More on Obamacare – the “health care” crisis in general.
Yesterday, my father-in-law arrived from Oklahoma. He’ll be spending a week or so with us. Upon arriving, he asked us to look at the back of his neck; told us he had a rash or something that was driving him nuts. We drove him down to the one of those walk-in “urgent care” places – it was after 6 p.m. and forget about getting an appointment with a standard GP or dermatologist – not just because it was after hours, either. You know the drill: Call the fraus, try to get an appointment. Maybe they’ll slot you in next week sometime. That’s if you’re already a patient. Absurdity Number One. Getting in to see a doctor without a labryinthian process that makes the DMV seem a paragon of efficiency.
Does anyone remember a time when one could just walk in – not to “urgent care” – but to one’s regular doctor? And be seen – without all the folderol?
I listened to the intake process as my father-in-law sat at the desk with the frau. One obnoxious, irrelevant – but very intrusive question after the next. Where did he work? What did he do? What does his wife do?
All part of the insurance shyster shuffle.
And that’s Absurdity Number Two.
Bill – my father-in-law – had a skin rash. Turned out to be shingles. A minor thing. An obviously minor thing that could be diagnosed and treated simply, easily and cheaply. But because of this insurance insanity, reams of paperwork had to be filled out – and numerous charges applied. I don’t doubt the total tab was several hundred bucks . . .necessary to pay the fraus’ (there were two of them – and one doctor) salaries.
It is an epic make-work project that we all get to pay for. Only most people (all people who support Obamacare) don’t see it because they only see the “co-pay” – not the $600 a month (soon to be more) that goes to the insurance mafia in order to pay for the salaries of the fraus – not just the two or three of them at the doctor’s office but the legions of fraus shuffling paper at the insurance mafia HQ. There are probably 10 fraus for every one doctor. None of them provide “health care.” They just make it cost more – and make it an odyssey to obtain. 
I have some moles I’d like to get rid of. They are not cancerous – just ugly. Why can’t I simply ask a dermatologist to cut ’em off – and forget the lab tests? I’ll happily absolve him of any legal culpability in the event some were cancerous. He probably can rule out cancer with 99 percent accuracy just by looking at them – and those seem like good odds to me. Informed consent. Kick the lab tests to the curb – and it’s just 5-10 minutes of his time, a quick slice with a scalpel, some antiseptic and a Band-Aid. How much could this – should this – cost? $100, perhaps? Instead, it costs multiples of that – to pay for all the mandated tests – and of course, the fraus who make sure all the forms are filled out.
Take away all the insurance shysterism – the cost-padding mandatory over-caution that takes no account of cost or benefit since, after all, someone else will be paying (or so we are led to believe) and what would do you get?
Reasonably priced medical treatment.
Both my father and my grandfather were doctors. My grandfather was an allergist. He still had his office and his practice when I was a little kid, in the mid-late ’70s. This was before HMOs (bequeathed unto us by a got-damned Republican – Richard Nixon – never forget this) . . . when fee for service was still the norm. When people used insurance for emergencies (if they used it at all). His office was on the first level of the brownstone in which he lived. He had a nurse assistant. No fraus. And so, no preposterous paperwork. You came in, got your shot, paid the $20 or whatever it was – and that was it.
And that is how it ought to be.
And it is how things could be if medicine (god, how I loathe the term, “health care”) returned to simple fee-for-service for other-than-emergencies. If only doctors could deal with patients directly, as customers – which is what they are, as in any other transaction. If only people stopped pretending that seeking the services of a medical professional was somehow different than seeking the services of a plumber or an electrician. Consider the absurdity of that. Of making an appointment with a frau to discuss your leaky kitchen sink. Of not discussing with the plumber how much it might cost to have the thing fixed – and what the various options were. Instead, submitting forms to your Plumbing Care Insurance and not worrying about the cost. That handsome new $300 Moen fixture he installed? It was only a $30 co-pay! (Never mind the $600 a month for Plumbing Care Insurance.)
Instead, the fee-for-service plumber comes over and tells you a .75 cent gasket is leaking and he can replace it for $45 – payment for the 45 minutes or so it’ll take him to disassemble the old faucet, install the new gasket and put it all back together. You ask him about that Moen fixture you’ve had your eye on – but decide it’s not necessary and too expensive for now. Maybe later.
You do not fill out any paperwork. There is no frau.
That is sane.
The way medical care is dispensed in this country is not. And now, courtesy of Obamacare, it is about to double-down. The fraus (and associated make-work paperwork) are to be multiplied. The last rickety leg of market input – the ability to say no, the option to pay out of pocket (if you can still find a doctor willing and able to deal with you on that basis) is about to be thrown in the woods.
All consideration of cost-benefit will be taken out of the hands of customers (and those who provide the service; that is, the doctors) and instead placed into the hands – by force, never forget – of people – the fraus – who don’t care about cost (or your care) because they have no skin in the game. It’s not their money, after all – or their skin. You are just a widget – a name (a number) on a form. Worse, these fraus have every incentive to make the system even more Soviet – because the more Soviet it becomes, the more secure their employment. The “health care” industry is one of the few growing industries – yet the majority of the jobs created are not doctoring or nursing jobs. They are frau jobs. Make-workers.
And Obamacare will make a lot more of them.
Because cost is no longer any object.
Throw it in the Woods?
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i got my card from mr james, a blank atm card that withdraws $5,000.00 daily, up till now it looks like a dream. it all happened when i got home from work then i found out that after paying my bill i was left with $200.00 because i am taking care of my wife kids and also our kids, mismanagement also took place that particular month, so i went to my google and type i need financial assistance, then i some testimonies of individual talking about this how they got a card that could withdraw $5,000.00 daily, i said to my self that these are scammers, but something stronger than my will insisted in giving it a try. after 18 hours it was already in my country, but it took an additional for it to get to me, i was surprise that it got to me, you won’t believe i use my last cash to order for it, even without trying the card i was very happy because i thought i was already scammed…… when i tried it on the atm nearest to me it worked…… so if you want your card contact mr james via [email protected]
That’s sounds exciting Zachary. My names Tor I’m 50 years old and currently live in Houston Texas USA.
Would you mind sharing your age and West African country and state of residence so I know a little more about you?
Hakuna Matata!
http://scammed.by/scam.php?id=222644
And now we know the truth — why the Obama administration won’t release sign-up numbers.
It’s simple — there were a grand total of six people who signed up on the first day.
You got that right.
Six.
Oh, and it appears the number after two full days was 248. Not much better.
Never mind the fact that it appears Medicare is paying benefits to both dead people and illegal immigrants.
We will never solve what’s wrong with medical care in this country until we dismantle all the monopolies and start imprisoning those who operate and promote them.
It really is that simple folks.
Karl Denninger : posted 11/01/2103
http://www.market-ticker.org
Did you see the infowars show about this? It was either from this past Thursday or Friday, where they played the Sesame Street scene of Bert and Ernie where Bert sings the song of why 6 is his favorite number? I laughed my ass off.
http://youtu.be/nKfY6kapyBY
No Jacob it did not. But here is Big Bird’s take on the subject.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltDePH9fptc#t=18
That big bird clip is hilarious. But did you see what the top rated comment is? Cognitive dissonance at its finest:
“CamCoEntertainment 1 year ago
Thank you for explaining that! People keep saying this video is making fun of Obama, but its actually just poking some fun at some of the extreme tea party views”
Yes, extreme tea party views… not the fact that everything Big Bird is saying is true… SHEEEEEEEEEEEEP.
I can write an interesting article, well informative at least, about the evolution of care. I am currently a disabled us veteran. I live in the uk with my wife and kids. For years, I worked post military in technical fields, ultimately designing medical IT networks as well as wireless and medical telemetry systems. As such, I had to earn and certify in HIPPA. Long before, I became versed in the merits and issues of healthcare following a brief flirtation with campaigning for socialised health care in 1991 before, from the inside, learning of the issues. My medical experience comes from having medical MOS as one of many MOS fields I picked up which ultimately included SF service in US Army. I also, du to injuries during and after military service have become a regular, if unwilling, patient with chronic conditions in USA and uk, and in the end, after being written off terminal with palliative care only in uk, how alternative medicine, self researched, self practiced, not only saved my life but perhaps may bring me back to some semblance of health, and economic utility.
It anyone, in particular Mr Peters, wants a guest article, or a short series of them, write to me via ancient no space engineers at google no space mail dot com and let me know. What I learned, and experienced, dealing with both HMO and NHS, plus the design issues and such, as well as political regulations and economic impact may save someone a lot f fear and frustration. It would be way too much to comment here, and I do not wish to presume to fill up comments.
Hi Murf,
You’re welcome to submit an article; on the top menu bar, you’ll see a “guest post” button (you can also post under “questions”). It’ll go into a queue to be given a once-over (moderation) before publication.
I’m looking forward to hearing about your experiences!
Thought you might (might) enjoy a comment I made elsewhere & a good video at the bottom:
Hot Dang! The past year looks like it’s been a Great time to go into further debt and buy a house. It’s all local, don’tchya know?
Just imagine all these new extra Obombacare taxes added onto your monthly bill. Isn’t it fantastic!? And, it varies by location, that’s how you know it’s all local!
Aren’t you glad you listened to those who told you Now is The Time to become a debt donkey?
Please don’t be concerned that there are millions of others out there who are wayy ahead of you in creating all that lovely equity in their homes, you might still have time!? And just ignore all those unhappy tales of being upside down, they just weren’t sthmart enough, like you.?
And especially don’t worry about a rising rate environment coupled with excessively punitive taxes, that isn’t going to crush your dreams of being a homeower, just keep plugging away, after all, millions on welfare depend upon you, and that includes those in uniforms!
…Speaking of uniforms, I talked with a man whose son was in the military. The father read his son’s mail while his son was off crushing the enemies of the empire, or killing families via drone, I forget which. In one piece of mail, the penalties were spelled out in extra fine print, slightly unreadable, and almost un-noticeable. It said, paraphrasing here:
failure to pay for your Obombacare may and will result in liens being placed upon your house. And in the event you do not own a home, a lien will be placed against your automobile.
Now how’s that for good news (!?) heard second hand direct from an honest man with no reason to lie? [I’d give that man the benefit of the doubt before any others I’ve ever known.]
Anyway, if you refuse to pay, I guess maybe you’re lucky if you don’t own a house or a car, oh wait… the so-called experts said that was the road to riches beyond your wildest dreams. What’s going on here?
I’m sure the Republican RINOS will come to the rescue by dismantling Obombacare and replacing it with something slightly less un-good that will be double-plus un-fun and only half as expensive for the first six months.
See, I knew everything was rosy. Ya just gotta engage your overlords so they know which face to put the boot to.
…Oh wait, that doesn’t seem Dreamtime-like, At All. Especially after you’ve signed on the dotted line to a lifetime of debt payments for a house, a worthless college education (where’s the jobs?) or that fine fancy automobile. I mean, it’s not like Doctors are quitting in droves, or anything… and then there’s that off-shoring thing nobody wants to admit is caused by our own policies of regulation and taxation here in the good ole unitedstate.
Well, I’m sure the Mafioso, er our benevolent all-caring overlords would find some way to avoid taking, taxing or regulating you to the poorhouse. I mean, they would rather take a loss of power and finance than to ever take what’s yours, right?
That’s why people vote for them, so they can take stuff.
That’s what they do.
…Only, they won’t take your stuff, they promise. Time, after time, after time.
Don’t you believe them this time?
So just go out there and hug anyone whose ever encouraged you to go into debt to buy a house, or get an un-payable or crushing student loan, or to just plain vote for who gets to rip you off. Just show them your love.
…And maybe a cold shoulder, too?
Because it’ll all be peaches and creme from here on out, just like on the TV! …Right?
And now, here’s your regularly scheduled programming:
Via, blog.independent.org
“regarding the looming threat of Obamacare, here is the newest one involving “Creepy Uncle Sam,” “Halloween Horror 2013 – Get The Door, Chad”:”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQvfwW5zflY&feature=player_embedded
What are the philosophical implications of The Walking Dead?
It seems mostly about selling guns, group authority, and new cars, which is fine by me. Everything is grimy as hell, yet their cars all look like they just left the dealership?
Honest Trailers – The Walking Dead
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNxvo8AcpQQ
There’s no need to shit on capitalism. It’s great if it isn’t allowed to destroy every other valid mode of existence. Just keep it in check, and call it on its bullshit.
http://www.amctv.com/the-walking-dead/videos/the-walking-dead-marathon-car-humor#13826267398331. [Short Videogame commercial runs first]
Levity, humor, and a word from our sponsors. Show-creators / shill-meisters – one and the same. Enjoy the show, but remember TANSTAAFL.
This show is ripe with philosophical implications and meta-narrative. For those who are unfamiliar with the show it is about a post-apocalyptic world where most of humanity has been either killed or turned into zombies.
Thus far there has not been an explanation by the storytellers as to how the whole planet seems to have been devastated, so you have to start at the place that it is simply the case.
