Yea, you're seeing it wrong, and seeing it right at the same time. Many of us do hate corruption and have a problem with things like this. However, there are also people who accepted the irresponsible and immoral "greed is good" philosophy. Greed now so rules their lives that they see evidence of greed in society as validation of their philosophy rather than recognizing that what is going on is actually costing them money and harming their own society.
Greed has so blinded them that they become like dogs crapping in their own back yards.
But, actually there is a logical fallacy there. I had to go back and look at exactly which one it is, but it's there. I recognized a fallacy existed in the thought underlying the post, I just couldn't bring to mind which fallacy it was as it's been 8 or 9 years since I last looked into logical fallacies.
The fallacy is: Questionable Cause. That fallacy says that because you see often A and B together you assume that A causes B. It's a fallacy because it ignores all other possible causes.
Ummmm.... It's my understanding from historical Chinese government interaction with their businesses that it tells Chinese businesses what to do, how to interact with the rest of the world. It's not like their government isn't a totalitarian government.
IMO, it's self-defeating behavior to deny obvious possibilities.
I'm not sure what the formal name of the logical fallacy you used in your post is, but it most definitely is a logical fallacy.
There is nothing in Capitalistic theory that says companies must act unethically to succeed, or that the ONLY motivation a company must have is greed.
There are ethical businesses and businessmen. Not all businessmen think that short-term profit is their only goal or only reason for existence. Yes, a business must make money to succeed and to stay in business, but that doesn't mean greed must be the over-riding motivation.
Ummm.... No, the CBO didn't say what you're alleging it said. It said, if the $500 billion you are taking out of Medicare is applied to deficit reduction, and only deficit reduction, then the the bill is deficit neutral at the Federal level. However, if the $500 billion is spent elsewhere in the bill, which is how it is used, you can't count it twice. Thus, any claim to this bill reducing the deficit is patently false. It actually raises the deficit by a minimum of $380 billion.
On top of that it mandates that the states cover 60% of the people being covered under this bill. It doesn't fund this for the states though. So, here in the state of Washington, where I live, the state is estimating that this will add $6.4 billion to Medicaid costs that the state must cover. However, Medicaid in Washington state is broke, and the $6.4 billion in costs just happens to equal our current deficit. So, the affect of this bill on the state of Washington is double its deficit in one fell swoop. On top of that many doctors are refusing to take any more Medicaid patients as the state now pays them less than what it costs to treat them. Other doctors aren't even going to accept Medicaid patients at all.
So, where are these new patients going to get treated? Is the government going to raise it's costs even more by raising Medicaid payments thus raising it's deficit? Is it going to force doctors to lose money and possibly bankrupt their practices thus once again lowering the number of health care providers? Or, are doctors just going to up their overall rates to their paying customers? It looks to me this will lead to even further rationing of health care and reduced access to doctors for everyone.
No matter how it happens somebody has to pay for it. There is no free lunch. One way or another this is going to raise rates, and create much longer waiting times to get an appointment to see a doctor, as this mandate is going to add a large number of patients but in all actuality is going to reduce the number of providers. It's also going to significantly raise taxes at the state level on top of the increases in taxes at the Federal level.
And now they can finally make good on that promise.
Bullshit. They'll make this an RFID card and the cards will be hacked within a week or so of being released. When everything was just starting to be computerized the argument put forward was that it would stop all fraud.
Yeah, like that really happened, and no RFID card is going to stop all Medicare, income tax, etc... fraud. It will probably make it worse, as that's been the trend so far with each promise of technological advancement being trumpeted as the "fraud-ender".
I don't think you understand the conservative position, or the position taken on what we see as Obama care. We're not against health care reform, but we are against the health care reform that was just passed. It has a lot of things wrong with it that will do us all harm.
1. This bill is not deficit neutral. The CBO put out a written statement saying that the Democrats couldn't take $500 billion out of medicare and spend it on subsidies while saying the $500 billion taken out of medicare is reducing the deficit. However, all the Democrats and Obama ignored it and went right on claiming this bill reduces the deficit. It doesn't. It adds to the deficit by a minimum of $380 billion. That's the $120 billion claimed as deficit reduction minus the $500 billion counted twice. Claiming it's reducing the deficit while knowing it isn't is flat out lying to the American public. It's despicable.
