EDIT: I answered my own question about this. Apparently "US Citizens Living Abroad" is one of the exemptions to the mandate/rule. So nevermind the below.

As a US citizen living outside the US, one thing that concerns me is the health care / insurance mandate and penalties.

I live in Thailand, and have health insurance through the nearly-universal Thai healthcare system because I have a job that pays in to it. On top of that, I have insurance through a private insurer based in the UK.

The Thai system is really good. A few years ago, I had something like 5 episodes of tonsillitis in one year, and my doc told me that I should consider getting a tonsillectomy. I opted to go for it, and the Thai govt. insurance paid for the entire operation except for about $30 that I had to pay myself because I opted to stay in a private, air conditioned room for a recovery night instead of the busy public ward. Other than that, it cost me absolutely nothing.

The private insurer I have is for any travel outside Thailand and backup purposes; it has a higher max payout and would allow for more optional treatments to major things. I haven't made any claims against it so far, but it is a nice safety net. The only downside to it is that it works "around the world*" (*except in the US, because that system is so f*&^ed up they wash their hands of it). So, on the rare occasions where I make a trip back home to the US, I'm technically uninsured.

Signing up for Obamacare would be pretty pointless for me. I've been in Thailand for about 10 years, and during that time I've been back to the US only twice for a sum total of about a month and a half. But technically, it seems that I may be subject to penalties since I don't have any US insurance coverage. No idea if there are exceptions for expats or not.

Well, that's a better stance to take than most right wing people take, I'll applaud that. I would suggest that cutting assistance for all people would leave many in desperate situations, and desperate people have a tendency to ignore the law and societal norms, raising crime rates (and so costing more money). Desperate corporations have less of a track record getting away with that (although some still do).
I thought most right wing people blamed the poor for 'taking advantage' of the system, but corporations are seen as being smart to accept funding. I feel it's misinformation that makes them believe that most people availing themselves of the assistance are 'taking advantage of the system', and most corporations are simply properly following the law/rules to get any advantage possible, as they should. I can't understand the disconnect.
I blame anyone/anything 'taking advantage of the system', which does not mean anyone making use of it, only those gaming the system for advantage. My opinion is that more corporations fall into that category than individuals, or at least they get more out of the system.
Why labor in the fields instead of being a leach that requires illegal help? I think you answer your own question (perhaps you forgot the sarcasm button?). If field labor was paid appropriately they would need no government cheese or illegals to get it done. That would solve 2 issues for the right, I can't understand the resistance.
I think we actually agree that the system is set up to incentivize immoral behavior in an effort to create a safety net. (Perhaps we only disagree with the levels of immorality between people and corporations on this topic.) I think rational people could easily fix that problem without erasing the safety net with just a few reasonable requirements to qualify for assistance...too bad reasonable people are so few and far between.

"Over time, we're going to see what works and what doesn't and things will generally settle down"
Illusion and fantasy...total confabulation.

A government is a simple creation really, it uses force to achieve the end goal which is control, not unlike a rapist or a thief-The antithesis of liberty in the example of say, the American government works because force is used by an immoral core of liars and thieves to achieve goals that benefit the few rather than the whole of society. Examples of just how fucked things are at face value VooDooV, why bother to cite the examples that are glaringly obvious to anyone who at their core, is a moral and free individual...pointless and insulting to anyone who can think.

Mind you, infrastructure and social safety nets enhance freedom, but what should the end-goal be? To enhance the moral framework of a society, which has surely not been done so far with the American form of government, on the contrary, we see the fabric of what makes a society prosper and maintain a fairness for all being eroded to serve the interests of a few, through force and control...through civil liberties being chipped-away at through surveillance and more prisons, more laws, more fines and punishments for more people, etc. Deficit spending pays debt forward to further enslave the recipients of services like roads and social welfare programs, higher education, etc. The freedom to make poor choices at a micro and macro level is what the current government is all about, getting worse every year.

