The architects of the State can have all the good intentions in the world - they can be paragons of selfless virtue - and it doesn’t change a thing. The nature of the system they create will inevitably corrupt it, because the nature of the people trapped in the system doesn’t change. They want more for themselves and their families, and if they can’t earn it, they will band together to demand it. There is only one reliable way to hold those bands together over the long term, only one predictable response to the diminishing returns gained by each sacrifice of liberty… and only one emotion the leaders of each collective entity can easily encourage, to maintain their own power: hatred.
When everything you have is provided by the State, you will easily come to hate anyone whose demands take priority over yours. They are not your competitors. They are your enemies. Even now, in what may prove to be the last days we can regard ourselves as a free nation with a bloated government, we can see how much anger simmers among those who believe the urgency of their demands outweighs any consideration of the cost to others.
-- Dr. Zero - Socialism: A Hate Story
Thursday, October 08, 2009
Quote of the Day - Socialism Edition
Quote of the Day - Socialism Edition
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Coincidence?
Perusing through some old posts and their comments, I ran across something I found . . . interesting.
Remember this Quote-of-the-Day from John Taylor Gatto's The Underground History of American Education?
Remember this Quote-of-the-Day from John Taylor Gatto's The Underground History of American Education?
I lived through the great transformation which turned schools from often useful places (if never the essential ones school publicists claimed) into laboratories of state experimentation. When I began teaching in 1961, the social environment of Manhattan schools was a distant cousin of the western Pennsylvania schools I attended in the 1940s, as Darwin was a distant cousin of Malthus.In the comments to The George Orwell Daycare Center, written two months before that QotD, I found this from reader DJ:
Discipline was the daily watchword on school corridors. A network of discipline referrals, graded into an elaborate catalogue of well-calibrated offenses, was etched into the classroom heart. At bottom, hard as it is to believe in today’s school climate, there was a common dedication to the intellectual part of the enterprise. I remember screaming (pompously) at an administrator who marked on my plan book that he would like to see evidence I was teaching "the whole child," that I didn’t teach children at all, I taught the discipline of the English language! Priggish as that sounds, it reflects an attitude not uncommon among teachers who grew up in the 1940s and before. Even with much slippage in practice, Monongahela and Manhattan had a family relationship. About schooling at least. Then suddenly in 1965 everything changed.
Whatever the event is that I’m actually referring to—and its full dimensions are still only partially clear to me—it was a nationwide phenomenon simultaneously arriving in all big cities coast to coast, penetrating the hinterlands afterwards. Whatever it was, it arrived all at once, the way we see national testing and other remote-control school matters like School-to-Work legislation appear in every state today at the same time. A plan was being orchestrated, the nature of which is unmasked in the upcoming chapters.
Think of this thing for the moment as a course of discipline dictated by coaches outside the perimeter of the visible school world. It constituted psychological restructuring of the institution’s mission, but traveled under the guise of a public emergency which (the public was told) dictated increasing the intellectual content of the business! Except for its nightmare aspect, it could have been a scene from farce, a swipe directly from Orwell’s 1984 and its fictional telly announcements that the chocolate ration was being raised every time it was being lowered. This reorientation did not arise from any democratic debate, or from any public clamor for such a peculiar initiative; the public was not consulted or informed. Best of all, those engineering the makeover denied it was happening.
I remember well the math lessons of the 3rd through 6th grades. During the 3rd through 5th grades, the textbooks used were a series for those grades by the same author and publisher. They taught arithmetic by explanation, example, and drill, and overwhelmingly they applied those lessons to the real world through innumerable story problems, as they were known at the time.Coincidence? I think not.
I dearly loved those story problems. They taught us to think. They taught the real-world use of arithmetic to answer questions and solve problems. They taught the use of algebra in simple, practical, useful ways, thereby making its later formal study easy.
Then came the sixth grade. We had a brand new textbook, with no curled page corners, no writing in the margins, no dirty fingerprints, and damned little in common with what we had used before. Your contrast between the classroom example of 1960 and 1970 (new math) is spot on. We were perhaps ahead of our time, as I was in the sixth grade from September, 1964, to May, 1965.
What I remember most about that textbook is that I didn't like it, the rest of the class hated it, and the teacher complained about it to us, in class. She did her best to teach what she would have taught had she still used the old textbooks, so we learned much more from the blackboard than from the book.
I recall a meeting between all the teachers of our school (grades 4-6) and the school board one afternoon just after class let out. I heard the voice of my teacher as she shouted at someone, which she rarely did, so I sneaked into the dark back of the auditorium where it was held. (I walked to and from school, so it didn't matter if I stayed late.) She ate out the board for having forced this textbook on us, and the Superintendent, a family friend whom I knew well, as he lived across the street from us, was bleeding from the ass before she was finished. The other teachers listened to her for about ten minutes, and then, when she sat down, they gave her a standing ovation. She kept her job. We kept using the textbook.
I Guess I'm Not... HUMAN
Normally I don't comment over at Markadelphia's blog. He does enough of that here, but yesterday I couldn't resist. Read his very short post, Yep.
I was the first to comment:
A basic education is a right in this country. It wasn't always.
No, indeed it was not. Back when I started this blog, one of the very first posts I published was an essay entitled What is a "Right"? That essay has, over the years, drawn a lot of commentary and inspired a six-part exchange with a professor of mathematics on just that very topic. (Check the left sidebar if you want to read the whole discussion. I recommend it.) The original essay was written to win me a year's membership at AR15.com, and that contest required that I limit myself to, I think, 800 words, but the core point of the essay was this:
I'll come back to that.
Most people would agree that protection by the fire and the police departments is a right. It wasn't always that way.
Obviously I'm not "most people." I know better. I've lived where residents had to pay a local private fire company to get them to come to their homes if there was a fire. If they chose not to pay, the firefighters could choose not to come. Or if they did, the homeowner would get a big damned bill for their appearance afterward that would represent a lot more than a few years of subscription to their services. If the homeowner chose not to pay that bill, they'd be taken to court.
Does that sound like a "right"?
I also understand that I have no "right" to police protection. That happens to be just one of many reasons I'm an activist for the right to arms. As I said, I'm a pragmatist. I try to deal with the way the world works rather than how people think it ought to be. And given your assertion that police protection is a "right," you ought to read both pieces of that essay. You might be surprised.
Why isn't health care a right? What else would promote the general Welfare of our population than ensuring that everyone has a long and healthy life? What could be more Just than making sure that every child, worker and elderly person can see a doctor when they're sick?
Let's take these one at a time, because they're not a set. This is a textbook example of argumentum ad consequentiam - the proposition that belief in X will lead to good consequences, therefore X is good.
