On 22-Mar-2005, Scott Weiser wrote:

And we should take YOUR word for it because....???

Because I actually have the insurance you claim is illegal
and impossible to get.

You claim to be a journalist and editor and you don't have
any concern for the truth. Perhaps the AP writer went
to the same school of dickhead journalism that you did.

Mike

On 22-Mar-2005, Scott Weiser wrote:

Because poking Netwits like you through the bars of your cage is so much
fun!

Exactly - you play games without any concern for truth. Give it
up asshole.

Mike

On 22-Mar-2005, Scott Weiser wrote:

and slightly more than
half the voting population of the country find him to be sufficiently
intelligent to be President of the United States.

Slightly more than half of those that bothered to vote. The net is
a minority.

The fact that that many Americans consider Bush to be sufficiently
intelligent says more about how stupid those Americans are than
how smart Bush is.

Mike

"KMAN" wrote in message
.. .

What you mean, of course, is the idea that you must save another person
(e.g. throw them a life presever) is an affirmative burden on you, and
therefore the starting point on the slippery slope to gulags and other
nasty commie stuff.

Well, YEAH!

Mark

A Usenet persona calling itself KMAN wrote:

in article , Scott Weiser at
wrote on 3/22/05 11:57 PM:

A Usenet persona calling itself KMAN wrote:


Ah. So you start holding a child accountable for their own future
starting
with infancy.

No, I hold the parents accountable.

But the child suffers.

Then perhaps the state should take custody of the child, award custody to
someone better able to raise the child, and garnish the parent's wages to
pay for the child's care...after eliminating any welfare payments to the
parents to stimulate them to get a job.

Wow, for a guy who seems so freaked out about freedom, you are a bit of a
control freak when it comes to other people!

Am I? Or am I merely attempting to elicit some sort of reasoned argument out
of you?


Born to parents who could not afford to send you to school?
Tough titties for you, this ain't the land of opportunity.

You confuse equality of opportunity with equality of outcome.

No, I don't, actually.

There is no equality of opportunity for a child born into a poor family who
cannot access education or health care.

Wrong.

You are hopeless if you really believe that.

In this country, opportunities are abundant. There are millions uponn
millions of success stories of poor people who have persevered and
succeeded. That's WHY a million people a month illegally enter this country.

In the Sudan, there are no opportunities for education or health care, but
in North America there are opportunities everywhere. All a parent has to do
is go and seek it out and resolve to be successful.

A child who grows up in poverty does not have equality of opportunity with a
child from a wealthy family. If you think otherwise, you are insane.

I'll grant you that a child of poverty may not have the same quality of
opportunities available to the children of the rich, but that does not mean
the opportunities do not nonetheless abound. No one has "equal opportunity"
with everyone else, rich or poor, because the major part of "opportunity" is
the individual's willingness to seize it and make it work, in spite of
obstacles. In fact, in most cases, it is the obstacles themselves that
stimulate the drive to succeed that results in success. Many's the rich
child who's failed in business because he hasn't learned how to overcome
adversity. And many's the poor child who has succeeded beyond everyone's
wildest expectations because of a resolve to overcome adversity.

Understanding access to education and health care as fundamental human
rights helps to give those born into a poverty a chance.

But is "access" inevitably the same thing as "entitlement?"


America is indeed the "Land of
Opportunity,"
but the opportunities are not all positive opportunities. You have an
equal
opportunity to FAIL as well as succeed. That's what causes people to
strive
to excel and advance.

As Linda Seebach said once, "The only way to make everyone equal is to
squash everyone flat."

You can't have an equal opportunity to anything if you are hungry,
uneducated, and without access to health care.

Sure you can. Go to a shelter, get a meal, go find a Catholic hospital and
seek medical care and go find a job to pay for your education.

That gives you an equal opportunity to someone who is born into a wealthy
family, never has to know a hungry belly, has tutors, can afford any tuition
they require, and does not have to work while studying?

It gives you adequate opportunity to succeed if you're willing to fight for
it. Getting everything as a gift is not, contrary to your assertion, a
guarantee of success. In fact, in many cases, it's a guarantee of failure.
Just look at Paris Hilton if you don't believe me. Most of the great
entrepeneurs of this country weren't rich to begin with, and many of them
started out as "poor children." The difference between them and a ghetto
child is primarily an unswerving resolve not to be bound to poverty.

