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Monday, March 7, 2011
Monday, February 28, 2011
Abortion And The Rights Of Liberty
"I believe that the Declaration of Independence says 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,'" he said. "Whenever someone forces me to do something against my will, they're infringing upon my freedoms and my liberties." (Maine Governor Paul LaPage (R,) in an article published by TPM online. In it, LePage referred to his support of "right to work" legislation that protects the rights of individuals to refuse to join a union.)
Finally, a concise definition of the meaning of liberty by a conservative.
Abortion then, must be a sacrament, for by that simple definition it is obvious that being forced to bear a pregnancy and childbirth if I don't want to...is an OBVIOUS, need I say it again, infringement on my liberty. If women do not have a right to terminate a pregnancy, then there are NO civil liberties or Liberty for women. Reproductive freedom for women is essential before any contemplation of the more mundane aspects of Liberty, like freedom to speak or to assemble, or to prosper can even begin to matter. In this way, women differ from men. Women have a Meta Freedom (reproductive) that must be met, an Alpha Condition for Freedom, that must be met before any other civil right or liberty has meaning. Men, by biology, have met that Meta Freedom: they cannot be forced to be pregnant; they can walk away from pregnancy and children. Women cannot. Either way they must Choose, so they must be Free to Choose. Everything else follows from that. Any OTHER position on abortion is oppositional to the conservative ethos of personal liberty and personal responsibility. Here is their philosophical conundrum and it will skewer them sooner or later. They will be forced to admit that their concept of liberty is not the same as their concept of women's liberty, and that, in the end, men will make that decision.
Finally, a concise definition of the meaning of liberty by a conservative.
Abortion then, must be a sacrament, for by that simple definition it is obvious that being forced to bear a pregnancy and childbirth if I don't want to...is an OBVIOUS, need I say it again, infringement on my liberty. If women do not have a right to terminate a pregnancy, then there are NO civil liberties or Liberty for women. Reproductive freedom for women is essential before any contemplation of the more mundane aspects of Liberty, like freedom to speak or to assemble, or to prosper can even begin to matter. In this way, women differ from men. Women have a Meta Freedom (reproductive) that must be met, an Alpha Condition for Freedom, that must be met before any other civil right or liberty has meaning. Men, by biology, have met that Meta Freedom: they cannot be forced to be pregnant; they can walk away from pregnancy and children. Women cannot. Either way they must Choose, so they must be Free to Choose. Everything else follows from that. Any OTHER position on abortion is oppositional to the conservative ethos of personal liberty and personal responsibility. Here is their philosophical conundrum and it will skewer them sooner or later. They will be forced to admit that their concept of liberty is not the same as their concept of women's liberty, and that, in the end, men will make that decision.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
More Weird Ads
I am not a supporter of Rand Paul, just fyi. I would like his ad off my site. I preferred the Chinese ones, at least they were interesting.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Why Trickle Down Is A Lie
I'm mad as hell that the bailout gave billions to banks, who then refused to lend it. I'm sick of the anti-citizenship shown by corporations and especially the financial sectors.
Why, someone please explain, when mortgage failures began to... be in the news, didn't the bankers and mortgage holders rush to re-negotiate those loans? They would have made money, just not as much of it and people would have kept their homes. The cost of such foreclosure rates is huge, not just in the financial loss, but as a cost to society from stressed families, uprooted children, sense of powerlessness on the part of millions of families. All these things turn into low school performance, health care costs, law enforcement costs: we never crunch the numbers completely.
That's the problem with American. Us voters and folks just let those guys carry on, scraping the cream off the top.
This really pisses me off: I read in a non-partisan article on the economy a sort of innocuous comment....that increased revenue/stimulus to the lower socio-economic sector of society has a much greater stimulative effect than stimulus of wealthy persons. Poor and middle class people SPEND the stimulus they receive, in grocery stores, retail, vacations, etc. The money goes right back into the pot. Stimulus for wealthy persons (tax cuts, et al., ) goes OUT of the pot! They may buy a mercedes, but the rest they invest or use to play wall street games (Michael Milken, Hurwitz.) It does NOT stimulate the economy to nearly the same degree, let alone create jobs. And that's another big lie from the "Reagan era," or "Neo-conservative era," (1980-present). Trickle down doesn't work; Trickle UP works! (The other big lie is, of course, weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.)