Why isn't health care a right? For the same reason having a fire engine show up at your door in the event of a fire isn't a right - it demands that someone else do something for you. One thing I try to do with this blog is make sure that if someone can say something better than I can, I let them. Let me quote Dr. Pat Santy, a psychologist and MD on the topic:
And I'm able to tell the difference between idealism and pragmatism.
What else would promote the general Welfare of our population than ensuring that everyone has a long and healthy life? Excuse me? Everyone? What do you do with the chronically ill? The disabled? The terminally ill? Define "long" and "healthy." Who gets to be the arbiter of what is and what isn't a "long and healthy life"? You? Or some bureaucrat? You're postulating a utopian outcome as achievable fact when it is obviously fantasy.
What you're doing is appealing to emotion: "Wouldn't it be wonderful..." Why yes, it would. But back to reality. Life doesn't work that way, Sparky. Some people get roses, some get fertilizer. Wishing it weren't so won't make it not so. If you are incapable of dealing with what is, you shouldn't be advocating change.
What could be more Just than making sure that every child, worker and elderly person can see a doctor when they're sick? And they can't? This is Argumentum ad Misericordiam - the appeal to pity. Let me quote the author of the blog Bloodletting, an up-and-coming doctor now doing his residency training, from a post he wrote in 2004 back when Bush was pushing for expanded Medicare drug prescription entitlements. Fisking Nancy Pelosi's response to a Bush speech:
Next up, National health care would promote domestic Tranquility by giving everyone peace of mind, knowing that if their kid comes down with some awful disease they can get treatment. If you have cancer, the emergency room just ain't gonna cut it. I'm tempted, but let's wait until I come back to the "level of care" question.
To enjoy the Blessings of Liberty you have to be alive. Many people die in this country because they don't have health care. No, they may die because they don't have sufficient or sometimes competent health care, but health care is available. If you're deathly ill and call 911, an ambulance will come, an EMT will examine you, you will be transported to a hospital, and (assuming you live long enough) you will get looked at by a doctor, and probably admitted somewhere. Might be a crappy hospital, might not be enough to save you, but it's a lot more than our Founders got when they wrote the Constitution you quoted.
Now to the meat of it.
We are a rich country. Well, I'd say we were a rich country, but not any more. You are aware of the thing called "the national debt"? As of Monday the Treasury reports that our national debt was $11,919,879,121,739.54. That's $11.9 trillion dollars. That's the total of what the government has spent in excess of its income and not paid off. Per the CIA World Factbook the 2008 US GDP - defined as "the sum value of all goods and services produced in the country valued at prices prevailing in the United States" - was $14.26 trillion. On Sept. 30, 2008 (end of the 2008 fiscal year) the national debt was $10,024,724,896,912.49. According to this site, the total federal income in 2008 through taxes, fees, etc. was $2.524 trillion, or a mere 17.7% of GDP, and each and every year our federal government spends several hundred billion dollars more than it takes in - thus making the national debt ever larger.
Are we a "wealthy nation" or are we a debtor nation, living on money we don't have? Could you run your household that way? Can you spend, each and every year, more money than you earn, borrowing to make up the difference? EVERY year? Do you owe more than five times your annual income to creditors?
As we've become wealthier and as technology and science have advanced the notion of what is a right has changed. That's the only thing you've said that I agree with without reservation. We certainly have "advanced the notion," but that doesn't change the reality. As we've changed the notion of what is a right, we've spent ourselves into the poor house. "Entitlement" spending - and "health care" is just an expansion of entitlement spending - makes up about 45% of the federal budget now. (PDF)
Now that we can afford them, education, police and fire protection are rights. Really? Police protection isn't a right. The courts say so. Fire protection isn't a right. Education isn't a right either, but I will agree that the majority certainly believes that it is.
But can we still "afford" it? I invite you to read The George Orwell Daycare Center. Pack a lunch.
The way health care costs are exploding, we are going to go bankrupt. Regardless of what health care costs do, we are going bankrupt. All you have to do is look at the numbers to see that.
We have to change the way the system works to reign in costs. Who's this "we"? You want the government to do it, no? An army of bureaucrats appointed by our elected officials. Lots of GSA employees with great benefit packages, administering health care claims or monitoring those evil health insurance companies to ensure no one (especially Uncle Sugar) gets ripped off?
By covering everyone we can make it cheaper for each person. Really? Show me the data. Then explain, using small words, why a healthy 25 year old should be made to pay for the dialysis of an 86 year old (s)he has never met and will never meet? Explain to me how making that healthy 25 year old pay will make it cheaper for him/her.
When everyone is covered and everyone is paying, we'll finally have the leverage we need to prevent the explosive rise in costs. Again, really? Everyone? So you're going to make the poor pay too? I thought the deal was to cover everybody including those who can't pay. Who picks up their tab? I've heard various numbers bandied about, but we'll use 47 million, since that seems to be a popular number. You honestly are going to tell me that adding 47 million people to the health care system is going to make it work better? That it's going to reduce costs? How long does it take for you to get an appointment with your regular doctor, and when you go, how long do you spend in that doctor's actual presence? You're playing in fantasy-land again. It sounds wonderful, but it doesn't pass the smell test.
That will mean squeezing out unnecessary middlemen who get between you and your doctor. And here we go. Who decides who is "unnecessary"? And won't this add to unemployment? Why do those "unnecessary middlemen" exist in the first place? How about this example: What if lawyers had to bill like doctors do? (Stolen without shame from Dr. Westby G. Fisher, MD.)
What planet do you live on, because it isn't mine.
And, finally: The most expensive and least useful middlemen are insurance industry execs. By eliminating them we can squeeze literally billions of dollars from health care overhead (health care company execs pull in salaries, bonuses and options in the range of tens of millions, to hundreds of millions to a billion dollars). Ah, yes: Argumentum ad Invidiam, the appeal to envy.
Total health care expenditures in fiscal year 2009 are estimated to reach $2.5 trillion, according to the National Coalition on Health Care. (Edit: Did, in fact, reach $2.6 trillion in 2009 according to this site.) According to Crooks and Liars, the compensation of the top 10 highest-paid insurance company CEOs totals out to $85,429,970. Assuming the top 100 insurance company executive's compensation is ten times that amount, you're still looking at less than a billion dollars total. Hell, lets assume that the top 1,000 is 100 times that amount, you're looking at $8,542,997,000 You're talking about cutting - at most - 0.3% of total expenditures, even if you don't include what the government employees that replace them will cost.
Whoopee-fucking-doo.
Halving total health care expenditures would increase that savings to a whopping 0.6%! Be still my beating heart! But by G*d those greedy fucking fat-cat executives won't have three vacation homes!
