We have been discussing how mean=spirited and nasty the presidential campaign has already become on both sides. With Republicans called Obama a socialist and a Muslim, Democrats are saying Romney would not have killed Bin Laden . . . and now that he is vampiric.
The new ad, “Steel” describes GS Technologies, a steel mill in Kansas City, Mo., that was bought by Romney’s private equity firm Bain Capital. One former mill worker says “We view Mitt Romney as a job destroyer, a vampire. They came in and sucked the life out of us.” “Mitt the Job Destroyer” is still better than “Vlad the Impaler” but they seem to be saying that he is both.
The question is how strong the anti-vampire vote is. After all, Obama is no Buffy The Vampire Slayer himself, but then again who is?
Before the Republicans denounce the ad, they should consider that there could be some positive aspects to an undead president for the GOP:
1. They work nights.
2. They truly can take the bite out of crime.
3. They are always taking the pulse of voters.
5. One meeting of the Group of Eight would leave a group of one.
6. The GOP would finally secure the Goth vote.
7. We would finally have a president who is all bite and no bark.
8. Republicans can re-use those “Drill, Baby, Drill” signs.
9. No one is more anti-evolution than a vampire.
10. Perfect for the slogan, “Better Undead than Red.”
Source: Washington Post
I know somebody who is quite influential at AEI, and when he disagreed with me over something, he tried his best to destroy me. Privately. The reason I laughed about that is that, like a cockroach, I am very hard to destroy. Particularly when I get in the corners. [green grinny face]
@Bron: I am with Gene, I would eliminate the mandate as well, I also think it is unconstitutional.
But I am a bit to the left of Gene, I am for nationalized health care, paying volunteer military rates for all doctors and health care employees, just like the Veterans Administration hospital. In fact I would provide free education in any of those fields in return for a service contract, two years of service for each year of schooling. That still leaves the lion’s share of a private practice career, if you want that. Like Norway, I would not legislate against private healthcare or insurance for those that want to use it or pursue it.
Unlike you, I am not willing to relegate the poor, disabled, or just not very smart to death just because they do not have marketable skills beyond their manual labor. That is what YOUR plan does, because they cannot earn enough to buy food, shelter, AND medical care or insurance, and they cannot SAVE enough to pay for the critical care they need if they are the victim of a hit and run, get food poisoning, or just fall downstairs and shatter their shoulder.
Elaine,
I’m a heathen and proud of it when it comes to AEI.
“I am trying to maximize liberty and minimize suffering. You want to maximize suffering and minimize liberty. You think you are infallible and have to turn to despotism to prove it. You would force 310 million people to buy something that 275 million of them didnt need to insure the 10% without health care. Some of whom are choosing not to buy it for various reasons.”
Straw man again. You seem to think I’m for the mandate. I think the mandate portion of the ACA is unconstitutional. I’m for single payer universal health care insurance; a solution well within Congresses powers that has the best business case behind it for efficiency and cost reduction through maximizing the size of the risk pool, reducing physician and hospital required paperwork, etc. As to the maximize liberty, minimize suffering comment? You’ve proven that you have no clue whatsoever about the nature of liberty by your steadfast willingness to sacrifice it at the alter of private profits left to the whim of free markets, so pardon me if I chuckle.
Gene,
“AEI? Seriously, Bron?”
What…you don’t trust the findings of a study conducted by the American Enterprise Institute? Oh, ye of little faith!
😉
Gene H:
Did you read the study? Elizabeth Warren felt it was good enough to use as a reference for her study. I got it from her references.
It actually validates some of Warrens findings but has different conclusions.
Unlike you and Tony C I am trying to figure out what the truth is and to tailor solutions to meet particular needs. Not a one size fits all shove it down your throat or else approach. The right tool for the right job.
I am trying to maximize liberty and minimize suffering. You want to maximize suffering and minimize liberty. You think you are infallible and have to turn to despotism to prove it. You would force 310 million people to buy something that 275 million of them didnt need to insure the 10% without health care. Some of whom are choosing not to buy it for various reasons.
There are many good solutions to preventing people from starving, from going bankrupt because of illness and insuring those who arent which dont limit the freedom of the majority.
Bron,
I didn’t forget the footnotes.