Urban sprawl will continue as folks with pipe-dreams tout more green, less energy usage, cleaner burning cars and factories, etc. One 'problem' is addressed by creating one for another somewhere else.

Ever listen to Buckminster Fuller's idea of a 'green' or 'energy efficient society'? It doesn't use ANY of the current models of societal structure, it pretty much SCRAPS them all for a trans-formative way of moving forward. The old models are shit if they accomplish them through force and control of human activity. YOU don't live in a democratic system, in case you have been asleep for your entire life, democracy is only a fucking word, a concept not unlike any 'ism' created by humans in the past 3000-7000 years.

The financial structure of the United States is inherently evil. It can not be made fair and moral for everyone, it wasn't designed to. It is designed to serve the few at the top, with enforcers and regulators at the bottom-tier of their system. The government is NOT inherently evil but it has been hijacked by cunts.

Just because you think you know how politicians should perform, does not make it happen that way. Sane health care system? Nope. Maybe for the privileged classes-What they hand the masses is complete shit. National debt? Foreign policy? How would YOU do it? Then that's probably saner than the way it's being run, innit? Government is not needed for ANY of these aspects of a civil and moral society to function. All it takes is moral and sane judgement and agreement at solutions and for folks to voluntarily subscribe to these actions, without force, without police, without armies, etc.

Many more examples too many to pontificate upon, many variables of systems, all of which could function to afford everyone freedom and liberty, WITHOUT a government. The government is a construct just like everything else man creates-It takes willing humans to make them either function efficiently, or to scrap them for something new and improved.

I'm no libertarian, no anarchist, just a practical human being.
There are more reasons for scrapping the world system of government than there are for maintaining them, you simply refuse to see any other way THAN systems of government.

Mankind can self-govern if it does so with a formidable and sound moral compass...Is mankind doing that? It can also make the entire planet it's playground if it chooses to do so...Is mankind doing this??
FUCK NO!

The basic form of a social contract is the foundation for every state in the world. Every individual within the territory forfeits a set of rights and is imposed with a set of duties instead. That's a social contract as described in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "Du contrat social".

Doesn't help much with regards to Anglo-Saxon capitalism, does it? Beyond its most basic definition, social contract means, in theory, a recalibration of metrics beyond mere profit, within a society. Whatever metrics one might think would reasonably map progress towards the ultimate goal: the pursuit of happiness.

A concrete example would be the political-economic system of Germany, 1948 onwards, the so-called "Soziale Marktwirtschaft", wherein capitalism is (or was) constrained by agreements to the benefit of the whole of society. Not any individual, not any group, all members of society. Manifestations of it would be the safety net in all its forms and shapes, the health system, the pension system, the rejection of military interventionalism, the preservation of nature, no tolerance for fascism, etc. All specific policies that have their origins in an understanding of what society agreed upon would be best for everyone. The extent is subject to constant political debate, but the underlying concept remains untouched.

So the claim that there is no such thing as a social contract strikes me as a continuation of Thatcher's insistence that there is, in fact, no society. I don't subscribe to that notion, and as far as I can tell, neither does continental Europe as a whole.

If people prefer a system without a "society" beyond the very basic neccessities of a functioning state, go ahead. Do your thing. Competition of ideas and whatnot.

But I'm going to stay a member of this society, thank you very much. And as such, I take the liberty of leaving this "discussion" again. Cheerio.

I would not advocate for that, RFlagg. I am not a republican either, although I am conservative on many issues, but not all of them. I am liberal when it comes to helping the poor, for instance. I find most Christians who have a heart for the Lord have a heart for people and are willing to donate their time and money to serve. Not all are like that, but not all know the Lord either. It was actually the church who provided the social safety net before the New Deal. Even today, you will scarecly find a place in the world where a church hasn't built hospitals, food banks, homeless shelters and various helps and organizations to serve people. That isn't what is reported on, however..