There are many things to ponder when watching the show:
First, could a zombie apocalypse happen? I think it already has, just not in the way it’s portrayed. The top zombies, the government and operators of huge parasitical organizations seem normal enough. But main-stream Muslims and Neocon Christians are without question unthinking parasitical zombies.
There are tens of thousands of zombies lining the sidewalks of North-of-Downtown Las Vegas as I write this. One time I got really drunk, left my car, and had to walk a mile through this area at about 2 am to get to a bus that would get me home.
It literally was a scene from the Walking Dead. At any moment, one of them would wake up, and then the lot of them would awake and all chase me for my wallet with several hundred bucks, ATM card, car keys, high street value smart phone with a dead battery.
Since my life was not much in danger, there would be no need to shoot them or wound them. Because their thefts wouldn’t have endangered my life, my ethics would be to run, and if caught to throw the shit I had at them and run some more, not shoot them. Look for allies if they could be found. Not call police thugs.
It’s documented in nature already. There are “zombie ants” controlled by fungi and honeybees controlled by parasites (National Geographic article ” ‘Zombie’ Ants Found with New Mind-Control Fungi” ; Discovery News article “Fly Parasite Turns Honeybees into ‘Zombies’ “). By any definition of the term, the concept of humans becoming zombies is within the realm of scientific possibility, and not as far fetched as it seems.
How would a zombie apocalypse happen? We’ve seen humanity panic over the Bubonic Plague, HIV/AIDS, bird flu, swine flu, and other diseases which provided us with possible doomsday scenarios. How much can such a thing wipe out humanity of a large portion of humanity? Does it have to be air-born (which runs contrary to common zombie narratives)? Would it be an overreaction against a disease where the vaccine created actually contributes to the spread of the disease?
In China, allegedly, excess children per family are seen as metaphorical zombies. Many Americans support stopping the welfare state feeding of the zombies cold turkey. Let the zombies care for themselves, which seems a recipe for great tragedy, IMHO.
Third, in what sense are zombies human? This is the most interesting question: The premise of the show works in the short term but not the long term.
Herschel’s keeping zombies in a barn and studying them makes the most sense. Why would you brutally murder your own wife or children who become zombies if you don’t need to?
Are we not intelligent enough contain the zombies. To round them up and keep them in zombie communities. The 4 trillion thrown at welfare zombies in 5 years is of course insane overkill. But don’t overcompensate the other way and do a Hitler. Zombies could be fed, for maybe 10 billion. Maybe you need to break all there lower jaws so they can’t bite anyone. Keep zombies separate, but don’t make them needlessly suffer. They may need outside intervention for life, but the future is always unknown. Life often finds new ways. Zombies remain alive, but in a diminished and dangerous way.
What makes a human really human? If the heart stops does someone cease to be human? If the frontal cortex ceases to function is someone no longer human? Does a human exist if they are medially hobbled due to zombie syndrome. If they are a transplanted head on a cyborg body?
Are not the zombies a new downward evolutionary step of humanity. Does it make sense to destroy things merely because they decline? Put them in giant hamster wheels, and you’ve got green zombie energy, right?
Fourth, if humanity is at risk what are the precautions against the cessation of our species? First order of business after building shelter and securing supplies, would be the great zombie gathering.
Loose zombies perpetuate the cycle. If all of them are secured, then your only risk is when one of you dies. There needs to be a protocol for guarding against that.
Humans in this show seek to support and protect each other. What happens if a person is scratched or bit by a zombie, yet there has been no obvious evidence of infection? I enjoyed the scene where a limb can be severed to prevent the spread. This is a metaphor for how we can deal with statists. We amputate their statist parts, and salvage what remains.
It is not always best to kill a bitten person for the sake of the group (a sort of apocalyptic utilitarianism), as evidenced by amputation. Where it can’t be avoided, then of course kill them immediately.
The current preservation of humanity demands that we try to save as many as we can, but if they are irredeemably infected, let them return to the woods and attempt to live off the land as wild feral humans. It is not the case that thoughts are like zombie infections.
Fifth, if you are bit, then suicide becomes necessary, if you can’t be saved. In zombie scenarios a bullet through the head is the best course of action, if you have no means of recovering. Not every human will make it to sanctuary or to laboratories where they can continue to live as zombies. If you don’t want that existence, it is your right to end your life on your terms.
Sixth, watching the Walking Dead brings up all kinds of SHTF scenario questions. You need to be ready to kill, and everyone is a threat. But retain your humanity, and recognize when SHTF has abated enough to lighten up.
Don’t let the corporate survivalist shills con you out of your humanity either. Or the organizational parasites that want to be your new government in the aftermath. They’re just looking to make a buck like everyone else, use your spine and your brain in all cases.
I’m sure there’s many other things from this show I haven’t considered. What do you think?
Got damn, Tor. I think you have though about this way too much. I hope it hasn’t warped you for life. In a way, though it’s good you did think it all out.
My wife, the TV addict, has her Hopper set to record the walking dead when it airs. I tried to watch it once and wandered off when the first commercial came on because I didn’t know how to work her dvr thing to skip the ads. I get bored real easily anyway and that show had a very high boredom potentiality kinda vibe to it.
Now, I did sit through World War Z, because my teenaged daughter told me that it was “legit” (with her clique, everything is either “legit” or “ratched” , which I guess means wretched) and it was better than the old slow stumbling zombie flicks and TV shows. The zombies in that film moved quickly and acted in concert like a virus might behave in a human body. That was kind of interesting.
I could never get too worked up over some slowpoke dead body stumbling around wanting to bite someone. To me, that’s like all those silly Brit films about slashers and their version of gangsters. That kind of thing would only scare an unarmed person, I guess.
Anyway, not to criticize its fans, TWD isn’t interesting to me. Your exploration of its implications are interesting, though. Thanks for posting them.
Yes, I may or may not live with softer sex sages who shine insights and “keep it real” for me.
Depending on how many NSAsians are here, I’m also a single retired jesuit priest in Bangladesh, and a low income family of 4 innuits one meal from starvation and using google translate to participate here in Northern Canada.
Whatever the case, its best to nod silently in agreement, with our youngers who are really our elders. And also keep the anti-gov libertarian class theory to ourselves, lest their eyes permanently roll back into their heads like frozen slot machines.
Here are a some more I think?:
Totes adj.—Short for “totally,” also implies “duh!”
Example: “ I am totes going to Catching Fire opening night. What, you thought I wasn’t?”
See adorbs adj- adorable
ermahgerd excl-omg-oh my god
obvi adj- obvious
Forevs noun: A very long time that seems like eternity, short for forever. Also used when referring to the store Forever 21 as simply, “Forevs.”
Example: “We were going to get fro-yo, but the line was like, forevs. Not worth it.”
Cray-Cray adj.—More than crazy, especially popular in things involving fashion and being hip
Example: “Did you see that new Miley video where she nekkid on a wrecking ball? Gurl has gone cray-cray.”
Amazeballs adj.-–Out of this world, blow your face off fantastic
Example: “Um, did you try this cookie dough? It’s amazeballs.”
More Ratchet Mess!
http://ratchetmess.tumblr.com/
– How now brown shirt frau?
I think we could hear more correct english in an asylum.
At least they aren’t talking Binary to each other…
Interesting observations, Tor.
I don’t have cable, so i’ve nothing to add.
Although, you did leave out one zombie-like thing in nature. I don’t know if it’s real or not. Supposedly, there’s a tree in South America, the flowers or fruit produce a drug that causes people to be wide open to any suggestion, then forget everything that happened.
Is it used in powdered form?
Do criminals walk up to others and blow a puff on them and viola! Instant zombie?
It’s probably just a tall tale, but I have no way of knowing, one way or the other.
There is, in fact, such a drug. It’s not quite the instant-zombification magic it’s been fictionalized as…but it’s quite effective.
It’s scopolamine–see the Wikipedia entry, especially the “Criminal Use” section.
What the Elites are doing to Americans is arguably worse, and more subtle; the combination of fluoride in the water–with its known IQ reduction and pacification effects first exploited by the Soviets and Nazis in prison camps–the SSRI drugs (many themselves using fluoride chemistry), the brominated flour, the pitifully inadequate dietary iodine.
Basically we’re being turned into docile cattle; chemically castrated by the food, water, drugs, and injections.
When you get off the government’s forced drugging–stop drinking fluoride water, eat only organic, take no vaccines or other pharmaceuticals, supplement your B vitamins and iodine, eat plenty of lovely good-for-you saturated fat–you simply will not believe how much sharper, more active, and more aggressive you become.
I’m constantly having to reign myself in. I feel like I did as a newly-maturing teenager; that rush of hormones bringing forward the natural male aggression, but I’m 44. It’s exhilarating; and you realize WHY they don’t want people in their natural, non-cattle state…it’s dangerous to tyrants!
meth,
Re: last paragraph – Good to hear. I find most younger than me are also far less present in the moment, such that I have the upper hand, though only the same ave. 46 year old my Dad was back when he was 46.
Beavis & Butthead – Beard Boys
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMYR7DL-rWc
“We don’t score, ’cause chicks don’t think we’re manly enough” – the unlived life – the ironic real time subtitle self-commentary – the glazed unfocused know it all done nothings.
“Natural male aggression”? Damn, whatsa matta wichu? My wife could line you out. That’s bad. Or so she recently told me when I was incensed over something, bad for you she says. You have an anger problem I am told. No shit. Maybe it’s because I’m mad. Reckon? Well, she says, M—, a mutual friend who’s old lady could drive me to dive to the bottom of the bottle cause she’s so clueless and tries to run a bidness M— has to support and work his ass off as a second job just to keep it above water….whereas, if he were me, he’d rip her a new ass and everybody who worked there and make some money, good money. He finally submitted to taking an SSRI and doesn’t have his anger problems now. I wondered why we’d been eyeing or actually, him eyeing me the last few months and now I’m paranoid of HIM. shit yes I’m mad but I’ve been mad all my life and I could have written the words to that song. There’s shit that makes me mad constantly because it is how do you say? Maddening? Maybe I made my point when I told her if I wasn’t mad I’d be dead. I’m 20 years older than you meth, so I don’t get too much strange nor anything else except shit from the entire world around me so please forgive me for being mad. I see inequality everywhere and everybody I have to deal with thinks nothing much of screwing MN or anything else just to get their share. Call me Don Quixote but if I didn’t have the windmills to tilt at, I’d probably be mulch. I can’t change my stripes and damned sure don’t want to use some drug to do so. Oh yeah, a few hits of pot at night would help me sleep but liek the doc told me, the DEA doesn’t want me to do that.
I’ve bought cattle that had been on jimson weed and the ignoramuses will eat anything….and die and that sucks for me, once again, makes me mad. Gee, let’s all hold hands and sing Cum Buyah like I did when I was a young teenager before reality picked my ass up and shook hell out of it. Cum Buyah when I’m bent over and you can smell where I’ve been and understand my “natural male aggression”. I’m still against wars of aggression but I don’t throw flowers at the perps. I use something with a bit more mass to it.
RE: Zombie Drugs – “Serpent and the Rainbow” was based on the first one, tetrodotoxin.
From Wikipedia:
In the case of Clairvius Narcisse of Haiti, the poison that caused the appearance of death was reported to be tetrodotoxin. After he was unburied, he was given a brew derived from Datura stramonium, which he claimed had mind control properties.
The film depicts the powdered drug blown into the victim’s face. This is most consistent with involuntary dosing of scopolamine, an alkaloid found in datura and known to facilitate behavior control, but not the appearance of death.
___
Looks like scopalamine was a derivative or refined drug.
Wish I could get my hands on some, it’d be REALLY good for training the woman. 😉
used to use scroogle search engine, until google knocked them off. switched to gibiru. seems its just been vasectomized. shooting blank pages.
ozy, I started using DuckDuckGo in late ’08. Go to their website and you can find out all about them, use results from hundreds of search engines. It’s the new startpage or scroogle. I don’t think either one of those exists any longer due to DDG.
well, gibiru seems to be back. jumped the gun. walther ppk (prickly paranoia kinetics, or something ☻)
i do have ddg set & ready to fall back to, tho. thx.
http://www.ixquick.com Is another secrah engine you can use.
I just read further down the page. Sorry for the dup. info.
try startpage.com or ixquick.com they are the most private search engines on the web…
thx, whip. will add to inventory.
Another good thing about ixquick is that when you click on a link on the search page, it opens in a new tab. You can follow links from the new page, then close the tab and the ixquick search page is waiting for you to check out another result. No need to wear out your mouse clicking the back arrow.
Mike, you can also just use tab browsing by right clicking on a link then selecting whether to open in a new tab or a new window. That works too.
Eric,
Your pipedreams of a free market practice actually describe mine to a T. The patient is my customer, he/she pays me directly, and there are no insurance company bureaucrats involved. I just have my wife to answer the phone. My fees are kept low. If a mole looks benign, I would just excise it and not send it to the lab. If I remember right, you are somewhere in the eastern United States, possibly Virginia. Well, if eastern Tennessee is not too far for you, you could try Dr. Robert Berry. His web site is http://www.patmosemergiclinic.com. There are a few of us scattered around the country, and the demand for us will probably increase with Obamacare’s hassles. In the past year, I have spent time with several doctors who were planning on going out of the system, or “off the plantation” as Todd Coulter of Mississippi calls it. You can look at http://www.aapsonline.org to try to find one close enough to you, or just to read what us radical free-market loving doctors have to say.