AEI? Seriously, Bron? That’s a new low even for someone who quotes von Mises. Why not break out a PNAC study as your rebuttal? Couldn’t find one from those Neocon dipshits so you went with the B Team?
Matt Johnson:
“The professor tried to accuse me of plagiarism. I told her, it’s not my text, I’m just quoting.”
Did you “forget” the quote marks?
Tony C:
And you still cannot understand that hospitals and doctors work with people.
Nor do you understand that people declare bankruptcy to avoid debt they can pay.
If you dont see that this study is flawed, I feel sorry for you.
The way I would have done this study was to break out all debts by category and to compare total medical debt to total non-medical debt. And to show the medical debt as a percentage of total medical and non-medical debt. I think you should also find out how long the people carried non-medical debt and how long they had carried non-medical and medical debt prior to declaring bankruptcy. You should also find out how many people had supplemental insurance for disability or lost work time and what percentage of the total pool they comprised. What was their level of savings, what was their life style vs. their debt.
People could be declaring bankruptcy from a lack of knowledge of what is available to them. Or their lifestyle could be part of the problem. Too much consumption and not enough savings. But we dont know any of this, this study wants to declare that national health care is a necessity without looking at other causes or options.
here is a study from the 1990’s which does try and take a look at some of what I mentioned. The results are similar but it is looked at a little differently.
http://www.aei.org/files/2006/07/19/20060719_MedicalBillsAndBankruptcy.pdf
Tony,
Keep your meatballs to yourself. I did a research paper once in college. It was business law. The professor tried to accuse me of plagiarism. I told her, it’s not my text, I’m just quoting.
@Matt Johnson: You copy somebody’s work by mistake when a belief you have about the work is mistaken. If I truly believe my great grandfather’s cousin’s recipe for meatballs was original with her and taught to my grandmother and by her to my mother and by her to me, as I am wont to believe, then I do not believe it is copyrighted by anybody. If that was a story made up by my mother, and she copied the recipe from a magazine that still holds the copyright, then my belief that I can share the recipe at will is mistaken.
Alternatively, if I am taught the recipe and tweak it to my own taste by doubling the Oregano and halving the Garlic, I may believe I have my OWN recipe for meatballs. But it is at least possible my simple adjustment to a public domain recipe widely shared over the last century has been made before by somebody with a palate much like my own, and published in a cook book or newspaper column somewhere.
Plagiarism is intentional, not accidental. If we could prevent all accidents, we would not need a word for them in all our languages.
@Bron: No it isn’t, and you still cannot read. The cause is the difference between $400 a month and $20,000 DUE RIGHT NOW OR WE WILL SUE YOU.
You are still a hypocritical liar that just makes stuff up to suit your dogmatic view.
Tony C:
“If you are then saddled with $20K in debt DUE IMMEDIATELY IN FULL, you may not be ABLE to raise that money, or negotiate a payment plan you can afford.”
Every time I have asked for a reduction in fee or asked to be put on a payment plan it was granted.
If I owe $25,000 in debt and I incur another $15,000, the cause is the amount of debt above which I cannot pay. To say it is the first $25,000 or the last $15,000 is sophistry. It was the total amount of debt I owe.
If the $25,000 was for electronic devices and trips to the Bahamas and Cayman Island vacations and spa treatments and $300/pair shoes, why isnt it uncontrolled spending which caused me to file for bankruptcy.
That study is flawed and comes to a conclusion based on the authors political orientation. It is propaganda if you will. But not unexpected of a person like Elizabeth Warren, a known ancestor fabricator and now cook book recipe plagiarist. Bless her heart.
Betty Kath:
the study also mentioned that bankruptcies for medical reasons were low in the early 1980’s. I think what is causing the problem is consumer debt, the medical bills are the straw so to speak.
But I also know from long experience with the medical profession that they will put you on a payment plan or reduce fees for service if you are having problems with the bill.
So I think this study is flawed because they do not tell how much debt existed prior to the bankruptcies. I know people who declare bankruptcy to avoid paying legitimate bills they are capable of paying. In fact I know people who have run up bills knowing they were going to file for bankruptcy.