2. As this bill takes $500 billion out of medicare/medicaid it puts both of those programs on even shakier financial footing than they were before, even if no more people would be added to the medicare/medicaid roles. However, that isn't the case. It gives an unfunded mandate to the states to treat the 60% of the estimated 30 million more people it's supposed to cover. Have you looked at the financial condition of Medicaid in your state? In Washington it's dead broke and both physicians and pharmacies are leaving the program right and left as they are losing money on each medicaid patient they treat. They aren't even breaking even. They're losing money. Washington state figures that this bill add another 300,000 people to their Medicaid program. Who's going to fund it? Not the Federal government. Where's the money going to come from? Where are the doctors to treat these 300,000 additional patients? Neither exists. It means that wait times for seeing a doctor are going to be measured in months, and patients, when they get a prescription may not be able to fill it. That's adequate health care? That's better than things are now?
3. Moody's put out a report saying the US will lose its AAA credit rating in a matter of months if the US government doesn't lower its spending and start paying off its debts. You seem intelligent enough to know what that is going to do to our economy. It will raise the interest rates the government pays on its debts to the point that a large chunk of the taxes we pay will go to nothing more than interest payments. This is rapidly reaching the point of no return on the way to bankruptcy. What's being done about it by the Obama adiminstration? They're lying to us about the real costs of Obama care, a huge additional government bureaucracy is being created that means more government spending, and the IRS is being set up to be the collection agency for the fines people will have to pay if they don't buy health insurance.
And you wonder why people say this bill is a disaster? Why the vast majority of Americans opposed it? They aren't opposing health care reform, they are opposing this bill. Learn to differentiate between the two and stop listening to what the liberal media is telling you.
I'm in need of health care far more than most people that don't have it. I'm diabetic, have a long history of high blood pressure, have a family history of diabetes, strokes, heart attacks, etc... on both sides of my family, am disabled but gave up fighting the SS system and am getting no medical treatment for my health issues. I'm against this bill on the grounds that it's bad for me, the supposed target-for-helping of this bill. It's terrible legislation.
I don't have a major problem with this second post of yours. I guess I didn't understand where you were coming from in your first one.
I still have a major problem with the idea that everyone has to "go along" just to point out the flaws in a president's agenda. I find that completely foolish as a bad president with an agenda can point this country in the wrong direction for a long time, and the results of just following along behind and letting bad ideas come to fruition can be devastating to the country. It's this point that made me think that you are a political partisan.
I know what voter turnout levels have been. I don't think that is going to continue. The "silent majority" is going to start voting in great numbers as this demonstration of politics by the Democrats has greatly angered these people. These people made up a large portion of the polls who disliked Obama care. When they spoke out they were flat out ignored and insulted, and they are not going to take this lying down.
Saying that there is no consensus on anything is the US is ignoring the huge percentage of the population who opposed Obama care. There is also consensus that the US debt is a greater threat to the US than terrorism, by almost 3 to 1, and a 4 to 1 consensus that the national debt could collapse the entire US economy, according to 2 new polls just published.
This political awakening of the "silent majority" is going to fundamentally change this country. Many of the liberal laws and the big spending policies are going to go, or all incumbents will go. It's already a consensus of close to 3 to 1 already saying that all incumbents must go, and if both parties keep on voting for more spending and more government power they are going to be replaced.
The pendulum has been on the left side of the political spectrum for quite a while, and now it is going to swing to the right with a vengeance. It's going to stay there for quite a while too.
How is that? If the majority of the US population opposes what members of either the House or the Senate, or what a president wants, the only thing that should count is what the politicians want? Just how do you account for the will of a clear majority of the American people? I don't see any thought given in what you have to say to their desires/wishes/opinions at all.
Where do you get the idea that Obama is honest? I'm not trolling you. It's a serious question as I just don't see it. I see him as one of the most dishonest we've had in a long time.