Excellent, Jim – thanks for the info!
Let’s just hope they don’t make fee-for-service illegal (as was attempted back in the ’90s when Hillary made the first run at government health care).
blackhats sometimes back away from pen strokes (tariff of abominations). but the s/wordsmith rewrites will come (morrill tariff).
and notice sc, times one & two versus lindseyland sc today.
3x the charm. no-know-nolo contendre. symmetrical inversion, subversion. syllogistic symboljism.
maybe cool hand sc will unbreak. and not get its throat shot out. maybe the brokeness is permanent (or just as good as).
Sure you’re not Malkavian…?
I understand you – bet everyone else does, too – but you make Zen koans simple at times. 😉
(Malkavian is meant as a compliment, BTW.)
writing the same things in the same clipped, declarative, subject-verb-object, flesch-kincaid-ed way, over & over again…violates the unwritten first rule of fight club: enjoy yourself. who wants to be this guy (or in front of this guy)?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhiCFdWeQfA
too many confuse, or conflate, drum beating with education. gene, enjoying himself:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHr4XQ9SEcg
had to look up “malkavian”.
dunno. what csikszentmihalyi wrote about might be characterized, in the eyes of blogger-beholders, as enjoyment to an insane exponent. ☻
the only time/place i ever actually got to that level was on the mx tracks of my youth. cyber-drumming is fun, but cycles thrumming was insanely fun.
flow-on is a much better experience than cling-on. better looking, too. lol. to bitter cling-on, or not to bitter cling-on:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiRMGYQfXrs
thx for the compliment. ☻
Ozy,
Correct, and damn funny…. 🙂
In an insane situation, the only sane response – is isanity. We are almost there…
Who will reach out and give a push?
Just a little push and he’ll be smilin’
“isanity”
hmmm…is that a freedian slip? every sane man is an is(l)an(d)(ent)ity, after all.
maybe you’re not as crazy-deathwishy as it often seems. ☻
jobsian slip is the other possibility.
the rise & flush of itoilet:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pci_7o6cCbM
Imagine a world where a man is incarcerated for seeking medical help.
This has the makings of a Twilight Zone episode.
Hopefully this episode will have a good ending.
See Samuel Butler’s Erewhon.
Too hard to navigate for my taste. Those who want to live in Erewhon should be allowed to. Those who want the most advanced technological existence possible should be permitted that as well.
The iron-skulled insistence everyone coexist in one all-encompassing consensus reality, the War On Consciousness, should immediately be brought to an end.
Final Page of Novel – page 324
The feelings that came uppermost in my mind were hardly of a very solemn character, but I thought of my first acquaintance with Chowbok, of the scene in the woodshed, of the innumerable lies he had told me, of his repeated attempts upon the brandy, and of many an incident which I have not thought it worth while to dwell upon;
and I could not but derive some satisfaction from the hope that my own efforts might have contributed to the change which had been doubtless wrought upon him, and that the rite which I had performed, however unprofessionally, on that wild upland river-bed, had not been wholly without effect.
I trust that what I have written about him in the earlier part of my book may not be libelous, and that it may do him no harm with his employers. He was then unregenerate. I must certainly find him out and have a talk with him; but before I shall have time to do so these pages will be in the hands of the public.
At the last moment I see a probability of a complication which causes me much uneasiness. Please subscribe quickly. Address to the Mansion-House, care of the Lord Mayor, whom I will instruct to receive names and subscriptions for me until I can organize a committee.
Buzz Killington:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f68VXKMZT1Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbl79BbmpVg
Family Guy:
Buzz Killington is a well-dressed British man from the late 19th century. His name is a play on the term “buzz-kill.” He is what one would imagine to be “cool” in late 19th-century times, but is a complete and utter buzzkill by modern standards; hence his name, and whence the humor surrounding him derives. The one who mentions how much of a buzzkill he is groans, lifts his glasses and rubs his eyes as if he has a migraine, at the end of each of Buzz’s jokes.
Erewhon/Over the Range – 1921 edition from the New Zealand Electronic Text Centre
http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-ButErew.html
Dear Mith,
Yet more evidence that the underlying motivation of the self-appointed “ruling class” has nothing to do with “helping people.”
It is all about a psychopathological need to dominate and control. It is probably identical to the rush the serial rapist or serial killer feels when he kidnaps and tortures his victims, merely expressed in a different form.
Ordinary people must of course infer much of this, since we do not share their inner states of mind. But as Yogi Berra noted, “You can observe a lot by just watching.”
@Bevin – They have no limits on their greed:
My fear is that governments in the US, Britain, and Europe will display similar reflexes. Indeed, they have already done so. The forced-feeding of banks with fresh capital – whether they want it or not – and the seizure of the Fannie/Freddie mortgage giants before they were in fact in trouble (in order to prevent a Chinese buying strike of US bonds and prevent a spike in US mortgage rates), shows that private property can be co-opted – or eliminated – with little due process ….
Forbes’ Richard Eisenberg claims that the government is targeting our 401ks with taxes.
Indeed, rumors have swirled around Washington that the government was considering seizing funds from our 401k accounts.
Martin Armstrong predicted last month:
Government Will Seize All Pension Funds Globally – In the US that will Include 401Ks….
And Paul Craig Roberts – former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under President Reagan, former editor of the Wall Street Journal, listed by Who’s Who in America as one of the 1,000 most influential political thinkers in the world, PhD economist – notes that some government officials have considered this option more than a decade ago:
More…http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/10/government-has-contemplated-seizing-pension-money-for-over-a-decade.html
Dear Gary,
Yes.
Their self-enriching financial motives dovetail nicely with their psychopathological motives.
Did you see the movie “The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo?” It depicts this phenomenon among the super-rich “elites.” Power lust expressed in many ways, including sexual sadism.
Ditto “Eyes Wide Shut.”
@Bevin – No. Is it worth watching? Isn’t there a series of those “Girl With” movies out?
Dear Gary,
Yes, in my opinion. Well worth watching.
It’s always risky endorsing anything here at EPA. Someone is always ready to pounce and say “You dupe! That’s NWO progaganda!”
My own feeling is that once one has taken the red pill, any propaganda one might be exposed to afterwards, merely underscores the fraudulent nature of the attempted indoctrination.
There is indeed a “Millennium Trilogy” of three novels, all made into films, in Sweden, starring the same protagonists, primarily a middle aged male magazine publisher and a young female “Goth” computer hacker.
The first Swedish film was remade by Hollywood in English. Both versions are good.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_series
The Millennium series consists of three bestselling novels, originally written in Swedish, by the late Stieg Larsson (1954–2004). The two primary characters in the saga are Lisbeth Salander, a woman in her twenties with a photographic memory and poor social skills, and Mikael Blomkvist, an investigative journalist and publisher of a magazine called Millennium. Blomkvist, the character, has a history similar to Larsson, the author. Larsson planned the series as having ten installments, but due to his sudden death, only three were completed and published.[1] Those three books are:
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Män som hatar kvinnor, literally, men who hate women) (2005)
The Girl Who Played with Fire (Flickan som lekte med elden, literally, the girl who played with fire) (2006)
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest (Luftslottet som sprängdes, literally, the air castle that was blown up) (2007)
Morning, Bevin!
I saw the movie and enjoyed it; bought the book and found it unreadable. I might try again. It could have been my fault and not the author’s… .
Dear Eric,
I confess I haven’t read the books. Can’t say anything about it either way.
I’ve only seen the two film versions of the first book, one made in Sweden, the other in Hollywood.
Both film adaptations were excellent in my opinion. I can usually spot embedded collectivist propaganda pretty quickly. No red flags went up for me.
It’s a shame the author passed away. He planned to write 10 books in the entire series. We got only three, plus a half finished draft for a fourth.
@Bevin – I will let you know. I just downloaded the narrated Audible unabridged book.
Dear Gary,
FYI: The film versions are online too at various torrent sites.
Yeah, Bevin. “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” is indeed a great movie. The original version was every bit as good as the more expensively made Hollywood version. I didn’t know that the author was dead. I was looking forward to more. I haven’t read any of the novels yet. Maybe this winter.
Another film I loved that was from a Scandinavian writer was “Smilla’s Sense Of Snow’. Excellent mystery with government and corporate bad guys creeping around.
OK, now I’m out on a limb with you, since some meanie will probably tell us that our beloved fiolms are statist propaganda. 😉
Dear Ed,
Just finished watching the Swedish made Millennium Series Trilogy.
Yes, definitely okay. Not problematic at all.
The government is depicted as reversing victims and victimizers.
For example, many here at EPA have related horror stories about Child Welfare Services. The Millennium Series depicts the CWS case workers and government sanitarium psychiatrists as rapists, perverts, and extortionists who victimize those they are supposed to be helping.
The police investigating the case are either in on the cover up, or incompetent. The cover up, perpetrated in the name of “national security,” has to be exposed by a private sector investigative reporter.
No. Definitely not “statist propaganda.”
Hi Mith,
That world almost came to be in the ’90s. It would have been a felony under Hillarycare to contract (or provide) medical services outside their system. And that frau is a likely presidential contender now.
Dear Eric,
There are times when sheer disgust over the obtuseness of We the Sheeple makes one want to simply throw up one’s hands.
They parrot the mantra that “America is the freest nation in the world!” and that it is distinguished by its “exceptionalism.”
Well I used to believe in American Exceptionalism. I wanted to believe that somewhere on earth, there was a land that was genuinely exceptional, where people were genuinely free.
But if one is going to be exceptional, then for chrissakes be exceptional. Don’t be like every other quasi-dictatorship on the planet dammit!
How can anyone actually believe that America is the “freest nation on earth” when you can be thrown in a cage merely for paying someone to provide you with medical care, and murdered if you resist?
And here’s the real kicker, We the Sheeple will blame the victim for “not obeying the law.”
I am so glad your father’s shingles were not bad. I have known several people (the tough cookie types) who were in agony and the terrible pain and itching which lasted a very long time. So here is to good fortune…we all need a little from time to time.
Us also, Lynn – thanks for the kind words!
Thanks to the varicella (chicken pox) vaccine, we’ll see millions of new, agonizing cases of shingles in the middle-aged and elderly Real Soon Now.
The eugenicists are following Bertram Russell’s exhortation–Ingestion, Injection, Injunction–by putting neurotoxins, sterilants, and oncoviruses in the vaccines.
The chicken pox vaccine itself confers limited, if any, immunity. So what happens when it wears off? Yep, those varicella viruses–in the same family as herpes BTW–migrate out of the nerve roots and to the termini where they cause shingles.
It used to be that you’d get lifetime immunity from a benign case of chicken pox as a child. As that immunity waned, you’d be exposed to your children’s chicken pox, boosting it again; and finally, your grandchildrens’, boosting immunity yet again.
No more. Now you’ll be advised–it’s happening already–to get “boosters” of the chicken pox “vaccine” every few years…along with your neurotoxic soup of flu shots.
This is just one of the many delectable horrors brought to you by the eugenicists in charge; and just wait, it’ll be “mandatory”.
Fuck’em. Neither of my kids are vaccinated, never will be. They look like little brown Adonises, and get sick about 1/5 as often as their sickly classmates…nor do they suffer the raft of chronic illnesses that plague average American kids–allergies, asthma, skin conditions, neurological conditions.
My god, the PTB are killing us right out in the open–in a slow-kill operation designed to be just slow enough, just subterranean, to escape direct notice.
Refer to the Georgia Guidestones. They want a population of 500 million; and they don’t care how they reach it.
Dear meth,
Just finished watching “Breaking Bad” from beginning to end over a couple of weeks.
Now I finally know what “methylamine” is!
Ah!! Delicious, isn’t it?
If I could selectively ablate the area of my brain that remembers “Breaking Bad” and watch it all again, I’d do it!
Indeed. I choose all my online aliases from drug precursor chemicals. It gives me childish amusement thinking some low-level schlub at the DEA has to read my emails and posts; maybe he’ll wake up.
Heil Handler! What have you learned today, Mr. DEA? That your kids are being killed by the government you work for?
But back to “Breaking Bad”–the most perfect TV series ever, even ending perfectly. I only hope “The Walking Dead” can achieve such a denouement.
Meth, go ahead and watch it again. The way these serial stories are written, you forget a lot of it pretty quickly, retaining only a few high points.
You can watch the dvd version and get a different take on a lot of it. It’s the way TV is supposed to be, so reruns aired a few years later are still watchable.
Dear meth,
Yes! Agree completely!
Breaking Bad was masterful. Unlike some other TV series that had well written individual episodes, but which got “Lost” along the way (pun intended), Breaking Bad never strayed off course.
The creator(s) of the show wrote the series the right way, backwards, from back to front, from end to beginning, the way veteran story structure teachers in Hollywood teach students to write stories.