People who truly cannot pay for medical care should be helped but to willy nilly make some national health care plan up out of whole cloth and then say we wont know what is in it until we pass it is beyond common sense.
Have a surcharge on premiums and use that money to pay for people to use Veterans Hospitals who do not have insurance. I would rather pay an extra $1,000 per year than have national health care.
Tony,
I think unintentional copying of somebody else’s work is not plagiarism.
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Don’t copy somebody’s work by mistake.
Bron,
This statement was in your discussion about Elizabeth Warren’s report:
“If you had $25,000 of debt prior to a medical problem and the medical bills, per the study were on average around $20,000 you cannot say the sole cause of the bankruptcy was medical bills.”
The purpose of the original study based on 2001 data was to determine causes for bankruptcies, all bankruptcies What the authors found was that “half of all bankruptcies in the US occurred in the aftermath of a serious medical problem”. This is not what they expected. It was “a startling” finding and it generated lots of political debate. So she and her co-authors modified their approach to answer questions raised by the first study but using 2007 data. This has also generated debate. Her next step is to do another paper that will help folks like you and me to better understand exactly “What is a Medical Bankruptcy?” I consider her to be well qualified to answer that question. I don’t consider you (or me) to be qualified to do so. I look forward to her paper on the subject
However, as Tony C. has pointed out, the medical bills can be enough to tip the balance such that bankruptcy is the only option that will work.
@Matt: I know what plagiarism is, and I believe plagiarism requires an intent to deceive. Apparently you did not even read the passage you cut and pasted. I think unintentional copying of somebody else’s work is not plagiarism; if you think that something is apocryphal, or common knowledge, or in the public domain.
I will add that I disagree with the entire premise, even if somebody plagiarized a recipe that does not indicate in any way they would engage in professional, academic plagiarism for a peer-reviewed academic article. Plagiarizing a recipe would not result in sanctions or loss of a professorial and academic career, they are on completely different scales.
Further, no claims of plagiarism are leveled against this article co-authored by Warren, and plagiarism would not even call the data into question, just its provenance. The only charge that would invalidate the report would be outright fabrication of data, some proof that the entire report was a lie. Nobody is attacking the statistics or numbers in the report, and they speak for themselves.
Tony,
The academic malfeasance of publicly LYING about statistics you supposedly garnered from a study is far, FAR worse than thinking something was original when it was not, or taking notes of a passage in a book and failing to cite the author. The former is active deception, the latter can be carelessness without any intent to deceive.
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It’s called plagiarism. Do you want to claim another person’s text as yours? The intent to deceive is intentional.
@Bron: Recipes are passed around all the time without attribution; I have heard of instances where a cook thought a recipe was original with their mother and it turned out to be identical to recipe that came with an old can of vegetable shortening.
The academic malfeasance of publicly LYING about statistics you supposedly garnered from a study is far, FAR worse than thinking something was original when it was not, or taking notes of a passage in a book and failing to cite the author. The former is active deception, the latter can be carelessness without any intent to deceive.
If you had $25,000 of debt prior to a medical problem and the medical bills, per the study were on average around $20,000 you cannot say the sole cause of the bankruptcy was medical bills.
Yes, you can. $25K in debt, even at 18%, is $375 a month in interest, maybe $400 a month in payments. A person can afford that. It might even be a useful tool in their finances; like the difference between a working car and spending a few extra hours every day taking the bus. It might be the difference between living in a house and living in an apartment; or the difference between having a working air conditioner or not, or some combination of those things. You might even be able to use savings to avoid default for a few months because you lost your job due to illness.
If you are then saddled with $20K in debt DUE IMMEDIATELY IN FULL, you may not be ABLE to raise that money, or negotiate a payment plan you can afford. If the hospital routinely sells its uncollected debt to ruthless collectors, the collectors may compute they get more by you declaring bankruptcy and taking 44% of your liquidated financial carcass than by negotiating whatever paltry payment you can afford on top of the payments for your other $25K in debt.
Your protest about not needing to lie are ironic, since they occur in the same post as your apparent need to lie about me being a totalitarian, Marxist, and my motivations.
My sources are not left-wing or right wing. They are the undeniable statistics that prove you are just a liar willing to say anything whether it is true or not. You just make stuff up and hope it sticks or gets a reaction.