FBI Violated Electronic Communications Privacy Act

An anonymous reader writes to tell us of a report from the Washington Post which alleges that the FBI "illegally collected more than 2,000 US telephone call records between 2002 and 2006 by invoking terrorism emergencies that did not exist or simply persuading phone companies to provide records." The report continues, "E-mails obtained by The Washington Post detail how counterterrorism officials inside FBI headquarters did not follow their own procedures that were put in place to protect civil liberties. The stream of urgent requests for phone records also overwhelmed the FBI communications analysis unit with work that ultimately was not connected to imminent threats. ... FBI officials told The Post that their own review has found that about half of the 4,400 toll records collected in emergency situations or with after-the-fact approvals were done in technical violation of the law. The searches involved only records of calls and not the content of the calls. In some cases, agents broadened their searches to gather numbers two and three degrees of separation from the original request, documents show."

Comments

Duhh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Your tax dollars aren't being used to your benefit. Your never going to get propper health care when it's more profitable for politicians to sell you out to insurance companies for 'campaign contributions'

I can't even find out how much my insurance company will cover for a given procedure. They refuse to tell me until its to late.

But the FBI can break the law and spy on me all day...

Re:Duhh...

[MickyTheIdiot]

And they have been able to twist the "healthcare" debate into a discussion about government taking away "freedoms"... while this is going on under their noses.

We've got a lot of people here in the US right now that are running after not only RED herrings, but blue, pink, orange and red pokadotted herrings as well.

Re:Duhh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, Obama did promise us 'Change'.

Re:Duhh...

[megamerican]

Many American's, whether they are democrat or republican aren't very happy with Obama because he promised two major things with healthcare: he would not force people to buy insurance and that he would televise healthcare discussions with insurance and big pharma companies.

He did a complete 180 on both of those promises. Many democrats realize what Congressman Dennis Kucinich said, that the current healthcare bills are bailouts to the insurance companies and wall street.

On topic for the FBI; they have always broken the law in very deliberate ways. Go read about the FBI's COINTELPRO operations.

You can watch this documentary: COINTELPRO: The FBI's war on black America

Or you can read this Church Committee Report on how the FBI illegally spied on Martin Luther King Jr. for years, using the Communist scare to justify their actions (the more things that change...)

There are plenty of legitimate reasons why people don't trust their government and it has nothing to do with what color fish people enjoy consuming. This country was founded on the principle of treating government actions with a large dose of skepticism.

Re:Duhh...

[jank1887]

sorry, even with that last sentence this needs an Offtopic mod.

Re:Duhh...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's been my experience, that while 'heated' debates are being strewn out by our elected elite, Corporations, Law-Enforcement Bodies, and the M.I.C, are usually getting away with more murder than usual.

Especially if a natural disaster happens to strike. Double so, if it's not too far from home... ha iti

Re:Duhh...

[svtdragon]

And people with practical foresight knew that no system can make insurance companies cover you, in spite of preexisting conditions, unless they had a mandate of some kind. The logical way that he could have done so would've been an employer mandate, but in a way you're forcing business owners to buy it, and they're people too. So no matter what you'll have some people upset.

I happen to prefer the employer mandate, but *some* form of mandate is absolutely necessary to avoid a death spiral in the industry (ie, I have no insurance, I get sick, buy insurance 'til I'm better, drop it again; if everyone does this the risk pool gets so poor that premiums are even more absurd, leading more to drop coverage, and eventually insurance premiums end up as a proxy for hospital bills).

As far as the healthcare bill being a bailout to Wall Street and the insurance companies, take a look at their profit margins. They're around 3%. What we're talking about is $900B in subsidies to people who can't afford insurance on their own:

Insurance stocks [rose 3.40%] on news of healthcare deal [...] The 3.40 percent net gain translates into about $3.34 billion in market capitalization added. [...] This would mean that the total value added from passage of the bill is $16.04 billion. [...] That's a lot of money: $16 billion. But relative to the total outlay from the bill, it is fairly small. Over the course of the next ten years, the Senate's bill directs about $447 billion in public subsidies to people for the purchase of private health insurance. (This is in addition to another $400 billion or so in subsidies for the expansion of Medicaid). The $16 billion in value-added, therefore, represents about 3.6 percent of the subsidy. Coincidentally -- and it is mostly a coincidence, since the numbers are not directly comparable for a variety of reasons -- this compares rather neatly to the 3.3 percent profit margin in the health insurance industry overall.

This is not to mention the fact that after passage, the stocks were down in the net, but the math about the percentage of the subsidy that actually profits insurers is the important bit.

Re:Duhh...

[Shakrai]

The logical way that he could have done so would've been an employer mandate

That's only "logical" if you operate in a vacuum and ignore the realities of running a business. Such a mandate would drive many companies out of business in the worst case or force them to lay off workers in the best case. You don't fix unemployment problems by burdening employers with unfunded mandates.

Re:Duhh...

[svtdragon]

But with everyone covered and everyone in the risk pool, everyone's costs go down. And they'd be just as heavily subsidized by the government as individuals are going to be--somewhere to the tune of $900B, geared toward smaller businesses (of which, as it turns out, many would be exempt).

Re:Duhh...

[The FBI]

If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place

Maybe you should have thought of that before posting here.

Re:Duhh...

[Shakrai]

What if I don't want to be part of the risk pool? What if I'd rather have the money my employer is going to spend on health insurance in my paycheck instead? The mandate is unpopular specifically because it takes away our freedom of choice.

Besides which, costs won't go down. Costs aren't going up because we don't have everybody in the same risk pool. Costs are going up because we've built a system that requires the involvement of several different layers of bureaucracy (public and private) before a simple bill for an office visit can be paid. Costs won't come down until people realize the absurdity of a system that uses insurance (a product designed to protect against catastrophe) to pay for routine expenses.

Can you imagine a system wherein your car insurance paid for oil changes? What about one where your homeowners insurance paid to shovel your sidewalks in the winter? Do you think that such a system might cost more than paying for those services out of your own pocket?

There's a really good article in The Atlantic that looks at this problem. A problem that has been completely ignored during the debate about health care in DC. Give it a read, it'll be well worth your time.

Re:Duhh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if you operate in a vacuum and ignore the reality that if all companies had to provide health insurance, they would be competing on equal ground.

Right now one way for a company to gain a cost advantage over a competitor is to deny their employees health insurance. Since the earth is populated with very sleazy people, it's inevitable that companies will sacrifice the health of their employees for a competitive advantage and they do.

Either value human life or don't. But don't call yourself pro-life and then do your best to deny my friends health care like Republicans do.

Re:Duhh...

[smooth wombat]

But with everyone covered and everyone in the risk pool, everyone's costs go down.

No, my costs go up because I'm forced to either buy insurance (which I don't need) or pay a penalty (for not buying insurance).

Question: why should I have to use my money to cover the medical expenses of my next door neighbor who smokes half a pack a day? Or how about my other neighbor who thinks it's great to drink a case of beer every weekend by himself.

What about some of the people I work with who waddle like hippos yet refuse to walk up one flight of stairs? (excluding those who legitimately can't walk due to arthritis and the like).

Why must I spend my money to cover someone else? Why should I be forced to pay for something I don't want?

And don't use that tired argument of how, if I need it at some point in the future, I'll have it because I could have been investing that money all along and be able to pay my bills if I ever need to. Nor will I ever be covered to the extent I've paid in. Ever.

Re:Duhh...

[blueZ3]

Regarding that last statement...

It only takes one catastrophic event to change the dynamic from "Nor will I ever be covered to the extent I've paid in. Ever" to "Nor will I ever be pay in to the extent I've been covered. Ever"

About a year ago I was in a motorcycle accident. A simple lay-down that resulted in a broken leg. I was taken to Stanford hospital and put in a cast. The cast wasn't holding the bone in place, so they inserted a plate and screws. A complication arose: compartment syndrome. Five surgeries and two weeks later, I went home. Total bill: $290,000. Total amount I paid: $0.

Maybe, just maybe, in the course of my life I might pay that much in premiums.

Point is, insurance isn't the sucker's bet that a lot of people seem to think.

Re:Duhh...

[TheWizardTim]

Why should you pay for police protection for your neighbor? Why should you pay for schools, when you don't have kids? Why should you pay for Air Traffic Control, when you are scared to fly? Why should you pay for a bridge you will never use? Why should you pay for someone to come up with and enforce building codes? Why should you pay for roads that you will never drive on? Why should you pay for farm aid to a wheat farmer when you can't eat wheat? Why should you pay for anything?

We live in a society. We all live together. Even if you never use the fire department, you know they are there. You know that they will respond to the fire next door, and hopefully keep it from spreading to your house.

We make choices as a society of things that benefit us all. Having police patrol the neighborhood and respond to calls, helps you and everyone else. Having schools helps kids become productive members of society and keeps them off the street. Air Traffic Control keeps planes from crashing in to one another, and falling on you. New building codes keep the roof over your head from falling on you in an earthquake. or from the wiring from catching on fire. I can go on, but I hope you get the point.

We can't have a ME ME ME ME attitude all the time, and live with one another.

Re:Duhh...

[Storchei]

In my opinion, the problem comes from the idea of "doing business" with healthcare.
Doctors, nurses, and employees must be paid for their services, no arguing about that. But there must be another way to provide healthcare (paying the bills, of course, but getting something in exchange).
The government forces us to pay for insurance and healthcare services in a monthly basis. Nevertheless, the moment you really need to get medical attention you must pay again and in advance (as if you don't pay every month). You MUST go to the cash desk before the doctor can see what injuries you have. Of course, if you have the need to see a specialist (in most cases) you have to wait from 1 to 3-4 months before he/she has time.
Again, profit cannot be present in a place where the most important thing is to cure people. Somehow this points to the State as the entity responsible for providing healthcare.

Going back to the topic, this issue (violation of privacy by the FBI, CIA, NSA, etc) has been discussed a million times, and it will be discussed again, until some actions take place from the government. It's interesting, however, the way arguments change during time but the modus operandi is exactly the same. Hippies, communists, nazis, terrorists, drug dealers, pornographers, blacks, yellows, greens, blues.. There will always be an excuse to do whatever they want.
I wonder what is worse, how US people live freedom or how they think freedom should be lived.

Re:Duhh...

[Shakrai]

About a year ago I was in a motorcycle accident. A simple lay-down that resulted in a broken leg. I was taken to Stanford hospital and put in a cast. The cast wasn't holding the bone in place, so they inserted a plate and screws. A complication arose: compartment syndrome. Five surgeries and two weeks later, I went home. Total bill: $290,000. Total amount I paid: $0.

That's a bad example to make to justify mandatory health insurance. Injuries of that nature would have been covered under your motorcycle/automobile policy. In fact if you read your health insurance policy it almost certainly has an exclusion for situations where another insurance company is liable for your injuries.

Re:Duhh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Good argument until you're the one with an expensive condition. Then we shouldn't care about you either? Come on, even you're better than that. My guess is that you're not living such a healthy lifestyle that you can criticize others. Even healthy people get hurt at the gym. Say you injure yourself at a spinning class, do we let you die because you're stupid enough to exercise? Or how about the runner hit by a car? What about the poor man or woman who's been dealt a bad ticker by the genetic lottery?

If we in the U.S. went to a single payer system, we could cover everyone for less. Period.

Even if you have to cover smokers and waddlers, it would cost less because they tend to die sooner and quicker. Eventually, you will be sick. It's just a question of when and how bad. If you think you'll never use what you paid in, you're badly mistaken. A minor heart attack with placement of a stent will run upwards of $80,0000 today with nearly $200/mo in meds for at least the next two year. You obviously haven't known anyone who's been sick. I just hope when your time comes someone more compassionate than yourself is on the death panel.

"But with everyone covered and everyone in the risk pool, everyone's costs go down." If that works for private insurance, just think of what it would do for Medicare. But then the anti-single-payer lobby would have you believe that it only works in the private sector.

Re:Duhh...

[Shakrai]

We can't have a ME ME ME ME attitude all the time, and live with one another.

Yes we can. Our country was founded on the principles of liberty and self-determination. You have no right to compel me to purchase health insurance if I decide that I could use the money for something else.

Your examples above are nothing more than irrelevant strawmen that have nothing to do with the issue currently under discussion. They might have been valid if we were talking about a single-payer system -- but that's not what's on the table, is it? Instead we are talking about a system that's going to compel you to do business with private interests, regardless of how you feel about them (what about moral and/or religious objections to the way they do business?) or whether or not you feel you are getting value for your money.

Do you want me to list the ways that such a system violates our Constitution?

Re:Duhh...

[Shakrai]

Again, profit cannot be present in a place where the most important thing is to cure people.

If profit isn't present then I think you'll see the quality of the health care system go down. What do you think motivates many people to get into medicine?

Re:Duhh...

[Teun]

Well spoken.

I'd be rather unimpressed when my daughter would come home with a new lover talking like the GP.

Re:Duhh...

[svtdragon]

I won't argue that it takes away from freedom of choice, as does an income tax and any other kind of tax or anything else that benefits the public collectively at taxpayer expense. It's unpopular, but so are denials based on preexisting conditions, and voters overwhelmingly want that practice stopped. But we can't have one without the other.

The problem with the "car insurance paying for oil changes" analogy is that if your car breaks, you can buy a new one. Fundamentally, car insurance is about protecting *other people* from *you*. Health insurance is about protecting yourself.

I agree that the best cost reduction mechanism is certainly not addressed in the legislation. More information on that is in this incredible (and like yours, nonpartisan) New Yorker article. I've skimmed yours, and will do a more thorough read after work.

What the article I've linked says is that it's unnecessary procedures that are the biggest cost. Bureaucracy, depending on your sources and whether you talk about Medicare (whose admin costs are less) or private insurers will run anywhere between 3% to 15%, which is significant but static--it's not a growing percentage, and it's not nearly enough to account for such growth in premiums (119% since 2000).

Driving costs down from where they are expected to be (not down absolutely, but bending the curve a little) can be done in part by ensuring that we cover preventative care, which is a good part of the base package proposed in this health reform.

And for the record, sometimes routine expenses can be catastrophic. I work for the pharmaceutical industry. One of our drugs (which my stepfather happens to be on) costs upwards of $400 a bottle. With insurance it's a manageable $30 or $40. Just because it's recurring (like, say, insulin) doesn't mean it shouldn't be insured, since I'd wager that recurring expenses of that size can add up to bankruptcy for the majority of people. And bankruptcy doesn't fix your health issues, so even after that, how do you keep paying?

On another level, insurance that pays for routine expenses is, in some sense, paying to protect the both the insurer and the insured against catastrophe in the future. That's the idea of preventative medicine.

Re:Duhh...

[Storchei]

I agree with you, Shakrai.

Doctors, nurses, and employees must be paid for their services, no arguing about that.

What I mean is that profit cannot be present as in other companies, where besides the cost of services and assets the owner of the company expects to earn something.
What I propose is to find a way to remove that higher level which is expecting health care services to be profitable, when the sole purpose of those services is to cure people. Currently, you pay in a period-basis for health care and insurance; part of that money you pay goes to doctors/nurses/employees and other part goes to a bank account of some corporation (as profit). In my opinion, that part which goes to the corporation should be used to improve services.
I hope you understand my point. Thanks for your comment.

Re:Duhh...

[svtdragon]

What if I want a doctor who cares more about curing me than how big his paycheck is? Look at what doctors make in countries with universal healthcare, and consider the hours they work. Here, they make twice as much but work twice as much.

Offhand, I'd say a UHC system in this country could probably pay doctors around $200,000. That's certainly more than I make. There's room for personal incentive in a nonprofit *hospital*.

In sum, your assertion-phrased-as-a-question is refuted by the actual experiences of universal (nonprofit) healthcare systems.

Re:Duhh...

[BobMcD]

The problem with the "car insurance paying for oil changes" analogy is that if your car breaks, you can buy a new one. Fundamentally, car insurance is about protecting *other people* from *you*. Health insurance is about protecting yourself.

This is fundamentally false.

Health insurance is about defraying a portion of the cost of health care and spreading it out over a group of people over a period of time.

Period.

There is no logical way in which paying for health insurance actually prevents your being sick. Certainly participating in the care might do so, but it would do so whether you had insurance or paid out of pocket.

False statements such as yours do more harm than good by giving the people an impression that by simply getting better health insurance they will have more protection. In reality this goal is certainly more difficult than that and involves getting better care and changing your way of life.

Insurance, by the way, actually makes it more difficult to do both. It drives up the cost of care, limits choice, discourages alternatives and/or experimental care, and drains finances that could be spent on other things. And lets face it, the better a given food is for you, for example, the more expensive it is as well.

As an aside, government health care to me represents an even bigger problem in that it offers deficit spending. Ultimately this will only serve to take more dollars away from unhealthy people in the form of taxes, and the health care system will evolve to bleed it dry at every possible turn.

Re:Duhh...

[svtdragon]

I do recall that the questions you asked were

Why must I spend my money to cover someone else? Why should I be forced to pay for something I don't want?

This may seem pedantic, but I believe that the GP is not building strawmen but applying your intentionally vague assumptions about our responsibilities to one another, as laid out in the questions above, to other situations. You mentioned nothing about governmental or not.

I personally advocate a single-payer system, but you're right that this isn't what's on the table. And if you think that this violates the constitution, you'd be in league with a lot of crazies. As I recall, there's something about interstate commerce, or even better, "promot[ing] the general Welfare" of the people.

And in any case, there are huge subsidies. They cover more than 50% of the cost for most families, then again I would guess the average /.er brings home twice what the average family makes.

Oh--and if you get sick or get hit by an uninsured motorist and go to the ER and you can't pay, well, it's the taxpayers subsidizing that bill for you, so the taxpayers are now saying that you ought to have insurance.

Re:Duhh...

[BobMcD]

About a year ago I was in a motorcycle accident. A simple lay-down that resulted in a broken leg. I was taken to Stanford hospital and put in a cast. The cast wasn't holding the bone in place, so they inserted a plate and screws. A complication arose: compartment syndrome. Five surgeries and two weeks later, I went home. Total bill: $290,000. Total amount I paid: $0.

That's a bad example to make to justify mandatory health insurance. Injuries of that nature would have been covered under your motorcycle/automobile policy. In fact if you read your health insurance policy it almost certainly has an exclusion for situations where another insurance company is liable for your injuries.

And fundamentally, it certainly should be so. The risk being described is in operating the motorcycle, rather than merely being alive. Higher utilization as a result of a wreck should drive up the cost of motorcycle insurance, not health insurance in general, because of the risk-reward nature of insurance.

Further parties who felt the cost of motorcycle insurance were too high would be incentivized to lower their risks.

Re:Duhh...

[ppanon]

If profit isn't present then I think you'll see the quality of the health care system go down. What do you think motivates many people to get into medicine?

These days in the US? Money for a lot of cases, particularly doctors since the system abuses them during the required hospital residency stage. There's no reason for them to have to work the consecutive hour lengths for typical shifts they are made to work - those shifts would be illegal for airplane pilots but for some reason they're OK for doctors? That's a high barrier to entry on the motivational dimension and the ones who get through either really want to help people a lot or really want to make a lot of money. That probably is a factor in increasing healthcare costs in the US.

