And cat owners with that logic. You most likely can't be near cats or people who have cats or places where cats have been. No, actually I love cats. Preferably rare, with a little hollandaise. But they cause no problem at all with my asthma.
Possibly dogs too, and then blind people cannot bring their seeing eye dog into the same store as you. Is that fair to the blind person? Ah, but there is a big difference between a service animal and a cigarette. Lets say that I was allergic to dogs (unusual, cats are much more allergenic than dogs, but lets take that for an example.) So I want to use a public space that a blind person who has a service dog also needs to use. Those are competing legitimate needs. Its a problem when you are trying to accommodate people with disabilities. It often takes creativity to overcome this sort of conflict, but 1) both parties can usually be accommodated if people are willing to work together and 2) both parties have legitimate needs.
Just saying... that's a weak argument. The problem is you are equating having a cigarette with a disability. It is certainly the case that addiction is a real disease, however the treatment of tobacco addiction does not involve providing people with an easy way to feed their addiction. If anything they are benefited by having smoking a cigarette be less convenient and more expensive.
So fortunately when we are talking about disability accommodation, the needs of people with asthma and people with tobacco addiction are not competing at all: no smoking in public places helps both.
Why can't the business owner decide if they want to allow smoking and then if smoking bothers you don't go there. Instead it has to be banned and taxed. A business owner should be allowed to have a business that caters to smokers. Because a business should be accessible to everyone, including people with asthma like me. If a smoker doesn't smoke at a restaurant, store or bar we can both still use that place. If he does, he eliminates me from being able to. Its like saying that a store owner should not be mandated to have wheelchair ramps because then businesses that cater to people in wheelchairs will 'spring up'. It doesn't work that way. In the time before smoking bans in restaurants and bars, it was unusual to see a restaurant or bar that was completely smoke free. Owners want the most customers possible, so they don't ban smoking knowing that non-smokers will often choose to suffer the bad smell to get what they otherwise want.
Its also a worker safety issue. We don't allow employers to have other toxic substances wafting through workplaces, why should we allow that with tobacco smoke? Just because its customer generated?
Last time I checked murder was "any willful act, knowingly undertaken, which causes the death of another person." So driving while talking on your cell phone - if you hit a pedestrian and kill them - is murder? Or for that matter, buying a worthless piece of plastic crap you don't need that supports the continued operation of a sweatshop in the third world which uses child labor - where next Tuesday a 9 year old boy will die because of the conditions there - is murder?
Both are willful acts, knowingly undertaken, which cause the death of another. Both are selfish and show a careless disregard for human life. But I don't think they rise to the title of murder. Nor does this idiot woman's behavior. Child abuse? Yes. Manslaughter? Maybe. But if its murder than everyone whose posted here is a murderer.
I will laugh happily every time I hear her family has suffered misfortune - losing their business, pulling their daughter from school and hopefully soon being forced from the community. She acted without remorse and deserves to suffer consequences. So you are applauding that a young girl (in this case the daughter of the woman in question) be forced from school (and quite possibly due to the financial problems her family suffers be denied a chance to attend college if she's apt), ostracized by her entire community, and very likely suffer profound emotional damage.
And your deriving pleasure from that girl's suffering is different than the woman you condemn because....?
But maybe the explanation for your son's corporate sociopathy is to be found in Old Testament Proverb 29:15:
"The rod and reproof give wisdom: but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame."
Maybe you, Mrs. Zelnick, were so taken by your handsome son that you spared the rod and spoiled the child. That would explain why he has brought you, by the way he presently acts, "to shame." So to add to his other mountains of failings, he's also an advocate of child abuse. Odd from someone who is always thinking of the children.
"You may lament the fact that legal activities may cause red flags" No, I lament:
1)Subjecting everyone to scrutiny during activities that do not necessitate higher scrutiny. That is, if I want to fly on a plane, get a job as a teacher, or buy a gun I think society has every right to subject me to greater scrutiny. However if I want to sit in my home and whack off to pictures of midget bdsm porn there is no reason to subject me to higher scrutiny unless you can prove an association between midget bdsm porn and a socially maladjusted activity. (And there is actually evidence that people who have access to porn get less STDs and are less likely to commit sexual crimes. If you burn it off in front of a CRT, you don't need to involve someone else.)
2)Using patently fucktacular means of profiling. While El Al uses far more stringent and more obviously racial profiling they also haven't been hijacked in my lifetime and would see a plastic bag saying 'Kip Hawley is an idiot' (or rather 'Izzy Borovich is a schmuck') as a sign you were a smart ass, not a terrorist.
