Nice try, but you've got the wrong guy. I've got over 18 years as a founder and board member of a couple corporations and am in talks to help a friend start another company.
And health insurance companies are still unnecessary. Expensive middlemen.
Forcing people to do things they don't want to do leads to violence. How many fewer abortion clinics would have been bombed if we had allowed some states to ban abortions?
First you seem to be against the use of force, then you suggest a regime of forced childbirth. Confusing.
But stick it in their face, and they get violent.
I assure you, most women getting an abortion do not want those busybodies' faces anywhere near them.
the Feds gotta come bustin'
Agreed, there's no good practical or moral reason for federal, state or local prohibition.
The point is that we can either have an Internet under the rules set by a few corporate executives or by the government. And I'll take government rules any day, since the government is by, for and of us, the citizens.
You may say that the link between what we the people want and what the government does is becoming rather loose. But that's why you should be fighting to strengthen that link (e.g. restricting corporate money in politics). Don't just surrender and cede control to the corporate execs.
And what steps would you take to fight this phantom menace? Would you agree that showing up to vote in person is not likely to happen with any frequency? Risking a felony, in person, for a single vote doesn't make a lot of sense.
Creating a system that forces people to buy things (Obamacare) is unconstitutional
The conservative Supreme Court disagrees. Your slippery slope is not slippery and not a slope. And health care does make for a better life.
greedy people seeking to milk the system
Insurance companies? Unnecessary middlemen.
people from countries with socialized medicine come to the USA for treatment
Nobody I've heard disagrees that the U.S. has some of the best care that money can buy. The disagreement is regarding those that can't afford quality care.
Sure, Obama gets credit for saying, "Make it so," but ANY president would have said that.
Except that other potential presidents said they would not have said that, and criticized Obama for his stance.
As for mortgage relief...
Did you read anything about the excesses and dirty tricks in the mortgage industry? And you still don't want any regulation? I do agree that the mortgage relief was not enough to make much of a difference.
As for people having insurance canceled...
Wendell Potter, former VP of Cigna says it happens. But even if it didn't happen, why fight against the provision barring that practice? What's the harm in it?
I would be livid to put it mildly
You would be livid at someone brought here as a child, who knows no other country? Seems rather extreme.
(1) raising the debt
Who's the last one who didn't?
(2) increasing racial tension
IOW, why is he so provocatively black?
Zimmerman...let alone presented in court?
I don't know what you wanted Obama to say, but the general outrage around the case was mostly that there wasn't going to be any facts presented in court.
(3) adding mountains of legalese to the U.S. Code
A single payer system would have been much simpler, so I agree with that.
This fictional drone of yours sounds closer to those that have been told over and over that gay marriage somehow threatens their own marriages. Snapping out of it isn't drone behavior. And what makes you think people spun quickly? I think people generally make small jumps in their thinking on these issues. And enough people made a small jump in the same direction the same week to show up in national polls.
I personally disagree with homosexuality, but even I can see the change has been occurring since long before Obama reached office.
There was a clear inflection point in polls though when Obama publicly stated his support for gay marriage.
Obama has had 3.5 years to do something and the unemployment rate has not only EXCEEDED the HIGHEST he said it would go, it has STAYED there for a long long time.
We've been doing doing about a million jobs a month better lately than the economy he took over in 2009. As economists know, spending is what pulls an economy out of a recession. You can clearly see when the stimulus worked in the unemployment numbers, but Congress blocked the jobs bill and has forced austerity, which is a drag on the economy.
How much voter fraud do we have in this country?
Almost none. Well, there was that O'Keefe guy. Got any others?
The GOP platform clearly says they oppose "critical thinking skills", implying that's a relabeling of OBE. And the reasons are that it's not good to challenge parental authority and fixed beliefs. You really want to defend that? If you want to defend the Texas GOP, you can still claim is was a mistake and they don't believe that.
I can agree somewhat in that they didn't categorically object to teaching of critical thinking, though their objection to challenging of fixed beliefs comes quite close. So they could have been narrower in their objection. And they could have stated support for teaching of "real" critical thinking if it was meant as a narrow objection.
The Texas GOP does not oppose "critical thinking skills"
Then why don't they state that they approve of teaching critical thinking skills and simply call out some parts of a curriculum as not really critical thinking? If I find that someone's teaching 2+2=5, I wouldn't call for an end of teaching mathematics.
What's your point - that insurance companies use dirty tricks to avoid paying benefits? If so, I agree, but the new rules attempt to prevent some of that. Maybe you don't think the new rules have the teeth to make a difference?