OK. I wasn't aware of her making that promise too. She's so slimy though that it's no surprise that her actions were completely the opposite of her promises.
Right..... Of course the desire to have politicians keep their promises can only arise from partisanship....
Just what political agenda am I representing as I'm an independent? The will of the individual, as in, government of the people, by the people, and for the people? The desire to have honest politicians? The desire to hold politicians accountable for what they promise? I realize that these are ideas that party politics would not like to become the predominant attitude, but they are the only solution to corrupt government overriding the will of the majority of population.
There is no freedom without restrictions. My right to punch you stops where your nose begins. My right to free speech stops where your right to not be libeled and slandered begins. Your right to do as you please with my property ends where my right to do with I please with my property begins.
Freedom without respect for the rights of others is lunacy. It leads to very bad ends. It ends with total lawlessness and might makes right.
Well, no, but he wasn't exactly a freedom-fighter or a lover of civil liberties.
This is true, but Chiang wasn't a pedophile like Mao either. Mao liked 11 and 12 year old virgins and had men(his pimps) constantly searching the country for them so he could deflower them.
I know people who, when confronted with their lousy behavior, think that it is confirmation of the "rightness" of their behavior. If they're a bully telling them that not everyone is a bully by nature confirms to them that bullies are the only ones who have everything all together. To them people who aren't bullies just don't understand life.
If they are a person in position of authority it will tell them that when they lie it only confirms what powerful leader they are, even if they're a total waste as a leader.
Instead of this being cautionary to them, it will only increase their antisocial behavior.
Just to be pedantic, there is no longer a difference between sociopath and psychopath in the DSM-IV used by both psychologists and psychiatrists. Both disorders are incorporated under the same definition, and it's now called "antisocial personality disorder".
You need to exchange US Congress for US President. It was Obama that promised open, transparent government and that the process would be aired on CSPAN.
It's that the AC didn't like what the author had to say. And, yes, I knew the comma was missing, but it didn't interfere with the meaning of the sentence. The entire point of the AC's invoking of GWB, no matter what his protestations were, was to cast aspersions upon the wording, because that was GWB's problem. His misuse of words was legendary, not his misuse of punctuation, as you can't see punctuation in a spoken sentence.
Ah, no it isn't. It's more like there is a group of people giving away popcorn because they believe it's important to give it away. Then a few people in the group make an arbitrary decision to start charging for the popcorn without the entire group's agreement.
If it had been a single developer who created the project and was the only one who had written any code then your analogy would be correct. It's not what has happened though.
Ummmm.... I see you've never been poor and had a creditor come after you. Just offering legal tender of $1 or more doesn't work. You end up having to hire a lawyer in the end. The hospitals just refuse to accept payment and keep on with their collection procedures which include garnisheeing your wages. Their favorite tactic is to tell you that you need to give them an amount that is more than you can pay per month, and then when that payment isn't made in full they double the payment amount. Thus they guarantee that you can't make full payments and turn you over to the nastiest collection agents they can find.
I'm someone without insurance. I've never gone to a hospital and demanded free treatment and I have diabetes, high blood pressure, and have disabling back pain from something similar to rheumatoid arthritis in my spine. I also don't believe any hospital emergency room will treat you on an ongoing basis for chronic conditions. I also can't get SS as it's now set up to deny, deny, deny. You can be dying of cancer and you will get refused access to SS. I've known, and that's a past tense verb for a reason, people it has happened to.
All the above being said, I also don't believe I have a "right" to demand that someone else foot the bill. I don't believe anyone has that "right". How can it be a "right" to demand something from someone else that you can't, or won't, provide for yourself? That's a losing proposition all the way around because it only encourages those people lacking the motivation/self-respect to support themselves to force other people to support them, and that's just not right. I'd much rather go without than do that to other people, or have someone else thinking they could do that to me.
Slashdot Mirror
Yea, you're seeing it wrong, and seeing it right at the same time. Many of us do hate corruption and have a problem with things like this. However, there are also people who accepted the irresponsible and immoral "greed is good" philosophy. Greed now so rules their lives that they see evidence of greed in society as validation of their philosophy rather than recognizing that what is going on is actually costing them money and harming their own society.