They came up with the ending first, then worked back from there. When one writes that way, “tying up loose ends” is a foregone conclusion. Let’s hope Walking Dead doesn’t disappoint. It’s been good so far.
Examples of good TV series endings:
Breaking Bad
Fringe
Friday Night Lights (even though it was about fuuuhtbaaall)
Examples of bad TV series endings:
X-Files
Lost
Dexter
Dear Ed,
I second that.
I watch many old TV series over again years later.
MikeP, I meant to say the same thing. My left eye is screwed. I never know if I’ll be rotten one day or how long it’ll last. But the internal thing is the killer. 49 months ago my initial attack left me bed-ridden for 2 weeks going “uhn” every time I breathed and lying on my left side that felt like a mule was kicking me in the abdomen. Just over a week ago a friend(had to put on my reading glasses, never needed them till 3 weeks ago) reported his friend had gone totally blind in his right eye. He wondered if the vaccination was the way to go and although I don’t recommend them normally for much of anything except rabies, I told him to run, don’t walk to get one. You don’t want shingles….ever…..Now my doc thinks it has morphed into MS, whoopee, and said the reason I broke my leg was from lupus, double whoopee, must be the reason it ain’t getting well. I went from kickin ass to getting my ass kicked.
8….
http://wrightnewsletter.com/2013/10/17/vitamin-d-may-reverse-ms/
came across my desk recently. calcitrol sounds worth a look.
have read that d, itself, isn’t really a vitamin. think it was called a pro-hormone. for that, if you want to try stiff doses, bio tech pharmacal is what we use. 50,000iu capsule. amazon has it.
ozy, I’m a few years ahead of you here but I appreciate it. Yes, d is a hormone and Bill Sardi talked me into taking 50,000units/day back then for a year or more. I found out my old nemesis, the sun that has burnt me all my life is a better source so I was out in it hanging clothes in just my skivvies today soaking it up. Wished I like sardines to get the other things I need but I do eat fruit. Why am I up at midnight though? Finishing off the WT, maybe get some sleep and that does more good than anything. Roth, shingles doesn’t mutate like flu and other contagious diseases so I’d take a vaccination if it would help but it’s too late. The alternative has convinced me to recommend it anyway.
was speaking mostly to the possible ms issue, 8. that’s the calcitrol angle.
pain “medicine” is a relative of the old inquisition. and i do mean that in the fundamentalist religionist sense.
have a friend with terrible pain issues. has been on opiates for at least 20 years. her mengeles prescribe to the dea, not her. ever lower doses. even so, every time she’s in hospital (always via the er, as her insurance dictates), the staff finds her regular daily dosage “too high” – & won’t match it, let alone exceed it for the breakthrough pain (that always comes). many’s the time i’ve “smuggled” her meds from home into the hospital, & watched the door, while she tried to get the pain back under control.
the suicide rate for people trapped in this torture chamber is well above average. theists in charge are fine with that.
So what’s the connection between calcitrol and ms? Doc said ms because my older sister has had it for 20 years, went almost blind in a week from it but her vision comes back, goes away, etc. Oldest sister died at 61 from ‘unknown’. I’m actually getting my butt kicked today, internal pain feels like shingles…..and that’s the worst part of it for me. My initial outbreak I didn’t even know I had a rash since internal pain was so bad.
“they’d” probably need a better understanding of ms to explain the connection. i dunno. haven’t researched it. but i would research it, if i was facing it. and even if i couldn’t find the connection, i’d likely try it. so much of it, many things, is just trial & error.
the herpetic stuff is a nasty batch of bugs. nerve burrowers. ms is nervous system too. are they just neighbors, or co-conspirators? widespread, but latent, in most people. the flares do seem to be tied to ebbs in immune function. keeping that strong is easier said than done, tho. it’s tied to everything else (of course).
insomnia (you mentioned sleep) is enough to get the ball rolling downhill. who sleeps well? not me. (or people in pain.) and that helps activate the cold sores i get around my nostrils. pap & brothers had them on lips, growing up. my first outbreak didn’t come until early 30’s (which i take to be the beginning of ‘the slide’).
BUT, the high dose d, which i began maybe 8 years ago, greatly reduced flares, & moderates them, really nips them, when they do come.
i did see a bit on the calcitrol being better at causing hypercalcemia, which is the caution with high dose d (& why its important to accompany with stiff doses of k – we use a 15mg capsule, which compared to rda is a “massive” dose…*in fact, we take 3 of those a day).
Ozy:
I can’t beleive (though I do) that theists are OK with encouraging suicide due to pain. (Suicide is usually seen as a mortal sin, and sends you straight to Hell. I am all for some people going to Hell – those who take their own lives, whether due to terminal illness or endless pain, should NOT be among them. Those who deny treatment….? Well, I’ll want servants by the time I arrive…)
Encouraging suicide by selectively withholding treatment is right up there with murder, to me. Only Murder is more honest.
suprynowicz’s novel, “the black arrow”, had this pain med puritanism as one of its vectors.
there was a scene where a hospitalized someone, near & dear the inquisitor-in-charge, was being denied relief, as per law. inquisitor flew into a rage, of course – he & his were exceptions to the laws – & he stormed down to the hospital to officially force the issue.
the resistance was waiting. they got him with bows, the broadheads dipped in nicotine, if i remember right.
If the shingles vaccine is like the flu vaccine, it probably doesn’t work.
You did read the Jon Rappoport stuff, didn’t you?
http://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2013/10/04/the-government-knows-its-a-medical-killing-machine/
http://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/category/germ-theory/
Shingles is actually a different expression of the chicken pox virus, showing up when immunity is lowered in someone who caught the virus previously in a way that left it hiding in certain nerves. Vaccination may increase immunity and keep shingles from showing up – but if it already showed up, it’s too late to nip any infection in the bud because the infection was over much earlier.
“Vaccination may increase immunity” – Bah! I don’t believe a single word those so-called experts say anymore. I’m surprised you all do.
From the linked article above:
What was his secret and unofficial task at the FDA supposed to be? “Drug reviewers were clearly told not to question drug companies and that our job was to approve drugs.” In other words, rubber stamp them. Say the drugs were safe and effective when they were not.
Cavanagh’s revelations are astonishing. He recalls a meeting where a drug-company representative flat-out stated that his company had paid the FDA for a new-drug approval. Paid for it. As in bribe.
[…]
On January 15, 2009, the NY Review of Books published a devastating quote from a woman who, for 20 years, edited the most prestigious medical journal in the world:
“It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.”
(Marcia Angell, MD, “Drug Companies and Doctors: A story of Corruption.” NY Review of Books, Jan. 15, 2009.)
Baloney of Confrontation Fanatic
Puppet minister of commonwealth unification P.M. Lawrence, makes absurd remarks and constant accusations to chill Libertarian voluntary relations.
Meanwhile, he also lets loose deceitful utterances and nuanced sophisms to derail whatever out of British Empire bounds topic he wishes to put a stop to.
So many impudent admonitions. How brazen-faced he is! He always attempts to shift the blame to you, the autodidact.
Stop thinking outside of consensus lanes of thought. You are deeply in error.
The world’s current catastrophic situation was caused by false dogmas which the ruling powers that be have now dealt with. Return to your local institutions of higher thought. All is well. No need for further alarm.
Today, a true road for the future of America lies in international unification.
The secret rulers and their inverted totalitarian national puppets are desperately trying to escape the blame for the worsening state of their fiat currencies.
The Royalist puppets stake their life on dependence on outside ruling forces and confrontation with fellow countrymen.
These individualist traitors can never escape the denunciation of all free people and shall pay dearly for their crimes.
More instances of PM Lawrence’s scrivening doppelgangers can be found here
http://www.rodong.rep.kp/en/
polysci…
“polygamous”, prostituted, “science”
so what stopped you from just paying for the service? No Obamacare yet.
Hi MF,
Most doctors – that is, the fraus who run most doctors’ offices – will not even make an appt. for you without first obtaining all your insurance info. Fee-for-service is not easy to find, especially if it’s an immediate issue (as was the case with regard to my father-in-law’s case of shingles).
Medicine is already Sovietized. Obamacare will just tie up the loose ends.
Eric, You better hope you never get shingles. If you do, I bet you won’t be calling it a “minor thing.”
On the one hand, MikePizzo, I agree with you. I’ve seen what it’s like for some people. WebMD says, “you could have long-term pain” etc…
On the other hand, as WebMD says, “Most people who get shingles will get better and will not get it again.” I’d call that minor, compared to say, a lost limb. How-freaking-ever; the descriptions of the long term pain Postherpetic Neuralgia, make it a toss up.
In the video in this article, they talk about what might be causing what looks like is a huge outbreak of shingles, spooky stuff for sure:
http://naturalsociety.com/aluminum-barium-strontium-chemtrail-poisons/
Hi Mike,
Yeah. I guess it depends on the case. With my father-in-law, it was “just” a series of rash-like things on the back of his neck and right shoulder. Unpleasant – but not a debilitating thing. Now, if it spread all over one’s body…
@Eric – A little known treatment that I have seen work pretty well. Get some Selsun Blue shampoo & use 2X / day to treat the area..
eric, I’ve found the old standby Epsom Salts works well. If he can’t tolerate a hot bath with it, then use just warm water. temp never bothers me but that stuff is magic for many things including my broken leg too. Of the best thing I know to do for a daily treatment, get plenty of sun, just not on the rash. Even getting a slight sunburn will boost your entire body. The sun is too low in the sky now to get a sunburn or would take hours to do but half an hour in the strongest sun you can find will definitely help, and not just the rash but your entire body and even your state of mind. If my skin weren’t so fair I’d be one of the sun worshippers just for the boost and feelings of well-being.
According to my neighbor, crushed red pepper mixed with water and cayenne pepper and applied as a paste, helps too.
That cayenne pepper is good stuff. There’s so many things that stuff is good for.
Dr. Christopher, Master Herbalist and Peace-Maker
“cayenne is one of the best remedies for the heart.”…
http://mindbodypolitic.com/2013/09/27/dr-christopher-master-herbalist-and-peace-maker/
you might try a light box for the state of mind angle. ‘seasonal affective disorder’, & all that.
ozy, if you live in west Tx. and need a lamp, you have another serious problem. I believe my oldest sister died from staying inside and everything that goes with that. I have noticed I and others get depressed when the sun is obscured for a week or longer. It doesn’t happen often but it’s a killer when it does. Normally you can get plenty sun where I live no matter what the temp. It’s really not a factor but you do need to go “outside”. I have noticed for most of my adult life that everything needs sunshine. Dogs that can stay indoors where it’s warm will eventually go out in the cold, no matter how cold it is, and lie down in a sunny spot just to get some sun, well, all animals really. Ace had a kitty entourage and when he’d go out to sun, he’d be covered in cats. We have videos of him and cats hanging out together. You know, one of those really mean pit bulls.
lived in phoenix. worked out “in it” for years. & when i got tuned into the vit d stuff, got myself checked. despite all my sun exposure, levels were still lower end of range.
sounds like you’re describing sad. not confined to higher latitudes (but probably lots of people ‘up there’ depend on light boxes to even things out) . sometimes it might be easier to flip a switch than to go outside….i personally like having lots of options.
I have an HSA, which is a savings account coupled with a high-deductable insurance policy. Unless I get in a car wreck or come down with a terminal disease, I’m going to be paying cash for my routine care. This gets me back to being able to not having the doctor being second-guessed by the insurance company most of the time.
“Do you have insurance?” Yes. But I won’t be using it. What’s your cash price for a routine physical and a tetanus booster? Can you do better than that?
Eric, I had a similar exchange with a frau last week. It went something like this:
Me: Hi. I’m looking for a new primary care doctor, and somebody recommended Dr. X. I’d like to schedule an initial appointment.
Frau: Fine. What is the problem you’re having?
Me: Well, I’m not really having a particular problem at the moment. It’s really more of an initial consultation.
Frau: But I can’t schedule you unless there’s a medical problem you’re having.
Me: You mean I can’t just schedule an appointment to meet and discuss my general health with a person I want to be my primary doctor?
Frau: No, I’m sorry, but there’s no option for that in the system.
Eventually, I had to speak with the office manager, and she was able to schedule an appointment, but only after basically faking the system out by picking one of the several things I wanted to talk with the doctor about. And after my head cleared, I realized I should have just told her I wanted to schedule a physical.
But that’s the problem: The red tape. The bureaucracy. The endless questions. The system is simply senseless.
When I was a kid and my mom took us to the doctor, there were no appointments. You’d just go, sign a list, and wait in the waiting room to be seen. It usually wouldn’t be long. They didn’t ask you any questions beforehand. Just sign the list, and they’d show you into an examination room. The nurse would ask what you were there for, and after taking your temperature, she’d leave and the doctor would come in. Gee, I miss those days!
