Tag: Joe Biden

The Right Question on Healthcare

The logic goes that if healthcare is a right, then healthcare providers become slaves.

If healthcare is a right, they say, then I (for example) am entitled to the labor of doctors and nurses and they cannot refuse me. If healthcare is a right, according to these Randian libertarians, then any doctor, any nurse, any healthcare provider must provide me with their services free of charge at any time. Because it’s my right, you see?

Which is a damned good example of why Atlas Shrugged should be regarded as a tediously mediocre science fiction novel and not a blueprint for civilization.

In America, guns are a right. The right, in a lot of ways. But you can’t just walk into a gun store and demand a gun as your due free of charge – not without getting shot, probably. The government isn’t obligated to provide you with a gun. Hell, we don’t even have subsidies for poor people who want a gun and can’t  afford one. And instead of turning gun manufacturers into slaves, it made them fabulously wealthy.

stonekettle.com

Using the logic libertarians apply to healthcare, I’ve pointed out to them that they can’t have the right to a gun, pretty much the way you draw it out. You can have a right to defend yourself but you cannot have a right to a weapon, the product of another man’s work. Their response generally has been to declare that argument pointless, because without a gun you are defenseless. They apparently haven’t heard of kitchen knives and baseball bats.

Doctors take an oath. They are required to treat the injured, within their ability to do so. To not offer help when it is needed, when it is available, is inhumane. To the extent that healthcare is generally available, it is a right of the citizenry to seek it. Just like food and shelter, healthcare should be provided to those in need.

The problem with conservatives and capitalists is that they seem to think that you can gain wealth through social austerity. That isn’t how modern economic systems work. Money is a debt instrument. If they want people to pay for things then give them the money to spend in enough quantities to meet their needs. Then we’ll know what the price and demand for goods and services really are, because everyone who needs a thing will be able to pay the market price to get it. I’m convinced that public health is too important to be treated as a commodity, but anything outside of public health concerns (screenings, inoculations, hospitals, research) should be fine treated in this way. Just as long as those in need are not required to do without.

That is the problem that zero-sum game types can’t wrap their heads around. With millions of Americans and billions of people on this planet, there is little we cannot do if we set our minds to doing it. We created these systems out of whole cloth in previous generations. There is nothing keeping us from maintaining them in perpetuity aside from our own lack of will. Our own greed. We’ve let the greedy run this country for far too long now. It’s time for a change.

A comment on stonekettle.com

Postscript

I had forgotten about this comment on Stonekettle’s article until he reposted the article on Facebook the other day as part of an illustration of what a change in the presidency and his agenda can do to address the plights of millions of people.

twitter.com/POTUS (facebook.com/Stonekettle)

For the Last Time: Bob Barr for President

Bill Quick over at the Daily Pundit endorsed Bob Barr the other day:

I just dropped my absentee ballot in the mail box. After waffling around, first saying I wouldn’t vote for John McCain, then saying I would, I ended up voting for Bob Barr. Not because I think he has any chance of winning, or even because I think he’d be a great president – although he would certainly be a much better one than either of the two major candidates.

I voted for him because it was the only way I could think of to get my libertarian/conservative preference on the official record, in hopes that the GOP might see what it had thrown away with its nomination of McCain, and its general move away from conservative and libertarian principles.

I guess I ended up being convinced by my own arguments.

dailypundit.com via the Wayback Machine

I briefly came up for air from a 7 hour stint on my diversion of choice these days, and decided to visit some of my old haunts (like digg and blogger) for a brief reminder as to why I have need of some diversion. I noticed a shout on digg from Bob Barr to the article above, and while reading through the comments on the site, I ran across one (buried to the level of -9) which offered up the same old “thanks for voting for Obama” argument in response.

Here’s a little counter spin for you.

As a Texas resident living in Austin, I am surrounded by yellow dogs who voted for Kerry 4 years ago, and are dutifully touting their Obama stickers which have mercifully replaced the Kerry stickers. I mean, leave the advertisement for the also ran on your bumper for 4 years? What does that mean? Does it mean I need a guide to tell the real Democrats from the fake ones?