3)Idiots who don't see that there is a massive difference between protesters and bombers. I am a 'habitual protester' and went to my first protest as a teenager. I've protested for LGBT rights, peace, at the NYC/RNC protests, as a union member, for women's reproductive choice, for the environment, and with anonymous. I am also a pacifist. In fact I would say that on average the protesters that I have encountered are far more likely to be pacifists than the average joe on the street. So if you are going to profile people to find those prone to violence - especially premeditated acts of terrorism, hippies smoking weed at a protest in central park are the first you should cross off your list.
So I don't mind intelligent profiling. But we don't do that. We use profiling based on what people would like to believe predicts anti-social behavior: sexual freedom, blue hair, being queer, being politically engaged (in protests and in organizations), etc. We also don't sufficiently psychologically screen or train those who will be doing the profiling (the TSA, police, etc) that it is NEVER EVER EVER acceptable to use one's authority in a punitive means. (For example: http://www.kiphawleyisanidiot.com/) When you give small-minded people authority over others, they will abuse that authority. But even when you give average people massive authority over people or you place them in a culture where abuse is acceptable, they will also abuse their authority (Abu Ghirab and the Stanford Prison Experiment.) So the only way that you can avoid that is to weed out the small-minded folks and create a culture where that sort of abuse is not tolerated.
Unfortunately most US police forces and the TSA have failed miserably at that.
A 'quick background scan' on Dennis Rader would show he had a bachelors degree in Justice Administration and worked for the city and was on city advisory panels, was a cub scout troop leader (who didn't abuse boys), was the president of his church's congregation panel, and a father with two grown children and a marriage of over 25 years.
He was also the BTK serial killer (BTK standing for bind, torture, kill.)
The only reason police caught him was his own stupidity. He actually asked (in his letters to the police and their response through a newspaper) whether a floppy disk could be traced back to the person who had created it. They said of course not, he sent them a disk, they got metadata from deleted files with his name and the name of his church all over it.
Unfortunately not all criminals are that stupid.
And even worse, what are the characteristics that you will use to determine what is dangerous? Unless you use prior criminal arrests for violent crimes, you are profiling. That's an unfortunate part of law enforcement, which I understand is somewhat necessary for screening. However to use profiling to limit the activities one may engage in lawfully is even more repulsive. "Sorry Mr Smith, you are not allowed to possess BDSM pron because of your age, gender, race, religion, hairstyle, and music tastes as indicated by your iPod. If you were gay or a woman or had just a bit more Yanni on your iPod, it would be fine... What? Oh, that's your wife's pron? Oh, OK. That's fine then. Have a good day."
Yeah, well I am not even certain what counts any more. Until I recently purchased one (due to the need for Wii access) I hadn't had a TV for almost a decade. But I now watch the Daily Show religiously on my laptop. Does that count as watching TV?
Would you buy a Metallica online album despite their former views? I actually have more respect for someone who is willing to say "Yep, I fucked up. Lets do it a better way."
However I wouldn't buy their album because their music sucks.
I. Don't. Believe. In. God. I was saying the slow kids even get this.
I'm a secular humanist, pro-choice, anti-gun, queer, pacifist, card carrying Green Party member. Jesus H Christ-on-a-Cracker... I would probably have a seizure if I walked into a church, or at the very least some nasty hives and need to take a few hits from my inhaler.
At least in Christianity, free will is assumed. If there were no free will, our love for God would mean nothing, because we wouldn't have any alternative. Exactly.
I call bullshit! The only thing monotheistic religions have ever managed to do right is... well, nothing First, I'm a gay, pro-choice, green, secular humanist. And I just pried the gun out of Charlton Heston's cold dead fingers. Second, go to any Jewish Deli in NYC and you will experience one thing one of the major monos did right. But I agree beyond the food and a few artists, they ain't worth the paper their holy books are printed on.
The point of my post was see, even the kids who ride the short school bus get it.
The only chance we have of any free will at all is in quantum weirdness which is not much free will to speak of, and certainly not enough to be palatable to the average American who thinks his success or failure is a product of his own decisions rather than the sum total of a very complicated system that he has little control over and basically just experiences as the phenomena of his mind. I knew you were gonna say that. And I knew you were going to say that.
It makes for a nice platitude, but your question (which is rhetorical) makes a lot of assumptions. Actually, my 6 year old beat up honda civic has had a window popped four times in the past year. Each was while I was in San Francisco where I go two days a week to volunteer at a free clinic to see people not unlike the ones who probably popped my windows. The time that was the hardest to process for me was the one where they stole $2 in quarters and left several pre-packaged pastries in the back seat. Its easy to fool myself with the 'they were probably hungry' idea. However, its a lot harder to have that happen and then say 'well, it was probably for drugs, but withdrawal can be incredibly painful and so they were seeking relief from their suffering regardless.'