Yup. Universal health care makes the system cheaper per person for several reasons. The efficiency of clinic vs. ER care and health maintenance vs. only treating something once it's life-threatening are two of the reasons.
You're in a small minority of people that want to let people suffer and die outside ERs because they can't prove they can pay for help.
Your idea that governments can only cause problems is contradicted by many examples, including health care examples in other countries. Your Taco Bell reference, while funny, is a long, not-so-slippery slope away. So far you've probably got around 0 people that want that.
I think those are great. Buying insurance from a private corporation and getting or not getting health care and then wading through the paperwork is what I was referring to. I'd be for medicare for all. Less hassle, less costly.
Medical insurance is straightforward to deal with, and a necessary expense. High-deductible plans are great. You are thinking of managed health plans/HMOs.
No, I wasn't thinking of HMOs. And medical insurance would not be necessary if we had a single payer system.
The individual mandate was designed (by Republican think tanks) to avoid freeloaders, who we've all been paying for when they show up in the emergency room.
I also have insurance and the 2 big things it does for me are that it'll be tougher for an insurance company to deny benefits based on a pre-existing condition (which has been interpreted ludicrously loosely at times) and that if I (or someone close to me) ever does have huge medical bills, it will be less likely to bankrupt me.
You can be completely self-interested and recognize the value in society helping those who make mistakes. Add in a little compassion and some of those things are slam dunks.
Employer provided health insurance policies may not deny coverage for pre-existing conditions.
What's your source? When I changed jobs last year, my new insurance informed me that they wouldn't cover any costs of a particular type for 6 months, citing a relatively minor and non-chronic incident I had in the previous year. I also personally know someone who had to leave his job because of his son's serious, chronic condition. The company couldn't afford the heavy premiums.
Slashdot Mirror
See here for how our austerity has hurt employment:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/25/american-austerity/
And here's Obama's spending compared to the last several presidents:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/obama-spending-binge-never-happened-2012-05-22
I think where we can agree is that giveaways to too-big-to-fail banks wasn't and isn't the best use of our limited resources.
Nice try, but you've got the wrong guy. I've got over 18 years as a founder and board member of a couple corporations and am in talks to help a friend start another company.
And health insurance companies are still unnecessary. Expensive middlemen.
Forcing people to do things they don't want to do leads to violence. How many fewer abortion clinics would have been bombed if we had allowed some states to ban abortions?
First you seem to be against the use of force, then you suggest a regime of forced childbirth. Confusing.
But stick it in their face, and they get violent.
I assure you, most women getting an abortion do not want those busybodies' faces anywhere near them.
the Feds gotta come bustin'
Agreed, there's no good practical or moral reason for federal, state or local prohibition.
The point is that we can either have an Internet under the rules set by a few corporate executives or by the government. And I'll take government rules any day, since the government is by, for and of us, the citizens.
You may say that the link between what we the people want and what the government does is becoming rather loose. But that's why you should be fighting to strengthen that link (e.g. restricting corporate money in politics). Don't just surrender and cede control to the corporate execs.
And what steps would you take to fight this phantom menace? Would you agree that showing up to vote in person is not likely to happen with any frequency? Risking a felony, in person, for a single vote doesn't make a lot of sense.
Creating a system that forces people to buy things (Obamacare) is unconstitutional
The conservative Supreme Court disagrees. Your slippery slope is not slippery and not a slope. And health care does make for a better life.
greedy people seeking to milk the system
Insurance companies? Unnecessary middlemen.
people from countries with socialized medicine come to the USA for treatment
Nobody I've heard disagrees that the U.S. has some of the best care that money can buy. The disagreement is regarding those that can't afford quality care.
Sure, Obama gets credit for saying, "Make it so," but ANY president would have said that.
Except that other potential presidents said they would not have said that, and criticized Obama for his stance.
As for mortgage relief ...
Did you read anything about the excesses and dirty tricks in the mortgage industry? And you still don't want any regulation? I do agree that the mortgage relief was not enough to make much of a difference.
As for people having insurance canceled...
Wendell Potter, former VP of Cigna says it happens. But even if it didn't happen, why fight against the provision barring that practice? What's the harm in it?
I would be livid to put it mildly
You would be livid at someone brought here as a child, who knows no other country? Seems rather extreme.
(1) raising the debt
Who's the last one who didn't?
(2) increasing racial tension
IOW, why is he so provocatively black?
Zimmerman...let alone presented in court?