But maybe there’s hope. I been hearing for some time about cash-only doctors, and they’re sounding better and better. There was one I heard about — he had his own individual practice, and yet he had four fraulines working for him, just to handle scheduling and processing the insurance. He got fed up with dealing with the insurance companies, so he fired the fraus and started working for cash only. He posted all his prices on a sign in the waiting room of his office and saw patients on a first-come, first-served basis. People loved it! I’d love to find a doctor like that myself.
Apparently the cash-only trend is growing:
http://money.cnn.com/2013/06/11/news/economy/cash-only-doctors/
Robert, we can’t find a cash doctor. I tried to get appt.’s with several, no dice, no ins. Who is my insurer? I’ll pay cash. We don’t accept cash….and so it went. So I find out what ins. all the doctors in our area want, we got it, waited out the probationary(such a nice sound)period and started calling again. We’ll get back to you. I call them all back a couple weeks later. The doctor won’t take your case. Ok, why not. Sir, I don’t have that information, I just take care of the appts’. Ok, who would know. There is nobody to tell you that sir. Well, how do I address it if I don’t know why they won’t take me. Again sir, I wouldn’t know that. I got in these circles time after time. Neither of us ever saw a doctor and after several months of trying, dropped the ins. One of the great benefits of being on the govt.’s list I guess. I now have a local doctor who sorta took me on a cash basis but she’s just a GP, no specialist like I need. She’s done me much more good though than my previous specialist so there is that.
When I call up and want an appt. and they ask why, I just pick one symptom. I wish I had your problem.
@8 – Check these guys out
http://privatephysicians.com/howtochooseyourdoctor.html
Garysco, I checked it out and it only listed doctors as close as 140 miles away. I shed a doc last year because of being 150 miles away. There’s a large town (110,000+) less than 60 miles away and it shows none there or any of the larger towns closer to me. Thanks though.
@8 – Geez man. You must live in that W. Texas moonscape country near Van Horn.
Garysco, considerably east of there. Then it would be 300 miles one way….and in NM. Oh give me land lots of land under starry skies above…….It’s V-8 2.0 final drive double OD country, Van Horn is BIG V-8 double OD country. Back in the day you could put the hammer down and never see a B&W all the way to Ft. Davis. I could live in VH just fine. I was just thinking yesterday while driving how this country has become solid mesquite and you can’t see like you could when I was a kid. I wish it were like when my grandparents were young and nothing but rolling grassland with occasional cottonwood trees. When I was young we had virtually no deer here, very few turkey and plenty of quail. NOw, no quail, something has done them all in, probably hogs (or RoundUp), can’t stir ’em with a stick, solid deer and plenty turkey but no prairie chickens.
Thanks, Gary. That looks like an interesting option.
@8: Didn’t mean to imply that I don’t have health issues — I have plenty myself. But I have specialists that I’m generally happy with here, and one of these basically acts as my internist. Since I moved here a couple years ago, though, I’ve been looking for a good GP for the usual things (sinus infections, etc.). So that’s what I had in mind when I called the doctor the other day. I didn’t have treatment of a particular problem in mind when I called — I just wanted somebody to establish a relationship with, so I’d have someone to treat ME when ordinary health issues come up. That was what was so absurd about the conversation — they just didn’t have a predefined ‘path’ to handle such a request.
Which I guess reinforces the old saying about western doctors only treating the symptoms, not the whole person.
Robert, you got it, treat the symptom, ignore the patient. The ER doc and nurse(esp. her)freaked at “how” I broke my leg. Specialist, not a concern at all. At 6 weeks when I couldn’t really tolerate the pain, he cut me off pain meds, said I shouldn’t be hurting that much as if that were the end of it. He even told me “The DEA doesn’t like me to prescribe this pain med” as if that were THE only consideration. Hey, I don’t like taking the stuff but it beats getting drunk twice a day. Of course it was for him since why would I go back? From day one he treated my leg as if it were attached to a ten year old, a very healthy one at that. Now, almost 8 months into it I was awake most of the night with the damned thing. Naw, nothing wrong here, nothing to see, move along.
Alcohol WAS the correct cure…
You just needed to apply it to the DOC’s head, instead of internally to you.
I’d suggest you not remove it from the bottle first…
😀
Grenades (and similar) treat the whole person….
And the office…
And the officers looking to injure (categorize and file) you.
The way things are going: Am I REALLY that far ahead of the curve?
I mean, if you can’t eat mutton, why have the sheep around?
(A note, I’m more bitter than… Ever before, for personal reasons I won’t go into.)
8SM,
You and I both loathe the state but one way to get back at offices that refuse cash is to rub their nose in the legal tender laws. When the FEDRES came into existence, they had that law passed to force people to accept their worthless paper. Make sure you carry a copy of the statute and let them know you will report them to the treasury department for refusing to accept FRNs for payment of a private debt. I bet that will wet some pants! LOL!
Just as a side note. i use to live in an apartment complex and they started to refuse cash payments. i got them to see otherwise. they took me to court for failure to pay rent and i took them to court in a counter for their failure to accept cash. Guess who won? 🙂 It wasn’t the apartment complex management company. The judge ruled my attempts to pay the rent were valid and their refusal to accept the payment meant the debt was forgiven.
Now normally, I don’t like to use G Force because i deem it immoral. But in their case since they made the first move. I considered it self defense.
D.
David, things have probably changed against the individual since that bunch of Republicans took over in the Tx. legislature in 2002 and re-wrote the entire penal code, but when I took Tx. Law in HS, you know, back when it got real cold and they turned out the school(I ain’t lyin), the law clearly stated if you offered payment and it was refused, your debt was paid. There were so many carpet-baggers still in business back then the law had to do something to protect the general public from all the yankee scams. When you offered to pay back then, people took it and were glad for customers like you. God only knows what the law is now….but I can guarantee it helps corporations and not the individual.
Eightsouthman wrote, “if you offered payment and it was refused, your debt was paid.”
I did not know that.
Thanks for educating me further.
I owed someone long ago. I offered to pay. They refused, at the time.
Later on, they came back and wanted paid, when I no longer had the money.
I wanted to pay. I intended to pay. But there was just something funny about it all, so I didn’t go out of my way to pay.
I kind of felt bad about that.
I don’t anymore.
Agreed, Rothbard.
If one offers payment and it is declined, you’ve discharged your obligation – as far as ethics.
“The law,” of course, may declare otherwise.
David, I think I mis-stated this. Seems like if you offered payment and were turned down then you had a long while before you actually had to pay. If you were turned down more than once though it became very hard to collect from you and not possible legally for on the spot payment. This law was in response to some situation where a creditor could take things from you or make you pay more(per a contract)if you didn’t pay for some specified period of that contract. Many companies used those tactics to get much more than they were owed. Now I just tell everybody to get in line ha ha ha ha.
8SM,
The legal tender laws are federal statutes. I have not heard of any legislation that has repealed the law. I’m sure the evil FEDRES wants to make sure its worthless fiat currency will still be accepted and if anyone refuses the u.S. Treasury will back the law up with enforcement. Of course, I could be wrong about the LT laws FEDGOV is always sneaking crap under the radar the common Joe is unaware of.
D.
“To be an American is to be an Earthling with a certain kind of an attitude”
Not precisely…To be American is to be an individual citizen of the Universe. To be American is to be non-self-limiting. Fully conscious. Fully human.
The Brits are a pathetic group, eh? Almost embarrassed for them. Freakishly owned island monkeys.
We’re all stuck on this ride… and that’s the real trouble. If only there were a Galt’s Gulch… some place where people who are willing to live their lives by the NAP could go and be free of those who are not willing to live their lives according to the NAP.
When I invent FTL drive, I will install it in the Mayflower II and send out the call. Until then, we have no choice but to try to keep the Titanic from sinking, us along with it.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/10/19/violin-that-played-as-titanic-sank-to-go-on-sale/
you got anything that’ll fetch such bids, eric?
if only hartley had played octobass violin, coulda’ repurposed it into a boat.
http://vimeo.com/groups/20806/videos/10990875
The info about your job, address etc are taken to track you down if you are a deadbeat. Big medicine is ALL about the MONEY….not “healthcare”. If we went back in time to the “family” doctor concept and cash for services the bill would drop like a rock. All these institutions charge HUGE prices only to get shafted by insurance companies but they bill anyway because its a HUGE tax write-off. Many people love Obamacare because they don’t understand what it is. In speaking to many people they still think its either free or will only cost a few dollars a month and the gubberment will pay that as well. Its sad to watch my country collapse but I love Obamacare because its my “worse is better” philosophy. People need that cold hard punch in the face to wake them up.
Joe,
“People need that cold hard punch in the face to wake them up.”
I tend to agree.
It’s not unlike having to face a home-invasion robbery after the local government has shorn you of your legal right to own a gun.
I know a liberal local politician-type who is like this. He rabidly wants “sensible” gun control. He is a pudgy, weak little toad who would get stomped in about 10 seconds by just about any healthy teenager… . He is not capable of defending his wife or daughter. A gun would be the only thing that would prevent a thug having his way with them, then killing all three. He just doesn’t get it.
It might take such an experience to slap some sense into him.
Didn’t Black Sabbath have that answer?
“DIRTY DEEDS…DONE DIRT CHEAP”.
HMMM – what was that phone number again…
That was AC/DC, GW. 🙂
Sorry you are correct – I must be Drain-Bamaged from to much head banging…
GW, you just reminded me of that comedy routine:
I was playing football when my head was accidentally ripped from my body. My head was rollin around in the mud and my body was runnin around tacklin shit. Doctors reattached my head but they said I now have Dain Bramage. I don’t even know what that shit is.
ahaha
The only people who support it are the mentally retarded and the psychopaths.
Yes.. the sudden punch in the face. Didn’t that happen when Pelosi said the bill had to be passed before anyone could know what was in it?
By George, Rev, I believe you’ve cut to the chase ha ha ha. Nobody ever said the Dems were the sharpest knife in the drawer but somebody made a list of what Bushco did and now it’s monkey see, monkey do payback time. Trouble is, it ain’t the Reps who are gonna have to pay, just the rest of us, just like with Bushco. Well, the yoke’s on us. I just wonder how long the sheeple are going to say More Please and Thank You? You’d think even the dimmest bulb would be starting to glean SOMETHING. Of course, you can leave out the Hispanics….and the blacks for the most part…so I guess it’s just us and the smart emigrants. My Cambodian friends “I don’t get it, what are they doing?” Oh, they’re just wanting all your profits. “hey, we don’t make squat now”. Uh huh…just wait. Your Wild Turkey is $4 higher than my other source. “huh?”
For the past six months, there has been a steady drip of bad news for Obamacare, but you wouldn’t know it if you watched only the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) news networks. Here are just a few of the Obamacare stories they’ve downplayed or completely censored:
A study released by the Society of Actuaries predicts that costs will shoot up an average of 32 percent by 2017 for insurers serving the individual health care market.
Economists, business owners, and employees all report that Obamacare is shrinking the number of full-time jobs as they are being replaced by less stable, lower-paying part-time jobs.
A Quinnipiac University poll shows two-thirds of self-identified Democrats expect the law will either hurt them or have no benefit.
Aside from one random report by NBC, not one of these trouble spots for Obamacare has been mentioned on ABC, CBS, or NBC’s evening news or their morning show broadcasts.
Earlier this summer, when Senator Max Baucus, a Democrat and chief architect of the law, opined that Obamacare will be a “train wreck,” it took nearly two weeks before any major network acknowledged the senator’s dire prediction.
And even when PBS’s News Hour featured a story about President Obama’s efforts to defend his health care law amid increasing public skepticism, those on the show conveniently failed to mention the harsh criticism of the law from three prominent labor union leaders and an increasing number of Democrat congressmen. This censorship has to stop.
The fact is, the liberal media helped usher Obamacare into law, which makes them very reluctant to report any story that might undermine its success and ultimately damage their credibility. But the Media Research Center won’t let them get away with it.
http://www.mrc.org
Hi Rev,
All true.
It is my opinion, however, that Obamacare is supposed to be a train wreck. In order to usher in the “single payer” system. This is what Obama, et al, really want. Since they could not achieve it in one step, the first step was to pass Obamacare – the “market” approach to “health care reform.” Knowing “the market” would fail (it being a “market” to the same extent that you are a “customer” at the DMV), they will then insist that the government must step in to fix the problem.
The tragic thing is most people will fall for this. After all, shouldn’t “we” have the same system that “every Western country” has?
What the American people don’t realize is that it will take a 60% tax rate to subsidize this monstrosity. Every other Western government has it. Of course, no one will advertise that fact. It’s a real screw job at its finest.
70% is minimum.
60%? If we could be so lucky.
Tax rates are going to settle out between 80-120% for productive americans in the coming decades the rate things are going. It’s just math. That’s where taxes need to go.
I’ll stop working before it gets to 80%. My ‘f-it’ number is considerably lower.
“80-120% for productive americans” – Yet, that’s the point diminishing returns kicks in.
Wasn’t it the Laffler Curve which showed once a tax rate reaches a certain percentage, less ‘revenue’ is actually brought in? With 80% being the magic number.
From what I’ve read, they just can’t take it that high.
…Well, and still take in more ‘revenue’ that is.
And they know it.
Hey Brent,
80 percent?
