Most people believe that ObamaCare is just about “health care” – making it “free” (that is, paid for by others) or at least more “accessible” (see previous bracketed deconstruction). In fact, ObamaCare is about everything. Once affirmed by the Supremes – which it will be – every nook and cranny of your (past tense) life will be Official Public Business. I go too far? I am being hysterical? 
Let’s see now…
Already, it is a legal requirement in many areas that your child be given whatever vaccines the state decrees each child must have. If the parents demure, sanctions range from the beneficent (the child is prohibited from entering a government school) to the not-so-beneficent (a visit from the Child Protective Services KGB). Now, granted, some vaccines are helpful, even necessary. That’s entirely beside the point. The core issue here is coercion. Being forced to submit to a medical procedure.
With kids, the legal basis for this coercion is they’re minors. But when ObamaCare envelopes the land, we will all become minors as a matter of law – with those in control of the government exercising total control over us.
It is already happening. Consider, for example, the case of David Sarti.
Sarti is an older guy – and an overweight guy. He visited his doctor one day because he wasn’t feeling well. The doctor, a cardiologist, advised surgical treatment and radical weight loss. Sarti explained to the doctor that he did not wish to live his life with “tubes running out of his throat” and so on. And went home, explaining on his way out the door that he had livestock to care for. The doctor called the thug scrum. The local sheriff’s office sent armed goons to Sarti’s farm and had him forcibly committed for “psychiatric evaluation” because he declined the treatment advised by the doctor – and in order to force him to go on a diet.
See the news story here.
Subsequently, Sarti was declared “mentally incompetent” – and his (former) right to possess firearms rescinded. His rifles and handguns were taken from him by the state of Tennessee. See the video here: You will be struck by how lucid, even-tempered – and sane – Sarti appears to be. More so, given his ordeal. Sure, he’s heavy. And yeah, it’s not “healthy” to be that heavy. But if that’s evidence of mental illness then a third of the country is mentally ill – and in peril of being declared “mentally incompetent” and having their (former) right to possess firearms rescinded. 
The key thing here is the pathologizing of difference. Any deviation from the prescribed orthodoxies – orthodoxies as defined by the government – is becoming the pretext for “intervention.” And that means, forcible interposition by men with guns, who will compel you to behave as dictated.
If Sarti can be sent to a rubber room for being heavy and declining to heed the advice of his doctor to lose weight or undergo a surgical procedure, what door has been opened? Think hard about this.
How about the case of the 64-year-old California man I mentioned in my last column (see here) who fell, scraped himself up a little, but decided he did not need to go to the hospital – and then was Tazered repeatedly in his own home by a thug cop, who refused to respect his choice to skip the trip to the hospital?
The law is already such that if a “public service” official decides you “need” treatment, you can be forced to “accept” it – at gunpoint. As Sarti discovered. As we all soon will discover.
ObamaCare will expand this principle of coercive “care.” Deviations from the orthodox will be pathologized. Disagree – dare to decline – and you will be disabused, at gunpoint. This is precisely how it was done in the old Soviet Union. And it is precisely how it will be done here.
Personal anecdote: I go with my wife once a year to the dermatologist to get my skin given a once-over for possible signs of skin cancer, which I figure I’m at higher risk for because of my ’70s and ’80s-era history of going out into the sun without sun block and getting roasted. Every single time I go in for the skin check, a bitter old nurse tries to take my blood pressure. I politely tell her no thanks – and in my mind am thinking, what the hell does my blood pressure have to do with whether I have a mole that needs to be cut off? My polite demurral really annoys the sour old nurse (aren’t they always sour and old?) Well, the thing that has me more than a little freaked out is the very real possibility that my refusal to have my BP checked will soon be taken as a sign of mental illness – and used as the pretext to have me declared “mentally incompetent” by the state, with all that implies for whatever remnants of my civil liberties (such as my possession of firearms) I still retain.
Why do I decline to have my BP checked by my skin doctor? The why is no one’s business but my own (and my wife’s). Just as Sarti’s decision to decline a weight loss regimen and surgical “treatment” was his to make. Just as it may be your decision to smoke, or to eat fast food or to skydive or a million other things.
Under ObamaCare, these decisions will no longer be ours to make for ourselves – because these decisions, it will be argued, affect our “health” and our “health” is now a matter of the commons. It affects “interstate commerce.” It affects “society.” The same reasoning used to justify everything from seat-belt laws to TSA gropes. 
And how will it affect your driving?
Are you perhaps an aggressive driver? Do you “speed” – or have too many “points” on your DMV record? Fail to buckle-up for safety? Your car’s Even Data Recorder (see here) has noted these behaviors. They present an unacceptable risk to your health – and thus, to society. After all, you might crash and injure yourself and thus impose costs on the corporate collective. This precise justification has already been used to ratify the at-gunpoint wearing of seatbelts, forcible vaccinations and (as in Sarti’s case) mandatory “treatment” you’d rather not have. And it will be used again.
Anything you do that can plausibly (or even not-so-plausibly) argued involves “risk” – as defined by the government – will be subject to control. And if you refuse to be controlled, the results will be as predictable and inevitable as the results of making a left turn to avoid a “safety” check or expressing disgust at the TSA pervert fondling your junk.
Just ask David Sarti.
Throw it in the Woods?
http://www.freakingnews.com/pictures/71500/Obamacare–71716.jpg
Sure Could Use Some Help
Hey Guys, I invite Y’all to go to military.com and help me kick ass whenever a story appears about the Coast Guard wasting resources on Drug Busts. For the current abomination Google: Coast Guard Stops 30th Drug Sub
Judging from some of the comments posted by active duty and retired Military persons you’d think the misguided dickheads were heroically fighting something as serious as WWII. As a Coast Guard Vet it makes me want to puke, but I do enjoy bursting their stupid bubbles.
Eric, since your talent has been recognized by large-circulation sources you might even find something worth writing about there.
Tinsley Grey Sammons (1936 –)
I will check it out!
Everybody sit down. Nurse Ratched stole 206 Billion in cash from the major tobacco companies, plus 41 cents a pack for the 4 states that she looted separately. You need to learn to be thankful for everything she’s done for you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5NyyC-UjBM
I want my cigs – cuckoos nest
The Times-Picayune, Wednesday, December 12, 2001 B-1
Lawyer Wendell Gauthier Dies at 58
Wendell Gauthier, a New Orleans lawyer whose huge class-action lawsuits against the tobacco industry and other corporations furthered the transformation of torts lawyers from ambulance chasers into power brokers with a collective influence rivaling the legislative branches of government, died Thursday of liver cancer in his home in Metairie. He was 58. . . .
*****
This parasite should never have been born in the first place. I closely followed the legal tobacco ripoff and its aftermath.
What happened to all that money that was supposedly for treatment of the “victims” of tobacco related illnesses? That’s a subject that merits a criminjal investigation.
Columnist James Gill made the point that, considering Social Security payments and other tax funded services and “entitlements” the sooner a person dies following retirement, the better.
Hell, I’m retired twelve years now and the SS money I’ve received is surely much more than the amount withheld from my paychecks. If they ever want to give me more I’ll do nothing to stop them.
tgsam
A 17 year old girl is arrested for swearing while calling 911 to get help for her dying father. 6 minutes were lost wherein her father spasmed with unconscious seizures while Sgt Robert McFarland hung up on her because he felt disrespected by her choice of words. The girl finally walked the couple of blocks to the station to try and get help face to face, and ended up being arrested. Sgt. Robert McFarland is continues to wallow in stolen tax dollars in Lincoln Park, MI even today. He thanks you for your cooperation.
The girl was handcuffed to a bench at the station for misusing the 911 system.
http://youtu.be/tp5bjzAwdAc
Florida Highway Patrolman Daniel Cole tases 20 year old Danielle Maudsley in the back. She is now in a vegetative state. The murdering thug trooper has been cleared of any wrongdoing.
http://youtu.be/ZrDox4wYBlQ
This stuff is beyond my capacity to understand. What sort of man – not even a cop, just a man – does something like that? A scrawny 20 year-old girl, no physical threat to anyone… just makes me ill.
I just don’t get it. What has happened and is continuing to happen to America? I’m surprised that no enraged citizen-snipers have taken justice into their own hands yet. I won’t do it, but neither would I testify against someone who did.
Tinsley Grey Sammons (1936 –)
Just take a look at our local representative of the new American mentality! A creature named Clover.
I think every armed civilian in America would lose against against a single A10 Warthog fighter. Their 7 barrelled Gau8 weighs 1.8 tons and fires depleted uranium shells faster than the speed of sound. Good old General Electric, proud as a peacock.
Wikileaks is the best answer I’ve seen so far.
http://youtu.be/udCb_yAWm7U
Killing a mosquito with a sledgehammer.
The Avenger cannon is superb for killing big targets like MBTs, but it’s not a crowd broom.
I’d suggest that an A-10 would have a difficult time hitting a normal car, especially if it tries to engage the target perpendicular to the car’s travel path.
There are only so many A-10s in service and the gun is only good for maybe, MAYBE, two dozen bursts before it’s out of rounds.
Looks scary, but just think about it for a minute.
Direct confrontation with military hardware would be silly.
The military’s equipment will quickly begin to fail and turn to useless junk without a support system. When people refuse to do it, these fancy weapons will cease to be a factor in a shorter period of time than most anyone thinks.
Consider: The Soviet Union, at the peak of its power, unconstrained by any “rules of decency,” was unable to control Afghanistan – a country of rustics armed with RPGs and AK-47s against Spetznatz terror troops, T-72s and every mechanized form of mass death delivery imaginable.
