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Mundane & Pointless Stuff I Must Share: The Off Topic Forum

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Crissa
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Post by Crissa » Fri Jul 31, 2009 7:28 am

As it stands, #1 isn't on the table: There's a bottom size for companies and a top cost for plans before the tax would kick in. The Republican's version doesn't have that. #2 is virtually useless; most plans cost more than that, and only a small percentage of Americans even take tax credits, let alone non-refundable. You can't buy healthcare with money you don't have, and you can't be reimbursed an amount you didn't pay. #3 is just shit. If you can't pay for Medicare, how is a deduction in your non-existent taxes going to pay for it?
Without major changes to how healthcare is bought, that set of items will totally destroy millions of households. Right now, problems with how the industry:

1. Charges more by your profession.
2. Charges more by your age.
3. Charges more by your gender.
4. Caps lifetime payout.
5. Jacks prices or refuses to contract care for pre-existing conditions.
6. Goes out of their way to 'find' pre-existing conditions or violations of contract years after they've begun taking payments for service.
7. Does not refund insurance payments if they find a reason to weasel out of care after taking payments.
8. Charge more for the same service if you aren't already insured, and will do this post-hoc.

...Are far more important. But Republicans would rather give some money away to the top 1% again and screw anyone below.
Where are the actual ideas, I wonder? I mean, the ones that don't involve millions of more people suffering and dying?
-Crissa
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tzor
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Post by tzor » Fri Jul 31, 2009 2:06 pm

This is one of the cases where I strongly agree with Crissa. I think there are fundamental flaws in the way we currently structure the health insurance industry that no one ever dares consider or tries to address. With a few minor exceptions I strongly agree with your eight problems.
I really think that health insurance should be like life insurance, or perhaps even more so. It needs to be individual, something you get when you are a child, paid for by your parents until you can pay for it yourself, and barring changing carriers, something you carry for life. This constant and consistent involvement would also allow for a constant payment option, and like life insurance (where the total cost will be the same whether you start at age 25 or age 55 only its divided over more years for the 25 year old) getting into the system as early as possible ensures the lowest payments.
The profession charge is something I might quibble with, for the most part your profession has no significant impact on your long term health. There are some cases, for example professional football players (the long term medial problems of repeated concussions of professional football players is something that the sport still refuses to acknowledge) but for the most part your profession doesn’t impact your health. This is where I think that life insurance is the closest we have to a real type of “insurance;” actuaries actually have to statistically prove their basis for assigning rates. (Even then, irregularities pop up in the system. Constant vigilance is always required for everything.)
Finally I would like to bring up one point. Why must people assume that we need one system to solve a broken arm, the common cold, high blood pressure and Botox? It’s pure BS. We need to establish effective EM system and an effective clinic based cold and flu system (that also handles immunizations as well) and have them paid for out of the general budget. It doesn’t reduce the overall cost but by shifting the costs from regular “health insurance” to something more equitable like income tax the “cost” of regular health insurance comes down and increases the chance that young people who aren’t making that much money will continue to put health insurance as a priority on their payment lists.
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Username17
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Post by Username17 » Fri Jul 31, 2009 3:50 pm

I'm not even going to get to the part where health insurance by definition has to cover people who can't pay a dime because really sick people cannot work! Instead I am going to quibble with this:

> Tzor wrote:but for the most part your profession doesn’t impact your health.

No. Just.... no. Your profession is one of the strongest indicators of the lifelong diseases you will get. Childcare workers get a huge number of colds and flus. Coal miners get the black lung. Office workers get carpal tunnel inflammation. And so on and so forth.
Things you do both protect you from harm and expose you to danger. A profession is something you do 30 hours a week or more. Heck, have you seen the statistics for bone spurs in retail clerks?
-Username17
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tzor
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Post by tzor » Fri Jul 31, 2009 7:32 pm

> FrankTrollman wrote:No. Just.... no. Your profession is one of the strongest indicators of the lifelong diseases you will get. Childcare workers get a huge number of colds and flus. Coal miners get the black lung. Office workers get carpal tunnel inflammation. And so on and so forth.

