posted
I suspect this particular topic prompted Ron's particular brand of smug craziness because it is something which might, and is in some quarters being spoken of, as something which makes a Clinton presidency in 2016 more likely. Whether or not this is true as a practical matter, I wouldn't be surprised if that helped prompt another Hurricane Ron.
Although now I have another thing to be curious about with respect to the future. Whether it's because he's simply nuts and believes the absurd, contradictory, and not uncommonly probably untrue things he says*, or if it's because he's just so deeply partisan that lying to the bad guys doesn't seem wrong to him...
I think it's fair to say whichever of these is true, Ron conducts himself as though he were dead to all shame with respect to personal attacks and integrity when it comes to political discussion. But then we have 2016 drawing closer to us all. With a highly likely female Democratic presidential candidate who, if that wasn't trouble enough, is married to another loathed figure in Ron's eyes.
But...I don't know if Ron's bats#*t craziness has ever drifted into sexism and misogyny before. I can't recall if they have. So I'm wondering if it will in 2016, or if it won't? Normally I wouldn't consider it but the man still insists it's been proven Obama is Kenyan...when he can be brought to speak of it at all, which is rare. L
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: the thing is is that it doesn't make sense in a way you did not intend. using the definition that we are all using (hopefully) democracy is neither liberal nor conservative, as both brands of political thought in this day and age are effectively democratic.
Now one can argue its neither, but parliamentary/representative democracy has a history and developed from anti-absolutist monarch thinking from which liberalism developed.
quote: But...I don't know if Ron's bats#*t craziness has ever drifted into sexism and misogyny before. I can't recall if they have. So I'm wondering if it will in 2016, or if it won't? Normally I wouldn't consider it but the man still insists it's been proven Obama is Kenyan...when he can be brought to speak of it at all, which is rare. L
L? what does it mean!?
I think iirc Ron kinda backhandedly finally conceded that Obama might not be from Kenya? I don't quite remember but I vaguely recall him accusing Obama of making it up or something.
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I've already found at least one lie on that site:
"It is unconstitutional to force the American people to buy a product. The Supreme Court already called it unconstitutional, which is when the Obama Administration revised the law to say “tax” instead of “fine.” Nothing else changed."
It was Chief Justice Roberts who said that the individual mandate was within Congress's powers of taxation, the law was not changed.
No one lacks the sanity to literally go over every point on this website, its simply yet another super libertarian conservative wank site, yet no doubt unless we do you are going to claim we are "wrong, brainless, idiots, liars, etc" no matter how obviously biased this site is.
I'll grant that there's probably a couple of points I'll agree with that Obama has done "wrong" that the site in broken clock fashion lists, though none of them grounds for impeachment.
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"It is unconstitutional to force the American people to buy a product."
I'll remember that next time the government makes me buy one of their registration stickers this year. Or car insurance.
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Actually, some of those items are perfectly legitimate. Some of them are outright lies. Some of them are laughably misstated or just plain unobjectionable. And some are arguably legitimate complaints, but can't be laid neatly at Obama's door and almost certainly didn't see his involvement (like forcing an Amish family farm to stop selling raw milk per existing regulations, or funding a study into how cocaine affects auditory stimulation in mice). Some are a combination of the above, like the one that accuses "Obama" of spending $200K on a $16 bush (which, if you get the actual details, is a really shocking misrepresentation of the truth.)
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: But...I don't know if Ron's bats#*t craziness has ever drifted into sexism and misogyny before. I can't recall if they have.
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: There was at one time a rational reason born of psychological necessity for men to regard women as second-class people, much less important than men. Go back in time three hundred years, and you will find that one out of five women died in childbirth. This means that virtually every man was touched by the death of a woman he knew--mother, aunt, sister, wife--who died because a man had sex with her. Men had to diminish the psychological impact of this, otherwise it would have been hard to continue propagating the species. If a man really thinks to himself that when he is having sex with a woman he is likely killing her, he must either trivialize the life that is being put at risk, or else be unable to perform, out of sheer horror and guilt.