Ideology has become a substitute for looking at a thing clearly and finding practical solutions. Ideology has strangled us, propagandized us to ludicrous moral propositions (greed is good,) and decimated America's store of moral capital. They have made us a joke and a freakish caricature of the people who had the greatness to create and implement the Marshall Plan.
Why, someone please explain, when mortgage failures began to... be in the news, didn't the bankers and mortgage holders rush to re-negotiate those loans? They would have made money, just not as much of it and people would have kept their homes. The cost of such foreclosure rates is huge, not just in the financial loss, but as a cost to society from stressed families, uprooted children, sense of powerlessness on the part of millions of families. All these things turn into low school performance, health care costs, law enforcement costs: we never crunch the numbers completely.
That's the problem with American. Us voters and folks just let those guys carry on, scraping the cream off the top.
This really pisses me off: I read in a non-partisan article on the economy a sort of innocuous comment....that increased revenue/stimulus to the lower socio-economic sector of society has a much greater stimulative effect than stimulus of wealthy persons. Poor and middle class people SPEND the stimulus they receive, in grocery stores, retail, vacations, etc. The money goes right back into the pot. Stimulus for wealthy persons (tax cuts, et al., ) goes OUT of the pot! They may buy a mercedes, but the rest they invest or use to play wall street games (Michael Milken, Hurwitz.) It does NOT stimulate the economy to nearly the same degree, let alone create jobs. And that's another big lie from the "Reagan era," or "Neo-conservative era," (1980-present). Trickle down doesn't work; Trickle UP works! (The other big lie is, of course, weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.)
Ideology has become a substitute for looking at a thing clearly and finding practical solutions. Ideology has strangled us, propagandized us to ludicrous moral propositions (greed is good,) and decimated America's store of moral capital. They have made us a joke and a freakish caricature of the people who had the greatness to create and implement the Marshall Plan.
Chinese Ads
I guess liberal concepts are so foreign to our popular culture that my pages elicits ads in Chinese! Is it greek to everyone? Or is this a mild internet nudge that such ideas are communist. What a silly world!
Why Taxes Are Good
UPDATE:
What really annoys me are all the people on the public dole, including Congress, sorry - the upper class of the military, and most of the highly paid "mouths" who tell us our news, who are annoyed when the public dole is given to poor people. These folks have terrific health care plans and excellent pensions, all paid for with public money. The gall of it floors me!
I love the one where higher level federal officials retire, and then go back to work for the same department as a consultant! That is wealth and resources that could be spread around. It's very bad policy: they are getting paid health insurance and pension, and then being paid some more....again from the nation's funds. Besides that, it's just plain evidence of a corrupt sensibility with respect to taxpayer's funds, that must reside in every cell of the governing "elite", in the executive branch, congress, state legislatures, Governor's mansions, the military, corporate America and the media. The incentives working for them means they don't work for us.
But to have some old white man (for the most part) looking down his nose at my need for comprehensive medical - and please, for God's sake, dental- insurance, while he's taking home millions from the public treasury, is so absurd it makes me sputter. I feel like Alice.
There's yet another type of double dipping: retired officials receiving pension benefits from the military and congress and perhaps from their stint as a state governor. They also have terrific health care plans for the rest of their lives and lifetime coverage for their spouses. How awesome is that! I don't begrudge them that. I just think we all deserve that.
It's part of the modern covenant between the people and its government; to not give all the wealth to the nobility. It's the oldest story in politics. Does the nobility prosper because the peasants and working people do without necessities? And yes, there is an American Nobility, and class is the driving force behind the American dynamics of today and the last half of the twentieth century.
To have poor women and children, the aged, the disabled, the depressed, veterans, all those who comprise the poor, without access to health care or homeless is an abomination that should not be tolerated in this country if we are to have any self-respect and any heart or goodness left. To have hungry children in your neighborhood should be inconceivable to an American.