The major assumption is that the thief is indeed less fortunate than the victim by some measure. He may very well be stealing a Honda Civic from a recently divorced single mother living out of a Super 8 motel and working the night shift at Arby's. And there is a randomness in the system. Just like there is a randomness to who gets killed by a drunk driver. However that doesn't mean that you can't find patterns. Who gets T-boned by a drunk driver may be unpredictable, but it is easily predictable that you are more likely to survive a crash with a seatbelt. It is certainly the case that this might happen as you describe. However it is more often than not that the thief (in non white-collar-crime) is worse off by many measures of socioeconomic status than the victim.
Just because he is less fortunate does not automatically grant him the moral right to what I have done for myself. My comments supposes you understand and accept the fact that there is no free will. Understanding that the guy who breaks into your Honda does not have free will but then supposing you do (and thus have 'done for yourself') kind of misses the whole point.
Except that since I know free will is an illusion, when the kid last night took a swing at me in a drunken stupor, I understood that as no more his decision than my decision was to treat him decently, and make sure he didn't injure himself or others as he metabolized himself to freedom in the morning.
Its more of a Buddhist concept of suffering and the necessity of working to end the suffering of others (or at least think you are doing so) that motivates moral action in people who don't believe in free will. How much better of a world would it be if when someone broke into your car to steal, you saw that person as someone less fortunate than you and felt it was your responsibility to, instead of punishing him, make his life better?
Though lucky for us, people who have the insight to understand a world without free will are also people who are more often endowed with that kind of sentiment.
Um, not much of a newsflash. Hell the major monotheistic religions figured this out way back. If God is omniscient, then he knows what I am about to do and everything I will do in my life. If he knows that, than I can't truly have free will. (Even if you try to weasel out that God decides to blind himself to my future, if it is knowable then its pre-ordained.) So unless you are willing to say God isn't omniscient, then there is no free will, kids.
The only chance we have of any free will at all is in quantum weirdness which is not much free will to speak of, and certainly not enough to be palatable to the average American who thinks his success or failure is a product of his own decisions rather than the sum total of a very complicated system that he has little control over and basically just experiences as the phenomena of his mind. We think we are in control, but largely we are along for the ride.
Used to freak me out, and it was hard to swallow since I have that Horatio Algeirs kind of narrative: Grew up on welfare in a house without indoor plumbing and now have a doctorate and am typing this on the toilet I picked (the best... I loves me a good quality toilet) in the house I just remodeled. It would feel very nice to think that I did all of this and deserve this wonderful throne. And to be honest my experience is that I think I have free will in my day to day life. But that's probably because the sum of my experiences also made me, after gaining understand that I don't have free will, accept that I live my life with that illusion and navigate life in such a way that I feel comfortable with the 'moral decisions' I think I make. So I pretend I have free will, and think I make moral choices based on that understanding.
Now I've given myself a headache. No. Wait, I was destined to have this headache as long as that electron spun to the left last Tuesday in Portugal. I'm going to go pretend to decide to take an ibuprofen.
Where would you draw the line? The term is completely subjective; to someone living under an oppressive dictatorship a penniless vagrant in the U.S. may be "rich", and yet the average citizen might reasonably consider that same vagrant "poor". The FPL is at least a defined term, although there is room for debate over the meaning of "necessities."
Well, let's see. I would call food, clothing, shelter, and health care necessities. The cost of those for Americans far outstrips the federal poverty level regardless of how thrifty you are. Hell, just the cost of purchasing health insurance alone eats up well over half (and that doesn't count copays etc.) Unless you think that health care, food, and a roof over one's head are luxury items?
I also don't agree with the concept of so-called "progressive" taxation. You rightly object to implications of the "FairTax" name; the same applies to the whole "regressive"/"progressive" naming scheme. There's nothing inherently good about transferring money from high-income to low-income groups -- unless, of course, one happens to be in the low-income group oneself.
1)As income level rises, consumption as a proportion of this income falls. Progressive taxes tend to have an economic stimulating effect because they decrease the tax burden on those who plug back a higher proportion of their income back into the economy.
2)As long as your post tax income increases in proportion to productivity there is a motivation to work. For a given income goal, the higher the tax rate, the more you have to work to reach that goal. (A person making 20,000/year might have to increase his gross by 1,200 to see 1,000 in his pocket, while a person making 200,000/year would have to increase his gross by 2,000 to see 1,000 in his pocket.) So the greatest stimulus for productivity occurs in people with higher income (who are often the most skilled workers and the most valuable in society.)
