HCAN: "It's a Shame Not a Single Republican" Voted To Allow Debate

[spookyturtle 9,466]

Well one would have to be pretty foolish to live here when utopia is only a plane ticket away, right?

One day soon I want to go there from the Phils. Any idea how long of a flight it is?

You're not in the US? Then you're already ahead of the game.

[luckytxn 2,265]

So Medicare was proven to be actually more costly and inefficient than private insurance awhile back so we should follow that and go complete health care for all? Too funny.

Also I keep hearing how the Republicans are doing what the Health insurance wants but when I check on two sites and that shows that all the health industry and insurance political contributions have been and are still flowing to the Socialists then makes me wonder why they want all this. May be it is because they are being promised to be fed at the trough of greed to gorge themselves at the public teat. The Socialists are selling everyone out but the koolaid drinking sheep just live in ignorance bleating their approval.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

So Medicare was proven to be actually more costly and inefficient than private insurance awhile back so we should follow that and go complete health care for all? Too funny.

Also I keep hearing how the Republicans are doing what the Health insurance wants but when I check on two sites and that shows that all the health industry and insurance political contributions have been and are still flowing to the Socialists then makes me wonder why they want all this. May be it is because they are being promised to be fed at the trough of greed to gorge themselves at the public teat. The Socialists are selling everyone out but the koolaid drinking sheep just live in ignorance bleating their approval.

Medicare is way more efficient than private insurance...that's an indisputable fact. Which is the whole argument against including a public option...the Republicans fear that public insurance will run private insurance companies out of business.

As for who is looking out for you - the private insurance lobby has spent over $650 million dollars fighting health care reform in less than 10 months since it was pushed forward.

[Niels Bohr 72]

Reminds me how Comcrap wants to institute throttle control on the network by lobbying Congress to support their business needs.

So Medicare was proven to be actually more costly and inefficient than private insurance awhile back so we should follow that and go complete health care for all? Too funny.

Also I keep hearing how the Republicans are doing what the Health insurance wants but when I check on two sites and that shows that all the health industry and insurance political contributions have been and are still flowing to the Socialists then makes me wonder why they want all this. May be it is because they are being promised to be fed at the trough of greed to gorge themselves at the public teat. The Socialists are selling everyone out but the koolaid drinking sheep just live in ignorance bleating their approval.

Medicare is way more efficient than private insurance...that's an indisputable fact. Which is the whole argument against including a public option...the Republicans fear that public insurance will run private insurance companies out of business.

As for who is looking out for you - the private insurance lobby has spent over $650 million dollars fighting health care reform in less than 10 months since it was pushed forward.

[scandal 951]

Good constitutions are formed upon a comparison of the liberty of the individual with the strength of government: If the tone of either be too high, the other will be weakened too much. It is the happiest possible mode of conciliating these objects, to institute one branch peculiarly endowed with sensibility, another with knowledge and firmness. Through the opposition and mutual control of these bodies, the government will reach, in its regular operations, the perfect balance between liberty and power.

Alexander Hamilton, speech to the New York Ratifying Convention, June 25, 1788

Good post, Steve.

Our form of government is a compromise between those who fear strong central authority and wished to preserve individual civil liberties, and those who feared anarchy and understood the need for a confident central government. Similarly, it's a balance between distributed and centralized authority - a nod to the regional nature of a large diverse country (states rights) and again, that same acknowledgment of strong central government. It's always been about checks and balances due to a distrust of any one branch of government becoming too strong. The basic rationale of American government is that it should be limited and balanced, yet it is essential and vital for protecting and sustaining the common good. That was true in the 1770s and 1780s. It's true today.

There's a vocal loudmouthed population which rants "we hate all government, and all government officials, and all political parties - a plague on all their houses!". Go ask them for actual concrete solutions to the real problems we face as a society. They have none.

[Sofiyya 1,687]

The money you want to find is in someone else's pocket since the government and none of you liberal beggers have none of your own to help yourselves.

All this juvenile catterwalling about how "everyone else is doing health care" in the world is more mindless capitulating to big government nannyism by people who have the money to spend on importing a spouse, but want someone else's money to take care of their ills. How rich is that?!

Too bad you weren't the president. Then we could criticize you and call you all kind of names without being suspended. You're worse than those you constantly belittle.

Certainly not worse; simply more honest. You didn't dispute the premise of my post, just my delivery. It can't be disputed that there are those here who are salivating over the possibility that they may soon have a new law that mandates robbing Peter to pay Paul. The incentive to solve their own problems is lost since they merely wait on the Feds to take from others what they can't get for themselves.

Let's face it, importing a spouse is not an inexpensive proposition. in addition, the process provides plenty of evidence proving the inefficiencies and apathy of the Feds to individual circumstances. That anyone on this website endorses more of the same for everyone, and that some pay more for it than others is demonstrable shortsightedness of the first order.

[spookyturtle 9,466]

The money you want to find is in someone else's pocket since the government and none of you liberal beggers have none of your own to help yourselves.

All this juvenile catterwalling about how "everyone else is doing health care" in the world is more mindless capitulating to big government nannyism by people who have the money to spend on importing a spouse, but want someone else's money to take care of their ills. How rich is that?!