I'm sorry, but those conclusions are pure emotional based off what you see in the MSM. If you can find me a study, a legitimate one, not one from Faux News or Huffington Post, that actually shows that a government safety net induces vagrant behavior, then I will believe you. Until then, I will stick with all the studies that show very clearly that social safety barriers do in fact work, and that the decades old gutting of the programs are wrecking havoc on the system. Not to mentioned the systematic desecration of the educational system that's been designed solely for "efficiency" and pumps out students that are over qualified, unhappy, massively in debt and lead to believe a lie in which they can never achieve, or the exact opposite and ditches those most in need yet are the most visually different.

Combine this with white flight, red lining, and a culture of fear mongering, race baiting and rapid communication and we have a perfect storm. The general population is so overrun with sad stories and empathy inducing situations they actually go into empathy shock - a state in which they cease to care and numb themselves so they don't have to make a decision. A decision which they may later feel bad about. Instead, it's "nothing I can do about it so I won't care." And yes, this happens with those "gang-bangers" you talk about.

Instead of solving the situation, which is a blatant and total discrepancy in incomes, social normality, and general empathy, we will continue to have this problem. So long as white flight occurs and the NYPD openly racially profiles and harasses 110% (no joke) of the black community, and so long as the Christian Right still chants "it's ok to profile brown people" both in NYC, Arizona and everywhere else we will continue to have this problem.

Ever hear of the Theory of Attitudes? Or Reactance? There is far more going on than "if we give them money they'll stop working." Because I'm pretty sure every Christmas when your parents (general assumption) gives you presents, you instantly stop working. Totally proven concept, eh?

School guidelines were not passed by the county/state/federal legislature - they are not law.
A school board is not a law making body.
School guidelines are merely process policy.

There are no infractions or penalties associated with them in any way whatsoever.

'Not following school guidelines' is not any kind of legal offense.




Guidelines are part of the liability management process for members of an institution.
If whatever an employee does follows institutional guidelines, then the institution is liable for the results, not the employee.
This way the employees are shielded from penalties/lawsuits/jail/etc by the institution they act as agents of.

An institution is basically 'etherial', and can't actually be 'punished', as it feels no pain. So it's basically a cop-out from justice. Which is why it makes such a good safety net.

The reverse works out too. A single bad employee can cost the institution a lot. If the institution is lost, other members are out of a job.
So the policies let an institution disown an employee that breaks policy and gets into trouble. Then that employee is liable for his individual actions, and the institution is safe.

Hence, an institution may take action against its own employees for violating policy, but that's an employer/employee issue related to how an employee is doing their job.
Enforcement is necessary because if an institution is found to not enforce its policies, then it's as if there are no policies, and the institution can not disown an employee that doesn't follow policies and gets into trouble.




This arrest can not in any way be made on account of school guidelines. That's not even 'a thing'.

The excuse for the arrest was 'disorderly conduct' - and that's what you need to find in the video to verify that it's a legitimate arrest.

We'll see how this turns out with the video being available.
Usually you can't defend from that charge, since it's word against word, and the courts assume the officer is telling the truth.

The charge is subjective anyways, so the truth is up to people's opinion.
Anything can be disorderly when it's up to opinion.
"Nodding hello" could be disorderly, in someone's "opinion".
... And it's the officer's opinion.
A fine example of screwy laws that shouldn't even exist.
It's one of the 'catch-all' offenses that anyone can be charged with at any time.

-scheherazade

The reasons you listed have nothing to do with how the administration sees things. Rather, how the republicans see things.

And you cannot honestly tell me the republicans have any other reason, other than putting this as an issue for 2014 mid-terms, to want to delay the mandate.

The Forbes article you posted is an opinion article from a right-wing thinktank hack. AEI wants nothing other than destruction of any social safety net this country has. You may as well link to a breitbart or Glenn Beck diatribe.

It's fine if you feel so bad about the veterans not getting to have their gathering. But what about all the head start kids who're locked out of school because of the bagger hostage-taking?

The Democrats have already given two enourmous gifts to republicans.