FYI, not every
community has a Catholic hospital around the corner.

Almost every community has a federally-funded hospital at which even the
indigent can receive emergency care. If there's not one in that community,
then perhaps it's time to move to a community that has more charitable
resources available for the poor.

You are living in a
dreamland of selfish ignorance.

Nope. I'm just not buying your "the poor are helpless victims" mentality.


Parents are not stimulated to encourage, assist, stimulate, enlighten,
browbeat, badger, threaten and otherwise require scholarship on the part
of
their children if they see no future for them because the dole is all they
know. Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Teach him to fish, and he
can feed the world.

How ironic, to use the "teach him to fish" analogy while saying that poor
people should not have access to education.

I didn't say they shouldn't have access to education, I said that public
education is a dismal failure and that nobody should *expect* a free public
education as a "right" to be paid for by somebody else.

If it's not a right, then it doesn't have to be provided, and selfish prigs
like yourself obviously aren't going to support it.

So what? If you think it's important, then YOU support it or provide it.


There are nearly unlimited educational opportunities out there, even for the
very poor, that either cost them nothing (charitable institutions) or merely
require some nominal input to qualify. There are vocational programs
sponsored by industry specifically targeted at the disadvantaged explicitly
to teach them a valuable skill that will be of use to the industry.

The opportunities are everywhere. All one needs to do is reach out and grab
one.

I don't think that I child born into poverty should have such vastly
different opportunities than those afforded children born into wealth.

Then adopt a poor child and give him better opportunities.


If you want to learn to fish, go to the dock and demonstrate to a ship
captain that you are eager and willing to work hard in exchange for his
teaching you how to fish. Quid pro quo. As simple as that.

LOL. You forget, the rich people have already overfished the stock and
there's no jobs.

Then take up another line of work and do the same thing. We need ditch
diggers, trash collectors and custodians too. Not everybody can be the CEO
of Ford.


The worst thing about a liberal arts degree is that some of the graduates
might be capable of thinking.

True, but sadly, almost universally, they fail to realize that potential,
largely thanks to the pervasive leftist/liberal apologetics of failure and
muddled thinking taught to them on most of our college campuses.

Rare indeed is the student who is able to rise above the leftist
propaganda
and demagogary to reach a state of enlightenment and understanding, and
every one who does is universally a conservative thinker.

In your fantasy world.

Is George W. Bush one of your elightened right-wing graduates? LOL.

His college grades were much higher than Kerry's, and slightly more than
half the voting population of the country find him to be sufficiently
intelligent to be President of the United States.

You didn't really answer the question.

Sure I did. You just didn't understand the answer.

FYI, money and a name can buy a lot of things, including college grades.

Do you have any credible evidence that this is the case?


--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser

You mean, YOU don't want it.

Indeed, me and 200 million others.


When you can pull that number out of a filing cabinet instead of your ass,
I'll believe it.

And the reason you have a minimal military is because the US protects
you,
just like it protected all of western Europe during the Cold War, which
freed you from having to spend more money on defense.

You're welcome...


That would be your opinion, of course.

Nope, a fact.


Sorry, *wanting* something to be true doesn't *make* it true, it's still
just an opinion. But I'm sure it makes you feel better, and that's what
counts.


Strangely enough, the Canadians who live under the system so oppresively
described by you seem happier and healthier than most Americans.

And they will continue to do so right up until the entire system collapses
into chaos. Nothing surprising about people getting freebies not
complaining
about it...till the gravy train derails.


Kind of like the way the American system has derailed for so many of *it's*
citizens, I guess?

There are many ways that society pays the price for
illness beyond the obvious issues of contagion and health care costs.
The
economic costs of so many Americans sitting at home because they're sick
or
injured is astronomical when you consider things like lost productivity,
overinflated payrolls forced upon employers (which transfer those costs
to
consumers), etc.

And who is responsible for inflated payrolls? The government.


Huh? Payrolls get inflated because businesses don't want to lose their
profit margin, government has nothing to do with it.

When you're a small business owner and your employees are
home sick instead of working, you lose money.

So what? That's just part of the cost of doing business. Why should
government bail out the business owner? Why should I? If the business
owner
fails to properly plan for sick employees, how is that MY problem and why
should I be required to pay for that employee's health care in order to
protect the business owner? If the business owner feels the employee is
essential, then the employer should purchase health insurance to keep him
healthy, not the government or the rest of us.