Hitler had a helluva time with partisans in the occupied areas; German troops often dared not risk leaving their compounds.
This is a big country with millions of nooks and crannies and millions of angry, much-better-prepared non-Clovers. The shit-storm that would ensue if the Clovers double down and try to impose a modern Reich here will be epic.
This question comes to my mind frequently too, Tinsley; in fact both those questions.
What has happened? And more cogently, how did it happen so fast? Most people I think are intentionally ignoring it. It’s the phenomenon described in They Thought They Were Free–incrementalism, and a desperate desire to avoid cognitive dissonance, an almost frantic effort to normalize the changes, to pretend the old forms are still there.
And to your second question: have you ever heard of “Dead Pools”?
StartPage it.
“Dead Pools”?
Never heard of it.
tgsam
The dead pool for the the top currencies to collapse looks to be about 4 years from now.
http://media.resourceinvestor.com/resourceinvestor/historical/News/2011/7/PublishingImages/7-19-11-BMG%20Currency%20Decline%20Chart.jpg
Lately, new tech keep coming on the scene to kick the collapse down the road.
If 3D printing of stuff on a home computer with Objet quality rolls out quickly enough, it might buy us another decade. But if we all print out AK47s then the SHsTF anyway.
I don’t know why it would surprise anyone…Cops are just mental apes that are “trained” by the political terrorist’s public schools, retard box programming, and wars.
Have you actually seen retard box “cop show” programming these days? We are all lucky the cops aren’t *total* murdering psychopaths. Give it time.
Shows such as Cops have been nicely described as fascist porn. And you’re right – it’s only a matter of time. The typical late-model cop in this country is fundamentally the same in his mindset – controlling of others, deferential toward the authority that controls him, robotic in his willingness to enforce “the law” – and contemptuous of those who violate “the law” – as a ’30s-vintage SA Man.
The clouds are gathering; it’s gonna rain soon.
A seed is sown for revolution every time a bad law is enforced. Even the functional dullards among the People eventually know instinctively what they are unable to discover intellectually.
Government is on shaky ground when Individuals are being systematically arrested, impoverished, and even imprisoned for things that are not intrinsically criminal.
I focus on philosophically exposing The Great Drug Persecution simply because, in my opinion it is the Legal Linchpin for the Tyranny Apparatus engulfing America today. Pull the linchpin and the Precedent will have been established that will cause the entire rotten Bad Law Apparatus to collapse like a house of cards. When it comes to unlawful Government Power Versus The Individual nothing can compare with the unconstitutional Drug War.
Those of us who think are morally obliged to enlighten those who do not. To know of a real crime and remain silent is itself a crime.
WE hold these Truths…
Tinsley Grey Sammons (1936 –)author of AMERICA’S FORSAKEN PROMISE
The law is the weapon, the courtroom the battlefield, the judge your enemy and your lawyer is an enemy spy. —Michael H. Brown, The Erwin Rommel School of Law
Have you ever tried to find a genuine license to practice law*?
No?
And yet, an Individual can be imprisoned for practicing law without a license.
*****
Juris Doctor DAs and ADAs, Juris Doctor defense attorneys, Juris Doctor judges, Juris Doctor legislators, Juris Doctor presidents, and Juris Doctor governors.
Is it any wonder that the Fellowship of Juris Doctors wields great power?
Know your enemy.
Tinsley Grey Sammons (1936 –)author of AMERICA’S FORSAKEN PROMISE
*If you can find one please share it with me.
In a few days time, we can once again shock the world, through the spectacle of the disappearing dollars.
It is time for all good men still holding dollars to awake and to come to their senses. Join together and refuse to trade for the dying and debased dollars. Accept barter and exchange, rubles, rials, and renminbis but never dollars.
Trade in jewels, tools, consumables, fungibles, bitcoins, but never in the hated dollars. Hold strong, and they will close the Federal Reserve Banks. They will withdraw their enslaving reserve notes and return the issuance of money to its lawful place, the sovereign states.
Cast out your dependents and let them swarm in hordes to the brothels of welfare and social servitude.
Take your savings out of banks and hold them for safekeeping at home or in a neighboring country. Alter your will to demand a foreign burial and immediate conversion of your assets into pesos, yen, or won, safe from this kleptomaniac kingdom.
Organize caravans or deliveries of needed supplies by ocean vessel, Canadian, or Mexican trucks.
We are many, they are few. We can produce without their thievery, they can only impotently scramble to find a new way to take.
Join together to publically burn whatever greenbacks remains in your pockets, and let’s all become dollar dodgers.
“So, you cut me off in traffic in an aggressive and unsafe fashion, causing me to brake suddenly to avoid a collision, thereby causing the person behind me to run into me at 70 mph, resulting in my wife’s neck snapping backward suddenly and thus paralyzing her for life? I get out of the car, aim an RPG at you and blow your ass to hell”
That’s just stupid.
Who says I cut you off? You? Unilaterally, there on the street you’re going to be judge, jury and executioner? And you impose the sentence of death for somebody cutting you off in traffic?
Nor can a right be demanded. You either have the right or you don’t and you do not have the right to kill someone because of road rage.
Moreover: what’s any of that got to do with mandatory auto insurance? I know I’m not as smart as you guys plus I drink but I don’t even see the connection.
It’s not “just stupid”, it’s very intelligently stupid. Being *that* stupid isn’t particularly easy you know.
It is, more correctly, a finely honed bit of “reduction to the absurd” (reductio ad absurdum). And I’ll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head 🙂
The connection between not being smart and drinking is well established BTW. I drink, therefor I’m stupid…
I wonder how you say that in Latin? Drinko ergo Stupido?
PerhapsBevo, ergo stupido?
Sometimes I curse myself for not having study actual Latin during all those years I studied Romance languages.
I should also mention that I’m working on my Clover badge. Eric hasn’t given me one yet but I’m pretty sure I’m close. Don’t tell him.
Clover is as clover does I believe. No official decree required.
Of course, but you must understand that any true clover wants the badge. That’s a big part of it.
What did you just say? Eric is far more polite and always gives one the benefit of the doubt. Me? Not so much. Sorry, but you have every right to ignore me.
Don, you misunderstand and you have my apologies for getting your back up. I have no quarrel with you or anything you’ve said. I enjoy your comments.
No, I was serious: what did you say? I didn’t understand any of it.
I said it was a reduction to the absurd, which is a primitive form of humor. To explain it in other terms would require a much longer written treatment of the subject.
In short, we can make rules concerning social obligations, or we can declare a free for all. There’s no in-between.
My favorite line from Last of the Mohicans is “I believe if they set aside their law as and when they wish, their law no longer has rightful authority over us, all they have over us then is tyranny and I will not live under that yoke, so I will stay here no longer.” I too, wonder if American is too far gone to salvage. My wife is from another country, it isn’t any better than the US but different. Maybe time to learn the language.
I’m a huge fan of the Leatherstocking stories; the movie was excellent. It captured the essence of the live and let live attitude that made Natty Bumpo such an appealing character. His – and his Indian friends’ – contempt for the control freaks/thugs of their era speaks across the generations and oceans of time to the present day.
Here’s another great clip from that movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OceYiLo8OTM
Funny. The nurse at my Dermatologist is young, petite, and very attractive. Also friendly. Now that I think about it, she does take my BP. I guess I’m just conditioned to getting it checked every time I see anyone medical. Thanks for the wake up call.
Pretty or not, I think the issue here is that any data they collect “can and will be used against you” under ObamaCare. Hence my decision to decline to provide the data. I also refuse to answer those idiotic – evil – questions about where I work, what I do, whether I own guns – and so on.
In David’s case it’s probably less “do you brush your teeth? Own a gun?” and more “Do you have a condom?”
In most states, if not all, a “Driver” is an “Operator” of a commercial “Vehicle.” An “Operator” is required to carry a “Driver’s License” to use the public byways for commercial purposes.
Way back when in the days of old when knights were bold folks began to complain that trucks and heavy use commercial vehicles were making a mess of the roads. The states responded with motor vehicle codes designed to collect fees and such to cover the increased cost of maintenance caused by commercial “vehicles.” Essentially, the MVC applies to “Persons,” which in legalese means a corporation. By the way “individual” means “person” according to SCOTUS. Soooo, The Motor vehicle codes are of the nature of an excise tax, that is, a tax on a privilege. That privilege is the state granted legal title of corporation and its state granted privilege of using the public roads for profit. The insurance laws apply to this category alone.
When people make the argument that the state MUST require humans to carry insurance so that they will be “protected” from the other guy in the event of an accident they are missing some very fundamental truths: Life is risky, you assume that risk every time you get in your car. Sorry to break the news folks, but in life you roll the dice and you takes your chances. That’s how it is and you won’t change that by demanding that government “pass a law.” Life is not fair, it is not and can not be made safe and no amount of government ninny nannying, regulation, intervention, bullying or coercion is going to change that. Get it through your thick, swollen heads clovers, freedom is more important than even your kids, Because without it your kids will live as slaves.
In local jurisdictions you can use the Dean Clifford approach although it requires an understanding of trust law or you can try Marc Stevens approach http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=218×4797 here. Remember all government in this country is a corporation and they are enforcing private corporate law, or statutes. Even though some argue against this truth the evidence for this is overwhelming. Nobamacare falls into this category. Go to Adask’s law and look into The State vs. This state, interesting stuff.
But of course, non of this matters because we live in a Fascist state that is Hell bent on exercising total control. If that’s what you want then may your chains rest upon you lightly.