'way back when, women died in childbirth a lot, so they had a rational reason born of necessity to consider women second-class humans. otherwise we men wouldn't have been able to get it on if we didn't just think we were copulating with an object'
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Hrm. Gotta disagree with you there, Samp. As it was quoted as without knowing the larger context I don't think it serves as an example of misogyny. A good heaping helping dose of patriarchal attitudes, of course, but reading that I don't exactly see an endorsement of the attitude either.
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It is eurocentric however, pretty sure large sections of the world 300+ years ago didn't quite have those mortality rates.
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I provide it as just, well, it is just where batshit drifted into sexism.
and if this is the worst that can be said of it then he's probably pretty aok on the sexism front, all things considered
quote:Originally posted by Elison R. Salazar: It is eurocentric however, pretty sure large sections of the world 300+ years ago didn't quite have those mortality rates.
... yes. large sections of the world 300+ years ago didn't quite have those mortality rates
(this includes europe)
(so, 'eurocentrism' isn't the issue, or relevant)
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Dying at childbirth is a pretty bad evolutionary strategy, and therefore human women have always been naturally good at giving birth.
In my understanding, the historical, "natural" worldwide childbirth death ratio is around 1%. But the numbers get worse, if you give birth for example to 5 children. You're taking that 1% risk five times.
If you want, you can skew the historical numbers by concentrating on the widespread epidemics in early western hospitals, that caused exceptional childbirth death rates. It was an unfortunate transition period when we already had "modern" hospitals, but no understanding of germs.
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quote:Dying at childbirth is a pretty bad evolutionary strategy, and therefore human women have always been naturally good at giving birth.
That does not necessarily follow. If the adaptations that make childbirth more dangerous confer a greater overall survival benefit then it's possible for such deaths to be relatively frequent without contradicting evolutionary theory. When optimizing for multiple factors compromise is the name of the game.
I don't think there's a lot of good data on prehistoric deaths in childbirth which would be more relevant to the point than modern "natural" births which usually occur in the context of a world that understand hygiene and usually has relatively quick access to medical intervention.
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: "It is unconstitutional to force the American people to buy a product."
I'll remember that next time the government makes me buy one of their registration stickers this year. Or car insurance.
False equivalence. Hate to nitpick, but the state government and federal government are different in that way. The state has the right to require registration and car insurance. The federal government had never had that power, which is why the "penalty" had to be considered a tax.
The other difference? You don't have to have a car or drive. You can take the bus, cabs, mass transit, etc as an alternative. As soon as we have proxy robots available I can download my brain and consciousness into as an alternative to traditional life, you can require me to get health insurance. Right now we don't have any alternatives to life except suicide.
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quote:The other difference? You don't have to have a car or drive. You can take the bus, cabs, mass transit, etc as an alternative. As soon as we have proxy robots available I can download my brain and consciousness into as an alternative to traditional life, you can require me to get health insurance. Right now we don't have any alternatives to life except suicide.
Except we're all required to pay for your emergency room medical treatment while you wait for the sci-fi robots to upload your brain to. Which, you know, you will be wanting when the time comes as just about everyone does when the time comes.
So which right trumps the other? Your right not to buy something, or everyone else's right not to pay for that same something later, at a higher cost, because you didn't buy it?
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quote:The federal government had never had that power, which is why the "penalty" had to be considered a tax.
Well that and whether it's considered a tax or not is a semantic matter. Buy insurance and get a tax break, or don't buy insurance and pay a higher tax to offset the burden of the uninsured. A large proportion of our taxes can be interpreted as being "forced to buy a product" if you are so inclined to interpret it that way.
The power to tax it the power to force me to give you money. There is also a well established history of setting conditions under which I may be compelled to give you more or less money. I can buy solar cells and owe less tax. I can also buy health insurance and owe less tax.
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: "It is unconstitutional to force the American people to buy a product."
I'll remember that next time the government makes me buy one of their registration stickers this year. Or car insurance.
False equivalence. Hate to nitpick, but the state government and federal government are different in that way. The state has the right to require registration and car insurance. The federal government had never had that power, which is why the "penalty" had to be considered a tax.
The other difference? You don't have to have a car or drive. You can take the bus, cabs, mass transit, etc as an alternative. As soon as we have proxy robots available I can download my brain and consciousness into as an alternative to traditional life, you can require me to get health insurance. Right now we don't have any alternatives to life except suicide.
