How Does Republican Platform Help Middle Class?

Also, he's fat. That's all the proof a conservative needs against the arguments in "Sicko."

Just being able to afford a computer ($300), a low-end car ($170 a month payment), and rent at a decent apartment ($700 a month) and keep clothing on the back of you and your family hardly indicates such a surplus of income as to make family health insurance affordable, given that the mean family plan premium in the US is around $1200. I don't know of anybody who has enough fat in the budget to trim out another $1200, do you? (Maybe everyone you know is very wealthy. Most likely, everybody you know has the bulk of their insurance premiums paid for by someone else, like their employer.) What do you think insurance is, stupid?

Indeed. Some might not provide pediatric care, for instance. Even the "average" plan might not. Well, no, they don't. They don't offer based on what the market desires, because obviously what the market desires is as much health care as they need, for free. What they offer is what it's most profitable to offer, and because of the nature of health insurance, what is most profitable to offer is to charge high premiums for little to no expenditure on care. So, to the greatest extent possible, what health insurance companies are in the business of is charging premiums to provide nothing in return - hence the high rates of practices like claim denials and recission - all means to evade the responsibility to reimburse hospitals for medical care. Because they make more money that way. The single-room rat trap is what I was referring to - $700. You could probably get a box under the bridge for something less, but then that's going to increase the health needs of you and your family and make it impossible for you to qualify for health insurance (they don't provide it to the homeless.) So what do you actually save, there? Nonsense. Your first month on health insurance - you've paid in no more than $1200, on average - you're entitled to make claims up to the maximum of your policy. Say, $250,000. What on Earth is that besides your hand in everybody else's pocket? Your notion of health insurance as a savings account, where you contribute and then withdraw, is moronic.

But here's the thing - the resources aren't limited, not in that way. There's enough medicine for everybody. There are enough people to be doctors.We don't have to ration care and only give it to the rich; there's enough for everyone who needs it, because we can make as much as we decide we need.Other people's kids getting medicine for their illnesses doesn't make it any harder for your kids to get what they need. You don't have to worry about poor black people slurping up all your delicious, precious health care. The sooner you get over your absurd fear of brown people getting in line ahead of you, the sooner you'll realize that we don't need markets to allocate care to the richest. There's more than enough, or could be if we decide there should be.You need to ask yourself whose interests are served by an artificial scarcity of health care.

Why would it "trickle down"? How does that jive with the ample evidence that things trickle up, instead? There's actually thirty years of evidence or more that strong social safety nets financed by progressive taxes, effective regulation, labor rights, and social justice actually do promote significant economic growth. Similarly there's about ten years of evidence that deregulation, union busting, and religious oppression are disastrous for the American economy. It wouldn't be the first thing he turned out to be dead wrong about. You act like deregulation is free, but who pays for the polluted air and water?And how do you square that with property rights? Surely you'd recognize that your property rights enjoin me from dumping thousands of pounds of burning garbage into your front lawn. Right? Isn't it a right you have, to not have nuisances and refuse dropped onto your land without your permission?So why doesn't that right extend to your air and water? How do you square property rights with an untrammeled right of corporations to pollute land, air, and water that belongs to other people? There's zero evidence that unemployment is driven by environmental regulation. Our nation's high unemployment rate and declining wealth of the middle class is almost entirely due to a deregulated financial services sector.

Juan Williams hasn't ever been a "moderate liberal", which is why he was immediately picked up by Fox News. In the past week? Rand Paul. Michelle Bachmann. Mitt Romney. Ken Cuchinelli. Mario Loyola. William Galston. Are you? How do you square property rights with an untrammeled right of industry corporations to deposit pollution and garbage in the air and water you own?