Oh, by the way, property ownership is a natural right. All state constitutions acknowledge that right. A natural right can not be taxed or regulated in any way. So how do they tax our property? Same deal, corporations have no rights, the state considers property owned by corporations and other legal entities a taxable privilege.
So how do they justify property taxes on your private property? The excuse is a lien has been placed on your property by majority vote! It is a cover for the fact the state considers you a “person.” If you consider property taxes as necessary for whatever reason, education or what not, you have consented to being owned by the state that considers your life to be a state granted privilege.
In re “education” and real estate taxes:
It is loathsome in the extreme that some people believe their decision to have kids imposes an obligation enforceable at gunppoint on others to provide funds for the “education” of said kids.
I know, I know. This makes me a mean-spirited person and hater of little kids.
Yes you’re incorrigibly mean Eric.
My condom broke. So YOU have to pay for it for 18 years; and then some more for state-funded colleges.
What I lurve is watching the fat-assed ignorant progeny of the equally fat-assed ignorant apartment dwellers near my expensive neighborhood trolling to government skewl in droves every morning.
I want to yell out my car’s window as I drive by: “I’m paying for you you fat fucks!”
But they’re just kids.
Meanwhile I pay for them…AND for my kids to go to private school, because they will not ever go to government indoctrination camps.
Yup!~
And, of course, it never enters the Cloveronian consciousness (a contradiction in terms, I know) that I am also trying to defend the right of those kids to not be chained to other people’s kids themselves, when they are adults and trying to provide for their families.
Nope, it doesn’t.
I hate little kids because they always pee on me. It has nothing to do with education.
Well, this is the result of people believing society or the group is more important than the individual. People refuse to think for themselves. It’s too much work.
And, in too many cases there is too much month at the end of the money. That is because of taxes and inflation.
But the failure to think is really because of lack of real education. Please see my essay on education at my website.
Alice, I realized many years ago that “education” and “learning” are not synonyms.
Having had enough of it, I left school following the tenth grade.
Perhaps it’s time to reconsider mandatory state rendered education now that the Internet has been around for decades.
Interestingly, if the televised account is accurate, the PC and the Mac came about as a result of the thinking of three young recreational drug users. The Corporate Big Dogs felt that the general public is too stupid to use a PC so there was no point in manufacturing and marketing something that folks could not use. Although many will never use a PC wisely, it still ought to eventually take Philosophical Awareness to persons who might otherwise never have any.
If nothing else, the Internet bypasses the criminally negligent and deliberately deceptive MSM.
Tinsley Grey Sammons (1936 –)
Almost all I know I learned on my own, by reading – and doing.
Schooling – government schooling, at any rate – is mostly about conditioning (social and emotional). The very last thing it’s about is cultivating a thinking mind – conceptual abstract reasoning, application of principles to particulars, etc.
And of course the PTB are well aware that growing numbers of us have caught on to this fact. That is why they’re resorting to increasingly coercive measures to force us to send our offspring to their dangerous and destructive indoctrination prisons.
My best teachers (instructors actually)were the young enlisted men in the Air Force. I eventually became one, teaching Automatic Tracking Radar at Keesler AFB in Biloxi MS. Although the pay was inadequate fifty years ago, it was the most enjoyable and satisfying job I ever had. But of course the students were serious and there was no disruptive conduct.
One of my students, Sgt. Chranuck had been a ball turret gunner in a B-17 while flying missions over Germany during WWII.
tgsam
The ruling class doesn’t want people’s abilities awakened. That’s why it does everything it can to stop the intelligent from pulling the masses forward with them. People who learn on their own, know how to think are not dangerous as individuals. They are dangerous when they can encourage others into enlightenment with them.
The school system isn’t meant just to damage the masses, it’s also meant to lower the ability or inclination of the intelligent to bring others along with them.
Those in the corporatist system want things static with them on top. Thinking and creative people are distruptive to their power and way of life.
Decades. How time flies.
Yes, it has been decades now. I remember 1989 and the big battle between routing and switching. Who would win? Nowadays you might better ask “who would care?” Wellfleet has gone back to dust, cisco (lower case “c”)is no more, and all that’s left ‘R’ us.
Will we use it? Will we make a better world from Johannes’s second best attempt? I certainly hope we will.
I hope.
A guy I know works at an office with 6 doctors, 40 people total. They have catered food left over every day that was bought by drug dealers (reps). But I’m sure they don’t expect anything in return.
What pisses me off the most about Obamacare is that so many dumbasses think the GOP will get rid of it. There’s no way they will walk away from such a windfall of power.
There was a TV movie years ago about a runaway train nearing the end of the line. Engineers in another engine on a spur were racing to overtake the runaway, hook to it and stop it. They reached a point where they had to decide if they could catch it in time to stop themselves and the runaway or if they should just give up, back away and at least save themselves from a fiery crash. This is the paradox I am confronted with every morning when I wake up. I’ve spent the last twenty years exhausting my valuable (to me) time, my treasure (such as it was), at some personal risk, and before my first cup of coffee in the morning I can’t help but question if Americana is way too far gone to salvage. I know our enemies want us to feel alone and isolated, but—I think the coffee’s ready.
Right now the choice appears to be between “Obama-Care” and “Obomney-Care”…aka Tweedle-dumb-ass and Tweedle-dumb-shit.
Is it too late to persuade Mr. Paul to run as an independent with son Rand as Veep?
I see some merit in mandatory auto insurance. A drunk driver smashes into my vehicle and I become disabled. It’s a hit and run. The reckless driver gets away. So the “community” of vehicle operators agrees that since this can happen to anyone, insurance is the way to spread and balance the risk that we all, on average, face. I’d rather pay an insurance premium than be disabled.
An opt out provision would provide that those who opt out post a bond of some kind. “You may be a great guy, Harry, but you never know when time and trials might force you to do something against your better nature — like hit and run…”
Why mandatory? Because it may be impossible to find and hold the reckless driver accountable and, even if he or she were found and held accountable, he or she may have no means to offer compensation.
I’m making some assumptions that may not hold. I’m assuming that the system will work honestly, that insurers won’t exploit those who may be forced to obtain insurance and that all motorists want and have reasonable access to those roads that are operated and maintained at public expense.
“Merit” is not the issue – the issue is whether it’s legitimate to violate a peaceful person’s rights by forcing him to buy a service he might otherwise decline. Your argument is a utilitarian argument, not a moral argument. Your argument amounts to: If I can show some theoretical “good” (or reduced “risk”) then it is ok to violate your rights. To threaten you with violence if you do not do as I command – even though you have caused no harm to anyone.
My argument is simply: Unless I have caused you some demonstrable, specific harm, you have no right to exercise power over me. My argument amounts to a defense of human liberty; yours of a authoritarianism.
Which side do you prefer to be on?
The concept of someone doing something wrong before they are punished for doing something wrong is foreign in this country. Everyone should just be forced to be insured for everything: health insurance, life insurance, car insurance, renter’s insurance, pet insurance, disability insurance, home owners insurance, dental insurance …
People are afraid of life itself.
And of course everyone else then must be forced to absorb the increase in prices thanks to all those insurances and the moral hazard associated with them.
I’ve done a rough calculation and over my 30+ years of spotless driving I’ve shelled out around $30,000. I could have easily paid for my college with that money and yet I’ve never filed an insurance claim.
Ditto – and amen!
On health insurance: Had I been forced to buy it when I first entered the work force – as will become mandatory under ObamaCare – I doubt I could have ever bought my first home. Instead, being young and in excellent health I made the reasonable and prudent decision to skip the company-offered health insurance and instead put the money that would have gone toward premiums in the bank. Over a period of several years, this came to be a decent stack of bills – enough to help come up with the necessary down payment for that first home loan. Today’s young people are about to get screwed painfully. Few of them will ever need more than routine medical care until they’re well over 30. But instead of being able to build wealth, they’ll be forced to buy insurance they don’t need to get “health care” they won’t use.
For every $100 you give to mandatory insurance, they spend $90 on dividends, salaries, advertising, lobbying, and overhead. About $10 is put into stocks and bonds that offer enough dividend/yield to pay off the few claims they actually become liable for.
You get a little better return than playing the lottery, but a lot less than a you would from a bet at the racetrack or casino.
A simple comment on the efficacy of requiring auto insurance and why it’s a crappy justification to mandate health insurance:
California state minimums were ’15K-30K-5K’ back in ’76 when I moved from Florida as a high schooler. They were considered ridiculously low then. There’s still the same today. Sure, someone who is “working poor” (or getting by on unemployment, disability, or other “Gubmint” welfare), who has no assets or immediate earning potential, the same can get by simply because they’re judgement proof! So what do responsible folks do? They buy uninsured and underinsured coverage, and comp and collision. There’s even UMPD, which is $5K on my policy and covers my “fun” car (a ’95 Mustang) and my “beater” (a ’95 Mercedes) for minimal bucks. With a late model vehicle (2007 Pacifica) which even though paid for still has full coverage, I pay out just under a hundred a month, thanks to being over 50 and having a good driving record and about every discount possible on all three vehicles, for up to half a million liability and 100K property damaged (I also have a separate umbrella which is ridiculously affordable). Why bother worrying about requiring insurance for bozos that the carriers don’t even want and whose limits do almost nothing to protect someone who has something to lose? There’s still nothing that sez that the “financial” responsibility laws can’t be applied in event someone causes damage with their car and can’t pay up. Like the cops are removing the thirty percent of drivers in California that drive with no insurance at all. What a joke. I don’t need a law to tell me to be responsible, my own appreciation of what a motor vehicle can do if misguided (survived a couple of very bad accidents that I was completely not at fault at, and chagrined myself terribly back in ’98 for rear-ending some poor fellow but fortunately superficial damage resulted) and my desire to protect what I’ve worked hard for does that.