Sorry Geraine but I regret to inform you but this is actually false.
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Christie is now under investigation for improperly using relief funds related to Hurricane Sandy. It's small time stuff, a couple million dollars, but, that's all it takes.
I was reading an article the other day that said what I'd been thinking about this Christie thing but couldn't articulate myself.
The worst scandals a politician can embroil himself in are ones where they reinforce a preconceived notion. People already think Christie is a vengeful, grudge-holding guy with a serious attitude. So whether he was actually involved or not is irrelevant. People will believe he did it because it fits the idea of Christie, and it will stay around as an issue for the same reason, and because investigations will keep it alive for months and months.
And now with new things starting to come out, on top of all the dirt that opposition research has dug up on him...
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Obviously this revelation was strategically revealed by the Obama administration to distract from Benghazi.
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quote:Dying at childbirth is a pretty bad evolutionary strategy, and therefore human women have always been naturally good at giving birth.
That does not necessarily follow. If the adaptations that make childbirth more dangerous confer a greater overall survival benefit then it's possible for such deaths to be relatively frequent without contradicting evolutionary theory. When optimizing for multiple factors compromise is the name of the game.
I don't think there's a lot of good data on prehistoric deaths in childbirth which would be more relevant to the point than modern "natural" births which usually occur in the context of a world that understand hygiene and usually has relatively quick access to medical intervention.
I'm curious: What adaptations do humans have, that make childbirth considerably more dangerous, yet give other overall benefits?
I thought it would be a fairly logical evolutionary benefit that the mothers of human infants don't immediately die, considering how dependent the infants tend to be on their parents. And considering how in most human societies - historical and pre-historical - taking care of the infant has primarily been the mother's job.
Granted, in tribe-cultures the concept of shared parenthood among the tribe is fairly common. But passing the genes on the mother's side is much harder, if the mothers keep on regularly dying on their first attempt at giving birth. It creates a genetic bottleneck. And in my understanding maternal lineage among mankind is just as strong as the fraternal lineage.
Anyway, I'm not an expert on the issue, and googling this was surprisingly difficult. But the 1% number popped up in a lot of places. If the number is close to accurate, it's not much of a stretch to say that from an evolutionary perspective it was more beneficial to keep that number at 1%, instead of for example 50% (With the child mortality rates of the past, that percentage would have pretty much eradicated human race).
Written historical data does go back a few thousand years. Then there are many archeological ways to research the issue. And then there are many societies in the world where people still live and give birth in conditions, that are similar to our historical, and prehistorical past.
quote: Republicans, Krugman writes, have difficulty speaking coherently about anti-poverty measures, in large part because of their well-deserved “reputation for reverse Robin-Hoodism, for being the party that takes from the poor and gives to the rich.” To bolster this claim, Krugman notes GOP efforts on the state and federal level to deny the poor healthcare (via Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion) as well as economic support (via unemployment insurance) and education (via public financing for schools). “It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that right now Republicans are doing all they can to hurt the poor,” Krugman writes.
quote: “The point is that a party committed to small government and low taxes on the rich is, more or less necessarily, a party committed to hurting, not helping, the poor,”
That Maternal Death wiki link is one of the places where I got the 1% number from.
Thanks for the link to Obstetrical dilemma. According to that article, since human bipedalism started roughly 4 million years ago, evolution has helped us to adapt to obstetrical dilemma in numerous ways, making it easier for women to give birth.
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quote:The other difference? You don't have to have a car or drive. You can take the bus, cabs, mass transit, etc as an alternative. As soon as we have proxy robots available I can download my brain and consciousness into as an alternative to traditional life, you can require me to get health insurance. Right now we don't have any alternatives to life except suicide.
Except we're all required to pay for your emergency room medical treatment while you wait for the sci-fi robots to upload your brain to. Which, you know, you will be wanting when the time comes as just about everyone does when the time comes.
So which right trumps the other? Your right not to buy something, or everyone else's right not to pay for that same something later, at a higher cost, because you didn't buy it?
Why would you be required to pay for my emergency room costs?