Too bad you weren't the president. Then we could criticize you and call you all kind of names without being suspended. You're worse than those you constantly belittle.

Certainly not worse; simply more honest. You didn't dispute the premise of my post, just my delivery. It can't be disputed that there are those here who are salivating over the possibility that they may soon have a new law that mandates robbing Peter to pay Paul. The incentive to solve their own problems is lost since they merely wait on the Feds to take from others what they can't get for themselves.

Let's face it, importing a spouse is not an inexpensive proposition. in addition, the process provides plenty of evidence proving the inefficiencies and apathy of the Feds to individual circumstances. That anyone on this website endorses more of the same for everyone, and that some pay more for it than others is demonstrable shortsightedness of the first order.

There are hard working people that will benefit from healthcare reform. Granted they aren't in the elite group such as you are, but they work hard for what they do have. It's time for this country to spend some money right here on US soil for a change and invest in itself.

[Nikita2Charles 33]

Let me ask you this question

Do you think a CEO of an health care companies deserve $1.6 Billion in Compensation

We are in Open enrollment at work, and every year our insurance premium keeps going up, our deduction share keep increasing, just as the company portion also. IF things keep going at that rate most companies won't be able to afford health care coverage, or the cost will be so high, people won't have any option but to opt out.

That same year the McGuire the former CEO of united health care got so much money in compensation, Unitedhealth care was asking some of the doctors to take a pay cut on their fees, to the point some doctors including my wife Doctor. We had to change to a different physician because a few doctors dropped out of unitedhealth care.

Again let me ask you, Do you think a CEO of a health care company deserves to get that much money, where do you think that money came from

From you and me and all of those folks that are paying their insurance deduction to those insurance companies.

DO YOU THINK WE SHOULD LEAVE THE SYSTEM AS IT IS?

DO YOU THINK WE SHOULD KEEP THE STATUS QUO?

[Sofiyya 1,687]

There is little investment reaped from lower the initiative and the incentive of both those who will be forced to give and those who cannot wait to receive. It's not health care reform in and of itself that I oppose, it's the way it's being done by encouraging class envy, by demonizing some segments of society, and by bribing legislators to buy votes. For those on these highest of political echelons, politics is a business, where garning favors, keeping score, and planting victory flags are the highest pursuits. This is why so many legislators are not so mindful of what's in the bill, or how their constituants view it, as they are interested in its mere existance.

Most if those here who cheer it on are also less interested in what's in it but that it exists. As well. Combined with our "leaders" lack of true integrity, that is truly sad for our future.

[Sofiyya 1,687]

Btw, the folks making your laws are part of an elite group, too, but Im not in your wallet unless invited in.

[Sofiyya 1,687]

What the CEO of any company makes is up to the board of directors. Do you support the idea of government setting pay? At what level on the org chart would they stop?

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it.

~ Eisenhower

"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes that you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."

President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1952

[scandal 951]

Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it.

~ Eisenhower

"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes that you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."

President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1952

He musta been a weak-assed RINO. Even if he did defeat the Nazis

[spookyturtle 9,466]

Perhaps if you knew someone it would help, you might feel differently. Of course someone in your position wouldn't associate with people like that, but just think about it for a moment or two. My tax dollars have gone to Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, etc etc etc. How much aid have we provided around the world since WWII? How many loans? How much in rebuilding other countries devastated by war? I have no problem with my money being spent on my home soil to help American people that need it. Not to pay for abortions or illegal aliens, but to help citizens and legal immigrants alike.

[Sofiyya 1,687]

“When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.”

-Benjamin Franklin

“To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.”

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Joseph Milligan, April 6, 1816

“A wise and frugal government … shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.”

-Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801

“Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated.”

-Thomas Jefferson

“When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.”

-Thomas Jefferson to Charles Hammond, 1821. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, (Memorial Edition) Lipscomb and Bergh, editors, ME 15:332

“The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.”

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to E. Carrington, May 27, 1788

“The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If ‘Thou shalt not covet’ and ‘Thou shalt not steal’ were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free.”

-John Adams, A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, 1787

James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, elaborated upon this limitation in a letter to James Robertson:

“With respect to the two words ‘general welfare,’ I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.”

In 1794, when Congress appropriated $15,000 for relief of French refugees who fled from insurrection in San Domingo to Baltimore and Philadelphia, James Madison stood on the floor of the House to object saying, “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”

-James Madison, 4 Annals of congress 179 (1794)

“…[T]he government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.”

-James Madison

“If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the general welfare, the government is no longer a limited one possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one subject to particular exceptions.” James Madison, “Letter to Edmund Pendleton,”

-James Madison, January 21, 1792, in The Papers of James Madison, vol. 14, Robert A Rutland et. al., ed (Charlottesvile: University Press of Virginia,1984).

“An elective despotism was not the government we fought for; but one in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among the several bodies of magistracy as that no one could transcend their legal limits without being effectually checked and restrained by the others.”

-James Madison, Federalist No. 58, February 20, 1788

“There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”

-James Madison, speech to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 16, 1788