To deny medicaid coverage to students in college, even if they are otherwise eligible, because they are "voluntarily poor," is just so dumb I can't dignify it with an insult. So, otherwise totally promising students may be forced to choose health care over education, just in order to stay alive or retain the medications they need to conduct their lives. That is just a ridiculous outcome for the wealthiest nation in the world, indeed, in the history of the world.
I refuse to accept it and you should refuse to accept it too. I reject any ideology based on the notion that people always and only make their own bed and should lie in it; and that the government has no legitimate role in securing the conditions of the weak and the sick, the elderly, women and children. It's the gentlemanly thing to do and it is still proper, and, amazingly, cheaper.
What a squandering of resources. We don't crunch the right data, we don't form the right queries, we don't know what to look for when assessing the costs of our policies. It is cheaper to build an apartment building in Seattle to house the chronic, hard-core alcoholic, homeless, than it is to leave them in the street. What the city saves in law enforcement, health care costs, social services, etc more than pays for the building. No one is required to stop drinking. It's not a moral mission to save souls and restore productivity; it's a quite practical mission to restore a semblance of dignity to people, provide for the basic human primal needs of clothing, shelter, and food, and thereby save the taxpayer money! Brilliant! Humanity, cost effectiveness, and leveraged outcomes go together, and lower and spread costs throughout the system instead of concentrating them in law enforcement and emergency services.
Enough. You get the picture....people collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars of federal benefit are telling single poor mothers to shove it. That makes me sick. My conservative father taught me better than that! Who are these people? They are in no way American as I was raised to understand it.
MediCare should be means tested. So should social security. Why on earth would the nation pay social security to someone who is already collecting two full government pensions.
*********************************
When did taxes get such a bad name? I think we need to start a "Taxes are Good!" campaign. Remember, taxes build roads, schools, fund law enforcement, health care, all good things in the realm of the "public good," a largely forgotten concept. I say that all people on the "no taxes" hype imagine what it would be like if each of them had to pay for their personal firefighters, cops, security to protect their private property...oh yeah, taxes pay for courts and the whole enforcement mechanism. No enforcement, no private property rights. Arguably, and this is not my argument although I certainly see the sense in it, there are no inalienable rights until they are substantiated by enforcement. Therefore, the entire system of laws, jurisprudence, etc. is largely "welfare" for property owners. (See, The Costs of Rights: Why Liberty Depends on Taxes by Cass Sunstein and Stephen Holmes.)
What really annoys me are all the people on the public dole, including Congress, sorry - the upper class of the military, and most of the highly paid "mouths" who tell us our news, who are annoyed when the public dole is given to poor people. These folks have terrific health care plans and excellent pensions, all paid for with public money. The gall of it floors me!
I love the one where higher level federal officials retire, and then go back to work for the same department as a consultant! That is wealth and resources that could be spread around. It's very bad policy: they are getting paid health insurance and pension, and then being paid some more....again from the nation's funds. Besides that, it's just plain evidence of a corrupt sensibility with respect to taxpayer's funds, that must reside in every cell of the governing "elite", in the executive branch, congress, state legislatures, Governor's mansions, the military, corporate America and the media. The incentives working for them means they don't work for us.
But to have some old white man (for the most part) looking down his nose at my need for comprehensive medical - and please, for God's sake, dental- insurance, while he's taking home millions from the public treasury, is so absurd it makes me sputter. I feel like Alice.
There's yet another type of double dipping: retired officials receiving pension benefits from the military and congress and perhaps from their stint as a state governor. They also have terrific health care plans for the rest of their lives and lifetime coverage for their spouses. How awesome is that! I don't begrudge them that. I just think we all deserve that.
It's part of the modern covenant between the people and its government; to not give all the wealth to the nobility. It's the oldest story in politics. Does the nobility prosper because the peasants and working people do without necessities? And yes, there is an American Nobility, and class is the driving force behind the American dynamics of today and the last half of the twentieth century.