They are now trumpeting their intention to vote for the guy with the best teeth and hair running in the presidential race (like all Americans do) the man who will be the future president of the United States. As almost anyone who pays attention to politics could have told you the minute that Barak Obama became the clear Democrat favorite, Barack Obama will be the next president of the United States. Up to the point where he won the Democratic nomination the next President of the United States was going to be a woman. He’s going to win because the Republicans never stood a chance this time around and they stand even less of a chance now that the markets have tanked.

None of this even touches on the fact that Texas will go for McCain. The Republicans could leave the top of the ticket blank and claim that we’d be better off without a President, and Texas would still go to the Republicans because “nobody is better than anybody the Democrats would nominate.”

So, for all you yellow dog Democrats out there, wasting your vote for Obama in Texas; I just want to know, why? If you agree with Mr. Better Teeth and Hair then good for you, you did you research and know what you are getting into (you’re wrong, but…) But if you are voting for Obama because at least he’s not McCain, what planet are you living on?

The ultimate wasted vote is a vote for the lessor of two evils. Especially when the majority of the voting population disagrees with you. To use the old adage:

If two wolves and a sheep are voting on what’s for dinner, and you’re the sheep, why are you wasting your time voting?

If it’s a life or death issue, better to be a well armed sheep when the wolves come knocking looking for dinner.

Politics has become quite blasé for me. I never was much interested in saying I told you so, and I’ve found myself repeating that phrase more and more often since 9/11. I got into politics because I wanted to see a positive change in the system; and in 15 years of activity, I’ve seen things go from bad to worse to imminent destruction. I no longer care about petty little things like who the next President will be. He’s going to screw things up at least as much as the last guy did. Both major party candidates are blissfully oblivious to real problems while attacking each other over meaningless twaddle.

Obama chooses a dedicated socialist as his running mate, and McCain nominates a woman who is so backwards in her thinking I shudder to wonder what her presidency will be like after McCain kicks it. Kicks it? Dies in office. My money is on John McCain not even surviving to be sworn in; in the almost incomprehensible reversal of fortune that would inspire Americans to vote for the ugly puppet on the stage.

But in both major party candidates cases the baggage they are freighting is so onerous and the understanding of the real world around us is so absent, that I have no doubt that, whichever screwup is elected will make the most mess possible before the downfall of the dollar brings his reign to it’s ultimate end.

So I’m not wasting my time worrying about which lessor evil to vote for. I’m going to go out and pull the lever next to the L, again. Bob Barr at least talks about issues, and has the nomination of the only party dedicated to smaller government. The rest of it is just so much noise.

The reorganization of my priority list continues apace. Time to return to my W0W session.

Postscript

This was my last post as a member of the Libertarian party. I find this odd, looking back. I remember there being a finality in my having to hold my nose and vote for Bob Barr. Hold my nose and vote for the presidential candidate for my party of conscience. I remember thinking “does this make sense? I thought the other guys were evil and we weren’t?”

Looking back (eight years) I wonder how I couldn’t see it. The libertarians in Texas and through most of the US are closer to conservatives than they are to liberals. Economics is to blame for this; economics and the influence of the Midwestern work ethic. Not even they can see it from inside. It is only from outside, from the vantage point of more accumulated knowledge on the subject of money and social systems that I can say that the mantra of small government forces them into proximity with conservatives who have adopted the same talking points.

As if government in the US isn’t already small.  We just pay too much for it, considering how much it doesn’t get done. McCain died of a brain tumor right after destroying Republican hopes (fears?) of repealing the Affordable Care Act. He did something with that last act that inspires me to forgive him for picking Sarah Palin. She self-destructed anyway, just like all hypocrites do.

The dollar didn’t tank (at least not yet) Donald Trump came as close to destroying our country as anyone since General Robert E. Lee has. Obama was just a mediocre as a President as I feared he would be. I voted for him anyway in 2012. Why not?

I chuckled to myself when I read what I typed about Joe Biden. Joe Biden a socialist? Gimme a break. Just like the dog whistle that yellow dog Democrat is, calling every Democrat a socialist is just code for saying “he’s not one of us.” If anything Joe Biden is just as mediocre as Obama and Clinton were. I wish he was less like us and more like younger Americans. Here’s hoping that Kamala Harris does better when she is in charge.