>> ^curiousity> Umm... Isn't that what he said? I'm pretty sure he said the problem with Canada's health care is that it is underfunded.
And you are making the same point and then saying that he is ignorant? We did watch the same video, right?

To a point yes and to a point no. We already run at a 50% tax rate, and that's with 33m people across the country. Figure at the size of the country, that we're already overburdened paying for everything. You probably missed the point because I was touching on things in a conceptual level which is okay. The level is at the max that can be reasonably sustained, while providing all other core services.

Yes he is ignorant, because he believes that funding should be higher. He misses the half-trillion dollar debt we have(0.30/$1 spent in just interest), other social services, and so on and so forth. Canada is 'socialized' we pay out the ass for it in taxes. The other provinces pay out the ass for it to equalize everyone across the board. Canada is not a member of the SDL like Sweden, or Norway. We don't have a +75% tax rate.

Now all you gotta do is figure out the rest, and figure out how you can tell people that an extra 5-15% tax rate is going to be good for them. Especially in a place like Ontario where you have a true unemployment rate of around 18% and 1:4 people are employed by the government.

Translated for your pleasure.

General

Moved pork barrel spending from one industry to another.

Ethics

Talked big talk about ethics but appointed unqualified cronies to high office and got her sister's ex fired from a gov job for personal reasons.

Fiscal Notes

Eviscerated all social services.

Education

Talked big talk with nothing tangible to show for it such as improved test scores. Also, what the fuck would someone who thinks the world was created in 6 days 6000 years ago know about education?

Corrections

Did nothing but partake in a perfunctory kind of ceremony that every mayor or governor is likely to take part in.

Fish and Game

Drill baby drill!

QM is 1000% FAIL on this one.

Hm? How am I wrong when I’m the one saying that Republicans have been governing like liberal democrats? You yourself admit that GOP POTUS’s have massively increased our deficits. I agree with that position. It conclusively proves my point that fiscally conservative voters (such as myself) have very little to identify with in today’s Republican party. Therefore they are not voting for it. Duh.

And the dictionary definition of liberal isn't all that far removed from what liberals stand for. We stand for tolerance and fairness. We stand for progress.

Tolerance, fairness, and progress are generic pretty words. The practical political reality of the far-left liberal Democrat party has very little to do with any of those things. The degree of anger, hatred, and intolerance that comes from the political left proves that very few neolibs are actually interested in tolerance, fairness, or progress.

Liberals and conservatives might both have a tendency to "overspend," but with liberals we get services, instead of trillions of dollars poured into a mostly unnecessary military.

Baloney. That’s a neolib conceit. The bulk of Bush2’s overspending was on social issues, not the military. His problem was that he spent a lot on military AND social services without cutting anything. Terrible. The idea that Republicans spend all the budget on military is a complete neo-lib myth. Entitlement spending has dominated the US Federal budget since WW2 ended.

With higher taxing and more spending on USEFUL things, the state could provide people with a much better platform than you currently have. By SPENDING money on providing healthcare you could actually SAVE and MAKE money because people would be healthier overall

Let's assume that by your methods we manage to make our population an unprecedented '20% healthier'. I.E. They need to go see a health-care professional 20% less, need 20% fewer prescriptions, surgeries, et al. Even reducing health care needs by a whopping 20%, you aren't 'saving' money and you certainly aren't 'making' it. All you are doing is SPENDING money at an 80% rate instead of a 100% rate.

Neolibs love to say that single-payer health care will save taxpayers money, but they have yet to prove that claim. In no single-payer system has it ever been demonstrably proved that costs were reduced while care was increased. Quite the opposite. The only way single-payer systems can reduce costs is to reduce quality of care.

So it becomes a semantic shell game. Neolibs love to whine about the 'uninsured' as if they were getting no health care (which is blatantly untrue). It's a sob story they use to sell universal health care. So when we go on a single payer system 'everyone' will have care? BULL. Every government run system denies coverate, delays care, and lowers the rate of treatment compared to private models. Just because 'everyone is covered' doesn't mean 'everyone gets treated'.

That's the lie. Sell the system by promising 'unversal health care' and hide the fact that when you go in the office expecting treatment that you get denied medical care because 'that service isn't covered' or 'you'll have to wait 6 to 12 months' or 'you'll have to pay for that operation'.

Way to "research" an argument. Seeing as Obama's coverage plan has yet to be released, and the people it will help most is those with ZERO Health care currently.

http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/globalwarming/2007-02-01-ipcc-report_x.htm

And when the majority of the science community agrees that global warming is man made, and agrees that it is becoming a major threat, then I think the term "manufactured" becomes invalid.

Lastly, offering social services is not socialism. Many democratic counties employ social services to maintain a functioning democracy. And I'll consider your concerns with "big government" when you acknowledge that deregulation allows for big business to take advantage of the little guy.

If I have a choice between big government and big business running my life I will take big government every time.