Again... huh? Who's talking about government bailouts? That's just the
cost of doing business? Sure... to you. You're the one paying for inflated
prices. If the business owner needs to purchase health insurance to keep
his employees healthy, it costs him extra. And you're the one who bears
that additional cost through price increases. Duh.

If his business fails because he plans and manages badly, why, that just
provides an opportunity for some new businessman to try to do it better.

So does the national economy.
It's been a long time since I've seen estimates of the figures, but
they're
enormous.

Not really. You falsely presume that the economic impacts of absenteeism
are
the responsibility of the government to ameliorate or prevent. That
responsibility lies with the employee and the employer and no one else.


No, I don't. I'm simply saying that poor health care has secondary impacts
that, among other things, manifest themselves in higher prices. Higher
prices that *you're* going to pay. You don't want government to step in and
help keep the economy more efficient? Fine, but it'll cost you.

in article , Scott Weiser at
wrote on 3/23/05 7:21 PM:

A Usenet persona calling itself KMAN wrote:

in article , Scott Weiser at
wrote on 3/22/05 11:57 PM:

A Usenet persona calling itself KMAN wrote:


Ah. So you start holding a child accountable for their own future
starting
with infancy.

No, I hold the parents accountable.

But the child suffers.

Then perhaps the state should take custody of the child, award custody to
someone better able to raise the child, and garnish the parent's wages to
pay for the child's care...after eliminating any welfare payments to the
parents to stimulate them to get a job.

Wow, for a guy who seems so freaked out about freedom, you are a bit of a
control freak when it comes to other people!

Am I?

Ooo yes.

Or am I merely attempting to elicit some sort of reasoned argument out
of you?

That's just another way of saying that you are irritated that all your own
arguments are easily boiled down to extreme self-centered selfishness.

Born to parents who could not afford to send you to school?
Tough titties for you, this ain't the land of opportunity.

You confuse equality of opportunity with equality of outcome.

No, I don't, actually.

There is no equality of opportunity for a child born into a poor family who
cannot access education or health care.

Wrong.

You are hopeless if you really believe that.

In this country, opportunities are abundant. There are millions uponn
millions of success stories of poor people who have persevered and
succeeded. That's WHY a million people a month illegally enter this country.

In the Sudan, there are no opportunities for education or health care, but
in North America there are opportunities everywhere. All a parent has to do
is go and seek it out and resolve to be successful.

A child who grows up in poverty does not have equality of opportunity with a
child from a wealthy family. If you think otherwise, you are insane.

I'll grant you that a child of poverty may not have the same quality of
opportunities available to the children of the rich

Gee, welcome to reality.

but that does not mean
the opportunities do not nonetheless abound. No one has "equal opportunity"
with everyone else, rich or poor, because the major part of "opportunity" is
the individual's willingness to seize it and make it work, in spite of
obstacles. In fact, in most cases, it is the obstacles themselves that
stimulate the drive to succeed that results in success. Many's the rich
child who's failed in business because he hasn't learned how to overcome
adversity. And many's the poor child who has succeeded beyond everyone's
wildest expectations because of a resolve to overcome adversity.

It's all about levelling the playing field. That's a lot of what having a
society is all about Scotty. Making sure that every child - regardless of
family situation - can access education and healthcare is fundamental to
giving kids a chance at the type of life others are simply born into.

Understanding access to education and health care as fundamental human
rights helps to give those born into a poverty a chance.

But is "access" inevitably the same thing as "entitlement?"

I would be fine with the word entitlement. We are talking about children. A
society that does not believe children should be entitled to education and
health care is a society deserving of implosion.

America is indeed the "Land of
Opportunity,"
but the opportunities are not all positive opportunities. You have an
equal
opportunity to FAIL as well as succeed. That's what causes people to
strive
to excel and advance.

As Linda Seebach said once, "The only way to make everyone equal is to
squash everyone flat."

You can't have an equal opportunity to anything if you are hungry,
uneducated, and without access to health care.

Sure you can. Go to a shelter, get a meal, go find a Catholic hospital and
seek medical care and go find a job to pay for your education.

That gives you an equal opportunity to someone who is born into a wealthy
family, never has to know a hungry belly, has tutors, can afford any tuition
they require, and does not have to work while studying?

It gives you adequate opportunity to succeed if you're willing to fight for
it.