This, I think, is the crux of the problem. We have come to believe that "society" is responsible to take care of you.
So to answer your question: Neither. It is not society's responsibility to pay for something I did not get due to being irresponsible.
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quote:So to answer your question: Neither. It is not society's responsibility to pay for something I did not get due to being irresponsible.
So how do you propose emergency medical care be managed? I'm in a terrible car wreck and an ambulance shows up - should that ambulance have been called before verifying my ability to pay? Should the EMTs check to see if I have insurance before administering care? Say I don't have insurance, but I claim that the accident was another driver's fault. Do they go check to see what his insurance coverage is before assisting me? If he doesn't have insurance either do they deny care? What if I claim to have insurance but they can't get through to the insurance company to verify? Wait 15 minutes on hold to verify that, then treat me?
I don't see any workable system where emergency care is not administered before verifying ability to pay. And if we can't verify ability to pay then ability to pay can't be a precondition for care.
We can, however, establish a system where everyone gets care and those who refuse to buy into the system that finances it are penalized for their irresponsibility.
First I should clarify. My statement about emergency rooms wasn't one of preference, it was a statement of fact. If you don't have health insurance and you get sick, you stand a chance of not just getting better on your own. Should that happen, eventually you or someone who encounters your stricken body will call an ambulance and take you to the emergency room. There some stopgap, extremely expensive measures will be taken and you then stand a chance of being on the street once more, and stand an even greater chance of it happening all over again. From a cost perspective if the rest of society is lucky, you're able to get yourself to the hospital for these steps to be taken.
It's not a question of 'should we do that', because that's the reality.
quote:This, I think, is the crux of the problem. We have come to believe that "society" is responsible to take care of you.
So to answer your question: Neither. It is not society's responsibility to pay for something I did not get due to being irresponsible.
We haven't 'come to believe' this, it's always been true for as long as there have been human societies. What changes is where the line is drawn. In the European societies from which we are generally as a culture descended, for example, the government had an obligation to take care of the individual basically to the extent that they wouldn't let foreign invaders or bandits come and kill them. They would then be free to yield up the work and resources their overlords needed. If you can name me a single society which doesn't have some minimum level at which it is responsible for the care of individuals, I'll be surprised. So let's set aside the notion that even considering this is some risky, adventurous new frontier.
As to my personal preference, though. Well, yes, I do prefer that people not be allowed to suffer too much even from the consequences of their own mistakes. Even if it costs me something. But let's just be clear about what you're endorsing, here, to really expose the ethics involved aside from a high-minded pursuit of personal responsibility and freedom. You're suggesting that the wealthiest society in the history of humanity should allow people to suffer and die in their homes and on the streets because they were either too unwise or too unfortunate to acquire health insurance when they were younger and healthier.
Let's just be clear about that. A libertarian ideal that admits that I can at least acknowledge for a willingness to face reality and admit it to others, however repellant it is.
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Survival of the Richest in reality. If you can't afford the doctor--die. If you can't afford shelter--die. If you can't afford food--die. That is the libertarian ideal?
Well sure, there are charities that might be able to feed you, run a hospital, give you a blanket during the coldest months. But if the charity runs out of what you need--die.
I am sure all these mega-churches out there will just jump at the chance to switch from using their limited funds from spreading the faith, to doctor duty. That's what happened before--hospitals were all church run, food for the poor was all church run, and homeless shelters were all church run.
And it worked so well that during the height of a downturn in the economy so many people put such demands on these services that they started to collapse. Movies and books were written by the likes of Dickens and Bronte about the unfairness of that charity system. A more efficient and fair way was demanded by all--so the government took over.
History, read it and know it all, not cherry pick it.
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Libertarian ideals have a really difficult time reconciling the reality of healthcare. It's very house-of-cards thinking (and geraine's upcoming replies will speak much to that fact) that requires you believe a minimum quantity of observable falsehoods about healthcare in order to support as not even just superior to uhc, but even vaguely tolerable.Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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"And their children, too." I want to insert that phrase into all those libertarian dreams. " If you can't afford the doctor--die. If you can't afford shelter--die. If you can't afford food--die." And your children, too.