3)Progressive taxation does have an effect to (marginally) redistribute wealth, but largely this is in that it maintains a middle class within a society. Those countries with the most progressive tax systems also have the largest middle classes and the lowest proportion of people living in poverty. In fact one of the effects of the last few decades where the tax system in the US has become more regressive (starting with Reagan) is that we are undergoing what is termed 'third-worldization'. The US middle class shrinks every year, the number of Americans living in poverty is rising, the real median family income is falling, and we perform in measures like infant mortality at about the level of a developing nation. When I was a resident in, I saw American born children who had true protein calorie malnutrition. While it was a good learning experience as a physician, it was eyeopening to see the kwashiorkor and marasmus I would expect to find in Ghana or Nigeria in Flatbush Brooklyn. Though its not surprising since 40% of the kids in NYC live in poverty.
4)The wealthy benefit disproportionately from maintaining the security of their property rights, maintaining a fire department, maintaining an army to defend our borders (because they would have more to lose.) Therefore a proportionally higher contribution is appropriate.
5)A progressive tax is an automatic income stabilizer in that if you lost your job and got one paying a lower rate, it would soften the blow.
However with regard to your comment about the inherent 'goodness' of alleviating the wealth disparities (to a small extent) as would be done with progressive taxation, from my perspective it would be good even though my tax burden would increase. Because I don't want to live in a society where I see a child in the ER with severe protein calorie malnutrition who will be sick for the rest of his life because he wasn't given food. I don't want to live in a place where poverty is so bad that my car gets broken into repeatedly (because as poverty rises, so does propert
The "FairTax" group is essentially proposing that the zero-point for their sales tax be placed at the poverty income level. Their "prebate" cancels out the sales taxes up to the estimated expenses for a poverty-level household. For yearly taxable expenses below the poverty line there is a small net handout; above the poverty line the effective sales tax rate asymptotically approaches the per-transaction rate. Thus the "poor people" (presumably poverty-level and below) pay no federal taxes at all under this system. I have some news for you: you can be poor and make above 1xFPL. But let me re-do the math for you: In residency I made 45k, and spent 20k on sales taxable items. The FPL for a single person is 10,210. I would pay 1958 in taxes, or 4.4%. Now we make 250k and spend 50k on taxable items. The FPL for two is 13,690. I would pay 7262 in taxes, or 2.9%.
4.4% is still significantly higher than 2.9%. Making something less unfair doesn't make it fair. Making a regressive tax marginally less regressive doesn't make it progressive.
Or fair.
And the FairTax group is like Focus on the Family or Concerned Women for America. Calling your organization the 'Basket of Puppies and Kittens Association' doesn't mean that you poop rainbows if your agenda is evil.
A simple straightforward sales tax applied to imports and domestic sales (with a prebate to avoid screwing over the poor) would eliminate most loopholes, practically eliminate the need for the IRS (saving a decent amount of money), and save so much time and effort it's scary. And taxation would become even more regressive.
Say the tax was a flat 20%. My partner and I make about $250,000 annually. Our expenditures on items that are sales-taxable is about $50,000 annually. We would pay $10,000 in taxes - or 4%. When I was in residency, I made $45,000 annually and spent about $20,000 on sales-taxable items. I would have paid $4,000 in taxes - or 8.9%.
As it stands, my tax burden as a percentage of my income is far less now. I pay about 27% now and paid about 35% in residency. (Just by virtue of the fact that Social Security tax stops at $75,000.) However a sales tax only system would make it far more regressive. Poor people pay a far greater portion of their income in sales-taxable items than the wealthy, so unless you are going to tax hiring a lawn guy, tipping a waiter, investing in stocks, paying for boutique health care, and sending junior to Harvard, we have a moral disaster of monumental proportions on our hands.
Actually, the site you quote says: (italics is the part you didn't include in your quote)
The Emergency Medical and Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) requires hospitals and emergency personnel to screen, treat and stabilize anyone who seeks emergency medical care regardless of income or immigration status. Under Emergency Medicaid, the federal government pays for some emergency medical care delivered to undocumented immigrants who, except for their immigration status, would be eligible for Medicaid. It is certainly the case that if people get Medicaid or Medicare they pay, although far less than private insurance and less than the cost of providing the care. However the federal government pays nothing for uninsured patients who they require me to treat under EMTALA.
There's one example of where the money REALLY comes from. It's no wonder you're an ER doc, all the smart docs run from that job like it's contagious (LOL!). Actually its a highly competitive specialty to get a residency in. Its interesting, pays a lot more than pediatrics, and there is no pager. But then why would I expect you to know any more about EM residency training than you do about the EMTALA law?
