Ron Paul’s Campaign Mastermind Died Of Pneumonia, Penniless And Uninsured

By on September 14, 2011 in News 432

ronpaulkentsnyder1In an arresting moment at Monday’s Republican presidential debate, Wolf Blitzer asked Ron Paul about the hypothetical case of an uninsured young man who needs medical care, and whether “society should just let him die.” The debate audience cheered in approval, and Paul more or less agreed.

Gawker writes that the question wasn’t so hypothetical. Kent Snyder is credited with convincing Paul to run for president, and served brilliantly as his campaign manager, raising an astonishing $19.5 million. In 2008, just two weeks after the campaign ended, Snyder died at age 49 from pneumonia. He did not receive insurance through Paul, and was unable to afford it on his own due to a preexisting medical condition. His death left his mother with $400,000 in medical bills. (She is now in debt.) Say what you will, but he exemplified the free-market libertarian principles that he worked for while healthy:

After Snyder’s death, Paul posted a message to the website for his Campaign for Liberty — a pre-Tea Party organization which served Paul as both presidential marketing tool and platform to promote his non-interventionist, free market ideals. He wrote:

“Like so many in our movement, Kent sacrificed much for the cause of liberty. Kent poured every ounce of his being into our fight for freedom. He will always hold a place in my heart and in the hearts of my family.”

And that, friends, is what freedom is really all about.

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  • Wanooski

    Bootstraps and all that.

  • Wanooski

    Bootstraps and all that.

  • Jbar

    Ron Paul, like most libertarians I’ve met or heard, is a dick.

  • Guest

    Perhaps they should write and article to explain how debt of a deceased person get passed on to someone else. It actually becomes part of the estate and and assets are liquidated but it can’t make his mother become indebted because he died.  Nice reporting…

  • Anonymous

    Ron Paul?  Didn’t we think the same thing with Barry back in ’08?  Quit relying on demagogues and start thinking outside the conventional political realm.  Every aspect of it is rigged; I assure you.  The only difference you can do is doing something yourself.

  • http://profiles.google.com/bethshatara Beth Shatara

    Paul is a terrible debater. The 10th takes away all medical issues from the Fed. Gov. and gives them to various states, period, next issue.

  • http://profiles.google.com/bethshatara Beth Shatara

    Paul is a terrible debater. The 10th takes away all medical issues from the Fed. Gov. and gives them to various states, period, next issue.

  • Hadrian999

    ignore the problem and it goes away, the new american dream

  • http://profiles.google.com/bethshatara Beth Shatara

    p.s. The Fed. Gov’s invovelment in medicine has inflated the cost of treatment.

  • Big Gummamit

    Ha! Take that Libertarians!

    I will definitely be voting for Obama or Perry… Big government will keep us healthy and safe! We might be so safe and healthy that we will live forever!

  • Okarin

    i wonder if kent snyder had the same views as ron paul and did he and ron paul had any talks about his medical insurance as it would mean something if he refused medicare because they were against it as unfortunate the situation is

  • Wanooski

    Whoa! You just totally put all of us in our place! You have a withering wit and intellect, would you like to be proclaimed supreme master debater extraordinaire? He who always knows what’s best for everyone forever and always.

  • Anonymous

    “society should just let him die.” The debate audience cheered in approval, and Paul more or less agreed.

    Just another loaded question.. ofcourse not, as Paul mentioned no one was left out on the streets to die or anything like that before medicare was around and the govt got so involved in our healthcare. There are charities, churches, communities that have programs setup for the less fortunate.

    Why is GOVT the only option? Govt involvement has given us less options, and inflated the cost.

    How is this beneficial to our society? Everything that is “given” away is taken from someone else. You claim it is for the welfare of the sick, but what about the welfare of all the citizens who were forced to pay for their bills? Think of how heavily our income is taxed for these unconstitutional programs.. income that we could use to feed, clothe and shelter our own families. If you would like to help the less fortunate, by all means please do so and donate to charity.. but more government involvement in our lives and our pockets is not the answer.

  • Anonymous

    You should probably do more research then.
    When people are afraid of the concepts of liberty and personal freedom, things have gotten real bad.

  • http://voxmagi-necessarywords.blogspot.com/ VoxMagi

    I love the irony…almost as much as I love the soppy cunts who babble on about how govt cant or shouldnt be a part of the solution for these issues…because they’ve lived their entire lives in a cushy world after govt started playing a part…and weren’t here for the centuries of brutality, misery and spectacular poverty that preceded the attempts by govt to mollify things. It was so shitty…that even as bad as govt may be…people accepted it as an improvement over the way things were. I strongly suggest these assholes take a long vacation to Haiti with no cash…look for work…and see how comfy they can get by on the kindness of charities if it doesn’t work out. Might be a wakeup call. 

  • Sangproductions183

    The rest of the world either laughs at you Americans or shakes their heads in dismay. Keep up the idiocy Yanks, see how far it gets your country in ten to twenty years. I’d start mentally preparing yourselves now for your future as a second world country (think Russia’s situation in the 80s).

  • Anonymous

    The problem of the govt. stealing part of every citizens income to pay for unconstitutional programs?

  • Wanooski

    “There are charities, churches, communities that have programs setup for the less fortunate.”Where? Where are these things? Are they like unicorns? I’ve never seen them. 

  • http://voxmagi-necessarywords.blogspot.com/ VoxMagi

    Hey…be nice man…some of us have a clue…but we’re fighting tooth and nail against a tidal wave of retards and con-artists.

  • Wanooski

    Yeah I know, I read Dmitry Orlov.

  • Hadrian999

    government has to provide leadership in some way. maybe not a government financed healthcare system but we can’t afford the “fuck you if you aren’t wealthy” modern brand of libertarianism it can only lead to violent class warfare

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1455288665 Deva O’Donnell

    So, what is your stance on gay marriage and marijuana prohibition?

  • Jason Marsh

    Survival of the fittest… fucking fail lol.

  • nathan willard

    Does a passenger of a train have anymore control then another? we are not at the wheel and although we try to give our feedback to the guy driving it is hardly discernible over the rabble of the crowd, when each person believes they are right and each shouting louder then the next. What is scary is that Our train is dragging most of the first world cars behind it so when we derail you follow too. We can thank global economizing for linking all the train cars together. We just sit closer to the conductor then you.

  • Anonymous

    The government should not be involved in the personal choices of it’s citizens, so long as those choices do not cause harm to others. Legalize weed, legalize same-sex marriage, legalize freedom.

  • FxChiP

    So you think we should trust a private industry that has proven its capacity and propensity to either collude with competitors to fix prices or simply have a de facto standard of fixed prices because any lower would “bankrupt” the company attempting to do so? The private industry that cares far more for profits — the *primary reason* they turn away “preexisting conditions” — than about what they purport to do? Please, be realistic: private industry benefits none but the companies participating in it, and only benefits the common man either when it’s profitable to do so or illegal not to. And these same companies are always the ones that want to “deregulate”, i.e. make it illegal not to less often.

    If your objective is to make sure that people don’t die of diseases that have been around with treatments and cures since the middle ages, then you can’t have a profit motive involved there. If your objective is to make money on those poor saps and then deny them the coverage they were ostensibly paying for, well, we’ve already got it, so stop pushing for it.

  • Dip Buyer

    Your government has done a very good job at snuffing them out. Yet, they still exist, in remote places where governments do not destroy them.

  • halmonkey

    Paul did not agree. Didn’t you watch the debate? He clarified how reality works and how big government works, and how charities, friends, family, and churches often help.

  • halmonkey

    Paul did not agree. Didn’t you watch the debate? He clarified how reality works and how big government works, and how charities, friends, family, and churches often help.

  • halmonkey

    Paul did not agree. Didn’t you watch the debate? He clarified how reality works and how big government works, and how charities, friends, family, and churches often help.

  • Dip Buyer

    You may have relied on Barry, but not many Libertarians. And look at where we’re at now because we cannot tolerate reality. Reality has a strange way of getting what it wants.

  • Dip Buyer

    You may have relied on Barry, but not many Libertarians. And look at where we’re at now because we cannot tolerate reality. Reality has a strange way of getting what it wants.

  • Dip Buyer

    You may have relied on Barry, but not many Libertarians. And look at where we’re at now because we cannot tolerate reality. Reality has a strange way of getting what it wants.

  • Verycleaver

    Those who reject government prefer oppression by corporations.  No one rejects “personal freedom,” but individual freedom isn’t viable without a collective commitment to the common welfare.  Those advocating “freedom” do so as a cover for enabling a greater control of your life by corporations and private interests.  Government may not be perfect, but it’s the best system any nation has ever devised for promoting the common good.  Certainly our founders believed so.  Reject the unity of government and you’re enslaving yourself.

  • Verycleaver

    Those who reject government prefer oppression by corporations.  No one rejects “personal freedom,” but individual freedom isn’t viable without a collective commitment to the common welfare.  Those advocating “freedom” do so as a cover for enabling a greater control of your life by corporations and private interests.  Government may not be perfect, but it’s the best system any nation has ever devised for promoting the common good.  Certainly our founders believed so.  Reject the unity of government and you’re enslaving yourself.

  • nathan willard

    This argument is always going to be moot, insurance is identical but on a smaller scale, a group policy forces the group to pay the difference in cost for the individual, when too many individuals get sick or expenses increase the group cost goes up. The difference is the nation becomes the group and the cost is further diffused, while process and management is consolidated to drive expenses down. If government based care is bad then so is Health care insurance, I still pay for some other sick person… However I believe in a social structure in which symbiosis is elemental, we depend on each other so much for some many things from language to learning from food procurement to health and well being, yet we sit here with acetone to try and break down the adhesive that bonds us together in our dependency.  The root cause for this decay is that we embrace individualism too much, we forget we are on the same team and we rely on each other. Companies compete for wealth, we compete for resources, and in the end a massive amount of waste is generated. 

  • nathan willard

    This argument is always going to be moot, insurance is identical but on a smaller scale, a group policy forces the group to pay the difference in cost for the individual, when too many individuals get sick or expenses increase the group cost goes up. The difference is the nation becomes the group and the cost is further diffused, while process and management is consolidated to drive expenses down. If government based care is bad then so is Health care insurance, I still pay for some other sick person… However I believe in a social structure in which symbiosis is elemental, we depend on each other so much for some many things from language to learning from food procurement to health and well being, yet we sit here with acetone to try and break down the adhesive that bonds us together in our dependency.  The root cause for this decay is that we embrace individualism too much, we forget we are on the same team and we rely on each other. Companies compete for wealth, we compete for resources, and in the end a massive amount of waste is generated. 

  • FxChiP

    “Think of how heavily our income is taxed for these unconstitutional
    programs.. income that we could use to feed, clothe and shelter our own
    families.”

    The biggest problem I have with this line is that it is often spoken by people who don’t even need the extra to feed, clothe and shelter their own families to evoke the sympathies of those who would, if they were actually being taxed more. That is to say, financially well-off people wanting more disposable income speaking to those who don’t get taxed all that heavily because they simply don’t make as much! As taxes are cut, the money has to come from somewhere — if it’s not coming from the largest concentrations of wealth, it’s coming from the largest distribution of population, some of which are already scraping to get by. Yet the largest concentrations of wealth should be given breaks because they’re “job creators?” These “job creators” who seem to create jobs overseas — you know, NOT AMERICAN — and get *tax breaks* for doing so? And these are the guys telling us they need to be taxed *less*? WHY?

  • FxChiP

    “Think of how heavily our income is taxed for these unconstitutional
    programs.. income that we could use to feed, clothe and shelter our own
    families.”

    The biggest problem I have with this line is that it is often spoken by people who don’t even need the extra to feed, clothe and shelter their own families to evoke the sympathies of those who would, if they were actually being taxed more. That is to say, financially well-off people wanting more disposable income speaking to those who don’t get taxed all that heavily because they simply don’t make as much! As taxes are cut, the money has to come from somewhere — if it’s not coming from the largest concentrations of wealth, it’s coming from the largest distribution of population, some of which are already scraping to get by. Yet the largest concentrations of wealth should be given breaks because they’re “job creators?” These “job creators” who seem to create jobs overseas — you know, NOT AMERICAN — and get *tax breaks* for doing so? And these are the guys telling us they need to be taxed *less*? WHY?

  • Anonymous

    There are charity hospitals all over the nation, privately run and non-profit. Not a secret. Definitely not a unicorn.

    My
    wife had to use one here in Houston for major surgery after a car wreck
    when unemployed. We had to pay a small part, but most was covered by
    the hospital. “So then your taking handouts!!!”
    Yes, the difference is this money came from those who CHOSE to donate it to charity, they were not forced by the government.

    All
    emergency rooms are required by law to care for anyone that comes in,
    regardless of their finances, by the way. People aren’t getting kicked
    out because their poor.

  • Anonymous

    There are charity hospitals all over the nation, privately run and non-profit. Not a secret. Definitely not a unicorn.

    My
    wife had to use one here in Houston for major surgery after a car wreck
    when unemployed. We had to pay a small part, but most was covered by
    the hospital. “So then your taking handouts!!!”
    Yes, the difference is this money came from those who CHOSE to donate it to charity, they were not forced by the government.

    All
    emergency rooms are required by law to care for anyone that comes in,
    regardless of their finances, by the way. People aren’t getting kicked
    out because their poor.

  • Wanooski

    Yeah, uh huh. You of course say that, because it is bullshit. 

  • Wanooski

    Yeah, uh huh. You of course say that, because it is bullshit. 

  • Wanooski

    Emergency rooms respond to emergencies, injuries and immediate problems like heart attacks, they don’t treat illness. And all they will do is “stabilize” a patient. 
    This is of course arguing over a pointless small part of the problem with your overall idiot “philosophy”.

  • Verycleaver

    You’re advocating a return to the 19th century.  Before centralized social systems were implemented, private charities — churches, beneficial societies, etc — offered the scant help available.  It was far too little, it was prohibitively expensive at broader scales, and it relied upon the caprice of philanthropists.  It was simply panhandling on an institutional level.

    The social network created by the New Deal reflected socialist and socialistic movements throughout the world in the 20th century.  These systems evolved because they were more effectively run by centralized, organized governments offering the maximum effect to the greatest number possible.  Like public education, public health systems, public transportation systems, defense systems, and regulated agricultural systems, a centralized government-operated social network was *effective* and economical, compared to the comparatively vast expenditure for little effect of the 19th century “begging” model.  It just works better; it certainly works better than the complete absence of services that predominated before it.I’m sorry you don’t care for the 20th century, let alone the 21st, but if you’re bent on returning to a system just slightly more civilized than feudalism, may I ask you to find a quiet little island for your experiment and leave the rest of us — as the Founders proposed — to operating a government for the people.

  • FxChiP

    By the way, emergency rooms are not FOR that. Emergency rooms are for EMERGENCIES. If you’re uninsured, going to the emergency room has a real risk of cluttering it up for someone who actually, really has an emergency. Plus, they still charge you exorbitant amounts of money, you still have to pay those exorbitant sums, etc.

    And besides — if “deregulation” comes to hospitals because “GOVT SHOULD NOT BE INVOLVED IN THAT”, the emergency room may not be the “haven for the uninsured” you think it is anymore anyway.

  • Verycleaver

    Oh gosh: this is pure silliness.  All the government does and should do is regulate personal choices.  I WANT government to regulate personal choices.  I want the government to help keep crime off the streets, poisons from my food, potholes from my streets, and laws well-enforced.  The idea that the government is just a nasty parent always keeping you from having your jollies is just petulant adolescence.

  • Anonymous

    How is keeping the money that I earn an idiot philosophy?

    Please explain to us your vision of what healthcare should be.

  • nathan willard

       I don’t think that statement is entirely true, some policies may have been contributing factors in driving up cost but on the other hand cost would have risen as new technologies develop that corrected and cured thing prior technology could barely treat. Sure a broken leg can be set and healed for little to nothing in some countries, but it may never be the same either, we have refined treatments through new process and technology and because nothing but the latest breakthroughs are often considered acceptable in this country we find the prices never really go down but continue to go up as newer technologies replace the previous. On the flip side slowing down the advancement in medical science  for the sake of allowing cost to catch up is not likely. 
       On another point the administrative cost have risen drastically, for every one doctor treating there are multitudes of desk jockeys, nurses, and Insurance delegates all there to support the massive amounts of paperwork, data entry, verification, and etc… Some of the Federal Governments plans were to streamline the administrative process in order to cost these cost, but too many jobs and too many business reap profits in order to see this criteria eliminated.  
      In the end we will have to either accept the rising cost which is easy to point the finger at the government because it is so faceless (and is in fact supposedly all of us.). or accept a drastic change in policy, like single medical database, more control over the variety of technologies that make to applicable use, and finally a nation wide group policy a.k.a. pay-once national health care plan.

  • nathan willard

       I don’t think that statement is entirely true, some policies may have been contributing factors in driving up cost but on the other hand cost would have risen as new technologies develop that corrected and cured thing prior technology could barely treat. Sure a broken leg can be set and healed for little to nothing in some countries, but it may never be the same either, we have refined treatments through new process and technology and because nothing but the latest breakthroughs are often considered acceptable in this country we find the prices never really go down but continue to go up as newer technologies replace the previous. On the flip side slowing down the advancement in medical science  for the sake of allowing cost to catch up is not likely. 
       On another point the administrative cost have risen drastically, for every one doctor treating there are multitudes of desk jockeys, nurses, and Insurance delegates all there to support the massive amounts of paperwork, data entry, verification, and etc… Some of the Federal Governments plans were to streamline the administrative process in order to cost these cost, but too many jobs and too many business reap profits in order to see this criteria eliminated.  
      In the end we will have to either accept the rising cost which is easy to point the finger at the government because it is so faceless (and is in fact supposedly all of us.). or accept a drastic change in policy, like single medical database, more control over the variety of technologies that make to applicable use, and finally a nation wide group policy a.k.a. pay-once national health care plan.

  • Frankensteinmoneymac

    You do realize that since about 1980, we’ve spent a higher percentage of our GDP on health care than any OECD country. In other words countries that pay healthcare for everyone spend LESS than we do…by a VERY LARGE margin…Go ahead, Google it. Socialized Healthcare would HELP SAVE MONEY. Isn’t that the point?!?! Well I mean unless you really want America to be a place where workers are always sick, and where people die regularly because they can’t afford healthcare. 

  • Wanooski

    Why do you even earn money? How do you earn that money? Why do you need to earn money? Ask some outside of the box questions.

  • FxChiP

    It’s an idiot philosophy because of its sheer myopia — it focuses primarily on you and ignores entirely the millions of others in the United States who are not as fortunate as you are. It ignores those who are unemployed because their local businesses received freedoms and tax cuts to open jobs in other countries so they could spend less and make more of a profit; it ignores those whose jobs have been replaced by technology, and who, due to the high monetary requirements of education and the low chance they have of getting that kind of capital or credit, find it very difficult to go anywhere else. It ignores those whose job does not provide health care and, in fact, pays minimum wage — and would pay *less* if it could — with barely enough hours to provide food and basic shelter and utilities, much less health care itself.

    Simply put, it’s an idiot philosophy because it focuses on you and doesn’t compensate for the fact that other people are getting screwed because of others who are holding this same philosophy Right Now. In human nature, selfishness is far more prevalent than selflessness, and that is the problem — especially as presented here.

    Oh, and it’s an idiot philosophy because you *are* keeping the money you earn — you’re just not keeping as *much* money as you would *like* to. And it’s a deliberate misrepresentation of what’s really at hand to try to evoke sympathy from reasonable people.

  • nathan willard

    Democracy is often followed by tyranny, and so we see the face of the tyrant. We will cheer him and embrace him and then be betrayed by him. Corporations are the next generation feudal lords, and are we to embrace them we will be nothing more then serfs on their properties and engineered towns, eventually corporations will cease to cater to our needs and we will be forced to cater to theirs as no other choice will then be provided, the squandering of wealth and resources from the higher echelon’s greed and power will then cause further social decay until people begin to revolt and reorganize leading back to a new age of enlightenment. 

  • Wanooski

    You know nothing of these concepts idiot, your philosophy advocates absolute property rights, meaning a return to feudalism, Wherein property owners are absolute rulers, anyone unable to afford property is subject of those that do. Because of the ever present monopolization that will always be a feature of capitalism, it is only logical that over time, property will be owned by fewer and fewer individuals and corporations, those unable to own property becoming essentially slaves of those entities. 
    You don’t know freedom and you never will, right libertarianism is the philosophy of petulant children that don’t want to share, don’t want to be part of any kind of larger community and want to privately enrich themselves from land that is in the common heritage of all lifeforms on this planet. The views on ecology and environment are particularly pathetic.
    This discussion has far bigger implications than just over healthcare.

  • Klizto

    americans should start to become more paranoid about the “government” or the people behind it. go vote for your peace price winner president, or the other morons, they all look like bill o’reilly to me.

    greetings from Chile, one of the many countries in south america that your “government” had help bringing death , destruction and off course happy meals.

    we had our 9/11 before you, in September eleven of 1973 a military coup supported by CIA trow down a democratic elected president/government just because the ideology of the people living in Chile those years, tanks for helping transform our beautiful land in to a clandestine cemetery, thanks for the 3.000 unnamed tombs that cross our geography. all that thanks to your external policies and interventions   
     
    Chile, Nicaragua, Panama, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, the list goes on…..  

    http://www.ronpaulwarroom.com/?p=11227

  • nathan willard

      It truly is scary the direction we seem to head toward, wealth seem to be the biggest factor to the creation of policies, corporations continue to gain more wealth, and policies tend to cater to corporations leading to the acquisition of more corporate wealth. All the while policies that limit individual rights dwindle, and a corporation has been giving the rights of a person-plus.
      I like the idea of democratic co-ops as decisions are voted, and CEOs are elected, what good is democracy if you spend 1/3rd of your life in a monarchy, and your political system is controlled by those same monarchs.

  • Anonymous

    So once again, how do you think the government should run healthcare then?
    Because so far it hasn’t been too great, and we’re close to broke.

  • Anonymous

    So once again, how do you think the government should run healthcare then?
    Because so far it hasn’t been too great, and we’re close to broke.

  • Anonymous

    So once again, how do you think the government should run healthcare then?
    Because so far it hasn’t been too great, and we’re close to broke.

  • Anonymous

    I do want to help others.
    I just don’t need the government telling me the best way to do so.

    Big government leads to more corporatism, not less. There is far too much special interest in our politics today; elections and decisions made by the money of large corporations and lobbyist. Regulations that hinder industries while providing unfair opportunities to other corporatons. Just because I do not agree with the welfare/warfare state does not mean I am anti-govt. Government has a role, as outlined in the constitution.

    And Wanooski, stop calling me an idiot because of differing opinions.

  • RogueREex

    I can tell by the cheers of the audience to more or less let the man die that we can look forward to much philanthropy and charity moving forward.

  • Word Eater

    Unlike you, maybe she thought it would be nice to help a fellow human being out.  Perhaps she went in to debt by helping her son pay his medical bills.  Maybe she ran up credit cards or put took out a second mortgage or just kept borrowing money that she couldn’t afford to pay back because HER KID WAS DYING and there was nobody else offering to lend a hand.

  • Wanooski

    Prove that assertion about less corporatism. You can’t. All they push for is further and further deregulation, precisely because it allows them to accrue more power and influence. There is no evidence that it will cause them to lose power and influence. 

  • ChrisCanada

    LOL another socialist moron.   The USA was the brightest, most prosperous country in the world, before government was taken over by the Jewish establishment…. Once the Federal Reserve moved in, you lost control of your own currency, and allowed international lobbyists to BUY OUT the federal government and dictate all policy.  All these socialist programs like medicare and social security was merely a way for your government to continue to stealthy raise taxes in other areas beisdes ”income tax” (take more and more of YOUR money)  to support your “entitlement” programs.  These programs have been raided for the benefit of the Military Industrial Complex, who like the government keeps growing and sucking up more of your annual revenue base.    Now not only do you have more taxes and less income and less freedom than any time in history, before Christmas your governemnt will make CUTS to your entitlement. So all that money being deducted from each paychek and your “house of cards” 401k is NOT gonna be there for you.  and it’s because of the SOCIALIST system that enriches bankers, and government lackys at the expense of the people.  Enjoy your socialism aka slavery to the government, hoping they take care of you!  They won’t. You are currently witnessing the largest drop in the standard of living in the history of the world, in the USA!  why? because peons like you were too lazy to work for them selves and too stupid to see that giving all your money to the governemnt and hoping they will “manage” your life for you will not turn out how you “hoped”.  And now that “free trade” “socialist” policies have shipped the bulk of your manufacturing industry over seas (the real backbone of the USA economy)  You will NEVER  be the nation you once were.  The more faith you put in your government and it’s “programs” the lower you standard of living and a complete absence of freedom awaits you.  enjoy.

  • Rex Vestri

    emc_0, if you want people to stop calling you an idiot, perhaps you should stop stating things that make you sound like an idiot, idiot.

  • Jbar

    I listen to them regularly. The most used phrase is “MY MONEY!” Fuck everyone else, I would rather an entire town starve than pay 1% more in taxes. Usually you learn compassion when you mature, but there are large swathes of “humanity” that seem immune to this concept.

  • Anonymous

    words of wisdom, thank you for your contribution.

  • Dueyv9

    I have no job, and no health insurance. I take care of myself so I don’t have to pay any money I would make away to invisible money-suck machines. I haven’t been to the dentist since I was six and I have all my teeth(cause I take care of them). Haven’t been to the hospital since I was 16 to have a physical to play football.(Because I don’t get into fights, be retarded, join the military.) So I guess you can see why I also agree with Ron Paul. It’s not as black and white as the article suggests.

    The country that is America now is definitely more helpless than the 19th century version.(People these days call 911 because their fridge breaks.) Maybe that’s why some people might want to go back to those days of grinding it out…but “hey!” we still have 21st century technology. It’s not like we have to travel across the country with oxen, or sleep outside. Even homeless people have it made now compared to back then.

    It’s the way the govt turns everyone into a leech for the simplest of things. People don’t want to do anything with their lives anymore. People don’t mind losing their job if they know the govt is gonna set them up for at least a year. They spend huge amounts of energy trampling people to get into Walmart rather than engaging in some activism 101. And these same people think socialism is a bad thing.

  • Jbar

    He didn’t seem to have a problem with the cheering crowds advocating what he weakly defended against. You don’t leave healthcare up to the hopes that charitable organizations might fill the need. You ensure that EVERYONE has healthcare, regardless of the cost. If the top 20% of income earners and wealth holders have to give a little more, tough shit. If I’m ever in that category, I’ll give my share without complaint.