But back to your point, which doctor do you think is going to provide you with the best care? The one doing it for the money and who rushes to see as many patients as possible, or the one who cares about people and wants to help them? Fortunately, it's usually not a mutually exclusive proposition and many doctors want to make a reasonable amount of money while still helping people. But generally, for equivalent competency, most people would get better service from the doctor who wants to help people than from the one who is in it for the money. Finally, people (including doctors) get better by repetitive practice involving positive feedback, and a doctor who wants to help people is going to care more about improving outcomes (ie. improving themselves as a doctor), while someone in it for the money will only care about improving patient outcomes if it happens to coincide with improving their own income.

But the stats tell the story better than any case study: the US spends more money per capita on healthcare than other industrialized countries for worse average outcomes in most categories.

Re:Duhh...

[svtdragon]

The problem with the "car insurance paying for oil changes" analogy is that if your car breaks, you can buy a new one. Fundamentally, car insurance is about protecting *other people* from *you*. Health insurance is about protecting yourself.

This is fundamentally false.

False assumption is false.

I did not suggest that it would protect you from getting sick, though in the long run preventative care enabled by insurance might. It's about protecting you from the financial consequences of catastrophe. And it does serve to get you treated better once you're already sick. I'm sure you are aware of the fact that if you're uninsured and you go to the ER, you're twice as likely to die?

Certainly participating in the care might do so, but it would do so whether you had insurance or paid out of pocket.

Conveniently you neglect the third scenario, which is "none of the above; I have no insurance and money with which to pay". See my link above.

Deficit spending is not the monster you make it out to be, especially in an economic slump at the zero lower bound on the Fed funds rate. It's called a liquidity trap, and Paul Krugman has written about it many a time. And as for the actual proposal, it's better than deficit-neutral over ten years. Of course, we could solve all of it by expanding Medicare to everyone, but people are inexplicably terrified of that--does anyone know a senior who wishes they didn't have it?

Re:Duhh...

[BobMcD]

Grandparent Post:

Why must I spend my money to cover someone else? Why should I be forced to pay for something I don't want?

Note the matter at hand is presently private insurance.

Parent Post:

Why should you pay for police protection for your neighbor? Why should you pay for schools, when you don't have kids? Why should you pay for Air Traffic Control, when you are scared to fly? Why should you pay for a bridge you will never use? Why should you pay for someone to come up with and enforce building codes? Why should you pay for roads that you will never drive on? Why should you pay for farm aid to a wheat farmer when you can't eat wheat? Why should you pay for anything?

Note that none of the matters above are private. They're all provided by the government.

I'll pause here and point out that this is a strawman by nature of the change in the source of the protection. A better analogy would be the government mandating that I get the extended warranty from BestBuy. But I digress...

Another key difference here is that the powers enumerated by the parent are modifiable by the will of the people. If the people want City Council to cut the budget on the Firemen, they do so. If the people want to vote in better tax rates in favor of their schools, it happens. If the people want cheaper insurance with more features, can we vote that in also? No. We're expected to shop somewhere else, and that is the extent of the power we have.

That alone makes all of this 'apples and oranges'.

Now, and I think this is the best part, this is not outside the design. This disparity is the beginning of the slippery slope that will result in federally-provided care. The steps are these:

1) Attempt Government-run health care weakly, eliciting a backlash

2) Compromise and use a mandatory and flawed private-ran system

3) Regulate that system into the ground

4) Answer the people's cries for help by taking over the now-defunct system, noting that your efforts in step 1 have eliminated any functional objections

And it will work, too, chiefly because there is only one party in Washington. No matter which side you're on, you have to have noticed by now that none of the laws the 'bad guys' ever get overturned once your 'good guys' take office. This means that even if the people vote entire red in the next few election cycles, mandatory health insurance is here to stay. And with that in place, the system will almost certainly fail.

Re:Duhh...

[Shakrai]

you'd be in league with a lot of crazies

Typical partisan answer. If you disagree with me then you must be crazy/uneducated/misinformed.

As I recall, there's something about interstate commerce, or even better, "promot[ing] the general Welfare" of the people.

So the interstate commerce clause now extends to a lack of commerce? I hope you realize that the logical conclusion of that argument is the Federal Government arresting cancer patients for smoking weed......

And in any case, there are huge subsidies.

Irrelevant.

Oh--and if you get sick or get hit by an uninsured motorist and go to the ER and you can't pay, well, it's the taxpayers subsidizing that bill for you, so the taxpayers are now saying that you ought to have insurance.

Then end the unfunded mandate that hospitals treat people regardless of their ability to pay. You don't get to impose one mandate and then use it as a rationalization for another one.

Re:Duhh...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's people that say their insurance is great right now and we shouldn't change the system that I want to give cancer to. So they can see how great insurance is, or how all the money they saved by not having insurance is nothing compared to the medical bills they will need to pay.

There is a substantial amount of stories of people who did save money, had health insurance, were retired, and had their house payed off. Got cancer and it all went away then had to move in with their children so they wouldn't be homeless because they had to sell their house.

Re:Duhh...

[Shakrai]

And as for the actual proposal, it's better than deficit-neutral over ten years

My household budget would look pretty good too if I had ten years of income and only six years of expenses.....

Re:Duhh...

[BobMcD]

It's about protecting you from the financial consequences of catastrophe.

Do you realize that this kind of policy is being outlawed in the reform?

And it does serve to get you treated better once you're already sick.

That is a byproduct of the system, and nothing designed into it. In fact, the insurer actively works to prohibit you the more expensive treatments in favor of cheaper ones. This is irrespective of which care is actually 'best'.

I'm sure you are aware of the fact that if you're uninsured and you go to the ER, you're twice as likely to die [msn.com]?

Do you suppose there are any other forces at work? Or are you implying that those with insurance have magical antibodies that keep them well? Read what you linked me.

From the article:

The researchers couldn't pin down the reasons behind the differences they found.

Further:

The researchers took into account the severity of the injuries and the patients' race, gender and age. After those adjustments, they still found the uninsured were 80 percent more likely to die than those with insurance — even low-income patients insured by the government's Medicaid program.

So we're already down to 80 percent and we have yet to account for any of the socio-economic factors that you can't find on an admission form, e.g. 'Will you mom be able to afford to take a week off work to aid in your recovery?'

Call me unconvinced.

Deficit spending is not the monster you make it out to be, especially in an economic slump at the zero lower bound on the Fed funds rate. It's called a liquidity trap, and Paul Krugman has written about it many a time. And as for the actual proposal, it's better than deficit-neutral over ten years. Of course, we could solve all of it by expanding Medicare to everyone, but people are inexplicably terrified of that--does anyone know a senior who wishes they didn't have it?

The actual proposal is moot. It will never survive in its present form to reach that deficit neutral point. It simply can't.

The issue you're not grasping is the greed that occurs when you use federal dollars against a private system. Note how I'm not talking about the entire economy, but healthcare as an independent fraction of it. The private insurance payers are the only things keeping Medicare costs in check, and they're only doing so out of the most primitive of self-preservation interests. Once you remove the private payers, everyone will charge and pay the full Medicare price. Then the health care system will lobby for those prices to go up, and since they are no longer subject to private market forces this will absolutely result in a lossy system. Inflation will run rampant, and until the tax dollars finally dry up, costs will always trend upwards.

Drop a name on that if you'd like, but there's just no logical way to deny how a system without any independent oversight and without competition will not gorge itself to death.

Re:Duhh...

[Obfuscant]

First, I wish I had mods points for the people above you in the thread. Costs don't go down if everyone has to be in the pool. Just one trivial example why: people who aren't covered now don't go to the ER when they get sick, they don't participate in the medical system at all and they get better all by themselves. (And if you don't believe this, why were hospital ERs deluged to the point they had to refuse admittance to people with the flu this last fall?) A few years ago I had a cut that I went to the ER to deal with, which I would NOT have bothered had the Home Depot where I was injured not said "go to the ER, we'll cover it" (which they then refused to pay a dime for, asshole Home Depot.)

About a year ago I was in a motorcycle accident.

So YOU are one of those high-risks that everyone else has to pay for when you get hurt having your fun. You get the fun of riding, I get the fun of working to pay to fix you when you get broken. This is a perfect example of why some people want to opt-out of having to pay for health care for other people. They don't ride death-traps, they don't jump out of perfectly good airplanes, they don't inhale burning vegetable matter, they don't try to ride on top of waves, they don't drown their bodies in depressants or strange elixers that make them feel invincible.

They would rather spend the money they worked for on a new TV instead of paying for your surgeries that were necessary only because you like to ride motorcycles.

Why should your costs be ZERO? Why shouldn't you have a healthy co-pay? Hell, even the cut I went to the ER for cost me 20% of the total, and I was doing nothing more dangerous than standing in the checkout line at Home Depot.

Point is, insurance isn't the sucker's bet that a lot of people seem to think.

Whether it is a sucker's bet depends on the odds, and if you choose to do risky things that changes the odds and makes insurance less of a bet and more of a "get out of jail free" card.

Re:Duhh...

[BobMcD]

"There is no fucking hope when 'movements' like the 'birthers', tea-baggers, etc. have gained any significant traction at all, instead of being laughed right out of every single mainstream media outlet."

Why not?

A 'birther' wants to know that no one who lacks the qualifications for office may be elected. There's nothing catastrophic in this.

A 'tea-bagger' wants no taxation without representation. Again, I fail to see the 'danger' of this idea.

Please, enlighten us.

Re:Duhh...

[svtdragon]

If you disagree with me then you must be crazy/uneducated/misinformed.

Or it could be that such a league of crazies is, in fact, crazy. The league of crazies I speak of are the birthers, etc., who despite being shown all valid evidence to the contrary continue to propagate myths about death panels and "pulling the plug on grandma" and so forth; the "keep your government hands off my Medicare" sort. And anyone who says that is, by any measure, crazy, what with government being the sole proprietor of Medicare.

The question of an individual mandate breaks down into an individual mandate and the no-denials-based-on-PECs wording. I'll grant you that the tie to interstate commerce as it relates to the individual mandate is tenuous, but it's in line with the mandate to insurance companies that they have to cover you. You fail to address the preamble, however, which it seems to me in line with a mandate designed to limit a)under/nonpayment to doctors and b)situations in which inadequate/no care is received.

And in any case, there are huge subsidies.

Irrelevant.

Not if you keep using the word "unfunded". I realize that the technical definition of an unfunded mandate may be in line with what you're saying, but it's scarcely unfunded if you look at the $900 billion in subsidies for the poor. And on top of that, if we tried to, say, fund the hospitals using the government, the same people would get up in arms about that, so it's clearly not about the funding so much as "omg government is teh ebil" which, when made as a moral argument, is specious at best, especially when you look at the success (by any measure--cost per-capita, life expectancy, infant mortality, etc) of UHC systems.

Then end the unfunded mandate that hospitals treat people regardless of their ability to pay.

And if you are trying to tell me that any hospital ought to be able to say "nope" if somebody walks in the door gushing blood, and would be absolved of all guilt should they simply die on the floor, then we've nothing more to talk about, since we've now hit a moral argument instead of a practical one, and my opinion of you, as someone who would advocate for such a policy, is that you've no conscience and/or soul.

Re:Duhh...

[svtdragon]

CBO also scores the decade after 2019 (pdf):

...[S]avings from changes to the Medicare program (along with other changes to direct spending that are not associated directly with expanded insurance coverage) would increase at a rate that is between 10 percent and 15 percent per year during the 2020–2029 period [...] All told, CBO expects that the legislation, if enacted, would reduce federal budget deficits over the decade after 2019 relative to those projected under current law—with a total effect during that decade that is in a broad range between one-quarter percent and one-half percent of GDP.

Re:Duhh...

[svtdragon]

It's about protecting you from the financial consequences of catastrophe.

Do you realize that this kind of policy is being outlawed in the reform?

So you're saying that in the reform, health insurance will no longer insulate you from the financial consequences of health catastrophes? That doesn't explain the cap on annual and lifetime expenditures that they've put into the legislation.

And it does serve to get you treated better once you're already sick.

That is a byproduct of the system, and nothing designed into it. In fact, the insurer actively works to prohibit you the more expensive treatments in favor of cheaper ones. This is irrespective of which care is actually 'best'.

You're making my argument for me--a system with no profit motive will go with the 'best' rather than the cheapest. Once you eliminate the profit motive, the only motivation left is to provide the most effective care for the money.

I'm sure you are aware of the fact that if you're uninsured and you go to the ER, you're twice as likely to die [msn.com]?

Do you suppose there are any other forces at work? Or are you implying that those with insurance have magical antibodies that keep them well?

Of course there are demographic trends. However, unless you can explain away 100%, it's still a problem that needs solving.

Drop a name on that if you'd like, but there's just no logical way to deny how a system without any independent oversight and without competition will not gorge itself to death.

Evidence belies your assertion. We already pay multiples of what countries that have universal healthcare pay.

Re:Duhh...

[TheWizardTim]

A 35 year old with no insurance starts coughing. He can't afford to go to the doctor, but after a few weeks of coughing finally pays out of pocket to see a doctor. The doctor can't do an x-ray because it costs too much and he has a history of bronchitis anyway. He get's some drugs to see if that will help. A few months later he goes to the ER with chest pains, and it turns out he has stage 4 lung cancer. He then get almost free treatment to the tune of tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars. He lives for 6 months.

The above man is my brother Matt. He was working as a chef in a small diner. He made about 10 an hour. The owner did not offer health insurance until you have worked for 6 months. Before he could get insurance from work, he got sick. The state and social security paid to keep him alive for 6 months.

If he had public insurance, he could have gotten the chest x-ray when the drugs did not help. The treatment for stage 1 or 2 cancer is less costly then stage 4, and more importantly he would still be alive. So when asked, should I, working in the computer industry making good money, have to support my neighbor, my answer is YES! My neighbor is someone's brother or sister or father or mother or child.

Re:Duhh...

[Hognoxious]

If profit isn't present then I think you'll see the quality of the health care system go down.

According to most sources I've seen, those evuhl soshurlist snail munchershave better healthcare than the US - and it costs less to boot.

What do you think motivates many people to get into medicine?

I often wondered why there weren't any doctors in England, France, Canada ... let's cut it short and just say the rest of the developed world.

Re:Duhh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for explaining why my civil liberties are being trampled on. It's all clear now.

Re:Duhh...

[Shakrai]

The league of crazies I speak of are the birthers, etc., who despite being shown all valid evidence to the contrary continue to propagate myths about death panels and "pulling the plug on grandma" and so forth;

No, the league of crazies that you spoke of were those who think that the current Health Care bill is unconstitutional. Your previous comment said nothing about birthers.

Do you believe in free association? If so, how do you justify a mandate that people do business with health insurance companies?

Do you believe in freedom of religion? If so, what about people whom have a religious objection to doing business with health insurance companies? If I raise a religious or moral objection is the Government going to accept my word or get into the business of determining whether or not my faith is genuine?

Do you believe that you have the right to be secure in your papers and effects? If so, how is it Uncle Sam's business whether or not I have health insurance?

but it's in line with the mandate to insurance companies that they have to cover you.

That could be imposed without an individual mandate. If the Democrats had sought to end the pre-existing condition practice without attaching it to the rest of this "reform" they could have passed it months ago with supermajorities in both houses of Congress. There's bipartisan support for reining in the most egregious practices of the insurance industry.

Not if you keep using the word "unfunded". I realize that the technical definition of an unfunded mandate may be in line with what you're saying, but it's scarcely unfunded if you look at the $900 billion in subsidies for the poor.

Subsidies that I won't qualify for, thus it's an unfunded mandate for me. You might also consider the costs that the states are going to incur under this bill (unless you live in Nebraska) or the fact that the Democrats can only make it "deficit-neutral" by imposing the new taxes right away but delaying benefits/payouts for several years. Think your household budget would look better if you had 10 years of income and only 6 years of expenses?

And if you are trying to tell me that any hospital ought to be able to say "nope" if somebody walks in the door gushing blood, and would be absolved of all guilt should they simply die on the floor, then we've nothing more to talk about, since we've now hit a moral argument instead of a practical one, and my opinion of you, as someone who would advocate for such a policy, is that you've no conscience and/or soul.

My point was that you shouldn't use one unfunded mandate as a rationalization for another one. The rationalization is thin anyway. Because people can come to the ER and get treated for free we must impose a individual mandate and strip millions of people of their freedom of choice? I thought self-determination was one of our ideals?

To add one final point, can you honestly look at me with a straight face and tell me this legislation doesn't stink? It doesn't bother you that Candidate Obama promised an open process but President Obama has cut backroom deals with the pharmaceutical industry? It doesn't bother you that Candidate Obama promised that everyone would have a seat at the table but President Obama has stood mute while Speaker Pelosi completely muzzled the minority party? It doesn't bother you that Candidate Obama condemned the individual mandate and used it against his two main opponents but President Obama has reneged on this promise? It doesn't bother you that they systematically bought off the votes of skeptical Senators with a series of special deals that favor the few at the expense of the many? It doesn't bother you that Union members get special treatment under this legislation?

Re:Duhh...

[BobMcD]

So you're saying that in the reform, health insurance will no longer insulate you from the financial consequences of health catastrophes? That doesn't explain the cap on annual and lifetime expenditures that they've put into the legislation.

Are you not aware or are you sabotaging the discussion on purpose?

Today I can go out and buy a plan that excludes everything but catastrophic care. After the reform all plans will be required to have certain features, and the kind of coverage you're advocating will only be available as a part of a package.

It seems to me, if you genuinely believe that insurance primarily serves this purpose, that you would be in favor of allowing people to select a catastrophic-only plan.

At a minimum there seems to be a disconnect between what you feel insurance is for and what the people writing the reform bill feel it is for.

You're making my argument for me--a system with no profit motive will go with the 'best' rather than the cheapest. Once you eliminate the profit motive, the only motivation left is to provide the most effective care for the money.

How does a system with no competition suddenly stop caring about profit? You're mixing metaphors here to your benefit. You simply can't have one (no competition) with the other (no profit motive). There exists a little called corruption that you may have heard about...

Of course there are demographic trends. However, unless you can explain away 100%, it's still a problem that needs solving.

On this we may agree, but due to the importance of what's involved here, I'd advocating having some kind of a clue what the causes of the issues are before we take action. Groping around in the dark isn't going to cut it here.

Drop a name on that if you'd like, but there's just no logical way to deny how a system without any independent oversight and without competition will not gorge itself to death.

Evidence belies your assertion. We already pay multiples of what countries that have universal healthcare pay.

You'll need to back that one up with some more information. This isn't evidence. There's nothing here, nor in the links, about the content of the data. Are we looking at out of pocket dollars, billed charges, taxes paid - what? Arbitrary links to graphs do not convince me, and further there's zero discussion here as to how our government would keep these costs in check. Please do note that while private insurance presently pays based on a percentage of what Medicare allows, the health providers bill everything they can possibly consider. Most of what is billed is denied by everyone but Medicare. This is the system you're advocating we modify, not necessarily the one they had in Australia, Finland, etc.

Re:Duhh...

[BobMcD]

With all due respect, all humans are someone's brother or sister or father or mother or child. Even those that feel they ought to be able to choose these sorts of things for themselves.

Your argument, essentially, is because your brother got cancer and died from it, the rest of us are no longer able to disagree.

While my heart does go out to you, I'd also like to point out the multitudes that died to give us the right to discuss these things and vote on them.

All life has value, but our rights still also have value.

Re:Duhh...

[svtdragon]

The league of crazies I speak of are the birthers, etc., who despite being shown all valid evidence to the contrary continue to propagate myths about death panels and "pulling the plug on grandma" and so forth;

No, the league of crazies that you spoke of were those who think that the current Health Care bill is unconstitutional. Your previous comment said nothing about birthers.