As a person of expertise, how do you think that a national healthcare that covered the first $5,000 (so all that prevention.. and even some broken arms & minor emergency stuff) would work? No, because appendicitis costs 20-25k. And diabetes is about 3-4k annually (so you better not break an arm.)
The only way to do it is to make it everybody in, nobody out. Then those who are healthy and have few bills will subsidize the rest. You can make sure that health care is thrifty without draconian rationing. You just have to prioritize. That is why in Canada a pregnant woman with new onset status epilepticus needing an MRI can get one now, but if its for your knee injury that has bothered you for 3 years and you finally got around to getting it checked, that is going to be a wait.
The problem is less not being able to take care of people, but of people's unreasonable expectations of health care. I always say in the ER for non-emergent complaints - this ain't burger king: its not fast and its not your way. But people feel its absurd to wait three hours to get sutures done. Well its not because when you have your heart attack, you will go to the front of the line and others with sprained ankles will have to wait.
If we as a society want to pay twice as much for emergency care, then we could make almost everyone be seen in under 30 minutes (because we'd have an overabundance of doctors on duty.) But then in the slower times, we would be wasting money. The most cost effective way is to keep people pretty busy most of the time. That means however that a certain percentage of the time when the demand is high, it will be a long wait. But its all what we are willing to pay for as a society. And once we decide that its the standard for everyone. And this applies to most care... wait times to see your family doc, availablity of a pulmonologist, etc.
Simple, just like the sign in my bike mechanics store: "cheap, fast, and good: pick any two you want."
I am going to sue Micro$oft and that will allow me to subpoena CowboyNeal's recored relating to any treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, psychopathology, and substance abuse. Like duh its obvious why his claptastic history would be pertinent.
And actually... since you do quite well for the most part, in reality I am paying for it. You forget: I pay for health insurance too. And since my partner is a man, I also get to pay taxes on his health insurance (which you probably don't have to on your spouse.) Moreover, the reason that HMOs have been able to keep the costs from rising even more is by preventing physicians and hospitals from doing what you suggest: cost shifting. I can bill your insurer for the $400 it took me to provide you care, and half your neighbors uninsured tab, but they have gotten wise to that and will only give me $400. That's why over 400 US ERs have closed their doors in the past decade (while ER visits rose 25%) - because they are money losers for many hospitals.
However more to the point: I could make a shitload more if I worked in an ER that pursues uninsured patients with bill collectors and evil tactics (not to make them pay their bills which often will never happen, but to harass them into avoiding *us* next time.) However I don't. I also would LOVE to make even $30/hour working in the clinic where I volunteer. If we had single payer, I probably would because then we could survive without volunteers and begging.
It is certainly the case that if I were more evil about this I would be able to avoid the money loss that is inherent in the practice environments that I choose. However I don't like to have my soul sucked out my eyeballs on a regular basis. Call me crazy.
The problem comes externalizing costs becomes the majority (which it sort of is now...something like 60% of people in the US rely on other people to pay for some or all of their healthcare). No the problem is when you make health care a commodity. The economics don't work the same with regard to health and hamburgers.
First of all if you guarantee emergency care and don't guarantee prevention, you are throwing money down the drain. Because it costs a lot less to prevent cervical cancer or a heart attack than it does to treat one - by an order of like 100-1000:1. Its like running a car with no oil changes and no maintenance till the engine falls out and buying a new car: financially idiotic.
So unless you are willing to say that emergency care is not a right then you better pay for prevention unless you'd like to bankrupt the economy (which it is, btw.) Of course people are not willing in our society to do that, which is why EMTALA passed in the first place. A toddler dying of meningitis, a young man dying of appendicitis, a young woman giving birth to a baby on the footsteps of a hospital who would not treat her: Americans won't stand for it. So we put a band aid on it in the form of EMTALA, but let the festering wound below that band-aid go without care. The band-aid means that most Americans don't have to look at it, but as someone who sees it daily I can tell you, its foul, necrotic, and spreading.
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So fortunately when we are talking about disability accommodation, the needs of people with asthma and people with tobacco addiction are not competing at all: no smoking in public places helps both.
Its also a worker safety issue. We don't allow employers to have other toxic substances wafting through workplaces, why should we allow that with tobacco smoke? Just because its customer generated?
Both are willful acts, knowingly undertaken, which cause the death of another. Both are selfish and show a careless disregard for human life. But I don't think they rise to the title of murder. Nor does this idiot woman's behavior. Child abuse? Yes. Manslaughter? Maybe. But if its murder than everyone whose posted here is a murderer.
And your deriving pleasure from that girl's suffering is different than the woman you condemn because....?
"The rod and reproof give wisdom: but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame."