First and foremost, colds and flus are not a major factor of health insurance. Coal miners work under conditions where the deliberately endanger their own health (as I mentioned football players above). Poor work conditions should be solved by improving those work conditions.
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Akula
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Post by Akula » Sat Aug 01, 2009 5:27 pm

Flus can be quite serious. Even if they are just the normal seasonal strain. And that is really just nitpicking. You aren't refuting the point, you are just saying that the examples aren't good.
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Koumei
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Post by Koumei » Sun Aug 02, 2009 7:09 am

> tzor wrote:Coal miners work under conditions where the deliberately endanger their own health (as I mentioned football players above). Poor work conditions should be solved by improving those work conditions.

Yeah, what's with those coal miners working near coal? They should do their coal mining in well-ventilated office blocks like everyone else!
(Yes, I'm well aware that you're probably making the point "They should be issued mandatory safety equipment". Unless you're saying "If you choose to do a dangerous job, then fuck you.")

> Count Arioch the 28th wrote:There is NOTHING better than lesbians. Lesbians make everything better.

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PhoneLobster
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Post by PhoneLobster » Sun Aug 02, 2009 11:31 am

> Koumei wrote:Unless you're saying...

It's Tzor, in an incarnation where is avatar is seriously a tea bagger he could be saying anything.
So could be saying anything. Up to and including something that is accidentally also something crude to do with his testicles.
(Seriously Tzor, first you don't "predict" the economic crisis while it happens and now a tea bagger avatar? Do you actually hate your own credibility)
Last edited by PhoneLobster on Sun Aug 02, 2009 11:32 am, edited 1 time in total.
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tzor
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Post by tzor » Sun Aug 02, 2009 9:39 pm

> Koumei wrote:(Yes, I'm well aware that you're probably making the point "They should be issued mandatory safety equipment". Unless you're saying "If you choose to do a dangerous job, then fuck you.")

Coal is cheep partly because of inadequate safety precautions in terms of long term exposure. In the past, caveins, explosions, flooding were important things because they killed miners right then and there. There are ways to mitigate black lung, but until people treat coal dust with the same safety precautions abestos workers take, workers will always be getting the medical short end of the stick.
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tzor
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Post by tzor » Sun Aug 02, 2009 9:51 pm

> PhoneLobster wrote:(Seriously Tzor, first you don't "predict" the economic crisis while it happens and now a tea bagger avatar? Do you actually hate your own credibility)

Pardon me? I was supposed to predict something? I must have misplaced the email. Yes times are tough (and unemployment sucks even in the best of times - I've been there) but it's BS to say this is worse than the high unemployment and inflation of the Carter recession. Meanwhile, have you seen the God Damn taxes the average person in NY pays? School districts out of control (20% spending increase this year alone) state government dysfunctional, and look at all the shit proposed by the current administration.
I AM NOT A TEABAGGER! I AM A TEA DRINKER!
I don't want our children forced to never come back after college because they can't afford Long Island. I love Long Island, I cannot state that strongly enough. I love our wine, I love our beer, I love our vodka, I love our restaurants, I love the Long Island Ducks. I've lived in "paradise" and now I reside in heaven.
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PhoneLobster
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Post by PhoneLobster » Sun Aug 02, 2009 10:07 pm

> tzor wrote:I AM NOT A TEABAGGER! I AM A TEA DRINKER!

So... you use a tea bagger avatar, state the tea bagger insanity basically word for word, add in a complete delusional hatred of the Carter administration up to and including describing the worst economic crisis since the great depression as "not as bad as" Carter, and on top of ALL of that crazy...
You want to relabel yourself as a slightly different form of lunatic.
Sorry Tzor, your platform and avatar make you a tea bagger. And yes, that does make you look stupid but your desperate relabeling doesn't help, it's your lunatic position and your associated lunatics that discredit you, self declared name changes do nothing but make it worse.
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Draco_Argentum
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Post by Draco_Argentum » Mon Aug 03, 2009 7:30 am

> tzor wrote:I AM NOT A TEABAGGER! I AM A TEA DRINKER!