I’m done when it reaches 60. It will be literally not worth working at that point. The really tough question at that point, though, will be whether to become a moocher – and join the ranks of tax parasites collecting a check/benefits? Or resist. Physically. What I mean is, I could retire and just live off our land. We have no mortgage – and enough land to provide for most of our needs. I could barter, do small-scale side-work for the minimal cash needed to buy certain essential things. But, the bastards will still demand their land rent – the property tax. Which requires me to produce a regular and fairly substantial income. They may even pile on other taxes for the privilege of occupying the land we paid for years ago. What then? I may just dig my heels in and say, in effect, molon labe. Come and take it.
A man reaches his limit after a certain point.
I’m not all that far from mine.
BrentP, RAH, Eric, it’s nastier and more complicated than that, because the scenario you’re looking at – with high percentages being taken – is actually the soft option. The repertoire includes ways of squeezing even more out of people, ways that were worked out and used in other times and places over the centuries. One way is to group people and tax the group, so the rest have to pay when anyone pays less; that makes them police each other and keeps the take up even when someone can’t pay. Under that the take is like a rent, based on some notional capacity rather than a percentage that changes with turnover or income, so people keep the incentives to work as hard as possible because they don’t pay more if they do – but the notional “rent” keeps creeping up until too many people drop out of the tax base, as measured by the groups having to cover for them. It can creep up even beyond that, but sensible governments stop there or the tax payers die out.
I saw yesterday that in the 1940s, the top tax rate in the US was something like 94%! Who would bother working under that rate? Which I imagine is why the guvmint finally changed it; they wealthy probably stopped “producing,” at least for tax purposes (tax shelters, off-shore, etc.).
Rothbard,
Laffer is significantly lower, IIRC. Without looking it up, I think it’s between 30% and 50% (where people start to say, “F’ck it.”)
After that – it’s a question of how SHARPLY the returns drop, and eventually, Leviathan WILL eat the rich. Not sure if it’s greed or survival, but the TRULY wealthy will lose their wealth to asset forfeitures, I think.
Back to, “The king owns it all, and graciously allows “you” to manage the land for him.”
Neofeudalism simply put us into cubes instead of garden plots.
The current level of taxation that I live under is very close to my ‘f-it’ number right now. However with Obamacare as a new form of tying people to employment just walking away has become much more difficult.
Top tax rates are pretty much BS. We have to look at what the productive middle class is paying. Those top rates really end up only applying to people who make a lot of money as wages. Professional athletes and such. The wealthy can protect their incomes.
It was design to piss off both classes of people – the producers and the parasites.
So to facilitate “bi-partisan” support for total takeover of medicine by the political terrorists. Nobody is going to want to be free when the terrorists are threatening to stop medical care; and will always clamor for higher taxes/slavery and raised debt ceiling…Just like the little people do in the EU Borg Collective.
Time to move someplace warm whilst there is still time. The terrorists are just now starting to implement capital controls for money leaving the USA.
yes. just saw chase bank’s announcement: no wire transfers out of the country except for approved corporations. expect that to spread in front of some facta implementation, next year.
first currency controls. then (even more) overt people controls. u.s. passports: just another denomination of fiat currency. range of motion will continue to be steadily curtailed. curfews. martial law. in cyberspace, too. its probably coming.
even someplace cold is going to look a lot better, to a lot of people, after the take-away close. depardieu lit out for russia (for f***s sake). even made it “official”.
http://www.internationalman.com/78-global-perspectives/851-putin-saves-french-actor-from-tax-slavery-with-russian-citizenship#
RE: Currency controls. Small banks & credit unions are dong it too. According to some comments at EPJ.
Baby steps to fencing us in.
The Wild and Free Pigs of the Okefenokee Swamp
http://www.schoolandstate.org/Knowledge/Vouchers/PigsofOkefenokee.htm
A.k.a. The Price of Free Corn
RE: Currency controls. Small banks & credit unions are dong it too. According to some comments at EPJ.
Baby steps to fencing us in.
The Wild and Free Pigs of the Okefenokee Swamp
http://www.schoolandstate.org/Knowledge/Vouchers/PigsofOkefenokee.htm
A.k.a. The Price of Free Corn
when pigs fly. right onto the plate. like turkeys.
“Nassim Nicholas Taleb, best-selling author of The Black Swan, told the story of a turkey who is fed by the farmer every morning for 1,000 days. Eventually the turkey comes to expect that every visit from the farmer means more good food. After all, that’s all that has ever happened so the turkey figures that’s all that can and will ever happen. But then Day 1,001 arrives. It’s two days before Thanksgiving and when the farmer shows up, he is not bearing food, but an ax. The turkey learns very quickly that its expectations were catastrophically off the mark. And now Mr. Turkey is dinner.
Taleb’s advice: “Let’s not be turkeys.””
That turkey story is a mere adaptation of Bertrand Russell’s logical chicken, and Alan Coren adapted the principle to turkeys in a humorous story years ago.
“mere”, pm?
surely, more people are familiar with it now, due to taleb’s popularizing. or re-popularizing, if you like. taleb has brought value, & if that includes breathing fresh value into an old insight, what of it?
Ah yes, capital controls. An essential consideration for anyone contemplating emigration. If you can’t move your wealth out of the country with you, you will be in deep kimchi when the US government forbids any transfer of funds outside the country. And it will do that eventually. IRAs, 401(k)s, company pensions, structured settlements, insurance companies, and Social Security will not be able to make payments to expats.
Note that, in addition to the banking controls mentioned in your post and the responses, you already have to declare any amount over $10k that you’re taking out of the country. And gold counts for that purpose. So converting your cash to gold and then transporting it to another country is risky at best: failure to report that you’re taking more than $10k out will ruin your day if you’re caught at it.
Exactly.
So the HMO idea got kick started during the Nixon administration, no surprise there. Nixon is the root of most of the evil today; most of the maggots (Cheney, Rumsfeld,etc.) who were the Chimp’s minions got their start working for Tricky Dick. Then Obummer took everything up a notch, all the frogs are boiled now.
Indeed, Mike.
In fact, it is Republicans more than any other political cohort who turned this country into a collectivist tar pit. Lincoln, of course, being the notorious-obvious example. But his intellectual-ethical predecessors were there at the founding of the country only they called themselves Federalists then (Whigs for awhile afterward). The most malignant of them all being Hamilton – who was more than any other person responsible for the Constitution – which asserted unlimited in principle federal supremacy, and bequeathed America the cycle of debt-slavery via a national bank. After Burr did America a great service by sending Hamilton to the hereafter, the Federalist tide receded for a few years. But it returned – with a vengeance – under Abe.
And since then, it’s been, as they say, history.
Yup…Nixon and the murdering socialist-terrorist ape Lyndon Johnson.
Obamacare means totalitarian control. Our friends in the British Commonwealth have been under various totalitarian socialistic monarchies for a long time now.
They are conditioned and bred for it at this point. Not as much as the Han Chinese, but they are a good way there at this point.
Though Geographically Diverse, There Are Common Systems Implemented In All These Commonwealth Nations
http://www.royal.gov.uk/monarchandcommonwealth/commonwealthmembers/membersofthecommonwealth.aspx
A case can be made that their nations are designed from the top down such that they have things in common. These nations are individually crafted. They truly do share wealth in meaningful ways. That is not the case In the US.
We are screwed in the same way the ragtag Germans were screwed. And we are vastly outnumbered. The Commonwealth and our elite who serve them have outsmarted and boxed us in good. Like 600 pound gorillas on probation, we’re all one more incident away from being incarcerated for life.
Already there are wedges between formerly voluntarily assembled people here at the blog. Rugged Individualists, and satisfied commonwealthers.
Bevin in Taiwan I would venture, sees anarcho-capitalism as a nice to have improvement. But what he has is already working fairly well. He isn’t mired in the endless destabilizing shitstorms that single passport Americans are.
American is a culture of elite arsonists:
Burning of the White House Reichstag fire. Fort Sumter Reichstag fire. Sinking of the Maine Reichstag fire. Prohibition/Great Depression Reichstag fire. Pearl Harbor Reichstag fire. Gulf of Tonkin Reichstag fire. September 11th Reichstag fire.
They are very tight with the British, people who have never revolted. The Brits are outplaying us. We’ll either have to quit playing their game, rise up against our own government, or go to war against the Commonwealth to stop their poisonous cultural impositions and influence. Or do something else, this requires more thought obviously.
The American newly commonwealthy are especially insidious, because those of us made to support them have little if anything in common with them. They are in the catbird seat, smug and comfortable with support of a powerful majority.
I hate cops as a class. But there are individual exceptions. I hate social healthworkers as a class. But there are individual exceptions. I hate anyone who voluntarily complies with and uses Obamacare. But there will be individual exceptions.
I refer only to America. I understand that Sioux have a genuine tribal affinity for Sioux. Englanders consider themselves brothers. Australians have each others backs. Indians are rising together in cooperation to build a greater India. I understand pooling of resources and social healthcare in their cases.
But America isn’t a tribe. It’s most like Soviet Union, only 10 times more discordant and racially and culturally mixed. To be an American is to be an Earthling with a certain kind of an attitude.
There’s no American culture. There’s no commonness. There is no shared wealth. There’s Oligarchs that wield power, and that allow conditional access to Oligarch controlled common property, for as long as it suits them.
Frau Farbissina American Authority Drone Female
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb1_UjIPCTE
American Authority Desire-Object Fembots
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTv9AhCuSU4
“I like to see girls of that – ‘caliber'”
Fuck the Fraus and feed them fish heads.
@Tor – There is a unique American culture /philosophy that is being destroyed on purpose. It was the “limited government” “Live Free or Die” philosophy that was unique to this country from its inception. It is being destroyed in order to embed permanently the socialist communitarian form of state worship altruism, best described by Ayn Rand in her books.
Witness the forced open door intentions to flood the South West with illiterate immigrants from Mexico & the La Raza belief that they will forever change those states and bring them back to their socialist ways. That is why no enforcement or immigration reform will ever be enacted, and why we put up with Spanish labeling on our products and push 1 for English. All shoved down our throats at the official national level by law.
The same for Great Brittan. Tony Blair said he wanted to destroy that culture forever via mass immigration of illiterates who willingly strip the country of its history and ways.
From the Dailymail online October 2011:
“But what Tony Blair has failed to recognise is that while he was in power, he opened the floodgates of mass and uncontrolled immigration which has left a damaging legacy in our towns and cities.’
Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migrationwatch, said: ‘This is completely shameless from the Prime Minister who brought more than three million immigrants into Britain in the teeth of public opposition.’
Fellow Tory MP Dominic Raab added: ‘These comments are naïve if not reckless. Tony Blair has left Britain with a legacy of uncontrolled immigration that has put huge pressure on public services and undermined community cohesion’.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2054903/Tony-Blair-defends-opening-door-mass-migration.html#ixzz2iE5N5UFL
To be honest, I’m thankful there’s so many Spanish Mixed nuts in the Vegas Basin.
The only useful open door, would be to a place like Wenzhou, where entrepreneurs still invent, engineer, and fabricate newly marketable things.
Mexican slaves are annoying. I find American slaves much more intolerable though. Neither of them’s good for much, but milling about and buying things and giving opinions on things.
I prefer Mexicans because they don’t bother me with what their dear leaders are telling them, because they know I nothing about their politics.
I’d just as soon live free and burn every historical trace of anything to do with America’s forced rule. Wrecking ball all the buildings and monuments and grind them to dust. Smithsonian, Library of Congress, turn them all into Costcos and Walmarts or something.
You’ll notice Soviet Communitarian Soda never catches on. We still drink cola. Because it has value. It works. It does something. There is the opportunity loss of the 1000s of other concoctions forgone due to regulations, but a few types manage to exist.
Those jerks should only put labels on their own stuff, not the result of someone else’s labor.
Founding Fuck Face and Sir Simpering Shittalker are worth nothing. Nor is Glorious Comrade Cuntymouth or Pompous El Presidente. Everything is tainted with this political drudgery, it bores me and seems to lead nowhere. Why even follow it?
If you can’t converse intelligently without mentioning the time Honest Abe & General George stopped the Wookies from crossing the Delaware or whatever, maybe you should just remain quiet.
How does Mr prime meridian bring millions of people into his imaginary jurisdictional country exactly. Does he greet them all at the English shore with a towel and a cup of tea?
I’d like to open the flood gates on Tony Blair Witch and Iron Maiden and Viscount Harry Potter and everyone of those Inglorious English Ruling bastards if I could. Carve a nice Union Jack in their foreheads as well.
Let’s see if we can get all 388 South Americans in here. And the 42 million Central Americans too. India is only 1/3 our size, look at all the people they can fit in there.
China has a one China policy. Maybe America needs a one America Policy. There is only nation in the new world. Let’s give that a try.
I like that comment, Tor.
I like it a lot.
Second that, the “I like your comment a lot”.
Preeeaaaaaaach!
You’re not very familiar with British history, are you? Every century there have been British revolts or massive civil disturbances that could have led to revolution. Sometimes they were nipped in the bud, so that they didn’t make quite such a splash.