However, if you were to say that it was unconstitutional, you would be advocating the birther position on the matter, and they are easily the majority of people I've seen expressing that opinion. Generalization, yes. Unfounded? No.

Do you believe in free association? If so, how do you justify a mandate that people do business with health insurance companies?

I do, but I believe more in the right of a human being to healthcare regardless of income. In any other civilized nation (G8, G20, etc.), it is just that: a right. It doesn't much matter who you associate with if you've been allowed to die.

Do you believe in freedom of religion? If so, what about people whom have a religious objection to doing business with health insurance companies? If I raise a religious or moral objection is the Government going to accept my word or get into the business of determining whether or not my faith is genuine?

I believe that religion is a net negative force in the world, and that as a practice, religious-belief exceptions have a lot of grief to answer for. If your religious belief forbids such a system from coming into being, why is my belief that everyone ought to be granted the right to healthcare not equally as enforceable? I understand that you're talking about individual versus collective here, but when concern for the individual's beliefs preclude the collective from benefiting itself, something has to give. And I believe that the qualms of a few are not justification for the death of 18,000 people a year. And I also believe that the most common (Judeo-Christian) religions, at least, advocate giving of yourself to help your neighbor--so pay into the pool.

Do you believe that you have the right to be secure in your papers and effects? If so, how is it Uncle Sam's business whether or not I have health insurance?

How is it his business that you have car insurance? Whereas car insurance protects other people from your potential inability to pay should you injure them, health insurance in addition to protecting you, as above, protects the hospital and the doctors from your inability to pay.

but it's in line with the mandate to insurance companies that they have to cover you.

That could be imposed without an individual mandate. If the Democrats had sought to end the pre-existing condition practice without attaching it to the rest of this "reform" they could have passed it months ago with supermajorities in both houses of Congress. There's bipartisan support for reining in the most egregious practices of the insurance industry.

There *is* wide popular support, but did you not read what I first wrote about this? There MUST be a mandate that everyone is covered, or else people game the system and only buy insurance when they get sick. This means that the risk pool turns sour and premiums skyrocket until you're paying full hospital prices at the time of service. The mandate has to be there to prevent this, whether it's individual or employer-based. It happened that the least preferable of the two came out of the debate, but it's better than nothing and it's scarcely a price to pay for getting rid of the PEC abuses. Either have a mandate and no more PECs, or neither. That's how the economics of it work out.

You might also consider the costs that the states are going to in

Re:Duhh...

[svtdragon]

No, I am aware that there will be minimum standards for insurance plans, however I don't buy the argument that they will no longer protect you from catastrophe. Since everyone will have them, they will still be protected, however the insurance company saves money in the long run, as it turns out, by making you buy coverage for preventative care as well, thereby making catastrophe less likely. This is not to mention the assertion I made above that even long-term recurring costs (e.g., medication) can be catastrophic, and I'm assuming that under a catastrophic-only plan those would not be covered.

To your point about best versus cheapest care: in Medicare, the government, by its taxpayer-funded nature, does not care about making a profit, versus insurance companies who clearly do. The hospitals and doctors providing care certainly do, but they're not deciding how much care that my insurer will approve. There exist decision-making bodies for such purposes and they lie within the entity insuring the patient. And in a government system, as the board of decision-makers do not have their salaries dependent upon denying my care, what they are left with is "what's the most we can get for the money?" i.e. the most cost-effective care.

I can tell you that I searched out the data used to make that plot, and found that it's from this OECD spreadsheet. Within the spreadsheet there's a link to the online database from which the data is extracted, and within which you can find the precise details about which metrics are what, and how they are measured.

To do a bit of adventurous guessing re: how we'd keep these costs in check, I'd suggest that we look at how these other countries run their healthcare systems. On the whole it appears as though they all have universal healthcare. We're certainly an outlier, and this seems to be the most noticeable difference, so why don't we try that and see if it works? If not, well, we'll have saved some lives in the process.

Re:Duhh...

[TheWizardTim]

So "provide for the common defense" has more weight to you then "promote the general welfare"? I would argue that I can't have "Life liberty and the pursuit of happiness" without health care.

Without health care, I can't have life. At least not for long.

Without health care, I can't have liberty, if I am not free to do whatever job I want, because I am tied to my job for health insurance.

Without health care, I can't pursue my happiness, because being self-employed, health insurance is too expensive.

I would rather people of this country be free to follow their dreams. Many people can't quit their jobs because they need the insurance.

I see health care as a right, not a privilege.

Re:Duhh...

[Shakrai]

However, if you were to say that it was unconstitutional, you would be advocating the birther position on the matter, and they are easily the majority of people I've seen expressing that opinion. Generalization, yes. Unfounded? No.

Wow, you really are reaching here.

I do, but I believe more in the right of a human being to healthcare regardless of income. In any other civilized nation (G8, G20, etc.), it is just that: a right. It doesn't much matter who you associate with if you've been allowed to die.

As I said, I would not be making this objection to a single payer system. But the current legislation does nothing to fix the underlying problems with our system. All it does is enshrine them into law while taking away my freedom of choice to opt-out of the broken system.

I understand that you're talking about individual versus collective here, but when concern for the individual's beliefs preclude the collective from benefiting itself, something has to give.

So you can trample on any and all individual rights if the "collective" will "benefit"?

And I believe that the qualms of a few are not justification for the death of 18,000 people a year

More people than that die on car accidents every year. Why aren't you spending all of your energy attacking that issue?

How is it his business that you have car insurance?

It's not. The Federal Government does not mandate that anyone purchase car insurance. Furthermore, owning a car is a choice. Being a citizen of the United States is not.

There MUST be a mandate that everyone is covered, or else people game the system and only buy insurance when they get sick.

That's not what Candidate Obama said.

Did you read the last thing I wrote? From 2019 to 2029 it will continue to reduce the deficit, per the CBO [cbo.gov].

Apparently you didn't read what I wrote. Tell me, where did the CBO score the impact of this legislation on the states? What do you suppose it means when the Governors of NY and CA both come out and say that the current legislation will seriously harm their respective states? It's worth noting that both of them are (or were?) supporters of health care reform. Further, the CBO score is based on unrealistic assumptions, like the political fantasy that Congress won't increase medicare reimbursement rates.

The larger of my ideals is that we ought not let those die whom we can save.

The larger of my ideals is that life isn't worth living if you are going to strip me of my liberty and personal choice. That's exactly what this bill does. It regulates what kind of insurance I can buy (high-deductible plans won't be allowed in the exchanges), grants favors to special interest groups at the expense of the whole (I thought you were all about the "collective"?), compels me at gunpoint to participate in a broken system and cuts deals with private industry (big pharma) that codifies their exploitative business model into law at the expense of the citizenry.

November 2010 can't come fast enough as far as I'm concerned. Actually, I might not even have to wait that long. Looks like the Democrats stand a very good chance of losing an election in a few hours in Massachusetts of all places. The fact that you can't even sell this bill to the people of the Bay State ought to tell you something.

Re:Duhh...

[Falconhell]

Hwen you defend paranoid morons, it is hard to believe you are capable of enlightenment.

Re:Duhh...

[BobMcD]

The hospitals and doctors providing care certainly do, but they're not deciding how much care that my insurer will approve.

You are completely overlooking the provider-side of the equation with this argument.

Your provider only cares about how much the insurer will approve when it means you, the customer, become uncomfortable with the costs. If they feel you'll pay the differences, you get to experience the full glory of billed charges.

Look into it. I'm confident you'll find that giving the provider side unlimited access to Federal dollars will be disastrous.

I get that your heart is in the right place, and know from experience that insurance companies are not love-fests. However they exist to stand between you and the hospitals, who are the real agents driving up the costs. Replace the insurance company's profit motive with bottomless government profits and see what happens next.

I cannot explain why this may or may not be the case in other health systems. I do know enough about our current system to state, from personal experience, that the system in America we have now will not survive such a transition easily. It would first need to be replaced. Unfortunately I feel the health lobby has way, way, way too much power to expect the law to actually force them to adapt. They, in the end, will not adapt, and we the people will be forced to in the end.

I suppose this is where our discussion ends, as I'm not sure how I can phrase and rephrase the point any other way. You're sold on the opposite point of view, and you're simply not listening to me. On the other hand I am unfortunately unconvinced that we have nothing to fear. Those other nations must have more differences than merely how they handle the paper work. You're not able to illustrate what those are to make your point, and you've stopped discussing mine. So yeah, I think we're done.

Re:Duhh...

[svtdragon]

First, I've no interest in trampling anything, but religion is a poor excuse, and if your right to practice Scientology with all ten other Scientologists denies 45 million people healthcare, I'm all for healthcare. There's something to be said for *scale* here.

Second, we make cars safer all the time, and yet highway deaths increase because we drive more. Deaths per mile, however, decrease, whereas the number of uninsured and deaths among them is *increasing*. The problem is that we're already addressing highway deaths (though we need better driver ed) and nothing's being done about healthcare. Third, everywhere I've been it's been mandated that you have car insurance. It's effectively federal. Would you have a problem with a state mandating health insurance? As far as citizenship goes--you can leave. It's optional, though you're not going to find another similarly developed country that doesn't offer universal healthcare, so I think you're SOL on that one. But you can still go to Zimbabwe or something.

Fourth, Candidate Obama was wrong on that, and we all knew it at the time.

Fifth, about half of the legislation's $900b is going to states for Medicaid, so this isn't entirely unfunded either. And this theory that none of the cuts will stick has been debunked, as it turns out that most similar cuts in the past have stuck.

And finally, making you buy health insurance minimizes risk. This enables you to be *free* to live without the worry of someday getting hit by a car driven by an uninsured motorist and to live the rest of your life in suffocating debt. To me, that sense of safety makes me *more* free--free to leave my job, for example, and find another because I know I won't be denied coverage. Furthermore, unionization of a fraction of the population does benefit the collective. Just look at the income disparity numbers from the golden age of unions in the 50s and 60s. And with higher unionization, as union wages go, so go the wages of nonunionized workers. This is less true nowadays, but were we still more unionized, it would mean that when they renegotiate cheaper healthcare plans the higher salaries they'd exchange them for would be seen by nearly everyone.

For the record, I work for big pharma. And in the US, drugs comprise something like 10% of all healthcare spending. But that's another discussion for another day.

Actually, the people of the Bay State already *have* this system. And they like it. I should know--I am one. Massachusetts liberal to the core. And I know that this proposed system, like the one in MA, is broken. But it's far less broken than what we have, wherein we let people die.

Re:Duhh...

[svtdragon]

Whoops. Missed a line break in there...

Re:Duhh...

[BobMcD]

Without food you also can't have life, and yet there is minimal interference here. A better example along these lines would be free clinics, yet we're not seeing that kind of reform.

Health care isn't a right any more than any other good or service someone must provide is a right. Again, look to food. Do you have the right to eat at McDonalds without paying at the register? Why not? Except through possibly taxation, you have no right to deprive others of the fruits of their labor. And again, you're not advocating access to tax dollars to pay for health care. You're advocating artificial limits on health insurance. That's not even close to the same thing.

If health care is a right then everything we need is a right and suddenly that word has no meaning other than 'necessity'. Do you have a right to clean underwear? A right to a housewife? A right to a fast computer? Or do you merely have the right to pursue these things on equal footing with everyone else?

Finally I disagree that corrupting and bankrupting our health care system at the whims of the special interests does anything good for the 'general welfare'. The rose-colored glasses you are using do not reflect our present nor our past, so why do they work when looking forward?

Re:Duhh...

[BobMcD]

Perhaps.

When you label others as paranoid morons it is demonstrable that you are not certainly capable of it.

I defend any man's right to think what they will, and challenge those who think otherwise to convince them through reason. If you cannot do this, then kindly STFU and let the rest of us have the floor. If the rest of us fail, then let the man alone in his beliefs. He harms no one but himself.

Re:Duhh...

[h4rm0ny]

But with everyone covered and everyone in the risk pool, everyone's costs go down.

So everyone is covered, and everybody pays a little assuming they have the money to do so... Remind me again what the difference between that and socialised healthcare is again? No wait, I've got it - you have to account for the businesses' profit layer as well. ;)

Re:Duhh...

[Falconhell]

The deluded need therapy not confirmation of their delusions. The deluded in the US certainly Do harm others with their paranoia, thats why youre health care system is a laughing stock to the civilized world.

Re:Duhh...

[BobMcD]

Bullshit. Or, if you prefer - [citation needed]

Re:Duhh...

[shirotakaaki]

When I pay for those things (schools, safety) a private organization is not profiting. That was the point.

Re:Duhh...

[Obfuscant]

You're making my argument for me--a system with no profit motive will go with the 'best' rather than the cheapest. Once you eliminate the profit motive, the only motivation left is to provide the most effective care for the money.

Nonsense. Absolute nonsense.

Once the "profit motive" is gone, you're talking government-run tax-funded health care. That's not an infinite pot of money.

Once you are talking government-run, then you open the floodgates for the number of people you have to treat, and lower the significance of any illness they seek treatment for. That means MANY more people in the system and thus LESS money per person. You can't afford "best", all you can afford to give out for "free" is "cheapest".

In addition, once you lose any profit motive, you lose creation incentive. Why should any company invest billions in research for cures that they can't make money on? Remember, companies are owned by PEOPLE, through stocks, and the stock market (at least the health stocks) would dive if there was no return on investments.

Who's going to take care of you if there is no "profit motive"? Doctors and nurses don't work for nothing. The ones that will are hardly going to be 'the best', even if they are 'cheapest'.

Hawaii proved this when they tried to provide government-run health insurance for all children under 17 who didn't have other insurance. They ran out of money. Too many people chasing too few dollars. Parents realized they didn't need to pay for insurance for Little Jimmy because the state would take care of him, so they cancelled the policy they were paying for and put Little Jimmy on the dole. Those who wouldn't have gone to a doctor for some sprain or fever wound up going to doctors -- and ERs -- and the state just couldn't afford it anymore. They had to shut the program down. They couldn't afford "best", they couldn't even afford "cheapest".

We already pay multiples of what countries that have universal healthcare pay.

Hiding the costs in taxes and ignoring the difference in quality doesn't make a fair comparison. Why do you think that so many Canadians come to the US to get basic treatment if their universal healthcare system is so great? Is a ten month waiting list for ultrasounds a sign of a good or bad system?

It's time to realize that ANY system that is based on calculations of current levels of staffing and use will be wildly overwhelmed when the number of users goes way up and the number of providers goes down. It's nonsensical at best, and dishonest at worst, to pretend that "universal health care" will not be overloaded from the second day it is in place, and grow worse as time goes on. It will be like every public welfare program ever created -- it will outgrow every cost estimate and continue growing.

Re:Duhh...

[svtdragon]

You're oblivious to the actual data that shows that countries with universal care spend less per-capita on healthcare and have longer lifespans. It's one of the links I've already posted, but your post is full of so much wrong that I don't know if I feel like refuting you point by point.

You're talking about how increasing the risk pool would somehow increase the cost of care when the majority of uninsured are in the just-graduated-college age bracket and think they're bulletproof.

And comparing true universal care to "only for people under 17" care is apples to oranges. If the parents have to have policies themselves, of course they're not going to cover their kids on them. That's redundant. However, if mom and dad are covered by the state too, they're paying their premiums to the state instead, whose boards making decisions have no financial dependence on denial of care. And more of their money goes to actual healthcare than it would through a private company--just look up the administrative cost differences between Medicare and private insurance.

And when I said 'best' I very clearly indicated that I meant most cost-effective. When you have no incentive to go with the lowest common denominator (or no treatment at all, where possible) and instead have incentive to spend money on those things which provide the best balance of cost and result--which is what happens when you remove the profit motive from health insurance--everyone benefits.

And if you're going to compare to a UHC system, compare to the best, not the worst. How about France?

And for that matter have you ever had to make an appointment with a specialist here in the US? It takes 3 months to get in, life-threatening or not. In a UHC system patients are prioritized based on need, or to put it another way, threat of imminent death or permanent injury. Heart surgeries come before hip transplants.

On top of all that you're missing the fact that for a health insurance company, the profit motive points in the wrong direction. Can you debate the point that an insurance company makes more money if they take in more premiums and provide less care? How does that work in anyone's interest but theirs? By putting the government there instead, whose sole interest is that of the people, to whom they are accountable and by whom they are paid, the people will get better and more equitable care. The numbers don't lie.

Re:Duhh...

[SETIGuy]

What if I don't want to be part of the risk pool? What if I'd rather have the money my employer is going to spend on health insurance in my paycheck instead? The mandate is unpopular specifically because it takes away our freedom of choice.

That would be fine, if you could be also put outside of the benefit pool. But when you show up at the emergency room uninsured, the hospital is no longer allowed to dump you in the alley where you can die without inconveniencing the rest of us. You don't have a choice because the rest of us have to pay your bills if you are uninsured. So tough. If you want freedom to be uninsured, find a country where hospitals have the freedom not to serve you.

Re:Duhh...

[TheWizardTim]

The legislation is so wrong. I want universal health care, in the same way that I have universal fire coverage, or universal military coverage. I don't want my doctor to be working for the government, but I do want to kill off the insurance companies. They add NOTHING. They take our money, then deny coverage, then pay themselves millions, and in at least one case billions of dollars.

What should have happened in this fight is that the Dems should have called up all the other industrial countries that have universal health care and ask them, "What works? What doesn't work? What would you do better? What would you do if you could start over?" Then craft a bill from what other major countries do.

The problem is that there is too much MONEY involved. Republicans and Democrats take too much money from businesses and craft laws that reflect that fact.

Re:Duhh...

[SETIGuy]

But with everyone covered and everyone in the risk pool, everyone's costs go down.

No, my costs go up because I'm forced to either buy insurance (which I don't need) or pay a penalty (for not buying insurance).

No, because what you are doing by not buying health insurance is relying on the rest of us and our bankruptcy laws to bail you out if it turns out that you do need health coverage. If you show up at the emergency room in process of having an unexpected hemorrhagic stroke, you are going to get emergency care, an MRI, several days in the hospital, probably a rehab stay, and, most likely state disability and/or SSI if you are too disabled to work. And you will get these things without having to show an insurance card or a statement listing all of your assets. And when the bills show up, you'll hide as much of your assets as you can, then file for bankruptcy. At which point the hospital gets jack shit and makes up for the loss by charging the rest of us more.

And you'll do this because, as a selfish bastard, you are more than happy to live in a society that guarantees your access to healthcare without forcing you to pay for it.

Re:Duhh...

[SETIGuy]

I doubt he has $290,000 per per person in medical coverage on his motorcycle insurance. Nor would most states require medical liability in that amount. California's requirements are: $15,000 for injury/death to one person, $30,000 for injury/death to more than one person, $5,000 for damage to property (known as 15/30/5 for short) Or in lieu of insurance you can post a $35,000 bond. In either case, I spent one night in the hospital following an emergency room visit and was billed $26,000. (Fortunately I am insured) If you're counting on that $15,000 to cover your medical costs in an accident you'd better hope nobody gets admitted to the hospital.

Of course anyone with significant assets should have 500/1000/500 in auto insurance and a couple million extra in blanket liability coverage. It seems the average cover of insured drivers in CA is about 25/50/25. I know quite a few people with significant assets that stick to the minimum, though.

Re:Duhh...