Greed has so blinded them that they become like dogs crapping in their own back yards.
Maybe I'm misreading you, but what I see you saying is, if you find a way to steal, steal with impunity for as long as you can.
LOL. That was funny.
But, actually there is a logical fallacy there. I had to go back and look at exactly which one it is, but it's there. I recognized a fallacy existed in the thought underlying the post, I just couldn't bring to mind which fallacy it was as it's been 8 or 9 years since I last looked into logical fallacies.
The fallacy is: Questionable Cause. That fallacy says that because you see often A and B together you assume that A causes B. It's a fallacy because it ignores all other possible causes.
Ummmm.... It's my understanding from historical Chinese government interaction with their businesses that it tells Chinese businesses what to do, how to interact with the rest of the world. It's not like their government isn't a totalitarian government.
IMO, it's self-defeating behavior to deny obvious possibilities.
I'm not sure what the formal name of the logical fallacy you used in your post is, but it most definitely is a logical fallacy.
There is nothing in Capitalistic theory that says companies must act unethically to succeed, or that the ONLY motivation a company must have is greed.
There are ethical businesses and businessmen. Not all businessmen think that short-term profit is their only goal or only reason for existence. Yes, a business must make money to succeed and to stay in business, but that doesn't mean greed must be the over-riding motivation.
Ummm.... No, the CBO didn't say what you're alleging it said. It said, if the $500 billion you are taking out of Medicare is applied to deficit reduction, and only deficit reduction, then the the bill is deficit neutral at the Federal level. However, if the $500 billion is spent elsewhere in the bill, which is how it is used, you can't count it twice. Thus, any claim to this bill reducing the deficit is patently false. It actually raises the deficit by a minimum of $380 billion.
On top of that it mandates that the states cover 60% of the people being covered under this bill. It doesn't fund this for the states though. So, here in the state of Washington, where I live, the state is estimating that this will add $6.4 billion to Medicaid costs that the state must cover. However, Medicaid in Washington state is broke, and the $6.4 billion in costs just happens to equal our current deficit. So, the affect of this bill on the state of Washington is double its deficit in one fell swoop. On top of that many doctors are refusing to take any more Medicaid patients as the state now pays them less than what it costs to treat them. Other doctors aren't even going to accept Medicaid patients at all.
So, where are these new patients going to get treated? Is the government going to raise it's costs even more by raising Medicaid payments thus raising it's deficit? Is it going to force doctors to lose money and possibly bankrupt their practices thus once again lowering the number of health care providers? Or, are doctors just going to up their overall rates to their paying customers? It looks to me this will lead to even further rationing of health care and reduced access to doctors for everyone.
No matter how it happens somebody has to pay for it. There is no free lunch. One way or another this is going to raise rates, and create much longer waiting times to get an appointment to see a doctor, as this mandate is going to add a large number of patients but in all actuality is going to reduce the number of providers. It's also going to significantly raise taxes at the state level on top of the increases in taxes at the Federal level.
And now they can finally make good on that promise.
Bullshit. They'll make this an RFID card and the cards will be hacked within a week or so of being released. When everything was just starting to be computerized the argument put forward was that it would stop all fraud.
Yeah, like that really happened, and no RFID card is going to stop all Medicare, income tax, etc... fraud. It will probably make it worse, as that's been the trend so far with each promise of technological advancement being trumpeted as the "fraud-ender".
I don't think you understand the conservative position, or the position taken on what we see as Obama care. We're not against health care reform, but we are against the health care reform that was just passed. It has a lot of things wrong with it that will do us all harm.
1. This bill is not deficit neutral. The CBO put out a written statement saying that the Democrats couldn't take $500 billion out of medicare and spend it on subsidies while saying the $500 billion taken out of medicare is reducing the deficit. However, all the Democrats and Obama ignored it and went right on claiming this bill reduces the deficit. It doesn't. It adds to the deficit by a minimum of $380 billion. That's the $120 billion claimed as deficit reduction minus the $500 billion counted twice. Claiming it's reducing the deficit while knowing it isn't is flat out lying to the American public. It's despicable.