You believe that everyone should have a right to health care. How noble of you! Another example of self-congratulations as a basis for social policy. You asked, What could be more Just than making sure that every child, worker and elderly person can see a doctor when they're sick? You're concerned about Justice? OK, here are some questions for you: How much health care is "Just"? Who decides, and on what basis? Is it "Just" that someone who can afford to pay gets more care than someone who would be dependent on government provided insurance alone? Or do we "level the playing field" and require everyone to accept the same level of care? Would that be "Just"? Or should everyone get every single bit of care that modern medical science can provide? What would that do to the costs you're so concerned about?
Here's the deal, from my perspective. The government does only two things well: nothing, and overreact. (Thank Congressman Adam Putnam for that pithy observation.) You want the federal government, which took in only $2.54 trillion last year, to expand by another $2.5 trillion, and you expect me to believe that it will do better than what we have now. You honestly expect me to believe that the federal government, currently responsible for the administration of Public Education, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, will run America's health insurance system better?
Go ahead, pull my other leg. And read today's Quote of the Day.
Don't deny that what you are advocating is the doubling of the amount of money flowing through Washington D.C. You hold up Education, Policing, and Fire Protection as equivalent "rights" yet all those are all paid for through taxation. You claim that the U.S. is a "rich nation," yet you ignore the fact that at our current level of national debt, every man, woman, and child in the country is on the hook for over $39,000 to pay off that debt - far more, in fact, since we're doing it on time and paying interest.
Do you have a spare $39k laying around? I don't know about you, but my VISA card limit is pretty far below that, and I don't think I could float a loan for it, either. And if 47 million people can't pay for health insurance, how many can pay their portion of the national debt?
You've interpreted the Preamble of the Constitution to require the federal government to do a lot of different things. You're hardly alone. FDR put forth the idea of an Economic Bill of Rights that I'm sure you'd love, but have you read the rest of the original document? It's quite short. As P.J. O'Rourke put it,
Alexis de Toqueville wrote long ago, "The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money." Congress discovered that little trick some time back, and the bill is now coming due.
And that's brought us to where we are today, $14-plus trillion in the hole and digging ever faster. Yet you and millions like you want us to redouble our digging in the name of "Social Justice!"
No, health care is not a right. Fire protection is not a right. Police protection is not a right. And pretty damned soon if we don't get our shit in one sock and our heads on straight with the nose in front, just living is going to become damned difficult because Reality won't be ignored forever.
And I guess I'm just not human for realizing and articulating that fact.
(Ah, well, only 3,500 words or so in this one. I may be losing my touch.)
UPDATE: Marko writes on the specifics of why health care is not a right. It is, typical of Marko, crystal clear and precise.
I was the first to comment:
Great! Let him and his organization provide that coverage, and let's see how long he and his organization stay in business.There were, of course, responses to that, but here's the one I'm going to respond to with an Überpost:
Health care is not a RIGHT.
blk said...Where to begin? Why, at the beginning!
From the preamble to the Constitution:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
A basic education is a right in this country. It wasn't always. Most people would agree that protection by the fire and the police departments is a right. It wasn't always that way.
Why isn't health care a right? What else would promote the general Welfare of our population than ensuring that everyone has a long and healthy life? What could be more Just than making sure that every child, worker and elderly person can see a doctor when they're sick?
National health care would promote domestic Tranquility by giving everyone peace of mind, knowing that if their kid comes down with some awful disease they can get treatment. If you have cancer, the emergency room just ain't gonna cut it.
To enjoy the Blessings of Liberty you have to be alive. Many people die in this country because they don't have health care.
We are a rich country. As we've become wealthier and as technology and science have advanced the notion of what is a right has changed. Now that we can afford them, education, police and fire protection are rights. The way health care costs are exploding, we are going to go bankrupt. We have to change the way the system works to reign in costs. By covering everyone we can make it cheaper for each person. When everyone is covered and everyone is paying, we'll finally have the leverage we need to prevent the explosive rise in costs.
That will mean squeezing out unnecessary middlemen who get between you and your doctor. The most expensive and least useful middlemen are insurance industry execs. By eliminating them we can squeeze literally billions of dollars from health care overhead (health care company execs pull in salaries, bonuses and options in the range of tens of millions, to hundreds of millions to a billion dollars).
A basic education is a right in this country. It wasn't always.
No, indeed it was not. Back when I started this blog, one of the very first posts I published was an essay entitled What is a "Right"? That essay has, over the years, drawn a lot of commentary and inspired a six-part exchange with a professor of mathematics on just that very topic. (Check the left sidebar if you want to read the whole discussion. I recommend it.) The original essay was written to win me a year's membership at AR15.com, and that contest required that I limit myself to, I think, 800 words, but the core point of the essay was this:
A "right" is what the majority of a society believes it is.That's the pragmatist in me coming out. What people believe is a "right" they will agitate for and defend against encroachment. Conversely, if they don't believe, they won't defend. Is universal education really a "Right"? Philosophically, no, it's not, but we've had it hammered into us for so long the majority believes it is. They believe that it is the job of the government to educate our children to the point that many parents no longer take any responsibility for that education on themselves, and don't pay any attention to what their children learn (or don't) while those children spend six to eight hours a day under the control (or not) of our public education system.
I'll come back to that.
Most people would agree that protection by the fire and the police departments is a right. It wasn't always that way.
Obviously I'm not "most people." I know better. I've lived where residents had to pay a local private fire company to get them to come to their homes if there was a fire. If they chose not to pay, the firefighters could choose not to come. Or if they did, the homeowner would get a big damned bill for their appearance afterward that would represent a lot more than a few years of subscription to their services. If the homeowner chose not to pay that bill, they'd be taken to court.
Does that sound like a "right"?
I also understand that I have no "right" to police protection. That happens to be just one of many reasons I'm an activist for the right to arms. As I said, I'm a pragmatist. I try to deal with the way the world works rather than how people think it ought to be. And given your assertion that police protection is a "right," you ought to read both pieces of that essay. You might be surprised.
Why isn't health care a right? What else would promote the general Welfare of our population than ensuring that everyone has a long and healthy life? What could be more Just than making sure that every child, worker and elderly person can see a doctor when they're sick?
Let's take these one at a time, because they're not a set. This is a textbook example of argumentum ad consequentiam - the proposition that belief in X will lead to good consequences, therefore X is good.
Why isn't health care a right? For the same reason having a fire engine show up at your door in the event of a fire isn't a right - it demands that someone else do something for you. One thing I try to do with this blog is make sure that if someone can say something better than I can, I let them. Let me quote Dr. Pat Santy, a psychologist and MD on the topic:
Let me be clear. I don't believe that people have a "right" to health care; because, what advocating such a "right" basically means is that you believe you have a "right" to my mind; you have a "right" to my professional competence; i.e., you have a "right" to enslave me.In that six-part series on 'What is a "Right"?', I concluded that there is only one fundamental right, and all others are corollaries of it, but one defining factor is that YOUR rights end when they require DEMANDING something of another. That's the idealist in me.