As for health care, it’s already “required”, even if I wanted to stop covering my estranged wife and my 11 y.o. daughter (she lives with me) on my health plan, the family court wouldn’t allow it. Of course, the kid I’m going to care for w/o compulsion, and the way the premiums work the wife (whom I miss but I promise to improve my aim) is along for the ride w/o extra charge. I’ve already had the experience of telling a family court judge that I didn’t need her (the feminist bitch) to lecture me about fulfilling my responsibilities, everything that I’d done until then and since screamed that I always did the right thing even if it wasn’t convenient. Did cost me a night in the slammer and my attorney’s strong admonition to STFU.
And I ask – what is worse? The risk of being sideswiped by a vehicle and not having them pay for the damages, or the risks incurred by having this “government?” I think the answer is clear.
It’s an excellent point.
Just consider the money wasted on insurance: Over a 30 year period, it can easily amount to $30,000 – not counting interest/lost investment opportunity, etc.
Now, if instead of being forced to hand that money over to shyster insurance companies, you’d still have it – to either keep for “just in case” or to use for some other purpose.
Which route would you rather take?
It’s not that insurance in the FREE MARKET doesn’t have value…w/o compulsion for whatever well-meaning-but-usually-ill-considered notion why the insurance should be mandated, the premiums are subject to market forces. I use it but consider the trade-off…certainty of hopefully small loss (premiums) versus payoff in event of calamity (benefits).
It should be noted that the insurance lobby got the McCarran act passed in 1944 which restrains the Federal Gov’t from regulating insurance companies. Maybe THEY know something? Ever wonder why no policy in the US in the 20th and 21st centuries has ever failed to pay? Believe me, it’s not because insurance companies are financial geniuses…save that they’ve figured how to keep “Uncle” out of the equation.
Absolutely. If insurance is simply a service freely offered that we are free to reject, then I have no issue with it. But when we’re forced at gunpoint to purchase a “service,” it’s no longer that. It’s become just another form of taxation.
The situation you describe in the state I live in means the harmed party is on his own. If his auto insurance didn’t cover hit and run and it doesn’t have to, he’s out of luck.
Simply put a law does not make irresponsible people responsible. The law attacks the responsible who weren’t a problem to begin with.
As is with all things the “Gubmint” tries to solve. Go through a divorce sometime. The lazy, crafty, and indolent are rewarded. The hard-working and honest are punished. Fuck the whole lot of ’em.
How does having an insurance premium prevent you from being disabled by a drunk driver?
You realize it’s because of exactly that kind of abusive, unreasonable, irresponsible broken logic on the part of the people that gov’t has been able to get away with everything it has.
You want to believe that there is a perfect solution that will guarantee a great resolution to any problem you might have. There isn’t. All there is, is the best solution and it has to be a solution that does not violate another’s rights, because it is then a crime.
Don, you nailed it. If you want safety at the expense of liberty, I’ll be happy to wrap you up in bubble pack, toss you in a concrete bunker and let you watch TV for the rest of your life while I feed you through a tube.
Life *is* risk. Otherwise there would be no point to it at all.
Personally, I worry all the time about not taking risks…
That was a joke son.
Lee, when you say “I’d rather pay an insurance premium than be disabled”, I think you capture the entire argument for insurance. What doesn’t get expressed is *who* should pay for it.
In the “liability” model we have today, which requires me to carry insurance in the event that I damage you or your property, I’m penalized in advance of ever having done you harm; I pay someone because there is a calculable probability I *might* harm you in the future, and an additional chance I might not be able to pay for damages.
The is a pre-emptive doctrine. It is “Latin Law”, “Guilty until proven Innocent”, and the tragic truth is I will *never* be proven innocent under this doctrine, I can *only* be proven guilty.
If you would like to be protected in the event a horrible misfortune injures you, a loved one or your property, take out insurance against such an event. That’s fair to everyone and it doesn’t tax the innocent.
Precisely, Scott. You want to protect yourself, buy insurance. Those that don’t and get into accidents are going to have to save up to buy another car and work out payment schedules with the doctors and hospitals that treat them.
Two things:
1. Remember that Germany and Russia tried nationalizing health care. It didn’t work out so well, between committing political dissidents to mental hospitals and euthanizing people deemed “unfit.”
2. If the government REALLY cared about people’s health, and could do just one thing to improve Americans’ health, they should stop subsidizing things like high fructose corn syrup, which is known to contribute to obesity. (Trouble is, no politician dare buck the corn lobbies, which is also how we ended up with that whole ethanol fiasco.)
Just saying, y’all…
That’s just it, though: the government doesn’t care on wit about improving, or even sustaining, Americans’ health – only about its own limitless power. Pushing toxic shit like HFCS is just one of the ways it weakens and sickens us into conformity.
“Mr. McMurphey, the meeting is ajourned.”
Hey Mark,
Damn, I wish I’d thought to make a “Cuckoo’s Nest” reference! Just imagine: Soon we’ll all be forced to submit to a Nurse Ratched….
You got THAT right! Being disabled I always have a nagging worry in the back of my mind about what horrors the State may take it into its head to inflict on me.
In late 2010 while awaiting the delivery of my power wheelchair, I managed to take a spill in my living room. I spent three days waiting for that wheelchair, and it would have been longer had I not phoned the company responsible for getting it to me asking them to speed it up…since after all I was stuck in my living room with a sprained foot, ankle and knee.
The guy at the company did indeed expedite the wheelchair’s delivery, but being deep in the Matrix also thought he’d ‘help’ by getting the authorities involved.
In response to Dipstick Boy’s call, I found several burly firemen in my living room one morning. They REALLY wanted to cart my carcass to a hospital, but I declined, since that would leave my house unattended for looters to pillage it, as well as my two cats at the mercy of fate. I’d have had no way to get home other than being carted on a stretcher, and who knows how much trouble and expense that would’ve involved.
They finally listened and reluctantly left, but imagine if it had been some steroid-pumped cops instead of firemen! I’d have probably been dead when they started Tasering me for ‘noncompliance’ to get up and walk, all the while screaming at me to STOP RESISTING as they’re wont to do these days.
America’s turned into a surreal nightmare that would have made even Kafka’s head spin. In my writing I keep referring to RJ Rummel’s studies on democide, death by government, that invariably happens when the State accrues too much unaccountable power. 262 million dead civilians over the twentieth century.
It’s looking like we’re poised to see more of the same, unless we can wake enough people up and get them to withdraw consent to the tyrannical State, as Étienne de La Boétie advised about 500 years ago. That’s really the only peaceful way we’re going to resolve this, and I’m just not too sanguine that we’ll be able to, with all those Clovers and other State idolators out there.
I can’t find America’s Government 20th century kills anywhere.
62 Million USSR
35 Million China
21 Million Nazis
6 Million Japan
2 Million Cambodia
2 Million Vietnam
Drunk Troops on USS Denver
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b2f_1335389588
Ditto. I don’t think I can bench 300 lbs, but I exercise every day, eat reasonably well, and am arguably in better shape than I was even in my 20s. By incorporating chiropractic adjustments, interval training and limiting sugars to the a great extent, I can do a lot more than I used to. I have maybe had to call in sick 2x in the last 3 years, (and then only for a day or so) so I think that “heaf” care is a bunch of bull. I wish people would realize that all it takes is a minor lifestyle modification to be well. It doesn’t take $200 per month in monthly insurance premiums and $50 copays for optimum health. Tomorrow, I am sure will be worse if they don’t toss Obamacare.
I would use the emergency room only for accidents or broken limbs as well. Healthcare advocates can pound sand as far as I’m concerned.
Assuming a person is basically healthy (no congenital problems, etc.) then for the most part one can maintain one’s health – and avoid becoming another consumer of Big Pharma’s “products” – by eating reasonably, not smoking and exercising. American mainstream medicine has become pill-and-profit-centered. It’s absolutely egregious. I know a guy who is a “drug rep.” This guy spends most of his time wining and dining – literally – the doctors to whom he peddles his pills. Have you asked your doctor about Pradaxa?
America is among the least healthy countries in the Western world, despite all the “care,” despite all the pills.
I won’t have anything to do with ObamaCare. If you don’t like the way I’m livin’ you just leave this (sort of) long-haired country boy alone.
Eric, have you spent enough time considering the effect of your political position on your future chance of receiving government sponsored health care?
Seriously. If ObamaCare is upheld, your access to health care in the USA will be controlled by a Government you so frequently criticize. What happens when you need a procedure that might place you on a very, very, long, long, long wait list?
Better watch your mouth there boy!
Fuck that.
I exercise almost every day and at 46 am probably in better shape than most 20 year olds. I can bench press about 300 pounds. I easily run 7 miles several times a week. I eat reasonably, I have never smoked in my life. That ought to be enough. I want no part of the cartelized quackery that is “health care” in this country. I will live my life as long as my healthy body can sustain that life and when it cannot, it’s time to check out. I have zero desire to spend any time in a hospital or a nursing home or any such thing. And unless I break a leg or some such, have little use for the “health care” system. I will not have anything to do with it. For me, Obamacare, like gun control, is a line in the sand. I want nothing more than to be left in peace and to extend the same courtesy to others. But if they will not respect my right to be left in peace, they should not expect me to supinely submit, either.