[SETIGuy]

A 'birther' wants to know that no one who lacks the qualifications for office may be elected yet will disregard any evidence presented as to the qualifications of a candidate they oppose. There's nothing catastrophic in this.

A 'tea-bagger' wants no taxation without representation yet all of them are currently represented by two senators and a congressman, apart from the tiny minority that choose to live in the District of Columbia (are there any?). Still they complain about taxation without representation. Again, I fail to see the 'danger' of this idea.

Fixed the parts you left out....

Re:Duhh...

[Obfuscant]

You're talking about how increasing the risk pool would somehow increase the cost of care when the majority of uninsured are in the just-graduated-college age bracket and think they're bulletproof.

No, I've said nothing about "just-graduated-college" people. It's actually pretty simple. If you have free health care you are more likely to use it than if you don't. When everyone has it, everyone will be using it. What will they use it for? Yes, serious conditions certainly, but for colds and flus and cuts and scrapes and sprains and everything else that bothers them. They won't go to a doctor when they feel fine, so they won't have a regular physician. The brunt of the costs will be in the ER where it costs more to deal with a cold than a doctor's office. The only way to prevent that is to limit services -- which leads to waiting lines for those who need them. Just like in Canada.

And comparing true universal care to "only for people under 17" care is apples to oranges.

"Children under 17" are not a disjoint set from "all people", they are a subset. What happens when you give free care to everyone under 17 is a very good indicator of what will happen when you try to give it to everyone. What happens when you give free ANYTHING to everyone is a good indicator of what will happen when you talk about health care.

However, if mom and dad are covered by the state too, they're paying their premiums to the state instead,

By "premiums" you mean "taxes". But the point remains -- the state calculated what they thought they could do and the users came out of the woodwork to claim their free care. That's going to happen for any "free" care system you create. The number of users will balloon from today's numbers. The amount of available services won't increase because there is no profit to drive investment, so more people will be seeking the same or fewer services.

And if you're going to compare to a UHC system, compare to the best, not the worst. How about France?

Ohh, I see. Hopeless optimism is the argument you make for free care. What makes you think that we are going to have "the best" free system instead of repeats of the poor government-run systems we've already seen? It's a fool who plans health care based on "best case" scenarios. In fact, best case says you don't need health care because "best case" nobody needs it.

And for that matter have you ever had to make an appointment with a specialist here in the US? It takes 3 months to get in,...

I have, and it has never taken me more than a week to see one. A day or two at most, and the worst case was having to travel to a different city to see one in a week because the local specialist was on vacation. (And I needed the week to have the swelling go down on the break before the specialist could operate.) The day after I saw the specialist, I was checked into the hospital for surgery. When I needed a respiratory specialist for tests for a different condition, I saw him the next day. No, I have never seen the same kinds of delays reported as common in the Canadian system. This "three months" is what you get from free care, not what I've seen at all.

In a UHC system patients are prioritized based on need,...

In other words, you could die waiting for your care because someone else thought you didn't need it. Hmmmm, a grand system. Just what we ought to have.

Heart surgeries come before hip transplants.

I believe you'd find that operations are already prioritized in most hospitals. I don't know, I don't work there, but I do know that when I go with less critical things I wind up waiting. Either all the docs are out for a smoke or they're dealing with more serious cases. I suspect it's the latter. The doc who set my arm was in surgery when I got there, and he didn't rip off the mask and come down to set mine before he finished what he was doing.

Can you debate the point that an insurance company makes more money if they take in more

Re:Duhh...

[svtdragon]

Hello? If you add 45 million people to the line of course it will get longer. Glad to see you know something about queueing--I'd have mistaken you for a Brit if we weren't talking about our healthcare mess. Either we ration based on ability to pay--like we do now--or we ration based on need first, and ability to pay second, which is to say that there will be a minimum standard of care to which everyone is entitled and around which supplemental insurance can be built. There will *always* be the capitalist system, because the rich can always go somewhere else. The poor don't have that option, so that's why we need universal care.

Despite your knowledge of how to stand in line, good sir, your assertions about wait times are common but unfounded.

The US has always been good at taking other people's good ideas and adapting them to our needs. This is why I believe that any system we have will look better than Canada, because we can make a hybrid of anybody else's systems based on the mistakes they have made provided that we ever open our eyes and take notice of this idea that everyone else has adopted.

If every other advanced country in the world is doing it, it can't be that bad of an idea.

The problem is that MY insurance company doesn't say 'no', but the government "for the people" system will be telling everyone 'no'. My costs will go up and my service will go down, which is what will happen for a majority of the people.

As it turns out, there are millions of uninsured patients--or underinsured--who are simply told "no" because they are poor. I find that unacceptable. And I don't know any elderly who are complaining about the quality of care they get with Medicare. We already have a government-run system that works. Their costs do not go up beyond the general inflation index of healthcare costs, nor their services down.

The numbers in particular that I speak of are here and they are from the OECD.

Re:Duhh...

[Shakrai]

First, I've no interest in trampling anything, but religion is a poor excuse, and if your right to practice Scientology with all ten other Scientologists denies 45 million people healthcare, I'm all for healthcare.

It's not an "excuse". The free exercise of religion is one of the core principles of our country. If you can't tell me how you intend on handling religious/moral objections to the universal mandate then you aren't seriously considering this issue. And who said anything about Scientology? I was thinking more along the lines of the Amish. Are you going to force them to buy into your system?

Third, everywhere I've been it's been mandated that you have car insurance.

New Hampshire hasn't mandated it.

It's effectively federal.

No it's not. It's a state law. It doesn't matter that most of the states have the law. All 50 states have laws against murder. That doesn't mean it's "effectively Federal".

As far as citizenship goes--you can leave.

Thanks Dick Cheney. "If you don't like it, leave." That's a winning argument.

This enables you to be *free* to live without the worry of someday getting hit by a car driven by an uninsured motorist and to live the rest of your life in suffocating debt.

No, I'd just file bankruptcy. That's the beauty of the United States. You can hit rock bottom and society gives you another chance. No individual mandate required.

To me, that sense of safety makes me *more* free--free to leave my job, for example, and find another because I know I won't be denied coverage.

As I stated earlier, you can fix denials of coverage without having a mandate. Here in New York State it's already illegal for insurance companies to exclude pre-existing conditions or refuse to extend coverage to new group members. Somehow we've achieved this without having an individual mandate. I'm free to switch jobs without worrying about pre-existing conditions or being refused coverage.

Furthermore, unionization of a fraction of the population does benefit the collective. Just look at the income disparity numbers from the golden age of unions in the 50s and 60s. And with higher unionization, as union wages go, so go the wages of nonunionized workers. This is less true nowadays, but were we still more unionized, it would mean that when they renegotiate cheaper healthcare plans the higher salaries they'd exchange them for would be seen by nearly everyone.

You aren't going to sell me on the benefits of unions, so don't even waste your time trying. Unions have bankrupted my state and destroyed our public education system. They were necessary at one time but like most institutions they've been corrupted over time and now exist only to serve themselves.

For the record, I work for big pharma.

Well, that explains why you are in the minority of American citizens that like this legislation. You do realize that the overwhelming majority of Americans hate it, right?

And in the US, drugs comprise something like 10% of all healthcare spending. But that's another discussion for another day.

Didn't Candidate Obama say something about allowing drug re-importation? How do you rationalize away that change of heart?

Actually, the people of the Bay State already *have* this system. And they like it [nytimes.com].

They like it so much they just elected a Senator who promised to be the 41st vote against Obamacare. Want to try again?

I should know--I am one. Massachusetts liberal to the core.

That explains why you are so far out of touch with the rest of the country. Was tonight a wake up call for you or do you think the Democrats need to ram this bill through in spite of the special e

Re:Duhh...

[svtdragon]

Because it's better than what we have now. And the voters in MA don't realize how much this system looks like their own, plus I've heard people say the equivalent of "Ours works--we're all set. Why bother to fix everyone else's?"

Re:Duhh...

[Shakrai]

No, it's not better than what we have now. Right now I can choose any health insurance plan that I want or none at all. If this bill passes I won't be able to choose the plan that makes the most sense for me (high-deductible) and will have no choice to opt out of the system. I fail to see how a system that strips away individual liberty and self determination can be described as "better".

You've lost anyway. Health care reform in it's current form is dead. Members of your own party are saying that now. It's time to wake up and smell the roses. Obama couldn't even sell this plan in the bluest of the blue states. What chance do you suppose it has now with the moderates in the House and (if it goes back for another vote) Senate?

Thank you Massachusetts. There may be hope for you yet.....

Re:Duhh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Profit isn't the same as operating costs.

Re:Duhh...

[svtdragon]

Any system that leaves so many out in the cold is easily beaten by one that does not. You can fail to see it all you want, but that doesn't mean it's not there. It just means you adjust your focus a little more--that is, not only on yourself.

The House may well just pass the Senate bill, now, which is less fortunate than if they'd been able to put the bills together via conference. And just because the pundits are saying something doesn't make it true. The plan certainly doesn't go far enough, as the lack of progressive enthusiasm about Coakley showed--see the exit polling I linked--but it's about damn time we started to fix this broken system we have.

Re:Duhh...

[Shakrai]

I'd love to fix the broken system. I just don't think that forcing everyone to buy into it is the way to do that. My state has already fixed many of the problems with the health insurance market and managed to do so without an unconstitutional individual mandate. The fact that you aren't willing to admit this or even address the point suggests to me that you are primarily driven by political considerations.

BTW, you don't understand politics real well if you think the House is going to pass the Senate bill. The House only managed to pass their bill by 5 votes. The abortion issue alone is enough to scuttle it, even if the Liberals swallow their pride and the Moderates remain inclined to stick their necks out.

Then there's the questionable wisdom of passing a bill that a large majority of Americans oppose. How many times do you think the Democrats need to get their butts kicked at the polls before they remember who they work for?

Re:Duhh...

[svtdragon]

I freely admit I don't know how the NY system works--however I believe in a moral obligation to universal coverage as a part of the social safety net. You can fix all the problems you want, but if it's not universal, it's not done.

I know the chances of the House passing the bill are not terribly good, however the talk is of a dual bill, which would mean passing the Senate bill and then doing the rest through reconciliation. Add in the fact that it's now all-or-nothing and it becomes a different game. There can be no more quibbling about this language or that. The Dems have already paid the political price for HCR, now they need to just go ahead and get it done. Even Stupak hasn't ruled out voting for it.

Fivethirtyeight has done some analysis of the ideal situation for swing district D representatives, and that analysis suggests (sorry I don't have a link at the moment, but this isn't too hard to swallow) that the optimal outcome for them is to pass reform without voting for it. So no matter what, you're going to see a skin-of-the-teeth vote. And at this point you won't have the liberal 'no' votes like Kucinich, and you might get the votes of the impending retirees.

It's not a terribly large majority that oppose healthcare reform per se, so much as the bill in its current incarnation. Much opposition (as much as 12% of the total people polled) oppose from the left. Even with that said, it's liable to get more popular over time, as has the MA system, and as have other social services since their inception.

Re:Duhh...

[Shakrai]

I believe in liberty and self determination. I would rather have both of those things than a cradle to the grave social safety net. Your social safety net invariably comes with a corresponding reduction in personal choice and liberty. Thus I will oppose it at the top of my lungs and do everything within my power to see that it doesn't happen.

The best thing the Democrats could do now is to withdraw this clunker of a bill and start over. Focus on the aspects that everybody agrees on and you'll be able to pass a bill with bipartisan support. Insurance reform, tort reform, and marketplace reform are all elements that could pass with support from both parties.

One last point I'll make before I move on for the day. You mention that other social services have gotten more popular over time. That may be true. But every single one of those social services was passed with support from both political parties. At no time in the history of the American Republic has legislation of this scope been rammed through on a party line vote. If you want your health care reform to last longer than the time it takes the GOP to seize Washington, you might want to go back to the drawing board and a find a way to do it that doesn't rely on party line votes and deals to hold-out Senators and special interest groups.

Re:Duhh...

[svtdragon]

Of course, never before in history have 70% of bills been subject to filibuster. The most recent social program of this magnitude was Medicare, in the 60s. The filibuster rate then? 8%. We have no bipartisan support because the Republicans want to make Obama look ineffective to better their chances in 2012 and are more concerned with party unity than the best interests of America. They want him to fail and will do anything in their power to have him seen as a failure.

Re:Duhh...

[Obfuscant]

which is to say that there will be a minimum standard of care

Thank God we can get ourselves a minimum standard, instead of keeping the high standards we have now.

As it turns out, there are millions of uninsured patients--or underinsured--who are simply told "no" because they are poor.

It is dishonest in the extreme to ignore in those millions of uninsured people those who have chosen not to have insurance.

I find that unacceptable.

I find it perfectly acceptable that people who don't want to pay for insurance don't have to.

We already have a government-run system that works.

If it worked, people like you wouldn't be demanding changes. Apparently you can't make up your mind. Either it works and we don't need to change it or it doesn't work and we need radical changes to make it fully socialized and rationed beyond any reasonable limits. Pick one.

And I don't know any elderly who are complaining about the quality of care they get with Medicare.

Ignorance is no excuse. If there was no complaint, where are there so many ads for medicare supplement insurance? And cries about elders who can't afford their meds? This is the government run system that works.

Their costs do not go up beyond the general inflation index of healthcare costs, nor their services down.

THEIR costs don't go up because TAXES do and the deficit does. And I debate your claim that services haven't gone down.

The system works for most people. Taking that system away from them to deal with those who have chosen not to participate is insulting. Risking the quality of the current care so we can be just like France is ridiculous. Ignoring the fact that the system will fail from overload while claiming it will be just great for everyone is dishonest beyond any measure.

If every other advanced country in the world is doing it, it can't be that bad of an idea.

If we had taken that attitude in 1776, we'd still be a colony of the Brits. And lest we forget, forty million Frenchmen WERE wrong. But yes, let's do it just like the French.

Re:Duhh...

[svtdragon]

You miss the definition of minimum standard either to deliberately muddle the point or because you don't understand. For your reference it means that everyone is entitled to a certain level of care *or above*. Our doctors will not magically get dumber if the government starts to (indirectly) pay them.

Those who choose to be uninsured do so at not only their own peril but end up subsidized by the taxpayer when they cannot afford their bills and the taxpayer pays for them. I know you're going to say "what's the difference?" and it is that they go to the ER for every ailment that they could otherwise see a GP for, increasing costs.

You find it acceptable that people who don't want it don't have it. I find it unacceptable that a subset of those who need it can't get it. I simply value human life more than you do.

Again you either muddle the point or miss it completely. The system that I refer to is Medicare. If we could keep it and give it to everyone, I'd prefer that approach over this one, but that's never been on the table. I demand changes because I am not on Medicare, and to claim that my insistence on change proves that Medicare does not work is naive.

You are right that ignorance is no excuse--your ignorance of the facts about the cost savings and health benefits of universal healthcare, despite repeatedly being shown evidence, is inexcusable.

And the fact that there exists Medicare supplement insurance is exactly the model of the system of capitalism laid on a need-based minimum of which I spoke--those who are well off are free to acquire it, but those who are not receive care and are not left to die. About medication, if you speak of the "doughnut hole" issue, it's addressed, at least in part, in the legislation. And don't forget that not long ago Medicare didn't cover prescription drugs at all, until Part D was passed in '06. So, it would be silly to insist that all of those cries about elders who can't afford their meds came recently when in fact they've been on the decline. To reiterate, yes, it does work. And it's ever-improving as evidenced by Part D.

The legislation as written takes nothing away from "most people" by letting them keep wha they have, and not even the majority of uninsured are uninsured because they so choose. This assertion of yours neglects entirely the concept of being underinsured.

And while we're bringing in unconnected historical anecdotes, it's also worth noting that segregation and, in fact, slavery worked well for "the majority" of people.

We risk nothing by covering more people, except insurance company profits. The data which you continue to ignore is plentiful enough to be damn near conclusive: countries with universal care pay less per capita, by about half, than we do, and they live longer lives. Do you need me to link it again? They are in high demand, yes, but far from overloaded. You claim as a fact an assertion taken in a vacuum, as though it's only been tried once.

Add again while we're throwing these unrelated historical events out there, how many millions of Americans were wrong about Hitler and wanted to remain isolationist? How many, more recently, were wrong about Iraq?

The fact is that universal healthcare is now the norm for developed nations--and to debunk your irrelevant analogy all the same, the difference is that they started with systems of private insurance and moved to UHC. The analogous situation would be if we broke away from an British democracy to become a monarchy.

To discount the notion of forward progress is absurd.

Re:Duhh...

[scot4875]

What do you think motivates many people to get into medicine?

This may be difficult for you to understand, but for many people, money is not a primary motivator.

--Jeremy

Re:Duhh...

[Shakrai]

This may be difficult for you to understand, but for many people, money is a primary motivator.

Re:Duhh...

[Shakrai]

No, we have no bipartisan support because the Democrats have written the bill behind closed doors and completely muzzled the minority party. It extends beyond health care -- if you are a member of the minority in the House you can't even get your legislation considered. It goes off to committee where it dies. One could argue that the portion of the country represented by the minority party has no real representation in the House because of this. Of course the GOP did the exact same thing when they ran the place, but didn't Candidate Obama say something about a new kind of politics?

Regarding the filibuster, yeah, it's being used a lot nowadays but you can't pin all the blame for that on the Republicans. I seem to recall a lot of Democrats preaching the virtues of the filibuster when they were in the minority and used it to stall the agenda of the majority.

The broader issue at hand is our poisoned political atmosphere. Both parties are to blame for this, as is the 24/7 news cycle. The primary system is set up in such a way that the most rapid and partisan fringe of society usually decides who will be the standard bearer in the general election -- hence it's usually people on the far-left or far-right that make it to Washington.

If you've got a solution to these problems you are a smarter man than I.

Re:Duhh...

[Jawn98685]

Why not?

A 'birther' wants to know that no one who lacks the qualifications for office may be elected.

Assumes something that is unproven, as in "a falsehood, made up of whole cloth". Again, "uninformed" rather understates the intellect of anyone who embraces such hogwash.

A 'tea-bagger' wants no taxation without representation.

Again, a falsehood. With the exception of this or that state taxing the income or benefits of a resident of another state, simply because he/she works, or at one time worked, in the first state, and with the exception of the citizens of the District of Columbia, we are all "represented". Nice try.

Re:Duhh...

[BobMcD]

Assumes something that is unproven, as in "a falsehood, made up of whole cloth".
  Again, "uninformed" rather understates the intellect of anyone who embraces such hogwash.

I find it interesting that not only are we not allowed to ask the question, Mr Obama did not have his paperwork all sorted out when he applied to run for office. It really could have been a non-issue, but even today there isn't enough evidence to support his citizenship as would be required to, say, convict someone of a crime. And yet asking the question is forbidden, all in the stated attempt to shore up other people's intellect.

This makes sense to you, I take it.

Again, a falsehood. With the exception of this or that state taxing the income or benefits of a resident of another state, simply because he/she works, or at one time worked, in the first state, and with the exception of the citizens of the District of Columbia, we are all "represented". Nice try.

Pork and corruption are not falsehoods. Neither is the collusion between the Red and Blue arms of the single party system. These are observable, measurable things. So while we are sending elected officials to serve in office, they are representing their corporate masters and their single-party interests, and not the will of the people they serve.

How someone can doubt this and yet insult another person's intellect is beyond my comprehension.

Re:Duhh...