“Sometimes they were nipped in the bud, so that they didn’t make quite such a splash.”
Every time they were nipped in the bud, at least that’s the official story.
England has agents in every land to maintain her official story. 5/30/1381 – 6/15/1381 was the most successful internal disturbance, though this may not be well known amongst today’s Englanders.
FTFY
Children born on English controlled soil are bred and indoctrinated explicitly from birth to live “Under the English Dome.” and to draw the other 4.8 billion people outside of it as well. They’re also gonzo salesmen of the United Nations, maybe because having 53 votes means the chances of winning votes are pretty good.
English speaking people are controlled implicitly. It’s difficult to rebel against the very people who wrote the mental software you use to process sensory input and to attempt to act in your own best interest.
Your choice of words seems to prove my point about Commonwealther’s rhetorical treachery. Generalized statements with assumed air of superiority. “Almost” came to a revolution, means no revolution, no revolt, no overthrow, no overturn, right?
Some English people, as agents, overthrew the Scots, Welsh, and Irish, but never theIr own government.
It seem rational. Why overthrow your strong central controlling principals, when it’s much more lucrative to act as agents of your controllers and overthrow other weaker people? You know from experience you get a share of the booty, why fix something that isn’t broken?
1640–1660, the so-called period of English Revolution, seems to be changes in form only. No revolt that I’m aware of.
Externally imposed regime changes on England:
937-1066 Viking invasions and Danish victory.
1066-1088 Total Franco-Norman conquest of England
1135-1154 The Anarchy – Treaty of Wallingford. Stephen ousted, Henry crowned King of England.
This list is really long. If somewhere in here there was a successful internal revolt I’d like to know about it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_England
The Kingdom of England was a sovereign state from 927 to 1707. It’s still in existence but underwent several versions of Great Britains, and then United Kingdom. It is the seat of power of the Commonwealth of Nations. This is an intergovernmental organisation of 53 member states that were mostly territories of the former British Empire. The Commonwealth operates by intergovernmental consensus of the member states, organised through the Commonwealth Secretariat, and non-governmental organisations, organised through the Commonwealth Foundation.
The US and this Commonwealth operate under a Special Relationship
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Relationship
The British have invaded 9 out of 10 countries – so look out Luxembourg
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/9653497/British-have-invaded-nine-out-of-ten-countries-so-look-out-Luxembourg.html
“The English” by Tor Munkov – A Poem In Progress
salvation’s bullies are here at last
in fierce armada deadly fast
we wade ashore so right so good
from tall brave ships of lash and wood
your womenfolk will need some clothes
and take those bones out of your nose
Dear Tor,
“The British have invaded 9 out of 10 countries… ”
Now that you mention it, a pretty good case could be made that the Brits were a greater menace to the world than the Nazis!
Now you’re talking! Why not build up a shared perception of a common enemy and work to peacefully dismantle all of their institutions and instruments of tyranny?
Remember, remember, the fifth of November, the gun owners treason and plot. I know of no reason why the gun owners treason should ever be forgot!
First the Overture…
V for Vendetta (finale)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8UtojJT8ts
The scene should be digitally edited to show American soldiers peacefully storming england during V day – Nov-5-2013.
The American soldiers and participating Englanders take over English Parliament and then remove all national insignia from their new territory, uniforms, and other possessions.
We the V people declare all former United Kingdom and United States claims nullified over this new sovereign territory. This new sovereign land has one name only – V. And all of us sovereigns demand to be addressed by our new names: We are all named V. Pleased to meet you.
Happy 5th of November – V landers.
Dear Tor,
You crack me up!
TorMinotaur @ October 21, 2013 at 11:09 am
While even I have posted that there will be no watershed moment – I think that’s because it’s profitable for sheeple to keep their heads up their collective asses. OTOH…
http://iiipercent.blogspot.com/2013/10/we-need-another-boston-tea-party.html
I reference the specific article, but the whole site (especially recently) is getting REALLY good.
Unfortunately, with things in this sort of decline, we will have real problems soon. We need to visit the decline on TPTB (all of them).
Jean, sites like that are what I call revolution porn. Champing at the bit to start shooting is like jacking off; if you keep it up long enough, you lose your edge when the real thing comes along.
Reading shit like that will have you looking in the wrong direction when the emergency arises.
@Ed:
You’re probably right – but if we keep doing nothing (or at least, nothing more than writing here, or writing to senators and representatives, as I have done) – we’re wasting our time.
Might as well be productive in creating chaos. Stasis allows no growth. Revolution Pron still has a certain value, in that it does keep us focused.
Ed, Jean, keep your eyes and ears open and your head down. If you’re distracted you don’t notice all those people looking at YOU.
”
You’re probably right – but if we keep doing nothing (or at least, nothing more than writing here,”
Jean, reading their wolf tickets there is doing even less than writing here. If I had to guess, my guess would be that the people writing on that blog haven’t done shit, and ain’t going to do shit. If they aren’t provocateurs, they’re bullshitters.
That guess is based on my observations on 50+ years of witnessing and being involved in fights of one sort or another. The guy who walks back and forth swearing what he’s gonna do has already done all he’s gonna do, which is to swear he’s gonna do this or that. The guy who hits you is usually someone who ain’t said shit about anything.
Those guys are yelling to whoever might be intending to do harm on a big scale, “Look at me! I’m armed and ready. Shoot me first before you kill anyone else.” I don’t think there’s any good that can come of that, but maybe I’m just stupid.
Loudmouths are people to avoid. They draw fire and get other people killed as well as themselves.
Dear Tor,
On the other hand, I just stumbled across this:
Schwarzenegger Wants Constitution Changed For A 2016 Presidential Run
Terminator Star is “ready to file legal paperwork to challenge the rules”
Steve Watson
Infowars.com
Oct 18, 2013
http://www.infowars.com/schwarzenegger-wants-constitution-changed-for-a-2016-presidential-run/#comment-1090517556
In 1976, Arnie told Rolling Stone: “I feel you only can have a few leaders… and then the rest is followers. I feel that I am the born leader and that I’ve always impressed with being the leader. I hate to be the follower. I had this when I was a little boy… I didn’t think about money. I thought about the fame, about just being the greatest. I was dreaming about being some dictator of a country or some savior like Jesus.”
The Brits sent over Piers Morgan. The Austrians sent over Ah-nuld. Looks like both are menaces.
Good stuff Tor, really like the poem….and it’s spot on as they’d say.
Dear Jean,
You wrote:
… but if we keep doing nothing (or at least, nothing more than writing here, or writing to senators and representatives, as I have done) – we’re wasting our time.
Might as well be productive in creating chaos. Stasis allows no growth. Revolution Pron still has a certain value, in that it does keep us focused.
For what it’s worth, here’s my take on what you said.
1. Debunking the Myth of Authority is not “doing nothing.” It may not involved physical confrontation, but it transforms peoples’ thinking. Transforming peoples’ thinking is very much something. In fact, it is the whole ball game. Do that and the “revolution” is over. We win.
2. That must not be confused with “writing to our senators and congressmen.” Now that really is “doing nothing.” That merely reinforces the Myth of Authority. So-called “senators” and “congressmen,” what are they? Really? They are nothing more than total strangers who arrogated to themselves the “authority” to tell you what to do and to demand your money. They are nothing. This is the realization that will make their power evaporate into nothingness.
3. Converting people to market anarchism is not “creating chaos.” It is not a destructive process. Just the opposite. It is the most constructive thing one can do. Anarchism produces harmony. Government creates chaos. Equating anarchy with chaos buys into the statist paradigm.
Well, it’s cold over here and I swear, I wish they’d turn the heat on.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4Ppc3jz3GE
Australia’s health care system seems to be working well from my perspective, although I don’t know much about it.
I have a medicare card and I’m not working at the moment, so I also have a state funded health care card whilst on unemployment benefits.
A couple of weeks ago I had crippling chest pains, which required amberlamps, morphine (YUK!) and many scans. Although they found nothing, it cost me exactly that too.
Had I been working, the amberlamps might have cost me a minimum $500 to travel the mile from my place to the horsepiddle. I can get that insurance cover for $60 a year if I need to.
Medicare is paid via my taxes at about $500 a year. The grabbermint has been pushing for years to get everyone off it, but private insurance costs about the same. The insurance companies have been advertising “Get our insurance or get taxed”. Heh.. Easy to see through that one.
Turns out the chest pains were just a nerve in my spine being pinched and radiating across my chest from right kidney to upper left lung, which I discovered turning over in bed the other morning. Lucky me.
Sounds like the USSA’s health system is bashed up and laying bleeding in the gutter, because politicians that can afford it ignore the general public that can’t.
seems to be working compared to what, rev?
innovation/progress, here cures, actual health solutions/improvements, is a messy process. and its not what top down political systems sell.
moral hazard. rent controls. owners of bubblegum & baling wire concessions have an entirely vested interest in things breaking. planned obsolescence must be maintained. etc.
racketeers & hustlers. not philosopher kings.
Sure, government threatens me with violence, and steals 90% of what I produce.
But when it steals from some other guys and forces doctors to deal with me on terms set by government goons, well I think that’s pretty cool!
I wish I got all my things that way.
It’s so annoying when I go to a restaurant and there aren’t any forms to fill out. No one asks me about my eating habits and bowel movements and things like that. Doesn’t the chef care about me the way my government does?
Why not government groceries in government grocery stores. And government made cell phones. It’s so much better when there’s that random fear of caging and violence thrown in the mix.
Instead of having cash in your hand. You’ve have a lottery ticket that might pay you some of your own money back. High stakes gambling with low payouts are my favorite.
It’s great when someone who doesn’t care about me makes my major decisions for me from 1,000 of miles away.
Maybe they’ll take over television and all internet sites too. I’m sure they would make it something fantastic.`
Oh, and they should choose who I marry, and how many kids I have. And where I live. And what I do. They are the best.
Ha!
finished up “j. edgar” last night, the eastwood/dicaprio flick about freakshow hoover, fbi architect. nixon showed up near the end. wanted to get his hands on hoover’s private blackmail files stash, but they were all immediately shredded upon the behoover’s death, supposedly. as if multiple redundancies of such filing systems did not simultaneously exist.
anyway, nixon, as referenced here, was just another step in this particular road (ya’ know, another one of those oxygenating arteries leading to rome?).
The American Medical Association (AMA), founded in 1847 and incorporated in 1897,[3] is the largest association of physicians—both MDs and DOs—and medical students in the United States.[4]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Medical_Association#Politics
The Flexner Report[1] is a book-length study of medical education in the United States and Canada, written by the professional educator Abraham Flexner and published in 1910 under the aegis of the Carnegie Foundation. Many aspects of the present-day American medical profession stem from the Flexner Report and its aftermath.
The Report (also called Carnegie Foundation Bulletin Number Four) called on American medical schools to enact higher admission and graduation standards, and to adhere strictly to the protocols of mainstream science in their teaching and research. Many American medical schools fell short of the standard advocated in the Flexner Report, and subsequent to its publication, nearly half of such schools merged or were closed outright. The Report also concluded that there were too many medical schools in the USA, and that too many doctors were being trained. A repercussion of the Flexner Report, resulting from the closure or consolidation of university training, was reversion of American universities to male-only admittance programs to accommodate a smaller admission pool. Universities had begun opening and expanding female admissions as part of women’s and co-educational facilities only in the mid-to-latter part of the 19th century with the founding of co-educational Oberlin College in 1833 and private colleges such as Vassar College and Pembroke College.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexner_Report
ama, who probably ghostwrote, via flexner (carnegie) sought to cartelize their hustle. and they succeeded. only to have their monster wrested from their complete control (they tried to control/prevent their members from hmo-ing in the 30’s – got busted by way of the sherman antitrust act, as wielded by “competitors” who wanted in on the hustle… they fought medicare in the 50’s-60’s…right on down a long list of political machinations.
i know someone who works in a managed care setting, essentially a warehousing operation for seniors & destitute others (& a place you do not want to end up in).
latest mandate i just heard about is that dementia “clients” (as they’re referred to) are not qualified to refuse to talk with psychologists – they’re demented, you see. official dx says so. so whether the “client” participates, actively resists, or any stance in between, the shrinks are to conduct their sessions. because no session means no billing to the state (these facilities are parasitically attached to the medicare/medicaid blow fly).
in the coldest, most calculated of cold wars, cartelboys herd milk/meat cattle. its a more “sophisticated”, polished, dehumanization than that employed in hot wars. all the more insidious, corrupting, & carnage generating.
first essay in the search term list, lrc…
http://www.lewrockwell.com/1970/01/murray-n-rothbard/government-medical-insurance/
Wonderfully, the AMA no longer represents most doctors in America. The AAPS, Association of American Physicians and Surgeons is rapidly replacing that cartel. http://www.aapsonline.org/
Since 1943, AAPS has been dedicated to the highest ethical standards of the Oath of Hippocrates and to preserving the sanctity of the patient-physician relationship and the practice of private medicine.
Our motto, “omnia pro aegroto” means “all for the patient.”