1- CR at sequestration levels
2- The Paul Ryan Budget

There is absolutely no way in hell that our economy needs to suffer more.

The baggers need to be destroyed. Period.

0:06 - Is government the antithesis of liberty?

0:47 - One of the things that enhances freedoms are roads. Infrastructure enhances freedom. A social safety net enhances freedom.

2:02 - What should we do with the losers that are picked by the free market?

3:38 - Do we live in a society or don't we? Are we a collective? Everybody's success is predicated on the hard work of all of us; nobody gets there on their own. Why should it be that the people who lose are hung out to dry? For a group that doesn't believe in evolution, it's awfully Darwinian.

5:41 - In a representative democracy, we are the government. We have work to do, and we have a business to run, and we have children to raise.. We elect you as our representatives to look after our interests within a democratic system.

7:41 - Is government inherently evil?

9:03 - Sometimes to protect the greater liberty you have to do things like form an army, or gather a group together to build a wall or levy.

9:47 - As soon as you've built an army, you've now said government isn't always inherently evil because we need it to help us sometimes, so now.. it's that old joke: Would you sleep with me for a million dollars? How about a dollar? Who do you think I am? We already decided who you are, now we're just negotiating.

10:54 - You say: government which governs least governments best. But that were the Articles of Confederation. We tried that for 8 years, it didn't work, and went to the Constitution.

11:16 - You give money to the IRS because you think they're gonna hire a bunch of people, that if your house catches on fire, will come there with water.

11:56 - Why is it that libertarians trust a corporation, in certain matters, more than they trust representatives that are accountable to voters? The idea that I would give up my liberty to an insurance company, as opposed to my representative, seems insane.

13:38 - Why is it that with competition, we have such difficulty with our health care system? ...and there are choices within the educational system.

15:00 - Would you go back to 1890?

16:20 - If we didn't have government, we'd all be in hovercrafts, and nobody would have cancer, and broccoli would be ice-cream?

16:30 - Unregulated markets have been tried. The 80's and the 90's were the robber baron age. These regulations didn't come out of an interest in restricting liberty. What they did is came out of an interest in helping those that had been victimized by a system that they couldn't fight back against.

19:04 - Why do you think workers that worked in the mines unionized?

20:13 - Without the government there are no labor unions, because they would be smashed by Pinkerton agencies or people hired, or even sometimes the government.

20:24 - Would the free market have desegregated restaurants in the South, or would the free market have done away with miscegenation, if it had been allowed to? Would Marten Luther King have been less effective than the free market? Those laws sprung up out of a majority sense of, in that time, that blacks should not... The free market there would not have supported integrated lunch counters.

23:23 - Government is necessary but must be held accountable for its decisions.

Perhaps if your beloved so called "job creators" paid people a living wage rather than horde more and more of their profits for themselves there wouldn't be a war on poverty.


>>> You are your own boss, whether you work for someone else or not. You create the value and sell your time and labor to others, and can increase the value of both in many ways: providing solutions for others, inventing new products or boosting your own knowledge base. Yep, there are socialist countries that will pay you a living wage to push a broom, and those economies can't hope to compete with non-socialist economies.


I will go out on a limb and assume that you would shop exclusively at a Wal-mart-type store that paid their employees a living wage as opposed to the real Wal-mart? There aren't enough such "conscious consumers" to sustain such a business.


The problem with your narrative is you believe that the wealthy all won some type of lottery, that they did not provide any service or create an invention that yielded deserved financial rewards. This is a common sickness surrounding socialism: the game is rigged and those at the top are there by pure chance. This is what Obama was raised to believe.


The rich pay the lion's share of taxes in America, while the bottom half pay NOTHING in income tax yet get plenty of benefits. This model is nothing new, the ancient Athenians taxed the wealthy at a much higher rate than the poor. The difference is they didn't endlessly spend and create money out of thin air. I'm not against the social safety net, but what we have now is unsustainable and beyond ridiculous.