[Jawn98685]

No one has said "You can't ask the question." On the other hand, the question has been answered, over and over. The required "proof" was provided. This is a matter of record, both civil and media.
Perhaps you should choose information sources other than Fox News. Maybe then, you'd know this.

Pork and corruption are not falsehoods. Neither is the collusion between the Red and Blue arms of the single party system. These are observable, measurable things. So while we are sending elected officials to serve in office, they are representing their corporate masters and their single-party interests,

No argument there, but it that is not the same thing as the tea-baggers' lame "taxation without representation" rant. Someone voted for the carpet-baggers, and it wasn't a corporation. "We get the government we deserve," is a stark truism. Now that the SCOTUS has determined that trans-national corporations have every right (and only a fraction of the tax-burden, BTW) that a citizen has, it should be a very interesting time.

Re:Duhh...

[BobMcD]

Perhaps you should choose information sources other than Fox News. Maybe then, you'd know this.

Your assumption is false. This is why you're failing to communicate. Your mind is as closed as that of those whose image you intend to invoke. Not that you care. This is all text on the internet to you, and you're here to make a point and 'win' the day.

No argument there, but it that is not the same thing as the tea-baggers' lame "taxation without representation" rant. Someone voted for the carpet-baggers, and it wasn't a corporation. "We get the government we deserve," is a stark truism. Now that the SCOTUS has determined that trans-national corporations have every right (and only a fraction of the tax-burden, BTW) that a citizen has, it should be a very interesting time.

If we get the government that we deserve, and the 'tea-baggers' want to change the government, what does it say of you to oppose them while you agree with their ideals? (Hint, see the above statement)

Re:Duhh...

[Jawn98685]

If we get the government that we deserve, and the 'tea-baggers' want to change the government, what does it say of you to oppose them while you agree with their ideals? (Hint, see the above statement)

It says that I know that the corporate sponsored "tea parties" are quite effective at convincing mindless sheep to act, and vote, in a way the benefits those interests the most. Corruption and hypocrisy certainly pervade both sides of the aisle. The joke that is what "healthcare reform" has become is ample evidence of that. Truly effective reform, like that which would have provided a more effective (clinically and fiscally) system in place, was never even on the table. But when the Republicans have been at the wheel, the game was raised to a whole new level. The ledgers of the federal government provide ample evidence of this. Anyone who continues to believe that "Republican" = fiscally responsible is a fool's fool, but there they are, swallowing the bullshit with more gusto than ever, having had their latent racist fears whipped to a frenzy by skilled manipulators.

That anonymous reader is going to be jack bauered

[Anonymous Coward]

That anonymous reader is going to be jack bauered and then go to thompson.

The FBI? Surely not!

[JeffSpudrinski]

The FBI violated our privacy and civil rights? Surely not, I tell you!

-JJS

Surprised?

[guruevi]

When even the Supreme Court doesn't hold up the constitution as a valid basis there is not much that we can do except for revolt - but even if you get a critical mass to do that, they'll just stick the army on you or use near-lethal weaponry.

Re:Surprised?

[jhoegl]

Because revolution has never been bloodless. O.o

People revolt because they feel they have no other option and there are leaders strong enough to rally them. Look at the shit people took in Iraq and never revolted.
Yet, look at Indias revolution.

History shows that revolution happens, but only after years of oppression. Here in the USA, we get perceived renewed hope every 4, 6, to 8 years. Problem is, the "other guy" always did it even though those that actually did it have been in power throughout. Congress.... we really need to clean house.

Re:Surprised?

[DakotaSmith]

Revolt isn't necessary: the Federal Government is going to go bankrupt in the fairly near future and consequently collapse. With no money to fund it all, this becomes a self-correcting problem.

Re:Surprised?

[91degrees]

Soldiers are citizens too. And tend to dislike firing on their own countrymen.

Most successful revolutions have had a large chunk of the army on their side as well. Although you do need a pretty corrupt government for this to happen, and the Us is nowhere near there yet.

Re:Surprised?

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Most successful revolutions have had a large chunk of the army on their side as well.

And most unsuccessful revolutions have been crushed by the army. Funny how that works out.

Re:Surprised?

[vxice]

Police are just doing their job. They want their job to be easy and it is their boss's job to make sure they are not breaking the law and same goes all the way up the line. They need to be held accountable for what they are doing and that starts with courts enforcing the laws on the books and the legislative branch removing bad laws. Every time you say "oh my vote doesn't matter" or you vote when you don't have the appropriate knowledge of the issues you are feeding the system that feeds off people's votes based on knowledge that is irrelevant thus changing behavior of the politicians. Like Jefferson said "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance" or as the saying goes "Freedom isn't free" and our freedoms will be abused and short cut around if people can get a gain from doing so weather it is direct or just makes their job that little bit easier.

Re:Surprised?

[Alinabi]

Soldiers are citizens too. And tend to dislike firing on their own countrymen.

That has rarely been the case throughout history.

Re:Surprised?

[Tim C]

Police are just doing their job. They want their job to be easy and it is their boss's job to make sure they are not breaking the law

No, part of a police officer's job is to uphold the law, it is no more their boss's job to ensure they are not breaking it than it is my parents' job (given I am an adult) to make sure that I'm not breaking the law.

Re:Surprised?

[Anonymous Coward]

Blackwater

Re:Surprised?

[91degrees]

At a tactical disadvantage because it's a lot easier to find someone willing to lay down their life for a cause or for their country than for money.

Re:Surprised?

[cbiltcliffe]

It's my boss's job to make sure I'm not breaking the law? WTF?

I'm sure he'll be happy to know that.

No...it's your job to make sure you're not breaking the law. Especially when you work in law enforcement.

Re:Surprised?

[vegiVamp]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velvet_revolution

Re:Surprised?

[vegiVamp]

Are you sure that they're not through and out on the other side, yet ? It's not written anywhere that you can't buy the army, too.

Re:Surprised?

[vxice]

It is also the police's job but it is also the job of their boss since , all the way up to the three branches of government who are meant to each watch over each other and keep each other from gaining too much power or abusing the power that they have.

Re:Surprised?

[petermgreen]

Revolt isn't necessary: the Federal Government is going to go bankrupt in the fairly near future
Cant they just order the federal reserve to print more money?

Afaict most US debt is denominated in US dollars so the US can simply inflate it's way out of it.

Re:Surprised?

[Anonymous Coward]

umm whoosh? hint: he was using sarcasm

Re:Surprised?

[webweave]

Kent State? May 4th 1970 Ohio National Guard from over 300 feet away fires into a crowd of unarmed students killing four, one student is shot in the back and one student not involved it the protest is killed from a stray bullet. Courts said the Guard was justified killing the unarmed and distant students and not even an apology was issued.

Re:Surprised?

[mhajicek]

Notice the recent trend toward a robotic military?

Re:Surprised?

[srussia]

Revolt isn't necessary: the Federal Government is going to go bankrupt in the fairly near future Cant they just order the federal reserve to print more money?

Afaict most US debt is denominated in US dollars so the US can simply inflate it's way out of it.

I agree on the inflation part, but disagree on the revolt assertion. The necessary inflation (which is tantamount to a tax BTW), would have to be massive and is precisely what will cause a revolt.

Re:Surprised?

[Ren Hoak]

Revolution is an option, but a better one is voting. Sadly there are insufficient numbers of voters (lacking apathy) and there aren't many politicians worthy of being voted for.

Re:Surprised?

[justinlee37]

Your analogy makes no sense. Cops concern themselves with not breaking the law all of the time. What happens if a cop arrests someone without reading them their miranda rights? They get to go free. What happens if a cop conducts an illegal search? All of the evidence gathered is invalid in court. That is definitely something that the boss would be upset about.

Were you born yesterday?

Re:Surprised?

[Opportunist]

And that's basically what the whole surveillance is about: Ensuring no body emerges that could work as a focal point. Do you think India would have had a successful revolution without Ghandi? Or someone who could take his place? Successful revolutions without a head are rare in history.

Re:Surprised?

[Opportunist]

Certainly soldiers are citizens. But you must not underestimate how little real information soldiers get.

When you look at how the Soviet systems crushed revolutions, you will notice that the soldiers were usually crucial for the success of the oppression. How could they fight against someone who basically did what they wanted themselves, more freedom? Simply by giving them false information. Those soldiers were told that it wasn't a revolution backed by the people, they were told that a few insurgents toppled the good government that all people loved and oppressed the people now, and that they were begging for help.

Well, essentially what we get told before our armies invade some country.

Detach yourself from the idea that you get a full coverage just because the press needn't lie. The press lies, the government lies, the difference between dictatorship and democracy is just that in a democracy they're telling different lies. Unless of course it's necessary "for the good of the country".

Do you really think that you'd be told the real deal if a revolution started? Or that soldiers would be told how it really is? They'd get told that some terrorists are attacking capitol hill and threaten the American way of life, and that the army is expected by the people to come to the rescue.

Re:Surprised?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is why he said "tend to dislike" and not "it has never happened".

Re:Surprised?

[BobMcD]

As a counterpoint, I'd like to add that the examples you give are in the past age. The internet has changed a lot, e.g. Iran and Twitter.

As much as the Fed feels they can completely cut us off from communicating with one another, doing so would cost them dearly. Perhaps more than anyone yet realizes.

Re:Surprised?

[BobMcD]

Revolution is an option, but a better one is voting. Sadly there are insufficient numbers of voters (lacking apathy) and there aren't many politicians worthy of being voted for.

Is this a fact, or a myth? And assuming you can overcome the apathy and get record turn-outs in a candidate advocating "Change", what happens when this person betrays the voters?

If you seek to cure the apathy, I'd suggest some accountability and direct representation.

Re:Surprised?

[BobMcD]

Your analogy makes no sense. Cops concern themselves with not breaking the law all of the time. What happens if a cop arrests someone without reading them their miranda rights? They get to go free. What happens if a cop conducts an illegal search? All of the evidence gathered is invalid in court. That is definitely something that the boss would be upset about.

Were you born yesterday?

Unless, it seems, you work for the FBI. Then the boss passes it off as a 'technical violation'.

Re:Surprised?

[91degrees]

Well, I guess for a revolution to start, you not only need a very corrupt government, but you need everyone to know about it, which either means a corrupt, ineffectual government (such as Pre-soviet Russia had) or a completely out of control government - which I'm not sure whether History does provide any examples.

I think the military would know if most of the people knew. I'm guessing in the example you gave, everyone - not just the military - was told that these were brutal oppressive insurgents, and most people believed it.

Re:Surprised?

[91degrees]

Fair enough, but then we have the anti-war demonstrators putting flowers in gun barrels, and the Yugoslav army not willing to fight Slovenians during the breakup of Yugosavia. You even have that iconic Tiannaman square scene where the tank driver could have crushed the student. Any of these would likely have been a lot more violent if those going against the army were resisting an invasion.

There are examples of both but on the whole I'd argue that relying on the army to side with the government over the people is not something I'd bet my country on.

Re:Surprised?

[webweave]

as posted above, Kent State, May 4, l970 is a good example, what was the Guard told to shoot down unarmed students? I'm sure you were right with "some terrorists are attacking " INSERT NAME "and threaten the American way of life." At the time of the Kent St. massacre America was fighting another illegal war (according to that piece of paper, The Constitution.) and the war was secretly escalating when Nixon had promised to end it. So why not turn the Guard into a death squad and while you're at it how about some illegal wiretaps a la Watergate? How is this different from any other despot?

Re:Surprised?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I'm pretty sure its bosses job to try to make me circumvent the law in his advantage.

After all if they can get a advantage because I break a law great. They can get a free get out of jail card and send me instead.

Ive actually caught several bosses doing this, and I'm pretty sure they knew it was illegal to begin with because they refused to talk over the subject in writing.

Needless to say I try to avoid such bosses like plague, so wen this crops up and its serious its time for a new boss.

Re:Surprised?

[mpe]

When even the Supreme Court doesn't hold up the constitution as a valid basis there is not much that we can do except for revolt - but even if you get a critical mass to do that, they'll just stick the army on you or use near-lethal weaponry.

The issue of exactly what can cause a revolt is somewhat chaotic. As is how armed forces will react. Consider that China had to bring in troops from a completly different part of the country to deal with the Tianaman Square protest.

Re:Surprised?

[petermgreen]

which is tantamount to a tax BTW
It is in some ways like a tax but unlike most taxes which can only hit your citizens and residents inflation will hit anyone who holds either your currency or bonds (government or otherwise) denominated in your currency.

Re:Surprised?

[DaleSwanson]

I'd just like to point out that a significant portion of those in the US military aren't US citizens. I was surprised by this, but many joined largely to get their citizenship.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_armed_forces#Demographic_controversies

No shit, Sherlock?

[Bastard of Subhumani]

Wouldn't it be quicker to list ones they haven't violated?

Re:No shit, Sherlock?

[jhoegl]

Ahhh complacency through nervous joking....

Re:No shit, Sherlock?

[Bastard of Subhumani]

Ahhh complacency through nervous joking....

OK tough guy, what's your excuse? Complacency by abdication is somehow better?

Actually it's more like complacency through double nationality.

Not that it's much comfort, everywhere that isn't worse already is trying to catch up.

Re:No shit, Sherlock?

[Nadaka]

I can answer that one for you. The 3rd. But only because the FBI are not considered soldiers. They have in fact occupied property without the consent of the owners.

Re:No shit, Sherlock?

[DaleSwanson]

Citation? I certainly believe it, but would like to read about it.

Better Dead than Red?

[BadAnalogyGuy]

When I went to buy a printer the other day I was confronted with a dizzying array of choices. Do I want a laser printer or inkjet? Do I want one that supports Linux or is Windows-only OK? What is the cost of maintenance after purchase?

Then I remembered I don't have a personal PC to connect it to.

So too, in this case, I have to wonder what the benefit of having "civil liberties" is if the end result is being killed by a terrorist attack. Being alive is a prerequisite to enjoying civil liberties, so being dead means being unable to enjoy them. We should be preserving life now, as the most important first step, and we can focus on preserving our civil liberties later since we'll still be alive to fight for them.

Re:Better Dead than Red?

[gninnor]

This is a false dichotomy. Giving away civil liberties does not equal more safety. There is much more that can be done to prevent crime and violence that would be much more productive than wasting time money and effort on wire tapping, and that is just legal wire tapping, not this.

Re:Better Dead than Red?

[Sir_Lewk]

You clearly have absolutely no fucking idea how unlikely you are to die in a terrorist attack, particularly in a pre-Patriot Act world. By your logic, we should all give up any semblance of freedom and have our government lock us away in cages to prevent automobile deaths.

I'd rather be dead then a slave.

Re:Better Dead than Red?

[BlackPignouf]

You sir, are an idiot.

The probability of getting killed by a terrorist attack is so low that it shouldn't be any valid excuse to give away your privacy.
Bend over if you'd like, but please let others fight for their rights.

"Post PS": "personal PC" is just wrong

Re:Better Dead than Red?

[postbigbang]

Mod parent up.

Ben Franklin said: those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither.

Of course, this entire thread is going to be reviewed by some pencil pusher in Northern Virginia. A little note will be made.

Re:Better Dead than Red?

[MozeeToby]

Total number of Americans killed in Terrorist attacks in the last decade: ~3000 (No, soldiers fighting a way don't count)
Total number of Americans killed in car accidents in the last decade: ~400,000

I have to wonder what the benefit of having "the ability to travel" is if the end result is being killed in a car accident. Being alive is a prerequisite to enjoying travel, being dead means you'll never travel anyway. We should be preserving life now, as the most important first step, and we can focus on preserving our ability to travel later since we'll still be alive to work for it.

Re:Better Dead than Red?

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Ben Franklin said: those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither.

Voltaire said, "A witty saying proves nothing"

Re:Better Dead than Red?

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Unless you are trying to show how effective the counter-terrorism operations have been, it's unclear exactly what your numbers are meant to show.

There are billions of mosquitos in the world. Only a small fraction of them are killed by humans. Therefore we shouldn't kill them?

Your logic is astounding.

Re:Better Dead than Red?

[postbigbang]

Ever read the Book of French Military Successes? Both pages?

Re:Better Dead than Red?

[Runaway1956]

Seen many terrorists in your neighborhood? Don't count the ones in your family portrait now!!

So - you're willing to surrender your rights, and cower in fear of terrorists, and you've NEVER SEEN ONE!!

Cool.

Personally, I refuse to surrender my rights. Hell - every harbor town I've ever seen was populated by freaks of some kind or another, but I still walked the streets like I owned them. Chicago, New York, and LA are populated by thieves, robbers, whores, and worse - especially after the sun goes down. I should fear going out?

Funny - I don't fear what I HAVE seen, but you fear what you HAVEN'T seen.

Imagine that. Can I get you some more Kool-Aid, dude?

Re:Better Dead than Red?

[MozeeToby]

If someone has a gun to your head you're probably not very worried about the misquitos, why? Because the gun is a larger and more immediate danger. You are 2 orders of magnitude more likely to die in a car accident than a terrorist attack (and even those numbers are skewed by the largest terrorist act in our nation's history, the real value is probably closer to 3 orders of magnitude).

Yet we still invest hundreds of billions of dollars, give away our rights, and piss off the international community all in an effort to reduce deaths by terrorism. If we had put that same amount of money into things like high speed rail, improved roads, or enforcing drunk driving laws, we could have saved many more lives.

Re:Better Dead than Red?

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Yeah, why don't you pass me some of that global warming Kool-aid while you're at it. After all, if we're going to start ignoring things we can't see, we might as well start with greenhouse gases.

I'm sorry I'm not tough enough to hang with an ITG like yourself. Being wary of danger isn't common sense, it's "cowering" now. Ever since Bush's second term I've had trouble keeping up with the changing doublespeak vocabulary.

Re:Better Dead than Red?

[dkleinsc]

Pretend for a moment that every not-completely-stupid attempt at terrorism against the US had succeeded. The shoe and underpants bombers succeed. The USS Cole sinks.

The number of Americans killed in terrorist attacks would go from roughly 3000 to roughly 10,000 (being generous to Al Qaida and the Bush administration). You'd still be looking at a fraction of the number of deaths that you see annually for car accidents.

Re:Better Dead than Red?

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Obama spends some of his time watching basketball games. Bush spent a lot of his time clearing brush from his Crawford ranch. Clinton was a workaholic, but even he was able to squeeze in a blowjob while he used the phone.

You don't need to spend all your energy focusing on one thing all the time. In fact, there are many important things to focus and act upon simultaneously.

So yes, car safety is important. Is that what you wanted to hear? But god help me if I'm going to spend every waking minute trying to make my car safer when I have other things I need to do.

Re:Better Dead than Red?

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Pretend for a moment that every not-completely-stupid attempt at terrorism against the US had succeeded. The shoe and underpants bombers succeed. The USS Cole sinks.

The number of Americans killed in terrorist attacks would go from roughly 3000 to roughly 10,000 (being generous to Al Qaida and the Bush administration). You'd still be looking at a fraction of the number of deaths that you see annually for car accidents.

So what?

Re:Better Dead than Red?

[Anonymous Coward]

So too, in this case, I have to wonder what the benefit of having "civil liberties" is if the end result is being killed by a terrorist attack. Being alive is a prerequisite to enjoying civil liberties, so being dead means being unable to enjoy them. We should be preserving life now, as the most important first step, and we can focus on preserving our civil liberties later since we'll still be alive to fight for them.