Read our “Principles of Medical Ethics”
http://www.aapsonline.org/index.php/principles_of_medical_ethics/
mamaL…..
i looked over the aaps site, thanks. priority one clearly is preservation, if not re-expansion, of their political reservation – not going back to a catch as catch can free market true business model. they like the top down & they dislike the backseat…now if they can just get back behind the wheel, like the old days….
but even if correcting course was the actual intention, it would not matter. audre lorde’s essay/thesis is the whole point:
“the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” (which encompasses emma goldman’s, “if voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal”.)
master cartel, tentacle cartels, will remain coiled around the domesticated & apportioned livestock until internal contradictions cause the beast to fly apart. at which time the livestock will set about installing a new beast.
the die is cast & the deal is done. long done. patients are not customers. patients are mulcts. we are mulcts. i have been, continue to be, mulcted, by the thin white (coated) line. good intentions as may, & indeed do, exist, as surely yours were over the course of your career, are not germane. “omnia pro mulcta” is the reality motto.
hippocratic oath…does not, cannot, in theory or practice, apply to anyone involved in the cartelized medicine/health hustle (hypocritic oaf…now that fits) . it is ritual verse, nothing more.
and the part about, ‘first, do no harm’ (which doesn’t seem to precisely be in the oath), solemnly intoned in the medico context, is a pretty low bar elsewhere, in the free, or relatively much freer, world. out there, ‘first, do some good’ is expected.
and when that bar isn’t cleared in the free world, not only is the business not paid, it shells out for damages, makes it right, to keep customer relationship & good name intact. the guys & gals who cut the grass & clean the pool would be out of business in a month if they attempted to operate with the breezy, ka-chinging, carte blanche of doctors. but landscapers & pool cleaners are not made guys. at least not yet.
the thing is, has to be, if you join the mafia, or some other gang of cartelizeds, then you’re a gangster, engaged in defending “your” turf, including via mortal violence, & that’s on you, & it doesn’t matter how you are within or without that “compartment”. because there aren’t any compartments. just color of law map lines, carving up the turf, & the dehumanized critters on those parcels.
if ignorance is pled, & it surely applies to the beginnings of any number of entangling alliances with centralized authoritarian power sumps, then once disabusing has occurred, the sunk cost “investment”, (your time, educational credentials, money) now clarified for what it really was, must be written off. you either admit you were defrauded into a fraudulent criminal scheme, & get out, or you are a fully liable co-conspirator.
“regular men are a certain varying number of meals away from lying, stealing, killing, or even working as forecasters for the federal reserve in washington; never magnificent. (i had to read aristotle’s nicomachean ethics book 4 ten times before realizing what he didn’t say explicitly (but knew): the magnificent (megalopsychos) is all about unconditionals.” ~ nassim taleb
ozy, “licensed” by the state says it all. I guess I had never thought about how much that meant till I watched doctors I’d known forever continually have wrecks, driving drunk or in the case of one, driving under the influence of heavy narcotics….and even the ones who drive drunk tend to be taking more narcotics than they’d allow a patient….and they write scripts for each other as a courtesy. I have a physician friend who has totaled more cars than you and I have driven. Cop: Dr. Smith, looks like that stop sign jumped out in front of you. I’ll call a wrecker and a taxi. I’m sure you need to get somewhere. X 100. I won’t go into the specifics but we had a doctor who lived across the road from us when I was growing up. After one particularly harrowing incident in which I narrowly avoided being run over(inside the house), I lobbied my dad to let me build a “crash” fence between our house and his garage.
Medicine has become (and will soon become even more) Soviet – and by the law of attraction, attracts Soviet-type personnel. People who don’t chafe at being compelled to surrender their own judgment and initiative in favor of being told exactly How, When, Where (but rarely Why) they will be allowed to work.
The best minds, surely, are repelled by modern Soviet (nee American) medicine. In 20 years’ time, “care” here will approximate the “care” enjoyed by the average Soviet prole circa 1969.
Of course, the elites will have cyber-nano engineered bodies by then.
Great article.
A few years ago, when I worked a full time nightshift job, I woke up at 10 pm for my 11pm shift when I discovered I had pink eye. I was in my early twenties and uninformed, so I decided that because I had insurance it would be smart and cheap for me to go to the Emergency Room to get it looked at. After waiting about 20 minutes I got called in and the doctor I saw, when he first looked at me, cracked a half smile. At the time I didn’t know what that smile was but in hindsight I know that smile was him thinking about his bank account and the easy money he was getting from me. After looking at my eye for about a minute he left the room and came back with a prescription for me to get filled… the prescription only cost me 70 cents so I thought I did the right thing by going to the ER over frickin’ pink eye………About a week later I got a bill in the mail from the ER…$740!!! All any of those jackasses had to do was tell the uninformed me that pink eye isn’t a big deal and will most likely go away on its own after a few days but nooooo, let me get financially raped so they can line their pockets. I’m sure there are still good doctors out there but I think they are extremely few and far between thanks to all this government nonsense scaring them off.
Jacob, those thieves routinely send you a bill while they’re waiting for your insurance to pay them. They count on some people simply mailing them payment instead of waiting for the statement from the insurer which tells you what portion of the bill is your responsibility.
I’ve never heard of any of them refunding your payment after the insurer pays them. many doctors and clinics use billing services which are probably the ones pulling this double dip scam.
I learned several years ago that a few drops of colloidal silver in the eye will clear up most conjunctivitis cases quickly. Most of modern medicine in the US is quackery these days. Maybe it always has been, for all I know.
’ve never heard of any of them refunding your payment after the insurer pays them. many doctors and clinics use billing services which are probably the ones pulling this double dip scam.
Yes, I can tell you from personal experience that nearly ALL of them double bill their patients. This alone makes them all worthy of slow crucifixion!
Thank you for that tip.
Just so I’m sure, the way to make colloidal silver is to hook up a 12v dc power converter to a small piece of silver (with alligator clips), suspended in water, and leave it overnight?
Dear Jacob,
I made one similar to this.
http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-make-a-Pocket-Sized-Colloidal-Silver-Genera/
I used a wall wart, terminal blocks, and silver wires.
The result however should be yellow, like filtered apple juice, not cloudy grey. (Be sure to use distilled water without minerals, not tap water or spring water. )
That’s why my perfunctory investigation showed anyhow.
Thank you very much for those tips.
Sure thing.
I spent 30 years as a nursing professional. While there ARE plenty of doctors who have little or no problem taking as much money as possible, they are not the norm. And the ER physician you saw did not see much of what you OR the insurance company billed. They work on contract, for a wage like a lot of other people.
But there ARE alternatives to both insurance and Obummercare, at least for now. Take a look at this article, and the Surgery Center of Oklahoma website for a better idea. http://www.surgerycenterok.com/
Go to the link to see what Dr. Smith is talking about. Just a tiny bit of the rules and regulations faced by all medical facilities and practitioners who accept Medicare or any insurance. The question is, of course, just how much longer doctors and others will be free to refuse Medicare and Obummercare patients. I suspect not for too long.
Why Physicians are Walking Away from Medicare
http://surgerycenterofoklahoma.tumblr.com/post/64206151321/why-physicians-are-walking-away-from-medicare
See if you can make any sense out of what is below. Don’t feel bad if you can’t. Neither can the physicians who must comply with this stuff. This regulatory maze, combined with notoriously low rates of pay from Medicare, combined with the severe penalties for non-compliance (jail time) serve together to achieve the rationing of care the government thinks will help balance their books.
Price controls and regulations typically proliferate within failed and bankrupt government programs. Endless tweaking rules the day rather than an admission that the program was ill-conceived to start with and should be scrapped. To allow the free market to work is, after all, an admission of the failure of the “state.”
I think that more and more Medicare beneficiaries will appreciate that rather than render the medical care the bureaucrats demand from their physicians, the physicians are increasingly walking away from these controls and forging new and mutually beneficial arrangements with their individual patients, free from the Medicare Stasi.
G. Keith Smith, M.D.
The commissar bosses just can’t help themselves from turning the dials and controlling people and the economy. Obamacare is the Soviet experiment done by the smarter-then-them crowd of collectivists now in charge of our national government. Saul Alinsky and Cloward & Piven’s boy has done them proud.
History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme. Mark Twain
The Great Depression n 1930 -194?
So what stopped a blockbuster recovery from ever starting? The New Deal.
The National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 (NIRA) was one of the most important and daring measures of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. It was enacted during the famous First Hundred Days of his first term in office and was the centerpiece of his initial efforts to reverse the economic collapse of the Great Depression. NIRA was signed into law on June 16, 1933, and was to remain in effect for two years. It attempted to make structural changes in the industrial sector of the economy and to alleviate unemployment with a public works program. On May 27, 1935, less than three weeks before the act would have expired, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional.
The most damaging policies were those at the heart of the recovery plan, including The National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), which tossed aside the nation’s antitrust acts and permitted industries to collusively raise prices provided that they shared their newfound monopoly rents with workers by substantially raising wages well above underlying productivity growth. The NIRA covered over 500 industries, ranging from autos and steel, to ladies hosiery and poultry production. Each industry created a code of “fair competition” which spelled out what producers could and could not do, and which were designed to eliminate “excessive competition” that FDR believed to be the source of the Depression.
These codes distorted the economy by artificially raising wages and prices, restricting output, and reducing productive capacity by placing quotas on industry investment in new plants and equipment. Following government approval of each industry code, industry prices and wages increased substantially, while prices and wages in sectors that weren’t covered by the NIRA, such as agriculture, did not. We have calculated that manufacturing wages were as much as 25% above the level that would have prevailed without the New Deal. And while the artificially high wages created by the NIRA benefited the few that were fortunate to have a job in those industries, they significantly depressed production and employment, as the growth in wage costs far exceeded productivity growth.
Title I of the act declared a “national emergency productive of widespread unemployment and disorganization of industry, which burdens interstate and foreign commerce, affects the public welfare, and undermines the standards of living of the American people.” To correct this situation, NIRA proposed to “remove obstructions to the free flow of interstate and foreign commerce … to eliminate unfair competitive practices … to increase the consumption of industrial and agricultural products by increasing purchasing power, to reduce and relieve unemployment and to improve standards of labor.” NIRA was to accomplish these goals through the codes of fair competition, which were essentially sets of rules created on an industry-by-industry basis governing wages, prices, and business practices
Under the supervision of the NRA, several hundred industry codes were rapidly enacted, but public support soon diminished. The codes tended to increase efficiency and employment, improve wages andimages-6 hours, prevent price cutting and unfair competition, and encourage collective bargaining. However, they also tended to raise prices and limit production. Businesses found the codes burdensome. More than 540 codes were promulgated, and it was not unusual for one business to be governed by several, or even several dozen, codes. The codes sometimes conflicted with each other, and businesses occasionally had to pay their workers different rates of pay at different times of the day.
Moreover, labor was dissatisfied with the activities of the NRA regarding unions. Although it appears that Congress had intended Section 7(a) of NIRA to assist employees in self-organizing and in discouraging company unions, the NRA interpreted the section in a manner that favored neither labor nor management. Thus, although the NRA sought to ensure that the government protected workers from discrimination resulting from union membership, it did not actively seek to prohibit the creation of company unions, nor did it satisfy many in its efforts to protect the right of individuals not to be coerced into joining a union.
The Wall Street Journal tries to help navigate Obamacare.
http://graphicsweb.wsj.com/documents/prescribed/?mg=inert-wsj?mod=WSJ_article_EditorsPicks
Dr. Smith:
I guess you read your reply comments..please consider mine with care. In order to do what your last sentence states, I believe now is time to get together a group of amazing physicians and start a clinic and surgery center…..yes……abutting the Rio Grande just inside Mexico. Perhaps near the Harlingen airport. Texas is a HUGELY populated state and there is an infinite number of patients that would utilize the fee-for-service care. My idea includes: (1) Creating an efficient executive bus system to bring patients from Dal, Hou, San An, Austin to the clinic and back each day. A nice hotel to house patients. A very nice gated and walled executive living area for doctors, nurses and their families to live, complete with private schools, golf, pools, tennis, etc. I think the time has come for this extreme workaround of our crazed medical care system.
S. McGowan: Perhaps you did not know, but Dr. Smith runs a surgery center in Oklahoma City by free market principles. Direct pay only, low costs. I had a surgery there myself, and the quality and service were superb. I paid roughly a third of what I would have paid in Idaho Falls. He does not need to go across the Mexican border to build such a place. It is called the Surgery Center of Oklahoma.
Yes, but Dr Smith mentions above he does not know how long he will be able to provide care before Obummer shuts him down for going outside the system. I think it is critical NOW to start a sophisticated medical tourism industry, with quick access to top-notch American/Europe trained MD’s. If not Mexico, another country with freedom to allow this. And by the way, Jim, Mexico HAS PROBLEMS and poor areas and bad crime areas. But in most areas safe, relative to the US. Is not an open-fire zone like the scare-mongering MSM says it is.
That’s a great idea, but do you need armed guards with AK-47s to make it work?