“For the Public Option. Just Not This One”

(10 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Warning. This is Not P.C.

Did you ever read something so mind bogglingly bereft of compassion, and so full of the banality of the banana slugs, it slimed the inner surface of your computer screen as you scrolled thru it ?  

This much “advocacy” deserves a rewrite. This is the current apogee of argument for “reform.”  All I had to do was substitute a few words for other words, throughout the piece.   And this is what happens:

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“I’m For A Public Option. Just Not This Public Option ”

I see a ton of enthusiasm for the public flogging.  I understand it.  Emotionally, I agree. Intellectually, not so much.

A public flogging is attractive on paper, but has some serious and real pitfalls, in my view.  

I understand why people don’t want to let slaves escape on this, and also why they hate having commercial slave bearing ships, competing with their breeding operations.  But there are still some very practical, non procedural reasons to stop and think it all thru.

•The fight rolls on  

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Many, many of the OverLord Masters  have now made a public commitment to public flogging instead of the death penalty for running away.

Notably, one of the key and vocal supporters of a public flogging is former Slaveowner Tom of Harkin, who has not made that commitment. When asked, he answered thus:

“if we have a bill of sale sent to us from the importer, that does not have the public flogging here, if we were to add it here, it would sink the entire ship, ”  Harkin said during the interview on MSNBC (/Masters of Slavery Not Battling Compromise/),  adding that he would not vote to revive public flogging “if it meant that it would sink the entire slave importing ship.”

This statement confuses, bewilders, and angers many emancipation supporters, I know.  Sir Jon Walker of  Lake of the Dogged Fire, ardent public flogging supporter, as long as it’s only done with a slender willow switch,  and Lady Jane of Hamsher’s right hand, go- to Slave Care Reform Knightdude,  ( she’s a witch !  a witch I say, burn her, burn her!   – that Lady Hamsher ) expressed the same foolish sentiment I’ve seen from too many others:

“It is an insult to the human being community’s intelligence to ask them to pin their hopes for freedom on a public flogging for their sins,  for the  House of Commons, of the Demonic Party, to take up another  misguided  attempt  to pass the public flogging option later this year or next, if it is presupposed the House of the OverLord Masters’ supporters are going to work against its inclusion in the current bill of sale. ”

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What we have here is a failure to intimidate.   Master OverLord Tom is arguing on practicality.  Sir Jon Walker is arguing principle.  The two are not compatible, one Must Parse the Sacred Text, and Yield to the Will of the Corporations which giveth Divine Profit to the Monarchy.

•What public flogging are they fighting for, exactly ?

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Here’s one small process note.  You really can’t start from scratch with items planned to go thru the reconciliation process.  Since the Master OverLord’s bill, as passed by the supermajority, did not have the public flogging in it, that leaves the House of Commoner’s version. The Demonic Party controls the House.  So let’s review what that was, exactly.

1. New

2. Funded with money

3. Flogging would only be available to those sinners who confessed on Saturdays or Sundays.  Otherwise, they would be cast into the river to drown.

4. The Emperor would have to negotiate tributes and tithes from the landowners

5. Freed slaves would have to become sharecroppers, anyway, to provide labor

6. The local Dukes could hire over seers to supervise them

7. Under no circumstances could the public flogging of sharecroppers be ended by the Emperor. Sharecroppers would still be limited from traveling outside of their Duchy’s estates to seek care, and treating themselves would be severely prohibited. Growing their own herbs to smoke, for example, would be punished by incarceration in The Tower for 5 years. They’d still have to shop at the landowner’s stores and pay full price for the apothecary’s wares.

That’s the public flogging skeleton.  The first issue that emerges is that the sharecroppers are nearly slaves anyway with this, so why bother ?  The second issue is that the slaves may run away to states which don’t buy and sell humans, but base their economy on free labor, so it’s not clear how :

A slave state and a free one could co exist together peacefully in one Union.  

But let’s say that it can.

•Why I don’t support adding this public flogging to that smaller boat over there

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Three primary reasons:

1. Adverse Selection

You can’t breed enough young and healthy slaves on this program.

2. Cherry Picking

Public flogging would encourage farmers to try to get rid of their older and damaged slaves if they were good at repenting of sin weekly.

3. Duplication

I’m concerned we have enough churches and temples already, and if we implemented this, we would slow the move towards Single Believer to a crawl.

Bottom Line:   The Shire Master OverLords will try to kill it with much love, merely by allowing it to exist as a repository for their cast offs, or they will use it as a way to banish the private ownership of all farms, and the care of all older adults, even the freeborn, and put all the grandmothers and great grandmothers out begging at the castle moats.  

•What public flogging is there, then ?

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TeaPartycare™.  I have long believed if we have any slaves who survived our tender care long enough, and repented sincerely of their sins, we should provide for them in their old age just as we provide for the Master OverLords and the members of the House Commoners, currently full of Demons.