Maybe you, Mrs. Zelnick, were so taken by your handsome son that you spared the rod and spoiled the child. That would explain why he has brought you, by the way he presently acts, "to shame." So to add to his other mountains of failings, he's also an advocate of child abuse. Odd from someone who is always thinking of the children.
1)Subjecting everyone to scrutiny during activities that do not necessitate higher scrutiny. That is, if I want to fly on a plane, get a job as a teacher, or buy a gun I think society has every right to subject me to greater scrutiny. However if I want to sit in my home and whack off to pictures of midget bdsm porn there is no reason to subject me to higher scrutiny unless you can prove an association between midget bdsm porn and a socially maladjusted activity. (And there is actually evidence that people who have access to porn get less STDs and are less likely to commit sexual crimes. If you burn it off in front of a CRT, you don't need to involve someone else.)
2)Using patently fucktacular means of profiling. While El Al uses far more stringent and more obviously racial profiling they also haven't been hijacked in my lifetime and would see a plastic bag saying 'Kip Hawley is an idiot' (or rather 'Izzy Borovich is a schmuck') as a sign you were a smart ass, not a terrorist.
3)Idiots who don't see that there is a massive difference between protesters and bombers. I am a 'habitual protester' and went to my first protest as a teenager. I've protested for LGBT rights, peace, at the NYC/RNC protests, as a union member, for women's reproductive choice, for the environment, and with anonymous. I am also a pacifist. In fact I would say that on average the protesters that I have encountered are far more likely to be pacifists than the average joe on the street. So if you are going to profile people to find those prone to violence - especially premeditated acts of terrorism, hippies smoking weed at a protest in central park are the first you should cross off your list.
So I don't mind intelligent profiling. But we don't do that. We use profiling based on what people would like to believe predicts anti-social behavior: sexual freedom, blue hair, being queer, being politically engaged (in protests and in organizations), etc. We also don't sufficiently psychologically screen or train those who will be doing the profiling (the TSA, police, etc) that it is NEVER EVER EVER acceptable to use one's authority in a punitive means. (For example: http://www.kiphawleyisanidiot.com/) When you give small-minded people authority over others, they will abuse that authority. But even when you give average people massive authority over people or you place them in a culture where abuse is acceptable, they will also abuse their authority (Abu Ghirab and the Stanford Prison Experiment.) So the only way that you can avoid that is to weed out the small-minded folks and create a culture where that sort of abuse is not tolerated.
Unfortunately most US police forces and the TSA have failed miserably at that.
A 'quick background scan' on Dennis Rader would show he had a bachelors degree in Justice Administration and worked for the city and was on city advisory panels, was a cub scout troop leader (who didn't abuse boys), was the president of his church's congregation panel, and a father with two grown children and a marriage of over 25 years.
He was also the BTK serial killer (BTK standing for bind, torture, kill.)
The only reason police caught him was his own stupidity. He actually asked (in his letters to the police and their response through a newspaper) whether a floppy disk could be traced back to the person who had created it. They said of course not, he sent them a disk, they got metadata from deleted files with his name and the name of his church all over it.
Unfortunately not all criminals are that stupid.
And even worse, what are the characteristics that you will use to determine what is dangerous? Unless you use prior criminal arrests for violent crimes, you are profiling. That's an unfortunate part of law enforcement, which I understand is somewhat necessary for screening. However to use profiling to limit the activities one may engage in lawfully is even more repulsive. "Sorry Mr Smith, you are not allowed to possess BDSM pron because of your age, gender, race, religion, hairstyle, and music tastes as indicated by your iPod. If you were gay or a woman or had just a bit more Yanni on your iPod, it would be fine... What? Oh, that's your wife's pron? Oh, OK. That's fine then. Have a good day."
Yeah, well I am not even certain what counts any more. Until I recently purchased one (due to the need for Wii access) I hadn't had a TV for almost a decade. But I now watch the Daily Show religiously on my laptop. Does that count as watching TV?
Just wow.
My hippy-social-justice-queer-tree-hugging-dirt-worshipper self just did a little dance.
However I wouldn't buy their album because their music sucks.
I. Don't. Believe. In. God. I was saying the slow kids even get this.
I'm a secular humanist, pro-choice, anti-gun, queer, pacifist, card carrying Green Party member. Jesus H Christ-on-a-Cracker... I would probably have a seizure if I walked into a church, or at the very least some nasty hives and need to take a few hits from my inhaler.
The point of my post was see, even the kids who ride the short school bus get it.
Except that since I know free will is an illusion, when the kid last night took a swing at me in a drunken stupor, I understood that as no more his decision than my decision was to treat him decently, and make sure he didn't injure himself or others as he metabolized himself to freedom in the morning.