Perhaps don't post a photo of yourself Teabagging if you don't want to confuse us. Its not like people are using flimsy evidence to accuse you of being a member of the most hilariously named political protest ever. You're posting it with pride for us to see. So, either you want to slap Obama's face with your scrotum or you're just plain on the slow side.
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Akula
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Post by Akula » Mon Aug 03, 2009 9:11 am

In all fairness to tzor, I'm reasonably certain that he is trying to distance himself from the name if not the sentiment of that particular movement. I think it is fair to believe him when he says that he has no desire to teabag the president. He didn't come up with the name. Call his stance crazy, but the man himself doesn't have odd sexual fantasies involving his scrotum. That is verging on an ad hominum attack.
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Koumei
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Post by Koumei » Mon Aug 03, 2009 9:55 am

Yeah, but if I went around eating people, I wouldn't really have the right to complain just because I thought the name "cannibal" sounded too much like something you'd shoot out of a cannon. I'd be stuck with the label regardless.
So if someone wants to adopt the "Fuck you, I need my own private jet with drivers-side beanbags and on-board cocaine habit, you can't have my money, my precious" stance, they get to be called a teabagger.
And until I saw that avatar, I always thought it was some reference to the unfortunate incident in 1776. After all, when they rebelled against their evil overlords they did waste a whole lot of tea (which in my books would carry a life sentence). But apparently not.

> Count Arioch the 28th wrote:There is NOTHING better than lesbians. Lesbians make everything better.

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tzor
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Post by tzor » Mon Aug 03, 2009 1:23 pm

> Draco_Argentum wrote:Perhaps don't post a photo of yourself Teabagging if you don't want to confuse us. Its not like people are using flimsy evidence to accuse you of being a member of the most hilariously named political protest ever. You're posting it with pride for us to see. So, either you want to slap Obama's face with your scrotum or you're just plain on the slow side.

Let's get a couple of facts here; the term "teabagging" was first used by liberals in the main stream media to downplay and degrade the intellectual and moral standards of the "tea party" protestors. They used that term fully knowing the sexual implications of that term in common day use. They used it because, when it comes down to it, liberals will use any form of hate and bigotry in order to advance their agenda.
The term has not been and has never been used by anyone in the tea party movement. As Crissa pointed out in a different thread, it's sort of like the "fatty" comment, only it's applied to an entire group.
If, however, you are interested in my arguments why I think the people where I live are "taxed enough already," you can check out my old postings on Gather, "Conservative in a Blue State: Spend and tax school districts" "Conservative in a Blue State: If you tax them, they will leave!" & "The Land of the Un-free (or I live in the least free state in the Union – New York)" (Yes this is a blatant plug for views, because that gives me points and well that gives me cash, not much really, but as hobbies go, it's at least running in the black and not in the red.)
From the last article ...

> New York has the highest taxes in the country. Property, selective sales, individual income, and corporate income taxes are particularly high. Spending on social services and "other" is well above national norms. Only Massachusetts has more government debt as a percentage of the economy. Government employment is higher than average. On personal freedoms, gun laws are extremely restrictive, but marijuana laws are better than average (while tobacco laws are extremely strict). Motorists are highly regulated, but several kinds of gambling are allowed statewide (not casinos, except on reservations). Home school regulations are burdensome, but asset forfeiture has been reformed. Along with Vermont, New York has the strictest health insurance community rating regulations. Mandated coverages are also very high. Eminent domain is totally unreformed. Perversely, the state strictly limits what grassroots PACs may give to candidates and parties, but not what corporations and unions may give.