Frankly, sir, I find you a much greater threat than any terrorist.

Re:Better Dead than Red?

[ThrowAwaySociety]

Unless you are trying to show how effective the counter-terrorism operations have been, it's unclear exactly what your numbers are meant to show.

Homer: Not a bear in sight. The Bear Patrol must be working like a charm.
Lisa: That’s specious reasoning, Dad.
Homer: Thank you, dear.
Lisa: By your logic I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away.
Homer: Oh, how does it work?
Lisa: It doesn’t work.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: It’s just a stupid rock.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: But I don’t see any tigers around, do you?
Homer: Lisa, I want to buy your rock.

Re:Better Dead than Red?

[Sir_Lewk]

Minor correction: I'd rather be dead than a slave. Being an undead slave would probably suck too.

Re:Better Dead than Red?

[Shakrai]

or enforcing drunk driving laws

It's interesting that you complain about a loss of civil liberties and then use drunk driving as an example of something that needs more attention. The war on drunk driving has infringed on many of our civil liberties. In no particular order:

• "Implied consent" laws pretend that the 4th and 5th amendments don't exist.
• Police roadblocks where you have to account for your origin and destination to the friendly representative of the state are normally something associated with authoritarian regimes. Yet we embrace them for the sake of catching drunks.
• People make arguments like "driving is a privilege" to support these policies, thus reducing the citizenry to children that need to be watched over by a benevolent parent.
• The 0.08 law ignores the fact that most drunk driving accidents involve BACs of 0.15 or higher. It also pretends that everyone responds the same to alcohol, which isn't the case. One person might suffer no ill effects at 0.08, while another might be falling down drunk. Biology does not respond to hard limits in the same manner as an engineering or legal project.
• The Government invents bullshit statistics to support these policies. One of my favorites is the statistic that "nearly half of all fatal accidents involve alcohol". Guess how they arrive at that number? They include accidents where a passenger had alcohol in his or her system.

Re:Better Dead than Red?

[JonStewartMill]

In one sense, all those attacks DID succeed. They achieved their aim of frightening America's government into imposing ever more infringements on the freedom of its people, and frightening Americans into accepting those infringements.

Re:Better Dead than Red?

[Sir_Lewk]

I say, "If one is looking for proofs in witty sayings, then he is missing the point. Rather, one should look for insight."

Re:Better Dead than Red?

[tehdaemon]

Nonsense. They don't really give a damn about our freedoms. They want the US a)out of Muslim nations, and b)to stop helping Israel. The idea that they hate us for our freedoms is mostly crap. They do hate us for being infidels, part of that is the fact that we don't enforce sharia law, so in a roundabout way they are against our freedoms, but not really.

T

Re:Better Dead than Red?

[Anonymous Coward]

*sigh*

You'd think with the past decade in the US being what it has, people would have gotten this right by now.

Franklin said: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

In addition, a slightly altered version is inscribed on a plaque in the stairwell of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty: “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

Re:Better Dead than Red?

[JonStewartMill]

I didn't say "they hate us for our freedoms". They hate us for what we're doing to their freedoms (even if it's paradoxically the freedom to be restrictive of freedoms), and goading us into letting our government become more oppressive to its own populace is their revenge.

Re:Better Dead than Red?

[tsm_sf]

Ever read the Book of French Military Successes? Both pages?

You mean this one?

Or maybe this one?


tl;dr = you idiot.

Re:Better Dead than Red?

[Anonymous Coward]

A truly magnificent old-school troll. I tip my hat to you, sir!

Re:Better Dead than Red?

[rev_sanchez]

In this scenario I'd say we're giving away liberties for an increased risk of harm over the long term. I believe that an authoritarian government or one that is constantly grabbing more power for itself is more dangerous to its people than an external threat from terrorists. Stalin's Russia, Mao's China, Idi Amin's Ugandan, the Banana Republics of Central and South America, Cambodia under Pol Pot, Hilter, etc. were all far more dangerous than terrorist groups unless they have the power to overthrow the government.

I think it's safer to live with more of a risk from terrorism, which is very low when compared with other less dramatic but more easily preventable causes of death, than to further empower a much more potentially dangerous body.

Re:Better Dead than Red?

[frankxcid]

So those that survived the terrorist attack came out a-ok with no issues. As cold as it seems, a car accident has a more narrow effect radius than terrorist attacks. I live in Pennsylvania, 500 miles away from the towers and i was affected by the terrorist attacks. Although it was not as dramatic as dying in the attack, I lost my job, my company closed and took me 7 years to return to the same pay scale before the attack happen, how does that fit into your neat "No-one-is-affected-unless-they-died" stats.

Re:Better Dead than Red?

[Sir_Lewk]

Absolutely, I am baffled by the shear number of people who seem to think tearing apart the foundations the country was built upon will somehow make it more stable.

Re:Better Dead than Red?

[Opportunist]

By that logic we should probably have sent food instead of soldiers to Iraq.

Does the old saying "gimme liberty or gimme death" tell you something? There are people who value their freedom higher than their life. Granted, they become rare...

Re:Better Dead than Red?

[AntiDragon]

Let's turn it arround.

To combat terrorism we will take away some of your rights for your own good:

Privacy (wire taps)
Free speech (right to public protest, right to insult)
Right to a trial (Gitmo)

But it's ok, you can still watch government approved TV so it's OK.

Car travel is dangerous - more so than terrorism. So we will take away some of you rights to help combat car accidents:

Keys
Accelerator Pedal
Gas Stations.

But it's ok, you still have the car so don't worry about it.

Combating a threat (even a greatly exaggerated one such as terrosism) is all well and good. It's the methods that are the problem and the proportiionality of the response. Seriously, if the GPs figures are correct then car accidents are 130 times more threatening then how come none of your car owning and driving rights have been taken away?

I don't wholly beleive the whole "Inalienable rights" spiel - rights and expectations are a human creation and they will always change as society does but you cannot expect me to believe that the response seen in the US, UK and other countries to this "evil terrorism" is in any way proportional.

At best it's popularist politics at work, and we suffer for their continued careers and at the other end of the scale it's a mopre sinister power grab. Neither is good.

Re:Better Dead than Red?

[Opportunist]

I start to hate you, your Google-fu is stronger than mine.

But seriously. The whole "the anti-terrorism laws are working" talk is nonsense. Unless you can show me what it would have been like without them. It has a lot of astrology and the whole faith healing scam. Look, he got better, so the prayer worked. Look, we have fewer terrorist attacks so the anti-terror laws worked.

There was a SINGLE big terrorist attack in a DECADE. If you tell that to someone living in Israel, he'll fall down laughing how much a coward the "land of the brave" can be to throw away every liberty in sight to protect against "terrorism".

Re:Better Dead than Red?

[Phrogman]

I know its a joke that you Americans (I am assuming) find endlessly funny. However, its not.

Ever heard of the Napoleonic Wars? Ever heard of Napoleon for that matter? France used to be the most feared nation in the world and the most powerful military force bar none - most of the world's nations feared her, and most of Europe was conquered by her at one point or another.

Much like the US at the moment.

Re:Better Dead than Red?

[steelfood]

Yeah, we should limit drivers to only those certified and licensed.

Oh wait...

Re:Better Dead than Red?

[BobMcD]

For your position to work, it would have to be impossible to find a situation where liability for a car accident caused a business owner to file bankruptcy. I challenge that assumption.

Re:Better Dead than Red?

[BobMcD]

Ahh, I get it.

This is like that slashdot we read the other day, where the Fed is going to sneak into our conversations and try to modify them...

Nice try, SPOOK! ;)

Re:Better Dead than Red?

[BadAnalogyGuy]

By that logic we should probably have sent food instead of soldiers to Iraq.

Couldn't have been less effective than invading...

Does the old saying "gimme liberty or gimme death" tell you something?

Yes, that hyperbole is nothing new, especially among youths involved in radical organizations.

Re:Better Dead than Red?

[CarbonShell]

Partially it does.
Think about one place where you would have maximum security (alas, a hint!) but little civil liberties.

I would allow both 'Jail' and 'High Security Bank Vault' as correct answers.
Note: in a jail you are supposed to be safe, that this is not the case shows that in order to make a jail more secure, you'd have to put EVERYONE into isolation.
And even then a jail is still insecure! You'd have to be hooked up to medical scanners and GPS devices .. just in case .. for your own safety.

Think about what your country would look like if the populace wanted total security:
* being monitored 24/7 by cams, GPS, medical scanners etc
* everyone lives in a building block, each in their own room, guards everywhere
* marriages are not allowed, as statistics have shown that family violence ....
* your 'healthy' meals are provided to you by the central cookery and designed based on parameters matching your physical and mental needs
* 24/7 curfew and you can only go outside at certain times, only to certain places and only under the supervision of guards.
* people are no longer allowed to interact, in order to avoid violence as well as transfer of virii and bacteria
* every possible cell in your body has been scanned, finger prints, feet prints, hair/nail/skin samples, just in case something happens
* you must admit yourself to a weekly 'stability inspection' to see if you have any mental issues that might indicate a problem .. everything for YOUR security and health ... yep, sounds wonderful

BTW: IMHO It would make a GREAT Dr Who episode

Re:Better Dead than Red?

[mpe]

I have to wonder what the benefit of having "civil liberties" is if the end result is being killed by a terrorist attack

In terms of causes of death terrorists attacks rank along with "freak accidents".

Being alive is a prerequisite to enjoying civil liberties, so being dead means being unable to enjoy them. We should be preserving life now, as the most important first step, and we can focus on preserving our civil liberties later since we'll still be alive to fight for them.

If that were the aim you'd start with adressing the leading causes of death. e.g. spend more on traffic cops...

Re:Better Dead than Red?

[mpe]

This is a false dichotomy. Giving away civil liberties does not equal more safety.

It may not even increase safety from the "threat" used to justify it. As well as greatly increasing the risk from the activities of corrupt officials.

There is much more that can be done to prevent crime and violence that would be much more productive

That would be all crime, not just the tiny fraction which is "terrorism"

than wasting time money and effort on wire tapping, and that is just legal wire tapping, not this.

Where you have crime which involves a complex international conspiracy it's far more likely to involve fraud than terrorism too.

Re:Better Dead than Red?

[mpe]

Franklin said: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

Even in the unlikely event that they actually gain any "safety" by doing so. Nothing in the people giving up power to the state ensures that the people will gain anything at all.

Re:Better Dead than Red?

[mpe]

It's interesting that you complain about a loss of civil liberties and then use drunk driving as an example of something that needs more attention. The war on drunk driving has infringed on many of our civil liberties.

It might actually make more sense to enforce against "dangerous driving", regardless of any intoxication. The "problem" is that this requires people to make judgment calls. Whereas the likes of X amount of drug per Y volume of blood, speed of travel, passing a red light, etc can be measured by some kind of machine.

Re:Better Dead than Red?

[mpe]

Yet we still invest hundreds of billions of dollars, give away our rights, and piss off the international community all in an effort to reduce deaths by terrorism. If we had put that same amount of money into things like high speed rail, improved roads, or enforcing drunk driving laws, we could have saved many more lives.

Probably also by having more traffic cops, better driver training, taking bad drivers off the road, improved public transport, etc, etc.

Re:Better Dead than Red?

[Opportunist]

Well, it sure would have ensured the Iraq could not become a breeding ground for terrorist organisations. Say what you want about Saddam, but he had very little sympathy for religious nutjobs. Essentially, the Iraq used to be the only secular country in the whole region.

Thanks to the invasion, that's no longer the case.

2000? What a shame they overdid it

[mrRay720]

Had they collected 16 fewer records, it could have been so much more appropriate.

Re:The FBI? Surely not!

[rhsanborn]

This is exactly why we protect our civil liberties. A lot of people are willing to hand over exceptional rights to the government to make them safe from terrorism. The reason we don't do that is because the government abuses our rights. Proponents for strong government say it's a slippery slope argument, fortunately, we now have the evidence of wrong-doing to point back and show why rights need to be protected, and people responsible for abusing those rights should be severely prosecuted.

Some Judges need to lay the smack down.

[snowraver1]

Some Judges need to let some guilty people walk to teach the FBI that they have to play by the rules. I don't know how often that happens in the USofA, but clearly it's not enough. I know that in Canada, it is not that uncommon to have evidence invalidated because of invalid collection technique.

Re:Some Judges need to lay the smack down.

[Maximum Prophet]

Some Judges need to let some guilty people walk to teach the FBI that they have to play by the rules.

How does that punish the FBI? We the People, then have to deal with the criminals.

Instead, punish the FBI, by punishing the FBI. Fire their asses.

Re:Some Judges need to lay the smack down.

[RichMan]

How about making some of the guilty in the FBI do the perp walk?

Deliberate illegal acts should lead to jail time. Law enforcement officers are not above the law.

Re:Some Judges need to lay the smack down.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know how often that happens in the USofA

no u

Re:Some Judges need to lay the smack down.

[Shatrat]

It happens all the time and it doesn't really do anything but put criminals back on the streets.
What should be done is convict the criminal and then turn around and convict the investigator who broke the law during the course of the investigation.
What you propose is just 'two wrongs make a right as long as two different people commit them'.

Re:Some Judges need to lay the smack down.

[Anonymous Coward]

That doesn't really help, because very often the illegal wiretapping is used to find evidence that can then be collected through traditional methods.

This kind of thing is often very politically expedient -- wiretap your oppenent and find his weakness, and then expose them and force him to step down.

The illegal wiretapping needs to be dealt with as a criminal offense. Subverting the Constitution shouldn't be treateed lightly.

Re:Some Judges need to lay the smack down.

[yariv]

This is ridiculous, although it is the behavior of any legal system I know of. Obviously evidents that were acquired in some illegal process should still be used, but those FBI officials who "didn't play by the rules" should be tried. I believe that for a policeman to know that violating a citizen's rights will send him to jail is probably more persuading than that what he found in this manner won't be used. In the current method, if you think you can't get the evidence in any other way there is no reason not to get it illegally and hide the illegality.

So, someone (I don't know how the US justice system works very well) should prosecute those responsible, as you do in any other violation of the law.

Re:Some Judges need to lay the smack down.

[Angst Badger]

FBI officials told The Post that their own review has found that about half of the 4,400 toll records collected in emergency situations or with after-the-fact approvals were done in technical violation of the law. (emphasis added)

It seldom happens here anymore because of the idea of "technicalities". Certain factions in the US -- chiefly the one that, with unconscious irony, is always calling for "law and order" -- have brainwashed large portions of the public into believing that the law doesn't or at least shouldn't matter in cases where the outcome displeases them. When someone is acquitted because law enforcement agencies trampled all over the law during their investigation, they are regarded as "getting off on a technicality", and it generally triggers a backlash against the rule of law and accusations that the courts in question are "soft on crime". Of course, what has happened is that the courts in question are actually tough on crime even when the crimes are committed by law enforcement, and they are far-sighted enough to know that treating law enforcement agencies as being above the law is the royal road to serfdom, but the yokels don't get it. In their view, the function of the law is to dish out punishment, not to maintain actual order, and anything that gets in the way of punishing people -- often including their actual innocence -- angers them.

Unfortunately, there's not a lot of sympathy among those types for enforcing proper police procedure. They're the same people who hold the view that if you have nothing to hide, you shouldn't care about being searched. And it's true enough that they have nothing to hide inside their trailer parks, so why worry?

I wouldn't expect anything to change until the "law and order" faction grasps the fact that the expression "technical violation of the law" has no actual meaning; something is in violation of the law or it is not, and if the law is to lead to justice, it must apply to everyone equally, whether it's a thug holding up a liquor store or a better-dressed thug illegally wiretapping American citizens.

Re:Some Judges need to lay the smack down.

[Chris Burke]

Some Judges need to let some guilty people walk to teach the FBI that they have to play by the rules. I don't know how often that happens in the USofA, but clearly it's not enough. I know that in Canada, it is not that uncommon to have evidence invalidated because of invalid collection technique.

It's not uncommon in the US either for improperly acquired evidence to be invalidated, and depending on the importance of that evidence for the accused to walk. That's generally been the "teeth" in the 4th Amendment and the rules of evidence. It's why cops always read you your Miranda Rights, because Miranda was a guy who was pretty much as guilty as they come but was tricked into thinking he didn't have any rights and had to confess, so his confession was thrown out and he walked.

The thing is, it's not clear that any of these investigations resulted in actual arrests or charges or anything. It's not clear to what purpose they were getting these records. All I can see from the article is that the agents got these records by invoking "nonexistent emergencies". Well if the emergency was non-existent, it's not hard to imagine that the crime was non-existent too.

The impression I get is basically the FBI going on fishing expeditions. Fishing expeditions that not only came to naught and violated civil liberties, but also overloaded their communications analysts with crap that had nothing to do with actual terrorist threats. So the FBI's counsel can say that they only "technically" violated the law but that the agents were only trying to stop the next terrorist attack, and hey that might even be true, but the practical result was they made it harder to stop the real terrorist threats with their sloppy and illegal work.

Hey, who would have thought that the FBI "technically" violating the law would be a bad thing both to those who value civil liberties, and to "Ends justify the means" types?

Re:Some Judges need to lay the smack down.

[MobyDisk]

I don't think these illegal wiretaps lead to any convictions. So there is no case, no judge, and no defendant.

Re:Some Judges need to lay the smack down.

[cbiltcliffe]

No, you shouldn't convict the criminal based on illegally obtained evidence.

The reason for this is simple.

Do you know of every possible statute in your law that could put you behind bars if you violated it?
In Canada, we have the Criminal Code, for which most violations have the option of a jail term. There are lawyers who have made it their life's work for decades to work with only the criminal code, and still don't have it all down.

Then on top of that, there are the various tax, anti-terrorist crap, immigration, and other federal laws that could put you in jail. That doesn't even get to the provincial laws that could do the same. The Highway Traffic Act allows for jail terms for various things, although most of them are for obvious stuff like drunk driving, but still...

Then there are municipal laws.

Then there are all the laws at these three levels that could result in a fine, rather than jail time.

Do you know every single one of these laws?

Yeah....right.

The reason illegal evidence is not allowed in court, is that if it were allowed, then every citizen of the entire country would be a criminal, in one way or another, and anyone could be put in jail for political reasons because, with enough digging, it's guaranteed that you'd be able to find something they did that was illegal. The legal system is so horrendously complex, that nobody, anywhere, can know everything there is to know about it.

This goes for politicians, too, because there are known instances where one law contradicts another, and if you uphold one, you have no choice but to break the other.

The US legal system is probably even more complex, being that the country is older, and has more states with their own laws.

Don't pretend that all evidence should be allowed, or all it would take is for somebody to take a disliking to you, and all of a sudden you're in jail for breaking a law nobody knew about, and hasn't been enforced for a hundred years.

If there's reasonable belief that somebody's broken the law, that's one thing. Get a warrant. That's why the system is set up that way. If there's no reason to believe somebody's done something wrong, don't go fishing. Screw off and leave them alone.

Re:Some Judges need to lay the smack down.

[Hatta]

Instead, punish the FBI, by punishing the FBI. Fire their asses... out of a cannon. Maybe aimed at a country they'd feel more comfortable in, like North Korea or Iran.

Re:Some Judges need to lay the smack down.

[interploy]

Law enforcement officers are not above the law.

History disagrees with you. You can look up the numerous lynchings in the south and Rodney King for starters. History is rife with examples of police officers violating all kinds of laws and getting off free and clear.