"It is not society's responsibility to pay for something I did not get due to being irresponsible." Or for your children, either.Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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And its not even workable in reality, the ultimate, inevitable and irreversible result of the Libertarian policies as Geraine and Dan_Frank believe in would result in Communist revolution and the subsequent hanging of all capitalists unlucky enough to have not moved to Hong Kong or Singapore.
Its fact. Keynesian economics developed as an alternative to armed radical Communist uprisings of the proletariat and worked for decades in the United States thanks to the New Deal, whose purpose, to emphasize was not the ending of the Great Depression, but preventing the inevitable Communist Revolution.
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Dude, neither Dan nor Geraine are such purists of libertarianism as you're describing, and have said so repeatedly. It's a stretch to think you never noticed, so did you forget?
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it's not just that it doesn't accurately portray dan nor geraine, but that additionally there's three parts of it which are completely false/made up
a completely free market economy isn't automatically assured to become a permanent communist country (in fact it is way from the most probable outcomes), AND keynesian economics didn't develop as an alternative to armed radical communism uprisings, AND the new deal's purpose was not to prevent the 'inevitable communist revolution' and did indeed center mostly around ending the great depression
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Well, those involve a) discussing politics *and* economics with Elison in areas that even remotely relate-or are made to relate to-communism, an activity which is let's just say fraught and b) were so bizzare even by the usual standards I wasn't sure it wasn't just trolling.
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Yup, I hereby pronounce Christie's national political career dead on arrival. He might somehow get the nomination (which is also unlikely as most of the GOP hates him) but now he's lost any possible crossover support with Democrats and is just "another horrible GOP politician" instead of "One of the good (moderate) ones".
Without Christie and especially if Hillary runs this seems like a solid win for Hillary and likely relection; there just might be some hope that American politics are un-fruited.
Even if the more Liberal justices retire either now or under Hillary they can be replaced, likewise at least one of the GOP appointed Justices are also likely to retire, the Supreme Court will shift liberal hopefully for a whole generation; and while I'm hopeful there's also the matter of the US Census and un-gerrymandering stuff.
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I think he's handling this all wrong. He's trying a combination of bluster and mea culpa that even the most artful politician would have a hard time navigating.
The injecting of "proof" into the discussion that he had a role in the lane closure will dog him all the way to 2016. He's locked in. Whether or not he can brush it off will depend on how he handles the next 6 months.
To be honest I think he was a longshot for the Republican primary anyway. But not I think it's really unlikely.
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Christie's gonna rock back and forth in the night, pacing throughout his house, fretting, going mad. Eventually he will turn on the television and see what Rob Ford is getting away with. That, at a certain threshold, you're too ridiculous to do away with.
His laughter will last until the dawn.
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Christie doesn't strike me as the 'rending his garments' type.
He strikes me as someone who punches holes in walls and beats interns with tire irons for getting his coffee wrong.
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quote:Originally posted by Elison R. Salazar: And its not even workable in reality, the ultimate, inevitable and irreversible result of the Libertarian policies as Geraine and Dan_Frank believe in would result in Communist revolution and the subsequent hanging of all capitalists unlucky enough to have not moved to Hong Kong or Singapore.
Its fact. Keynesian economics developed as an alternative to armed radical Communist uprisings of the proletariat and worked for decades in the United States thanks to the New Deal, whose purpose, to emphasize was not the ending of the Great Depression, but preventing the inevitable Communist Revolution.
Wow Blayne... I don't even know what to say to this. Well, I know what I would like to say, but I don't feel like getting an email from Blackblade.
Point is this: The Federal Government should not be involved. Like 90% of what the Federal Government does. The Federal Government repeatedly inserts themselves into parts of our lives that should be taken care of by each individual state. Welfare programs, health coverage, marriage, etc. should all be handled by the state, not by the feds.
The country was designed with state's rights in mind. Over the last 100 years more and more of that power has been taken from the states by the federal government. What is good in one state is not always good in another. Generalizing the population by providing blanket regulations for the entire nation without taking into account the landscape of each individual state is, in my opinion, part of the reason our debt is so high, why our education system ranks so low, and why we are struggling with health insurance issues.