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tzor
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Post by tzor » Mon Aug 03, 2009 1:27 pm

P.S. are you familiar with "The Republic of Tea" sold in round containers with round tea bags with no strings? They sort of look like ... on second thought I'm not going to go there ...
Barry's Tea from Ireland is sold in square bags with no strings and they really look like ... oh right, still not going there ...
Last edited by tzor on Mon Aug 03, 2009 1:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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tzor
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Post by tzor » Mon Aug 03, 2009 1:42 pm

> Koumei wrote:And until I saw that avatar, I always thought it was some reference to the unfortunate incident in 1776. After all, when they rebelled against their evil overlords they did waste a whole lot of tea (which in my books would carry a life sentence). But apparently not.

The Boston Tea Party was in 1773. Personally I rather like the famous Bugs Bunny interpertation of the event when King George added "carpet tacks" to the colonist's tea. (Who wants to drink tea with carpet tacks ... that's got to hurt!) ... this famous cartoon also had the famous scene of Washington getting a letter and proclaiming, "Ye Gods, I've been drafted!"
There is an irony in that even the "tea party" wasn't really about the tea party or the throwing the tea into the waters; several boats in other ports were encouraged to return to England. It was more of an issue of a state run monopoly than it was about tax, but the issue of taxes were foremost on the colonists minds given other taxes that tore at long established freedoms of Englishmen especially freedom of speech and the press.
Frankly, I don't see what the fuss is all about. Do you know how many gallons of unsold coffee is flushed down the drains of Seattle every day? All those poor fish who can't sleep!
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PhoneLobster
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Post by PhoneLobster » Mon Aug 03, 2009 2:06 pm

I'm sorry but the teabagging movement started with the tea bag language. A protestor famously holding up a sign saying something about tea bagging liberal dems before they tea bag you, a fox news astroturfing buddy using similar language, even a major official astrofturf site of the movement has a poll asking who they would like to tea bag in Washington and it predates the big pick up from the rest of the universe catching on to your hilarious self oblivious humor.
Sure. Your movement wasn't the first to call themselves tea baggers. But they WERE the first to run around talking about how they were totally tea bagging everyone.
edit: And they encouraged their followers to Tea Bag The Fools In DC ...
Last edited by PhoneLobster on Mon Aug 03, 2009 2:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Crissa
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Post by Crissa » Mon Aug 03, 2009 10:05 pm

Yeah, liberals didn't use it first, but it was certainly used often on the news by liberals and conservatives alike in a 'hur hur' sense.
And California and New York do have high taxes. But what we don't have are appropriately high taxes. We lose most of our federal taxes, because they don't come back into the state - so the state has to make that up somehow. And then you get the 'no new taxes' fights, which seems to mostly result in things which should be paid with taxes (parks, clean waterways, emergency services) getting fees, while things (like cars, mass transit and urban planning) which could be paid well in fees, aren't.
Like, what's the point of charging me $4 a year when I drive over the one toll bridge I ever use to go to my mom's... When you could just add that to the car registration? Or charging me $2 to use a train to go 3 miles, when it costs a flat amount to operate it no mater how many people use it? Mass transit and urban planning should be paid for by those that tax it - developers and commercial operators - not the individual users who are then encouraged not to use it.
Which leads to taxes being basically frozen, not actually being levied according to the plans which they pay for... And so you have a collection of random fees at otherwise random times - like parking at a state park which is empty, paying to use an empty train, and paying for the roads with your income tax instead of your car registration.
-Crissa
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Lago PARANOIA
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Post by Lago PARANOIA » Mon Aug 03, 2009 10:43 pm

New York and California get consistedly slammed by certain states and senators who shall remain nameless yet these same assholes are sucking at the New York and California teat--if those two states cut them off they would end up richer and the bashers would end up poorer.
I hate these fucking hypocrites.

> Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
> In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.

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cthulhu
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Post by cthulhu » Mon Aug 03, 2009 11:38 pm

The US approach of tying health insurance to employment is entirely retarded.
The US approach further more of not taxing it is extremely stupid.
Seriously go the French or Australian model where the government gives you coverage A and you can purchase additional coverage X, Y and Z from public private hybrids.
Works great.
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PhoneLobster
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Post by PhoneLobster » Tue Aug 04, 2009 1:22 am

> cthulhu wrote:Works great.

