is way too far in debt. This is how the debate is being framed today. And unfortunately for an Obozo Zombie like you, but fortunately for America, Obozo will be thrown out on his incompetent Chicago thug butt come November. Thank God!

Have a nice day!

In truth, the real disease is you leftist nutjobs that attempt to distort our founding principles and Constitution into supporting your leftwing social engineering goals. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is NO WHERE in our founding documents anything that says the Fed Government must take care of people’s basic needs. No where does it say the Feds should be involved in the vast majority of what they do.

Your DemocRAT party needs an internal revolution like the Tea Party is doing to the Republicans. You need to start throwing out incumbents like 3-day old fish and start bringing in regular citizens with every day common sense. People that know what the real world is like and can defend DemocRATic principles with an American point of view, not a Euro-Socialist-Democracy or even Marxist point of view, which by the way I know is the same as your point of view. Unfortunately for you Dems, the radical socialists of the 60′s have hi-jacked your party. It will be the marginalization and demise of your party unless common sense Americans can take it back from socialists that currently control it.

Have a nice day!

Thanks for the good laugh, my lefty friend!

Regarding speech…. the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech has nothing to do with money, or no money. In fact, it can be argued quite effectively that restricting money is tantamount to preventing one from having their voice heard, and is therefore a restriction on speech. For what good is freedom of speech if I am restricted to only communicating with others within the sound of my voice. When the Constitution was written, freedom of speech also included freedom of the press, correct? Of course it did. With technological advancement, the definition of “the press” has become vastly expanded. However, whatever form “the press” takes, it is still solely a means of communicating ideas to large numbers of people who are not within the sound of your voice. Hence, keeping a group of people or individuals from having legal access to have their voices heard outside of the sound of their personal voices IS, IN FACT, a restriction on speech and is clearly unconstitutional. The Constitution and the courts have not made any distinction between individual or groups in the definition of what is speech.

Clearly there are limits to speech insofar as you cant put other people in harms way by screaming “FIRE” in a crowded theater. Nor can you spread public lies in print about another private person that harms them in reputation or financially. Clearly, the courts have held public figures to a higher threshhold of proof for libel or slander specifically for the protection of free speech and the right of people to speak out publicly against their leaders.

In short, I’d rather err on the side of free speech than to have political leaders be involved in the decisions about whom and how people can speak. To me, this is the slippery slope toward tyranny when we give up our liberties for the sole reason that we don’t like someone else’s speech and we want it restricted. Just because you don’t like it, doesn’t mean you should want it restricted. For whenever the political winds shift as they inevitably do, your ox may be the next one to be gored, and there will be no one to speak up for you.

Have a nice day, awake! Send my regards (and thanks) to your bride!