2. As this bill takes $500 billion out of medicare/medicaid it puts both of those programs on even shakier financial footing than they were before, even if no more people would be added to the medicare/medicaid roles. However, that isn't the case. It gives an unfunded mandate to the states to treat the 60% of the estimated 30 million more people it's supposed to cover. Have you looked at the financial condition of Medicaid in your state? In Washington it's dead broke and both physicians and pharmacies are leaving the program right and left as they are losing money on each medicaid patient they treat. They aren't even breaking even. They're losing money. Washington state figures that this bill add another 300,000 people to their Medicaid program. Who's going to fund it? Not the Federal government. Where's the money going to come from? Where are the doctors to treat these 300,000 additional patients? Neither exists. It means that wait times for seeing a doctor are going to be measured in months, and patients, when they get a prescription may not be able to fill it. That's adequate health care? That's better than things are now?
3. Moody's put out a report saying the US will lose its AAA credit rating in a matter of months if the US government doesn't lower its spending and start paying off its debts. You seem intelligent enough to know what that is going to do to our economy. It will raise the interest rates the government pays on its debts to the point that a large chunk of the taxes we pay will go to nothing more than interest payments. This is rapidly reaching the point of no return on the way to bankruptcy. What's being done about it by the Obama adiminstration? They're lying to us about the real costs of Obama care, a huge additional government bureaucracy is being created that means more government spending, and the IRS is being set up to be the collection agency for the fines people will have to pay if they don't buy health insurance.
And you wonder why people say this bill is a disaster? Why the vast majority of Americans opposed it? They aren't opposing health care reform, they are opposing this bill. Learn to differentiate between the two and stop listening to what the liberal media is telling you.
I'm in need of health care far more than most people that don't have it. I'm diabetic, have a long history of high blood pressure, have a family history of diabetes, strokes, heart attacks, etc... on both sides of my family, am disabled but gave up fighting the SS system and am getting no medical treatment for my health issues. I'm against this bill on the grounds that it's bad for me, the supposed target-for-helping of this bill. It's terrible legislation.
Well, I could probably make a lot of my points clearer too, so no biggie. We understand each other in the end....
I don't have a major problem with this second post of yours. I guess I didn't understand where you were coming from in your first one.
I still have a major problem with the idea that everyone has to "go along" just to point out the flaws in a president's agenda. I find that completely foolish as a bad president with an agenda can point this country in the wrong direction for a long time, and the results of just following along behind and letting bad ideas come to fruition can be devastating to the country. It's this point that made me think that you are a political partisan.
I know what voter turnout levels have been. I don't think that is going to continue. The "silent majority" is going to start voting in great numbers as this demonstration of politics by the Democrats has greatly angered these people. These people made up a large portion of the polls who disliked Obama care. When they spoke out they were flat out ignored and insulted, and they are not going to take this lying down.
Saying that there is no consensus on anything is the US is ignoring the huge percentage of the population who opposed Obama care. There is also consensus that the US debt is a greater threat to the US than terrorism, by almost 3 to 1, and a 4 to 1 consensus that the national debt could collapse the entire US economy, according to 2 new polls just published.
This political awakening of the "silent majority" is going to fundamentally change this country. Many of the liberal laws and the big spending policies are going to go, or all incumbents will go. It's already a consensus of close to 3 to 1 already saying that all incumbents must go, and if both parties keep on voting for more spending and more government power they are going to be replaced.
The pendulum has been on the left side of the political spectrum for quite a while, and now it is going to swing to the right with a vengeance. It's going to stay there for quite a while too.
How is that? If the majority of the US population opposes what members of either the House or the Senate, or what a president wants, the only thing that should count is what the politicians want? Just how do you account for the will of a clear majority of the American people? I don't see any thought given in what you have to say to their desires/wishes/opinions at all.
Where do you get the idea that Obama is honest? I'm not trolling you. It's a serious question as I just don't see it. I see him as one of the most dishonest we've had in a long time.
OK. I wasn't aware of her making that promise too. She's so slimy though that it's no surprise that her actions were completely the opposite of her promises.
