discussing the presidential election, a challenge of sorts

[gwd-scouter]

Never said government employees' health plan was free.

[Lisabob]

scoutldr, I don't want to argue details of health policy but I was struck by your last sentence and the broader implication. Why should access to quality health care be something that must be "earned?" Would you seriously suggest that the child of low-income parents, or of some middle/upper-middle income parents whose jobs suddenly disappear from underneath them for that matter, doesn't deserve health insurance because they haven't "earned" it? Do you feel that people who work their whole lives but are diagnosed at some point with serious illnesses and who have exhausted the benefits offered by many less-than-wonderful health care plans, deserve to be bankrupted by health costs because they haven't "earned" the right to more comprehensive coverage of their illness?

 

That, to me, is a symptom of a major problem in our society, and it is a problem that well-off societies practically everywhere else in the world have already solved. Health care shouldn't need to be earned, it should be a basic right. In my view.

[OldGreyEagle]

back to the Presidential Campaign

[kraut-60]

Allright OGE...back to topic! I will cast my vote for John McCain and Sarah Palin. I see these people having beliefs, ideas and values nearly reflecting my own. Sen. McCain also gets my vote for his being a veteran as well as a POW who didnt accept the offer of parole the North Vietnamese government offered him as a consequence of his fathers then position as CinCPac (commander in chief-pacific).

He kept the faith of a warrior and a patriot...he is a leader then and now. Sarah Palin may not have the longest track record of a person serving the public interest, but my impression of her is that she knows that she must serve the people who elected her...whether it was the constituents of Wasilla AK...the people of the state of Alaska, or now the citizens of the United States...she is a leader.

 

While I will not vote for Mr.Obama and Mr. Biden, should they be elected, I will give them my support as every true American SHOULD DO...irregardless of any sour grapes. The Presidency is an office that I wouldnt want for myself, but I believe we need to respect those that step up and bear up the mantle of a overall consuming public service. And we need to stop laying the blame for everything that goes wrong at the doorstep of the White House...We are Americans...we won 2 world wars...we sent men to the moon...we outlasted the Soviet Russian threat to world peace...we are capable of working from the community level in bettering ourselves, our cities and towns, states and ultimately our country,....and perhaps the world.

[packsaddle]

OK, OGE, I just have one quick correction. No matter how many times I have to write it, it's FLAVOR-AID, not Kool-aid that Jim Jones used for his terminal communion. Sheesh.

 

OK, back to the election. I think I can say some good things about the selection of Palin now. McCain clearly chose the most qualified Republican there is - to be the VP candidate. This much is clear. First of all Palin is obviously far more qualified to take the reins of leadership for our country if something happens to McCain, far more qualified than any MALE Republican. The male Republicans have shown themselves to be ineffective, incompetent, or just plain crooked, that's pretty obvious...every last one of them, and Palin is clearly the superior choice.

But Palin is also clearly the most qualified Republican woman. Far more qualified than, say, Rice, or Dole, or Jean Kirkpatrick. Yes, I know Kirkpatrick is dead but I mention her to emphasize that even dead, she'd be a better choice than the Republican males. H'mmm what about Christine Todd Whitman, or Kay Bailey Hutchinson? Nope, those don't even come close to comparing to the qualifications of Palin.

Rice is too shallow and inexperienced. Dole too narrow in her view of the world. Whitman and Hutchinson are also fairly narrow as well as shallow....in comparison to Palin. Yep, I might think of some others but Palin would top them all.

 

Just a note about Feds and their insurance. I was, up until recently, also under one of the optional plans available to Federal employees. Under that plan I was covered, like scoutldr, by a private company and program of my choice, and for which I paid a premium each pay period. I had previously been covered by another private program while in industry and just before going with the Feds my coverage through a state agency was with the EXACT same insurance company as I had with the Feds. In each case I was terminated from the previous program and I had to start over in the new one, even when the insurer was the same. There was nothing portable about any of it. And wouldn't you know it, when we started our family, in between positions, we were totally uninsured and I paid everything out of pocket.

This is where the Republicans' Darwinian approach can have the greatest effect. If my child had had some sort of defect there would have been no way I could pay those costs. I would have hocked everything to try, though, and it would have put an economic shackle on this family that I doubt we ever could have overcome. As it was it pushed us to the edge. We almost were selected against. In the pure Republican every-man-for-himself approach, this selective pressure will work very well.

Universal health care, on the other hand, will, in the above scenario, allow the proliferation of defects, perhaps all the way into the middle-class. Now there's something to think about.

 

[scoutldr]

Pack, there is now a law called COBRA, which addresses situations like yours. It enables continuation of health benefits when one is "between positions"... I think that is a good law, as I am not for the Darwinian approach in such situations. I am for the Govt providing incentives to employers to continue to offer health benefits to valued employees who are working their butts off to provide for their families...a value that is lacking in many communities.

 

(This message has been edited by a staff member.)