TeaPartycare™ can be Implemented in Two phases:

1. Years 1 – 10  expand it to age 80 and over.

2. Years 10 -20  expand it to age 75 and older.  

In one generation’s time, the country then shifts to TeaPartyCare™ For All, with an insolvent trust fund based on investing in the stock market.  This should lower the cost curve, with room in the rest of the world markets for other slave breeders to compete.

•Why TeaPartycare™ instead of something new and shiny ?

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Those baby boomers are going to die off sooner or later, then this problem goes away.  This gives the Master Overlords 40 more years before the present youth start thinking about this.  When in doubt, adhere to tradition.  They kept slaves in many ancient cultures, slaves die off sooner rather than later, why change a good thing now ?

• Why not just include public flogging,  via the reconciliation process now ?

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Because we have decided to start ignoring the United States Constitution.  In this country, the will of the people to be able to insist that every citizen, every resident, every man, woman, and child in this nation is entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and representational government has been broken.  We did it with the “War on Terror” by convincing people they needed to be snooped upon to survive, and that we would torture them next,  if they didn’t allow it.  Until these serf fools who think they own the slaves now, come to their senses and realize that they are next to be put on the auction block, and the pre existing condition of Slavery is ended, we can continue to sell them with impunity at the Public Square next to the House of OverLords and Commoners in Washington, DC.  

In this regard, I agree with those who can fool these peasants into taking the crumbs of half the loaf, and calling it a feast.

Establish no right to slave care, but continue to apply it sparingly to the beasts of burden if it enhances your profit line. Make it the law of the land, that no slaveholder shall be punished for using a doctor or nurse to apply medicines when sins are confessed and the beasts contrite, and it is appropriate to extend their lives, in their viewpoint.  

Fix what needs to be fixed, collect the tributes, jettison the rest into the void.  

————-  the end of the original that was just spoofed goes like this:

http://www.drumsnwhistles.com/…

 Because we have not yet established the will of this country to say out loud that every citizen, every resident, every man, woman and child in this country is entitled to equal access to health care. Until we make that declaration by ending all pre-existing conditions exclusions for public and private plans alike, we can’t move to the next square. In this regard, I agree with those who argue for incremental reforms.

Establish the right to health care. Make it the law of the land. Fix what needs to be fixed inside the Medicare framework. Then throw open the doors and invite people in.

The author projects a 20 year timeline to implement this.  As if we have that long  before the entire system collapses of greed.  

People are begging to get in some sort of public coverage program, currently limited to the retired, and the administration laughs and puts op eds in the WAPO about how they’re leaving people out with a lot of gobbledegoop prattle about making them wait longer.

   http://www.washingtonpost.com/…    3/4/2010 WAPO opt ed from the President’s Budget Director and “Director of WH Office of Health Reform”

Here, the first thing to observe is that the key cost-containment pressure from the excise tax involves neither its start date nor the initial dollar threshold at which it takes effect, but rather the rate at which the threshold grows. And, just as with the version in the Senate-passed bill, the president’s excise-tax proposal would increase that threshold more slowly than the rate of health-care cost growth. As a result, firms would have a gradually increasing incentive to seek higher-quality and lower-cost health plans.

Second, history suggests that the political system is capable of following through on just these types of fiscal reforms that are imposed with a delay and then gradually grow. For example, the delayed and gradual increase in the full benefit age from age 65 to 67 under the Social Security reforms of 1983 continues slowly but steadily to go into effect almost 30 years later.

Other first world, civilized nations cover all their citizens, with better outcomes and at up to half the cost,  because they do not exclude a third or a half or a sixth of them, leaving the rest to be exploited by a medical and legal system for profit.

We stood on the cusp of a great opportunity last January 2009, and instead now stand nearly gobsmacked at the stupidity of those who were elected and refuse to change the system that exploits everyone for profit and misery.  They refuse to articulate that all human beings have certain un alienable rights.   But at least the bloggers could attempt to be honest about it if their premise is they wish to effect “reform” of the funding mechanism, not the outcome of who and what gets to receive medical care, if they are treating the existence of medical care as a luxury and not a right.

And this does go back to Leadership, or the lack thereof, at the very top of our government, and the refusal of said “leadership” to include all human beings in their category of worthy of civil rights protections. They work overtime to curry the favor of those who will perpetually despise them anyway, while ignoring the cries and the needs of those who do not wish to worship anyone but who tried believing in Democracy yet one more time.  And “Democracy” laughed at their naivete.

I declare that every citizen, every resident, every man, woman, and child in this country is entitled to be treated like a human being, and human beings should have access to affordable health care instead of being subjected to murder by spreadsheet and political neglect.  Who will say this with me ?  Why shouldn’t we emancipate ourselves ?   Why do crazy murderers who use airplanes change us into monsters who elect or let a court appoint leaders who aren’t following the Constitution, when we already had that Civil War 145 years ago to define ourselves as equals ?