I agree that many of these CEOs are overcompensated turds, but they are a small part of the problem. In order for them to be paid, stockholders have to be happy, and for stockholders to be happy, a business has to be successful. Only in the fantasy world of government is anything too big to fail.


You're somewhat awakened in that you see that the ole government's robbing peter to pay paul routine doesn't work. Wonder where the trillions went? First and foremost, to con artists and bureaucrats, who gobble up so much of every dollar seized by government very little reaches the intended recipients, and that will NEVER change. "The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else."


If you want to attack "greed", start with these Obama worshipers who nonetheless sheltered their own wealth when it came time to pay up.


http://michellemalkin.com/2013/01/01/obamas-tax-evaders-of-the-year/

Good post.

There are always so many things could have an influence. A simplistic explanation is always going to be self serving and misleading.

Example: I bet just the move to credit cards (cash-less society) has lowered violent crime (muggings) by at least a small amount.

As a Criminal Justice student we reviewed studies on the effects of gun control (ineffective in the U.S.), death penalty (ineffective as deterrence), etc.

A very large influence to the crime rate was inequality and the number of people who feel disenfranchised from the mainstream.

The availability of social programs and safety nets (or lack of) also had a great effect.

That was years ago and the analysis has been out there for a very long time - but never used in any meaningful way.

Biased.

I've said it before, the porn industry will attract "bad types" because of its nature, so regulation, unions, and other safety nets is needed to ensure that there is no abuse other than the play-acting that it's supposed to be.

There's a hell of a lot of porn that I don't want to watch, but there's an awful lot of other people who like to watch - and there are people who like to get payed doing it; who are we to outlaw it? Where's the personal responsibility in this too?

"I was so desperate, that I had to to double vaginal/double anal while that asian chick puked on me. I had to pay for my kid's kindergarten!"

Aww, that's nice.

The door is open.

Thanks.

Anyway, I think it is foolish for anyone to say that god does not exist and they know it. But, god could mean so many things. All I know is that a bunch of dudes wrote the Bible based on older stories. It is man made, there may be some truth to it but there is some truth to everything. The kind of fascism hypocricy that today's extremist republican christians exhibit disgusts me. They would let rich, corrupt motherfuckers, manipulate them for their own gain and throw them from a plane. Their perception of reality is so completely bent by right wing think tanks and corporatism that they live in some sort of Christian inspired DaDa universe while the rich send their zombie minds to the polls to vote with their manipulated hearts and steal every last penny from their coffers as they self willingly turn a blind eye.

Well, in this context God means the being that created the Universe. The scripture claims to be revelation from this God, in the person of Jesus Christ. God says we have all sinned and are accountable to Him for our sins, but He sent a Savior who paid the price for our sins so we could be forgiven and have eternal life with Him. Jesus says everyone who comes to God must go through Him:

John 14:6 Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

So, God could be many things, but there is only one way to know God according to Jesus. So, it's not something you can just pick and choose from. If Jesus wasn't raised from the dead, none of it is true. I have found His claims to be true.

I can't speak for your impressions of Christians as seen through the lens of our current culture, but seen through the lens of society at large Christians have been a force for good. Before the welfare system was created, the church in America was providing the social safety net, and still does in a number of ways. They're the ones running the charities, food banks, youth centers, blood drives, homeless shelters, etc. Look in any community, you will undoubtedly find Christians taking care of the poor and doing good works. I'm not saying there are no secular charities, food banks, etc, but this is something the church is well noted for.

There is some truth to what you say. Christians are not perfect, and unfortunately in the western church this sometimes becomes very apparent. You do not usually see this kind of behavior from Christians in countries where there is some cost to becoming a Christian. When there is no cost to following Christ, the church becomes lazy and apostate, as you see today in America. A good percentage of American Christians probably are not saved. This isn't though a reason to reject Jesus. He in fact predicted this behavior from Christians in Matthew 24. It is simply that we are not following His ways that you see this kind of behavior.

Question: Do you have any church background or were you raised in a secular home?