>> ^toast:
^ I was not saying that you should not help those around you but that at the expense of another person I should get this or that from money gain by FORCE.

Yet again with the FREEDOM/FORCE canard.

If you want freedom you can have it, head into the nearest forest, and never walk out, you will not get taxed, you will not benefit from an economy subsidized on tax funded roads, or stabilized through tax funded courts, or made fluid through a tax funded currency system. You will also probably die of a curable disease by your fortieth birthday.

Property, currency, and other social services are all conventions we use because they bring us benefit both collectively and personally. If you believe you should have the "freedom" to own things, then I should have the "freedom" not to have to worry about pandemics and poverty in my society.

The difference is that you believe, incorrectly, that property, and all the legal machinery necessary to maintain it, is somehow not funded by force, but that the medical machinery to maintain universal health care is.

>> ^dirtythirtyix:
I'd like to understand where how a distinction can be drawn between medical care, and other protective social services like police and fire?
Isn't the goal of those things ostensibly the same?


That is a very very excellent question! I'd love to see some parodies of anti socialised medicine propaganda where they are instead arguing against socialised fire protection, or policing.

"Some people think that the government should be in charge of the police. This kind of socialised policing would be inefficient, wasteful, and unamerican!"

I'd like to understand where how a distinction can be drawn between medical care, and other protective social services like police and fire?

Isn't the goal of those things ostensibly the same?

That's all we need to know pims, all we need to know

Issy, my god I think we're on the umm... fourth episode of season 3 and it's AMAZING! Lost is just surpassing itself in every way too, woohoo bout frickin time.

Ok i'll start you off then if I must.

This was one of the weirdest things to happen. I was young and reckless and completely rebellious and decided one day to jump the train with my friend to London. She knew some fellas up there who would put us up and I briefly knew who they were and had met them so wasn't particularly concerned. We spent the hour and a half there wedged in the loos smoking out of the window and drinking a bottle each of white cider, bleeeech. By the time we got there I was pretty wasted already, and it was a hot day etc. Wandering through London taking buses to get to this mobile phone shop they all worked in together. Eventually they finished up for the day and we went home to her friends place, by this point I had been given a few spliffs on top of the cider and was really not myself at all. Anyway, when we walked into this apartment there was this guy who was all dressed up in overalls painting the place.

Kelly's friend introduced him just as Steve and that he was doin him a favour decorating his place out for him as he'd not long moved there. He was a total hottie and I was drunk and stoned so had clearly lost any inhibitions and was flirting outrageously. As the evening went on he finished up and came in and sat down to eat with us and get drunk. Of course I was being a total slapper, and he seemingly didn't mind at all. Basically we got a bit frisky and all that jazz but when it came down to it (literally) there was no way I was going there his penis was abnormal and by that I mean gigantic! Scared the living shit out of me. Luckily he wasn't a bad guy and just laughed and we fell asleep all being well.

Next day I got made a complete twat of. Somehow the staff at the home I was living in had gotten hold of Kelly's number and rang her Mum who had done a 1471 when Kel phoned her the night before and gave the number to my social worker. So the next morning this guy who's flat we're in gets a very shitty phone call telling him that he had two underage girls who have run away, one in local authority care and that if he didn't take us to a police station so we could get home they would ring the cops and get them arrested. So yeah that was horrible, especially seeing as i'd lied about my age haha. Fucking embarrassing, but I was glad to get out of there after that. We had to wait in the police station until they could get a taxi driver who was willing to drive all the way to London from Bournemouth and then back again. Some stupid red tape funding issues stopped us just getting a taxi from London as it was going to be Social Services paying it, not us outright. Eventually some guy got there, and we fell asleep in the back of the car.

Woke up to find ourselves off road somewhere in the New Forest!! We absolutely shit ourselves, neither of us had a phone. All the lights were off and the driver was passed out in his seat, it was about 2am. We demanded he wake up not trusting him or the situation, it all felt very weird. He tried to tell us he was just needing a nap or he couldn't drive but we both started crying and panicking, so the poor bastard was left with little choice. Finally got home, acted like the little twat I was when they started questioning me about where I had been and what i'd been doing, as if they had no right to worry about me, god I was such a prick sometimes haha.

So I got lumped with paying that whole bill off, took me nearly a year to finish. As far as I was concerned though, it had been a little adventure and something in me when I was young craved independence so much I didn't think twice about doing stupuid stuff. The end of this story was the weirdest part...

This Steve had through his friend told Kelly a few times he wanted to meet up with me again and blah blah. I was never interested, mostly cos unless I was drunk the male species pretty much perplexed me even up until I was about 17! Turned out it was a good job I never went there. About 6 months later I get a phone call from Kelly telling me to turn the fucking tv on NOW. The Cook Report was on, some investigative journo Roger Cook used to go around doing exposes on stuff, he was one of the first people to do a show such as that. And there he was, this Steve. Turned out he wasn't a painter and decorator, he was the owner of a chain of phone shops and he had fraudulently made hundreds and thousands of pounds in stolen and contract phones. Jesus Christ

I'm not sure what the moral of this story is, but I can safely say I've never been as reckless since!

