If I could get elected in the first place, I'd do it.
See, that's part of the problem with democratic process. Your vote counts the same no matter how much money you have. "Poor" people will vote that they be given benefits funded by the rich. OTOH, one of the good things about democratic process is that people have equal political power even if they don't have equal economic power.
I guess there's no perfect system.
Yet, amazingly, many homeschooled kids do much better with far less funding. I wish education were tuition-based, so I could keep my own money to teach my own kids. Those that have lots of kids (and this includes me, already above the national average) should be required to take responsibility for them. Those that don't have any should get a break. I think it's immoral to be forced to keep funding such a broken system when I'll never make use of it.
My son just turned one; I intend with every school year to start it by asking his teachers what the parents can provide for him/her to better teach our children.
"With respect to the two words 'general welfare,' I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators." - James Madison in letter to James Robertson
"[Congressional jurisdiction of power] is limited to certain enumerated objects, which concern all the members of the republic, but which are not to be attained by the separate provisions of any." - James Madison, Federalist 14
"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined . . . to be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce." - James Madison, Federalist 45
"If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions." - James Madison, 1792
"The Constitution allows only the means which are 'necessary,' not those which are merely 'convenient,' for effecting the enumerated powers. If such a latitude of construction be allowed to this phrase as to give any non-enumerated power, it will go to every one, for there is not one which ingenuity may not torture into a convenience in some instance or other, to some one of so long a list of enumerated powers. It would swallow up all the delegated powers, and reduce the whole to one power, as before observed" - Thomas Jefferson, 1791
"Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated." - Thomas Jefferson, 1798
Sounds to me like you don't have any kids of your own.
If the birth is expected January 20, you don't set aside your flex until that year. Then, oh shoot, you have a preemie in December! You can't use the following year's flex for that, plus the expenses are higher on account of the preemie circumstances.
Or the reverse, you planned for December 20, but your conception was off (hard to make those things happen exactly on schedule) and the baby doesn't arrive until January 10. Can't use the previous year's flex either, and it reverts back to the company who paid it on your behalf. (Yeah right.)
People would be more capable of supporting the kids they have if the government weren't confiscating a large portion of their paychecks! That's the point here. People ought to be responsible for their own medical care expenses. When government screws with that, they screw it all up (as is typical).
Less government meddling. More personal responsibility. That's what I want.
Instead of adding more broken layers on top of layers already broken, just simplify.
The whole mess is created by the income tax. Even the most ardent proponents of government theft had to admit that reducing someone's ability to keep themselves healthy is pretty evil. So health insurance became a non-taxable benefit from your employer rather than income. (This carried the nasty side-effect of employer lock-in as well.) There were still additional expenses out-of-pocket, so the concept of "flex accounts" came along. These are also tied to your employer, so again you will lose if you have to change jobs. Or, heaven forbid, end up with an expense you hadn't anticipated and budgeted for, like a pregnancy.
Shifting the burden of insurance to a third-party also has the effect that you tend to use more of something when you aren't footing the bill. Between this and the shift of "health insurance" into "health care payment plan", the "price of health care" has gone up dramatically.
Now McCain wants to add another layer of complexity (and gov't intervention) on top of that whole mess. Tax even the benefits you get, but then shell-game a rebate back to you to smooth it all out. What a joke! Get down to fixing the underlying problem...income tax!
Scrap the income tax entirely, and go to a consumption-based tax, like a national sales tax. Exempt certain essentials like food and medical. Change health insurance to be insurance again, taking care only of major incidents. You will immediately see people become more responsible when affects their pocketbook directly, and health care costs will come down for everyone.
It would be compulsory to pay the taxes that support it, whether or not you use its services. If "society" isn't footing the bill, it's not socialized. You are correct that it may not be compulsory to use it, but you can be darn sure you'll pay for it whether you want to or not.
Only the fact that, if one is already forced to pay for the socialist system, there's not much left in the budget to pay for a second/private system in addition.
Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome
on
Google Chrome, Day 2
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· Score: 1
The User Agent String is "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/525.13 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/0.2.149.27 Safari/525.13"
Good freakin' grief! How many levels of browser-spoofing do you need? Why can't this simply say, "Chrome/0.2.149.27 (Windows NT 5.1; U; en-US) AppleWebKit/525.13" at the most???
Maybe the "leave me alone and keep government small" ppl happen to be religious types, and they get ridiculed on the latter point in order to demonize the former ideas by association. Just a thought.
Then why don't other large groups offer insurance plans? If you belong to 5 groups (e.g. employer, church, fraternal organization, professional society, Slashdot Readers United) you could have up to 5 plans to choose from. Each would, of course, negotiate its own group rate with the insurance company on behalf of its members. The reason is because you'd have to pay for them out of your own pocket, and even the screwed up US federal gov't realizes it's pretty evil to make ppl pay taxes on the money they use to keep themselves healthy. That's why health insurance is almost universally given by employers: it's really compensation just like your salary is, but in this way it can be separated from taxation. It's a "benefit" not pay.
If there were no income tax (or if you taxed employees on the monetary equivalent of benefits they receive, which would pretty much put an end to most employer-offered benefits), you could simply get paid a greater amount, and buy your own insurance to fit your own needs. Also, since you'd be paying for it out of your own pocket, you'd be encouraged to be smarter with your (ab)uses of it, taking the most cost-effective plan for your own needs, rather than being stuck with the one-size-fits-all plan your employer gives you. This would tend not to drive up costs like our current system. (When "someone else" is footing the bill, it's easy to take it for all its worth.)
In short, there's no good reason other than income tax why you can't get your group rate insurance discount through any large organization you wish rather than solely through your employer.
Except that the market isn't free mostly because of gov't intervention. If it weren't for income tax, the concept of insurance-as-nonincome-benefit would never have come up. If it weren't for that, you wouldn't be locked into the insurer chosen by your employer. When the market isn't free, the government should BUTT OUT.
I'm not saying there isn't bias on both sides. I am saying that the cartoon nicely illustrated the point being made here. And that point is mostly accurate: moral peccadilloes on the Left are glossed over, while those on the Right are excoriated. For those on the Left, who tend to believe more in moral relativism, I suppose this make sense...judge pols according to the values they espouse. For those on the Right, who tend to believe in moral absolutes, it's frustrating...judge all pols with the same standard. Thus is illustrated a fundamental difference in philosophy between the two.
I'm OK with that as long as the amendments and changes are still germane to the original subject of the bill! Unrelated riders should be right out. Nobody's going to vote against a bill giving $10 million for better body armor for soldiers just because Congressman Dork adds a rider to build a $10k memorial to himself in his hometown. The press and the public would have your hide! We can hope that other congressman/senators or the president has some principles and the balls to stand up to these abuses, but in reality...it doesn't happen much.
Nitpick: The provision for the States to call a Constitutional Convention without the participation of Congress need not be limited merely to amending the Constitution. They could just as easily throw the whole thing out and start over...which is what was done in the original Constitutional Convention when the Articles of Confederation were thrown out, even though the Articles did not have provision for that.
In theory, this is good. It balances the "self-regulation" of the federal government you mention by showing that ultimately it is subordinate to the States. (FedGov is a creation of the States, not the other way around.) However, given current political trends, I wouldn't trust delegates to a convention of this sort to draft any kind of fundamental guiding government document...we'd have no rights left.
Slashdot Mirror
Eat, riiiight. You're going to come back with a bottle of rum. Yo ho ho...
If I could get elected in the first place, I'd do it. See, that's part of the problem with democratic process. Your vote counts the same no matter how much money you have. "Poor" people will vote that they be given benefits funded by the rich. OTOH, one of the good things about democratic process is that people have equal political power even if they don't have equal economic power. I guess there's no perfect system.