I’ve lived w/o health insurance now for almost 3 years. In that time I’ve had two major health problems that have nothing to do with my lifestyle: appendicitis and a degenerative disk in my back. Both times I went to the doctor, he treated me, I made a down payment for the care and he put me on a payment plan for the balance. Both times I paid it off ahead of schedule. Simple doctor patient contract. No gov’t intervention required. Both times the doctor also prescribed generic medication which only cost me $4-12 dollars.
I think back on all the money I spent on health insurance over the years.
“Fuck that”.
F’ing GREAT response! I hope that Scott’s admonition to “watch what you say” was tongue in cheek! If he really believes that “O-Bummer” and his cohorts, should they get their regarding health care, would use legal access to a doctor or other health care practitioner as a means to stifle dissent, then we should say, “Fuck the election, hang ’em all!” Not that I don’t believe for a moment that Obama, Biden, the Clintons, Gore, Pelosi, Soros, et al. wouldn’t impose exactly that type of tyranny if they felt they could get away with it. And it wouldn’t surprise me if McCain, Bush, Palin, Romney, etc. wouldn’t also use “Gubmint” control of health care to stifle opposition, but it seems less likely that their supporters would stand for it.
I believe it was Thomas Jefferson that mentioned the necessity of the freedoms of the citizenry needing to be refreshed every couple of hundred years with a bloody revolution. Seems that we’re about 36 years overdue….
This could well turn out to be the critical mass moment. The point at which enough people decide it’s no longer worth being passive, because they’re already at the point of being defrocked of everything that matters. Most people – understandably – will put up with a certain amount of taxation, regulation, controls over their lives, etc. But at some point, the balance is tipped. They – the PTB – make the error of taking too much away; enough such that it’s just no longer worth putting up with their depredations.
This may prove to be that moment.
Eric, I wish you all the best in your health and health-care ambitions. I agree with your ideals all the way.
Thus disclaimed, as one somewhat older (61), though not necessarily wiser, I offer you this comment: Leave as many health care options open as you can personally justify. Up to a certain point, I surmise that you will find it more productive and satisfying to continue living having, at least, “gamed” the system, than to die, prematurely, in rock-ribbed adherence to a self-imposed and uncompromisable orthodoxy.
Or, to cite an ancient axiom: “He who fights and runs away will live to fight another day!”
P.S. Years ago, I left behind the 300# BP. I am happy, these days, with a body-weight barbell squat.
“The law is already such that if a “public service” official decides you “need” treatment, you can be forced to “accept” it – at gunpoint. As Sarti discovered. As we all soon will discover.”
Right back at ya fluffy…..Heh, heh. Yep, I gots training. I love the “stack” makes it easy to get more per round. Arschlocks.
Eric – having once having, as the LATE Chris Farley put it in his best role, “Tommy Boy”, a bit of a “weight problem” (5’10” and 320 lbs!), I can relate to what Mr Sarti is going through. I did go through a program starting six years ago through Kaiser Permanente (Bariatrics Dept) to do “something”, which was a series of counseling and group therapy sessions, with the recommendation to have Roux-en-Y (RnY) gastric bypass surgery. Though I could back out of the actual surgery and still be in the program (it was entirely elective), the idea was to get to the recommended weight no matter what. I did lose 40 lbs, which was slightly above the 10% of total body weight that I had to lose prior in order to show that I’d acquired enough “discipline” to follow through if I did go through with the surgery. On 3/5/2007, I had it done at Kaiser, South San Francisco. I proceeded to drop an additional 100 lbs in the next eight months, which I’ve kept off since. I did experience some difficulties, but due to having been a well-exercised fat guy before hand, therefore being as good a surgical candidate as one could be under the circumstances, it was better than average. There are folks that have died, though that particular Kaiser facility is considered a center of excellence in that field and claims to have not lost a patient that has had any bariatric procedure in the past eight years (they’ve done some 3,200 people). So definitely it’s in Mr. Sarti’s interest that he does something about his weight issue.
Having said ALL THAT, it’s still for Mr. Sarti himself. Never mind that what happened to the man is sheer tyranny, unimaginable to the signers of the Constitution, especially one Ben Franklin who lived off the “fat of the land” yet still lived to be 84 years of age, twice the average life expectancy for a white male of his day! None of this will work for Mr. Sarti unless he wants it bad enough. Bad enough that he’s willing to alter his lifestyle. Bad enough that, if yet another round of the “old college try” and “self-discipline” and all that rot doesn’t yield satisfactory results (and we already know the main definition of insanity), then admitting to oneself as I had to about 5-1/2 years ago that I couldn’t do it on my own and had to rely on a “higher” power (the skills of the good surgeon and the willingness of Kaiser to approve a $15,000 procedure for my co-pay of five hundred bucks). Looking back, it was a no-brainer, and from Kaiser’s perspective, the green eyeshade boys had already crunched the numbers and said “offer bariatric surgery to the fool”.
It’s unfortunate but fat people are discriminated against for whatever reason those that are of “normal” stature like to get on their self-righteous high horse. In the America that corpulent Ben Franklin envisioned, folks like Mr. Sarti feed themselves, clothe themselves (and if their designer jeans have the label from “Omar the tent-maker”, what of it?), pay their own medical care, and so on, so who should give a rat’s ass what they weigh? But, in Obama’s America, Comrade Sarti is not a “good citizen”, or more properly, a “good comrade”…the US Government is exactly like the fictional Clon-Glom-O Corporation from “Rocko’s Modern Life”, the slogan being, “We Own You”. Of course, maybe it won’t be so heavy-handed as that Tennessee judge was. Perhaps it’ll be a “snack tax” as was tried here in CA, or some surtax on McDonald’s and Pizza Hut. “Big Momma” won’t be a hilarious alter ego by Martin Lawrence, it’s practically a reality now! What’s next? Will some “Gubmint” computer track how many RockStars I buy from Wise Buys at 98 cents a pop and report me to some bureau-rat if I exceed my “allotment”? Will my triglyceride count or blood pressure be fodder in case there’s a family law dispute with my ex?
Just as I, being a practicing Mormon, eschew use of marijuana for myself and family, yet feel strongly that it should be as legal as alcohol for adults (their “Gawd”-given right to screw up their bodies), so, though I preach strongly to maintain a proper weight in the first place (lest you have to endure what I’ve had to do), or get the excess weight off no matter what, it’s likewise you’re “Gawd”-given right to eat what you pay for with your own pocket and wear as large clothes as you can find, provided likewise you pay for them out of your own pocket.
Lastly, ever notice that all the welfare types that complain “we ain’t getting our fair share” have so many of their number that are horrifically obese?
Here is the case for declaring me insane.
Almost two years ago, I was diagnosed with A-fib. Despite being in otherwise good health, good physical condition and basically asymptomatic, I kept hearing about my elevated risk of stroke. Blood thinners were essential to my treatment, I was told.
After nearly 8 months of putting up with blood draws up to twice a week–because my body would not cooperate with Warfarin and let its level stabilize–Pradaxa was prescribed for me. Within 10 days, I had a very scary reaction from that, involving internal bleeding.
Back to Warfarin, I was told. Not yet, I said. After the complications subsided, I went on my own regimen of 4 baby aspirin a day, some fish oil caps and Vitamin E. Again, the docs said “Warfarin: or do you want to die of a stroke?”
Shortly thereafter, a female acquaintance not two years older than I (early sixties) went for a weekend walk with her husband. She tripped, fell, gashed her head and promptly bled to death. The EMTs could not stop the bleeding. She was on Warfarin.
I then told the docs: No more Warfarin, no more Pradaxa, no more nothin’. I will take my chances with my own OTC substances.
So far, so good. No stroke.
Nor any nice young men in clean white coats at my front door.
Yet.
BTW, I feel great!
This is off topic, I simply felt like ranting. I just walked outside to get my BBQ fired up and I checked the mail and this is what I got.
Dear, Resident
The U.S. Cenuse Bureau recently sent a letter to your houshold about the American Community Survey. (mail it back, blah blah blah)
This survey collect up-to-date information used to meet the needs of communities across the United States. For example, results from this survey are used to decide where new schools, hospitals, and fire stations etc etc etc.
blah blah blah You are required by law to respond to this survey. blah blah blah.
Any question call 1-800-354-7271
Are they freaking kidding me, in the paper work it says it will take an average of 38 minutes and it is punishable by law if I don’t fill it out. Not bad enough we have census cops, now we have survey cops! WTF? So they are extorting 38 minutes of my life for a stinking survey that will cost a thousand times what it’s worth. Brilliant.
I’m also ticked because the Z28 I was going to buy was gone by the time I got back (my fault). ARRGGGG I’m going to drown my sorrows in beer and BBQ that should cheer me up.
They harassed me three times – I told them, “two adults lives here.” Period. That is all I am required to divulge vis-a-vis the Census. Now please get off my land.
Right on!
They told me I’d be fined if I didn’t answer the Census. They came back three times!
Same here. Call their bluff. I don’t think they’ve fined anyone who gave them the constitutionally authorized info: The number of people living here (adults and children). The Census is an enumeration – a count – nothing more. Don’t give ’em anything more!
Me too. I answered with ONLY the number of residents living in the household and sent the form in. Never heard from the Census Bureau again, although they did send a couple of morons to talk to my daughter, who lived in the other house on our property. I ordered both of them off of my land and never saw either one again. Never heard from the CB about either visit either.
All bark, no bite.
I filled out the entire form. It only took 5 minutes due to a rubber stamp I had made for the express purpose. It reads, in red caps: “This question is not authorized under the U.S. Constitution”
I haven’t heard back from them. Yet.