I don't know what you wanted Obama to say, but the general outrage around the case was mostly that there wasn't going to be any facts presented in court.
(3) adding mountains of legalese to the U.S. Code
A single payer system would have been much simpler, so I agree with that.
If someone wanted to collapse a government
That's some serious paranoia.
I was thinking of individuals attempting to vote fraudulently, but that's a good point.
Good one. And what ever happened to the case of that woman who voted in the wrong district? Last name Coulter, I think.
This fictional drone of yours sounds closer to those that have been told over and over that gay marriage somehow threatens their own marriages. Snapping out of it isn't drone behavior. And what makes you think people spun quickly? I think people generally make small jumps in their thinking on these issues. And enough people made a small jump in the same direction the same week to show up in national polls.
I can't correct it all right now...
I personally disagree with homosexuality, but even I can see the change has been occurring since long before Obama reached office.
There was a clear inflection point in polls though when Obama publicly stated his support for gay marriage.
Obama has had 3.5 years to do something and the unemployment rate has not only EXCEEDED the HIGHEST he said it would go, it has STAYED there for a long long time.
We've been doing doing about a million jobs a month better lately than the economy he took over in 2009. As economists know, spending is what pulls an economy out of a recession. You can clearly see when the stimulus worked in the unemployment numbers, but Congress blocked the jobs bill and has forced austerity, which is a drag on the economy.
How much voter fraud do we have in this country?
Almost none. Well, there was that O'Keefe guy. Got any others?
The GOP platform clearly says they oppose "critical thinking skills", implying that's a relabeling of OBE. And the reasons are that it's not good to challenge parental authority and fixed beliefs. You really want to defend that? If you want to defend the Texas GOP, you can still claim is was a mistake and they don't believe that.
I can agree somewhat in that they didn't categorically object to teaching of critical thinking, though their objection to challenging of fixed beliefs comes quite close. So they could have been narrower in their objection. And they could have stated support for teaching of "real" critical thinking if it was meant as a narrow objection.
Uh, no. The Slashdot crowd has its flaws, but cheering on opposition to critical thinking itself isn't one of them.
The Texas GOP does not oppose "critical thinking skills"
Then why don't they state that they approve of teaching critical thinking skills and simply call out some parts of a curriculum as not really critical thinking? If I find that someone's teaching 2+2=5, I wouldn't call for an end of teaching mathematics.
What's your point - that insurance companies use dirty tricks to avoid paying benefits? If so, I agree, but the new rules attempt to prevent some of that. Maybe you don't think the new rules have the teeth to make a difference?
Yup. Universal health care makes the system cheaper per person for several reasons. The efficiency of clinic vs. ER care and health maintenance vs. only treating something once it's life-threatening are two of the reasons.
You're in a small minority of people that want to let people suffer and die outside ERs because they can't prove they can pay for help.
Your idea that governments can only cause problems is contradicted by many examples, including health care examples in other countries. Your Taco Bell reference, while funny, is a long, not-so-slippery slope away. So far you've probably got around 0 people that want that.
I think those are great. Buying insurance from a private corporation and getting or not getting health care and then wading through the paperwork is what I was referring to. I'd be for medicare for all. Less hassle, less costly.
I've dealt with both and they're both frustratingly complicated.
Medical insurance is straightforward to deal with, and a necessary expense. High-deductible plans are great. You are thinking of managed health plans/HMOs.
No, I wasn't thinking of HMOs. And medical insurance would not be necessary if we had a single payer system.
The individual mandate was designed (by Republican think tanks) to avoid freeloaders, who we've all been paying for when they show up in the emergency room.
I also have insurance and the 2 big things it does for me are that it'll be tougher for an insurance company to deny benefits based on a pre-existing condition (which has been interpreted ludicrously loosely at times) and that if I (or someone close to me) ever does have huge medical bills, it will be less likely to bankrupt me.
Medical insurance is not only incredibly frustrating to deal with, but a huge unnecessary expense in the system.
You can be completely self-interested and recognize the value in society helping those who make mistakes. Add in a little compassion and some of those things are slam dunks.
Employer provided health insurance policies may not deny coverage for pre-existing conditions.
What's your source? When I changed jobs last year, my new insurance informed me that they wouldn't cover any costs of a particular type for 6 months, citing a relatively minor and non-chronic incident I had in the previous year. I also personally know someone who had to leave his job because of his son's serious, chronic condition. The company couldn't afford the heavy premiums.
So you'd benefit greatly from a single payer system, even more than most of us would.