Right..... Of course the desire to have politicians keep their promises can only arise from partisanship....
Just what political agenda am I representing as I'm an independent? The will of the individual, as in, government of the people, by the people, and for the people? The desire to have honest politicians? The desire to hold politicians accountable for what they promise? I realize that these are ideas that party politics would not like to become the predominant attitude, but they are the only solution to corrupt government overriding the will of the majority of population.
There is no freedom without restrictions. My right to punch you stops where your nose begins. My right to free speech stops where your right to not be libeled and slandered begins. Your right to do as you please with my property ends where my right to do with I please with my property begins.
Freedom without respect for the rights of others is lunacy. It leads to very bad ends. It ends with total lawlessness and might makes right.
Well, no, but he wasn't exactly a freedom-fighter or a lover of civil liberties.
This is true, but Chiang wasn't a pedophile like Mao either. Mao liked 11 and 12 year old virgins and had men(his pimps) constantly searching the country for them so he could deflower them.
I know people who, when confronted with their lousy behavior, think that it is confirmation of the "rightness" of their behavior. If they're a bully telling them that not everyone is a bully by nature confirms to them that bullies are the only ones who have everything all together. To them people who aren't bullies just don't understand life.
If they are a person in position of authority it will tell them that when they lie it only confirms what powerful leader they are, even if they're a total waste as a leader.
Instead of this being cautionary to them, it will only increase their antisocial behavior.
I liked the Obama tag even better.... ;)
Just to be pedantic, there is no longer a difference between sociopath and psychopath in the DSM-IV used by both psychologists and psychiatrists. Both disorders are incorporated under the same definition, and it's now called "antisocial personality disorder".
You need to exchange US Congress for US President. It was Obama that promised open, transparent government and that the process would be aired on CSPAN.
The sentence isn't ambiguous.
It's that the AC didn't like what the author had to say. And, yes, I knew the comma was missing, but it didn't interfere with the meaning of the sentence. The entire point of the AC's invoking of GWB, no matter what his protestations were, was to cast aspersions upon the wording, because that was GWB's problem. His misuse of words was legendary, not his misuse of punctuation, as you can't see punctuation in a spoken sentence.
"With that kind of reading comprehension I..."
Thanks for the setup line, Mr. Bush.
Ummmm.... The dictionary lists one of the definitions of "kind" as "fundamental nature or quality" which is exactly how the parent post used it.
I guess if you're going to mock someone's usage of the English language you should actually know what you're talking about.
Ah, no it isn't. It's more like there is a group of people giving away popcorn because they believe it's important to give it away. Then a few people in the group make an arbitrary decision to start charging for the popcorn without the entire group's agreement.
If it had been a single developer who created the project and was the only one who had written any code then your analogy would be correct. It's not what has happened though.
Ummmm.... I see you've never been poor and had a creditor come after you. Just offering legal tender of $1 or more doesn't work. You end up having to hire a lawyer in the end. The hospitals just refuse to accept payment and keep on with their collection procedures which include garnisheeing your wages. Their favorite tactic is to tell you that you need to give them an amount that is more than you can pay per month, and then when that payment isn't made in full they double the payment amount. Thus they guarantee that you can't make full payments and turn you over to the nastiest collection agents they can find.
I'm someone without insurance. I've never gone to a hospital and demanded free treatment and I have diabetes, high blood pressure, and have disabling back pain from something similar to rheumatoid arthritis in my spine. I also don't believe any hospital emergency room will treat you on an ongoing basis for chronic conditions. I also can't get SS as it's now set up to deny, deny, deny. You can be dying of cancer and you will get refused access to SS. I've known, and that's a past tense verb for a reason, people it has happened to.
All the above being said, I also don't believe I have a "right" to demand that someone else foot the bill. I don't believe anyone has that "right". How can it be a "right" to demand something from someone else that you can't, or won't, provide for yourself? That's a losing proposition all the way around because it only encourages those people lacking the motivation/self-respect to support themselves to force other people to support them, and that's just not right. I'd much rather go without than do that to other people, or have someone else thinking they could do that to me.