Its more of a Buddhist concept of suffering and the necessity of working to end the suffering of others (or at least think you are doing so) that motivates moral action in people who don't believe in free will. How much better of a world would it be if when someone broke into your car to steal, you saw that person as someone less fortunate than you and felt it was your responsibility to, instead of punishing him, make his life better?
Though lucky for us, people who have the insight to understand a world without free will are also people who are more often endowed with that kind of sentiment.
Um, not much of a newsflash. Hell the major monotheistic religions figured this out way back. If God is omniscient, then he knows what I am about to do and everything I will do in my life. If he knows that, than I can't truly have free will. (Even if you try to weasel out that God decides to blind himself to my future, if it is knowable then its pre-ordained.) So unless you are willing to say God isn't omniscient, then there is no free will, kids.
The only chance we have of any free will at all is in quantum weirdness which is not much free will to speak of, and certainly not enough to be palatable to the average American who thinks his success or failure is a product of his own decisions rather than the sum total of a very complicated system that he has little control over and basically just experiences as the phenomena of his mind. We think we are in control, but largely we are along for the ride.
Used to freak me out, and it was hard to swallow since I have that Horatio Algeirs kind of narrative: Grew up on welfare in a house without indoor plumbing and now have a doctorate and am typing this on the toilet I picked (the best... I loves me a good quality toilet) in the house I just remodeled. It would feel very nice to think that I did all of this and deserve this wonderful throne. And to be honest my experience is that I think I have free will in my day to day life. But that's probably because the sum of my experiences also made me, after gaining understand that I don't have free will, accept that I live my life with that illusion and navigate life in such a way that I feel comfortable with the 'moral decisions' I think I make. So I pretend I have free will, and think I make moral choices based on that understanding.
Now I've given myself a headache. No. Wait, I was destined to have this headache as long as that electron spun to the left last Tuesday in Portugal. I'm going to go pretend to decide to take an ibuprofen.
Where would you draw the line? The term is completely subjective; to someone living under an oppressive dictatorship a penniless vagrant in the U.S. may be "rich", and yet the average citizen might reasonably consider that same vagrant "poor". The FPL is at least a defined term, although there is room for debate over the meaning of "necessities."
Well, let's see. I would call food, clothing, shelter, and health care necessities. The cost of those for Americans far outstrips the federal poverty level regardless of how thrifty you are. Hell, just the cost of purchasing health insurance alone eats up well over half (and that doesn't count copays etc.) Unless you think that health care, food, and a roof over one's head are luxury items?
I also don't agree with the concept of so-called "progressive" taxation. You rightly object to implications of the "FairTax" name; the same applies to the whole "regressive"/"progressive" naming scheme. There's nothing inherently good about transferring money from high-income to low-income groups -- unless, of course, one happens to be in the low-income group oneself.
1)As income level rises, consumption as a proportion of this income falls. Progressive taxes tend to have an economic stimulating effect because they decrease the tax burden on those who plug back a higher proportion of their income back into the economy.
2)As long as your post tax income increases in proportion to productivity there is a motivation to work. For a given income goal, the higher the tax rate, the more you have to work to reach that goal. (A person making 20,000/year might have to increase his gross by 1,200 to see 1,000 in his pocket, while a person making 200,000/year would have to increase his gross by 2,000 to see 1,000 in his pocket.) So the greatest stimulus for productivity occurs in people with higher income (who are often the most skilled workers and the most valuable in society.)
3)Progressive taxation does have an effect to (marginally) redistribute wealth, but largely this is in that it maintains a middle class within a society. Those countries with the most progressive tax systems also have the largest middle classes and the lowest proportion of people living in poverty. In fact one of the effects of the last few decades where the tax system in the US has become more regressive (starting with Reagan) is that we are undergoing what is termed 'third-worldization'. The US middle class shrinks every year, the number of Americans living in poverty is rising, the real median family income is falling, and we perform in measures like infant mortality at about the level of a developing nation. When I was a resident in, I saw American born children who had true protein calorie malnutrition. While it was a good learning experience as a physician, it was eyeopening to see the kwashiorkor and marasmus I would expect to find in Ghana or Nigeria in Flatbush Brooklyn. Though its not surprising since 40% of the kids in NYC live in poverty.
4)The wealthy benefit disproportionately from maintaining the security of their property rights, maintaining a fire department, maintaining an army to defend our borders (because they would have more to lose.) Therefore a proportionally higher contribution is appropriate.
5)A progressive tax is an automatic income stabilizer in that if you lost your job and got one paying a lower rate, it would soften the blow.