[TheScout]

Hi as a hard core conservative Republican who hates the idea of government health care I think there is a mistaken notion of such a "Darwinian" posiiton as you call it.

 

We do not favor people dying in the streets due to the lack of government health care.

 

The theory is if you get government out of the medical business there are large amounts of money that could be saved which could be passed back to the people in the form of tax cuts.

 

All people would then have more money to buy their own health care and/or dontate to churches and charities to help those in need. Americans are the most generous people in the world. Give them their money back and they can be more generous.

 

This system would provide more freedom to everyone. More choices, less government dictates of what to do with their health care and their money.

[packsaddle]

Yes, the 'trickle-down' economics that David Stockman so eloquently exposed after he finished with the job. This approach has been continued since Reagan with the same spectacular success in providing for those who worship Mammon (and incidentally providing for the national debt).

 

My reference to the Darwinian approach has nothing to do with people dying in the streets. I've been waiting for someone to take me to task for misapplying the namesake, to no avail. I'll keep waiting.

But in natural selection, selection does not necessitate death. It necessitates differential reproduction. This is most effectively accomplished for sexually-reproducing eukaryotes by applying some kind of pressure on pre-reproductive individuals (children). In the case of neo-con(federate) thought, this translates into differential income and wealth in lieu of genes. (There actually are some of you who think this IS related to genetics - shhhhh - they're called 'racists') And they are the genesis of the Southern Republicans of modern times, still alive and well I might add, evidently, after what they did to McCain in 2000.

OK, back to saying 'nice' things about people.

 

Edited Part: Just looked up COBRA and yes it does help, between jobs at least. It wouldn't have applied to me because at that time we had no savings, no money, just some job prospects for the future. All we had was the ability to incur more and more debt. Or is that the idea with COBRA?(This message has been edited by packsaddle)

[scoutldr]

Pack, just goes to prove that the Govt can't be all things for all people. A concept the Democrat party seems to ignore.

[packsaddle]

It proves nothing. It demonstrates that when measures go only half-way to address a problem, you only get half-way solutions.

[gwd-scouter]

Maybe it means the government can't do anything if we the people don't really want them to. An example: I was watching a focus group of undecided voters yesterday on CSPAN. One of the questions was about how to fix social security. Twenty-five people in the focus group. Admittedly a small sample and not scientific in any way.

 

Assuming that the social security system needs fixing:

 

Question 1: Who would agree to having their taxes raised in order to protect social security? No one agreed.

 

Question 2: Who would agree to having benefits cut in order to protect social security? No one agreed.

 

Question 3: Who is in favor of privatizing social security and doing away with the current system? A few agreed but most felt that there had to be some kind of safety net for those folks that just wouldn't make enough money to put into a private account. But, if privatized, then no one would pay into a safety-net system so where would the money for that come from?

 

So they all wanted social security fixed, but were unwilling to make any personal sacrifices to do so. Could it be the same reason the government (we) can't fix our health care system, energy problems, etc.?

[TheScout]

The 18th Century Scottish legalist, Sir Alex Tyler wrote something which I think is again relevant,

 

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess of the public treasury. From that time on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.... The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from great courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependence; from dependency back again to bondage." -- Sir Alex Fraser Tyler

[BulldogBlitz]

" Why should access to quality health care be something that must be "earned?" Would you seriously suggest that the child of low-income parents, or of some middle/upper-middle income parents whose jobs suddenly disappear from underneath them for that matter, doesn't deserve health insurance because they haven't "earned" it? Do you feel that people who work their whole lives but are diagnosed at some point with serious illnesses and who have exhausted the benefits offered by many less-than-wonderful health care plans, deserve to be bankrupted by health costs because they haven't "earned" the right to more comprehensive coverage of their illness? "

 

 

the scenario that you describe, lisabob, is called life. it happens to the best of us. it has happened to me. not even one time did i even think "i wish the government would step in and save me". i picked myself up by my bootstraps and have turned things around. it is my life to turn it around.

[packsaddle]

BDB, Now THAT is the every-man-for-himself approach with which I am so familiar. I would just LOVE to see that approach adopted across the board for all social problems. But there is no way that conservative groups would allow it across the board.

For one thing, it means that every adult, every young person, every child, every baby, every fetus, and every fertilized egg...would have equivalent individual 'tough luck' status and jeopardy, left to whims of luck, nature, and personal responsibility by the person or the parents.

It also means complete rejection of public education, something that I have actually advocated in these threads. I think I am probably alone on that, sigh. And the same goes for most other social concerns.

 

We talk a good talk about high-minded morals regarding single cells but in practically the same breath turn our backs on that organism once it has reached a multicellular stage. This, to me, is not moral relativism, but rather moral hypocrisy.

But I'm probably in a minority view on that as well.

[BulldogBlitz]

"We talk a good talk about high-minded morals regarding single cells but in practically the same breath turn our backs on that organism once it has reached a multicellular stage. "

 

i've never heard that stance. where is that platform spelled out?