Yet, amazingly, many homeschooled kids do much better with far less funding. I wish education were tuition-based, so I could keep my own money to teach my own kids. Those that have lots of kids (and this includes me, already above the national average) should be required to take responsibility for them. Those that don't have any should get a break. I think it's immoral to be forced to keep funding such a broken system when I'll never make use of it.
Provide an ability to homeschool your own kids?
"With respect to the two words 'general welfare,' I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators." - James Madison in letter to James Robertson "[Congressional jurisdiction of power] is limited to certain enumerated objects, which concern all the members of the republic, but which are not to be attained by the separate provisions of any." - James Madison, Federalist 14 "The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined . . . to be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce." - James Madison, Federalist 45 "If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions." - James Madison, 1792 "The Constitution allows only the means which are 'necessary,' not those which are merely 'convenient,' for effecting the enumerated powers. If such a latitude of construction be allowed to this phrase as to give any non-enumerated power, it will go to every one, for there is not one which ingenuity may not torture into a convenience in some instance or other, to some one of so long a list of enumerated powers. It would swallow up all the delegated powers, and reduce the whole to one power, as before observed" - Thomas Jefferson, 1791 "Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated." - Thomas Jefferson, 1798
Sounds to me like you don't have any kids of your own.
If the birth is expected January 20, you don't set aside your flex until that year. Then, oh shoot, you have a preemie in December! You can't use the following year's flex for that, plus the expenses are higher on account of the preemie circumstances.
Or the reverse, you planned for December 20, but your conception was off (hard to make those things happen exactly on schedule) and the baby doesn't arrive until January 10. Can't use the previous year's flex either, and it reverts back to the company who paid it on your behalf. (Yeah right.)
People would be more capable of supporting the kids they have if the government weren't confiscating a large portion of their paychecks! That's the point here. People ought to be responsible for their own medical care expenses. When government screws with that, they screw it all up (as is typical).
Less government meddling. More personal responsibility. That's what I want.
The top 1% of income earners made 22% of the income and paid 40% of the federal income taxes.
The top 5% earned 37% of the income and paid 60% of the taxes.
The top 10% earned 47% of the income and paid 71% of the taxes.
The top 25% made 68% of the income and paid 86% of the taxes.
The top 50% made 87% of the income and paid 97% of the taxes.
The bottom 50% made 13% of the income and paid 3% of the taxes.
Looks like the rich are taxed too much. source
Instead of adding more broken layers on top of layers already broken, just simplify.
The whole mess is created by the income tax. Even the most ardent proponents of government theft had to admit that reducing someone's ability to keep themselves healthy is pretty evil. So health insurance became a non-taxable benefit from your employer rather than income. (This carried the nasty side-effect of employer lock-in as well.) There were still additional expenses out-of-pocket, so the concept of "flex accounts" came along. These are also tied to your employer, so again you will lose if you have to change jobs. Or, heaven forbid, end up with an expense you hadn't anticipated and budgeted for, like a pregnancy.
Shifting the burden of insurance to a third-party also has the effect that you tend to use more of something when you aren't footing the bill. Between this and the shift of "health insurance" into "health care payment plan", the "price of health care" has gone up dramatically.
Now McCain wants to add another layer of complexity (and gov't intervention) on top of that whole mess. Tax even the benefits you get, but then shell-game a rebate back to you to smooth it all out. What a joke! Get down to fixing the underlying problem...income tax!
Scrap the income tax entirely, and go to a consumption-based tax, like a national sales tax. Exempt certain essentials like food and medical. Change health insurance to be insurance again, taking care only of major incidents. You will immediately see people become more responsible when affects their pocketbook directly, and health care costs will come down for everyone.
It would be compulsory to pay the taxes that support it, whether or not you use its services. If "society" isn't footing the bill, it's not socialized. You are correct that it may not be compulsory to use it, but you can be darn sure you'll pay for it whether you want to or not.
Only the fact that, if one is already forced to pay for the socialist system, there's not much left in the budget to pay for a second/private system in addition.