Compared to the US mess it is a damn miracle working system.
But in practice the good bits are the public system and collective public bargaining power for drug purchases. The private system is just free money for corporate shills at the expense of the public system.
Now I can find you a pile of reputable Australian sources if you like, but this obscure Canadian article actually brings it all together very nicely.

> Verna Milligan wrote:It is encouraging to see that Senator Kirby warns that a private, parallel health care system “would be highly regrettable.” After all, whether it’s public or private health care, citizens end up footing the bill. Australian citizens have been supporting both their public system and a private, parallel system. But in the last year and a half there have been shock waves in their parallel system that are reverberating throughout the whole economy and, according to experts, creating a “national crisis” that will cause “massive collateral damage” to their public system.
> Firmly believing that the private, parallel system would eventually relieve the pressure on the public system, their federal government has been subsidizing private insurance corporations by $2.5 billion per year during the past five years.
> Australians who purchase private insurance receive 30 percent annual rebates on their income tax. Their Senate study, however, indicated that 3 to12 percent more health care could have been delivered if this money had gone into the public system. (Another Senate recommendation stated that privatization of public hospitals be abandoned until a thorough national investigation shows an “advantage for patients”.)
> Yet, in spite of this windfall, Australia’s second largest private insurance company, HIH, became the biggest corporate collapse in the country’s history with a massive $5.3 billion bankruptcy in March, 2001.
> There are victims galore, with billions of dollars of shareholder and creditor funds up in smoke, and victims of workers compensation and disability pensions.
> A public outcry has resulted in an ongoing Royal Commission with disclosures revealing Enron-like corporate largesse and executive bonuses skyrocketing from $340,000 to $7.2 million in two years
> “Not only the thousands of people staring at financial ruin”, states a Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) Columnist June 1st last year, “but the rest of us, the hapless taxpayers, are called on yet again to socialize the losses…”
> A public outcry has resulted in an ongoing Royal Commission with disclosures revealing Enron-like corporate largesse and executive bonuses skyrocketing from $340,000 to $7.2 million in two years. Both corporate auditing, Andersen Accounting, and the government regulators have been found to lacking when it comes to protecting citizens.
> While still reeling from the HIH taxpayers’ tab, Australians were shocked to learn that their country's main provider of malpractice insurance, United Medical Protection, collapsed this April, leaving sixty percent of Australia’s physicians without malpractice insurance.
> The results have been catastrophic! Physicians, particularly surgeons and obstetricians, left without malpractice insurance or facing exorbitant premiums from the remaining insurance companies, are refusing to care for patients other than under the umbrella of the public system which covers malpractice insurance, as in Canada. (In Alberta physicians are covered in both the public and private systems).
> Obstetricians say they can no longer see private patients, thus forcing pregnant women to the public system. One private hospital is refusing obstetrics altogether. Surgery lists in the private hospitals are not being reduced – they are being cancelled, with resulting layoffs and bed shortages.
> As the private health system ground to a halt, the federal government, still busy calculating the cost of their HIH bailout responsibilities, had no choice but to subsidize malpractice insurance for doctors to the end of this year. And under threat of losing physicians, a 50-million-dollar package was hammered out this past week for the coming year with the government covering half of the cost of malpractice payouts over $2 million and subsidizing costly premiums for specialists deemed to be in high risk areas.
> Australians quickly learned that there is only one payer. Just two months after the massive collapse of HIH insurance, the two senior executives of Insurance Corporation of Australia told the Sydney Morning Herald columnist that “The insurance industry, like any other industry, can't be held accountable for the behaviour of its competitors. It's not how our capitalist free market system works." And while admitting this causes “a serious problem in terms of our image with the public…we have a bigger problem in terms of making sure that our shareholders and our shareholder value is maintained through this problem.”
> And therein lies the crux of the issue. No parallel health care system can exist without private insurances. Why would we want to trade our citizen-owned health care system for one whose primary fiduciary duty is to shareholders? And when these corporations collapse, who will pick up the pieces? After all, there is only one payer!