And I'm able to tell the difference between idealism and pragmatism.
What else would promote the general Welfare of our population than ensuring that everyone has a long and healthy life? Excuse me? Everyone? What do you do with the chronically ill? The disabled? The terminally ill? Define "long" and "healthy." Who gets to be the arbiter of what is and what isn't a "long and healthy life"? You? Or some bureaucrat? You're postulating a utopian outcome as achievable fact when it is obviously fantasy.
What you're doing is appealing to emotion: "Wouldn't it be wonderful..." Why yes, it would. But back to reality. Life doesn't work that way, Sparky. Some people get roses, some get fertilizer. Wishing it weren't so won't make it not so. If you are incapable of dealing with what is, you shouldn't be advocating change.
What could be more Just than making sure that every child, worker and elderly person can see a doctor when they're sick? And they can't? This is Argumentum ad Misericordiam - the appeal to pity. Let me quote the author of the blog Bloodletting, an up-and-coming doctor now doing his residency training, from a post he wrote in 2004 back when Bush was pushing for expanded Medicare drug prescription entitlements. Fisking Nancy Pelosi's response to a Bush speech:
This is from a man in the system, providing that care - what Markadelphia calls "a primary source." And let's stop playing semantic games. What you're advocating is universal health care insurance - the method of paying for health care. If health care is a right, why should anyone have to pay? What we're debating about here is the level of that care and its cost. I'll come back to this, too.HEALTH CARE AND MEDICARE PRESCRIPTION DRUGSThird, our "opportunity society" is built on the belief that affordable, available health care is not a luxury, but a basic foundation of a truly compassionate society. [OK, now we are going to get into the real nitty-gritty about the difference between "want" and "need." Healthcare is denied to nobody. NOBODY. Nobody is denied a ferrari, either, but most people do not want to spend the money on one.]
Next up, National health care would promote domestic Tranquility by giving everyone peace of mind, knowing that if their kid comes down with some awful disease they can get treatment. If you have cancer, the emergency room just ain't gonna cut it. I'm tempted, but let's wait until I come back to the "level of care" question.
To enjoy the Blessings of Liberty you have to be alive. Many people die in this country because they don't have health care. No, they may die because they don't have sufficient or sometimes competent health care, but health care is available. If you're deathly ill and call 911, an ambulance will come, an EMT will examine you, you will be transported to a hospital, and (assuming you live long enough) you will get looked at by a doctor, and probably admitted somewhere. Might be a crappy hospital, might not be enough to save you, but it's a lot more than our Founders got when they wrote the Constitution you quoted.
Now to the meat of it.
We are a rich country. Well, I'd say we were a rich country, but not any more. You are aware of the thing called "the national debt"? As of Monday the Treasury reports that our national debt was $11,919,879,121,739.54. That's $11.9 trillion dollars. That's the total of what the government has spent in excess of its income and not paid off. Per the CIA World Factbook the 2008 US GDP - defined as "the sum value of all goods and services produced in the country valued at prices prevailing in the United States" - was $14.26 trillion. On Sept. 30, 2008 (end of the 2008 fiscal year) the national debt was $10,024,724,896,912.49. According to this site, the total federal income in 2008 through taxes, fees, etc. was $2.524 trillion, or a mere 17.7% of GDP, and each and every year our federal government spends several hundred billion dollars more than it takes in - thus making the national debt ever larger.
Are we a "wealthy nation" or are we a debtor nation, living on money we don't have? Could you run your household that way? Can you spend, each and every year, more money than you earn, borrowing to make up the difference? EVERY year? Do you owe more than five times your annual income to creditors?
As we've become wealthier and as technology and science have advanced the notion of what is a right has changed. That's the only thing you've said that I agree with without reservation. We certainly have "advanced the notion," but that doesn't change the reality. As we've changed the notion of what is a right, we've spent ourselves into the poor house. "Entitlement" spending - and "health care" is just an expansion of entitlement spending - makes up about 45% of the federal budget now. (PDF)
Now that we can afford them, education, police and fire protection are rights. Really? Police protection isn't a right. The courts say so. Fire protection isn't a right. Education isn't a right either, but I will agree that the majority certainly believes that it is.
But can we still "afford" it? I invite you to read The George Orwell Daycare Center. Pack a lunch.
The way health care costs are exploding, we are going to go bankrupt. Regardless of what health care costs do, we are going bankrupt. All you have to do is look at the numbers to see that.
We have to change the way the system works to reign in costs. Who's this "we"? You want the government to do it, no? An army of bureaucrats appointed by our elected officials. Lots of GSA employees with great benefit packages, administering health care claims or monitoring those evil health insurance companies to ensure no one (especially Uncle Sugar) gets ripped off?
By covering everyone we can make it cheaper for each person. Really? Show me the data. Then explain, using small words, why a healthy 25 year old should be made to pay for the dialysis of an 86 year old (s)he has never met and will never meet? Explain to me how making that healthy 25 year old pay will make it cheaper for him/her.
When everyone is covered and everyone is paying, we'll finally have the leverage we need to prevent the explosive rise in costs. Again, really? Everyone? So you're going to make the poor pay too? I thought the deal was to cover everybody including those who can't pay. Who picks up their tab? I've heard various numbers bandied about, but we'll use 47 million, since that seems to be a popular number. You honestly are going to tell me that adding 47 million people to the health care system is going to make it work better? That it's going to reduce costs? How long does it take for you to get an appointment with your regular doctor, and when you go, how long do you spend in that doctor's actual presence? You're playing in fantasy-land again. It sounds wonderful, but it doesn't pass the smell test.
That will mean squeezing out unnecessary middlemen who get between you and your doctor. And here we go. Who decides who is "unnecessary"? And won't this add to unemployment? Why do those "unnecessary middlemen" exist in the first place? How about this example: What if lawyers had to bill like doctors do? (Stolen without shame from Dr. Westby G. Fisher, MD.)
Beginning July 1, 2010, under the Legal Billing Obfuscation Act of 2009, lawyers will receive their payments for services rendered after approval by a central US government Payment Distribution Authority (USPDA). To receive payment from the Authority plaintiff and defendant complaints must be coded and filed electronically using the International Classification of Legal Complaints, 10th edition (ICLD-10), copyright © 2009, American Bar Association and Legal Proceeding Terminology (LPT) codes, copyright © 2009 American Bar Association. The full publication of each of these codes will be available in print March 1st 2010 and in electronic form on DVD in July 2011.You're talking about adding another layer of government oversight to a system already buried under paperwork. You won't be "squeezing out unnecessary middlemen," you'll be replacing them with government drones. Yet you think that will make the system more efficient?