  • Rex Vestri

    You’re welcome, idiot

  • Jbar

    You are a racist cocksucker, just shut the fuck up already.

  • chriscanada

    congratulations.  you are a perfect Serf!  The propaganda and brainwashing techniques have worked perfectly on you. ”government knows whats best for you!” One who doesn’t question somebody else’s unchallenged authority of them, is nothing but a sheep.  And that’s exactly what the government wants. Perfect little worker sheep, beholden to the state.  Hell, why don’t you just donate your entire paycheck to the government, let them tell you what to eat, install some security cameras around your house to make sure you stay in line. bahhhhhh!   A man once said “Those who do not think for them selves are no different than animals, and like animals, will be led to the slaughter.”  Enjoy your fema camp when your government comes to round you up :)

  • Jbar

    You like that, emc_0? Especially the Jewish establishment part, I’d imagine…

  • Jbar

    You like that, emc_0? Especially the Jewish establishment part, I’d imagine…

  • chriscanada

    I am definitely not Anti-Jew.  The “Jewish Establishment” represents that ZIONIST Israeli government and their cronies in Washington.  This represents a TINY % of the Jewish population as a whole.  Hell there was 500,000 Jews in Israeli protesting their own government, just a week ago!  Furthermore every person with half a brain (or went to high school) knows that SOCIALISM is a pretty trick used by the ULTRA rich to “trick” the stupid peasants into handing ALL their money over to the governement for “wealth distribution”  EVERY time socialsim takes over a country, the rich get REALLY rich, the poor get dead, and the middle class becomes the new poor.  but nice try Jbar.  LOL but don’t take my word for it.  Look at the steady decline of America that only accelerates the more “socialist” it becomes!

  • Anonymous

    Now that it’s out of your system, do you have anything worth while to say? About the topic at hand. Or are you just here to troll?

    Sweetypie :)

  • chriscanada

    People aren’t afraid of the concepts of liberty and personal freedom.  They are brainwashed, lazy, flouride-drinking zombies.  They would rather be told what to do and think, rather than have to think for them selves.  Choice is a burden that these subhumans are unwilling to bear.  That’s why they watch CNN for their “news”. and gladly slurp up the spoon fed rhetoric of the Washington satus quo.  The REAL Americans fought tooth and nail for their freedom, sacrificed everything for their liberty, only to let these uneducated unwashed masses not just allow it all to slip away, but SCREAM for it to be taken away!  Because they prefer to sit their fat ass on the couch and do what their TV tells them.  America’s founding fathers are all turning over in their graves at the pathetic inhabitants of this once proud nation.

  • chriscanada

    People aren’t afraid of the concepts of liberty and personal freedom.  They are brainwashed, lazy, flouride-drinking zombies.  They would rather be told what to do and think, rather than have to think for them selves.  Choice is a burden that these subhumans are unwilling to bear.  That’s why they watch CNN for their “news”. and gladly slurp up the spoon fed rhetoric of the Washington satus quo.  The REAL Americans fought tooth and nail for their freedom, sacrificed everything for their liberty, only to let these uneducated unwashed masses not just allow it all to slip away, but SCREAM for it to be taken away!  Because they prefer to sit their fat ass on the couch and do what their TV tells them.  America’s founding fathers are all turning over in their graves at the pathetic inhabitants of this once proud nation.

  • chriscanada

    “enabling a greater control of your life by corporations and private interests”  That is the definition of socialism and the reality of the current status of the USA!  The corporations control the government through lobbyists, who then controls you.  You’re obviously not VERYCLEVER.   Your founding fathers HATED the idea of government, because they knew that once created it would grow and grow and grow, destroying freedom, and taking wealth from the people as it did.  This is why the founding fathers drafted a CONSTITUTION to expressly LIMIT the power of government.  Something you all have forgotten with your “two party system deomcracy”  And that’s why you have a greater wealth gap between the rich and poor than countries like NIGERIA! because the rich and powerful rely on the apathy of the lazy and stupid to destroy a nation from the inside out for their own personal benefit.

  • Anonymous

    Yeah, good one.
     
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/whsimages/1603655856/in/set-72157602476458793
     
    Do us a favor then, would ya?  Count the # of dead babies in these photos.  Not the brown immigrant babies no one in the Tea Party even pretends to give a sh*t about, but the # of dead white American babies.  The babies stacked like cord wood in drafty shed-like homes of actual productive Heartland American farmers and workers, not the babies of Wall Street speculating banker leeches like the ones libertarian “economic theory” glorifies.  No, not them–because you won’t find any dead millionaire babies in that lot.
     
    And while you’re cogitating there, ask yourself:  “Why did the Milwaukee Archdioscese, and dozens of other arms of the church go bankrupt in the last decade?”
     
    A:  Sex abuse settlements.  Eons of providing institutional cover to predatory clergy who betrayed their sacred vows to beat and rape their young charges finally caught up with them.  This is the alternative model you endorse?
     
    Sick.  God I hope Ron Paul isn’t really as big a twisted and amoral freak as you seem to claim he is.

  • chriscanada

    LOL that’s only assuming that the federal government abides by the constitution.   And in a Socialsit country in a never ending “war on terror” where citizens have absolutely no rights, saying things like the “10th amendment” or “states rights”  won’t get you anywhere except maybe in indefinite detention in Guantonamo for being a domestic terrorist!

  • http://hormeticminds.blogspot.com/ Chaorder Gradient

    I wish people would look at what exactly qualifies for socialized “medicine”. Cosmetic surgery counts…. psychotropic doping counts…

    I will be the first to admit that I don’t know what the hell the answer is to HOW it gets paid, but I’m more interested in the WHAT gets paid for, WHY it costs so much, WHO benefits from this huge expenditure and whether there are any alternative approaches (cheaper or more effective or both).

  • http://www.youtube.com/user/ZYCERIN Zycerin

    I’m not sure I understand why this is a dark stain on Dr.Paul? After all the free market system is heavily corrupt and Paul has repeatedly stated that the corruption of the system has to be dealt with so we can enjoy the prospects of a real free market. (i.e. remove the lobbyist and “special interest groups”, from influencing and writing our bills) Was he suppossed to have provided Kent Snyder insurance??? Before the current health care bill went into effect, you couldn’t get insurance with a pre existing condition. We are so lucky for that one good thing in that shitty Republican bill….

    I personally believe that a socialized Gov. option was and will always be the best choice for our country, but not without the option to purchase your own insurance. The Republicans really….well, they amazed me at their total lack of respect and care for the normal people of this country when they went all “Sieg Heil”, about the Government option proposal. Especially RIGHT NOW in the complete fucked up position MOST of our country is in due to one of their own and his dire need to police the oil from the middle east. I know that it didn’t suprise many people, I suppose I should state it as, I am suprised that the country and our president didn’t put up a real fight for the open health care plan. Most of us supported it, and Obama tucked his tail and ran…what a disappointment. 

    As for Dr. Paul, remember he IS a doctor, making points of a failed government when it come to medicare and medicaid, he’s absolutely RIGHT! Now does this mean those programs should go away? I don’t think so, but as it stands currently most doctors are turning away patients in those programs b/c of such a lousy reimbursement. And I should stress LOUSY! In fact most of the current Government programs are in a bad position, both parties have scammed us into supporting legitimate programs for the people and then they have turned them into a money making scheme for bad things and people we the people don’t actually want to support. Case in point: Why is the SS program broke?

    I will say this, in a current debate Paul said,(regarding FEMA), that if we brought our troops home from all over the world then we could use that money to fix the Government programs that the people wanted to keep, like FEMA. That seems to me like he’s most likely very flexible option there is. The back bone to all that he rambles on about is the people making a choice and not the Gov. That can’t be bad. After all we are supposed to have alot more say in the way our country works, and Paul has so much support simply b/c he wants to give power back to the people and states. He’s just a terrible debater!

    Point still stands; both parties have failed our country and everyone should realize that by now…

  • Anonymous

    Aaaaaaannd we all pay higher prices at the hospital to cover for those who cannot pay. So the rational choice is to have everyone chip in and guarantee the right of every human being to both preventive and emergency care. In this way we are both more humane and we save money….because whether you like it or not you are still subsidizing the EMERGENCY care of the poor just not the less expensive preventive care.

  • Anonymous

    just a complete waste of a post.

  • Jbar

    I am 100% Jewish and proud as fuck to be Zionist, as well. And those protesting the Israeli government are crying for a group of people that would cut their throats in a heartbeat.

  • Jbar

    I am 100% Jewish and proud as fuck to be Zionist, as well. And those protesting the Israeli government are crying for a group of people that would cut their throats in a heartbeat.

  • Jbar

    I am 100% Jewish and proud as fuck to be Zionist, as well. And those protesting the Israeli government are crying for a group of people that would cut their throats in a heartbeat.

  • Jbar

    I am 100% Jewish and proud as fuck to be Zionist, as well. And those protesting the Israeli government are crying for a group of people that would cut their throats in a heartbeat.

  • Jbar

    I am 100% Jewish and proud as fuck to be Zionist, as well. And those protesting the Israeli government are crying for a group of people that would cut their throats in a heartbeat.

  • Jbar

    I am 100% Jewish and proud as fuck to be Zionist, as well. And those protesting the Israeli government are crying for a group of people that would cut their throats in a heartbeat.

  • http://hormeticminds.blogspot.com/ Chaorder Gradient

    Just quiet down and wait for the crash… The controls are already broken, nothings stopping us now. One thing we can all agree on, is that after the the explosions, we’re not going to be arguing about the fine details of how the engine works anymore. There’s no getting off this machine…

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENpb9jNpq48

  • Locke

    end the warZ?

  • Locke

    end the warZ?

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=32808318 April Broccoli

    Fuck this, fuck that, fuck YOU DISINFO! Off my homepage, bitch.

    This isn’t news or anything other than perpetuating power play.

  • chriscanada

    Ahhh a Zionist…. So you’re one that takes his teachings from the Talmud…. so you also believe that Jews are the “chosen ones” and that the “goyim” are nothing but cattle?  It’s people like you that will be the reason Israel is wiped off the map.  A small percentage of useless Zionists, give the Jewish people a bad name.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=32808318 April Broccoli

    Thank you thank you friend~!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=32808318 April Broccoli

    So what’s your solution, big-shot?

  • chriscanada

    You can say that again!  Look for the Establishment to try and divide the people on as many issues as possible….. divided people fighting amongst them selves are unable to see the real problem in front of them (their hijacked monetary system, and government!)  Unfortunately most people won’t get off their couch until Fema is knocking on their door to “relocate” their family to Camp Fema.

  • SinglePayer

    Single-payer, just like Obummer promised during his campaign, before he proceeded to wipe it off the table without so much as a backwards glance. Aren’t thy doing single-payer in Vermont now? If it successful, hopefully other states will follow in their footsteps and implement similar steps.  

  • http://www.genomicon.com Nick Taylor

    What? Freedom is “about” dying really young of a curable disease? and leaving your mum with debt that she will be enslaved to for the rest of her life?

    I don’t know if that’s what you meant – but some of the comments here seem to think so.

    Something that is very clear from the outside – America is stupiding itself to death. America will not survive the stupidity of conservatism.

    I come from NZ and the UK. I have never had to worry about medical bills (or insurance) in my life. It is worth every penny of my taxes (which aren’t that different from yours) that when my neighbour gets sick, he doesn’t lose his house.

    What is it with you people, that you are pathologically incapable of seeing what works in other countries and then doing that? How did you get to be so brainwashed, that ideology trumps evidence?

    Utterly unbelievable.

  • Anonymous

    lol quite a joke when rex is a well-known poster, and you’re the true troll…

  • Anonymous

    wow, what a great contribution to the discussion…..lol

  • Big Gummamit

    What does this anti-libertarian hysteria remind me of?

    -All the people who screamed that Obama would transform the US into a Communist Wellfare Wunderland.  It fell a little short of the hype…

    -All the people who screamed that Bush would turn the US into a mixture of Nazi Germany and the Old Testament.  That fell a little short of the hype.

    If anything, Ron Paul will merely TAP THE BRAKES on government expansion.  You can forget fantasies of the US becoming the old wild west with John Wayne shooting twin revolvers.  The internet isn’t going away.

    But go ahead and vote Obama or Rick Perry and see where that gets you.

  • guest

    Why is desire to resist forced confiscation of wages earned “lack of compassion?”  Do you think every dollar donated to (insert cause here) comes from the left? 

  • guest

    Why is desire to resist forced confiscation of wages earned “lack of compassion?”  Do you think every dollar donated to (insert cause here) comes from the left? 

  • guest

    Why is desire to resist forced confiscation of wages earned “lack of compassion?”  Do you think every dollar donated to (insert cause here) comes from the left? 

  • guest

    So if it wasn’t her kid, she’d have done the same, “help a fellow human,”right?

  • Anonymous

    the history of the US involvement in Latin America is nothing less than despicable

  • Anonymous

    the history of the US involvement in Latin America is nothing less than despicable

  • Anonymous

    America is no socialist country…..not by a long shot. Corporatist yes socialist no

  • Anonymous

    America is no socialist country…..not by a long shot. Corporatist yes socialist no

  • Anonymous

    I find the image of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps both humorous and impossibly ridiculous

  • Anonymous

    I find the image of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps both humorous and impossibly ridiculous

  • Anon

    While greater control by corporations and private interests may be the current status of the USA, it is the opposite of socialism. 

    The suggestion that the Constitution was drafted because the founders hated the idea of government is a patent absurdity – they were distrustful of the concentration of power which government had tended to produce, but recognised its necessity to hold at bay the private interests which, in absence of a body charged with defining and defending public values, would produce just the kind of feudalism you fear (under the mistaken guise of socialism).

    Where the present problems emerge is through the capture of government by those private interests.  When government uses its power not to advance the interests of the public, but to advance those of their corporate funders, then yeah, the result is horrifically unedifying, but it’s a long way from socialism as understood by anyone who has taken the trouble to earn an understanding of what that word actually means.

    The irony is that there are socialistic elements at the top end of the food-chain – the GFC demonstrated that persuasively.  When ‘too big to fail’ institutions are able to make their profits private and their losses public, we all end up subsidising their gambling, and they have no incentive to reign in the risk.  Similarly, the last 30 years of frenzied privatisation of public assets and deregulation (inspired by an abreation against ‘socialism’ as ill-informed and hysterical as your own) has led to none of the increases in efficiency which economists assured us was the reason to proceed, and have evolved a new class of ultra-wealthy private contractors earning salaries orders of magnitude larger than they would if working for the government to do the same work, and still paid for by taxpayers through contracts which amount to a spectacular welfare-scam for those smart and/or cynical enough to take advantage.

    And again, a particular irony of this historical course is that those 30 years during which faith in ‘command and control’ oversight of massively complex systems has been eroded have seen the birth of the information age and the development of information systems which have made such approaches feasible.

  • O. Spengler

    ” ‘enabling a greater control of your life by corporations and private interests’ That is the definition of socialism and the reality of the current status of the USA!”

    Erm… no. Socialism is defined as the situation when workers control the means of production. I don’t see that happening in the USA. A lot of people these days can’t tell the difference between bureaucracy and socialism. Socialism tends to result in a bureaucracy, but not every bureaucracy is therefore automatically socialism.

  • Anonymous

    The average American has no sense of history, no sense of their place in the world, and will readily admonish others for not being up to date on football….go figure

  • Furshlugginer

    FEMA camps! What a fucking dope!

  • Anon

    or, more succinctly, there is a reliable trend towards a preference for “freedom from responsibility” over “freedom with responsibility” which is predictably exploited by those who would control

  • TheClash

    “As every cell in Chile will tell

    The cries of the tortured men

    Remember Allende, and the days before,

    Before the army came

    Please remember Victor Jara,

    In the Santiago Stadium,

    Es verdad – those Washington Bullets again”

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5BBBFESEig

  • Hestiagirl

    “no one was left out on the streets to die or anything like that before medicare was around” ????? 
    …. are you serious??? 

  • Mr. Watson

    There is no such thing as a free lunch.
    But we as moral agents decide to charge who what and to buy from whom what we wish.
    I can’t be convinced that a government mandate is not fundamentally based on the coercion of violence because it cannot be argued otherwise.  As long as we support violence to get what we wish is good, we support authoritarianism.  No system should be principally based on murder and kidnapping.  All else, even if it is claimed to be for the good of others, is bad philosophy and utter hypocrisy.

  • Anonymous

    I simply equate Libertarians with the “LiberTINE”…

    Like mmmaybe OK in one diseased “Noble” in an already F*cked up society if you haven’t the misfortune to be related to him or one of his victims.  But a society based on these stupid F*cking not even half thought out “Ideals”.

    Well, it’s literally a “Lassie Fare” Capitalist’s wet dream, one that includes them being one of the “Rich Elite” already.

    And that’s all it is.  Joe Trailer park supporting the plant moving overseas, Josh Middle-Manager helping the boss kick down the union even if he’ll NEVER let him “elevate” to true boss status.  They think the “Rich Elite” should be diefied because mmmabye they’ll be rich someday themselves.

    Back, twice, when America nearly disintegrated into class warfare we had these types all over too.  The public propaganda put out all sorts of media stories of the “Smithers” (from the Simpsons) kiss up/kick down to the top and that somehow proved deadly factories full of children working 16 hour days was the best of all possible worlds.  And during both floods of sporadic class warfare the rich elite hid and the “Smithers” types got killed or just mutilated to show the others they’d better choose sides OK.  The police were good at “Arresting” and later murdering union bosses or protecting/avenging the elites but I doubt one policeman worked an extra SECOND to get one of the people who got rid of the “Smithers” so pathetic a toady.

  • Anon

    I’m encountering that devastatingly insightful and relevant Steinbeck quote more and more frequently in the context of such discussions, so I may as well contribute to the spread of worthy memes in support of your fine post:

    “Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves
    not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed
    millionaires.” 

  • Facepalm

    The guy died of AIDS you idiots.  When you die of that, they don’t write that as the cause of death (you die from your immune system failing to repress bacteria) and people generally don’t go around talking about how so and so died  He was openly gay and spending his last money and time on earth toward promoting Ron Paul because he knew that it would be the right thing to do for the country.  Instead his family gets to get dragged through the pain again by the media and have to witness slander against the one person that their family member dedicated every ounce of himself to.  

  • Mr Willow

    Holy god, man. 

    When I saw this article earlier in the day, I thought: Wow. Ron Paul. The only thing he has going for him really are his stances on foreign policy. His opinions regarding marijuana are also good. But those things alone—while good—won’t make me vote for him. All his other stances are pretty sickening.

    Then, I come back a few hours later to see the comments filled with a bunch of moronic drivel. And the real quandary I face is deciding between emc’s “People need to look out for themselves, and if they are dying from a sickness or an accident I’m not going to be bothered with helping them because it’s my money damn it, and nobody can tell me what to do with it no matter what!” theme and you’re general (and quite tired) “Government can’t do anything right!” diatribe as being the more idiotic. 

    And then I see this post, which somehow seeks to turn socialism into some sort of ploy of the über-wealthy to funnel even more money their way, implementing the government in some way that makes it the tool of corporations to steal money from the poor, and somehow making it some Zionist plot. (or something like that—to tell you the truth it was all quite confusing.) 

    To be perfectly honest, I really don’t feel like responding to each of these posts individually, so I shall try to address most of both of your points (you and emc) into this post. 

    First of all, Socialism is an economic system in which workers control the means of production, and therefore the wealth created by that production—not CEOs, not Wall Street, not an individual or small group of individuals who are not directly and actively involved in the manufacture and design of any product (think board of directors). Other definitions include public ownership or state ownership of production (and therefore wealth). 

    Secondly, and this is just a general point to you, emc, and everyone who says “Taxes are just a roundabout way of the Government stealing our money!”, taxes means you are buying it. That is, by paying the government to fund things like schools, roads, bridges, museums, institutes, potential healthcare, etc. affords you partial ownership of said thing, service, or program. That’s the funny thing about public programs, is that in an interesting way it makes you responsible for them. I think the reason anyöne is really ever against public programs—aside from ignorance—is that they do not actually want responsibility, because if someöne dies of a easily treatable disease, they would peripherally be responsible for their death. If a program does not function the way it should, it is your fault. 

    It is your fault indirectly, of course, because of how our government is constructed: a Republic. A Republic is, quite simply, a representative democracy. That is, we elect individuals to represent our wishes, our image abroad (especially in respect to the president), and allocate the funds collected from taxation to programs that seek to benefit society equally, hopefully to the betterment of society, and by extension mankind. It is a deeply flawed system, but direct democracy was inconceivable in the late 1700’s in a new nation that had little infrastructure built that would afford the majority of the citizens a voice in such a thing. It is also the reason for the establishment of the Electoral College—many in rural areas were unable to vote because of their location and a lack of public transport (there, public again. ain’t that something). In an age where one’s opinion may be transmitted anywhere in the world instantaneously, this is no longer a problem. 

    Thirdly, the Constitution afforded absolute power to the People. Also, the majority of the time the Constitution is invoked in any sort of contemporary political discussion, it is by people who view it as some manner of holy writ, and treat every word as if were divinely inspired, and yet always pish-posh the clause about providing for the general welfare, and forget (or are entirely unaware) that many of the founding fathers had socialist proclivities, and almost none of them supported capitalism, especially how it is practised today. This is how you get Jefferson referring to corporations as the ‘Monied Aristocracy’ and this little gem out of Thomas Paine’s Agrarian Justice:

    Having thus in a few words, opened the merits of the case, I shall now proceed to the plan I have to propose, which is, to create a national fund, out of which there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling, as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property: and also, the sum of ten pounds per annum, during life, to every person now living, of the age of fifty years, and to all others as they shall arrive at that age.  

    I have no idea, adjusting for inflation, what fifteen pounds sterling would amount to today (somebody help me out), but he goes on to proclaim—quite rightly—that the earth was the common property of all. If that isn’t socialism and redistribution of wealth, I don’t know what is. 

  • Mr Willow

    Holy god, man. 

    When I saw this article earlier in the day, I thought: Wow. Ron Paul. The only thing he has going for him really are his stances on foreign policy. His opinions regarding marijuana are also good. But those things alone—while good—won’t make me vote for him. All his other stances are pretty sickening.

    Then, I come back a few hours later to see the comments filled with a bunch of moronic drivel. And the real quandary I face is deciding between emc’s “People need to look out for themselves, and if they are dying from a sickness or an accident I’m not going to be bothered with helping them because it’s my money damn it, and nobody can tell me what to do with it no matter what!” theme and you’re general (and quite tired) “Government can’t do anything right!” diatribe as being the more idiotic. 

    And then I see this post, which somehow seeks to turn socialism into some sort of ploy of the über-wealthy to funnel even more money their way, implementing the government in some way that makes it the tool of corporations to steal money from the poor, and somehow making it some Zionist plot. (or something like that—to tell you the truth it was all quite confusing.) 

    To be perfectly honest, I really don’t feel like responding to each of these posts individually, so I shall try to address most of both of your points (you and emc) into this post. 

    First of all, Socialism is an economic system in which workers control the means of production, and therefore the wealth created by that production—not CEOs, not Wall Street, not an individual or small group of individuals who are not directly and actively involved in the manufacture and design of any product (think board of directors). Other definitions include public ownership or state ownership of production (and therefore wealth). 

    Secondly, and this is just a general point to you, emc, and everyone who says “Taxes are just a roundabout way of the Government stealing our money!”, taxes means you are buying it. That is, by paying the government to fund things like schools, roads, bridges, museums, institutes, potential healthcare, etc. affords you partial ownership of said thing, service, or program. That’s the funny thing about public programs, is that in an interesting way it makes you responsible for them. I think the reason anyöne is really ever against public programs—aside from ignorance—is that they do not actually want responsibility, because if someöne dies of a easily treatable disease, they would peripherally be responsible for their death. If a program does not function the way it should, it is your fault. 

    It is your fault indirectly, of course, because of how our government is constructed: a Republic. A Republic is, quite simply, a representative democracy. That is, we elect individuals to represent our wishes, our image abroad (especially in respect to the president), and allocate the funds collected from taxation to programs that seek to benefit society equally, hopefully to the betterment of society, and by extension mankind. It is a deeply flawed system, but direct democracy was inconceivable in the late 1700’s in a new nation that had little infrastructure built that would afford the majority of the citizens a voice in such a thing. It is also the reason for the establishment of the Electoral College—many in rural areas were unable to vote because of their location and a lack of public transport (there, public again. ain’t that something). In an age where one’s opinion may be transmitted anywhere in the world instantaneously, this is no longer a problem. 

    Thirdly, the Constitution afforded absolute power to the People. Also, the majority of the time the Constitution is invoked in any sort of contemporary political discussion, it is by people who view it as some manner of holy writ, and treat every word as if were divinely inspired, and yet always pish-posh the clause about providing for the general welfare, and forget (or are entirely unaware) that many of the founding fathers had socialist proclivities, and almost none of them supported capitalism, especially how it is practised today. This is how you get Jefferson referring to corporations as the ‘Monied Aristocracy’ and this little gem out of Thomas Paine’s Agrarian Justice:

    Having thus in a few words, opened the merits of the case, I shall now proceed to the plan I have to propose, which is, to create a national fund, out of which there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling, as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property: and also, the sum of ten pounds per annum, during life, to every person now living, of the age of fifty years, and to all others as they shall arrive at that age.  

    I have no idea, adjusting for inflation, what fifteen pounds sterling would amount to today (somebody help me out), but he goes on to proclaim—quite rightly—that the earth was the common property of all. If that isn’t socialism and redistribution of wealth, I don’t know what is. 

  • Anonymous

    excellent reply. hopefully the those out en masse today will take some time to LEARN something.

  • Anonymous

    excellent reply. hopefully the those out en masse today will take some time to LEARN something.

  • Anonymous

    social myths are so much more fun than history

  • Anonymous

    social myths are so much more fun than history

  • Jamie D.

     His campaign manager received treatment and was not allowed to die, they were just not able to save him. Ron Paul and his staff raised 50 thousand dollars to help pay down his bills. The hospital didn’t try to collect the other 350 thousand…. Ron Paul talks the talk, AND walked the walk. The REAL question, and lesson here, is WHY is the hospital charges over 400 thousand dollars for a few weeks worth of treatment, and some antibiotics. You can buy 2 nice houses for that price. Government involvement in healthcare drives up the costs.