>> ^blankfist:
And most hospitals have a trauma center inside of them. In fact, I've never been inside one that didn't. Just pointing that out.

That's just not true. What most hospitals have is an Emergency Room, which is definitely not the same as a Level 1 trauma center. And most ERs are overburdened with patients waiting for care, some for hours. This is because of a lack of basic medical services in the community, which are typically provided by social services.

Prior to Katrina, there was only one Level 1 trauma center in the city of New Orleans, located at Charity Hospital. Today, there are none. The only one in the Greater New Orleans area is now in Jefferson Parish. My info on the medical services in New Orleans is admittedly spotty - dotdude can probably shed more light on this. But the fact remains that fully functional trauma centers are not nearly as common as you claim.

[edit] As of Dec 18, 2008, there are about 115 Level 1 trauma centers in the United States. source: http://www.emsmagazine.com/web/online/Emergency-Department/New-Orleans-Regains-Level-1-Trauma-Center/24$8669

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:
You see taxes as theft and I see them as a rudimentary part of living in a democratic nation.

Nope. I said income tax. I believe in excise tax and user fees.


>> ^NetRunner:
blankfist, you're cute when you claim all social programs are forbidden by the Constitution.

Nope. I have said the Constitution details the limited power of the federal government, and when they decide to socialize services and fund them through income tax (force payment) instead of, say, user fees (elected payment), then, yes, that's unconstitutional.

^You didn't offend me, really. It did read as ad hominem, as if you were making a personal attack about my character as opposed to my actual comments in order to win an argument. For that, I will always respond, and respond fervently.

The type of liberty and freedom I "speak of" is very far from anarchy. I believe in the writ of law as it pertains to limited government set forth by our Constitution, and for some reason Republicans and Democrats alike try to revise that to mean lawlessness. That's unfair.

"but in the US we require freedom and liberty" - I didn't mean "in stark contrast to Europe". I was saying we are not Europe, so any juxtaposition with Europe is an exercise in sophism. My original point was you cannot have liberty and freedom in a socialist society, because money is being extorted and stolen from us (violently) in order to pay for socialized services, etc. etc. etc. Blah, blah, blah.

This is the part where you say it's something we've discussed ad naseum though for some reason for a topic we've apparently discussed to its absolute end I still feel like I'm being taken out of context constantly and shoved into some fringe group next to Anarchism. And then with the next breath told I'm a chest-thumping Nationalist! They're not even close to being in the same realm!

I hope you can see how that kind of extreme diametrical labeling can be inferred as an attack on my character more than a true critique of my politics.

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

Oh please, dft, don't act as if my point is trite and beneath discussion? You sound like the people from the other party who say we're a Christian nation because the money is printed with 'In God We Trust' and our 'Pledge of Allegiance' says 'One Nation Under God'. To them, the discussion is over, too.

Just because our Congress put 'In God We Trust' on our money does not mean we're a Christian nation, right? And why is that? Because we left a tyrannical EUROPEAN rule with a nationally recognized church, and our founding fathers wanted this new nation to be secular. Funny how Republicans want to rewrite that portion of our history.

And just because our government has voted to increase our taxes, its own size and forces us to pay for new socialized services does not mean this was the intended direction of the nation. Never in a single utterance of our founding fathers did they ever want a socialist nation. Funny how Democrats want to rewrite that portion of our history.

"The government is best which governs least" - Thomas Jefferson

Oh please, blankfist, must we dance this aged dance yet again? Do I need to type the litany of socialized services you take for granted every day?

You will not find a pure capitalist or socialist system in the world. The United States is a blend of the two balancing systems, just like Europe.

Ohh the old they are all terroristsssss!!!

Up to 90% of Hamas's work and resources are spent on social, welfare, cultural, and educational activities. In the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Hamas has established hospitals, schools, and libraries, and provided other social services.

Tell me when Fatah or PLO or PA have committed the same amount of resources to actually helping the Palestinians insides of asking the EU and US for more money to line their pockets?

What answer you want? You want me to say Hamas murders all its political opponents? Sorry mate.

Following the Battle of Gaza in June of 2007, elected Hamas officials were ousted from their positions in the Palestinian National Authority government in the West Bank and replaced by rival Fatah members and independents in an action that many political experts considered illegal. Hamas retained control of Gaza. On 18 June 2007, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (Fatah) issued a decree outlawing the Hamas militia and executive force (for his pals the Israelis and America). Israel immediately thereafter imposed an economic blockade on Gaza, cutting power, food and other essential supplies for the people in Gaza.

^'Big government' is a vague and meaningless political slogan, that seems only applicable to social services that actually benefit the general populous. I don't think I've ever heard you complain about the gazillions of dollars given to military industries over the last few decades, but drop a dime for an energy efficient car and you're up in arms.