Re:Some Judges need to lay the smack down.

[yariv]

What you suggest doesn't make sense, you say that everyone break the law, so we must only prosecute those that don't hide it.

Even with current handling of illegally obtained evidence, most of the laws you break you actually break in a public way (for example, all tax violations). If the authorities would want to get to you, they have all your tax information, and all the information from other sources regarding your income and expanses, they can find what you did wrong if they'll only put enough work to it. It is also the case with most other laws, there was some evidence which is legal and point to the violation. The problem is sorting through all the information and finding the relevant one, and that's a difficult problem. Now, you'll find it hard to commit almost any crime completely in the privacy of your home, in such a way no outside information will point to it, so if they want to get you, they will.

Remember, illegal evidence isn't the only way to fish for violations, and prosecution is much more deterring than ignoring the illegal evidence.

Re:Some Judges need to lay the smack down.

[Kattspya]

We theoretically have this in Sweden and I can guarantee you don't want it.

The part about having any evidence admittable in court works fine. The second part never works or at least I have never heard of any cop/prosecutor getting in any trouble for unlawfully collected evidence. No matter what you do you're fucked but at least in the US you get less fucked than in most countries.

Re:Some Judges need to lay the smack down.

[cbiltcliffe]

Now, you'll find it hard to commit almost any crime completely in the privacy of your home, in such a way no outside information will point to it

Oral sex is a criminal offence in something like 21 different states.
Crime? Check.
Privacy of my home? Check.
No outside information points to it? Check.

Done by the vast majority of couples, married or not, at some point in their relationship? Check.

See? Everybody's a criminal. The only reason this doesn't get prosecuted more often is:
1. It's stupid.
2. It's difficult to catch somebody doing it without illegally gathering evidence.

But if someone were to decide to nail someone on political reasons, there's probably an 80-90% chance that they're guilty of this offence, if they're in one of the appropriate states.
There are other, equally moronic criminal laws in other states, I'm sure.

Re:Some Judges need to lay the smack down.

[Fnord666]

Instead, punish the FBI, by punishing the FBI. Fire their asses.

Fire them? That should just be the start of it. Indictments, followed by a criminal trial, followed by a stint in prison if found guilty is what should happen to them. Will it? Probably not, but one can hope that there is still a shred of sanity left.

Re:Some Judges need to lay the smack down.

[evil_aar0n]

> Law enforcement officers are not above the law.

Sure they are. Two recent events:

1. I'm driving a little behind a NY state trooper on the expressway. I'm in the normal lane, on the right, and the trooper's in the passing lane, though he's not passing anyone; he's just cruising, there. A county sheriff comes up behind us, lights and siren going, in the passing lane, and the statie does nothing: doesn't move over to the right lane, doesn't speed up, doesn't slow down - nothing. After following the statie for a few seconds, the sheriff had to dodge into the right lane to get around him.

2. I'm in my home town, making a turn onto a 2-lane stretch leading out of town. Speed limit is 30 for at least half a mile. A police officer from another town turns onto the same street, right behind me and then - no lights, no siren - just blazes up street, leaving me in the dust, though I was doing 35.

The police are definitely above the law - at least in their own minds.

Re:Some Judges need to lay the smack down.

[Anonymous Coward]

How does that punish the FBI? We the People, then have to deal with the criminals.

We'll have to anyway, because the FBI made it impossible to know which of them is guilty and which isn't.

There doesn't have be a XOR here. We the People should release the accused people and fire the FBI for failing to protect us since they didn't try to collect credible evidence. They provided cover to the bad guys, successfully. It's done and we have to live with that and just keep it from happening again.

Re:Some Judges need to lay the smack down.

[misexistentialist]

Police have a huge advantage when it comes to evading the law. If you don't take away their motivation to perform illegal investigations they will do whatever the hell they want because they are unlikely to be caught. And perversely they would be less likely to be caught when abusing the rights of the innocent, since those cases would be dropped before coming under the scrutiny of the judge and defense counsel at trial.

Re:Some Judges need to lay the smack down.

[Rasputin]

"Deliberate illegal acts should lead to jail time. Law enforcement officers are not above the law."

Yeah, the problem is Barack Obama chose not to pursue the crimes of the Bush Administration. He believed that doing so would cause a Republican backlash. It is an understandable strategy, but leaves no room for JUSTICE. It also hasn't prompted the right-wingers to cut him any slack.

Re:Some Judges need to lay the smack down.

[mpe]

Deliberate illegal acts should lead to jail time. Law enforcement officers are not above the law.

If anything they should face a harsher sentence than a regular member of the public.

Re:Some Judges need to lay the smack down.

[Rob_Bryerton]

So did you file a complaint, or just bitch about it on the Internet?

Re:Some Judges need to lay the smack down.

[Shatrat]

I agree with you but that has no logical connection to what I said.
If there are useless laws we should have them repealed, that doesn't affect how we prosecute actual crimes one way or the other.
If it shouldn't be illegal then don't make it illegal.
If something definitely should be illegal, a conviction shouldn't be negated just because of what some third party did, intentionally or not.

Re:Some Judges need to lay the smack down.

[Hurricane78]

You both adhere to a pretty huge error: The alleged criminals!
Protip: At least in Germany, you will get sued for calling someone a criminal, without a judge first saying so. And I doubt it’s the only country where this is true. (And newspapers already got in some pretty nasty lawsuits for it.)
That’s the point: They are not really criminals! The FBI just for some reason did not like them, and the judge was bought or something like that. Doesn’t make those alleged “criminals“ wrongdoers, in my book!

Re:Some Judges need to lay the smack down.

[BobMcD]

What we need are the names. Then those wronged by the FBI could file suit in Federal court, due to the seriousness of the allegation that they were involved in a terrorist attack.

Re:Some Judges need to lay the smack down.

[BobMcD]

If Obama were doing anything serious about changing things, I'd be inclined to believe this. Unfortunately we have recent examples in the Acorn hubbub and the Black Panther voter-intimidation stuff that clearly demonstrates more executive abuses are to come.

As it stands I suspect he's not punishing Bush in the hopes that whomever serves after he is finished will return the favor.

Re:Some Judges need to lay the smack down.

[BobMcD]

See? Everybody's a criminal. The only reason this doesn't get prosecuted more often is:
1. It's stupid.
2. It's difficult to catch somebody doing it without illegally gathering evidence.

3. It isn't important enough to warrant the investigation necessary to prosecute.
4. The charges likely wouldn't stick due to jury nullification.
5. Many other reasons...

2, above is false, unless getting a warrant from a judge is 'difficult'. All you'd need is a facebook post or whatnot to establish probable cause...

Re:Some Judges need to lay the smack down.

[BobMcD]

Subverting the Constitution shouldn't be treateed lightly.

This shouldn't need to be stated.

Unfortunately, many Americans believe that that constitution is just some outdated, dusty old document, and has little bearing on any actual law.

They believe this because our Federal government wants it to be so and works pretty hard to convince them of it. Otherwise there would be things such as States and they would have the power to pass their own laws. As we have seen, through numerous examples, since 1865 or so this is no longer the case. Unfortunately I missed the amendment where the Federalists gained their powers, or otherwise even this could be deemed constitutional.

Re:Some Judges need to lay the smack down.

[BobMcD]

The images you invoke via 'yokels' and 'trailer parks' belies what you really mean. Your case is that people who aren't like you are stupid, and therefore your argument is superior. I don't think you're the first one that's attempted that particular logical feat.

Further I don't think you're correct. Many of the people in the social class you are describing actually fear law enforcement. I think those are exactly the people that would love to see the cops do a perp walk of their own, if for no other reason than they are far more likely to be victimized by an abuse of power.

No, I think it is the middle and upper classes that are complacent, not the lower.

Re:Some Judges need to lay the smack down.

[cbiltcliffe]

3. "It" isn't important enough, no. But when some political opponent decides he doesn't like you, it's irrelevant as to how important "it" is. What matters is that they can use "it" to make you disappear from whatever political circle they don't want you in.

4. Most jurors have no clue what jury nullification is, let alone that they're allowed to do it.

And anybody who posts on facebook about their sex life and leaves it open to the public, rather than just friends, is an idiot.

Re:Some Judges need to lay the smack down.

[cbiltcliffe]

Or course it has no logical connection to what you said. This is politics we're talking about. It has no logical connection to anything.

There are useless laws, and they should be repealed, but then the powers that be couldn't use them to harass political opponents when they needed something, so they'll never disappear.

The writers of the Constitution knew there would be corruption, stupid laws, and the like. That's why they wrote the Constitution the way they did. So stupid laws and corruption would have their impact severely limited.

Re:Some Judges need to lay the smack down.

[BobMcD]

And anybody who posts on facebook about their sex life and leaves it open to the public, rather than just friends, is an idiot.

For your entertainment:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vsxxsrn2Tfs

Anyone who uses the internet is an idiot, privacy-wise, but that's okay because that's just the way things are.

Re:Some Judges need to lay the smack down.

[mpe]

It seldom happens here anymore because of the idea of "technicalities". Certain factions in the US -- chiefly the one that, with unconscious irony, is always calling for "law and order" -- have brainwashed large portions of the public into believing that the law doesn't or at least shouldn't matter in cases where the outcome displeases them. When someone is acquitted because law enforcement agencies trampled all over the law during their investigation, they are regarded as "getting off on a technicality"

As opposed to an innocent person being dragged through the process of a trial. Or even public servants failing to do their job properly.

and it generally triggers a backlash against the rule of law and accusations that the courts in question are "soft on crime".

When the problem is more likely to be either the police in failing to gather evidence correctly. Or prosecutors attempting to prosecute weak cases, including for politcal reasons.

Of course, what has happened is that the courts in question are actually tough on crime even when the crimes are committed by law enforcement,

Except that they are not. Otherwise you'd expect to see police and/or prosecutors jailed for "contempt of court" every so often.

Re:Some Judges need to lay the smack down.

[DaleSwanson]

This happens in the US too. The problem, as pointed out above is that it doesn't punish the FBI. The FBI gets to say "hey we arrested them, the stupid courts set them free", while still doing whatever they want and abusing their powers. Then the public as a whole suffers from the criminals being set free.

Re:Some Judges need to lay the smack down.

[DaleSwanson]

He probably doesn't know any identifying information (car number), or possibly even the town of the cop in the second example. I'm sure that a complaint that some random cop was breaking a traffic law would investigated fully.

That's the problem, that it's so common place for police to disregard the law that it just accepted.

Told you so!

[copponex]

After diligently criticizing the powers of government for over 11 months, we have more proof that Obama is destroying America.

Sincerely,

Your Fox Opinutainment Team

Re:Told you so!

[vxice]

Obama is not the end all and be all of American government. He is no where near perfect but just because things aren't going the way you want them to doesn't mean he is solely to blame. There is an existing system that he has to work within. Now if you want W back or W 2.0(aka McCain) they would still be doing the exact same thing that W always did without any attempt to change at least Obama is making the effort and in many cases making improvements. For example he has given Iran the chance at talks which it claimed it wanted but has now proven it is hesitant at best(with good reason the U.S. has not always be the most forward negotiator).

Re:Told you so!

[QuantumRiff]

Why will Obama not Deny that he signed each one of these requests? I have heard that several of them were related to Glen Beck killing and raping a young girl in 1990.

Why won't Glen Beck Deny that he raped and killed a young girl in 1990? And why won't President Obamba deny that he signed each one of these orders personally?

(ever notice how when the last administration was in, certain people got mad, and corrected you that "It is PRESIDENT Bush", and those same people call our current president by his last name, or even worse, his first-middle-last.. Even if you don't respect the person, you have to respect the position, damnit. During the Campain, President Clinton came to my small town.. Some people wrote in nasty editorials about referring to him as President, when our President was PRESIDENT Bush. the newspaper had to explain that president is a title for life, and that its actually encoded into law somewhere...)

Re:Told you so!

[Anonymous Coward]

Whooosh

Re:Told you so!

[Mishotaki]

After diligently criticizing the powers of government for over 11 months, we have more proof that Obama is destroying America.

Sincerely,

Your Fox Opinutainment Team

Obama destroying something? it can't be! they gave him the nobel peace prize!

Re:Told you so!

[BarefootClown]

Yes, except that it's A) The Washington Post, not FOX, and B) between 2002-2006, solidly in Bush's term. FOX is also carrying the story, and they also say--right up front, in the lede--that it was 2002-2006, and goes on to make it explicit in the first sentence: "The FBI violated the law in collecting thousands of U.S. telephone records during the Bush administration, The Washington Post reported Monday [emphasis mine]."

But don't let a silly little thing like fact get in the way of FOX-bashing.

Re:Told you so!

[Hurricane78]

I wonder how FOX would spin the fact, that the laws were put in place by the Bush administration...

Re:Told you so!

[BobMcD]

You're absolutely correct. I'm sure his administration will begin making the heads roll immediately.

A question:

[Anonymous Coward]

Just out of interest, does anyone know what jurisdiction the feds. in the US would hold for international calls made to/from the US?

Surprised?

[SirBigSpur]

Is anyone actually surprised by this?

I'm sure it was for our own good.

[cvtan]

I am shocked and appalled. So who knows who was in charge of the FBI during this period?

2000+ Felonies?

[macemoneta]

Aren't these violations felonies? If so, then why are criminals employed by the FBI instead of in prison? If not, then (aside from the invasion of privacy), what's the problem?

Who's going to jail?

[michaelmalak]

According to TFA, the US DOJ started investigating the FBI over this issue in 2006. Why aren't FBI agents in jail right now? And why didn't the Washington Post ask this question?

Hmm, this is like saying --

[dwiget001]

corrupt politicians are... CORRUPT! OMFG!

Re:Hmm, this is like saying --

[Anonymous Coward]

Corruption might be commonplace but does that mean it's acceptable or not noteworthy?

Re:Hmm, this is like saying --

[cbiltcliffe]

corrupt politicians...

You repeat yourself, grasshopper....

Re:Hmm, this is like saying --

[dwiget001]

Well, I was only poking fun, don't take it too seriously.

Now, on a more serious note, I agree that it is not only unacceptable, but that all government officials should be held to an even higher standard than the norm in society, if such a thing could be possible. You violate laws or civil rights as a government official or politician, frankly, any penalty that would normally be applied, should be tripled or worse, should a government official or politician be convicted of such things. Why? Because they are supposed to be serving the public trust, and betrayal of that when put in a place of power or authority over the citizenry, should be met as a most heinous crime.

Of course, when it comes to national politicians, they regularly grant themselves exemptions from being governed by the very laws they pass. And, this, IMHO, is a practice that should be squashed by constitutional amendment. This, and the above, would be a good start in quelling what I see as massive corruption in the U.S. political system/scene for the past 70 years or so.

On the other hand...

[cvtan]

"Bureau officials said agents were working quickly under the stress of trying to thwart the next terrorist attack and were not violating the law deliberately. " Well, I guess if they didn't MEAN to be naughty we can't complain.

Re:On the other hand...

[Anonymous Coward]

More likely they were right-wing zealots who believed the "permanent Republican majority" drivel that the Republicans were bandying about and figured that what they were doing would be buried and never see the light of day, let alone a courtroom. Why aren't the "capital punishment is required as a deterrent" proponents demanding the revocation of these people's badges and their conviction?

Like to believe these are all good people, but ..

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to believe these are all good people, but sometimes even good people get carried away and need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law... to the top of knowledge and 1 more level of accountability.

Jail time is needed.

I've seen people fired for policy violations in the private sector. Anyone who knew about these violations needs to be fired even if they didn't actively participate.

The FBI needs to be cleaner than any other law enforcement agency in the USA. They haven't lost my trust, but they are headed that way.

Technical Violation of the Law

[Anonymous Coward]

After an internal review, I have determined that when I shot that guy and stole his wallet, that was in "technical violation of the law". However, since I performed a good faith auditing of my procedures on the matter, I feel that an administrative reprimand is the appropriate course of action.

I'm a bad person... there now everyone can feel safe again.

There should be criminal prosecutions

[Grond]

about half of the 4,400 toll records collected in emergency situations or with after-the-fact approvals were done in technical violation of the law.

'Technical violation of the law' is also known as 'crime.' The degree to which the law has been violated may be relevant for sentencing, but it's irrelevant in determining whether or not a crime has, in fact, taken place.

In true emergencies, Caproni said, agents always had the legal right to get phone records, and lawyers have now concluded there was no need for the after-the-fact approval process.

So how many of these were actually true emergencies? And having the legal right to get something doesn't excuse getting it illegally. If the police have probable cause they can get a warrant to search my house. If they decided to skip getting a warrant and search it anyway, the results of that search are inadmissible even though the police could have done it legally. It should be no different in this case. In fact, in this case there's a statute specifically defining the crime, and it does not excuse a criminal act if it could have been done legally but wasn't.

Bureau officials said agents were working quickly under the stress of trying to thwart the next terrorist attack and were not violating the law deliberately.

That's not a legally recognized excuse. The intent that matters is the intent to intercept the communication, which was plainly present (this is not a case of accidentally tapping the wrong line or anything like that). Whether they knew what they were doing was illegal or whether they thought what they were doing was justified is irrelevant in this case, per the statute.

Caproni said the bureau will use the inspector general's findings to determine whether discipline is warranted.

Discipline? I hope that's just for starters. The ECPA provides for a jail sentence of up to 5 years per violation, and I would like to see prosecutors pursue significant jail sentences for the "senior FBI managers up to the assistant director level" that approved the procedures for emergency requests, particularly for those who did so "for two years after bureau lawyers raised concerns and an FBI official began pressing for changes." They betrayed the public trust and broke the law even after their illegal behavior was pointed out to them. It's utterly inexcusable.

The federal government should also be made to pay the appropriate statutory civil fine to the parties whose phone records were illegally gathered, which is the greater of actual damages, $100 per day of violation, or $10,000. If $10,000 in statutory damages seems excessive, the government should take a look at the Copyright Act some time. And if 5 years in jail seems excessive, it should take a look at the penalties for growing certain plants in your back yard.

Re:There should be criminal prosecutions

[spearway]

I really like that term technical violation of the law. So if I am over the speed limit I am in technical violation of the speed limit and I should not get a ticket , just a mention in the newspaper. Try that defense next time...

Re:There should be criminal prosecutions

[Anonymous Coward]

'Technical violation of the law' is also known as 'crime.' The degree to which the law has been violated may be relevant for sentencing, but it's irrelevant in determining whether or not a crime has, in fact, taken place.

It's not a crime until a judge or jury says it is. Until then, it's only an alleged crime.

Re:There should be criminal prosecutions

[zzsmirkzz]

No it IS a crime which was allegedly committed by "someone". The crime is fact, the criminal remains to be proven...

Re:There should be criminal prosecutions

[tburkhol]

So if I am over the speed limit I am in technical violation of the speed limit and I should not get a ticket

Don't know about where you live, but around here, very few speeders get tickets. You really have to be 15+ MPH over the limit before they get interested, and that doesn't count all the miles of roadway where there's no officer even checking speeds. So yeah, if you're speeding, you're technically in violation of the law, but everyone has accepted that it's just not practical to enforce the letter of that law.

Using "technical violation of the law" to describe these wiretaps is a way to tell us that, even though it's illegal, this is the way the organization operates on a day-to-day basis, because they consider it no more "illegal" than jaywalking. The comparison to speeding is especially apt, except that speeding is a relatively minor moving violation, whereas wiretapping violates one of the most fundamental rights enshrined in our Constitution.