  • Anon
  • DeepCough

    Here’s the skinny of a Libertarian society: if it is acceptable to allow a physically sick, uninsured and penniless individual to die,  then it is okay for EVERYONE to die for whatever reason: in other words, a Libertarian society means NO LAWS against suicide, no matter its administration or consequences. See, kids, that’s what real Libertarianism is all about.

  • BirchBlack

    Not a very good Jew if you’re zionist as it’s against the teachings for the Jews to take Israel rather than have it given to them via their messiah. Zionists are fascist pig scum. The Palestinians loved their Jewish brothers and sisters, and accepted them as fellow patriots, it was the ZIONISTS who came from Europe and elsewhere that they rejected because the ZIONISTS are the pigs who sought to invade Palestine and establish their own government/nation within it. You support a nation that bombs and kills women and children every single day..EVERY DAY. All in the name of your beliefs, children die in a bloodbath because Zionist swine invaded their land and took it over. You disgust me, and you are a disgrace and embarrassment to all Jews.

  • Mr Willow

    Ehh. Doubtful. 

    I mean, it takes five minutes to a couple hours of research to find these things out. In all honesty, I didn’t really become interested in politics until the 2008 election cycle, when everyöne on the right was chanting “Obama’s a socialist!” I mean, I had a peripheral, passing knowledge of things, what with 9/11 and the wars and whatnot it was kind of impossible to avoid. 

    This stuff isn’t difficult to grasp in most cases. I think it really speaks volumes for people’s commitment to ignorance and the constructed narrative.

  • Mr Willow

    Ehh. Doubtful. 

    I mean, it takes five minutes to a couple hours of research to find these things out. In all honesty, I didn’t really become interested in politics until the 2008 election cycle, when everyöne on the right was chanting “Obama’s a socialist!” I mean, I had a peripheral, passing knowledge of things, what with 9/11 and the wars and whatnot it was kind of impossible to avoid. 

    This stuff isn’t difficult to grasp in most cases. I think it really speaks volumes for people’s commitment to ignorance and the constructed narrative.

  • Big Gummamit

    Such an intelligent and meticulously crafted assessment of socialism… however, no one is addressing the biggest mystery of this news article; how did Kent Snyder’s mother get saddled with $400,000 of posthumous hospital debt?  Did she co-sign and guarantee repayment of Kent’s bills?

    Relatives are not liable for the debt of deceased relatives, unless I’m mistaken.  None of us know the actual details here, so it’s useless to speculate.  Certainly he was not refused some form of treatment (apparantly $400,000 worth of treatment).

    While you’re on the subject of the founding fathers, please don’t forget NON-INTERVENTION in foreign engagements (See: Libya, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc), the power of CONGRESS to coin money (See: Tim Geithner, the pirvate Federal Reserve’s goon and Obama’s Secretary of Treasury), the power to IMPEACH for TREASON (See: Operation Fast and Furious, or the sale of 2,500 firearms directly to Mexican drug cartels),the 4TH AMMENDMENT (See: Obama’s extension of the Patriot Act).

    Show me a socialist candidate for president that upholds the principles laid out by the founding fathers… and until you can do that, don’t be suprised Ron Paul gets the support that he does, even with admittedly difficult positions to justify on issues like healthcare for our less privileged fellow citizens.  I can assure you that Pakistani civilians with relatives killed by drone-deployed smart-bombs don’t lose any sleep over how much medical debt Kent Snyder’s mother owes in the twilight years of her life, no disrespect intended.

  • Big Gummamit

    Such an intelligent and meticulously crafted assessment of socialism… however, no one is addressing the biggest mystery of this news article; how did Kent Snyder’s mother get saddled with $400,000 of posthumous hospital debt?  Did she co-sign and guarantee repayment of Kent’s bills?

    Relatives are not liable for the debt of deceased relatives, unless I’m mistaken.  None of us know the actual details here, so it’s useless to speculate.  Certainly he was not refused some form of treatment (apparantly $400,000 worth of treatment).

    While you’re on the subject of the founding fathers, please don’t forget NON-INTERVENTION in foreign engagements (See: Libya, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc), the power of CONGRESS to coin money (See: Tim Geithner, the pirvate Federal Reserve’s goon and Obama’s Secretary of Treasury), the power to IMPEACH for TREASON (See: Operation Fast and Furious, or the sale of 2,500 firearms directly to Mexican drug cartels),the 4TH AMMENDMENT (See: Obama’s extension of the Patriot Act).

    Show me a socialist candidate for president that upholds the principles laid out by the founding fathers… and until you can do that, don’t be suprised Ron Paul gets the support that he does, even with admittedly difficult positions to justify on issues like healthcare for our less privileged fellow citizens.  I can assure you that Pakistani civilians with relatives killed by drone-deployed smart-bombs don’t lose any sleep over how much medical debt Kent Snyder’s mother owes in the twilight years of her life, no disrespect intended.

  • DeepCough

    You know what, in truth, what appears to be irony is anything but: what you see here reported in this article, ladies and gents, is Libertarianism through and through. Take it with salt, alcohol, or arsenic if you must to swallow it, but a true Libertarian society does not necessarily care if you die, because, nonsensical as this sounds, laws against death just aren’t Libertarian.

  • http://voxmagi-necessarywords.blogspot.com/ VoxMagi

    Let me give you an analogy. Imagine a hundred people swimming alone in the shark infested waters…and watching people get devoured by sharks one after another. Finally they gather driftwood and rope and built a boat. It’s a shitty boat…but its better than swimming and being devoured so easily one by one. They’re all still at risk…but they’ve lowered the risk a little for all of them. Now they have to bail constantly to keep the shitty boat going. Half the people…the lazy gutless worthless half…quickly forget all about the shark issue…and worry about the bailing issue. They complain about being expected to bail…but since the other half of the people won’t go back in the water with the sharks voluntarily and want to slowly keep working toward building a better boat…the losers start drilling more holes in the boat to put an end to the debate by sinking it altogether. If they can ruin the boat idea they can go back to swimming…and take everyone else with them…because it they think it beats all that pesky bailing.

    So here’s my suggestion: STFU and bail…or get the fuck out…but if you keep drilling holes in our boat…we’re gonna throw your lazy, whining worthless asses to the sharks.

  • http://voxmagi-necessarywords.blogspot.com/ VoxMagi

    I’m not really opposed to suicide…if rabid Paultards are committing it.

  • http://hormeticminds.blogspot.com/ Chaorder Gradient

    Serious question, can this reply just be set as a full Disinfo article?

  • Big Gummamit

    You’ll see three Mic Jagger Youtube music videos posted on the front page of disinfo (that’s not a joke), or more likely the mythical hell actually freezing over, before you’ll ever see JacobSloan or Majestic post a fully researched and fair article about a political figure, save for corporate-neutered democrats.  Some of the important details do find their way into the comments, for those who care to know the rest of the story…

  • Ben Alberts

    There is no need to die of AIDS. The condition isn’t curable yet but it can be managed indefinitely through the use of anti-retrovirals. There are plenty of people alive today that have had HIV (AIDS without the symptoms) for over twenty years.
    The drugs aren’t even that expensive anymore, costing under $1000 per year.    

  • dogbeardbirdbeer

    emc_0.
    please muster some respect and intelligence.
    I think most of us have a degree of respect for the doctor so it’s not really necessary for you to run into the room insulting everyone who will listen.

    http://usliberals.about.com/od/faithinpubliclife/a/Funds_Faith2.htm

  • Housemouse

    To dismiss single-payer health systems under the banner of personal freedoms is an oxymoron.  Where are your freedoms?  As an Australian, I pay about the same tax as an American, enjoy a cleaner environment (thanks to my nations obsession with cleanliness), and don’t have to worry about whether I am up to date with my medical insurance.  I can travel all over the country with the peace of mind that I will be cared for.  I can rest safe knowing that my aged parents, my children and grandchildren will be cared for. I fail to see any freedom in ensuring my medical insurance is paid.  Won’t your lifestyle/finances become an unbearable burden if you have to open your house to an ailing relative?  Its an inconvenience when you can’t take the children to the baby-sitter because the baby-sitter *still* hasn’t recovered from an illness.  Its not good for business when that bright young spark you just hired tells you that they have to reduce their work hours to care for a palliative parent.  And its an utterly ridiculous notion to believe that you or yours will never need *the system*.  Why do you think it will cost so much more?  It doesn’t anywhere else.

  • FxChiP

    “… the 4TH AMMENDMENT (sic) (See: Obama’s extension of the Patriot Act).”

    But no mention of Bush’s writing, delivering to Congress (and subsequent political pressuring for time, trying to bar as much real review and discussion of the bill as possible), and signing?

  • Dip Buyer

    Of course it’s bullshit. There are no missions in Africa helping the sick and poor, only government hospitals. Right. Try to look outside your life and see the bigger picture.

  • DITM

    Disinfo alert! 
    “Ron Paul more or less agreed.” He actually said the polar opposite – “no.”"Unable to afford it on his own due to a preexisting medical condition.” Snyder was offered cover by the campaign but argued against it, and received by far enough income to buy insurance.”His death left his mother with $400,000 in medical bills.” Actually, Ron Paul set up a charity which covered some of the bills, some of the rest was taken from Snyder’s savings, and the rest was cancelled by the hospital.

  • Tuna Ghost

    …and it’s because of the SOCIALIST system that enriches bankers, and government lackys at the expense of the people.

    You managed to get just about everything wrong, but this was the most glaring.  If the bankers and government lackeys are enriched by these SOCIALIST systems, then why in god’s name have they been trying to get rid of it for decades?  It’s as if you’re ignoring huge parts of reality in order to make your painfully foolish ideology valid or something…..

    ….Oh.  Right.

  • Tuna Ghost

    But those Jews are in charge though, eh?  Which justifies, oh, probably all kinds of actions taken against them.  Right?  

  • Tuna Ghost

    There are charities, churches, communities that have programs setup for the less fortunate.

    Why is GOVT the only option? Govt involvement has given us less options, and inflated the cost.

    Because the charities, churches and communities can’t do enough.  It’s something that needs to be tackled at a national level, and the Federal government is the only thing that can make that happen.  It’s simply not going to happen otherwise.

    Think of how heavily our income is taxed for these unconstitutional programs.. income that we could use to feed, clothe and shelter our own families.

    If the small fraction of income going to these programs is keeping you from feeding your family, then frankly you’ve got much bigger problems.  Simply put, people dying of easily preventable diseases < shelling out a small portion of my paycheck.   

  • Tuna Ghost

     You are currently witnessing the largest drop in the standard of living in the history of the world, in the USA!  why?

    Good question!  Let’s see: corporate profits have reached all-time highs, whereas wages have remained the same or been lowered.  Hmmmmmm damn its such a mystery

  • Tuna Ghost

    You didn’t earn that money in a vacuum, guy.  Not all of it is “yours”.  It’s time to grow up and see how things actually work, I’m afraid.  

  • Tuna Ghost

    Well, we could look at other first world nations, like Japan or the UK, and see how their systems are run.  Notice that ours is in the shitter, and we’re one of only countries that still doesn’t have universal health care?  Do you think that is a coincidence?  

    And don’t even try to argue that medicare, medicaid and whatnot are “breaking” the system.  Do some research on where the debt in the US comes from, for god’s sake.

  • Tuna Ghost

    …no one was left out on the streets to die or anything like that before medicare was around and the govt got so involved in our healthcare. 

    You’re serious, aren’t you?  That would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic.

    Yes.  People were abandoned to die in the past.  They are being abandoned to die presently.  The fact that you aren’t aware of this is, sadly, not surprising.  But you should be aware of the realities before you go supporting something that will only make the situation, and the US in general, worse.  It’s already completely unforgivable that the richest country in the world is allowing this happen, and you want to go back to a system that was so fucked up it had to be drastically altered?  How on earth is that rational?  It’s almost as if you’re purposely ignoring reality to make this ideology valid.  

  • Tuna Ghost

    The parts of reality that they are ignoring aren’t hidden or anything.  They are quite apparent, and one can get a pretty good picture with literally minutes of research online.  This kind of ignorance is, for the most part, on purpose.  

  • Tuna Ghost

    Pretty sure the average Palenstinian doesn’t have anything against me, but it’s cool how you use that to support a government keen on eradicating an ethnic group they find inconvenient.  

  • Jaq

    I often read libertarian-type arguments where they point out government was so much smaller in the past, took less GDP and everything was hunky dory. Leaving aside that life in 1880 for most average people was a bit miserable, the argument is not measuring like with like. The Victorians didn’t have an airforce or giant road system or a national radar grid or airports or schools that needed to teach computing or colleges that taught electronics or public information websites or nuclear weapons… nor did whole branches of modern society that require regulation even exist then (i.e cell phones, who owns the TV airwaves, online pill sellers, dudes making LSD in their bedroom etc..) So it isn’t surprising government is more complex nowadays. Sure the government spends too much but most of that goes on wars or bribes to multinationals who threaten to leave if they don’t get ‘incentives’.

    But instead of working out policies to address the iniquities of fundamentalist capitalism the libertarians seem fixated more on schools, welfare and healthcare – precisely those services the average person makes use of. Sure a few are against military expansionism but not nearly as many as you’d think (lots of libertarians work for military contractors). So as far as I see it they’re basically cheerleaders for the rich and wanting to demolish the services the masses have fought for over a century. Sure many of these services can be improved – but not by obliterating them. In the UK we had tons of our public services privatised in the 80s and onwards. It was guarenteed to make them cheaper… hahaha, didn’t happen. Aside from some initial reductions in cost for telecoms (because of tech developed in the 70s coming on stream) the costs of most of the privatised utilities has skyrocketed – electricity, gas, water, train & bus travel and so on. The private companies are supposed to ‘compete’ but what we get is the odd paltry price drop – heralded with much fanfare in the press -  accompanied by huge increases a few months later. In short we were utterly screwed. Even the core public services have got worse once they sell them off – ask anyone about our glorious bin system or the quality of school meals…

    Libbytopia will be this writ large but with no social protections and feudalism thrown in. Eeek.

  • Guest

    “-All the people who screamed that Bush would turn the US into a mixture
    of Nazi Germany and the Old Testament.  That fell a little short of the
    hype.”

    Apparently, you weren’t paying attention.

  • Jaq

    Re: Churches and charities.

    All very nice but the problem is these organisations on a large scale are very much a part of the ruling class and their role is often to make people far more dependent on them than any government. Furthermore particularly in the case of religion (of whatever type) they set far more onerous social demands on the individual than pretty much any government also. If a public health survey asks who you’ve been sleeping with lately people are in uproar. If church ministers TELL (not ask) people to behave in a certain way or else they’ll be damned to hell that is seen as an acceptable part of our culture. If public services are given the chop then this transfers a vast amount of power back to the churches and the rich folks who run the big charities. And they’ll abuse it as a whole chunk of the population will be dependent on them for food or help with healthcare. I pretty much doubt the Jerry Fallwells of this world will be queuing up to give STD cures to teenage goths or free food to penniless leftists.

    There’s been plenty of times in history when the Church had such power. A cursory reading of history will show you what happened. It may even be worse these days due to religion’s access to mass-media and high technology.

    People let’s have governments we control, not relegate power under the guise of ‘liberty’ to supra-national organisations with extreme agendas.

  • chriscanada

    That’s the POWER of socialism! It looks great of paper!  “we will provide you all these essential services, blah blah blah.” but when the government is given ALL that money to fund all these cozy special programs you lazy fat fucks love, they STEAL a whole lot of money and give it to their friends under the table, the bankers and owners of companies like General Electric.  A government bureaucracy is the most inefficient, corruptable institution to be in charge of everything.  Anything governemnt “runs” is run sloppy, slow, inefficient and  HELL of alot more expensive than private funded programs of the same nature.  Multiply this “government control” over a multitude of programs, your “public servants” become your public masters, and you have become private SERFS beholden to your government masters.  Socialism, SHREDS the constitiution, taking ALL the power from the people, putting it in the governments hands, and turning the USA in the the ultimate NANNY STATE of people who simply do not have the skills to survive and provide for their family without “government assistance”.   the more SOCIALIST the USA becomes, the larger the wealth gap between rich and poor.  You love your “bail outs” because it gives you the illsuion everything is ok, when all it is is massive transfer of wealth from your pockets, to the bankers.  (and people like me) .  your lazy, socialist embracing ideal is what has rot away America from the core, and which is why it is merely a shadow of it’s former self, lacking liberty replaced with welfare/warfare state!    Your country is OWNED by the military industrial complex, and has been DESIGNED to keep you in debt from the day you finish high school (post secondary education loan, car lease)  to the day you DIE, (think huge mortgage combined with devalued property, and RAISING the retirement age to 70.)  Not to mention, social security, medicare and medicaid will all be cut by Christmas!  So all you little socialists depending on big governemnt’s check will be in for an unpleasant surprise.  SOCIALISM…making everybody an equal slave to their government since it’s inception, applauded by the politicians who live to steal from you, and those to fat, too lazy, too stupid to know any better!  enjoy your decline into third world status.  Remember to thank your shift from a constitional republic to a socialist nanny state is the reason you lost your freedom, prosperity and of course your dignity.   SOCIALSIM, the ultimate tool for the TRANSFER OF WEALTH from 99% of the population to the top 1%. 

  • chriscanada

    LOL Bankers and government lackeys are trying to get rid of socialsm?!?!?!?  REALLY?  I would like to see ONE example of that!  Obama has been the ULTIMATE SOCIALIST FREAK. and he has not seen an ounce of competition.   Americans really are the dumbest people in the world.  WOW!  It’s no wonder your country is in the toilet.   I think you should do a little research and learn what the words SOCIALSIM and Constitutional Republic mean…. and you will come to see that they are basically opposites of each other.  either you’re REALLY dumb, or being paid to sell your fellow Americans down the river… either way, you’re a lost cause.

  • chriscanada

    Im sure the hundreds of thousands of Japanese American citizens who were rounded up and placed in Camps would disagree with you….

  • chriscanada

    The history of the USA involvement in a countless number of nations is nothing less than dispicable!

  • iPINCH

    above and beyond post.it even has bold 

  • chriscanada

    AGREED. most people don’t understand the difference.  just like 90% of the people on here don’t understand how a REAL SOCIALSIST state works.  (especcially how Socialsim ONLY benefits the top 1% of a population while PRETENDING to be good for the other 99% while they rob you blind and take everythign from you!)

    and me being in the top 0.1% all i can do is laugh at the morons who continue to defend the policies that have destroyed their personal wealth and freedom!  MORON AMERICANS!  Keep doing your bail outs, and cheering on your Nanny State. it just puts more money in my pocket and takes from yours :)

  • chriscanada

    THANK YOU, sir. Americans are so blind to a) how their country is run b) who runs their country c) That America is in a state of a CONTROLLED decline in living standards.  Yes people.  It’s a PLAN by those in power to enrich themselves and the expense of you.  THIS IS YOUR REALITY. Until you realize this…. third world status, awaits you!

  • chriscanada

    The federal government’s involvement in ANY program ALWAYS inflates the cost, and invites a tidal wave of corruption and theft!  This is the way of Big Government! as government grows, prosperity dwindles.  It’s a direct correlation… There is only so much wealth to go around… and more and more and more is TAKEN and squandered by your governement…. so what do you do?  You keep giving governemnet MORE power and keep making it BIGGER… then wonder where your freedom, and prosperity went!  Geeee…. i wonder….

  • chriscanada

    It’s a wonderful entity of CORPORATE SOCIALSIM.  Where all the wonders of socialism are promised, but everything is run by the Corporate Lobbys…. hence why you have rampant theft and unequality in a system that’s SUPPOSED to be “great for the people!”

  • chriscanada

    The government COUNTS on the lazy apathy of these leaches.  It’s easy to defend the crimes of your government when they keep sending that welfare check and food stamps each month!  the government uses your own tax dollars to BUY the complaceny of the ignorant and lazy.

  • http://twitter.com/jasonpaulhayes jasonpaulhayes
  • Anon

    you keep using that word… I don’t think it means what you think it means

    if you insist on having ‘socialism’ in there, maybe ‘anti-socialism’ is a more coherent label – but crony capitalism is a more widely-grokked term for the basic situation you’re describing

    better still is ‘inverted totalitarianism’:  https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism

  • E.B. Wolf

    Funny how you keep describing corporate domination of the U.S. as socialism. You really ought to look “socialism” up in a dictionary. It doesn’t mean what you think it means.

  • E.B. Wolf

    You’re in the top .1% and the best thing you can think to do with your time is troll this site? That’s fucking pathetic.

  • E.B. Wolf

    …and psychopaths. Can’t forget the psychopaths.

  • Nuggett

    Big government leads to whatever the people of America decide they want the big government to do.  There are ALOT of people distrustful of corporations nowadays, and with good reason.  You don’t think certain and future politicians, for whatever reason, won’t want to capitalize on this growing and intelligent constituency?

    The government is more at odds with itself than say, a single corporation.  It’s even more at odds with itself than several competing corporations.  There may be a revolving door between the worlds, but elected officials get to pick and choose their alliances.  It’s also natural that they’d want to regulate competitors.  But this fact should not muddy the truth that regulation of EXTREMELY powerful entities is in the government and people’s interest.  

    Corporations do not write Constitutions.  Corporations write Standard Operating Procedures.  Such a dictum rings a little bit like…socialism, no?  And, what’s to stop Corporations from merging into one giant corporation?  Far-fetched?  I don’t think so.  Corporations are slaves to profit.  There is no collective interest, moral or economic, in a “nation” defined by a land mass.  There is such an interest, via our government.   

    Frankly, when I hear people carry on with comments like “Government can’t tell me what to do with MY money…etc”, I liken it to someone saying, “The authorities can’t tell me what to do with my knife or gun on a Saturday night when I have every intention on killing my neighbor.  They also, in general, can’t tell me what to do with my murderous habits.”  

    Yes, they can.  They should.  And, we vote for those who hopefully will RESPONSIBLY regulate operations in this country for the common good.  If the government is not doing this, as you propose, then the good people of the nation need to mobilize, wisen up, and clean house in Washington.  

    I don’t want a big government, I simply want a Government with a healthy fear of large corporations…and, a government that is BIGGER than corporations.  :)

  • chriscanada

    No you’re wrong… socialism is when the people give up their money to the government, “hoping” they can put it to good use with government run social programs….equality and services for all!!!  Great in THEORY… In reality (especially in the USA) where the CORPORATIONS and INTERNATIONAL INTERESTS SPEND BILLIONS on buying out politicians to PURCHASE legislstation to help out their coproate buddies, some of that PUBLIC money that the government was going to use to help the people gets “skimmed” off the top.  Now multiply this by the thousands of corproate lobbies, and you have a socialist governemnt who is bought and paid for by the corporations.  AKA CORPORATE socialism, which is basically FACISM hiding behind a corporate banner.   It becomes a system of corruption that FEEDS off the public money, funneling as much in to the pockets of corrupt politicians, ceo, and bankers…. And we all know where this leads!  no money, power, property OR freedom for the people.  As a matter of fact, we are almost there now!  the banks own over 75% of all proprerty in the USA.

    “I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous than standing armies…If the American people ever allow the banks to control the issue of currency, the banks and corporations that grow up around them will deprive the people of their property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their father conquered.”-Thomas JeffersonIt’s this American ignorance to the reality of the USA that is making the founding fathers roll over in their graves.  I think the people on this post need to read about socialism, the corproate lobbying system, and the ANTI-American Federal Reserve banking system.   Then you might understand why Socialism looks good on paper, but once implemented in such a corrupt system, becomes something else, altogether.

  • chriscanada

    FROM DICTIONARY.COM  for all you people who seem to think you know what socialsim is…
     
    1. a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the OWNERSHIP and CONTROL of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole. 

    2.  (in Marxist theory) the stage following capitalism in the transition of a society to communism, characterized by the imperfect implementation of collectivist principles.

    LOL “The transition of a society to communism”  AKA The MASSIVE TRANSFER OF WEALTH from the PEOPLE to the “people in power”   ENJOY your “socialism” on your way to corporate communism.  All you people have this cuddly cozy idea of Socialism… it is merely a way to WEAKEN SOCIETY and facilitate the transfer of wealth from the pockets of the people to the pockets of the politicians on your way to TOTAL SLAVERY (communism)  Think MAO, STALIN….  

    or are you gonna come out and say “dictionary.com” is wrong, and the “socialism” we have all been led to believe by our CNN, MSNBC and FOX news is really a wonerful fairy god mother that will take care of us and keep us safe!  Now we know why Green Day called their album AMERICAN IDIOT!  fucking Americans.  wake up.

  • Anon

    Chriscanada – you’re one of those trolls working for the Koch Brothers, aren’t you?

    And if it was a simple matter of ‘defend the crimes of your government when they keep sending that welfare check and food stamps each month’ then why is it usually poor people who kick off and demand better rights (as we’re seeing all over the world), while the well-off sit round hoovering up the cash and putting up with all those very same crimes? Or even make money off them?

    Plus you keep confusing fascism with democratic socialism. Is that something your Koch troll checklist tells you to mention in every post (tell a big lie often enough and all that)?

    Note to professional trolls working for political groups – if you spend all day posting on websites then either you’re a) Unemployed or b) People figure out your ‘job’ involves trolling said sites.

  • Nuggett

    There is obviously a revolving door between the corporate world and our government.  This truth is held in suspicion by many, many Americans.  Unfortunately for us, we don’t have much of a choice on who to trust, do we?  

    The truth is, we STILL have a constitution.  This constitution is supposed to be upheld by our elected officials.  Naive to think they’re all doing that?  OF COURSE!  But, are ALL government officials solely interested in corporate gains over human welfare?  No.  

    The American Government, regardless of its current operations, is designed to protect outlined inalienable rights.  The American Government, more importantly, the American people must always mobilize to vote for the trustworthy officials.  This is why I will favor candidates who are the most morally qualified and concerned with market regulation.  The government still has interest in the human condition of its state.  It’s supposed to, anyways.  The corporation, BY DEFINITION, does not.

  • chriscanada

    You dont’ know you ass from a hole in the ground!

    socialism  (ˈsəʊʃəˌlɪzəm) — n 1.  An economic theory or system in which the means of production, distribution, and exchange are owned by the community collectively, usually THROUGH THE STATE! It is characterized by production for use rather than profit, by equality of individual wealth, by the absence of competitive economic activity, and, usually, by government determination of investment, prices, and production levels 2. any of various social or political theories or movements in which the common welfare is to be achieved through the establishment of a socialist economic system 3. (in Leninist theory) a transitional stage in the development of a society from capitalism to communism: characterized by the distribution of income according to work rather than need Socialism is the transition of WEALTH and POWER from the PEOPLE to the STATE on the way to communism!  so SHUT THE FUCK UP because all you people defending socialism don’t even know what the fuck you’re talking about.  Morons.