Good freakin' grief! How many levels of browser-spoofing do you need? Why can't this simply say, "Chrome/0.2.149.27 (Windows NT 5.1; U; en-US) AppleWebKit/525.13" at the most???
I've lived in "red" states most of my life, and I happen to be one of the people I described. Many of my friends are, too.
Maybe the "leave me alone and keep government small" ppl happen to be religious types, and they get ridiculed on the latter point in order to demonize the former ideas by association. Just a thought.
Indiana is considered Midwestern?
That's why I lose out on much good older tech...cost of shipping is prohibitive. Living in the Midwest, there aren't that many good local finds.
Were there drives in the enclosures? I need some of those for my failing A/UX box...
(Does that answer your question?)
If it's a Quadra 650 or 800? Up to $10. I need a new A/UX box.
Exactly my point. The US insurance industry is not a free market because of gov't interference.
Then why don't other large groups offer insurance plans? If you belong to 5 groups (e.g. employer, church, fraternal organization, professional society, Slashdot Readers United) you could have up to 5 plans to choose from. Each would, of course, negotiate its own group rate with the insurance company on behalf of its members. The reason is because you'd have to pay for them out of your own pocket, and even the screwed up US federal gov't realizes it's pretty evil to make ppl pay taxes on the money they use to keep themselves healthy. That's why health insurance is almost universally given by employers: it's really compensation just like your salary is, but in this way it can be separated from taxation. It's a "benefit" not pay.
If there were no income tax (or if you taxed employees on the monetary equivalent of benefits they receive, which would pretty much put an end to most employer-offered benefits), you could simply get paid a greater amount, and buy your own insurance to fit your own needs. Also, since you'd be paying for it out of your own pocket, you'd be encouraged to be smarter with your (ab)uses of it, taking the most cost-effective plan for your own needs, rather than being stuck with the one-size-fits-all plan your employer gives you. This would tend not to drive up costs like our current system. (When "someone else" is footing the bill, it's easy to take it for all its worth.)
In short, there's no good reason other than income tax why you can't get your group rate insurance discount through any large organization you wish rather than solely through your employer.
Except that the market isn't free mostly because of gov't intervention. If it weren't for income tax, the concept of insurance-as-nonincome-benefit would never have come up. If it weren't for that, you wouldn't be locked into the insurer chosen by your employer. When the market isn't free, the government should BUTT OUT.
This revamp of Windows will go over about as well as Lucas' revamping of the Force...
An important thing to remember is that not all science is right, and not all philosophies are wrong.
I'm not saying there isn't bias on both sides. I am saying that the cartoon nicely illustrated the point being made here. And that point is mostly accurate: moral peccadilloes on the Left are glossed over, while those on the Right are excoriated. For those on the Left, who tend to believe more in moral relativism, I suppose this make sense...judge pols according to the values they espouse. For those on the Right, who tend to believe in moral absolutes, it's frustrating...judge all pols with the same standard. Thus is illustrated a fundamental difference in philosophy between the two.
I'm OK with that as long as the amendments and changes are still germane to the original subject of the bill! Unrelated riders should be right out. Nobody's going to vote against a bill giving $10 million for better body armor for soldiers just because Congressman Dork adds a rider to build a $10k memorial to himself in his hometown. The press and the public would have your hide! We can hope that other congressman/senators or the president has some principles and the balls to stand up to these abuses, but in reality...it doesn't happen much.
Nitpick: The provision for the States to call a Constitutional Convention without the participation of Congress need not be limited merely to amending the Constitution. They could just as easily throw the whole thing out and start over...which is what was done in the original Constitutional Convention when the Articles of Confederation were thrown out, even though the Articles did not have provision for that.
In theory, this is good. It balances the "self-regulation" of the federal government you mention by showing that ultimately it is subordinate to the States. (FedGov is a creation of the States, not the other way around.) However, given current political trends, I wouldn't trust delegates to a convention of this sort to draft any kind of fundamental guiding government document...we'd have no rights left.