To familiarize lawyers with the new coding scheme requested by the USPDA, a small sample for the complaint of “Spilling” is shown below:
Pairing of improper complaint codes with legal proceeding codes will result in non-payment. “Up-coding” of legal proceedings shall constitute grounds for prosecution with some additional fines imposed by the IRS, as determined by the Office of Health and Human Services. For instance, pairing a legal complaint of “Spilling, Coffee, Hot, with blisters” to and of those of Divorce, same gender, living apart, male (or female) (shown below) will result in non-payment.
- Spilling 200
- Spilling, Water – 210
. . .
- Spilling, Water, Hot – 211
- with blisters 211.1
- without blisters 211
- Spilling, Water, Warm – 212
- Spilling, Water, Cold – 213
- Spilling, Coffee - 240.1
- Spilling, Coffee, Hot - 240.11
Spilling, Coffee, Hot, With Cream only - 240.12
- with blisters - 240.121
- without blisters 240.122
- Spilling, Coffee, Hot, With Regular Milk only – 240.13
- Spilling, Coffee, Hot, With 2% milk only – 240.14
- Spilling, Coffee, Hot, With Skim Milk – 240.15
- Spilling, Coffee, Hot, With Soy milk only 240.16
- Spilling, Coffee, Hot, With Sugar only - 240.17
Spilling, Coffee, Hot, With Artificial Sweetner (of any type, including, but not limited to Nutrasweet, Splenda, Sweet ‘n Low) – 240.18- Spilling, Coffee, Hot, With Cream and Sugar 240.16
. . .
Valid code pairings for spillage include Accident codes (0010-0059), Assault codes (4400-4499), or Battery codes (5500-5599) provided documentation supports the requests for payment.
- Divorce: 100-199
- Between husband and wife 100.1
- Between same gender couple, living together, male, 100.011
- Between same gender couple, living together, female, 100.012
- Between same gender couple, living apart, male, 100.021
- Between same gender couple, living apart, female, 100.022
. . .
What planet do you live on, because it isn't mine.
And, finally: The most expensive and least useful middlemen are insurance industry execs. By eliminating them we can squeeze literally billions of dollars from health care overhead (health care company execs pull in salaries, bonuses and options in the range of tens of millions, to hundreds of millions to a billion dollars). Ah, yes: Argumentum ad Invidiam, the appeal to envy.
Total health care expenditures in fiscal year 2009 are estimated to reach $2.5 trillion, according to the National Coalition on Health Care. (Edit: Did, in fact, reach $2.6 trillion in 2009 according to this site.) According to Crooks and Liars, the compensation of the top 10 highest-paid insurance company CEOs totals out to $85,429,970. Assuming the top 100 insurance company executive's compensation is ten times that amount, you're still looking at less than a billion dollars total. Hell, lets assume that the top 1,000 is 100 times that amount, you're looking at $8,542,997,000 You're talking about cutting - at most - 0.3% of total expenditures, even if you don't include what the government employees that replace them will cost.
Whoopee-fucking-doo.
Halving total health care expenditures would increase that savings to a whopping 0.6%! Be still my beating heart! But by G*d those greedy fucking fat-cat executives won't have three vacation homes!
You believe that everyone should have a right to health care. How noble of you! Another example of self-congratulations as a basis for social policy. You asked, What could be more Just than making sure that every child, worker and elderly person can see a doctor when they're sick? You're concerned about Justice? OK, here are some questions for you: How much health care is "Just"? Who decides, and on what basis? Is it "Just" that someone who can afford to pay gets more care than someone who would be dependent on government provided insurance alone? Or do we "level the playing field" and require everyone to accept the same level of care? Would that be "Just"? Or should everyone get every single bit of care that modern medical science can provide? What would that do to the costs you're so concerned about?
Here's the deal, from my perspective. The government does only two things well: nothing, and overreact. (Thank Congressman Adam Putnam for that pithy observation.) You want the federal government, which took in only $2.54 trillion last year, to expand by another $2.5 trillion, and you expect me to believe that it will do better than what we have now. You honestly expect me to believe that the federal government, currently responsible for the administration of Public Education, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, will run America's health insurance system better?
Go ahead, pull my other leg. And read today's Quote of the Day.
Don't deny that what you are advocating is the doubling of the amount of money flowing through Washington D.C. You hold up Education, Policing, and Fire Protection as equivalent "rights" yet all those are all paid for through taxation. You claim that the U.S. is a "rich nation," yet you ignore the fact that at our current level of national debt, every man, woman, and child in the country is on the hook for over $39,000 to pay off that debt - far more, in fact, since we're doing it on time and paying interest.
Do you have a spare $39k laying around? I don't know about you, but my VISA card limit is pretty far below that, and I don't think I could float a loan for it, either. And if 47 million people can't pay for health insurance, how many can pay their portion of the national debt?
You've interpreted the Preamble of the Constitution to require the federal government to do a lot of different things. You're hardly alone. FDR put forth the idea of an Economic Bill of Rights that I'm sure you'd love, but have you read the rest of the original document? It's quite short. As P.J. O'Rourke put it,
The U.S. Constitution is less than a quarter the length of the owner's manual for a 1998 Toyota Camry, and yet it has managed to keep 300 million of the world's most unruly, passionate and energetic people safe, prosperous and free.That document spells out, with brevity and clarity, how the federal government is arranged, how it is to be staffed, and what the powers of each branch are and are not. As you've noted, the public's perception of what are and aren't "rights" has certainly changed over the years, and I put the blame - yes, blame - on our education system. The founding documents of our nation were based on the idea of limiting how much government could do, both for us and to us, yet we've been taught for decades that it's the job of government to take care of us, that only government is big enough to do certain jobs, that we're not qualified to do things for ourselves. In fact, we should be actively discouraged from doing so.
Alexis de Toqueville wrote long ago, "The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money." Congress discovered that little trick some time back, and the bill is now coming due.
And that's brought us to where we are today, $14-plus trillion in the hole and digging ever faster. Yet you and millions like you want us to redouble our digging in the name of "Social Justice!"
No, health care is not a right. Fire protection is not a right. Police protection is not a right. And pretty damned soon if we don't get our shit in one sock and our heads on straight with the nose in front, just living is going to become damned difficult because Reality won't be ignored forever.
And I guess I'm just not human for realizing and articulating that fact.
(Ah, well, only 3,500 words or so in this one. I may be losing my touch.)
UPDATE: Marko writes on the specifics of why health care is not a right. It is, typical of Marko, crystal clear and precise.
Quote of the Day - Socialism Edition
In comments, GrumpyOldFart linked to an excellent piece by "Dr. Zero" at Hotair.com - Socialism: A Hate Story - with the admonition,
I imagine Kevin can pull a QotD from there easily. The difficulty will be in choosing.How right he was. Here's my choice for today:
One of the most persistent and dangerous illusions of socialism is the belief that money becomes magically virtuous when government handles it.I think I'll be pulling QotD's from this piece for the next several days.