  • Lemon

    For some reason Chriscanada is sounding a bit shrill. Chris, did your dad or the church tell you stories as a kid about the evils of socialism? Or maybe you were dumped by some hippy chick?

    Its funny how the ‘ignorant and lazy’ on here are pwning your ass.

  • Jbar

    Fuck libertarianism.

  • chriscanada

    This is actually the first time I have ever posted on ANY site.  I READ every single day.  I like to know what’s going on in the world.  But after reading some of the comments on this forum, and how lost and confused most of the Americans are, I couldnt’ hold my tongue any longer.  Really… I’m a humanitarian at heart, however it’s extremely frustrating to watch the oppressed people praise the very policies that’s enslaving them… so I spoke up, on your behalf.  I’ll be fine either way.  I like your bail outs/stimulus/quantatitve easing/jobs bills  because I own a building/development corporation, in Canada.  (primarily residential… so i put people in homes)  when your government steals 800 billion in “stimulus” from you guys, instantly your dollar falls (our purchasing power for canadians in the real estate market increases) the stock markets rise (whic canadians are heavily invested), and consumer sentiment is artificially increased, along with public spending.  that’s wonderful for home market in Canada and makes me a lot of money.  So if I were a true asshole, I would simply do what the rest of the rich do… say nothing and watch you all chase your tails.  I’m just trying to open your eyes to the reality of the world we live in. 

    cheers.

  • chriscanada

    This is actually the first time I have ever posted on ANY site.  I READ every single day.  I like to know what’s going on in the world.  But after reading some of the comments on this forum, and how lost and confused most of the Americans are, I couldnt’ hold my tongue any longer.  Really… I’m a humanitarian at heart, however it’s extremely frustrating to watch the oppressed people praise the very policies that’s enslaving them… so I spoke up, on your behalf.  I’ll be fine either way.  I like your bail outs/stimulus/quantatitve easing/jobs bills  because I own a building/development corporation, in Canada.  (primarily residential… so i put people in homes)  when your government steals 800 billion in “stimulus” from you guys, instantly your dollar falls (our purchasing power for canadians in the real estate market increases) the stock markets rise (whic canadians are heavily invested), and consumer sentiment is artificially increased, along with public spending.  that’s wonderful for home market in Canada and makes me a lot of money.  So if I were a true asshole, I would simply do what the rest of the rich do… say nothing and watch you all chase your tails.  I’m just trying to open your eyes to the reality of the world we live in. 

    cheers.

  • Tuna Ghost

    The capital letters, the frequent LOLs, the baseless assumptions, the complete inability to actually address questions…we’re being trolled, aren’t we?  Congrats, you got us.  You managed to generate over a hundred posts by provoking us wacky liberals.  We’ll be watching for you next time.  

  • Anon

    One point about charity. The whole Libertarian concept of paying for the poor via charity relies on people having a ton of disposable income thats so disposable they’ll happily give it away for nothing (true you give it away via taxes but everyone gets some services back even if indirectly & many charity contributions these days are given because there are tax advantages). If we privatise all state services the cost of their replacements is likely to eat up any tax money the average person saves. Yeah, yeah I know with the ‘free market’ everything will be a ton cheaper but I somehow doubt doctors, lawyers & bankers are going to volunteer to take less pay in order to be ‘more competitive’ and thus lower their prices.

    So either the rich all give a ton more to charity or charity will not have the funds to provide services to the poor.

    Ergo the poor are somewhat fucked.

    Well there’s the idea that in the free market there’s no poor as everyone has a job, but that hasn’t appeared to work too well historically – the richest countries have always had strong governments of whatever political hue. However if by some miracle the market worked according to theory and people kept lowering their fees to compete until we hit a miracle equilibrium where companies can charge peanuts and no one has the cash to create monopolies then… well… that’ll be a society where everyone earns similar wages, companies all have similar profit levels and there won’t be any rich (as the minute they start to get rich someone out-competes them by charging less and they lose business). Sounds a tad communist really….

  • Verycleaver

    Look, Chris, if I’m a “serf” for believing that government is and can be a force for good — a government composed of representatives executing the will of its people, sometimes imperfect, but regulated and in myriad ways — then surely the Founders and every Congress and president since are also “serfs”?

    And, by extension, so are the current and past citizens of every nation on earth — especially socialistic democracies, I’d assume?

    Well well well, that’s a lotta brainwashees.  I guess you’ve got a lotta work ahead of you.

    But lastly, isn’t it a bit suspicious that GOP candidates decry government while scrambling to get into it?  Surely if they believed the steaming nonsense they spouted they would stay home and decrease the surplus government?

  • Verycleaver

    Look, Chris, if I’m a “serf” for believing that government is and can be a force for good — a government composed of representatives executing the will of its people, sometimes imperfect, but regulated and in myriad ways — then surely the Founders and every Congress and president since are also “serfs”?

    And, by extension, so are the current and past citizens of every nation on earth — especially socialistic democracies, I’d assume?

    Well well well, that’s a lotta brainwashees.  I guess you’ve got a lotta work ahead of you.

    But lastly, isn’t it a bit suspicious that GOP candidates decry government while scrambling to get into it?  Surely if they believed the steaming nonsense they spouted they would stay home and decrease the surplus government?

  • Anonymous

    What’s even stupider is that when they talk about comparing to other countries, the conservatives _actually_ think things are terrible in other places. They talk about European countries like they’re third world nations. Trying to learn from other countries is actually one of the things they fight hardest against because it’s foreign and therefore “of the devil!” I just had this argument a couple days ago. Dude thought his trump card was “or we’ll end up like Europe!’

  • Anonymous

    You’re not real familiar with history, are you. People were, in fact, left out on the streets to die. The poor died from easily treatable medical problems because they were poor! They still are, just not nearly as many. Witness the guy on the east coast a couple weeks ago who died from a tooth infection because he couldn’t afford to buy antibiotics.

  • Verycleaver

    Oh gosh it’s enervating to argue with those who a) don’t read their own definitions, b) don’t understand what they do read, and c) excoriate “socialism” while using the name of a constitutional democracy with considerable socialist leanings.

    But we must.

    The Founders wrote a Constitution to create a government.  That’s it.  Without a Constitution there’d be no government, federal or state.  Yes, certainly they did to to limit the government’s reach — that’s the express purpose of the Bill of Rights — but they also did so to establish certain necessary governmental controls.  They established a method of creating laws — which, by definition, constrain citizens’ behavior.  They established methods of executing and judging those laws.  They established a system by which citizens would represent themselves within government by voting for representatives. In short, the Constitution mandates government.  

    (The Founders were in no way libertarian.  While there was then and continues to be a divide between federalists and those advocating greater states’ rights, no one was arguing for “less government” in general.  Certainly no one argued that the theory of government was bad.  That’s absurd to think they believed.  They were in the process of establishing a  new government — and while some wanted greater local control and some wanted greater national control, not one Founder argued that we’d all be freer if only government didn’t exist.)

    Now you may night like to hear this.  To you, the “Constitution” is obviously some holy but abstract thing, which must be revered but never read.  I encourage you to read it.  It might make you a bit proud to have such an excellent form of government.  (I’m assuming you live in the US and not “Canada,” as your name suggests.)  And lastly, if you can find a government on earth which provides more opportunity and freedom with less governing, well, I encourage you to move there and let me know where so that I can follow.

  • Anonymous

    Well said.

    Sadly, I think slugs like these must be paid to be this stupid (or think they’re getting some benefit in the future for it). It’s the only reason anyone would be so blindly, willfully ignorant on something so easy to discover the truth about.

  • Anonymous

    You keep using this word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

    If the US was socialist, the current rich would have no access to wealth beyond that which they directly create. That’s right, they’d have to go get a real job for a reasonable wage.

    I suggest you buy a dictionary. Maybe read a couple wikipedia articles. What you’re describing is called “corrupt capitalism.”

  • Anonymous

    whether it’s a troll or not, I actually know people who spout the same BS and believe it. It makes me want to carry a bag of dictionaries around with markers for where all the highly charged political words are so they can find them easily after I’ve finished beating them severely about the head with a dictionary for being so willfully ignorant about their own first language.

    If you’re gonna be against something, you’d _think_ you’d want to make sure you were at least using the right _words_ for it.

  • (O_O)

    $400,000 for 2 months of treatment! I wonder if medical services were competitive, if that would have driven down the cost and improved quality?

  • Anonymous

    What a bunch of nonsense this post is, “soppy cunt” nonsense. The story above is leaving out a lot of information, conveniently. The man was NOT allowed to die, he received treatment. Ron Paul and his staff raised 50 THOUSAND dollars, to help pay down the costs for a few weeks of treatment, and some antibiotics. Show me where any of the other candidates, or Obama have ever done anything so noble. The hospital charged OVER 400 THOUSAND dollars, for that few weeks of treatment, and some antibiotics. You can buy 2 nice houses with that amount. THAT’S what government involvement in healthcare gets you, and THAT should be the real story. It drives up the costs, and who is gonna pay for universal healthcare? Tax payers. We would have to raise everybody’s taxes to a point where they may as well buy private insurance anyway, except healthy people will have to pay for the bad choices of smokers, obese couch potatoes, etc. I know most of you obese couch potatoes are fine with that, but I’m not. People come here from Canada regularly, because they’re put on a waiting list for treatments.
    Politicians make healthcare decisions, instead of medical professionals. With the growing population of retired and aging Americans, just like social security, there will be more people on these programs than there is people paying into them. As costs climb, there would inevitably be rationing. The resources will be limited, experimental treatments would probably be eliminated or drastically reduced, as there would be no incentive to pursue new drugs and treatments since it costs so much up front to develop them, the government wouldn’t fund that, or be able to. Would older people get the same treatment as younger people, when resources are limited (which they will be)?

  • Verycleaver

    As you lose this argument, you grow LOUDER and “stranger” and cursier and otherwise all manner of Internet loopy.  If you want use to believe

    You’ve posted two definitions of socialism: 

    1) “A theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.”

    and, much more to your liking I think:

    2) “An economic theory or system in which the means of production, distribution, and exchange are owned by the community collectively, usually THROUGH THE STATE!”  [your caps, mais oui.]

    You go one to list some rather lovely definitions of socialism — including phrases like “common welfare” and “equality of individual wealth,” which all sound perfectly scrumptious to me.  But ah, clearly not to you.  You fixate on one word at the end — “COMMUNISM!”  [my caps] — and that, for you, is the True Meaning of Socialism.  Right.Since clearly, words like “ownership” and “control” and “state” scare you, let’s have another:
    Capitalism: “An economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state”  (Definitions via Google’s built-in dictionary.)So, I’m not trying to put words in your mouth here, but it seems to me that you might flee from “socialism” and embrace “capitalism,” yes?  And that means you prefer that control of industry and capital be vested not with a community, nor a centralized government, but with private owners for profit?

    Then you must very much like the current economic meltdown, which was the doing of private for-profit banks, auto corporations, and a variety of other non-governmental entities.  (Oh, the government had a role in the crisis, but via a strident lack of oversight and control, rather than too much.)  You must also be a great fan of escalating oil prices.  You must love environmental damage and escalating climate change due to pollution and the lack of industrial regulation.  And you must be giddy about America’s third-world private health care system, being the least effective and most expensive non-socialized health care system in the industrialized world.  All of these must strike you as wonderful examples of how government only serves to harm and control us — because look how very free and happy you are when only private enterprise dominates, yes?

  • Verycleaver

    Sorry, I didn’t complete my second sentence:  ”If you want us to believe your arguments, play nice.”

  • Anonymous

    Here’s the thing. There’s not too many procedures that there aren’t some people who will need it for a genuine medical need. That includes cosmetic surgery and even psychotropics. If cosmetic surgery is not funded, say, it won’t be practiced often enough to help the people who genuinely need it. Burn victims, women who get new boobs after having them removed because of breast cancer, etc. Some people are mentally ill to the point where only exceptionally strong medicines are even marginally effective. Those things need to be part of the industry in general or there will be no incentive for doctors to learn about these treatments so they can perform them, and there’ll be no incentive for the companies who supply those type of procedures to actually make the components necessary. I would gladly pay my tiny share of a hundred boob jobs, knowing that doing so means that when my grandmother gets her replacement breasts, the procedure is well-practiced and safe, and the implants have a high track record of success.

    The issue with determining what qualifies as medically necessary is easy at the extremes. It’s the cases in the middle that are the problem. Just how disfigured do you have to be in a fire to qualify for surgery? Do you cover burn victims but not acid attacks? Or do you not fund it at all and tell people to just deal with being scarred, in physical pain, and stared at for the rest of their lives? Some people may choose to learn to live with it, but shouldn’t it be their choice, not forced on them?

  • Anonymous

    yay! I wanna be just like africa! What a fucking great idea… how quickly can the republicans take us to a Democratic Congo?

    Dude, don’t be such a tool – using africa as your example of good is … well, stupid. the goal is to be better than africa – it’s known as “undeveloped” for a reason.

  • Anonymous

    Read up on him Liam. I think you’ll find he’s even worse. And his son is even worse than he is.

  • Verycleaver

    1) Please explain how “government involvement in healthcare” led to the hospital charging over $400,000.

    2) Please explain which “politicians” routinely, and in this specific case, make healthcare decisions.  Please contrast this with the decisions made by insurance company administrators and bureaucrats.3) Please explain how much our taxes would be raised to implement a national healthcare system, versus the amount we pay now.4) Please contrast America’s private insurance-based healthcare systems with the universal health care systems of England, Argentina, Canada, India, Israel, China, Japan, Germany, France, Greece, Italy, Russia, Australia, Egypt, South Africa, among many others — and focus on why their citizens can afford such systems but America’s cannot.Thanks bunches.

  • Anonymous

    You… honestly can’t think critically enough to see that those definitions say the opposite of what you’re describing, can you?

    Meh. I’m starting to agree with Tuna Ghost. This has to be an elaborate troll. No one could be this incapable of basic thought and still manage to be able to put together enough brain power to breathe and type at the same time.

  • Anonymous

    I quote: It is characterized by production for use rather than profit, by equality of individual wealth.

    Yeah, cuz, we’re all equally wealthy and companies aren’t about profit at all right now.

    Do you even read the things you’ve posted?

  • Anonymous

    Well remember EB. You can be anyone on the interwebs.

    Today I’m the head of a multi-national corporation making those little plastic bits that go in sterile medical equipment. I said it so it must be true, right?

    Tomorrow maybe I’ll be someone’s grandma on Medicare. That should be fun.

  • Anonymous

    earned? how did you “earn” it? Did you do it using “Public Infrastructure”? Did you deliver your potatoes without using a road? Did you learn to read exclusively at private schools that float in the clouds and also don’t use Public Resources?

    It’s all fine and dandy that you feel you’ve “earned” whatever money is in your pocket, but – if earnings go off of anything, you owe ever teacher who ever taught you (shitty as they obviously were), every road worker that paved the street you use, every tax payer who payed for it while you whined. You “earn” what you are allowed to earn. More than that is stealing, until you get the “more than god” status, in which case, it’s called a “bad investment”.

    Are your “wages earned” confiscated when you drive to the mall and buy your big screen TV?

  • Anonymous

    It’s all about political points and profit. So long as either of those things can be had by decrying single-payer, we won’t have single-payer.

  • Anonymous

    It’s fairer to say that the gov’ts half-assed involvement while trying to maximize the profits of health insurance companies has inflated the cost of treatment. If we cut the insurance companies and their profits out of the equation, we’d go a long way to getting it back on the same track that’s working in so many other places in the world. I don’t think that alone would solve it, but it sure would help.

  • Anonymous

    Ron Paul is a Constitutional ‘paleo’ conservative. He wants to bring the troops home, build a strong national defense while our troops spend their pay here at home, in our economy instead of every other country. He wants to shrink the FEDERAL government, to protect the states from outside threats, ensure interstate commerce, and ensure the states stay within the Constitution. That would STRENGTHEN state governments, who will be able to keep much more of their own money when it’s not being wasted on bloated inefficient federal agencies, wars, and no bid contracts for lobbyists. The PEOPLE vote for state laws, so if the people of a given state want to create a state issued health plan, and are willing to pay for it wil their taxes, they would have that option. The same goes for disaster relief programs, welfare programs, etc. But, Ron Paul would not be able to implement ALL of his ideas immediately anyway, and has made that clear. His plan is the ONLY one that will keep the promises made to those who have already paid into the system. There are still checks and balances as well, but ANY movement away from big wasteful government will help us. But, as commander in chief, he can and actually WILL bring the troops home, which alone would be a HUGE improvement to our financial situation.

  • Anonymous

    Taking good care of yourself isn’t going to make a bit of difference when you get hit by a drunk driver tomorrow and end up in the hospital for weeks.

    I suppose you think it’s great that I’ll end up subsidizing the higher costs caused by your inability to pay, so long as you don’t have to pay into helping cover my costs, hm? Insurance is a scam, no doubt, but “I take care of myself so no one should have health care guaranteed to them” is very NOT the answer.

  • Anonymous

    We don’t have money to pay for the social programs we already have. Here’s a good link that should shed a little light on the universal healthcare issue for you…

    http://www.balancedpolitics.org/universal_health_care.htm

  • Anonymous

    You might want to let the hospital that treated him know the disease was curable, since they were unable to save him. Then ask them what they did that was worth 400 thousand dollars. Your country is locked in 3 (or more) wars, and doesn’t have military bases all over the world draining your money. Your country doesn’t have a huge bloated federal government that gives out no bid contracts paying for 18 tax payer dollars for a roll of toilet paper, so the company that got the contract can funnel that money back to the politicians, in the form of campaign contributions. Ron Paul wants to give the power back to the states, the PEOPLE vote for laws and social programs in the states. With a small federal government, states would be able to offer universal healthcare if that’s what the people vote for. It will never happen at the federal level, because the politicians that pretend to represent the people, don’t. They work for the lobbyists. Except for Ron Paul.

  • FreedomFighter

    Wow, this is my first time visiting this site and I must say, the title “disinformation” is spot-on.  What we have here is a gross misrepresentation of both the question posed by Wolf Blitzer in the debate and Ron Paul’s response to it.

    Wolf Blitzer specifically stated that the hypothetical young man COULD afford to pay for health insurance but CHOSE NOT TO, subsequently falling ill, leaving him unable to afford the necessary treatments.  Nice job leaving those details out JacobSloan, they obviously didn’t fit your agenda.

    Now I realize there are a lot of big government loving socialists here that are vehemently opposed to concepts like personal responsibility and individual freedoms, but bear with me for a similar hypothetical scenario and let me know your thoughts on the following:

    A young man strolls into a casino one day.  He’s handed a pair of dice and an opportunity to increase his personal wealth by lets say 15%  In exchange he must risk 100% of his personal wealth.  The odds favor him 20 to 1 and he’s cock-sure he’ll come out on top. 

    Why?  Who knows, those of us with so much as a shred of common sense realize there’s a 5% this guy could lose everything he has and it’s just not worth it for such a meager reward.  But it doesn’t seem to phase him one bit.  So the young man rolls the dice and, surprise surprise, he just lost everything he ever worked for. 

    So who’s problem is it?  The libertarian belief is that the young man should be held accountable for his own actions.  He should declare bankruptcy, and learning from his mistake, begin rebuilding his life from scratch never to repeat such a remarkably stupid decision while at the same time discouraging others who have heard of his demise from ever doing the same.

    Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong but it sounds like this is how all the liberals here would deal with such a hypothetical scenario.   They would start by bashing the casino.  They would rant and rave about the uncaring, rich, corrupt casino owners who dared turn a profit on the young man’s misfortune.  They would unleash a legion of  lawyers and do everything in their power to get the money back for the young man – and don’t forget the lawyers as well. 

    Whether it works or not the casino owners will immediately have less money to pay their employees or hire new ones.  

    If it doesn’t work the liberals will have to move on to step 2.  Borrow money from China, use it to pay the young mans debt as well as the lawyers.  Then pay considerable interest on the debt for years because the tax revenues don’t exist to pay it down.

    This will force them on to step 3.  Introduce regulatory burdens that cost the private sector a fortune to adhere to.  Fight for higher and new taxes on everyone but themselves, ultimately sucking money out of the private sector that would otherwise be used to create new jobs and growth.

    Wake up and get off the government Kool Aid people.  Take responsibility for your own lives.  Stop costing the rest of us the livelihoods we’ve worked our asses off for with your demented life decisions, entitlement mentality and general inability to succeed.

  • http://twitter.com/Marklar_Prime Marklar Kronkite

    Might as well go all the way Ron. Let’s shut down other social programs as well. Police and fire departments, courtrooms, road and bridge construction. I want to watch you try to deliver babies as you travel 15 miles over rough terrain in your horse and buggy while being accosted by hoards of post apocalyptic bandits. Maybe Mel Gibson can ride shotgun with you to give you a fighting chance.

  • Anonymous

    Ron Paul wants to give states like Vermont the right to single payer if the people of the states choose. Wouldn’t you like the ability to vote for such things, without red states having a say in YOUR state? That’s what Ron Paul believes, he is strongly for states rights, and leaving the money in the states, instead of taking it to pay for wars of aggression, and bloated federal programs.

  • Anonymous

    Dr. Paul is for ending the wars, and shrinking the FEDERAL government. That would strengthen state governments, and they would be able to pass universal healthcare, and whatever other social programs the people vote for, and use the money the feds aren’t taking from the states to pay for wars, and bloated federal programs with all the inefficiency and fraud, to fund them. State governments are much more in check by the people, as opposed to voting a representative, that just gets bought out by special interests and doesn’t represent the people. Wouldn’t blue states like the opportunity to vote for these things WITHOUT the interference of red states? And vice versa…

  • Anonymous

    You are not a cdn, because if you were- why no mention of Jack Layton? he DID lead the last bastion of ‘socialism’ in mainstream cdn politics? You have ‘socialist’ healthcare (thank you tommy douglas), socialist k-12 education, and most importantly you are NOT american nor a scholar, so why RAIL against american domestic policies- when your own country has far more socialist policies than the US ever will???

  • Elmyr23

    I think gekkotek is one of the bots set to troll. Our tax dollars hard at work.

    from your link point # 3 on the NO side “Profit motives, competition, and individual ingenuity have always
    led to greater cost control and effectiveness.” I love vague capitalist circle-jerking

  • Elmyr23

    we had a whole civil war on states rights, if you think ron paul is going to reverse the civil war bless your heart.

  • Anonymous

    A bot set to troll? Do you even know what a troll is? That word has become SO overused. A troll is Jbar, with the comment “Fuck libertarianism.” No substance, just inflammatory garbage meant to incite an emotional response. And for the record, I’m not a libertarian, I’m an independent who voted for Obama in the last election. I can’t stand warmongering neo-con hate addicts. But at the same time, the other side of the extreme spectrum gets pretty annoying too. Federal government programs are a joke, and they take our tax money, and give it to their buddies under no bid contracts, and outrageous costs, and split the difference. They use those programs to launder our tax money, and make themselves and their buddies rich. State level governments are more accountable to the people, who actually get to vote on these things. That would be the ONLY way to solve all the grid lock, by giving states the rights to choose their own paths on hot button social issues, as long as they don’t violate the Constitution.

  • Anonymous

    The states don’t have the right to violate the personal liberties of Americans. That’s against the Constitution, and that’s the job of the federal government, to ensure states don’t violate the Constitution. Slavery would NEVER come back, to suggest so is disingenuous, and dishonest.

  • Bigal

    Aren’t we able to discuss this in the comfort of our offices and homes because this has been and is, a great place to live?

    911 inside job.

  • Mr Willow

    I think you should do a little research and learn what the words SOCIALSIM and Constitutional Republic mean

    I explained to you, very concisely, what both of those terms mean!

    *sigh*

    Socialism: An economic system in which the means of production (and therefore the wealth created by that production) is owned by the workers, the public, or the state. 

    Constitutional Republic: A republic established by a constitution. (pretty obvious)

    Republic: a representative democracy. 

    You might look at socialism and think something to the effect of—”Yeah, the State. The big State lording power over the public, and telling the People what to do. Just like the Soviet Union!” But in the United States, in a government established ‘of, by, and for the People’, the public and the state would be the same thing. The state could not exercise any significant power over the people that the people did not allow. It is the Public controlling the Government, not the other way around.

    I also explained that a direct democracy would have been impossible during the time in which the Constitution was drafted and ratified because in a direct democracy all opinions would be needed, and to people who lived in rural areas, without viable means, in many cases, to make the trek into cities—no planes, trains, or automobiles, just horses that would take a week or more in some cases—their voice would be utterly lost. It is the same reason the Electoral College was established, because the same folks in rural areas also did not have the means to vote. 

    Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, e-Mail, and just the internet in general solves this problem.

  • Anonymous

    I can’t figure out where you stand. I kind of agree  with your 3rd paragraph’s last 2 sentences, disagree with your 2nd paragraph, and don’t understand what your 1st is trying to say.

    There certainly are elements of Ron Paul’s platform I can get on board with – drug legalization, ending military occupations (both overseas and at home), generally “Deregulating” the individual. That part of the Libertarian platform I understand. The part about letting “groups”, aka Corporations, be deregulated, the part about letting the rich horde the resources, the part about “absolute private property”, the part that forgets that the individual is part of something greater than the individual – well, it’s what happens when you let greedy assholes into your anarchist club, then give them the boot because they’re selfish, egomaniac dicks, so they start a Political Party called the Libertarians. Btw, sleeping outside and eating garbage, either in the 19th century or the 21st isn’t having “it made”.

    So, what was your point?

  • Mr Willow

    You know, perhaps I am alone, but I really get tired of the whole State vs. Federal government diatribe. Mayors and governors, besides the fact that they are still elected representatives, are in no way immune to corruption.

    If all we had were state governments, where red states operated independent of blue states, do you know what we would be: Ancient Greece. 

    And in a system such as that it would mean if Texas thought Oklahoma or Louisiana was giving it dirty looks, it could invade. Plus, without the federal government, there would be no United States of America, there would be the American States. Without cohesion of some sort, USA dies. 

    Also, just as a general aside, to everyone who screams “Government can’t do anything right!”—especially politicians who literally are members of the government—if government doesn’t work, doesn’t function, doesn’t take your interests to heart (especially in terms of the federal government), why not suggest ways in which it may be fixed, and work to better the system, instead of trying to neuter the government altogether and dismantle the system. 