The Federal Government, in my opinion, should relinquish most of these powers they have back to the states, and have them operate on their own. The federal government should just do what it was designed to do in the Constitution.
These include:
•Print money (bills and coins)
•Declare war
•Establish an army and navy
•Enter into treaties with foreign governments
•Regulate commerce between states and international trade
•Establish post offices and issue postage
•Make laws necessary to enforce the Constitution
State Responsibilities:
•Establish local governments
•Issue licenses (driver, hunting, marriage, etc.)
•Regulate intrastate (within the state) commerce
•Conduct elections
•Ratify amendments to the U.S. Constitution
•Provide for public health and safety
•Exercise powers neither delegated to the national government or prohibited from the states by the U.S.
•Constitution
Shared Responsibilities:
•Setting up courts
•Creating and collecting taxes
•Building highways
•Borrowing money
•Making and enforcing laws
•Chartering banks and corporations
•Spending money for the betterment of the general welfare
•Taking (condemning) private property with just compensation
The problem is that the federal government, no matter who is in power, has the tendency to interpret the Constitution to mean whatever the hell it wants it to mean. What results is massive debt, gigantic government, and a centralized government, something the Constitution was trying to PREVENT.
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On your last point, that's not entirely true. The Constitution was not out to prevent a centralized government. Don't forget that it was written after years of a failed experiment with decentralized government under the Articles of Confederation.
They wanted a centralized government, they just didn't want an all powerful government.
But I also think states are different today. I think they're a bit anachronistic in the level of importance and power we invest in them, when for all intents and purposes they should be treated as administrative districts rather than sovereign entities. Otherwise you pit states against each other, create winners and losers, and lose sight of what's best for the nation as a whole.
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Indeed, 'in a world' where the US was at the edge of the last unexploited land frontier and entirely uninvolved with the world and veltpolitik you could get away with that, but the steady consolidation and centralization of the power of the federal government is simply the logical result of the US becoming integrated with the world and taking a leading role thereof.
Want to stop the bad guys from setting off car bombs? You need the Statesec; you want to protect the borders from the Chinese? You need the military. You want the military to have the best equipment? Your forced the government to birth the military-industrial complex. You want to remain economically the most powerful nation? You need to have a central bureau that shifts around resources that can react to changing world circumstances. The US and by extension the world's economy could not function without the Federal Reserve, and the fact of a strong central US government able to do whatever is needed to back said currency.
quote: The Federal Government should not be involved. Like 90% of what the Federal Government does. The Federal Government repeatedly inserts themselves into parts of our lives that should be taken care of by each individual state. Welfare programs, health coverage, marriage, etc. should all be handled by the state, not by the feds.
Why? This is assertion, argument without logic or a supporting basis; they just "shouldn't" is all you're saying here.
quote: The country was designed with state's rights in mind.
The country was designed to have slaves, you don't have them anymore around do you? The Louisiana Purchase was unconstitutional, but it still suited state interest, and so such hang wringing was ignored as the stupidity it was.
quote: Over the last 100 years more and more of that power has been taken from the states by the federal government. What is good in one state is not always good in another.
While the idea of local discretion has merit, the idea that there shouldn't be national standards of say, "don't poison the water tables with mercury" is kind of hard to figure out the compelling local state interest in modifying.
quote: Generalizing the population by providing blanket regulations for the entire nation without taking into account the landscape of each individual state is
Can you cite an example of a blanket regulation that ignores some compelling local fact?
quote: in my opinion, part of the reason our debt is so high, why our education system ranks so low, and why we are struggling with health insurance issues.
You debt is so high because you fought two wars without paying for it, cut taxes on the rich and because you run a fiat currency. Modern economics pre-assumes debt because taxation is no longer defined as "revenue" but instead is "currency being removed from circulation" as an anti-inflation measure.
You education system ranks low because of several reasons, but in general the crying about "But but local circumstances!" is just an attempt to rationalize the inevitable compelling counter argument of "If Y how come country X does it so much better?" Not because Georgians are somehow inherently unsuitable to be taught the same way as people from Iowa.
quote: The Federal Government, in my opinion, should relinquish most of these powers they have back to the states, and have them operate on their own. The federal government should just do what it was designed to do in the Constitution.