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
Quote of the Day - Milton Friedman Edition
Quote of the Day - Milton Friedman Edition
Is there some society we know that doesn’t run on greed? What is greed? Of course none of us are greedy; it's only the other fellow who's greedy.(Hark! Was that the sound of someone's head exploding?)
The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn't construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn't revolutionize the auto industry that way.
In the only cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding poverty you're talking about, they have had capitalism and largely free trade.
If you want to know where the masses are worst off, it's exactly in the kinds of societies that depart from that. The record of history is absolutely crystal clear: that there is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by a free enterprise system.
Monday, October 05, 2009
And the Dominoes Continue to Fall
And the Dominoes Continue to Fall
Gold prices should continue to climb . . .
UPDATE: This is interesting - Whodunit? Sneak attack on U.S. dollar. RTWT, too. Did we just get played?
The demise of the dollarRTWT.
In a graphic illustration of the new world order, Arab states have launched secret moves with China, Russia and France to stop using the US currency for oil trading
In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar.
Secret meetings have already been held by finance ministers and central bank governors in Russia, China, Japan and Brazil to work on the scheme, which will mean that oil will no longer be priced in dollars.
The plans, confirmed to The Independent by both Gulf Arab and Chinese banking sources in Hong Kong, may help to explain the sudden rise in gold prices, but it also augurs an extraordinary transition from dollar markets within nine years.
Gold prices should continue to climb . . .
UPDATE: This is interesting - Whodunit? Sneak attack on U.S. dollar. RTWT, too. Did we just get played?
Mask? Who Needs a Mask?
Mask? Who Needs a Mask?
Dr. Sanity posted a particularly impassioned piece today, Glory to Postmodernism Science!, a piece inspired by an article published in The New Scientist by one Michael Brooks. That article was a review of Randy Olson's book, Don't Be Such a Scientist: Talking Substance in an Age of Style. The part that drew Dr. Sanity's ire?
Dr. Sanity continues:
Kant is still alive and well, even flourishing, and his ideas are being used by the Left every day. In fact, they've become so pervasive that the Left no longer seems to be concerned about concealing their sleight-of-hand: Emotion over fact? Check. "Fake but accurate"? Check. The ends justify the means? Check. I know what I know, don't confuse me with the facts? Checkeroo.
She's right to be appalled. But the public education system has done its job well. The majority doesn't notice it's being manipulated, or even if it does, it doesn't care. Masks? Who needs masks anymore? The rubes don't care that they're being played!
Well, some still do.
No wonder they're worried.
Dr. Sanity posted a particularly impassioned piece today, Glory to Postmodernism Science!, a piece inspired by an article published in The New Scientist by one Michael Brooks. That article was a review of Randy Olson's book, Don't Be Such a Scientist: Talking Substance in an Age of Style. The part that drew Dr. Sanity's ire?
If you want to get a message across to the public, don't obsess about facts. Just look at Al Gore's climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth, Olson says. The film contained more than a few factual errors, but it also had a profound influence on the world's attitude to climate change. Perhaps compromising on accuracy is a necessary evil...is this really the right way for scientists to go? With climate change, perhaps the end justifies the means... given Gore's success and the prevalence of scientific illiteracy, it remains an interesting path to consider.She expands:
In other words: truth is irrelevant, lying is perfectly ok, and "compromising on accuracy is a necessary evil" --particularly when it is some important issue like climate change...or any other issue deemed important for social policy by the political left. It is, after all, for our own good! A "greater good" !Which reminded me of something I posted some time back about how engineers (and, I'd hope, scientists) see the world. It was a quote from The Purple Avenger's blog and his post Engineers versus everyone else:
Stephen Hicks in his book quotes Frank Lentricchia, a noted Duke University literary critic. Postmodernism, says Lentricchia, "seeks not to find the foundation or conditions of truth but to exercise power for the purpose of social change."
Apparently, it's not what is true, it's what you can convince others to believe that matters.
My best friend is a lawyer, bright, gifted, ... PhD in law; bored with his job, he decided to study engineering. After his first quarter, he came to me and said that the two "C"s he'd achieved in Engineering Calculus 101 and Engineering Physics 101 were the first two non-A grades he'd ever gotten in college, and that he had had to study harder for them than for any other dozen classes he'd had. "I now understand", he said, "why engineers and their like are so hard to examine, whether on the stand or in a deposition. When they say a thing is possible, they KNOW it is possible, and when they say a thing is not possible, they KNOW it is not. Most people don't understand 'know' in that way; what they know is what we can persuade them to believe. You engineers live in the same world as the rest of us, but you understand that world in a way we never will."(Emphasis in bold is original. Emphasis in red is mine.)
Dr. Sanity continues:
Postmodernism deliberately eschews truth and reason and reality. It insists that our minds are not capable of even knowing reality. Under such conditions, what good is science, you may ask?As I've noted, despite the source of the title of this blog, I am not an Objectivist, nor am I particularly enamored of Ayn Rand, though I will call her one of the clearest thinkers I've ever read. I've excerpted from her essays and speeches on several occasions because I believe she was right a whole lot more often than she was wrong, and on this topic she was dead-nuts on. In her 1974 speech to the graduating class of West Point on the topic of philosophy, she said this:
You might claim - as most people do - that you have never been influenced by philosophy. I will ask you to check that claim. Have you ever thought or said the following? "Don't be so sure - nobody can be certain of anything." You got that notion from David Hume (and many, many others), even though you might never have heard of him. Or: "This may be good in theory, but it doesn't work in practice." You got that from Plato. Or: "That was a rotten thing to do, but it's only human, nobody is perfect in this world." You got that from Augustine. Or: "It may be true for you, but it's not true for me." You got it from William James. Or: "I couldn't help it! Nobody can help anything he does." You got it from Hegel. Or: "I can't prove it, but I feel it's true." You got it from Kant. Or: "It's logical, but logic has nothing to do with reality." You got it from Kant. Or: "It's evil because it's selfish." You got it from Kant.Rand hated Kant, calling him "the most evil man in history." Re-read two concepts she attributes to him: "I can't prove it, but I feel it's true," and "It's logical, but logic has nothing to do with reality." She blames Kantian philosophy for, well read it yourself:
Suppose you met a twisted, tormented young man and, trying to understand his behavior, discovered that he was brought up by a man-hating monster who worked systematically to paralyze his mind, destroy his self-confidence, obliterate his capacity for enjoyment and undercut his every attempt to escape. You would realize that nothing could be done with or for that young man and nothing could be expected of him until he was removed from the monster's influence.What Dr. Sanity is appalled by is the application of Kantian philosophy to what is supposed to be SCIENCE. She writes:
Western civilization is in that young man's position. The monster is Immanuel Kant.