  • Elmyr23

    Hold on everybody this guy is rich and we all know that wealth = intelligence.

  • deredder

    From the UK here – and just shaking my head like a lot of other people living in countries with a national healthcare system. Two questions:
    1. Have you actually corresponded with/spoken to/witnessed the experiences of others who live in a country that has national healthcare, as to their experiences and feelings about living and working and paying taxes that contributes to this system?
    2. Why do a large proportion of Americans that indentify as being Christian and who believe in creationism as the basis of all life on Earth appear to have a very Darwin-esque philosophy that promulgates survival of the fittest?
    I just don’t get it. Still shaking my head here.

  • Elmyr23

    building and selling homes is not putting people in homes. I sold a man food once dose that make me a soup kitchen?

  • Andrew

    An individual, family, or business can claim to not have enough money, but a nation, which creates its own money, cannot make such a claim.  The US has doesn’t have a lack of money, it has a lack of production–real wealth–to back that money up.  Money is merely a medium of exchange, and its value is only what you can get people to do or give you for it.

  • deepnotes

    Strongly recommend you read the book called, “Damming the Flood”, by Peter Hallward in order to fully comprehend exactly how U.S. foreign policy has undermined Haiti’s democracy movement.
    Only wake-up call i’ve noticed from living outside of the US bubble coming on 10 years now is how incredibly mis-informed the American public are.  Especially in regards to the consequences of covert operations.

  • Anonymous

    There would be cohesion, in that we all unite under the Constitution, and defend each other. There would not be state armies, or invasions. Come on now. There would be no need, because red states would not have blue states interfering in their social policies, and vice versa. As it is now, we’re more likely to see civil unrest, because we see social policies forced on all communities. You do realize that the next election will probably go back to the establishment Republicans, because people actually believe there’s a difference, and since we’re in such a mess they think the Republicans will do something different to fix it. I’m guessing once that happens, you won’t be so welcoming of blanket policies for all states. Ron Paul is NOT part of the establishment, look up his record for yourself. He refuses the pension, he actually gives money BACK that he doesn’t use, and he refuses to allow lobbyists to sway him. State governments allow the people to vote on laws, instead of representatives who are MORE corrupt, and have less accountability for their corruption.

  • Andrew

    > There is only so much wealth to go around…

    So wealth cannot be created?

  • Anonymous

     The difference is we are talking about healthcare and not gambling at a casino.  Healthcare is a right and not a “responsibility” there buddy, let’s get that straight right now.  Second, if anyone is taking your $ it’s corporations who get federal grants they don’t have to pay back and pay almost no taxes.  Funny how you tell people to stop costing you your livelihood when the rich have gotten richer and the poor have gotten poorer in the last 20 years or so. Just watch Fox News and talk about socialism even though you have no idea what you are talking about.

  • http://www.facebook.com/RustySausage Christopher Restemayer

    I love the false dichotomy.  “Its either have a big federal government or DIE OF A HORRIBLE DISEASE!”

  • Mr Willow

    There would be cohesion, in that we all unite under the Constitution, and defend each other. 
    I don’t know if you know this, but the Constitution is the document that established the federal government. 

    All the arguments I see for States rights at the expense of diminishing power of the federal government seem to say “Well, my state doesn’t provide healthcare or education to it’s citizens, nor public transport, nor anything else of benefit, and despite this injustice, we should live in a state of perpetual ignorance and sickness because ain’t nobody gonna force me to have a conscience!”

    It’s giving leeway to Governors to run their states like dictatorships, theocracies, or corporations withlittle consequences. 

    The only thing that makes me like Ron Paul (from what I’ve seen) is his position on foreign policy (in general) and legalisation of (now illigal) substances. 

    I voted for Obama because of the things you stated and his (at least) allusions to supporting universal healthcare and his promises of changing how the system is, changing how the game is played. Instead, he played the game with the best of them.

  • Anonymous

    Yes, the Constitution established the federal government, with a set purpose. It has gone FAR beyond that purpose. Ron Paul is not advocating doing away with the federal government, just wants to bring it back to it’s original intent.

    “All the arguments I see for States rights at the expense of diminishing
    power of the federal government seem to say “Well, my state doesn’t
    provide healthcare or education to it’s citizens, nor public transport,
    nor anything else of benefit, and despite this injustice, we should live
    in a state of perpetual ignorance and sickness because ain’t nobody
    gonna force me to have a conscience!”

    It’s giving leeway to Governors to run their states like dictatorships, theocracies, or corporations withlittle consequences.”

    Which state doesn’t provide those things? I’m not sure what you’re saying here. The people have MUCH more influence over state policies than they do over federal policies. States have their own welfare programs, they provide public transportation, police, fire depts, etc. Giving MORE money back to them, so the people can put up for vote which state programs they would like to see implemented, would only bring MORE services to them. Governors don’t run their states like dictatorships, for example here in AZ, the governor, the sheriff, etc. were all dead set against the medical cannabis law the people proposed. We voted on it, it passed, and they honored that vote (in the face of federal threats as always). Now, the AZ Dept of Health is making a little money on it in the form of filing fees, and they’re liking it. They see it wasn’t the end of the world, and there aren’t any pot parades, people just mind their business. That’s how state rights work. If it were up to the federal government, that vote would NEVER have been allowed.

  • Anonymous

    Well, potty mouthed Zionist, perhaps you should read this…before you bash Dr. Paul…

    http://lewrockwell.com/block/block88.html

    We give your enemies 7 times the amount of money we give you. And, for the amount we give you, which isn’t a whole hell of a lot these days…we keep a leash on you. Ron Paul wants to pull out of the situation that we’ve only made worse, playing double games. If Israel feels threatened, they have the right to defend themselves.

  • Anonymous

    Well, potty mouthed Zionist, perhaps you should read this…before you bash Dr. Paul…

    http://lewrockwell.com/block/block88.html

    We give your enemies 7 times the amount of money we give you. And, for the amount we give you, which isn’t a whole hell of a lot these days…we keep a leash on you. Ron Paul wants to pull out of the situation that we’ve only made worse, playing double games. If Israel feels threatened, they have the right to defend themselves.

  • Anonymous

    Well, potty mouthed Zionist, perhaps you should read this…before you bash Dr. Paul…

    http://lewrockwell.com/block/block88.html

    We give your enemies 7 times the amount of money we give you. And, for the amount we give you, which isn’t a whole hell of a lot these days…we keep a leash on you. Ron Paul wants to pull out of the situation that we’ve only made worse, playing double games. If Israel feels threatened, they have the right to defend themselves.

  • Anonymous

    Well, potty mouthed Zionist, perhaps you should read this…before you bash Dr. Paul…

    http://lewrockwell.com/block/block88.html

    We give your enemies 7 times the amount of money we give you. And, for the amount we give you, which isn’t a whole hell of a lot these days…we keep a leash on you. Ron Paul wants to pull out of the situation that we’ve only made worse, playing double games. If Israel feels threatened, they have the right to defend themselves.

  • DeepCough

    You’re right, Constitutionally speaking, Ron Paul would not be able to implement all of his plans–he would need Congress to legislate them first for a change!

  • http://hormeticminds.blogspot.com/ Chaorder Gradient

    I mostly agree with you on the needs for cosmetic surgery, psychotropic drugs not so much. I still think there needs to be a dramatic change in doctors’ discretion, many will put people under the knife for anything the patient wants, as long as they are a paying customer. I’m reminded of the military’s attempts to boost morale by handing out boob jobs to their female soldiers(I know its a separate issue, but its another example of money being spent without considering the real need)

  • Anonymous

    And another thing to remember, when considering Dr. Paul, is that there is a difference between his personal philosophical views, and the realities of our current situation. Too often, intentionally, the media focuses on his philosophies which are strictly rooted in the Constitution, and how things SHOULD have been. However, he makes it clear that he understands he can’t do away with many of the federal entitlement programs. His idea, is to stop overseas military spending, bring the troops home, and use half that budget to pay down the debt, and the other half to fund federal entitlement programs. That’s his ACTUAL policy, and it’s a good one. He knows he can’t come in and turn everything on it’s ear. He will NOT use executive orders to legislate, he made that clear as well. He can bring the troops home, as commander in chief, and I think you know he would do just that, unlike the lying establishment who are beholden to the MIC.

  • Anonymous

    Exactly, that’s what many people fail to understand. There’s a difference between his Constitutional philosophies, and what he understands he can and can’t do. Bringing the troops home he can do, and his plan is to use half the money we spent on overseas wars and bases, to pay the debt down. The other half would be used to fund the social safety net programs that are broke. But, the media keeps ignoring his actual policy ideas, and focuses on his personal beliefs.

  • Anonymous

    Which state doesn’t provide those things?

    I suggest you look at current politics over the last year in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio. I know there are others but those are the three that jump to mind because I have family in all three. All three are trying their damnedest to entirely cut such things off and Michigan in fact passed a law that allows lower governmental entities (cities, counties, etc) to be taken over by an appointed dictator, removing all elected officials in that entity. And those are the models that Republicans are looking to try to push in other states.

  • Anonymous

    Which state doesn’t provide those things?

    I suggest you look at current politics over the last year in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio. I know there are others but those are the three that jump to mind because I have family in all three. All three are trying their damnedest to entirely cut such things off and Michigan in fact passed a law that allows lower governmental entities (cities, counties, etc) to be taken over by an appointed dictator, removing all elected officials in that entity. And those are the models that Republicans are looking to try to push in other states.

  • Anonymous

    Yeah, no disagreement that a shift in focus is needed. I’m just not sure that without the… I guess you’d call them frivolous? procedures, they would be there for the people who do actually need them.

  • Anonymous

    Who’s voting for those laws? The people? If the governors are going over their heads, it would be just as easy for them to vote them out. If states had more individual rights, Republicans wouldn’t be able to push those models on other states. Many states are going broke, because of massive federal spending sucking money out of them, and no more industry. We no longer produce anything, thanks to regulations and incentives to send jobs away. Imagine if the federal government allowed a thriving hemp industry. Fuel, food, textiles.

  • Anonymous

    Mm, don’t forget the food and water. Anything that has been transported any farther than from your own backyard used public resources and public infrastructure to get there. But particularly the water. Unless you’re literally shoveling out a hole in the ground to scoop out water, then every point in the water chain relies on public money. The pipes being laid and maintained, the water being cleaned and transported along the pipes — even if you’re drilling your own well, you rely on the govt. regulations to keep your water table clean because they protect it from what your neighbors and (more usually) local corporations dump onto the ground (because that seeps into the water table). And there’s no other way that such things would happen. Does anyone _honestly_ believe that water would be even marginally safe to drink without someone regulating it? Hell, many places, it’s not regulated enough even now and there’s so much crap in the water than doctors tell pregnant women not to drink it because it could harm their children!

  • Anonymous

    If it makes you feel any better, I live in the US and I don’t get it either.

    I have talked to people in other countries about their experiences and they were overwhelmingly better than what we have here. Not perfect of course, but much safer and overall cheaper. I don’t get why there’s so much resistance to making thing better.

  • Anonymous

    I’m making no comment on the rest of the post by this, but I want to point out that a Libertine is very different from what you’ve described here. Libertines tend to question social mores and see pleasure (mainly physical pleasure of the senses, but not solely) as one of their highest pursuits.

    Both words do have the same root as liberty, but they mean very very different things.

  • http://hormeticminds.blogspot.com/ Chaorder Gradient

    I don’t get why that is so hard to understand…. Meh it seems maybe the media blackout of ron paul actually does have its effects. not to mention his stated view that just because he has particular views in no way means that he has the right (even if president) to push them on the whole nation, and its the people within the states who have the ultimate say.

    Oh well, I guess someone is going to counter with “all politicians lie” to counteract this, but if thats true, then all political arguments are moot and we should all just give up….

  • Anonymous

    Nobody is. They’re being passed by a small number of Republicans in those states, often through parliamentary trickery or outright illegal votes and crammed down everyone else’s throats in the state by fiat. And you can’t just “vote them out”. They get their term, and in Wisconsin particularly, then they get another term because their cronies “find” exactly the number of “misplaced” votes that they needed to win the election even though they were losing the election by the count before those “misplaced” votes were “found”. There’s recall processes in some places (not all) but even for that there’s usually a waiting period. For instance, the recall process for Wisconsin’s governor can’t start until next year. And even then, I will be surprised if they don’t “find” exactly the number of votes he needs to win the special election, regardless of how badly he does in the rest of the official counting. And some of these things are written in ways that can’t simply be reversed, or that will have caused so much damage by the time they can be reversed that it might as well be irreversible.

    Go study those situations in those states. Don’t come back asking these stupid questions and spouting off about them until you do. And try looking somewhere other than Fox News or Limbaugh’s archives for a change when you do.

  • http://hormeticminds.blogspot.com/ Chaorder Gradient

    I like you, you actually understand what Ron Paul is about rather than the other’s “fuck yeah, libertarianism(even though I dont know what it means), fuck the government!(even though I dont even know what THAT means) etc. etc.”

    I just with that he didn’t sign the petition to ban abortion, but even if he tried I doubt he’d be able to at this point

  • http://hormeticminds.blogspot.com/ Chaorder Gradient

    I like you, you actually understand what Ron Paul is about rather than the other’s “fuck yeah, libertarianism(even though I dont know what it means), fuck the government!(even though I dont even know what THAT means) etc. etc.”

    I just with that he didn’t sign the petition to ban abortion, but even if he tried I doubt he’d be able to at this point

  • Anonymous

    Oh, you think I’m a Republican. How cute. I don’t watch Fox, and Limbaugh and establishment Republicans are against Ron Paul. Anyway, if the votes and process are illegal in those states, then the people there have the duty to protest loudly and file suit against those behind it, and stop those policies from being implemented.

  • Anonymous

    Oh, you think I’m a Republican. How cute. I don’t watch Fox, and Limbaugh and establishment Republicans are against Ron Paul. Anyway, if the votes and process are illegal in those states, then the people there have the duty to protest loudly and file suit against those behind it, and stop those policies from being implemented.

  • Anonymous

    Thanks. : ) He thinks abortion is a state rights issue as well. His own words: “While Roe v. Wade is invalid, a federal law banning abortion across all 50 states would be equally invalid.”

    http://prolifeprofiles.com/ronpaul

  • Anonymous

    Thanks. : ) He thinks abortion is a state rights issue as well. His own words: “While Roe v. Wade is invalid, a federal law banning abortion across all 50 states would be equally invalid.”

    http://prolifeprofiles.com/ronpaul

  • Dip Buyer

    Did I say it was good? I don’t think so. This is the problem today. Too many people who cannot understand what they read let alone the world around them. Anyway, enjoy your ignorance. You’ll really need it in the coming years.

  • guest

    How did I earn it?  I went to work for it (delivering potatoes or whatever it is I do.)  Why do I owe my teachers anything?  Cuz they taught me the facts I’m wanted to be able to regurgitate?  They did their jobs, I do mine.  And what do public roads have to do with social medicine?  Did I say all taxes were evil?  Personally, I’d like for communities to own their own roads and not have to rely on the government to tell them to buckle up or else the funds go away. 
    I earn what I’m allowed to earn?  What a sheep you are.  I earn what I feel like earning, not what big brother says I can have.  No, my wages aren’t confiscated when I choose to buy a tv (or a book on how economies work, or why free will is a-ok.)  Have fun in your socialist utopia- plenty of food and medicine over here where competition is encouraged. 

  • guest

    How would it be safe?  Um, those selling ti would make sure of it.  Who the fuck would pay a company for deadly water?  Do we really need the FDA and EPA to convince companies not to poison their customers?  Give it a rest already.

  • 1oneidea

    Why don’t we all pay for it equally then?  Why don’t we calculate the bill and split it 300m ways or so.  Why is this burden hoisted upon those who earn more?  We all use roads roughly the same.  You can’t really think the guy making 80k and is a net tax payer uses more road than the guy making 25k with 4 kids in public school who makes money off gov’t handouts each year.
    And why does he owe his teachers for doing their job?  Do we all owe the bag boy for bagging our groceries, or the cop for writing bullshit tickets or the welfare cheat for cheating welfare?  Kind of a flawed argument, no?

  • Anonymous

    You obviously have not looked into the history of corporate behavior. That’s why those agencies were created in the first place. Companies do it because it’s cheaper. There are a continuous stream of products being recalled, food that has been intentionally adulterated or unintentionally contaminated by things like lead and e coli. If you want to see what would happen without any regulation to make companies accountable? Look at China’s industry. Lead in children’s toys because it’s cheap. Rice that is literally made of plastic. Baby formula that contains melamine to artificially elevate the levels of protein for testing. And that’s just in the products they export to us! Who _wouldn’t_ buy water that was tainted with chemicals that may be carcinogenic or deadly over time if they didn’t _know_ that it was in the water? Yes, we do in fact need laws and someone standing over the companies with a big stick threatening them with greater costs for poisoning their customers. Because that’s all that weighs in it. Is it cheaper to use these unsafe chemicals and pay one or two possible lawsuits if someone figures it out and sues individually or is it not? The point of regulations is to make sure that it _costs_ too much to use the unsafe chemicals because the potential penalties far outweigh the savings of using them. The FDA and EPA have been gutted so much that they aren’t doing it very well. We need an agency with the ability to actually DO something about it.

  • Anonymous

    You obviously have not looked into the history of corporate behavior. That’s why those agencies were created in the first place. Companies do it because it’s cheaper. There are a continuous stream of products being recalled, food that has been intentionally adulterated or unintentionally contaminated by things like lead and e coli. If you want to see what would happen without any regulation to make companies accountable? Look at China’s industry. Lead in children’s toys because it’s cheap. Rice that is literally made of plastic. Baby formula that contains melamine to artificially elevate the levels of protein for testing. And that’s just in the products they export to us! Who _wouldn’t_ buy water that was tainted with chemicals that may be carcinogenic or deadly over time if they didn’t _know_ that it was in the water? Yes, we do in fact need laws and someone standing over the companies with a big stick threatening them with greater costs for poisoning their customers. Because that’s all that weighs in it. Is it cheaper to use these unsafe chemicals and pay one or two possible lawsuits if someone figures it out and sues individually or is it not? The point of regulations is to make sure that it _costs_ too much to use the unsafe chemicals because the potential penalties far outweigh the savings of using them. The FDA and EPA have been gutted so much that they aren’t doing it very well. We need an agency with the ability to actually DO something about it.

  • Anonymous

    You obviously have not looked into the history of corporate behavior. That’s why those agencies were created in the first place. Companies do it because it’s cheaper. There are a continuous stream of products being recalled, food that has been intentionally adulterated or unintentionally contaminated by things like lead and e coli. If you want to see what would happen without any regulation to make companies accountable? Look at China’s industry. Lead in children’s toys because it’s cheap. Rice that is literally made of plastic. Baby formula that contains melamine to artificially elevate the levels of protein for testing. And that’s just in the products they export to us! Who _wouldn’t_ buy water that was tainted with chemicals that may be carcinogenic or deadly over time if they didn’t _know_ that it was in the water? Yes, we do in fact need laws and someone standing over the companies with a big stick threatening them with greater costs for poisoning their customers. Because that’s all that weighs in it. Is it cheaper to use these unsafe chemicals and pay one or two possible lawsuits if someone figures it out and sues individually or is it not? The point of regulations is to make sure that it _costs_ too much to use the unsafe chemicals because the potential penalties far outweigh the savings of using them. The FDA and EPA have been gutted so much that they aren’t doing it very well. We need an agency with the ability to actually DO something about it.

  • guest

    China is HEAVILY regulated by their government and they still have these problems.  Not a good argument in my opinion.  Look at, say, the Swiss.  Known for quality products, yet their government is not nearly as intrusive.  I hope you really don’t believe that the majority of companies would kill their customers for a buck, most companies thrive on repeat business (hard to accomplish if they’re dead.) 
    The responsibility for safety lies in me and you.  It’s 2011, surely I can test water via inexpensive over the counter options or heaven forbid, pay a private party to do so at a more cost effective rate than a bloated government agency.  Do you know what happens to a company with a dangerous product?  It dies.  Lawsuits bleed it dry.  Consumers quit consuming its products.  Unless, of course, they have the ear (and wallet) of the elected officials you task with saving us all.   

  • Anon

    “Federal government programs are a joke, and they take our tax money, and
    give it to their buddies under no bid contracts, and outrageous costs,
    and split the difference. They use those programs to launder our tax
    money, and make themselves and their buddies rich.”

    Which is why the claim that “Profit motives, competition, and individual ingenuity have always led to greater cost control and effectiveness” is so obviously false.  Once you introduce individual agents into the equation, each of whom is encouraged to exploit their position to their maximum personal advantage, the idea of ‘enlightened self interest’ soon gives way to a tragedy of the commons.

    The ‘invisible hand’, as envisaged by Smith, was not guided solely by a Randian obsession with self-dealing as the natural and proper way to conduct oneself – it was tempered by a theory of moral sentiments – the idea that people would recognise that they were parts of a community working together for common aims.  The insight carried through the intellectual lineage to James Buchanan’s ‘public choice theory’ with its persuasive demonstration that every attempt by those in power to justify their acts by reference to an ideal of ‘public good’ was fraught by the subjectively self-interested alignment of politicians’ notions of public good with what happened to be good for them and those like them, is that the way to best achieve these common goods is for locally affected and empowered parties to pursue their own interests.  To the extent that these personal interests are in conflict with the general good, the idea was that such transgressions would be regulated if not by economic forces (which favour the shamelessly ruthless), then by social norms which moderate misbehaviour by imposing extra-economic costs.

    It is the shift of these norms which has bequeathed us with a debased and cannibalistic capitalism capable of destroying the institutions of civil society and apparently intent on doing so – not by the will of any great conspiracy, but by the accumulated choices of pseudo-rational actors in an irrational system.

  • Anonymous

    please link evidence to your claim that china is “heavily regulated.” actually china has quite a neo-liberal market economy. better to have facts rather than to spout nonsense just because it goes along with your subversive ‘libertarian’ agenda.

  • Anon

    The problem with the water example is the company selling it is unlikely to be the same company polluting it  – Ronald Coase wrote about this problem in 1960, in nobel-prize winning work that laid the foundation for work towards emissions trading systems (and other trading systems – lookup the work of the ‘Chicago Boys’ in post-Allende Chile – the taxi license scheme is, I think, considered the first policy implementation of this idea… see also the sulfur-dioxide trading scheme introduced in the US to address acid-rain) as an alternative to a Pigouvian tax to regulate the externalisation of costs by private economic actors (ie dumping water in the nearest stream and letting someone else bear the cost rather than following regulated standards for disposal of hazardous waste). 

    Coase argued that economic actors would rationally arrive at the most cost-effective way to balance competing interests irrespective of any top-down regulation imposed by governments – ie, that if the costs of paying fines, damages et al, when added to the cheaper-but-harmful way of doing business was less than the costs of compliance (absorbing what would otherwise have been negative externalities), then companies would take the former course.  He then showed that where a price was able to be placed on ‘commodities’ previously considered to be ‘public goods’, such as clean air and water (he also provides examples from UK caselaw on nuisance caused by newly introduced train-lines and of the use of industrial machinery in premises with an adjoining wall to a business adversely affected by its operation) then economic actors (including individuals) would step in to regulate the harmful activities of others through market forces.

    Maybe this ‘property rights’ as universal panacea works for you as a theory – I remain less convinced.

    As to relying on the legal system to remedy the ills, while it’s true that the common law offered the first protection to consumers through recognition, via tort law, of the civil wrong of negligence causing damage (thanks to a decomposing snail in bottle of ginger beer), it’s not a serious substitute for some manner of regulation to prevent harms before they arise by imposing prospective liability.  This is especially so in the US after the Supreme Court’s crippling of the capacity for large groups of affected individuals to pool their resources in a class action to take on corporate behemoths such as WalMart.    

  • Anon

    I’ll join that club… never ceases to amaze me watching red-state middle-Americans hysterically campaigning against their own interests.

    What’s especially interesting is not only how far the economic and social ideals of the allegedly ‘Christian’ Right are from those allegedly espoused by Christ, but especially how close they are to the ideals espoused by Aleister Crowley and Anton LaVey – most would presumably be more comfortable claiming ideological lineage through Ayn Rand, whose “completely original philosophy” is, of course, anything but.  

  • Anonymous

    oh, do tell then, what were you saying? Were you saying that because charity exists in Africa, it could exist in North America? Or were you saying that, in Africa, the missions are competing at an equal level with government? Or … well, do tell, what were you saying?

  • Anonymous

    why does anyone owe you for doing your job? Further, because you have accumulated more representational resources (e.g. money), you have taken more from the “commons”. In fact, just see Quartz99 below – its a good summary.

    Its amazing how people feel like their ‘wealth’ was earned, but everyone else is just ‘writing bullshit’ tickets or cheating welfare (for the record, cops are writing bullshit tickets, and they really could go – i’ve no problem that) or teaching stupid kids that grow up to be stupid adults who believe they’ve done everything for themselves.

  • Anonymous

    LOL. Dude, i’m in swizterland. they are HEAVILY regulated. Way more than the US. You need a prescription for Ibuprofen here – of course, it costs pennies because we’re all insured, and we can all afford our insurance due to a 25chf/h minimum wage (that’s about $28/h). Yeah – it’s highly regulated.

    So, when a product kills someone, say bad water, how long does the fight go, how many resources do you have, as an individual consumer to hold the bad water company accountable, and what is the outcome? When everyone around a refinery is sick and dying, does that refinery go out of business? No. eh – fuck it – sometimes it’s just to annoying talking with idiots.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000617577904 Brian Walker

    Firstly, you have to take into account the devaluation in the purchasing power of Federal Reserve Notes since the FED began swapping notes for treasuries:
    $400,000 FRNs = 131,147  circulated US Minted 1964 silver dimes OR stated differently, a face value of $13,114….

    Secondly, if I could charge you $50 for a procedure, even if the cost of said procedure is say $20, would you negotiate that price?  Doesn’t matter, because through the intervention of government in the healthcare market, $50 will be paid…then that paperwork must be filed and stocked and kept indefinitely…so you are going to need a large enough space to contain such files and records…then you are going to need to hire someone to file these records…you’ll also need to hire someone to make sure you are in compliance regarding record keeping so you don’t get fined when you are audited…you’re also going to need to hire someone to supervise all of these employees so they don’t fuck off…then you have to offer insurance to all of them because of the HMO Act of 1973 says that you have too (an act which also wed so called  ”private insurance” with government racketeering). 