To have poor women and children, the aged, the disabled, the depressed, veterans, all those who comprise the poor, without access to health care or homeless is an abomination that should not be tolerated in this country if we are to have any self-respect and any heart or goodness left. To have hungry children in your neighborhood should be inconceivable to an American.
To deny medicaid coverage to students in college, even if they are otherwise eligible, because they are "voluntarily poor," is just so dumb I can't dignify it with an insult. So, otherwise totally promising students may be forced to choose health care over education, just in order to stay alive or retain the medications they need to conduct their lives. That is just a ridiculous outcome for the wealthiest nation in the world, indeed, in the history of the world.
I refuse to accept it and you should refuse to accept it too. I reject any ideology based on the notion that people always and only make their own bed and should lie in it; and that the government has no legitimate role in securing the conditions of the weak and the sick, the elderly, women and children. It's the gentlemanly thing to do and it is still proper, and, amazingly, cheaper.
What a squandering of resources. We don't crunch the right data, we don't form the right queries, we don't know what to look for when assessing the costs of our policies. It is cheaper to build an apartment building in Seattle to house the chronic, hard-core alcoholic, homeless, than it is to leave them in the street. What the city saves in law enforcement, health care costs, social services, etc more than pays for the building. No one is required to stop drinking. It's not a moral mission to save souls and restore productivity; it's a quite practical mission to restore a semblance of dignity to people, provide for the basic human primal needs of clothing, shelter, and food, and thereby save the taxpayer money! Brilliant! Humanity, cost effectiveness, and leveraged outcomes go together, and lower and spread costs throughout the system instead of concentrating them in law enforcement and emergency services.
Enough. You get the picture....people collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars of federal benefit are telling single poor mothers to shove it. That makes me sick. My conservative father taught me better than that! Who are these people? They are in no way American as I was raised to understand it.
MediCare should be means tested. So should social security. Why on earth would the nation pay social security to someone who is already collecting two full government pensions.
*********************************
When did taxes get such a bad name? I think we need to start a "Taxes are Good!" campaign. Remember, taxes build roads, schools, fund law enforcement, health care, all good things in the realm of the "public good," a largely forgotten concept. I say that all people on the "no taxes" hype imagine what it would be like if each of them had to pay for their personal firefighters, cops, security to protect their private property...oh yeah, taxes pay for courts and the whole enforcement mechanism. No enforcement, no private property rights. Arguably, and this is not my argument although I certainly see the sense in it, there are no inalienable rights until they are substantiated by enforcement. Therefore, the entire system of laws, jurisprudence, etc. is largely "welfare" for property owners. (See, The Costs of Rights: Why Liberty Depends on Taxes by Cass Sunstein and Stephen Holmes.)
Civil Discourse Does Not Deny Facts
I was recently reprimanded on my facebook page for mentioning that Republicans have played a role in our current national debacle, as though mention of facts is un-civil. So I have this to say, it is time for accountability for this country. In the name of civility, we cannot ignore the fact that the Bush administration lied to us about WMD, kept the costs of the war off the books, made a mockery of our human rights record, abandoned the Geneva convention and introduced torture as an allowable strategy (then punished low ranking people for it!,) allowed the Taliban to regain a foothold in Afghanistan, and had good buddies (and lobbyists) in high places, kept ridiculously low interest rates, exported our manufacturing, broke the backs of the working class, proliferated the sale of weapons both in the country and out....the list is endless. Being civil does not mean we sweep the actual facts under the rug. The republican party is brilliant at getting its message out. Its message is largely selfish, hateful, un-Christian, while they claim the religious moral high ground. Enough is enough. I was silenced during the beginning of the latest Iraq war, by good republicans, who threatened me and harassed me when I suggested that there were no WMD. I'm not going to be silenced again, now that "civility" has become a meme the republicans will manipulate. My father was the last republican I admired. Something pitiful and sour has happened to the party of Lincoln. It's time we took a good, clear look and refuse to allow republican ideology to propagandize us and twist us up into ridiculous propositions, like trickle down. It hasn't worked in 30 years and they still want to cut taxes for the super-rich. It's un-American.
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