Pretty good!
Similarly, I’ve begun telling busybody clerks at stores who ask for my phone number to call 867 5309. .
Way off topic, Eric, but I thought you would like the refference to Jenny’s Constant (867.5309) in: http://xkcd.com/1047/
Good stuff!
Sometimes, you’ve just gotta approximate…
I answered the door to two census workers but then I let my Bulldog out for her evening pee and they went away.
Brad, you missed an outstanding opportunity to just plain fuck with them.
Find your Muse. Get creative with the answers. THEY’LL NEVER KNOW!
There is so much historical evidence of abuse regarding institutionalizing people it should never be taken lightly. People have been found insane for a huge number of reasons that have nothing to do with mental health. Mostly it comes down to money, but it’s also been used to get rid of politicians, competing lovers, etc.
Perhaps we could get rid of Chris Christie. (just kidding, kind of)
Two more points.
Vets who get help for PTSD either through the VA or through a private doctor can be forced to give up their guns. (that should encourage vets to get help)
Letters have gone out to gun dealers forcing them to ask if the buyer has a medical Marijuana card. If so they are supposed refuse to sell to them. We all know how dangerous those Chemo patients are when they get the munchies.
That fat slob annoys me. He’s another boom-voiced bully. I hope he keeps on eating and dies soon.
It is a good riddance when a bad person dies.
tgsam
escept that the Congress have declared this improper. The BATf holds that only addiction or conviction for unlawful use can debar the use of arms. It is up to NICS to deny, and they can only do so upon notice of addiction or conviction. Mere use cannot result in Deny code. Further, treatment for PTSD is not the same as being declared mentally incompetent, the standard for a Deny code. Rumor control needed here…..
NEWS FLASH: Police can’t find Marijuana addict’s weapon in “Cookie Shootout”
Local police apprehended “TJ” Stoner this afternoon after a 911 call was received from the 7-11 convenience store in South Park claiming an armed robbery in progress. Mr. Stoner was apprehended leaving the store with a bag of Mrs. Field’s chocolate chip cookies, which he allegedly had not paid for.
Police arrived on the scene, and after ordering Mr. Stoner to surrender, drew their weapons. Mr. Stoner responded by falling to the ground and urinating spontaneously. Police were unable to find a weapon.
Mr. Stoner is quoted as saying “Hey! It said two for one sale on the window! I left the other bag at the counter!”
Stoner’s arraignment is scheduled for next Wednesday.
CHRIS CHRISTIE
Why the American People continueto elect JDs when America’s governments are infested with them is a mystery to me. I know of no educated faction that has done more to eliminate Constitutional American Liberty.
BTW, I don’t consider lawyers jokes funny. There’s nothing funny about being instrumental in making certain crimes legal. Cashing in on legal crimes is even less funny.
Tinsley Grey Sammons
There’s nothing funny about being instrumental in making certain crimes legal.
Ditto the flip side of that, which is to make harmless acts illegal.
From “first, do no harm” to “health care comes out of the barrel of a gun.”
Stalin and Mao are popping champagne bottles in Hell and holding their sides in laughter over what’s happening in the “shining city on a hill.”
Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato
Exactly. Il Duce’s spirit lives on!
Both Benito and Herr Schickelgruber were admirers of FDR.
They were impressed by the subtlety with which he imposed his spin of fascism.
In AH’s case, of Lincoln, too. He even referred to the Russians as “our niggers” in his Table Talk.
That Lincoln had both Karl Marx and Adolf Hitler as admirers should be more than enough to disgrace that tyrant’s memory in the minds of thinking Americans. Of course we know how many of those there are…
Marx would no doubt have enthusiastically approved of FDR too.
I honestly don’t know if Colorado maintains that it owns the roads here or not. I do know (after researching a small game license)that the state asserts ownership of every wild species within the state borders. Philosophical considerations aside it would not surprise me if that was true for roadways as well.
The fact that a third of Colorado land is owned by the Feds might also come into play.
Rooney, would you be surprised to learn the State of California sincerely believes it owns the entire coastline? This is really humorous when you consider the very same State will not allow the private development of coastal property; doesn’t matter at all who holds title to it.
Slam dunk!?
OT: I’m always amazed that a state the size of Colorado is so bad at funding its schools, given the land mass and traditional funding of schools through property taxes. Too bad the state legislature can’t seem to do the math and realize that the federal government hasn’t been paying its “fair share” of the tax burden.
Of course, I’m joking. But the reality is the feds really are holding the western states hostage by refusing to sell off (or develop) federal lands. They used to sell land off all the time, it’s a great way to come up with cash to pay off debt. The only reason I can see is to prop up real estate values in Vail and Aspen. Helps keep the riff-raff out I guess.
I’ve made it a practice to avoid going to doctors AT ALL if I can help it. They’ve become nothing but whores for Big Pharma, pushing unneeded and dangerous drugs that have little or nothing to do with one’s actual medical condition. I had a GP a few years ago actually try to push Zoloft on me while refusing to give me a straight answer as to why he thought I needed it. Needless to say, I never darkened his doorstep again.
I’m also seriously considering dropping my health care coverage, “the law” be goddamned. Insane as that might sound, the flip side of that issue is that most “health insurance plans” are nothing but back doors into your personal information and a set chains by which the State, via its Medical-Pharmaceutical Complex proxy (or is it the other way around? I don’t know.) controls your every life’s decision (see the David Sarti example above for painful confirmation of this fact). I’m leaving out the obvious fact that it’s nothing but a direct subsidy to otherwise unprofitable “insurance” companies that would go belly-up in a genuinely Free Market economy.
The real battle here is going to be convincing the sheepletards that “health insurance,” as it currently exists, is nothing but a set of state-corporate shackles and a means of intrusion into one’s personal life – not to mention the source of the skyrocketing cost of “health care” [sic]. Better to get rid of it altogether and let the market work. Keep insurance around for catastrophic events, but do away with “insurance” for routine medical care and watch costs go down, down, DOWN.
BTW, I really believe that if the SCOTUS upholds ObamunistCare (which, as Eric points out, it assuredly will), that should be considered the Final Straw for that body of black-robed tyrants. Every last one of them who voted to uphold this abomination should be impeached and thrown off the bench. A decision to uphold would prove beyond all doubt their collective Constitutional illiteracy – or their collective contempt for that document.
Lib, I agree with everything you say except the idea that the SCOTUS will uphold ObamaCare; I don’t think that will happen.
Pain can drive a person to doctors since it is illegal to possess certain effective analgesics without a frightened doctor’s written permission. Why Folks do not consider that particularly unlawful truth is a mystery to me.
Maybe Tom Paine nailed it. It just might be that an innate hatefulness in humans is stronger than their fear of personal suffering.
“An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.” — Thomas Paine
The American Revolution was inspired by Thomas Paine. His uniquely brilliant work deserves frequent detailed study by all Americans.
Tinsley Grey Sammons (1936 –)
Agreed 100% Eric, but I don’t get the sudden outrage at a gov’t mandate. If everyone is so outraged at being forced to buy health insurance, why hasn’t state law requiring auto insurance been taken to the supreme court? Why aren’t people up in arms about that as well or any of the other thousands of gov’t mandates on our lives?
One reason could be that the roads are owned by the state, and the owner of said property has a right to set the conditions for its use. On the other hand you own your body.
The roads are not owned by the state. They are public roads, which by definition is the opposite of private. The gov’t has no money with which to have purchased the roads. They were built and paid for with our money so they belong to everyone, and no one. The gov’t simply assigns itself jurisdiction over them, but they do not own them.
I don’t dispute what you’re saying. Maybe a better word would be managers… by fiat. In any case most people accept the fact that the state makes the rules for the roads. The roads have been under the states’ control longer than most all of us have been alive. Even if
However aware or unaware we are of the fact that we are self-owners, that truth is within each of us.
I suspect it is easier for most of us to accept the fact that the state controls the roads than it is to accept the fact the politicians and bureaucrats have every intent of commanding us by threat of violence to use our bodies and run our lives as they see fit, in this case destroying what use to be a private, consensual relationship between two adults, a doctor and his customer. A lot of people still remember that and still have some semblance of that kind of relationship. Even if the roads were privately owned the owners would have rules and I would have to abide by them if I wanted use of the roads. And I imagine the rules would be market driven, more to the liking of the users of the road than to state bureaucrats.
I’m sure there are other reasons. Hopefully others will chime in.
Sorry for the poor editing.
No, the roads are owned by the State.
Just because they were paid for by money looted from taxpayers doesn’t alter that because the State writes the laws.
Don, I think the answer is in the 14th Amendment and the state’s interpretation of it. We are all seen as citizens “of” the United States (i.e.“of” construed to mean “belonging to”) and therefore “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” The slavery issue was settled along with state and individual rights in 1865. The states have no rights and with the advent of the 14th Amendment, we the people were granted “privileges and immunities” and our Creator Endowed rights went down the toilet. We’s all on da’ plantation now Br’r Don, or at least that’s how the Federales see it. So since you and I are perceived as federal chattel property, it should come as no surprise that when one of the more recalcitrant slaves refuses to go to the doctor (“for his good” of course) the strap (spelled “Taser”) will be applied until they do. After all, healthy slaves are productive slaves. And remember to wear your seatbelt too; dead slaves don’t pay taxes.
I think because this is the first time there’s no opt-out, however much a technicality that might be. For instance, one can skip car insurance by skipping vehicle ownership. Not viable for most people, I agree – but nonetheless. Now they are going full-throttle. Not only will we be forced at gunpoint to buy the “service” of a private company, we’ll have no way out of it and it will become the basis for intrusions into our personal space such as I doubt most of us can even imagine.