    I noticed that the article neglected to mention that Kent Snyder left a good paying position to campaign for his friend, knowing that he didn’t have much longer to live, because it was what he wanted to do before he died.

    Now you could read the above text for an explanation, or you could just simply watch Peter Schiff’s testimony before congress:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLmD9TeUC54&feature=share   

  • Anonymous

    Remember – when making your plastic bits today, don’t forget to put profit before anything else and slip some poisonous chemical you picked up in the back of a wal-mart from 3 Asian guys in a van that does the same thing as that other, 5x more expensive and stable chemical. Then, when people start dying, just pay for a good PR company to make it all go away, a few good lawyers to keep costs down, and … viola! the cost of doing business just went down :-)

    Good job as CEO today! I am playing a Multi-National Investment banker packaging the privatization of water resources and other government funded infrastructure projects because I’ve convinced a bunch of other idiots that profit is more efficient than no profit. I’m still not sure how I’ve done it, but its done! Good job to me, too!

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000617577904 Brian Walker

    “First of all, Socialism is an economic system in which workers control the means of production, and therefore the wealth created by that production”

    How do they form the capital required to start production? How is labor divided? If one wanted to produce a pen, does one manufacture all of the chemicals required to form plastics, does one make the machines to form the plastics, does one mine and collect the elements to make the machines that form the plastics, does one manufacture the machines required to mine the elements to make the machines that form the plastics, does one mine for the elements to manufacture the machines needed to mine the elements required to make the machines to form the plastics…..you see where I’m going?

    Mind you I think a socialist system would work if it were voluntary.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000617577904 Brian Walker

    “First of all, Socialism is an economic system in which workers control the means of production, and therefore the wealth created by that production”

    How do they form the capital required to start production? How is labor divided? If one wanted to produce a pen, does one manufacture all of the chemicals required to form plastics, does one make the machines to form the plastics, does one mine and collect the elements to make the machines that form the plastics, does one manufacture the machines required to mine the elements to make the machines that form the plastics, does one mine for the elements to manufacture the machines needed to mine the elements required to make the machines to form the plastics…..you see where I’m going?

    Mind you I think a socialist system would work if it were voluntary.

  • Anonymous

    now, here we can agree. The US has put corporate economic interests before any other interest in foreign policy. It is a shame that will live on for generations to come.

  • Anonymous

    now, here we can agree. The US has put corporate economic interests before any other interest in foreign policy. It is a shame that will live on for generations to come.

  • Anonymous

    So, would you say that Hoover Dam had inflated costs? Or the national highway system? Would you say that private industry would have done the huge infrastructure projects that FDR implemented more cheaply, or efficiently? Because, um … they didn’t. No one did anything of the sort until FDR did it. But, perhaps we just didn’t wait long enough to let private industry get around to do developing these huge projects. Will private industry take on the renewal of the Mississippi River delta anytime soon, or is that something Government should do? Yeah – they ALWAYS inflate the costs.

    What actually inflates the costs is the constant cover government has to take to appease private industry. Btw, how’s them private contractors working out in all our wars? The food must be much better and much less expensive when Halliburton cooks and delivers it, than when the old traditional Army cooks did. (http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/news/dpc_hearing062705.html)

  • Anonymous

    So, would you say that Hoover Dam had inflated costs? Or the national highway system? Would you say that private industry would have done the huge infrastructure projects that FDR implemented more cheaply, or efficiently? Because, um … they didn’t. No one did anything of the sort until FDR did it. But, perhaps we just didn’t wait long enough to let private industry get around to do developing these huge projects. Will private industry take on the renewal of the Mississippi River delta anytime soon, or is that something Government should do? Yeah – they ALWAYS inflate the costs.

    What actually inflates the costs is the constant cover government has to take to appease private industry. Btw, how’s them private contractors working out in all our wars? The food must be much better and much less expensive when Halliburton cooks and delivers it, than when the old traditional Army cooks did. (http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/news/dpc_hearing062705.html)

  • Guerillaontology

    I think that “free market” advocates would suggest that the rise in standard of living had more to do with the rise of the merchant class, than with government.

    Personally, looking back at history, I have to note that most of the violence and dysfunction in society is perpetrated by states. No corporation has ever waged a large scale modern war, though they have used the government’s army to do their dirty work for them.

    In general, I think the VoxMagi is speaking from an anachronistic perspective, the old “Leviathan” theory. But of course Hobbes was speaking centuries before psychology was invented. His idea of humans being inherently bad looks pretty outdated with the benefit of a modern psychological perspective.

    Myself? I think the rise in civility is a result of psychological evolution. As standard of living rose, parents had fewer insecurities, and projected their insecurities onto their children less. The children grow up more emotionally secure, and being more secure, with less fear and more empathy.

    And what happens when we have lost our fear, and can openly understand those with a contrary perspective, say a leftist and a rightwinger, what happens when they don’t fear each-other anymore? I imagine they won’t have much need of government to push each-other around.

    I think that government is like training wheels, time to come off. Just like the church.

  • Guerillaontology

    I think that “free market” advocates would suggest that the rise in standard of living had more to do with the rise of the merchant class, than with government.

    Personally, looking back at history, I have to note that most of the violence and dysfunction in society is perpetrated by states. No corporation has ever waged a large scale modern war, though they have used the government’s army to do their dirty work for them.

    In general, I think the VoxMagi is speaking from an anachronistic perspective, the old “Leviathan” theory. But of course Hobbes was speaking centuries before psychology was invented. His idea of humans being inherently bad looks pretty outdated with the benefit of a modern psychological perspective.

    Myself? I think the rise in civility is a result of psychological evolution. As standard of living rose, parents had fewer insecurities, and projected their insecurities onto their children less. The children grow up more emotionally secure, and being more secure, with less fear and more empathy.

    And what happens when we have lost our fear, and can openly understand those with a contrary perspective, say a leftist and a rightwinger, what happens when they don’t fear each-other anymore? I imagine they won’t have much need of government to push each-other around.

    I think that government is like training wheels, time to come off. Just like the church.

  • Anonymous

    you know what libertarian hysteria reminds me of? A bunch of assholes who, perhaps at one point in their lives, professed a claim on Anarchy, then discovering the amount of work and commitment each individual would need to make, settled on an easier, “Stand on the backs of those below” because only the strong survive. It really is the last refuge for the amoral and worthless among us. I couldn’t count how many Rand-ians I’ve met that suck off the government tit (if i include those from the interwebs, then it’s just impossible).

  • Guerillaontology

    Translating your analogy back to reality, what are the sharks?

    I think that your analogy might be more accurate if you imagine all of this happening on dry land.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000617577904 Brian Walker

    “Secondly, and this is just a general point to you, emc, and everyone who says “Taxes are just a roundabout way of the Government stealing our money!”, taxes means you are buying it. That is, by paying the government to fund things like schools, roads, bridges, museums, institutes, potential healthcare, etc. affords you partial ownership of said thing, service, or program.That’s the funny thing about public programs, in an interesting way it makes you responsible for them. I think the reason anyöne is really ever against public programs—aside from ignorance—is that they do not actually want responsibility, because if someöne dies of a easily treatable disease, they would peripherally be responsible for their death. If a program does not function the way it should, it is your fault, which is why it would make sense to fund public programs as much as possible to make sure they function properly, and function well.”
    I am a third party to this contract. I never consented (this applies to the Constitution as well). Secondly, I disagree with your notion that I pay the government  with taxes. “Payment” indicates I have the option of not paying.  It’s quite clear that in America, a person does not own his or her wages. To have ownership, or a property right, one has complete control over said property.  The Federal government pays me 72% of my wages, and it  decided it gets to keep the other 28%. They have the control of my wages, thus my wages are the government’s property (much in the same way no one really owns a car, or a house, since almost no American owns a car or a house with an allodial title). 

    The way our system of money is setup, debt is NOT paid with taxes. Debt is monetized through the centrally planned monetary system. The Federal Reserve swaps notes (money created out of thin air) for Treasury Debt. Doesn’t that seem sketchy already? Swapping a note as money (note = debt) for another debt instrument?  Anyways, the Treasury pays interest to the Fed on its debt (so the American citizens get to pay a usuary fee on the “money” in their wallets). But guess what? THE FED REMITS THE INTEREST PAYMENTS BAAAACCCKKKK TO THE TREASURY (after “operating costs”)!!! What are operating costs you ask? Simple, all banks are required to own shares in their respective regionally banks. These shares payout a fixed dividend of 6%. So this happens where the Treasury and the Fed pass the money back and forth, while the banking institutions collect 6% off the top. Guess what happens when the Treasury matures? THE FUCKING FED ROLLS OVER THE PRINCIPLE!!!!!!!!!! What’s this mean? The Treasury debt is completely monetized, meaning the Treasury never really pays the debt that was used to pay for whatever government programs. 

    So now I ask you, if debt is merely monetized, then what the fuck is the point of an income tax, other than to further siphon your money away through direct taxation and inflation, and hand it out to large financial institutions, global corporations…and wall street to bet and bid up and manipulate anything it so chooses with cheap money?

  • Anonymous

    forgive me for this oversight, but i just can’t find the government in healthcare. Could you point it out? He had no government insurance. He did not go to a government hospital (they don’t exist, except for, perhaps the VA, but then, hospital is a rather liberal application of the term). The government did not get involved in any way that I can see…. so, do tell – what is the role of government in driving up these particular costs?

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000617577904 Brian Walker

    “Also, the majority of the time the Constitution is invoked in any sort of contemporary political discussion, it is by people who view it as some manner of holy writ, and treat every word as if were divinely inspired, and yet always pish-posh the clause about providing for the general welfare, and forget (or are entirely unaware) that many of the founding fathers had socialist proclivities, and almost none of them supported capitalism, especially how it is practised today. This is how you get Jefferson referring to corporations as the ‘Monied Aristocracy’ and this little gem out of Thomas Paine’s Agrarian Justice:”
    How are corporations created? Who grants them their legal status? Who granted them “person-hood?”

    Corporations do not exist in the absence of government. Hell, The United States of America is in itself a legal federal Corporation!

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000617577904 Brian Walker

    I think he was calling you a cunt. 

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000617577904 Brian Walker

    “Those who reject government prefer oppression by corporations.”
    Jesus Christ. Corporations are created through government.  A corporation doesn’t exist without a government. It’s how they gain their status as a corporation, it’s how they gain “person-hood,” it’s how they gain limited liability….

    AHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!

  • Anonymous

    Yeah, that’s usually what I do when people call me on drunken bullshit – i just say, “you’re a cunt”. It’s understandable, if not funny, or pertinent. Though, you’ve lived the vast majority of your life like that, so I suppose the two of you are used to it.

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  • Anonymous

    Corporations don’t wage wars.  They’re too expensive.  They buy politicians, and then the government convinces the people to go to war.  That’s  how the government and capital work hand-in-hand.

    That’s why we went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

  • Tuna Ghost

    I don’t think anyone with a rational mind thinks slavery is on the horizon or even possible.  But there is an issue with human and civil rights.  The problem is, to preserve an ideology libertarians are willing to sacrifice human and civil rights by pushing states rights.  I’ve spoken to so many that think states should be able to decide whether or not discrimination is legal.  ”Why shouldn’t I get to choose who comes into my business?” and so on, ignoring the fact that doing so is giving people the ability to legally discriminate based on race and color.  What happens when hospitals do this?  When real estate agencies do this?  Pretending we’re all on equal footing or that this wouldn’t serve only the ethnic majority is ignoring a significant portion of reality.  

  • Anonymous

    Screw the states.  What about personal, individual liberties? If you let the states decides issues like abortion, sodomy, gay marriage, affirmative action, and other things, you’re going to end up with a hella lot of white supremacist, Christian theocratic governments.  These cryptofascists would strip Muslims, gays, women, immigrants, and some minorities of their rights.

  • Tuna Ghost

    Wouldn’t blue states like the opportunity to vote for these things WITHOUT the interference of red states? And vice versa…

    What happens when one state wants to allow violations of human and civil rights?  The federal government got involved in the civil rights case because it was a problem that needed to be tackled on a national level, and that is what the federal government is for.  There is more than one case like this.  Some things aren’t meant to be left up to the states.

  • Tuna Ghost

    Okay, so he was too harsh and you didn’t deserve that.  I agree.  But his points still stand–it’s not as simple as you’re making it out to be.  It’s not a case of just “voting out” the bad guys or bad policies.  

  • Tuna Ghost

    Wow.  All that text and not a bit of it addressed my point.  Well done.

    By the way:  You love your “bail outs” because it gives you the illsuion everything is ok, when all it is is massive transfer of wealth from your pockets, to the bankers.

    You’re not serious, right?  NOBODY liked the bank bailouts.  Did you not see the huge outcry against it?  Why am I even bothering to talk to you, if you can’t notice even that?  

  • Tuna Ghost

    Plastic surgery isn’t always simply a luxury surgery so people can have bigger breasts and smaller noses, you know.  It also helps burn victims, people born with facial disfigurements, people who had masectomies, and a whole host of other things.  Its not always a vanity. 

  • Tuna Ghost

    Plastic surgery isn’t always simply a luxury surgery so people can have bigger breasts and smaller noses, you know.  It also helps burn victims, people born with facial disfigurements, people who had masectomies, and a whole host of other things.  Its not always a vanity. 

  • Tuna Ghost

    Check out his views on, say, racism for an unpleasant surprise.  In a Salon.com article from a few years past that I am fond of quoting, he calls recent TSA hires “suspicious” because either they’re not white, or because, since they’re not white, they don’t look “American”.  It’s such blatant racism you’ll wonder how on earth you’ve never heard anyone call him up on it.  

  • Tuna Ghost

    Wait, he’s a serf because he thinks it is the government’s duty to protect its citizens with the rule of law?  You don’t actually know much about government, do you?  Where on earth are you getting all this?  Seriously though.  Where did you get these opinions?  And why do you not address people’s actual points?

  • Tuna Ghost

    Btw, Mao and Stalin were “communist” in the same way that a donkey with black and white paint is a zebra.

  • Tuna Ghost

    Buddy, if you want people to stop calling you an idiot (which I admit is not polite and often unhelpful to a discussion) then you need to stop posting, if you’ll forgive me, idiotic things.  Claiming that people weren’t just left to die in the past because they didn’t have money for treatment when, not only did that happen fairly commonly, but is happening right here and now is a prime example.  How can we take you seriously when you write things like that?  Why should we think you are at all informed when you’ve clearly not noticed something like that?  We’re willing to give you a chance, but for the love of god step up your game.  

  • Tuna Ghost

    Well thank god I’m just a potted plant whose branches have been draped across a keyboard, not a person or anything.  Me and my hot model girlfriend will have a long talk about this tonight after I make love for several hours.  In my Ferrari.  

    Also, sometimes I’m a ninja.

    Prove me wrong.  

  • Tuna Ghost

    Oh you’re trying to help us.  By completely misunderstanding the terms whose definitions were posted in black and white.  By you.  Helping us by not knowing a goddam thing about how government functions, or how the world works, or what has been happening for most of US history.  And by, not surprisingly, blaming Jews.  

    Wotta guy!  Go ahead and don’t bother next time.

  • Tuna Ghost

    No, we need government agencies to keep them from poisoning us.  Which they would gladly do if there was a dollar in it.  Make no mistake: the CEO of any corporation has only one legal responsibility: pursue short-term profits.  This is not hyperbole.  The precedent was set in Ford v.s. Dodge back in the twenties.  Ford wanted to pay his employees more because he figured, hey, maybe they’ll turn around and buy one of the cars they built, giving it right back to me in the long run.  Maybe it’ll attract better talent and I’ll build better cars, making more money in the long run.  Good idea, yeah?  Except the Dodge brothers sued the shit out of him because he wasn’t maximizing profits.  And they won.  

  • Tuna Ghost

    Not a good argument in my opinion.

    Except that, as quartz noted, it is backed up by decades of corporate history.    

    Do you know what happens to a company with a dangerous product?  It dies.

    Not here it doesn’t.  As has been proven, time and time again, throughout US history.  You think that, because it makes sense (and it does, we’re not arguing that) that what you’re saying is true.  It’s not.  That is simply not how the US market works, that is not how it has worked for the last 100 years.  

    The responsibility for safety lies in me and you.

    We have the responsibility to ensure that companies aren’t making dangerous products and then lying about it to the public?  Care to explain that one, guy?

  • Tuna Ghost

    Holy god, it just said something that wasn’t complete bullshit!  It’s even…correct!  I think I just shat my pants.  

  • Anonymous

    Now I get it. It’s the cult of personality… Ron paul followers have been offended.

  • Anonymous

    Yeah some people say its crazy but I dunno, returning to a model where the federal government dealt with defense and foreign affairs…maybe funding large science projects but that’s about it. Everything else should be devolved to the states and the states should be empowered the enact the agendas they choose. One Passport, 50 countries. One army, 50 countries.

    The only, only issue I see with something like this is some states becoming so impoverished that mass migrations to other states will occur…causing a backlash among richer states and possibly some form of conflict. But thats the worst case I believe.

  • Big Gummamit

    You’re smarter than that FxChiP…. Most Paul supporters hate Bush policies… there’s not enough room on the internet to recap everything wrong with the Bush administration.  Just don’t give Obama a free pass because the liberal base was too lazy to oppose the corruption. 

  • Anonymous

    I haven’t read anything from Ronald Coase. I’m going to have to look it up and add it to my reading list. Thanks for posting about it :)

  • Anonymous

    The reason I somewhat favor giving more rights to states, is the idea that change is more likely to be produced at the state level. Look at what states like California and Colorado have done with marijuana laws? There is a de facto legalization currently in place and it makes me jealous to live in a state that still retains repressive policies towards the herb.

    Now, part of the reason other states don’t adopt more decrim or legalization like policies in regards to marijuana is the constant overbearing trumpet of propaganda, funding, and armed agents threatening to descend upon your state at any time. The Obama administration seems to be taking a hands-off approach but a new President could easily change that and send the DEA swooping in to raid ALL the medical MJ facilities, if he so chooses because the Fed trumps state law when it comes to “controlled substances”. Some states are unlikely to ever loosen their laws and this is fine, one can simply move.

    But as we saw with the health care debacle; any meaningful social reforms are going to be hard fought with ludicrous lies by well funded interests and waves of ignorant slogan shouting supporters. I would love to enact much needed social change on a national level but can we win the fight or should we redraw the lines and let each state decide its own fate? I honestly don’t know.

  • Anonymous

    Point of reference: I do make 80k+. And I do, in fact, use the public roads more than someone making 25k is likely to be using them (well, before I started working from home I was anyway, but most people don’t have that option). Why? Because I can afford to live farther away from where I work to find a better neighborhood, so I have to commute farther, and I can afford to pay for gas. I can afford to go for a drive on the weekends and play tourist to blow off some of the stress from my cubicle job. The guy making 25k can’t afford any of those things and may not even be making enough to have his own car, esp. if there’s any kids along with it. I, on the other hand, put over a thousand miles on my car every month just for normal use, before factoring in “mini-vacations”.

    More to the point, I can afford to pay more toward the public good than the guy making 25k before it runs up against making my finances impossible. Even 1k taken from him may mean the difference between his kids getting 3 square meals a day or having to skip dinner twice a week. I’ve been there too. That’s the way it is at that income level. At the 80k end, you’d have to take about 30-40k before I had to start making that same decision.

    Provided the money was actually going to progress in this country and making sure that if people fall down there’s a net there to catch them so they can get up on their feet again? And actually going to maintain our infrastructure so the highways are drivable and cities are protected from natural disasters? Going into science and NASA and education? I’d gladly give half my paycheck up for that.

  • Anonymous

    Point of reference: I do make 80k+. And I do, in fact, use the public roads more than someone making 25k is likely to be using them (well, before I started working from home I was anyway, but most people don’t have that option). Why? Because I can afford to live farther away from where I work to find a better neighborhood, so I have to commute farther, and I can afford to pay for gas. I can afford to go for a drive on the weekends and play tourist to blow off some of the stress from my cubicle job. The guy making 25k can’t afford any of those things and may not even be making enough to have his own car, esp. if there’s any kids along with it. I, on the other hand, put over a thousand miles on my car every month just for normal use, before factoring in “mini-vacations”.

    More to the point, I can afford to pay more toward the public good than the guy making 25k before it runs up against making my finances impossible. Even 1k taken from him may mean the difference between his kids getting 3 square meals a day or having to skip dinner twice a week. I’ve been there too. That’s the way it is at that income level. At the 80k end, you’d have to take about 30-40k before I had to start making that same decision.

    Provided the money was actually going to progress in this country and making sure that if people fall down there’s a net there to catch them so they can get up on their feet again? And actually going to maintain our infrastructure so the highways are drivable and cities are protected from natural disasters? Going into science and NASA and education? I’d gladly give half my paycheck up for that.

  • Anonymous

    How is any of what you just stated different from what happens on a national level?

  • Anonymous

    Eh, while I stand by my statement, I want to point out that I think the whole issue of people who consume something more paying for more of the thing being consumed would be solved if we’d abolish taxes on work and instead charge taxes for use and consumption. A federal sales tax on non-necessities, maybe even toll booths along all the highways, that sort of thing. I think that’s a better and fairer solution for gathering taxes. But I’d still gladly pay much higher sales tax/tolls/etc up to half my paycheck if it was actually going to progress in the country.

  • Anonymous

    Eh, while I stand by my statement, I want to point out that I think the whole issue of people who consume something more paying for more of the thing being consumed would be solved if we’d abolish taxes on work and instead charge taxes for use and consumption. A federal sales tax on non-necessities, maybe even toll booths along all the highways, that sort of thing. I think that’s a better and fairer solution for gathering taxes. But I’d still gladly pay much higher sales tax/tolls/etc up to half my paycheck if it was actually going to progress in the country.

  • Anonymous

    Eh, while I stand by my statement, I want to point out that I think the whole issue of people who consume something more paying for more of the thing being consumed would be solved if we’d abolish taxes on work and instead charge taxes for use and consumption. A federal sales tax on non-necessities, maybe even toll booths along all the highways, that sort of thing. I think that’s a better and fairer solution for gathering taxes. But I’d still gladly pay much higher sales tax/tolls/etc up to half my paycheck if it was actually going to progress in the country.

  • Anonymous

    Eh, while I stand by my statement, I want to point out that I think the whole issue of people who consume something more paying for more of the thing being consumed would be solved if we’d abolish taxes on work and instead charge taxes for use and consumption. A federal sales tax on non-necessities, maybe even toll booths along all the highways, that sort of thing. I think that’s a better and fairer solution for gathering taxes. But I’d still gladly pay much higher sales tax/tolls/etc up to half my paycheck if it was actually going to progress in the country.

  • Anonymous

    Sure many things are not state issues….but how much of an over-reach is there? I personally, am a committed socialist, 100% believe it is the right thing to do morally and logically. However I have serious doubts that any progress will ever be made towards that end as long as virtually every major issue must be framed as a national one and must pass through congress. The oppressive controlled substances act is perhaps one piece of legislation that most here can agree is a heinous over-reach of federal power.

    To be clear, I’m not opposed to federal power in any kind of legal, constitutional sense. I am opposed because it is the easiest way for large interests to push bogus legislation onto each and every one of us, I am tactically opposed because I have yet to see anyone, except maybe Howard Dean, make any attempt to actually win over the country to a more socially conscious agenda.

  • Anonymous

    Sure many things are not state issues….but how much of an over-reach is there? I personally, am a committed socialist, 100% believe it is the right thing to do morally and logically. However I have serious doubts that any progress will ever be made towards that end as long as virtually every major issue must be framed as a national one and must pass through congress. The oppressive controlled substances act is perhaps one piece of legislation that most here can agree is a heinous over-reach of federal power.

    To be clear, I’m not opposed to federal power in any kind of legal, constitutional sense. I am opposed because it is the easiest way for large interests to push bogus legislation onto each and every one of us, I am tactically opposed because I have yet to see anyone, except maybe Howard Dean, make any attempt to actually win over the country to a more socially conscious agenda.

  • Anonymous

    Sure many things are not state issues….but how much of an over-reach is there? I personally, am a committed socialist, 100% believe it is the right thing to do morally and logically. However I have serious doubts that any progress will ever be made towards that end as long as virtually every major issue must be framed as a national one and must pass through congress. The oppressive controlled substances act is perhaps one piece of legislation that most here can agree is a heinous over-reach of federal power.

    To be clear, I’m not opposed to federal power in any kind of legal, constitutional sense. I am opposed because it is the easiest way for large interests to push bogus legislation onto each and every one of us, I am tactically opposed because I have yet to see anyone, except maybe Howard Dean, make any attempt to actually win over the country to a more socially conscious agenda.

  • Anonymous

    Sure many things are not state issues….but how much of an over-reach is there? I personally, am a committed socialist, 100% believe it is the right thing to do morally and logically. However I have serious doubts that any progress will ever be made towards that end as long as virtually every major issue must be framed as a national one and must pass through congress. The oppressive controlled substances act is perhaps one piece of legislation that most here can agree is a heinous over-reach of federal power.

    To be clear, I’m not opposed to federal power in any kind of legal, constitutional sense. I am opposed because it is the easiest way for large interests to push bogus legislation onto each and every one of us, I am tactically opposed because I have yet to see anyone, except maybe Howard Dean, make any attempt to actually win over the country to a more socially conscious agenda.

  • Anonymous

    Ah, being a CEO is so passe. And there’s a class war on the horizon, you know. Wouldn’t want to wait around long enough to be caught up in that.

    I think today I’ll be a multi-millionaire on a yacht in International Waters where they’ll never find me… I’m a “job creator” donchaknow. And maybe investing in your privatized water resources…

  • Anonymous

    Ah, being a CEO is so passe. And there’s a class war on the horizon, you know. Wouldn’t want to wait around long enough to be caught up in that.

    I think today I’ll be a multi-millionaire on a yacht in International Waters where they’ll never find me… I’m a “job creator” donchaknow. And maybe investing in your privatized water resources…

  • Anonymous

    Ah, being a CEO is so passe. And there’s a class war on the horizon, you know. Wouldn’t want to wait around long enough to be caught up in that.