Of course this article is over 5 years old now.
NOW we subsidize over 4 Billion per year on the completely corrupt and unproductive "Private health rebate" alone. And royal commissions are warning us that we are creating an unfair two tiered environment that is damaging the public health system.
And in the end the basic concept that rich people deserve better health is foul and disgusting, even in a "hybrid" system where the bottom isn't as far down.
Last edited by PhoneLobster on Tue Aug 04, 2009 1:28 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Draco_Argentum
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Post by Draco_Argentum » Tue Aug 04, 2009 8:14 am

> tzor wrote:Let's get a couple of facts here; the term "teabagging" was first used by liberals in the main stream media to downplay and degrade the intellectual and moral standards of the "tea party" protestors. They used that term fully knowing the sexual implications of that term in common day use. They used it because, when it comes down to it, liberals will use any form of hate and bigotry in order to advance their agenda.

So you don't like the smart mouth. Okay, here it is in bland mode.
You attended the protest. You mightn't like the name but you attended and agree with the protest. As PL points out the tea bagging language is used by your fellows, its not just a media attack. This whole sideline is you trying to dodge a poor phrasing chosen by the protesters. You're just confusing the issue with semantic complaints. So get over the name. In future people who want to name anything should google it first.

Further, you yourself admitted when Crissa asked that Obama's plan won't increase your taxes. So the main reason people are on your case about it is obvious. It happens to be the reason most of us think the Republican party support base is insane, they actively resent taxing people who earn far more than they will ever earn. They resent levying taxes on the people who make all their wealth by extracting it from their staff and consumers.

PL nailed this already but the Australian system is better than the US in the same sense that getting kicked in the balls is better than being castrated. Poor people get screwed. Anyone who thinks income and quality of healthcare should be linked is an arsehole, pure and simple.
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Maxus
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Post by Maxus » Tue Aug 04, 2009 8:19 am

Very nicely put.
Except it should be "actively resent taxing people who earn far more than they will ever spend"
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
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Crissa
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Post by Crissa » Tue Aug 04, 2009 9:03 am

Yeah, did you know that people who make their income from investments... Selling masses of stuff or loaning money, etc... Are charged at a flat rate lower than income taxes that you'd pay on money earned for hours worked?
Did you know that people who make their income by managing other people's investments don't get their income taxed at all?
That the top tax bracket is a lower percentage of income in a hundred years? Lower than it was during any of the largest growth period on this planet, from 1950-2000?
That the amount of federal revenue lost to the Bush's tax cut is larger than the entire amount of the 2009 Stimulus Bill and the Iraq War (so far) combined?
That taxes, as a portion of income, have shrunk over the last thirty years, while gross median wages have basically stood still against inflation... Yet the GDP and top incomes have grown by many times?
-Crissa
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Koumei
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Post by Koumei » Tue Aug 04, 2009 12:31 pm

> tzor wrote: Frankly, I don't see what the fuss is all about. Do you know how many gallons of unsold coffee is flushed down the drains of Seattle every day? All those poor fish who can't sleep!

I really like tea. Wasting it like that is a terrible thing to do.
---
Incidentally, reading that report on how everyone else gets to bail out the mess of private health after some people decided to cock it up and walked away crazy-rich, like with Enron, and oh wait, like the current financial crisis and every other one... I have a question:
Surely a great source of money for fixing the mess would be "the people who caused it and are walking away filthy rich." Why not just have the government seize their assets? I hear they can do that for any bullshit reason anyway. If you really need a reason, stab them in the face and say "They're dead, so I guess we can have their stuff."
I know the losses caused are larger than the money they walk away with, but still, it could be a good start to fixing things (and making the general populace feel that justice is done, which basically seems to be all the criminal system is for, these days). Am I missing something here? Is there some mystic force protecting them?

> Count Arioch the 28th wrote:There is NOTHING better than lesbians. Lesbians make everything better.

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