The problem is that the federal government, no matter who is in power, has the tendency to interpret the Constitution to mean whatever the hell it wants it to mean. What results is massive debt, gigantic government, and a centralized government, something the Constitution was trying to PREVENT.
Just to let you know, spoilers but Thomas Jefferson had thought the constitution should be changed every 30 years or so; the idea that the federal government should just do "whats in the constitution" has no merit, because the constitution has also in fact been amended several times.
Anyways your argument about the centralization of power and how it somehow maliciously conspired to "interpret" the constitution to grant itself those powers is woefully wrong, almost every increase in the Federal governments power has been aided and abetted by the Supreme Court and via the amendment process.
The list of items the US Federal government should "restrict" itself to is the very list of arguments used to justify the powers it gradually accumulated over the last four centuries of reacting to changing world circumstances.
The sad fact is it seems like the only reason why you think this way is because the federal government is doing stuff you don't like and would prefer the generally republican controlled states to not have to conform to the democratic will of the people of the United states as a whole.
Which beings me back to:
quote: Welfare programs, health coverage, marriage, etc. should all be handled by the state, not by the feds.
The economic and jurisprudence facts disagree with this so strongly that the internet should literally explode.
1. Its in the interest of the federal government and the other states that the "taker" states (cough, mostly republican states) don't collapse or bring down the economic well being of the nation as a whole. So this is why they step in to insure your poors don't make everyone else poorer. Also because money collected by the feds can be spent more efficiently than the states can, again, simple economic fact.
2. Ditto with healthcoverage, this one is a baffling point because you conceded in a previous thread that the United States should implement singlepayer, doing this efficiently at the state level would be extremely difficult, many states won't have the resources to do this effectively or have the GOP actively trying to undercut such programs. Also because someone being unhealthy in Alabama causes someones premiums in Kansas to go up, so this has to be done at the federal level.
Just like in any other developed first world country.
3. So if two women get married in California, and then move to Missouri (lets assume Missouri banned it), is their marriage getting annulled perfectly fine with you?
Also what you suggest here would also actually be unconstitutional because of the "full faith and credit" clause. What one state recognizes the others have to as well.
Posts: 12931 | Registered: Aug 2005
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States have to honor the marriages of other states, but the federal government gets to say what marriage is within that context.
Besides, I'm not sure arguing against gay marriage will help you with Geraine. I think his libertarian leanings would suggest he doesn't think government should regulate marriage that closely. Or it could be that, like Jefferson, he didn't want the federal government oppressing you, he wanted states doing it. I'm not sure. I suspect it's the former.
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posted
Generally though my impression is that by saying "It should be up to the states" it also means "letting states ban it." Its hard to tell whether this includes or considers having to recognize them from out of state.
Following up on the "Why education should be nationalized" here's a post from SA:
quote: The tuition explosion is the clearest real world example you can point to when explaining why certain important societal functions need to be run by government rather than the free market. When they deregulated tuition in Texas in 2003, the university boards of regents and presidents swore up and down that there would only be, at most, a modest increase in the cost of a college education. Tuition rates at state schools have more than tripled in some cases in 10 years. It's not even because these regents are cackling money hoarding tycoons, it's that when you deregulate tuition and free market pressures start creating competition for things like faculty and facilities, the cost for those things has to come from somewhere. So you couple that with the current political reality of zero possibility of tax revenue increases and the only place that a cost can be borne is from the students.
Technically the post doesn't call for the Federal government to nationalize education, just for the 'invisible (cough)non existent(cough) hand of the market' to removed from higher education, but since leaving education "up to the states" is really just actually a part of the plan for Republican controlled states to auction off education to corporations whelp... The logical conclusion is to simply in my view remove the middle man and have the federal government directly control it rather than allow the possibility of unsupervised privatization.
Some very prominent scientists have come from states like Alabama, crippling education would deny the United States access to such individuals from such states and decrease the overall size of its knowledge pool, harming its relative geopolitical position, weakening its security.
Posts: 12931 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
Spread it around. Maybe people will see that Small Government isn't that great an idea unless you can buy it.
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