A child does not understand those grand concepts Scott, especially a child
that can't read or write and their goal is to not be hungry.

Getting everything as a gift is not, contrary to your assertion, a
guarantee of success. In fact, in many cases, it's a guarantee of failure.
Just look at Paris Hilton if you don't believe me. Most of the great
entrepeneurs of this country weren't rich to begin with, and many of them
started out as "poor children." The difference between them and a ghetto
child is primarily an unswerving resolve not to be bound to poverty.

Paris Hilton? Is she starving? What are you talking about?

Where does a child acquire an "unswerving resolve not to be bound to
poverty?" is all they know is poverty? Geez you are dense. If they are
illiterate and sickly, you really think they can just will themselves into
Harvard and onto the presidency?

FYI, not every
community has a Catholic hospital around the corner.

Almost every community has a federally-funded hospital at which even the
indigent can receive emergency care. If there's not one in that community,
then perhaps it's time to move to a community that has more charitable
resources available for the poor.

Yes, the infant should pack his or her bag and crawl to the next county.

You are living in a
dreamland of selfish ignorance.

Nope. I'm just not buying your "the poor are helpless victims" mentality.

That's not what I'm saying at all.

I believe in a hand up, not a handout.

Making sure that every child can go to school and get treatment if they are
sick is not about a "poor are helpless victims" mentality. It's about giving
a child a fighting chance at a better quality of life.

Parents are not stimulated to encourage, assist, stimulate, enlighten,
browbeat, badger, threaten and otherwise require scholarship on the part
of
their children if they see no future for them because the dole is all they
know. Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Teach him to fish, and he
can feed the world.

How ironic, to use the "teach him to fish" analogy while saying that poor
people should not have access to education.

I didn't say they shouldn't have access to education, I said that public
education is a dismal failure and that nobody should *expect* a free public
education as a "right" to be paid for by somebody else.

If it's not a right, then it doesn't have to be provided, and selfish prigs
like yourself obviously aren't going to support it.

So what? If you think it's important, then YOU support it or provide it.

It's not possible for a society to provide education and health care to all
children if selfish prigs can opt out.

There are nearly unlimited educational opportunities out there, even for the
very poor, that either cost them nothing (charitable institutions) or merely
require some nominal input to qualify. There are vocational programs
sponsored by industry specifically targeted at the disadvantaged explicitly
to teach them a valuable skill that will be of use to the industry.

The opportunities are everywhere. All one needs to do is reach out and grab
one.

I don't think that I child born into poverty should have such vastly
different opportunities than those afforded children born into wealth.

Then adopt a poor child and give him better opportunities.

I'd rather keep the child with their parents, and give them access to
education and health care so they can have a chance to make their own
opportunities.

If you want to learn to fish, go to the dock and demonstrate to a ship
captain that you are eager and willing to work hard in exchange for his
teaching you how to fish. Quid pro quo. As simple as that.

LOL. You forget, the rich people have already overfished the stock and
there's no jobs.

Then take up another line of work and do the same thing. We need ditch
diggers, trash collectors and custodians too. Not everybody can be the CEO
of Ford.

Is there a shortage of ditch diggers, trash collectors, and custodians?

I'm not arguing that no one should do those jobs. I'm arguing that an infant
should not start out in life without access to the basic tools they will
need to have a chance at a quality of life that is easily available to those
born into wealth.

The worst thing about a liberal arts degree is that some of the graduates
might be capable of thinking.

True, but sadly, almost universally, they fail to realize that potential,
largely thanks to the pervasive leftist/liberal apologetics of failure and
muddled thinking taught to them on most of our college campuses.

Rare indeed is the student who is able to rise above the leftist
propaganda
and demagogary to reach a state of enlightenment and understanding, and
every one who does is universally a conservative thinker.

In your fantasy world.

Is George W. Bush one of your elightened right-wing graduates? LOL.

His college grades were much higher than Kerry's, and slightly more than
half the voting population of the country find him to be sufficiently
intelligent to be President of the United States.

You didn't really answer the question.

Sure I did. You just didn't understand the answer.

Sure I did. It was a dodge.

Is George W. Bush one of your elightened right-wing graduates?

Yes or no.

FYI, money and a name can buy a lot of things, including college grades.

Do you have any credible evidence that this is the case?

Every time he opens his mouth - even with countless expert advisors to write
his speeches and help him look less stupid - it's obvious he'd barely pass
grade eight on his own merits.