Another issue is state rights. According to the Constitution (which I don’t always agree with), All laws not prohibited by the constitution are afforded to the states. So the question becomes is it prohibited by the constitution? it clearly is not a dictate of the federal government. I know people like to use the BS excuse that it’s in the preamble, “promote the general welfare” That would have most of our founding fathers spinning in their graves. Our fine Statist friends have used that clause to glom onto anything and everything that they consider good for us. If I could go back in time and smack some sense into them it would be about this one statement. They should have had the foresight to know just how messed up Statists can get.
Someone back then *DID* smack them on the head about the General Welfare clause in Article I section 8: Brutus in paper #6.
Those arguing AGAINST the second, current constitution of the United States of America were labeled anti-federalist by the devilishly brilliant Alexander Hamilton who called himself a Federalist. More accurate labels would have been (using modern language) Decentralists and Centralists or (using the terms of the time) Anti-nationalists and Pro-Nationalist. This is a wonderful example of “framing” a debate with favorable labeling.
The argument that the “general welfare” clause granted unlimited power had such legs that James Madison, in Federalist #41, had to address the matter directly.
Madison’s argument was is that Brutus was a delusional crank with fevered dreams which see phantoms usurpations and abuse in even the most innocuous language. Madison’s exact words were:
“It has been urged and echoed, that the power “to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States,” amounts to an unlimited commission to exercise every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the common defense or general welfare. No stronger proof could be given of the distress under which these writers labor for objections, than their stooping to such a misconstruction.”
With nearly 250 years of hindsight it is clear *EVERY* abuse and usurpation envisioned and predicted by the opponents of centralized government created the new second constitution (the anti-federalists) has come to pass.
History is equally clear that *NONE* of the protections and safe guards promised by the proponents of new second constitution (the federalists) have materialized.
For the to and fro of the debate for the second constitution I cannot recommend the book: The Debated for the Constitution; highly enough. The brilliance of the book is to assemble the pamphlets and writings in chronological order.
As for the touche-riposte of the argument regarding the “General Welfare” clause see:
http://robertlbryant.com/index.php/2010/08/the-federalist-papers-debunk-the-general-welfare-clause/
Excellent, John – thank you! And, amen!
We do have a way out of it Eric. Te US doesn’t yet control the entire globe. Love it or leave it. Personally? I’m leaving.
Unfortunately, that’s much easier said than done – and besides, there really isn’t anywhere to go. Fifty years ago, people leaving Europe for the US found a fairly free country, where (for the most part) there was the rule of law and respect for the rights of the individual, at least relative to what they’d left. And today? There’s no place I’m aware of that’s much of an improvement. Moreover, why should I leave? I despise that “love it or leave it” shit. This is much my country as yours or anyone else’s. I am not just walking away from the things I worked my whole life for, in order to give it to the asshole Clovers. They’re gonna have to come and take it from me. And while I’ll go down, so will a few of them. And that will give me much satisfaction.
I can’t leave, because they won’t let me. If they want me gone, they’ll have to get off their ass and throw me out. Or kill me.
I’m considering leaving again too.
Where, Scott?
My current candidates:
Chile
Mexico
Uruguay
Argentina
South Africa
Forgot:
Costa Rica
Panama
Top of my list is Chile but I’m also going to look into Argentina at the same time.
Take a look at Wired magazine’s map of the black markets ( http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/12/mf_neuwirth_qa/all/1 ). My thinking is you’re looking for a decent climate with a weak government.
The auto insurance mandates are state laws.
If we go through time we can see the respect for the law by the government fall to the side one bit at a time. Back when auto insurance mandates were being pushed there was enough respect that the only way anyone thought of it being accomplished was by state law. The USC does not give that power to the federal government, and thus the federal government does not have it. However, the states may do all sorts of ridiculous things and still be in compliance with the USC. The idea is that it is difficult to get something passed in the many states and failures will be isolated.
In the years since, even this remaining respect of the USC has vanished. So now we have the federal healthcare insurance power grab and insider feeding frenzy.
Mandatory auto insurance comes in many different forms because it is state law. Even if a challenge were heard by the supreme court and successful it could leave many other forms untouched.
Oh horsehockey Brent! “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
The States absolutely *do* have the right to mandate car insurance. Personally I commend the current implementation of that right. I do in fact believe every operator of a motor vehicle on public byways should have insurance to protect other people from accidental injury. I just think that’s a good idea,
The alternative is that everyone enters the road at their own risk. This is another approach and I could accept it as long as I was allowed to carry a weapon of my choice and use it to enforce my opinions on safe and sane driving habits without regard to any other authority.
Scott, if you believe this then you have accepted the fundamental premise of the state of affairs we live with today. Including ObamaCare. Including much else besides.
“States” have no rights. Only individual people have rights. You have no “right” to impinge on my rights – and vice versa. I am not harming you by the mere act of declining to buy car insurance. Therefore, you have no right to force me to buy it. Every utilitarian argument you may deploy falls flat against this. You either believe in individual rights – or you do not. If you do not, then what you demand be forced upon me for “safety” or some other nebulous collectivist reason may just as easily result in me or someone else forcing some noxious thing on you. It turns us all into animals – because the defining attribute of an animal is that it lives by violence – and the country into a prison.
Your assertion that I might cause you a harm if I cause an accident that I’m not able to cover on my own… no, even worse…. that someone (not even necessarily me) might cause you a harm and therefore I and everyone elsemust be forced to purchase car insurance is a textbook example of the flimsy Cloverite collectivism that is turning this country into a gulag.
Of course that’s always the justification: it’s happened before therefore EVERYONE must be controlled to ensure (which they can’t) that it never happens again. Never let a good crisis go to waste; never let them forget the crisis and fear it. If it helps even one person then it’s worth it.
But they never use the same logic to reject their mandates: if it harms even one person then it’s not worth it. The cost side of the argument is always conveniently ignored.
In a sense States do have rights against the Federal Government. The proper term is State authorities/powers versus delegated powers/authorities to the Central government and that is what I mean whenever I use the term States Rights, which I try to avoid.
Governments/agents are empowered/authorized by the principals.
A little while ago, a people empowered their States/Nations to join in a compact with other States/Nations for certain purposes. Those States/Nations were the principals until 1865, when a revolutionary Federal agent violently overthrew their compact relationship.
States Rights is more accurately defined as begging rights these days.
I really been enjoying your writings since you came on-board lewrockwell.com.
But you overlook my caveat Eric; if the State doesn’t require auto insurance, I demand the right to enforce any safety standards I choose using whatever means I find at my disposal.
So, you cut me off in traffic in an aggressive and unsafe fashion, causing me to brake suddenly to avoid a collision, thereby causing the person behind me to run into me at 70 mph, resulting in my wife’s neck snapping backward suddenly and thus paralyzing her for life? I get out of the car, aim an RPG at you and blow your ass to hell. Nobody writes me a ticket, neither of us is forced to carry insurance, everything’s good.
I don’t know about that though. I may not have the RPG in the right car. You might get out of range before I can respond. So many difficulties with that scenario…
I’m not sure how to respond; I’ll assume you were being facetious.
Ok. Here’s how it ought to be: I cause an injury to property or person, I am held proportionately and thus fairly responsible. If I hit your car and it’ll take $8,000 to fix it, then that’s what I owe you. If I can’t pay, then there are remedies such as wage garnishment, or asset seizure – etc.
But note: You have no rightful business to impose an obligation on me absent some actual harm done by me to you. My merely not having insurance does not, as such, cause you any harm. That I “might” cause you harm (or some other person might cause you some harm) is not sufficient. If you think otherwise, then the state’s authority to control people is unlimited, since anyone “might” do anything. This upends perhaps the most bedrock principle of a free society – and turns it into an authoritarian gulag.
Which, by the way, is a much less “safe” place to be than a free country where an individual’s right to accept risk is tolerated in return for individual responsibility for any negative consequences being expected (and demanded).
Scott, RPG’s? Here’s how it works in the current insurance system. The third party that caused the crash drives away and nobody is concerned. The guy who rear ended you is considered at fault. Then perhaps his insurance company refuses to pay if you can find them and if he has one. They want you to go after the party that cut you off. Isn’t mandatory insurance wonderful?
Brent & Eric –
I was being a little facetious, but not completely. Brent you hit the point I was trying to make; in today’s system the bad guy gets away. Eric, you beg the question “Who should really be paying for insurance?”, which I think is at the root of the debate.
The current system says I need to insure myself against some damage I might do you, but this is pre-emptive as you point out, and is unjust as a result; I’m financially “punished” in advance of doing something I may never actually do.
The real answer I think is that if I want to protect myself from random acts (like you cutting me off in traffic & etc.) *I* need to buy insurance. It’s kind of simple when you think about it 🙂
Perhaps simple, but certainly not well written.
What I meant to say is that *I* should not be buying insurance for *you*, I should be buying it for me, and only if I want to.
The current model is I buy *you* insurance just in case *I* screw up and do something that harms *you*. This is absurd.
If I want insurance to cover me if and when *you* screw up, I’ll buy it.
Well Scott that’s actually not a bad idea as far as I can see, but it should also help you see how the insurance racket has nothing to do with safety and forces drivers to stand facing the insurance companies with government guns at their backs.
The state of affairs you advocate includes choice. That’s why it will never happen.
That also makes it harder for the insurance companies to make money, because who do they raise premiums on in that situation? You, even though you did nothing wrong?