    I think today I’ll be a multi-millionaire on a yacht in International Waters where they’ll never find me… I’m a “job creator” donchaknow. And maybe investing in your privatized water resources…

  • Anonymous

    dude….i hate to say it but, shut the fuck up

  • Anonymous

    dude….i hate to say it but, shut the fuck up

  • Anonymous

    dude….i hate to say it but, shut the fuck up

  • Anonymous

    dude….i hate to say it but, shut the fuck up

  • E.B. Wolf

    It’s been my experience that a large majority of Americans, even many with above average intelligence, tend to have highly compartmentalized minds.

  • Anonymous

    They probably haven’t gotten that far in his civics class. Or maybe he doesn’t get to take civics until next year.

    …Hell, do they even still teach civics or am I just showing my age…

  • Anonymous

    Yes, that’s the problem. It couldn’t be the people who write things when they have no idea what the hell they’re saying and then get huffy when people take it to mean what it actually says. You basically just said we should have to rely on charities just like the ones in Africa. That implies that you think the situation in Africa is the ideal situation. Don’t be surprised by answers that assume you think so.

  • Anonymous

    You say that like you think it’s an insult. I’ll have you know a good half the population falls under that description. Including your mother. You talk about your mother that way?

  • Anonymous

    That is, in fact, what they want. If we’re all sick and scrambling to stay afloat, we won’t have time to realize just how much they’re screwing us over and we’ll be too feeble to organize a true resistance to stop it.

  • Anonymous

    You’re right. Most of the people claiming to be libertarians I end up interacting with turn out to just be a stripe of republican who still thinks Bill O’Reilly and Limbaugh are gods and still use them as a primary information source and still spout most of their talking points and just think it’s “cool” to be “different”. If you don’t, well, you’ve got a leg up on them.

    That doesn’t in any way change anything I said other the last sentence. The point of what they’re doing in those states is to remove the public from being able to do anything about it, and to make those tactics legal. Once it’s legal, it doesn’t matter how much people protest or what suits they bring.

    I’ll say it again. Go study the situations in those three states before you come back going “Oh, they should just do X and it’ll be all sunshine and kittens again.” You asked what states don’t provide things like healthcare and education. I answered you that it’ll be all of them if things continue the way they are going and gave you three examples where it’s being attempted right now. Pretending it’s as simple as “just file a suit!” is pretty ignorant. For one thing, with what money? Most people can’t afford lawyers. For another, the things being done are made legal as part of the legislation so a lengthy court battle will not only not happen because the people affected don’t have the money for lawyers but because they’re not fighting anything that is illegal (now).

    Leaving things to the states isn’t the great panacea you seem to think it is. The governments of the states are just as corrupt as the federal government, and the people at large don’t have much more say in their state government than they do in their federal.

  • Andrew

    Not to mention that healthy people–people with preventative health care–can work harder, be more self sufficient, and contribute more to the economy.

  • Anonymous

    *pst* It’s “her”. I know, hard to tell on the internet ;)

    But I don’t think there’s any amount of harshness that’s too much for pointing out stupidity. Part of the problem in this country: We’ve moved to the point where we not only don’t shame people for being fucking stupid, but we encourage it. Consider it me doing my part for bring some shame back to the charge of willful ignorance.

    That said, I fail to see how I was being harsh. Unless you mean conflating him with the republicans in which case, you may be right there.

  • Andrew

    U mad bro?

  • Anon

    You are most welcome – I came across his work while studying climate change law and found it an interesting and important step in the shaping of where-we-are-now-and-why, a subject of enduring interest to myself, and, happily, others also…

    If you haven’t already tracked it down, here’s a link to the article from the Journal of Law & Economics: http://www.sfu.ca/~allen/CoaseJLE1960.pdf 

    His earlier work ‘The Nature of the Firm’ is also a classic for its description of the economic forces which drive individual economic actors to join forces and form corporations et al – it’s all about the transaction costs, y’see – this is the idea that Julian Assange picked up with his ‘Conspiracy as Government’ essay, fwiw…

  • Andrew

    Ah yes, I want society to be organized by someone who calls those not as successful as him “leeches” and “subhumans.”  I’m sure that attitude would bring freedom and prosperity to most.

  • Landruc

    > Really… I’m a humanitarian at heart,

    Sure.  I think you mean “subhuman”itarian.

  • Andrew

    Strike the “leeches” part, that was some other humanitarian.

  • Anonymous

    But, laws that are based on racial division, do nothing but create resentment, and more racism. Affirmative action laws discriminate. It’s a property rights issue. If a business is ignorant enough to discriminate, most people will not go there. I wouldn’t. You can’t legislate and mandate personal beliefs. That’s the thing about freedom, if we’re gonna say it’s a free country, people have to be free to be ignorant. They would not stay in business long. If we want a colorblind society, we need to stop dividing the people, even if it’s done with good intentions. The President of the NAACP came out in defense of Ron Paul, and his positions.

  • Anonymous

    But, laws that are based on racial division, do nothing but create resentment, and more racism. Affirmative action laws discriminate. It’s a property rights issue. If a business is ignorant enough to discriminate, most people will not go there. I wouldn’t. You can’t legislate and mandate personal beliefs. That’s the thing about freedom, if we’re gonna say it’s a free country, people have to be free to be ignorant. They would not stay in business long. If we want a colorblind society, we need to stop dividing the people, even if it’s done with good intentions. The President of the NAACP came out in defense of Ron Paul, and his positions.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=709803427 Rob Stacey

    You should just say zionist then in the first place, it’s bad enough they themselves hide behind Judaism to avoid any scrutiny of their actions. 

  • Anonymous

    It isn’t. That’s my point. This idea that the states are somehow going to do it better or do it right or are somehow more under control of their citizens than the federal government is, is just so much bullshit. I just cited three good examples of that fact being taken to an extreme.

  • Anonymous

    Human rights violations are prohibited by the Constitution, which ALL states must abide by. The federal government would be required to step in and stop them. Like it did during the civil war. You people seem to not understand how this nation was meant to work. Understandable, since it’s strayed so far from it’s original intent.

  • Anonymous

    Yes, what about personal and individual liberties? We don’t have them now, under our powerful federal government. Corporationa decide what liberties we should be permitted. Look at how many people are in jail for possessing a PLANT, that the corporations made illegal because that plant competes with so many of their synthetic products.

  • Anonymous

    I’m still not understanding how those state representatives are immune from being voted out. I’m not sure what there reasoning is for cutting those programs, maybe it’s because so much of ALL of the states money is being used to fund overseas military aggression and bases. Ron Paul wants to bring the troops home, and use half the money saved to pay down the debt, and the other half to fund social programs like social security and medicare. Again, you people haven’t researched his ACTUAL policy ideas. He KNOWS he can’t turn things around to where he feels they should have been all along, as so many have already paid into the system, and are dependent on it. He actually sponsored a bill that would stop the federal government from spending the social security funds. You guys don’t have a clue about this man.

  • Anonymous

    That requires long term thinking to grasp as a concept though, something this country is woefully incapable of at the moment. I call it “penny smart and dollar stupid.” It’s the same mindset that makes the building maintenance manager order substandard paper towels. It’s fifty cents less per roll after all and you’ve got a ten story building with close to fifty bathrooms. What a savings! …until people start using it and it turns out it’s so thin they have to use three times as much and you end up paying twice what you were paying with the higher quality paper. In nearly every situation where people have to decide “short term gain” or “greater but delayed gain” people pick the instant gain.

  • Anonymous

    Well, under such a system, there would be less federal regulation, and again, less money being pulled from the states to fund the overseas empire. With less regulation, states can create new industries (like industrial hemp), and bring manufacturing jobs back.

  • Anonymous

    Well, under such a system, there would be less federal regulation, and again, less money being pulled from the states to fund the overseas empire. With less regulation, states can create new industries (like industrial hemp), and bring manufacturing jobs back.

  • Anonymous

    thanks for the titles and the link :)

  • Anonymous

    and that’s assuming it can even be reliably traced to a particular product in the first place. When it’s not traceable or has a delayed reaction, what would ever stop them? How many people have to die or be harmed before you isolate it to one product or company?

  • Anonymous

    Among other things they’ve tried introducing legislation to remove the ability of citizens to call for a recall. And then when there is an election, it is becoming common (in Wisconsin anyway) for exactly the right number of votes for the conservative candidate to mysteriously be “found” in a sympathetic official’s computer after the official count is nearly over and the conservative was losing by a large margin up to that point. Happened just a couple weeks ago again even. In Michigan they’re removing the elected officials and replacing them with appointed ones who cannot be voted out and have no accountability to the public. When you can’t hold an interim election, and the regular elections are a sham, what do you do? Short, that is, of pitchforks and torches?

    I reiterate, again again: “Go study those situations in those states. Don’t come back asking these
    stupid questions and spouting off about them until you do.”

  • http://hormeticminds.blogspot.com/ Chaorder Gradient

    The states rights issue is the willingness to let states experiement with themselves as their own little mostly sovereign nation. when the states have the freedom do do what they choose, different issues can be worked out on the states that really care about them, and if there is a dramatic difference between states: thats okay! we can see the distinctions, see what is better, or just realize that some people prefer one way or another. When wisconsin’s people see that they are getting the shit end of the deal (which they do) they will continue to protest it until it is fixed.

    However when we have a top-down federal legislation coming before the state legislation, then it is a blanket across the whole nation, and the states cannot compare different approaches to issues, because the same approach is being forced upon every state. It is antithetical to the ingenuity that was intended with the US constitution. It leads to short-sightedness and confusion rather than what is supposed to be a situation that is an effective group of 50 experiments going simultaneously.

  • Mr Willow

    I understand what you are saying. 

    California got its right to have legal marijuana through the people appealing (and protesting) to the state government, but by the same token Scott Walker completely gutted the education system in Wisconsin despite people’s appeals and protests, and Rick Scott refused to put high-speed rail in Florida—which I don’t think I need to point out would have created a multitude of jobs—and is forcing poor people to have arbitrary drug testing before allowing them to receive welfare benefits. 

    The idea that State governments are more easily directed by the general populace than the Federal government, I think, is fallacious, especially when (again going back to Wisconsin) Scott Walker signed his quite hated bill with a crowd outside screaming at him not to and a man standing with a law book in front of him saying “You can’t do this.” 

    In the end, power is power, and in all honesty, before any major legislation is passed on a state or national level, I would much prefer a miniature election for that law, where the region or nation puts it all to a vote. It would be a big step in direct governance by the People. 

  • Anonymous

    A person who is forced by economic necessity to do a job they despise is a slave.

    Wage slavery is slavery.

    Slavery can’t come back because it never went away.

  • http://hormeticminds.blogspot.com/ Chaorder Gradient

    yeah i replied to quartz about this, I agree there is important plastic surgery, but doctor’s discression needs to take into consideration more than profit motive. There are obvious situations where cosmetic surgery is simply just that, a mind being tainted by something like the beauty industry in some manner where they are convinced they are ugly, and modifying yourself surgically is the only (or only easy) way of “fixing” oneself.

    of course returning to a normal life after an injury, or even if they have some sort of regular deformity that could have social implications, is what plastic surgery is actually for. (I tend to distinguish “plastic” surgury from “cosmetic” surgery, in that the cosmetic kind is related to vanity)

  • Anonymous

    I like your suggestion about the referendum on new laws, maybe just for certain ones. And, yes I live in Florida and understand how futile state politics can be as well. I guess what we need is to deepen our democracy…im just beyond frustrated at the lack of democracy at the top levels

  • Anonymous

    I like your suggestion about the referendum on new laws, maybe just for certain ones. And, yes I live in Florida and understand how futile state politics can be as well. I guess what we need is to deepen our democracy…im just beyond frustrated at the lack of democracy at the top levels

  • Anonymous

    I like your suggestion about the referendum on new laws, maybe just for certain ones. And, yes I live in Florida and understand how futile state politics can be as well. I guess what we need is to deepen our democracy…im just beyond frustrated at the lack of democracy at the top levels

  • Anonymous

    I like your suggestion about the referendum on new laws, maybe just for certain ones. And, yes I live in Florida and understand how futile state politics can be as well. I guess what we need is to deepen our democracy…im just beyond frustrated at the lack of democracy at the top levels

  • Anonymous

    This is something I think we can agree on, even if we probably disagree on some of the specifics of where one’s personal freedom becomes infringing on the freedom of everyone else.

  • http://hormeticminds.blogspot.com/ Chaorder Gradient

    It seems you equate all things in the upper echelons as being allied with eachother and ignore the complexity of it all. In this light, all corporations and the government are synonymous, so therefore powerful corporations are defined as a powerful government when in reality they are separate entities. Given the lines are blurred by our fucked up system involving campaign financing and such, and that is the major chain that many are demanding being broken, so we can take back our country by actually being able to yell louder than the corporatocracy. You’re defining of the nation as socialist is from your short-term perspective of a corporate controlled state.

  • Anonymous

    You know, we do carry that responsibility. That’s part of what “for the public good” is supposed to cover in the various levels of government. We individually cannot hold large corporations accountable for their behaviors because we do not posses the resources to do so. But if we want them to be accountable, we are responsible for making sure we only elect people to political office who want there to be ways to make them accountable. Only in aggregate power (which translates to one of two things: governments or mobs with pitchforks – metaphorical or literal) can “the people” put themselves in a position to force the larger entities to do what’s best for “the people.”

    Pointing out that we are responsible for our safety is actually an argument in favor of regulation by an entity that is more powerful than the corporation, controlled by the populace at large. (Yeah, I know, that doesn’t describe our current government very well in action but it’s the best we’ve got at the moment).

  • Anonymous

    I wasn’t talking about recalls, I was talking about elections. If you’re trying to say they can’t vote for somebody else, youre a liar. I don’t need to research those situations, because the people CAN change it there. The people in those states need to assert themselves, or deal with the situation they have. And I’m not “spouting off”. Go fuck yourself, I don’t appreciate your condescending tone.

  • Anonymous

    It’s pretty simple, if you’re endangering, or threatening somebody else’s life or liberty, it crosses the line. Alcohol is legal, and people have the choice to drink themselves stupid, even if it’s a bad decision. If they get in a vehicle and drive, they are endangering somebody else’s life, and deserve to be punished. Same should go for drug use, although cannabis is the only drug that I could ever see being made ‘legal’. But that would take a huge bite out of the cartels’ money, about 80%, they’d collapse from infighting over the last bits of cash from hard drugs. I would also like to see users of those drugs not face criminal penalties, and be offered help.

  • Mr Willow

    A Corporation is created when a business becomes a franchise after it expands from selling whatever product it is making it needs no government to do this. 

    In no way is this, in itself, a bad thing, either, so long as the ‘corporate’ aspect of it does not override the happiness or well-being of the workers that are left in the factories to manufacture whatever product or in the store to sell the product. The reason the majority look upon corporations with ire is that just the opposite invariably occurs. Capitalism—or more accurately consumerism—dictates you must make money, and not just money, but a lot of money, more money than you can spend in three or four lifetimes, and this equates with happiness or success. 

    However, if all the wealth that is gained by all the labour goes to the corporate headquarters, whose inhabitants do nothing but function as PR and make (at times viable) decisions, while their company deprives workers of safety, any sense of fulfillment (as the workers are not their to fulfill themselves, but fulfill their ultimate bosses), and works them an inordinate amount of time for pennies, then it is an injustice. 

    The reason corporations were granted person-hood is because with all of their wealth, as well as their unquenchable lust for further power—along with capitalism’s ever present drum-beat of having more of both is not only desirable but the name of the game—they began buying politicians through lobbying (and not just federal officials, but state and local ones as well) which in turn granted them permission to further degrade work conditions, and to spoil the environment with pollutants. 

    But still, that was not enough, as there still exists government programs that compete with them—and corporations do not value competition (see Apple’s complaints after other companies started putting out tablets)—as well as regulations that prevent them from operating factories like sweat-shops, with little regard for their own workers—as workers by this point are seen as nothing more than exploitable commodities—and if they could do away with things like the minimum wage or workplace safety regulations, they could extract more money because they wouldn’t have to pay pesky salaries, or for trivial safety devices like guardrails, in the case of education, there still exist public schools (money to be extracted), and  in the case of healthcare, the elderly and poor are still guarded by public programs (money to be extracted). 

    So, beginning with Reagan (thereabouts), they began running the government like a corporation, where people are no longer the upstanding citizens that should be protected from businesses that wish only for you’re money and care little, if at all, about the quality of the product or service they are selling—this can be seen everywhere from a decrease in manufacturing quality in anything from furniture to firearms (yes, it’s beginning to have an effect there as well) and a lack of outright service (arbitrary preëxisting conditions anyöne?)—but money grubbing leeches who only want handouts in return for the tax money they pay into the system. There is now so much bleed-over between Corporate America and the Government they are almost a sole entity, where a regulator confirms a merger (NBC-Comcast) and then immediately goes to sit on the board of directors for the company she just created. The bailouts were a result of Wall-Street buyouts of members of Congress.

    Bottom line: the Government—both state (where applicable) and federal—functions like a Corporation because it is owned by corporations.

  • Anonymous

    Sure, they can vote for whoever they want, in the places where there’s even still elections. Some communities aren’t allowed those anymore. Then, in Michigan, they can watch the person they voted for being replaced by whomever the governor appoints. Or in Wisconsin, they can watch at the last second as a landslide of votes is “found” for the other guy so the conservative wins anyway.

    I wish that was a lie. But it’s not. And no amount of you getting pissy and calling me childish names will make it so.

    If you think you can comment on a situation you won’t even do a cursory examination of on google, that is practically the definition of spouting off. You asked a simple question. I gave you an exceedingly simple answer. If you refuse to look into that answer but want to continue along as though no one had given one, don’t be surprised when I continue to point out the answer.

    I hope you realize that the more you do that, the more deserving of condescension you are, though oddly, I’m actually not being condescending to you. If you choose to take it that way? *shrug* No skin off my nose. I’ve been called a hell of a lot worse just for pointing out basic facts. I apologize for mistaking you for a libertarian-in-name-only-republican. That was a mistake, and I own up to those. Don’t worry, I don’t expect one in return for impugning my honor by calling me a liar or telling me to go fuck myself. I’ve long since come to the conclusion that most people who call themselves libertarians have the notion that they deserve to receive everything due them for being human, and the utmost courtesy, but refuse to give even a fraction of that same due back to anyone else. Not all do, but it’s common enough that it doesn’t surprise me to see it happen.

  • Dubtheworld

    Privatize everything NOW! Corporations obviously have your best interests at heart, and you could always go line up behind a bunch of stinky, cracked out bums for your meals each day…

  • Anonymous

    Yeah, see, something we can agree on. I’d venture to say that we disagree in how to deal with it. If that’s the standard, how does it make a lick of sense to say that in some places it’s ok for it to be legal, and not in others? Are the people in the states where, for example, cannabis is illegal somehow less deserving of the same latitude that the citizens of a state where it is legal are afforded, just because they’re a smaller minority there? Or would this fall under a human rights thing where it’s ok for the federal government to step in (I think I could definitely see this as being considered so)? If you think it counts as a human rights issue, why would this be but gay marriage is considered a states rights issue?

    I believe we have a fundamental disagreement on the concept of the country. I see the USA as a single country. The states exist as a more local unit, just like a municipality is a more local unit than a state. But ultimately, we should be a united country with more or less the same laws. If I drive across the country I shouldn’t have to worry about surprise laws that are radically different every time I cross a state our county line. Minor differences maybe, but nothing radical. I think they’re too different from one state to another as it is, and it causes all manner of headaches every time I have to do anything that relates to more than one state. Think how much time and money and effort is poured into a regional or national company’s legal department that is solely focused on dealing with the differences in state laws.

    Correct me if I’m wrong, but you would prefer to see the country as a loose group of individual countries belonging to a larger unit but essentially being their own countries. So the USA should be more like the EU is than like a country in its own right?

  • Anonymous

    Yeah, see, something we can agree on. I’d venture to say that we disagree in how to deal with it. If that’s the standard, how does it make a lick of sense to say that in some places it’s ok for it to be legal, and not in others? Are the people in the states where, for example, cannabis is illegal somehow less deserving of the same latitude that the citizens of a state where it is legal are afforded, just because they’re a smaller minority there? Or would this fall under a human rights thing where it’s ok for the federal government to step in (I think I could definitely see this as being considered so)? If you think it counts as a human rights issue, why would this be but gay marriage is considered a states rights issue?

    I believe we have a fundamental disagreement on the concept of the country. I see the USA as a single country. The states exist as a more local unit, just like a municipality is a more local unit than a state. But ultimately, we should be a united country with more or less the same laws. If I drive across the country I shouldn’t have to worry about surprise laws that are radically different every time I cross a state our county line. Minor differences maybe, but nothing radical. I think they’re too different from one state to another as it is, and it causes all manner of headaches every time I have to do anything that relates to more than one state. Think how much time and money and effort is poured into a regional or national company’s legal department that is solely focused on dealing with the differences in state laws.

    Correct me if I’m wrong, but you would prefer to see the country as a loose group of individual countries belonging to a larger unit but essentially being their own countries. So the USA should be more like the EU is than like a country in its own right?

  • Anonymous

    Yeah, see, something we can agree on. I’d venture to say that we disagree in how to deal with it. If that’s the standard, how does it make a lick of sense to say that in some places it’s ok for it to be legal, and not in others? Are the people in the states where, for example, cannabis is illegal somehow less deserving of the same latitude that the citizens of a state where it is legal are afforded, just because they’re a smaller minority there? Or would this fall under a human rights thing where it’s ok for the federal government to step in (I think I could definitely see this as being considered so)? If you think it counts as a human rights issue, why would this be but gay marriage is considered a states rights issue?

    I believe we have a fundamental disagreement on the concept of the country. I see the USA as a single country. The states exist as a more local unit, just like a municipality is a more local unit than a state. But ultimately, we should be a united country with more or less the same laws. If I drive across the country I shouldn’t have to worry about surprise laws that are radically different every time I cross a state our county line. Minor differences maybe, but nothing radical. I think they’re too different from one state to another as it is, and it causes all manner of headaches every time I have to do anything that relates to more than one state. Think how much time and money and effort is poured into a regional or national company’s legal department that is solely focused on dealing with the differences in state laws.

    Correct me if I’m wrong, but you would prefer to see the country as a loose group of individual countries belonging to a larger unit but essentially being their own countries. So the USA should be more like the EU is than like a country in its own right?

  • Mr Willow

    So now I ask you, if debt is merely monetized, then what the fuck is the point of an income tax, other than to further siphon your money away through direct taxation and inflation, and hand it out to large financial institutions, global corporations…and wall street to bet and bid up and manipulate anything it so chooses with cheap money?

    Tax money shouldn’t be siphoned to financial institutions, global corporations! And the only reason Wall Street is able to ‘bet and bid up and manipulate anything it so chooses with cheap money’ is because of deregulation. That is all regulations do: place restrictions on corporate power, because without them, corporations abuse such power. 

    Taxes should be going toward the upkeep of the country and it’s citizens—roads, bridges, etc. (country); education, healthcare, etc. (citizens).

  • E.B. Wolf

    nothing substantial to add to this discussion. I was just curious to see how narrow this thread can get.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=14834374 Nick Lafayette

    Three hundred and seventeenth!!!!

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=14834374 Nick Lafayette

    Three hundred and seventeenth!!!!

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=14834374 Nick Lafayette

    Three hundred and seventeenth!!!!

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=14834374 Nick Lafayette

    Three hundred and seventeenth!!!!

  • Anonymous

    lol I was wondering that myself. I think we _might_ be reaching that minimum point…

  • Anonymous

    lol I was wondering that myself. I think we _might_ be reaching that minimum point…

  • Anonymous

    lol I was wondering that myself. I think we _might_ be reaching that minimum point…

  • Anonymous

    another great post. thanks!

  • Anonymous

    That’s what this country was meant to be, a collection of states with the different laws regarding social issues. I would venture to say it wouldn’t be long before all states legalized hemp, once they see how many resources it offers. As for the rest, this nation is already as you said. You have to be aware of different laws when you travel interstate. Here in AZ, I can legally buy an AK-47, and walk around with it slung over my shoulder (although people would probably be pretty nervous by the sight of it). I can’t take that same rifle to CA, or I’d be in big trouble. We have medical cannabis cards here in AZ, but we couldn’t take them to TX, it would be meaningless there. It’s just the way it is, and how it was meant to be. Imagine how impossible it would be to implement nationwide laws, that are subject to change anytime a new administration takes office. The federal government’s only intended purpose was to defend and secure the states, ensure interstate commerce, and ensure the states don’t pass laws that violate the Constitution. Different communities should have the right to vote on different laws that apply to their states, so long as they don’t deprive another of their individual liberty guaranteed under the Constitution. Ron Paul would NOT be able to make all the changes to match his philosophy of strict adherence to the Constitution, checks and balances will still exist. But, it would do us ALL good to have a President in office that is for the people, and not corporate interests. He WILL end the wars, and bring the troops home (as commander in chief). He knows he can’t do away with social programs, and wants to fund them with the money saved by ending the wars. He wants to do away with federal drug laws, not sure if he could make the case successfully that states imprisoning people for bad personal choices that don’t harm others is against the Constitution and a violation of their liberty, maybe he could and I’m sure he’d try.

  • Anon

    “I spent 33 years and four months in active
    military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class
    muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a
    racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially
    Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a
    decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped
    in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of
    Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown
    Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the
    American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American
    fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil
    went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a
    few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I
    operated on three continents.”

    -Marine Major General Smedley Butler, ‘War is a Racket’          
    http://www.archive.org/details/WarIsARacket    

  • Anonymous

    This comment format is ridiculous. It keeps getting skinnier. Anyway, I’m not sure what you mean about there not being elections, all our representatives and officials are elected. And as for the ‘go fuck yourself’ comment, I edited that out right after I posted it, as I felt I was wrong to say that. I can own up to that on my part, as you owned up to assuming I was a republican. I’m not a libertarian either, I’m an independent. I support Ron Paul because I believe in him, and his record proves he is sincere. I don’t agree with everything he says, but again his philosophies and his actual policies are totally different. He’s a deeply religious man, I’m not. He believes life begins at conception, I don’t, I take a more scientific view of abortions when they’re done early and the embryo hasn’t developed a nervous system. That said, Ron Paul would never force his beliefs on others, and has made that clear.

