Do Corporations 'Believe'?Follow

I, too, agree we should deport conservatives.

I always get a chuckle when Gbaji makes some sweeping statement that no one else agrees with and then gives an aggrieved "can't we agree on this?" as though everyone else is being unreasonable.

You yourself just went from "say" to "do" between the two sentences.

You can believe whatever the hell you want. You can say whatever the hell you want, with certain exceptions (fire in crowded theater, yada yada.) But you can only do the things that have not been expressly prohibited by law (and/or societal norms), which is universal across the span of human civilizations.

Fair enough. I'll counter that "say" and "do" aren't that different from a rights point of view though. I mean the first amendment is broadly about "free speech", yet refers specifically to the "free exercise thereof" (with regard to religion).



I disagree. In a free society you start being able to think, say, or do anything you damn well please. Then you limit just those things which constitute a greater infringement on others freedoms than imposed by limiting them. So we decide that beating someone to death is illegal, not because people's actions aren't protected, but because the right to not be beaten to death trumps the right to beat someone to death.

There's no innate difference between the methodology we use to determine the restrictions on what people can "do" compared to what they can "say". It's the same rules. It's just that what people do is more likely to infringe some other right than what we say, so we falsely assume that speech is more protected than action.

Not unreasonable so much as unwilling to acknowledge that one thing is not like the other. There's a difference between regulating the quality/safety of eggs sold in stores, and mandating that people must buy a certain number of eggs each week. Yet, when I point out that the health care law is the equivalent of the latter, I continually get responses about how the former is just fine and dandy and we've been doing it all the time.

I keep saying stuff like this because I honestly do wonder whether people understand the differences but are ok with the new/different thing, or aren't aware of this and are defending it because they don't realize that it's different. I just think that if you're ok with the mandates, you should be saying "mandating that people buy health insurance that is good because X, Y, Z", rather than saying "These mandates are no different than previous regulations". When you go with the latter, it suggests that you either don't understand the issue *or* you can't actually come up with a good argument to support your position.

So yeah, I'll bring it up.

Edited, Mar 28th 2014 4:12pm by gbaji

Be done with this ******** and just adopt universal healthcare.

The irony is that the Left can't get sufficient public support for that, so they settled on a half measure which is far far worse in terms of rights infringement. If they'd simply paid for health care for people out of tax dollars we might get a few "hey, I don't want my tax dollars paying for X!" arguments, but there's already some constitutional groundwork in that area (quite a bit actually).

Because they could not do that, they instead went with "let's force everyone to buy health insurance, and mandate what that insurance must cover". Which opens up a massive number of constitutional problems. "Government can provide benefits" is an accepted thing. "Government can tax to pay for benefits" is another accepted thing. "Government can force people to buy things they don't want" is just way off the reservation. But that's what they went with.

I'll point out again the monumental mistake the Court made in not tossing out the mandate on constitutional grounds in the first place. Had they done that we could maybe actually be looking at more rational ways of providing health care to those who actually can't afford it. Instead, we're perpetuating this doomed-to-failure process almost entirely because of sheer political momentum. It's a train wreck waiting to happen.

Edited, Mar 28th 2014 4:35pm by gbaji

Death panels!

We can debate why there is insufficient public support for direct socialized medicine in the US, but that doesn't change the fact that the "solution" to this that the Democrats came up with during their brief supermajority control of our government was a really really bad idea. I suspect that most Americans are still just discovering how bad and idea it was.

You get that there's a reason why they keep pushing back certain components of the ACA, right? It's because they are so bad and so legally problematic and so likely to result in massive howls of dislike from the public, that even those who pushed for and passed the law are afraid to actually implement them. That should speak volumes about how crappy this law is.

They have Romney Care! Which is the same as ObamaCare, only more white.

True that. Although I suppose and hope it'll be the next step one of these days. Likely not soon, mind you, but in that direction at least.

Hey, any time the GOP wants to float a single payer health care bill I'm sure they'll pick up a few Democratic votes

Yes, it does. Basically you are here arguing for the very small and very vocal ********** no one cares about" crowd. There comes a point where "religious freedom" can mean anything, and in this case it is some real nonsensical ********* I don't have any links to statistics, but I'm pretty sure almost every woman anywhere in the United States uses, has used, or will use birth control at some point, and for good reason.

Meanwhile, we have this very small number of "religious" folks whose feelings get hurt at the idea that all those poor sperm aren't getting their fair chance, and a slightly larger number of people who act like they sympathize with this so they can have an excuse to pretend they are standing up for religious freedom everywhere-- because by God, if it were my religion to scream loudly into the ears of every passer by I met, surely you would stand up for that as well-- because "religious freedom" trumps all.