States and governments do not have rights. Those people have Power which is excercise under some grant of Authority.
Even in your citation of the tenth amendment you failed to see this important distinction. People/Citizens/Individuals have rights. Agents of the State have POWER.
Believe it or not these are not the same thing.
Scott, re-read what I wrote. I did not write anything that said the states could not. In fact I wrote the opposite.
“However, the states may do all sorts of ridiculous things and still be in compliance with the USC.”
BTW, governments have powers, not rights.
As to auto insurance, get hit by an irresponsible person who has an insurance company that refuses to pay and see what happens. Mandatory auto insurance doesn’t suddenly make for responsibility.
Couldn’t what? The way I read it, your comment observed the bad guy gets away. What did I miss?
Sorry for mixing up the term “Right” with “Power”. From a pragmatic view, I find that if one has a Right and no Power, he has no right, whereas a person who has Power has just about all the Rights he wants.
Want to arm wrestle?
You replied as if I made an argument that states could not make such laws (provided the state constitution allows it). I made the opposite argument. They can make such laws with regards to the USC is concerned.
The many states were to be in competition with each other more or less. So if one did lots of stupid things people would leave for other states. States thus have considerably more power. Now I don’t agree that they should have much of the power they do, but it is what it is. They have it until the people wake up and relieve them of it.
Sorry for the misunderstanding. I quoted the 10th, which give the State the “Power” to make laws unless the “people” reserve them to themselves. In this example, the States have created regulations requiring car insurance and, from discussion, I conclude only a few (perhaps NH) have had their peepees whacked for it.
New Hampshire still does not have a general, mandatory auto insurance law. While NH is no longer as liberty minded as we once were, we still have that, along with no income or sales tax, and the Free State Project types finally seem to be making some local headway in the wake of the 2010 elections.
Hi Freak,
That’s encouraging!
Virginia – where I live – has mandatory car insurance, but most interestingly, one can legally drive without any insurance… provided one pays the state an annual $400 fee. So, it’s not about “safety.” It’s about money. And always has been.
True, the NH law is written such that there is no “adult” helmet or seatbelt requirements, nor insurance requirement. But the law seems to require either insurance or a bond. Folks seem to not know about the bond, seeing the insurance is not required is enough to set off a mental euphoria response that blocks all else.
Vehicles are considered “property” and there are property taxes, which for me comes to about $200/year. There are also “safety” inspections that have nothing to do with safety, so even in NH not everything is wine and roses.
Bob,
Never said it was “wine and roses.” In fact, I believe I said that NH is not as liberty minded as it once was. Property taxes and the annual auto registration fees are the most egregious, imo. But all things considered, it is one of the better places, if only because of the large, not professional, citizen legislature. Generally speaking, you don’t get the ladder climbing pols for $100/year.
@Bob
Also, by “bond” I assume that you are speaking of there the requirement to show that you can financially cover expenses in an at-fault accident. Practically speaking, that condition doesn’t amount to much. It’s not enforced and it is effectively just restating that you are financially liable for injury and property damage that you cause. You do not have to show that you have coverage or the financial ability to pay in order to register and legally drive in the state.
And compared to NH’s neighbors, we’re doing fairly well (though I’d add the corporate taxes to my gripes above). Mass is often derided as Taxachussets. Vermont is the greenie, socialist haven (though Killington, VT has voted several times to secede to NH, despite NOT being a border town), and Maine has ones of the largest tax burdens in the country. Maine even claims, and courts have upheld, the right to tax the income of the spouse of a non resident working in Maine, who themselves do NOT work in Maine (if you file jointly).
What is the $400 supposed to be applied to?
tgsam
The state of Virginia’s budget!
the state can mandate each vehicle owner have insurance to cover the results of any negligence or incompetance injuring anohter’s person or property. Used to be, you only had to have insurance if you were in an accident, were found at fault, and could not make restitution for damages you caused. Since then, the thinking has changed to “you must have insurance”. It is interesting to note the insurance rates have increased dramatically since making it mandatory to have it.
Of course – they have a monopoly now. We are not allowed to say “no thanks” if we find their “service” unacceptable.
It also artificially increases “demand,” which puts upward pressure on prices. This is a huge flaw in Obamacare. By mandating insurance, it increases demand which will cause prices to rise. Further, those with insurance will tend to utilize it more often (especially if they’re forced to buy), for minor ailments, increasing payouts, and thus necessitating even higher premiums to cover the additional risk and make a profit. Not allowing higher premiums, or even refusal of coverage, for high risk (obese, smokers, etc) customers will simply raise premiums for everyone. Auto insurance, thus far, can charge more for risky drivers and avoids much of this. It is still effectively a pooling of risk that covers unlikely to occur, but catastrophic events. Imagine how expensive auto insurance would be if we had 3rd party payers and copays for gas, oil changes, tune ups, inspections, etc.
Exactly, freak!
Thanks for adding your guns to this debate… much obliged!
I’ve been saying this for month’s now. Obamacare would screw the poor big time. Fewer people would have insurance and the “social cost” would go through the roof. They would have to build 100’s of new prisons for all the people who couldn’t go along. The civil unrest would make now seem like a Sunday school picnic.
Because auto insurance at least affords some protection to OTHERS against your actions whether accidental or negligent. The health mandate protects no one other then yourself and being an adult you should be capable of making your own assessment.
Except of course it often does no such thing. Example: There are millions of illegal aliens in this country, many of whom do not even have a valid US driver’s license, much less insurance. But they have nothing to lose – no assets to seize, and they’re not especially fearful of jail – so they drive (not infrequently, drunk) without insurance, with impunity. Pedro hits you, totals your car – you lose. The government won’t do a god-damned thing about it. But if you drive without insurance, even if you never so much as scuff a fender, they’ll crucify you if you’re caught.
You’ve made the error that “gun control” supporters make: The laws are irrelevant to the people causing the majority of the trouble; they’re just a hassle – and an excuse to take away the freedoms – of the people who are not the problem.
I fumed about forced auto insurance when they first passed it in my state (PA). Clearly unconstitutional. Same thing when I heard about random roadblocks in Kansas. But the granddaddy of all was the 18th amendment to the constitution (Prohibition) — why didn’t the population go berserk?
Because, unfortunately, most people are Clovers.
Ok. I’ll bite.
Explain “Clovers” to me.
Just for openers!
http://epautos.com/2011/10/29/another-clover-autopsy/
Why have the People not gone even more berserk over the wrongful application of the Constitution’s Commerce Clause (Or is it “Claws”?)
The Commerce Claws is certainly not applicable to sumptuary prohibitions. That sound’s like devious crap from the twisted minds of juris doctors.
Tinsley Grey Sammons (1936 –)
They just kept on drinking anyway. Also remember that the temperance and suffrage movements were virtually indistinguishable; the Volsted Act was very much a sop to America’s newly-enfranchised women, once women’s suffrage went national. Anything to get re-elected!
The auto insurance argument is one of the “classic” arguments used by proponents of socialized medicine to justify compelling citizens to buy a private product from a private company. But the important, basic difference is this: the state says, “If you wish to own and operate a motor vehicle on public roads, you must have liability insurance.” In the case of Obamacare, the State (big “S”) says, “If you exist, you must have health insurance.” BIG difference. You don’t have to own a motor vehicle (as most residents of New York City don’t), but you do have to exist.
Car insurance is to protect THIRD PARTIES from the insurance buyer’s potential negligence. If I fall asleep at the wheel, T-bone another car, and wind up paralyzing that other driver, my liability insurance will pay. Insurance is a precondition of being allowed to drive, yeah, but it’s to protect the other guy. With Obamacare, the government is requiring the purchase of FIRST-PARTY insurance which is a product meant (theoretically) to benefit the buyer, not a third-party. My health care insurance isn’t mandated so that it can protect my neighbor from getting sick.
Most psychiatrists have always been an arm of the state while pretending to be the advocate of their patients who they have no problem locking up in hospitals and fucking their brains with lobotomies, electroshock, and mind killing drugs.
Now we are beginning to see examples of real medical doctors violate their time honored code of do no harm, and more importantly to violate the autonomy of their patient. When I was a child this relationship was sacrosanct and buttressed by the fact that people paid their medical bills out of their pocket. Our parents paid the doctors, not the insurance company, and more importantly, not the
state. That autonomous relationship between doctor and patient has been severed, most severely with the passage of the Medicare in the mid 60’s. Thus the tragedy of David Sarti and the many of us who will, no doubt, find ourselves in similar circumstances.
As an aside but related, the confessed mass killer in Norway, Anders Breivik rightly denounces the accusation of the court appointed psychiatrist that he is mentally ill. He wants to be tried, convicted or found innocent, and either be executed or set free. He has taken full responsibility for the slaughter he committed and demands the court treat him as such. One other shrink declared Breivik
was sane. This contradiction another example of the fake science which is psychiatry.
Are you familiar with Dr. Thomas Szasz?
tgsam
Yes. He’s a paragon of critical thinking, common sense, wit, humor and good old sarcasm. If I believed in hero-worship he’d be the man.
Psychiatrists in the US are basically in the same role as in the Soviet Union.
Forty years ago homosexuality was a diagnosable mental disorder, now not promoting or celebrating homosexuality is.
Gee, and here I was hoping the bill wouldn’t pass.
Sad how people analyzing the decision must base thier predictions on how many members are left or right of center. That should make no difference at all. Thought they were there to protect the constitution. hmm
Really scary how one thing leads to another. I REALLY hope that black box doesn’t get mandated.