  • Anon

    The benefit of the modern psychological perspective, and especially the influence of Freud’s view of man (sic) as driven by dangerous libidinal drives operating under the surface of conscious apprehension and rational control was used from the outset (most notably by his nephew Edward Bernays, but also contemporaries such as Walter Lippman) to insist upon the need for elite control of democratic populations, who could not be trusted to reach the right views or take the actions deemed necessary by these elites without explicit manipulation (see Adam Curtis’ unspeakably brilliant ‘The Century of the Self’  http://www.archive.org/details/AdamCurtis_TheCenturyOfTheSelf – see also the debates around the introduction of the Prussian model of institutional education in the US, and particularly the not-nearly-famous-enough quote by Woodrow Wilson to the effect that what the nation needed was an education system which would prepare the masses for daily lives of toil as cogs within an industrial machine, while quietly schooling an elite overclass in the skills necessary to manage a population of drones – see: http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/2b.htm ). 

    In a powerful sense, this was a return to the Hobbesian view from the theory of government developed by Locke which used the notion of imputed consent to ameliorate the fundamentally coercive nature of human collectivity and to reconcile the demands of community with Enlightenment ideals of individual autonomy as the defining ‘good’.

    On the evolution of psychology, I agree it’s a necessary perspective which is all too often overlooked but personally, I think the world would have benefited tremendously from more influence by Jung, and in particular his essay ‘The Undiscovered Self (Present and Future)’ which can be found in pdf here: http://www.infinite-beyond.com/scripts/jung_theundiscoveredself.pdf

  • Anon

    Fwiw, the intellectual meat was put on the bones of ‘minarchism’ by Robert Nozick in his 1974 ‘Anarchy, State and Utopia’, which was a response to John Rawls’ 1971 ‘A Theory of Justice’ which aimed to reconcile the conflicting ideals of liberty and equality.

    https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/A_Theory_of_Justice
    https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Anarchy,_State,_and_Utopia

    Of course, most espousing the ideas fleshed out in Nozick’s work are unfamiliar with it, and more readily drawn to the odious self-congratulation on having liberated oneself from the moral obligation to not be an asshole which permeates Rand’s work. 

  • Elmyrl23

    your couch potatoes reference is enough to let me know how great you are.

  • Elmyr23

    wow its like you think freedom for all people is discrimination, the whole point of the country is to unite. We unite under our country and our people.

    you are a toll or bot, change your name to o’realy

  • Elmyr23

    wow its like you think freedom for all people is discrimination, the whole point of the country is to unite. We unite under our country and our people.

    you are a toll or bot, change your name to o’realy

  • Elmyr23

    wow its like you think freedom for all people is discrimination, the whole point of the country is to unite. We unite under our country and our people.

    you are a toll or bot, change your name to o’realy

  • Elmyr23

    wow its like you think freedom for all people is discrimination, the whole point of the country is to unite. We unite under our country and our people.

    you are a toll or bot, change your name to o’realy

  • Tuna Ghost

    It’s a property rights issue. If a business is ignorant enough to discriminate, most people will not go there.

    Why do you think this?  There is no reason to believe that.  In fact, history shows us the exact opposite.  Businesses that do discriminate, businesses that are practicing it right now, still thrive and survive.  There’s a lot of businesses that discriminate in my old neighborhood, where there is a significant amount of segregation.  Real estate agencies should not be able to decide who they service based on race or religion, that’s how we end up with racial ghettos.  Doctors should not decide who they serve based on race or religion.  Not being able to get adequate health care or live in a neighborhood with lower crime rates because of your race is a violation of civil rights.  Businesses should not have that freedom. 

    The problem is, this sort of thinking assumes that all races are on an equal footing, that we’d all be affected equally by legislation of this manner.  That simply isn’t true.  If a business discriminates against, say, black people, it could survive solely by servicing only whites.  There’s no reason to believe it would not be able to thrive if it discriminated against non-whites, especially if it provided a rare service or one that requires qualified people or a lot of training.  Like I noted above, businesses that practice discrimination presently are still doing fine (as fine as any business is doing in this shitty economy).  But the reverse is not true.  A business run by a black person what refused service to whites would not be able to stay in business because it has cut out the vast majority of customers.  

    If we want a colorblind society, we need to stop dividing the people, even if it’s done with good intentions.

    We don’t need a colorblind society, we need a society where all colors are treated equally.  That is different from not recognizing people’s ethnic backrounds.  What you’re written is easy for white people to say, since they’re the ethnic majority and are still benefitting from the horrible acts perpetrated against minorities in the US’s past.  We need to stop pretending races are on an equal footing, or that there is not still a system of oppression in operation against minorities.

  • Tuna Ghost

    Unless you mean conflating him with the republicans in which case, you may be right there.

    Well, I’d certainly take that personally. 

  • Tuna Ghost

    I will NEVER forget the psycopaths

  • JOE

    VOTE RON PAUL NOW DONT DICK AROUND ITS YOUR KIDS LIFE AT STAKE !!!!!!

  • JOE

    VOTE RON PAUL NOW DONT DICK AROUND ITS YOUR KIDS LIFE AT STAKE !!!!!!

  • Anonymous

    You’re kind of thinking is what will perpetuate racism. I do not support any laws that take into consideration race, at all. It should be no more significant than the color of someone’s shirt. You can’t legislate against ignorance, nor should the government even try. If I were going to say a restaurant where the owners or cooks didn’t like me because of my race, I’d probably want to know that, instead of getting my food spat on because they were forced to serve me. And I honestly don’t believe you about those businesses in your old neighborhood.

  • Anonymous

    I don’t think freedom for all people is discrimination, YOU do. And I’m not a “toll”, or a bot. And did you mean O’Reilly? I hate that moron, so maybe we have something in common. And perhaps go back to school and learn about capital letters, and punctuation.

  • Tuna Ghost

    You’re kind of thinking is what will perpetuate racism.

    What kind of thinking?  The kind that dares suggest that we are not living in a post-racial society?  The kind that points out how oppression of minorities still exists?  The kind that points out how very not equal the status quo is?  Ask yourself this: why is it always white people who spew this kind of crap?  Why don’t you listen to actual victims of racism, instead of just taking for granted that your ideas, which come from centuries of privilege, are correct?  Is it possibly because you won’t like what you hear?  

    You can’t legislate against ignorance, nor should the government even try.

    You can legislate against discrimination, though, which keeps the ignorance from causing too much harm.  But since you think that inconveniences you, well shit, I guess minorities are shit out of luck, eh?  

    And I honestly don’t believe you about those businesses in your old neighborhood.

    Of course you don’t.  It contradicts your ideology, after all.  Ask yourself this: why is the Detroit metro area so segregated?  Is it because only white people want to live in the nice neighborhoods?  Or is it because real estate agencies simply do what they can to keep minorities from moving in, as has been exposed numerous times?  In numerous cities?  Throughout the history of the US?  These companies haven’t fallen apart.  For god’s sake, open your fucking eyes and take a look instead of just taking Ron Paul’s word for what is happening.  

    Why am I even surprised that a Ron Paul supporter is racist?  The man himself is blatantly racist.  

  • Tuna Ghost

    You’re kind of thinking is what will perpetuate racism.

    What kind of thinking?  The kind that dares suggest that we are not living in a post-racial society?  The kind that points out how oppression of minorities still exists?  The kind that points out how very not equal the status quo is?  Ask yourself this: why is it always white people who spew this kind of crap?  Why don’t you listen to actual victims of racism, instead of just taking for granted that your ideas, which come from centuries of privilege, are correct?  Is it possibly because you won’t like what you hear?  

    You can’t legislate against ignorance, nor should the government even try.

    You can legislate against discrimination, though, which keeps the ignorance from causing too much harm.  But since you think that inconveniences you, well shit, I guess minorities are shit out of luck, eh?  

    And I honestly don’t believe you about those businesses in your old neighborhood.

    Of course you don’t.  It contradicts your ideology, after all.  Ask yourself this: why is the Detroit metro area so segregated?  Is it because only white people want to live in the nice neighborhoods?  Or is it because real estate agencies simply do what they can to keep minorities from moving in, as has been exposed numerous times?  In numerous cities?  Throughout the history of the US?  These companies haven’t fallen apart.  For god’s sake, open your fucking eyes and take a look instead of just taking Ron Paul’s word for what is happening.  

    Why am I even surprised that a Ron Paul supporter is racist?  The man himself is blatantly racist.  

  • Anonymous

    Sorry, I don’t have this mythical “privilege” that you racists constantly speak of. It has nothing to do with skin color, and everything to do with economic class. There are trailer parks, and there are ghettos, and people choose to segregate, because we are constantly divided by our race anyway by idiots like you. I’m one of the few white males at my job, which is extremely diverse. And if segregation is so rampant where you are, it only shows that even with laws that offer advantages to one race over the other, it hasn’t helped. I say it causes it. And that tired BULLSHIT about Ron Paul being racist, only proves what an ignorant son (or daughter) of a bitch you are.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvAuSXq5etA

  • Tuna Ghost

    Ah.  So supporting racial discrimination isn’t racist, but saying there is still racial inequality that needs to be addressed is.  Gotcha.  Oh, on that subject, here’s a bit of a Salon.com article I find myself quoting often these days:

    “We quadrupled the TSA, you know, and hired more people who look more suspicious to me than most Americans who are getting checked,” he says. “Most of them are, well, you know, they just don’t look very American to me. If I’d have been looking, they look suspicious … I mean, a lot of them can’t even speak English, hardly. Not that I’m accusing them of anything, but it’s sort of ironic.”–Ron Paul

    So do they look suspicious because they’re not white, or, because they’re not white, they don’t look “American”?  How is this not racist?  Explain it to me.  

    It has nothing to do with skin color, and everything to do with economic class

    So it’s just a coincidence that the white folks live in the nice places, and the minorities don’t?  Even the minorities that have similar incomes?  Because that’s what the minorities want, you say?  Guy.  C’mon.  Not even you believe that.  

    And if segregation is so rampant where you are, it only shows that even with laws that offer advantages to one race over the other, it hasn’t helped. I say it causes it.

    Affirmative action causes real estate agencies to discriminate?  Makes perfect sense! Jesus, listen to you.  Explain how that makes any sense at all.   

    So does this mean you’re ready to admit you were wrong about business that practice discrimination, now that it’s been proven that you are wrong?  Why don’t you go ahead and admit that, unless you’ve got some other brilliant insights to share with us, like 

    a) It’s not racism that keeps minorities out of white neighborhoods, it’s money!  Or that minorities want to be segregated into areas that are not as nice!  It’s just a coincidence that minorities report discrimination from real estate agents, and that those neighborhoods are 98% white.  Whatever is going on, it’s not racism!  After all, I’m white.  I know all about racism.

    b) Affirmative action causes the racism.  The racism that doesn’t happen.

    This is what you just told me, guy.  

  • chriscanada

    I am most definitely a Canadian and well aware that Canada is far more socialist than the USA. Thankfully there are major differences between our countries that make our socialism a lot less detrimental to our way of life, and I have have no say in it, so I make do.  For starters and most importantly in a nanny state where everybody needs to be “taken care of” …numbers.  30million (give or take) vs 300million people.  A universal health care system that’s already in place, (with private care for those who want it)  as well as our CPP that isn’t broke (like your social security funds being raided to bomb civillians in other countries).  Just as important,  our stable economy and monetary system (although highjacked by the same zionist banking interests as the USA) is much better off.  We have only 5 major banks, we didn’t give out 300,000.00 mortgages to ppl with no credit check and 5000.00 down. Also, our economy thrives on our exports of abundant resources (hydro, water, oil) as well as a fairly steady manufacturing base (in cars and development) Versus the now phony US  economy (once built on high quality manufacturing now shipped to places like china,india) all you have is a consumerism debt driven economy, where all the good jobs are cut or shipped away to be replaced by part and full time positions at Best Buy and Walmart.  another glaring disadvantage is your TREMENDOUS military spending. (over 1 trillion dollars of your 1.2 trillion dollar annual defecit )  Unfortunately for us, Warhawk Neocon Harper has upped our war spending exponentially, which is hurting us. (Hence our shiny new HST) Finally, USA printing eneormous amounts of your no longer AAA treasurey notes, (under all kinds of hillarious monikers btw. rescue package, bailout, stimuls, jobs bills, also known as the “you love me bill”) steadily devaluing your currency. and putting a “hidden tax” on all citizens in the form soon to be drastic INFLATION. (compare your grocery bill now and 12 months ago….it’s alot more than the “official” 2% increase, I promise you)
      
    anyways we were talking about the problem with socialism…
     
    As for everybody’s praise for socialism. I agree on paper, it works… On paper.  It looks so neat and tidy, and makes all these wonderful promises. (and takes all the responsibility off the individual, which is the MASS appeal, I believe) However, the reality is, you’re taking trillions of your dollars, throwing it into a government coffer and saying “Politicians, we hope you are honest, frugal and have our best interests at heart, spend this money wisely to give us the services we require and favorable, equal conditons at work.  Provide us a high standard of living and preserve us a GOOD retirement.” (and of course complete “oversight” and ”transparency” will preserve the power to the people, right?) Sounds great. and it would be great if you had honest people running the system.  But in politics where money is influence and everybody owes somebody a favor, you have a direct collusion between powerful corporations, government and all these wonderful regulatory agencies created by the government, not elected, and accountable to nobody, but the almighty dollar (FDA for instance)  Through the power of regulations (usually written by lawyers of companies like Monsanto and handed off to FDA for letter head, and an “FDA” stamp.  Now it’s a law) These huge companies literally strangle their competition.  Also,  ”selective” governemnt contracts (state development and or infrastructure projects) going to friends of the Federal government where 50 million dollar jobs become 500 million dollar jobs, you have a gradual and steady “squeeze” on all industries, more profit and power is gradulaly concentrated in fewer hands.  Small businesses, and farmers are being put out of business, just as the good jobs are being sent over seas.  Standard of living is in decline, the government cries out to you “we’re broke, but we are going to take care of you and preserve your standard of living so we’re going to print 500 billion dollars to create jobs!”…and thus a MASSIVE transfer of wealth from the former middle class, directly into the banker’s pockets… but in the short term, the stock market rises and people spend more money they don’t have… So the illusion is preserved and the game of wealth/property consolodation through regulation and direct governemnt colusion continues it’s squeeze…  (just ask Gibson guitars)  the next phase is AUSTERITY (and then… use your imagination)  The path you’re on. ….
     
    This is why Socialsim is referred to by those who truly understand its implications as a transition to communism.  It works wonderfully theoretically, and a lot of it’s promoters do mean well…But when you have trillions of dollars in the hands of the some of the least trust worthy members of society (the politicians, you ALL know that!)  All socialism becomes is a tool to pacify, weaken and ultimately enslave.   Remember, the road to hell was paved with good intentions.  So, for all your good intentions, socialist; you’re not going to like where this road takes you.
     
     
    I’m not even politically active, and the last thing I need is to get paid by anybody for anything I say!  I don’t need to hide from anybody. ckris_s@hotmail.com

  • chriscanada

    Ron Paul wins the California straw poll, convincingly…  http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2011/09/ron-paul-rick-wins-perry-mitt-romney-california-straw-poll-bachmann-.html

    So it appears at least SOME of America is waking up to the reality that socialism is bringing the country in the wrong direction

  • Vartox

    Okay, here’s a video I recommend everyone watches about the history of Silicon Valley…

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo

    Note how much of the tech we enjoy today was financed by the taxpayer and Uncle Sam basically kept R&D afloat for decades – look at the astonishing figures he gives for some of America’s top universities. The lecturer is a business guy and mentions how this has changed and Silicon Valley is now more profit-oriented with less tax money being used, but its clear to see this is a misrepresentation. There’s a lot of covert funding making its way into start-ups – think of all those AI drones that keep popping up on Youtube for instance – and the system hasn’t really changed. Ever wonder how those biotech startups that promised miracle disease cures but have delivered nothing stay in business? Government funding for weapons & defence programmes.

    When a technology has done its job for the government/military its then usually simplified and private companies get on with the business of selling it to the civilians as an amazing innovation. This job is pretty easy though when all your bills have been paid for and the guy in the street is clueless about the recent past thanks to media brainwashing.

    The point? Well its not really the market doing these things, its the government funding that makes them possible. Markets have existed since the days of the Sumerians but serious technological change really only started happening over the past century or so. There’s other factors at play of course (cheap oil, democracy, literacy) but the taxpayer funding is something which Libertarian types tend to sideline or outright ignore.

  • Gurb

    ‘ THAT’S what government involvement in healthcare gets you, and THAT should be the real story.’ – is funny how it only seems to get you that in the US and healthcare costs are a ton cheaper in the rest of the world.

    ‘Would older people get the same treatment as younger people, when resources are limited (which they will be)?’ – they’re limited via a private system as well. Rich old people would get treatment, poor old people would end up as Soylent Green.

    ‘except healthy people will have to pay for the bad choices of smokers,
    obese couch potatoes, etc. I know most of you obese couch potatoes are
    fine with that, but I’m not’ – is funny how America seems to have more fatties than anywhere else especially middle-class ones in good jobs. Perhaps I may venture because there’s tons of profit in feeding people crap then charging them for weight-loss drugs and surgery?

    ‘ experimental treatments would probably be eliminated or drastically
    reduced, as there would be no incentive to pursue new drugs and
    treatments since it costs so much up front to develop them, the
    government wouldn’t fund that, or be able to’ – actually they have done in the past and still do. If its a choice between paying a few billion for a new drug or watching millions of taxpayers die then governments will opt for spending the cash. I know, its hard to believe, isn’t it!!

  • Gurb

    There’s a huge issue with the ‘why should I pay for fatties’ crowd… nowadays we have genetic testing and its getting pretty advanced. Doctors can say that a person has an increased risk of xyz disease. That doesn’t mean they’ll actually get it but their risk is more. Insurance companies work on risk. Hence in the near future is entirely possible healthy people will get hit with super-huge premium rises because a DNA test says they MIGHT die of cancer or they MIGHT have heart disease. Similarly there will be a few without those genetic problems and they’ll probably be able to abuse themselves for decades before anything happens. So come an all-private profit healthcare system and the nice nerd up the street may get charged a whacking great fee because he could get cancer before he’s 30 or his future children could be autistic. Meanwhile Keith Richards would be paying $10 a month because, well nothing seems to get him…. and the fatties not prone to diabetes or heart disease will happily continue to be fat. After all they’ll be paying insurance to cover your DNA-damaged ass so be thankful…

  • Gurb

    Should note that in a world of ubiquitous DNA testing its entirely possible employers will ‘suggest’ who people can marry. You may love her, but your kids will be dyslexic & chubby and we at Supercorp don’t want to foot the insurance bill. Sure you can still marry her, but good luck paying the insurance premiums – especially as you’re now fired…

    Yes Libertarians I realise this went on via the government in Nazi Germany (and the US & other places) – that’s why I don’t want it to happen again when big business gets even more power than it has now.

  • Sangproductions183

    Apologies to those who do fortify themselves with knowledge. You’re right, and I know that America has some the most intelligent people as well as the dumbest. Although, these days you can only speculate that the good apples are a baskets-worth in a dump truck full of rotten ones.

    Palin? The Pauls? Romney? Perry? How are these idiots politicians??? How does your ‘democracy’ even resemble the meaning of the word with only TWO PARTIES to choose from, both practically identical?

    In America intelligence is used against its citizens. If those at the top can find another way to part the poor and middle class from their money, rest assured they will do it.

    People outside America honesty can’t believe the drivel and fear mongering peddled by your politicians and corporations. What’s more, its hard to believe that the majority of Americans fall for it. Sadly, the view of the American Citizen globally right now isn’t that their arrogant or wealthy or bullish. No, its that you’re all walking around with the word SUCKER tattooed on your foreheads.

    And why on earth hasn’t there been a revolt in your country yet? Y’all have guns! Take a cue from all the “Third World” countries that are smart enough to fight back against corporate interests and corrupt politics.

  • Flea

    I like Ron Paul, but I disagree with him on health care.  The current system is broken.  Dr. Paul said that you’re free to choose to buy health care insurance or not, under his administration.  I’m fine with that, and the consequences that come with not having insurance(I currently don’t have insurance).  The problem lies with the predatory insurance industry.  If you have a pre-existing condition, you’re denied coverage.  If you’re a high risk candidate for whatever, your rates are higher or you’re denied coverage when it comes time to use it.  It’s a joke.  I know of a woman that carried an extra insurance policy just for cancer, and they tried denying coverage when she got cancer.  You cannot have a for profit company insuring people.  You just can’t. 

  • Bigblakbus

    It is illegal for any business or entity to try and collect from surviving relatives on the debts of the deceased.
      

  • Bigblakbus

    Nice!

  • Radbrad

    Medicare has an overhead of ~3%.  Private insurance companies have and overhead of 20-30%.  Which is more efficient?  You see Medicare does not have to pay it’s CEO $70,000,000,000.00 dollars over a 10 year period like United Health Care did.

  • Anonymous

    I agree there are problems with private insurance as well and UHC’s CEO makes alot of money, but not 70 billion. I don’t think he made over 10 million in a 10 year period. Which is still alot. But, the important thing to understand is that Ron Paul is not going to do away with Medicare, he’s the only candidate that will actually be able to fund it with his plan. He wants to end the wars, close overseas military bases, and bring the troops home to spend their pay in OUR economy. There would still be checks and balances, and it would do this country good if AT LEAST one branch of our government was working for the people. He wants to use the money saved by ending overseas military spending (@ 2 billion a day), and use half of that money to pay down our debt, and the other half to fund Social Security, Medicare, etc. People get his personal beliefs, and his philosophies about how things should not have gone in this country confused with his actual policy ideas that are grounded in realism. He has made it clear he will not do away with the social safety nets, as people are dependent on them, and promises were made. He just wants to let younger people opt out, IF they choose to do so, and make their own arrangements. I think eventually he would LIKE to see the states and local governments take over social programs, and shrink the federal government to the levels it was intended..but he KNOWS that he can’t turn everything on it’s ear, and he’s the ONLY one who will save those programs. Soon, there won’t be money to fund them, especially with the wars and out of control overseas spending. No other candidate is going to bring the troops home…

  • http://www.youtube.com/user/ZYCERIN Zycerin

    Fucking christ on a stick!

    My net has been down for two days and this article is fucking STILL going full speed! I wonder how many here will actually vote?

  • Steve Esses

    One of the reasons for the rise in federal governmental power is because of the widespread corruption of state governments in the latter part of the 19th century.  Also, the violence and injustice against Blacks on the state level led many who opposed racial discrimination to appeal to the federal government for redress, for example, during the movement post WW II for a federal anti-lynching law, to make it a federal offense to lynch Negroes.  Frankly, without the intervention of the federal government, including sending in the 101st Airborne, do you think the Southern states would have willingly done away with Jim Crow laws?   Corruption at the state level also was responsible for the ballot initiative movement to wrest control of the legislatures from corporate dominance.  Do you believe state’s rights include lynching minorities, calling out the National Guard to shoot unarmed strikers and their families, and so on?  This is what states have done, with no one holding them to account.  But this is what states do, after all. 

    A second century Christian apologist asked what were the interests of the state, but to increase its own power and wealth, and it must needs do this at the expense of some other nation or people.  And it must do this by violence.  Therefore, he concluded, whoever is the servant of the state, must become a participant in that violence.  This was part of a consistent Christian pro-life, not merely anti-abortion, worldview, that eschewed any involvement with the state, and even excommunicated Christians who joined the military.  They also, as part of their pro-life and non violent worldview, refused to take anyone to court to redress any wrongs, counting even this as a violent wrong against  one’s neighbor.  But they even went further and renounced private property and held all things in common.  These things are abominable to the US evangelicals and fundamentalists.  Utter heresy to them, no?

    Libertarians like Ron Paul do right to question the abuses of a large, centralized state, but they never question the violence of capitalism.  Do they really believe the powerful capitalists who profit from the Federal Reserve system will just hand over their wealth and power because the Constitutionalists says so?  The question of any republic (res publica, or the people’s thing) or democracy (people’s power) is who counts as the people who own it, or who exercise power.  Apparently in the US, it is the fictive persons of corporate capitalism and those who own the corporate structures of capitalism.  Property makes personhood.  Until the Libertarians, Constitutionalists, Christian right, and their Mad Hatter friends in the Tea Party movement come to grips with this, they do not have much to say to me.

  • Steve Esses

    So, anyone who does not go along with you is a lazy, worthless, gutless untermensch, fit to be thrown overboard to the sharks?  You Libertarians and Constitutionalists are like chihuahuas that do not want any constraints against capitalist wolves for the sake of sheep, because those constraints may one day be turned against you.  You do not mind getting a morsel of sheep flesh now and then, but consider;  when the wolves are finished with the sheep, they will pick their teeth clean with chihuahua bones. 

  • Steve Esses

    Americans believe they are exceptional, as in specially chosen by God to be a City on the Hill, a light to the nations.  Especially godless, apostate, Europe.  Their mantra is,  “I do not trust the liberal media,” but they will not listen to anything outside their own echo chamber.  I heard it said commonly among the conservative evangelicals,  “I am not moved by my senses, but by the Word of God!”  Therefore what they believe must be nonsense or senseless.  Furthermore, I think it is a pathological discipline against empathy and compassion.  Read the Libertarian post above about throwing the worthless, gutless saboteurs (opponents) of Ron Paul’s programs to the sharks.

  • Steve Esses

    Dontcha know, they passed the civil rights act, and now negroes can vote!  So whatever happens to them now is their own fault.  I live in a state where they just abolished a law forbidding blacks to be in the state after sundown on pain of being flogged.  And we’re supposed to be real progressive!

  • http://voxmagi-necessarywords.blogspot.com/ VoxMagi

    I hate to break up your self righteous party…but my point was exactly the same as yours…the faux-libertarians and fake ‘strict constitutionalist’ morons are the ones who refuse to get in the game and bail…they are the lazy, gutless worthless deadweight, and they are the ones who should be thrown to the sharks until they learn why the rest of us are trying to work together.

    If you read the context of the discussion…you’ll notice that I’m on the side of people sometimes acting for collective good…so before you get a bug up your butt…at least make sure you aren’t chewing out your own teammates…it makes you look really foolish…and kind of hurts the overall cause, okay?

  • http://voxmagi-necessarywords.blogspot.com/ VoxMagi

    I hate to break up your self righteous party…but my point was exactly the same as yours…the faux-libertarians and fake ‘strict constitutionalist’ morons are the ones who refuse to get in the game and bail…they are the lazy, gutless worthless deadweight, and they are the ones who should be thrown to the sharks until they learn why the rest of us are trying to work together.

    If you read the context of the discussion…you’ll notice that I’m on the side of people sometimes acting for collective good…so before you get a bug up your butt…at least make sure you aren’t chewing out your own teammates…it makes you look really foolish…and kind of hurts the overall cause, okay?