I have mentioned in many articles that Kant is the chief destroyer of the modern world. My primary concern, however, was not to engage in polemics, but to present a rational approach to philosophy, untainted by any Kantian influence, and to indicate the connection of philosophy to man's life here, on earth--a connection which Kant had severed. It is useless to be against anything, unless one knows what one is for. A merely negative stand is always futile- as, for instance, the stand of the conservatives, who are against communism, but not for capitalism. One cannot start with or build on a negative; it is only by establishing what is the good that one can know what is evil and why.
Kant was opposed in his time and thereafter, but his opponents adopted a kind of Republican Party method: they conceded all his basic premises and fought him on inconsequential details. He won--by default and with their help. The result was the progressive shrinking of philosophy's stature in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. All the irrational twistings of contemporary philosophy are Kantian in origin. The ultimate result is the present state of the world.
If, on the positive basis of my philosophy, I may be permitted to express a negative consideration, as a consequence and a side issue, I would like to say, paraphrasing Ragnar Danneskjold in Atlas Shrugged: "I've chosen a special mission of my own. I'm after a man whom I want to destroy. He died 167 years ago, but until the last trace of him is wiped out of men's minds, we will not have a decent world to live in. (What man?) Immanuel Kant."
Well, those who adhere to postmodern ideas prefer to exercise power to force social change. They live in a world of contradiction and emotion. Their strategy is not to persuade people to accept their ideas, but to confuse them; to distort the truth, propagate lies and smears; and to use whatever rhetoric is necessary to accomplish their purposes. Science is particularly useful if it can be manipulated to make those who oppose your ideas to STFU.By all means, read her whole piece.
The politically useful concept of "social justice" is far more important than reality or truth; and the way that you can expedite the acceptance of unpalatable social policies is to use science to demonize your enemies or to pronounce that there is a "scientific consensus" on a contentious issue.
This is what your typical leftist postmodern progressives has in mind for the future of science. Instead of a dedication to reality and truth, science will be used to foist leftist ideology down the throats of the populace.
Kant is still alive and well, even flourishing, and his ideas are being used by the Left every day. In fact, they've become so pervasive that the Left no longer seems to be concerned about concealing their sleight-of-hand: Emotion over fact? Check. "Fake but accurate"? Check. The ends justify the means? Check. I know what I know, don't confuse me with the facts? Checkeroo.
She's right to be appalled. But the public education system has done its job well. The majority doesn't notice it's being manipulated, or even if it does, it doesn't care. Masks? Who needs masks anymore? The rubes don't care that they're being played!
Well, some still do.
No wonder they're worried.
Not Restricted to the USA
Via Hell in a Handbasket by way of The Zeray Gazette (and note the spelling errors in the text and transcript):
Some Government Bureaucrat . . .
Some Government Bureaucrat . . .
. . . will come along and quash his dream:
RTWT, though. Kid's got a future!
(h/t: Instapundit)
. . . will come along and quash his dream:
Teen’s DIY Energy Hacking Gives African Village New Hope(My emphasis.) There's his first mistake.
Some people see lemons and make lemonade. William Kamkwamba saw wind and made a windmill.
This might not seem like a mighty feat. But Kamkwamba, who grew up in Masitala, a tiny rural farming village off the grid in Malawi, was 14 years old in 2001 when he spotted a photo of a windmill in a U.S. textbook one day. He decided to make one, hacking together a contraption from strips of PVC pipe, rusty car and bicycle parts and blue gum trees.
Though he ultimately had big designs for his creation, all he really wanted to do initially was power a small bulb in his bedroom so he could stay up and read past sunset.
But one windmill has turned into three, which now generate enough electricity to light several bulbs in his family’s house, power radios and a TV, charge his neighbors’ cellphones and pump water for the village’s fields and household use.
Now 22, Kamkwamba wants to build windmills across Malawi and perhaps beyond. Next summer he also plans to construct a drilling machine to bore 40-meter holes for water and pumps. His aim is to help Africans become self-sufficient and resolve their problems without reliance on foreign aid.
RTWT, though. Kid's got a future!
(h/t: Instapundit)
Quote of the Day - Meet the New Boss Edition
Quote of the Day - Meet the New Boss Edition
In his scathing Wall Street Journal column on The Post articles last week, Thomas Frank crystallized the gap between Obama’s pledge and this reality. “There is something uniquely depressing about the fact that the National Portrait Gallery’s version of the Barack Obama ‘Hope’ poster previously belonged to a pair of lobbyists.” That’s no joke: It was donated by Tony and Heather Podesta.
-- Frank Rich, The New York Times - The Rabbit Ragu Democrats
Saturday, October 03, 2009
Quote of the Day - Tough History Coming Edition
Our currency is tanking. Our debts are climbing. Our energy needs are breaking us. Our borrowing is out of control. The country is divided in a 1859/1968 mode. And the world is smiling as Obama, now hesitant and without the old messianic confidence, presides over our accepted inevitable decline. The country needs to buck up and meet these challenges head on, since the world smells blood, whether in Iran, Russia, the Mideast, North Korea, or South America, and in a mere 9 months of the reset button.This sh!t is really starting to worry me.
- Victor Davis Hanson, Works and Days, Change and Hope
Friday, October 02, 2009
Get Out. Get Out NOW.
I've quoted Sir Robert Peel's Nine Principles of Policing that he developed when creating London's first official police force in 1822 several times in the past. Time to repeat them again:
1. The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder.I've also posted repeatedly on the decay of the UK's culture, and its performance as a laboratory petri dish for what the Left wants to implement here.
2. The ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent upon public approval of police actions.
3. Police must secure the willing co-operation of the public in voluntary observance of the law to be able to secure and maintain the respect of the public.
4. The degree of co-operation of the public that can be secured diminishes proportionately to the necessity of the use of physical force.
5 Police seek and preserve public favour not by catering to public opinion but by constantly demonstrating absolute impartial service to the law.
6. Police use physical force to the extent necessary to secure observance of the law or to restore order only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient.
7. Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.
8. Police should always direct their action strictly towards their functions and never appear to usurp the powers of the judiciary.
9. The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it.
This story (h/t: Ironhand) pissed me off:
Mark of madness: Police refuse to show suspect's birthmark in ID parade... because of his human rightsIt goes well beyond "lame."
When Tracy Ryan spotted a suspected burglar emerging from the dog sanctuary where she works, she thought she would have little problem pointing him out to police.
After all, he had a large port-wine stain on his face.
But when police set up an identity parade, they refused to take the man's distinctive birthmark into account - in case it infringed his human rights.
An officer from the Nottinghamshire force explained that the mark was too rare to be included in a profile of the burglar when it was entered into a computer database.