KMAN rightfully observes:
==============
LOL. There are societal consequences to such a "screw you" approach. No
wonder you are a gun nut. Your utopia would obviously be everyone
living in
a self-sustaining dwelling with a giant electrified fence to protect
them
from having to be in contact with other people or even - gasp - where
people
might care about each other.
===============

KMAN, as I type, I'm listening to an interesting CBC radio documentary
about Karl Polanyi. Polanyi's work is witnessing a resurgence as, for
example, "The Great Transformation" (1944) examined free market systems
and natural social reactions against such systems.

An interesting summary from
http://keithrankin.co.nz/nzpr1998_4Polanyi.html

"The social anthropologist understood that humans are fundamentally
cooperative beings, and that human societies naturally seek to form
institutions that confer social and economic protection. Protection
means supporting producers who are a part of one's own society. And
protection means security, including social security.

Unlike protection which is a natural human impulse, the market system
is an artificial construct of the human intellect. It eschews
protection and emphasises discipline. Competition is about discipline
and conformity, not freedom. The tyranny of the self-regulating market
can only become the central organising mechanism if it is intentionally
imposed on society by a government with dubious democratic credentials,
and can only survive for any length of time if such a government
resists the spontaneous human impulse towards protection.

Economic liberals, contrary to the way they portray themselves, are not
believers in small government. They are not akin to anarchists, as Marx
saw them. Rather they adopt a view of government that differs
fundamentally from that of social democrats. Economic liberals believe,
following Jeremy Bentham, that government means the "ministry of
police" (read Treasury in today's parlance) and not the "ministry of
welfare"

I doubt whether Scott Weiser has ever given thought to "The tyranny of
the self-regulating market can only become the central organising
mechanism if it is intentionally imposed on society by a
government...."?

Cheers,
Wilf

Scott Weiser wrote:
snip
: Yup, because you expect everybody else to pay for your bad driving habits
: and the expensive medical consequences. What if others don't want to pay for
: it? Why should you have a right to expect them to do so?

Wow... colorado must be a red state... course, Scott, "we" already pay for
someone's bad driving habits... Lets say you are in the left lane doing 55mph
in your Hummer while everyone else is doing 65mph. A motorcycle tries to pass
but his vision is blocked by the gleeming chrome of your Hummer's rhino bars
and he falls off. He'll be taken to the Hospital, and they will treat him
regardless of his insurance status, they have no choice, it's the law. The
hospital won't go and get him, but if he's brought there either by a passerby
or ambulance, he'll be treated (there was a case here in Chicago where someone
was shot in front of a hospital and they would not go get him to treat him...
as they are not required to , but cannot turn away anyone brought to them).

The hospital will try to collect from him, but they may or may not manage to
do so if he's uninsured.

Anyway, your insurance company has a contract with the hospital and they are
charged a reduced rate, whereas the un-insured guy on the bike gets charged
more so he may actually subsidize your next visit for whatever pains you,
which is paid for by insurance.

"... Because of these high health care costs, Ford spends more each year on
health care for employees and retirees than we spend on steel! ..."

As these costs continue to rise, it places U.S. jobs in jepardy. As Ford
recently pointed out, they spend more on health care than they do on steel,
while in Japan, with nationalized health care, Toyota doesn't need to do
the same. Google that above quote from Ford...

What happens when it gets to the point that private industry can no longer
afford it? What if every Ford is made in Windsor, eh?

: I truly believe the folks in public housing ( oh
: ,, We don't have a large homeless problem in my community. ) will get
: the same care. That is what reflects the values of my community.

: Yeah, "take from everybody and give to me" values.

Generally speaking, the rich tend to have a pretty good way of having the
country look after their interests... either by receiving no bid contracts
or various tax incentives... and the government makes sure theres plenty
of gas available for Hummers everywhere...

snip

: In the end I believe we will be judged by how we treat the poorest in
: society, not the wealthiest. I am pleased with Canada.

: Fine by me, just don't try to export your socialism down here, we don't want
: it.

It would actually be called compassion... I guess your not Christian but thats
ok, you live in a red state, I live in a blue state...

Hey, make sure next time you visit your doctor or hospital, you tell them you
don't want the reduced insurance rate for whatever treatment you are having,
but that you want to pay full price because nobody is gonna subsidize you!

snip

--
John Nelson
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