However with regard to your comment about the inherent 'goodness' of alleviating the wealth disparities (to a small extent) as would be done with progressive taxation, from my perspective it would be good even though my tax burden would increase. Because I don't want to live in a society where I see a child in the ER with severe protein calorie malnutrition who will be sick for the rest of his life because he wasn't given food. I don't want to live in a place where poverty is so bad that my car gets broken into repeatedly (because as poverty rises, so does propert
4.4% is still significantly higher than 2.9%. Making something less unfair doesn't make it fair. Making a regressive tax marginally less regressive doesn't make it progressive.
Or fair.
And the FairTax group is like Focus on the Family or Concerned Women for America. Calling your organization the 'Basket of Puppies and Kittens Association' doesn't mean that you poop rainbows if your agenda is evil.
Say the tax was a flat 20%. My partner and I make about $250,000 annually. Our expenditures on items that are sales-taxable is about $50,000 annually. We would pay $10,000 in taxes - or 4%. When I was in residency, I made $45,000 annually and spent about $20,000 on sales-taxable items. I would have paid $4,000 in taxes - or 8.9%.
As it stands, my tax burden as a percentage of my income is far less now. I pay about 27% now and paid about 35% in residency. (Just by virtue of the fact that Social Security tax stops at $75,000.) However a sales tax only system would make it far more regressive. Poor people pay a far greater portion of their income in sales-taxable items than the wealthy, so unless you are going to tax hiring a lawn guy, tipping a waiter, investing in stocks, paying for boutique health care, and sending junior to Harvard, we have a moral disaster of monumental proportions on our hands.
The only way to do it is to make it everybody in, nobody out. Then those who are healthy and have few bills will subsidize the rest. You can make sure that health care is thrifty without draconian rationing. You just have to prioritize. That is why in Canada a pregnant woman with new onset status epilepticus needing an MRI can get one now, but if its for your knee injury that has bothered you for 3 years and you finally got around to getting it checked, that is going to be a wait.
The problem is less not being able to take care of people, but of people's unreasonable expectations of health care. I always say in the ER for non-emergent complaints - this ain't burger king: its not fast and its not your way. But people feel its absurd to wait three hours to get sutures done. Well its not because when you have your heart attack, you will go to the front of the line and others with sprained ankles will have to wait.
If we as a society want to pay twice as much for emergency care, then we could make almost everyone be seen in under 30 minutes (because we'd have an overabundance of doctors on duty.) But then in the slower times, we would be wasting money. The most cost effective way is to keep people pretty busy most of the time. That means however that a certain percentage of the time when the demand is high, it will be a long wait. But its all what we are willing to pay for as a society. And once we decide that its the standard for everyone. And this applies to most care... wait times to see your family doc, availablity of a pulmonologist, etc.
Simple, just like the sign in my bike mechanics store: "cheap, fast, and good: pick any two you want."
I am going to sue Micro$oft and that will allow me to subpoena CowboyNeal's recored relating to any treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, psychopathology, and substance abuse. Like duh its obvious why his claptastic history would be pertinent.
However more to the point: I could make a shitload more if I worked in an ER that pursues uninsured patients with bill collectors and evil tactics (not to make them pay their bills which often will never happen, but to harass them into avoiding *us* next time.) However I don't. I also would LOVE to make even $30/hour working in the clinic where I volunteer. If we had single payer, I probably would because then we could survive without volunteers and begging.
It is certainly the case that if I were more evil about this I would be able to avoid the money loss that is inherent in the practice environments that I choose. However I don't like to have my soul sucked out my eyeballs on a regular basis. Call me crazy. The problem comes externalizing costs becomes the majority (which it sort of is now...something like 60% of people in the US rely on other people to pay for some or all of their healthcare). No the problem is when you make health care a commodity. The economics don't work the same with regard to health and hamburgers.
First of all if you guarantee emergency care and don't guarantee prevention, you are throwing money down the drain. Because it costs a lot less to prevent cervical cancer or a heart attack than it does to treat one - by an order of like 100-1000:1. Its like running a car with no oil changes and no maintenance till the engine falls out and buying a new car: financially idiotic.
So unless you are willing to say that emergency care is not a right then you better pay for prevention unless you'd like to bankrupt the economy (which it is, btw.) Of course people are not willing in our society to do that, which is why EMTALA passed in the first place. A toddler dying of meningitis, a young man dying of appendicitis, a young woman giving birth to a baby on the footsteps of a hospital who would not treat her: Americans won't stand for it. So we put a band aid on it in the form of EMTALA, but let the festering wound below that band-aid go without care. The band-aid means that most Americans don't have to look at it, but as someone who sees it daily I can tell you, its foul, necrotic, and spreading.