It would leave only a small pool of potential suspects in the electronic ID parade, he said, breaking police rules.
Under laws designed to take into account 'the rights and freedoms of the public', witnesses must be shown a minimum of 12 photographs before they are allowed to identify a suspect.
These are selected from a database of people who have passed through custody in Nottinghamshire, in the hope that the burglar is already known to police.
Because only a handful of people on a database had a birthmark or port-wine stain, the characteristic gave fewer than 12 results.
The characteristic was subsequently removed and the search was broadened.
This forced Mrs Ryan, 39, to examine the faces of 93 suspects, none of which she recognised.
It was on August 25 that £300 in charity donations was stolen from the Crossing Cottage Greyhound Sanctuary in Sutton on Trent, Nottinghamshire.
Mrs Ryan noted that, apart from his birthmark, the suspected culprit was tall and wore a white tracksuit. She also took his car registration number.
Police have subsequently made an arrest and Mrs Ryan is due to attend a second identification parade which will include the suspect, who is on bail.
He will be pictured alongside 11 people of a similar appearance. But if he has a birthmark, it will still be kept secret.
The suspected thief and the other participants will be made to cover one side of their face.
Mrs Ryan said: 'Surely an unusual characteristic like a big birthmark should help a police investigation?
'If there were just four or five people on the database with such marks, all the better.
'I understand police have to follow procedures, but to me the rules are flawed and amount to a pretty lame excuse.'
Her boss John Morton, who manages the home for 30 former racing dogs as part of the Retired Greyhound Trust, said: 'The police are saying they can't infringe human rights. But what about our human rights?You don't have any. You're not a member of a protected class.
'We are law-abiding people who have been victims of crime, and the police have a responsibility to maximise their chances of solving that crime. If this is the law, it has to be changed.'Yes, but it won't be.
But this story (also via Ironhand) inspired a RCOBTM reaction:
Police tell mother attacked by yobs at home: 'We won't send anyone... it may escalate the problem'Remember, this is in the same nation that produced Sir Robert Peel.
A mother who was punched to the floor in her own home by yobs was stunned when police advised her not to call officers to her house - because it would 'escalate' the problem.
Nikki Collen, 39, begged officers for help after a thug kicked in her front door and punched her to the floor in her hallway.
After her attacker fled, Nikki rang Warwickshire Police who promised to send an officer to her home in Kenilworth.
But an hour later she received a phone call from a woman police officer who told her it would be better if police did not attend because it might inflame the situation.
Mother-of-two Nikki, who is studying an Open University degree in nursing, said: 'I couldn't believe it.
'I was attacked and wanted to report it but the officer was persuading me not to press charges.
'She even told me that if the bullies saw a police officer at my home it could escalate the problem further.
Sweet bleeding jeebus.
'I was so scared I asked what I should do and she told me to try and sort it out on my own. I was really upset and felt really alone.Because your betters tell you you should. For "social justice."
'It's a horrendous way to live and has got to the stage where I fear going out because of the abuse I will get.
'I can't cope with it and need some help from authorities. I've just had enough and need to move. Why should I put up with this?'
Nikki, who lives with her son Josh, 17, and daughter Demi, 13, have been subjected to a terrifying campaign of harassment after a minor dispute over a bottle of hair conditioner last December.Of course not! That might violate their rights!
Since then the family have been sworn at, had used condoms hurled at their house, had their windows smashed and graffiti scrawled on their home.
Nikki said the police had been called on numerous occasions but no charges had ever been brought against the bullies.
She added: 'I am on anti-depressants, my nerves are shot to pieces and I'm terrified of walking out my front door.You and the rest of your countrymen.
'This is no way to live. When it's got really bad, I have to admit I have thought about ending it but I'm determined not to be beaten by the bullies who are acting like they are above the law.
'All I want is a bit of support from the police.'
Don't hold your breath waiting.
The family's problems have haunting comparisons to the case of Fiona Pilkington and her disabled daughter Francecca Hardwick, who were driven to their deaths after an 11-year bully campaign."Working closely."
Nikki said: 'I've read in the papers about Mrs Pilkington and just think the police simply don't care.
'If they can ignore that family for 11 years what hope have I got?'
A Warwickshire Police spokeswoman confirmed a female officer had spoken to Nikki about the attack on Saturday, September 19.
She said: 'The policing team have had some involvement in ongoing issues in the street.
'We have also been working closely with the local authority regarding tenancy agreements and ongoing neighbour disputes.
They're engaging in dialog, no doubt. Surely that will solve everything!
If you live in the UK and are an upstanding, law-abiding citizen, GET THE HELL OUT. It's too late to save your culture.
Dan Rather is Nuts
Dan Rather is Nuts
I traveled yesterday, and my rental car had Sirius satellite radio, so I skipped through a lot of channels looking for something interesting to listen to on my trip. FOX News' Neil Cavuto interviewed Dan Rather, since his $70 million lawsuit against CBS had just been thrown out of court. Part of the interview is here.
Some excerpts:
The only question I have now is whether Dan was nuts before he ran with the story, or did its exposure drive him over the brink?
I traveled yesterday, and my rental car had Sirius satellite radio, so I skipped through a lot of channels looking for something interesting to listen to on my trip. FOX News' Neil Cavuto interviewed Dan Rather, since his $70 million lawsuit against CBS had just been thrown out of court. Part of the interview is here.
Some excerpts:
Rather: We have strong documented evidence that what you have had here, you've had a large corporation, Viacom CBS, that basically buried an important news story in order to curry favor with and protect political interests who regulate them in Washington.Fake but accurate!
Cavuto: But they did let the story run, right? I mean, wasn't the issue with the quality of the documents that would support your story?
Rather: That was an issue, but the basic issue was whether we reported the truth. Was the story true.
Cavuto: And you stand by the story to this day that it was accurate.
Rather: I do.
Rather: I stand by the story as we reported it as accurate. But here's the important thing . . .I think he really believes that. As a "reasonable person who's trying to be fair," the side-by-side comparison of the CBS memos showing identical documents printed out using Microsoft Word at its default settings pretty much convinced me that the CBS documents were absolute, unalloyed, incompetent FAKES - and with that conclusion, anything else 60 Minutes II, CBS News and Dan Rather had to say to me was not only suspect, it was false until proven otherwise.
Cavuto: By the way, to that end then the documents that seemed to, to some experts reckoning to be forged or faked, you say no.
Rather: I do. What I say - and this is very important to me, and I think to any reasonable person who's trying to be fair about this - and that is that no one to this day, although you read about the documents were quote "forged," that they were frauds, quote unquote, nobody has proven that.
The only question I have now is whether Dan was nuts before he ran with the story, or did its exposure drive him over the brink?
Thursday, October 01, 2009
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