Re:There should be criminal prosecutions

[commodoresloat]

And if 5 years in jail seems excessive, it should take a look at the penalties for growing certain plants in your back yard.

Stupid rhododendrons....

Re:There should be criminal prosecutions

[BobMcD]

Using "technical violation of the law" to describe these wiretaps is a way to tell us that, even though it's illegal, this is the way the organization operates on a day-to-day basis, because they consider it no more "illegal" than jaywalking. The comparison to speeding is especially apt, except that speeding is a relatively minor moving violation, whereas wiretapping violates one of the most fundamental rights enshrined in our Constitution.

Then it would follow that if we as citizens disagree, we need to modify the code to either remove these powers or underscore the need for punishment.

Re:There should be criminal prosecutions

[mpe]

The ECPA provides for a jail sentence of up to 5 years per violation, and I would like to see prosecutors pursue significant jail sentences for the "senior FBI managers up to the assistant director level" that approved the procedures for emergency requests, particularly for those who did so "for two years after bureau lawyers raised concerns and an FBI official began pressing for changes."

Sounds like they may have broken quite a few other laws, which could have much longer sentences attached.

And if 5 years in jail seems excessive, it should take a look at the penalties for growing certain plants in your back yard.

5 years rather inadequate in the case of a senior public official. Especially without a lifetime ban from ever working in law enforcement or standing for public office.

Where were the T-parties

[Fujisawa Sensei]

Where were the T-parties? Where is Fox news? Why are they not protecting our constitutional rights and going after the people who committed these felonies against the our citizens?

Oh, that's right. The only protest people they think are liberals, who want things like health care, and believe in the rule of law. When a conservative administration breaks the law its for our own good. My bad.

Heh, nice.

[Chris Burke]

So too, in this case, I have to wonder what the benefit of having "civil liberties" is if the end result is being killed by a terrorist attack.

Actually, according to TFA, all these "nonexistent emergencies" and requests for records having nothing to do with actual terrorism overloaded the FBI's communications analysts, which one can reasonably guess hindered their efforts to find actual terrorist threats.

Oh but don't let practical consequences get in the way of that pretty "Liberty or Safety" false dichotomy. I mean it's so nice and obvious if you don't think about it even the tiniest bit.

I'm still waiting...

[macintard]

...for the Hope & Change that was promised to me. So far, BO seems a lot like GWB, but with better speaking skills.

Re:The FBI? Surely not!

[Anonymous Coward]

Waiting for the first 'Let them. I have nothing to hide.' post .... Well, guess there are already 10 of it, I'm just too lazy to look for them. lol.

Really

[delvsional]

This is a big fucking surprise. /sarcasm

Re:Who cares...

[Qzukk]

none of those involved with making or receiving the phone calls were inconvenienced

I'm inconvenienced when my tax money goes to bullshit like this, especially when the FBI was already having trouble paying for the wiretaps they actually needed.

If it had discovered a plot to blow up some major building and those involved were arrested the FBI would probably have been hailed as heroes and given medals.

And making up fake terrorism threats would have discovered one?

You ignorant liberals just don't get it

[GodfatherofSoul]

We have to sacrifice our freedoms to protect our freedoms. Even though our free society is better than an authoritarian one, authoritarianism is far better at protecting freedom. So, the only way to be free and have rights is to not be free and lose your rights. You dirty hippies get it now?

Re:You ignorant liberals just don't get it

[Pojut]

In the event you are joking, my response is this: lulzwut?

In the event you aren't joking, my response is this: lulzwut?

Re:You ignorant liberals just don't get it

[colinrichardday]

No, authoritarianism may be better at protecting lives against external threats, but itself may be a graver internal threat.

Or is my sarcasm meter off today?

Re:You ignorant liberals just don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

His comment is what Dick Cheney really thinks.

Re:You ignorant liberals just don't get it

[GodfatherofSoul]

It's off, WAY off :)

Re:You ignorant liberals just don't get it

[scot4875]

Unfortunately, the last 8 years of listening to people saying things like that in all seriousness has thrown everyone's sarcasm meters out of calibration.

--Jeremy

'Effective'? HA HA HA!

[Chris Burke]

Unless you are trying to show how effective the counter-terrorism operations have been

Ha ha ha ha! Oh man that's a good one -- "effective"!

Dude, we can't stop Teh Terrorists when their own fathers call us up to narc on them! There's no way you can call our counter-terrorism efforts "effective". Certainly you wouldn't say that about our counter-terrorism prior to 9/11, since it involved violating fewer liberties and liberty = teh terrorist kills you. But yet the death toll for that period even including the failure to stop 9/11 is still incredibly low.

I'm just pointing out what you already know of course, but I can't help it. You should get a new account called AwesomeTrollGuy, because you're really hitting it out of the park today.

Your First Premise Is WRONG

[Anonymous Coward]

You have NO rights in the U.S.S.A..

Yours In Minsk,
K. Trout

At least China is honest...

[Anonymous Coward]

At least China doesn't pretend to have more than one political party. Republicans == Democrats

It's Obvious

[drej]

It's a new law (involving electronic devices and such) so of course it's still okay to break it. I mean, it's not even in the bible! Besides: It's just too damn comfortable to spy on people over the phone or internet, much better than hiding bugs in people's houses and waiting outside in inconspicuous trucks. If for one can't see the FBI stopping anytime soon.

Re:Who cares...

[colinrichardday]

If it helps reduce the threat of terrorism and none of those involved with making or receiving the phone calls were inconvenienced or were persecuted on other charges that were discovered outside the original reasons for looking at the records than what is the difference?

That police-state tactics may be a graver threat to this republic than terrorism?

I'm not suggesting the government have total power to do anything they want, but how can we stand by and complain that terrorism is on the rise when a fit is thrown every time some phone records are looked at due to some technicalities?

I don't recall complaining that terrorism was on the rise. Could it be that the people who are complaining benefit from those complaints by having larger budgets and more power?

We should stop wasting resources on investigating our own agencies for things that did not have any affect on anyone. Maybe we could get out of debt and put the economy on track...

Because these investigations are going to cost more than the budget of the Department of Homeland Security?

This is the problem.

[lattyware]

Whenever anyone points out that these laws are to help stop terrorists, they forget that the first abuse often comes with good intents, but slowly decends into the police state nightmare no one wants.

Perspective

[Locke2005]

Tracing down the communications "networks" of suspected terrorists actually does sound like a useful way of generating intelligence, so the FBI may have a valid rationale behind doing this. However, I fail to see how this constitutes an "emergency", since there is little requirement for timeliness -- these records are not going to disappear if they don't collect them right away, and the analysts are going to take weeks or months to analyze them anyway. In short, I don't see any down side to using approved procedures to collect this information, making sure to dot all the "i"s and cross all the "t"s. Failing to do so is either laziness or the result of a delusion caused by watching too much "24".

The agents that did this are TERRORISTS themselves

[Anonymous Coward]

They should be delt with accordingly...

Depends on WHO is breaking the law

[moeinvt]

U.S. citizens are expected to comply with tens of thousands of BS laws and regulations that come out of Washington DC, and are regularly prosecuted for violating them. By contrast, government employees (from the President on down) violate the 15-20 pages of the U.S. Constitution on a regular basis, and nobody is arrested or prosecuted. Why should WE have to read, understand and obey the massive volume of rules that they spew out every year when THEY refuse to obey a very simple set of rules governing their behavior? I guess it depends on who is breaking the law.

Re:Depends on WHO is breaking the law

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, many civil servants have to follow all the awful laws that citizens do (and the potential for scrutiny is even higher-working for the gov't and all), and the folks on the bottom rung of the government-employee ladder have to jump through hoops just as numerous and senseless as folks on the bottom of the corporate-employee ladder. The only difference is the starting pay is better.

I realize that you were mostly referring to law enforcement and administrative/elected officials, but it's important to keep in mind that there's not much difference between corporate oppression and government oppression.

Re:Depends on WHO is breaking the law

[CisJokey]

To avoid that you had to change fundamentals in your law. "Precedence" law (hope this word means what i mean) is always tricky to handle without thousands of rules.

Re:The FBI? Surely not!

[Syberz]

Relax, they were just using company ressources to make sure their wives weren't having an affair.

Arnie did it in True Lies and it all worked out in the end.

You'd get in more trouble for speeding

[The Atog Lord]

If I were caught speeding, could I justify that by telling the officer who pulled me over that I was stressed?

Now, imagine that instead of speeding, I were instead violating the Constitution of the United States. For a period of several years.

We have rules and laws to prevent this from happening. But if there are no consequences for the people and agencies who violate our rights, then those rights have no teeth. The people who have done this to us should be prosecuted.

Re:The FBI? Surely not!

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, it's all a moot point for the most part, as recent history has shown. No matter what laws are in place, they will either a) change said law, or b) ignore said law anyway.

One way or another, we're screwed with no way out short of a massive civil uprising. Which I don't see happening anytime in the next few hundred years.

Re:The FBI? Surely not!

[davester666]

But if there is no real penalty being applied when this happens, can it really be considered illegal?

The FBI has been repeatedly caught doing these and other things such as using NSL's improperly, and even lying to Congress, and yet I never hear "and so and so who did it went to jail" or even "and those involved were fired".

Lawless Law Enforcement

[erroneus]

I was in a conversation with someone the other day about what it means to be in a civilized society. Where the morality and ethics of a society are important, there is a factor where respect for the law is a top-down characteristic. When a nation of laws implements its laws and punishments in a fair and equitable manner, respect for the law rises. When this doesn't happen, respect for the law decreases. And when the legal system, and especially law enforcement, break the law, you can expect respect for the law and the government in general to decrease dramatically.

EVERYONE in the U.S. should be deeply concerned by this. Where this all leads to is a culture of society of corruption that are the only believed to exist in Hollywood movies and 3rd world nations. No one believes it can happen here, but I see that it can and will if it's not prevented.

Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon

[hosecoat]

In some cases, agents broadened their searches to gather numbers two and three degrees of separation from the original request, documents show.

so what has kevin bacon been up to?

Re:The FBI? Surely not!

[mhajicek]

Wish I could mod you up. Was it Nixon who said "When the president does it it isn't illegal"?

Suggested Readings:

[foobsr]

"The narrator inhabits a paranoid dystopia where nothing is as it seems, chaos seems to rule all events, and everyone is deeply suspicious of every one else. In danger of losing his mind, our protagonist starts keeping a diary, and it is this diary which details only a few days in his life that is ultimately found by a future society and given the title Notes from the Neogene. Memoirs Found in a Bathtub is this distant voice from the past, this Notes from the Neogene."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memoirs_Found_in_a_Bathtub

Also probably anything by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, who were originally targetting the Soviet Union. Well, US is SU looking backwards.

CC.

Re:The FBI? Surely not!

[Duhavid]

They have nothing to hide except all the "I have nothing to hide" posts.

Re:Duhh... Separation of powers

[b4dc0d3r]

I sent a note to my "Congresscritter" Mitch McConnell in support of C-Span's complaint that resolving the differences between House and Senate bills should be televised. No response. Obama could ask them to open discussions, but Obama does not order Congress what to do.

When a presidential candidate promises things that only Congress can deliver, you have to discount that promise because they can't do anything about it. You really should discount the candidate because they lied about what they could do, but since everyone does that you'd have 0 votes for any candidate, more liars, and more 0-vote elections.

In contrast, FBI is an Executive Branch organization. So let's skip the healthcare trollbait and go directly to what's Obama going to do about FBI snoops!

It will be on Fox News...

[copponex]

You're right, it will be on Fox News. Remember, that's only from 9 am to 4 pm, and from 6 pm to 8 pm. The rest? Not even close to news. Just a bunch of washed up entertainers pretending like they're not pretending to be journalists.

Unpossible!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

An official organ of the state violated the law???
 
Color me shocked!!!

Straw

[fyngyrz]

That wasn't the point. The point was the cost of the healthcare exceeded the cost of the premiums rather significantly, contrary to the previous post's claim.

I would add that anyone who says "I don't need it" is naive. We don't know when, or why, we'll get sick. It might be an infection; it might be genetic; it might be consequent to an accident. When you need it, though, it's too late to say "Oh, hey, I'll buy insurance now." What you'll do "now" is go into debt, more than likely, or else hand the cost off to the rest of us indirectly.

The ONLY sensible path is to insure everyone, just as the only sensible path is to educate everyone -- we don't know who will get sick or remain healthy, and we don't know who will turn out to be a research scientist or a McDonald's employee. We don't know when a potential high performance person will cross with a health issue (Steven Hawking comes to mind, as do Stevie Wonder and Beethoven) either, until it has already happened.

That "we" includes you, whoever you may be. You don't know if your health will take a turn for the worse tomorrow. You can protest all you like, but you're doing nothing but playing the odds. The thing is that if you're wrong and you face something catastrophic, you're not likely to opt out of the medical services you need. And since you can't pay for them, everyone else will, in the form of (yet again) increased costs somewhere in the chain.

Pooling works because actuaries figure out the odds of people getting sick; most won't, but no one knows who will, and who won't. Usefully, though, the odds remain fairly constant. So you can figure out what the total cost will be, and then spread that cost thinly throughout a population. That thin cost is generally pretty affordable. The cost if you actually get seriously ill -- not so affordable.

The real problem we face here (aside from the naive) is that traditional insurance companies operate with a huge conflict of interest. They take premiums by selling the customer the idea that they'll be covered in case of health issues. But they serve corporate responsibilities that are best addressed by reducing the amount of services paid for. The less they pay out, the more money they make. Consequently, they are constantly looking for excuses not to pay.

This is why said companies should never be publicly traded companies, and never be allowed to provide rewards to employees based on payout amounts. Ideally, a minimum overhead system would be established with no company at all, simply the government as the payee, but we know that getting our government (US) to do things efficiently is problematic. Unfortunately, we also know that letting private insurance companies approach the problem freely results in people being unable to afford coverage, being denied coverage for health events, and outright being denied insurance.

The only sensible, socially responsible answer is to cover everyone and make certain that everyone is paying into the pool.

The homily goes, "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." Unfortunately, we don't have "good" yet, so perhaps there's still room to bitch a bit.

Re:Straw

[Shakrai]

You don't know if your health will take a turn for the worse tomorrow. You can protest all you like, but you're doing nothing but playing the odds.

It's my life. It's none of your business whether or not I want to "play the odds". This is a country that allows people to smoke tobacco, live off fast food, skydive, drink alcohol, bungee jump, BMX, blah, blah, blah. One could argue that every single one of those activities imposes indirect costs on society. Yet they remain legal.

The real problem we face here (aside from the naive) is that traditional insurance companies operate with a huge conflict of interest.

So your solution is to support legislation that requires us all to do business with them?

Re:Straw

[fyngyrz]

It's my life. It's none of your business whether or not I want to "play the odds".

No? It seems to be our business to see that you get educated, so that you're not an ignorant fuck, dragging down society with your inability to balance your own checkbook. So we force you to go to school. It seems to be our business to force you to pay taxes so that there are roads to transport food and goods to where you can buy it. It seems to be our business to tell you that you cannot put your neighbor at risk by building your house out of bricks of C4.

I draw the following conclusion: It should be our business to see to it that you're not a load on society because we allowed you to become unnecessarily crippled; it should be our business to see to it that you're not a source of plague or HIV or whatever horrible disease; it should be our business to see to it that should you take injury, we heal your ass up so you can go back to being a citizen in our society as soon, and as well, as possible, so that whatever potential you have is most likely to flourish.

This is a country that allows people to smoke tobacco, live off fast food, skydive, drink alcohol, bungee jump, BMX, blah, blah, blah. One could argue that every single one of those activities imposes indirect costs on society. Yet they remain legal.

And so they should. The fact that they are legal, and should be legal, only points more emphatically that we need to be ready to deal with medical issues, since our society allows behavior that is risky. Call it a cost of freedom. I think that's perfectly fair. I think it's also worth pointing out that as humans grow up, they generally gain a sense of their own mortality and the amount of risk taking declines. Older, for many people, is wiser. Best we see to it that they have a decent chance of getting older, while doing as little as possible to restrict their freedoms.

So your solution is to support legislation that requires us all to do business with them [insurance companies]?

Oh. Well, that's a fun question. We were talking about reality. But if you want to know how I'd handle it, here ya go:

My solution, were it my option to implement, would be to allow exactly one year's medical debt on the part of the government. Once the year is over, the next year's taxes pay that debt in full. Rinse, repeat. Payments go from gov't to the medical industry. The medical insurance industry would be banned (because although I've little objection to gambling, I still don't think it is reasonable to gamble one's health. Too much else in society depends upon it.)

I would accompany this with pulling out of all military commitments elsewhere, withdrawing our troops and our offensive equipment back within our borders. I would stop all government sourced foreign aid (private aid is of course the option of the citizens), I would seek to amend the constitution to add teeth such that any law determined to be in violation would result in the hanging of those who made it and the instant release and clearing of records of anyone touched by said laws; I would make said amendment retroactive; and, if I could get that amendment passed, I would hang all 9 supreme court justices for violation, and probably most of the congress. I would shrink our federal government to a fraction of its current size, making it serve the following roles:

• Defending our borders
• Educating our people to a minimum standard higher than the current HS standard
• Maintaining transport, utility, and communications infrastructure
• Providing a stable, non-inflatable, non-deflatable reference for currency
• Ensuring that interstate commerce is carried on over a level playing field
• Ensuring that no state in any way violates the bill of rights or other constitutional restrictions
• Levying tax as a strai

Re:Straw

[Shakrai]

No? It seems to be our business to see that you get educated, so that you're not an ignorant fuck, dragging down society with your inability to balance your own checkbook. So we force you to go to school.

Interesting analogy. Kinda falls down though when you consider the fact that people who haven't even reached the age of majority can decide to drop out of school. Imagine that, freedom of choice, what a concept......

the current proposal optimal? Hardly. But it's a step in the right direction

No it's not. It takes everything that's wrong with the current system and codifies it into law. It does nothing to address defensive medicine. It does nothing to address the shortage of primary care providers. It does nothing to change the messed up incentives that reward failure and punish prevention.

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

And don't let the Democrats need for a political victory blind you to the fact that this legislation has morphed into a cesspool of special interest favors and backroom deals.

It's all a moot point of course. Health care reform in it's current form died last night when the polls closed in Massachusetts. You think the moderates in the House and Senate are going to stick their necks out for it now? Not likely.

FBI Violated Electronic Communications Privacy Act

[FatherDale]

SurPRISE!

Violate the law, go to jail

[Anonymous Coward]

So when are these agents going to be charged and tried?

Re:The FBI? Surely not!

[mpe]

This is exactly why we protect our civil liberties. A lot of people are willing to hand over exceptional rights to the government to make them safe from terrorism.

It wouldn't be too bad if it were possible for people to hand over just their own rights. The problem comes when they expect even those who don't agree with them to hand over their rights. Even some of those who advocate loudest arn't actually handing over any rights.

The reason we don't do that is because the government abuses our rights.

Even if it actually "worked" in terms of reducing terrorism there are several orders of magnitude more corrupt public officials than there are terrorists. (Even before considering that the "War on Terror" is only intersted in a minority of terrorists.)

Proponents for strong government say it's a slippery slope argument, fortunately, we now have the evidence of wrong-doing to point back and show why rights need to be protected, and people responsible for abusing those rights should be severely prosecuted.

There's also very little historical evidence for "strong government" actually doing much to improve public safety anyways.