A transfer of wealth from the middle class to the rich. You know, that income redistribution conservatives are always on about. No, I am referring to usable products and services, the kind people willingly pay for. It's the middle class who are primarily engaged in the production of such goods and services. The productivity of the rich is incredibly low because they're fundamentally not engaged in the production of useful goods and services; they're predominantly engaged in finance, which largely transfers wealth from the middle class to the wealthy. No, it's a genuine question I'm asking you about how you square your belief in property rights with your belief that industrial corporations have an untrammeled right to deposit unwanted garbage and pollution in air and water you own.It's a real question. I'm completely serious about it and I'd like an answer - how do you square those completely contradictory positions? If I own some water and some air, how on Earth could it be "property rights" for someone with no claim to that water or air to deposit pollutants in it? Property rights would be my right to restrain someone from doing so, not their nonexistent right to do so. I don't, but clearly their self-interest more closely aligns with mine, and my personal property rights, than do the interests of people who run industrial paper factories or coal-burning power plants, since what it's their personal self-interest is to deposit the waste products of those industries into my own water, land, and air without my permission or any compensation being paid for me. It's obviously a lot better for their bottom line to simply steal access to my water, land, and air rather than pay money for the proper disposal of those wastes. On the other hand, government officials who allow industries to pollute all willy-nilly will, at some point, lose their jobs about it. Commonly attributed to Patrick Henry. Do you think Patrick Henry was referring to an untrammeled right to deposit garbage and pollution on other people's land, water, and air? Could you identify the Constitutional amendment that grants that right? Please be specific. Sure. Are you? Can you explain how you square property rights with an untrammeled right of industry corporations to deposit garbage and pollution on other people's land, water, and air? Were the people who ran that steel mill stealing access to other people's land, water, and air, and depositing unwanted pollution and garbage there?As a matter of fact, that's exactly what they were doing. It's unfortunate for the people who worked there, but they were engaged unwittingly in a conspiracy to violate people's property rights. And aren't property rights pretty important? You keep asking people if they own property, so I must assume you consider property rights of utmost importance. Am I wrong about that? Please advise.

Oh, I see. And he was supposed to be Fox News' only liberal, or something?No, he was very much a conservative. That's why he continues to work at Fox News and be embraced by the conservative community. You understand that you're talking about a radio station, right? Just curious. No, I did answer your question. I own property. You've not answered the question I asked you, however, which is "how do you square property rights with an untrammeled right of industry corporations to deposit garbage and pollution in other people's land, air, and water"?I suspect you may be a renter since you don't understand property rights. So then you admit that the EPA is a crucial and important government agency that protects the property rights of American citizens, since corporations don't have an untrammeled right to deposit garbage and pollution on other people's land, water, and air.

I thought it was, but clearly Marc is some kind of right-wing communist who believes that you can't own your own land, or water, or air. Or apparently rent out things you own, since he views the practice of renting as inherently illegitimate.Well, whatever. Of course the conservative project has always been one about telling other people what they can and can't do with their land, with their water, or with their bodies.

LOL! As if. Relatively few small business owners are actually rich, which is why Republican policies are so universally punitive against small business owners. The average small business owner's yearly income is usually well under $40,000 (that's the national average "Self-employment income" according to self-employed people's taxes.) But in point of fact, the owner of a plumbing company isn't providing any plumbing, usually; his employees are doing that. The owner of a sandwich shop usually isn't making the sandwiches.When we're talking about services that people want and goods that people want to buy, the people whose hands are producing them are invariably in the middle class, not the rich. Sounds like something a renter would say. No, I don't. You're on the record as opposing the legitimacy of government regulation meant to regulate the deposit of garbage and pollution into other people's land, air, and water.I'm asking you how you square that with a belief in property rights. Since you refuse to answer, I can only conclude that you're some kind of socialist who believes that all property - all land, all air, all water - are held communally, and anybody can do whatever they want on anybody else's property. Certainly a "reasonable legal system" pursues cases against people who are criminally violating property rights. You can't simultaneously believe that property disputes are always and only a civil matter and also believe in property rights, because one of the crucial rights of a property owner is the legal protection of his property under law. If you believe that property problems are always and only civil, you don't actually believe in property rights, because the violation of someone's rights is always a criminal matter. That's what rights are. That's not a "no" if they were always depositing garbage and pollution on property they had no legal right to. It's too bad they were engaged in a criminal enterprise to violate other people's property rights, but the defense that they couldn't quickly stop violating the law isn't much of a defense. A career car thief doesn't have a defense that he can't "quickly meet" his responsibility to stop stealing cars, and US Steel can't defend their criminal enterprise by asserting that they couldn't quickly stop breaking the law. That's the addict's defense. Conspiracy theories? Now you're outright denying that any US corporation has ever violated property rights by dumping pollution and garbage on land they didn't own?I dunno, sounds like some kind of commie nonsense to me. You realize you're talking about people who made a living off the labor of human beings they owned, right? Do you think very hard before you post, Marc? Thomas Jefferson owned slaves, stupid!Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

Um, no, stupid, Thomas Jefferson was an agricultural landowner. He was a farmer who, instead of hiring laborers to work his land, purchased human beings to do so for free, and kept the profits that resulted from their uncompensated labor.Thomas Jefferson is exactly the example of a parasite who lives off the labor and utility of other people. That's what slavery means, you incredible gob-shite. Jefferson didn't "seek" handouts, he took them at the point of a sword - via the institutionalized brutality and labor-theft of slavery. Do you think before you say anything at all? Do you do any research on the subjects you spout off about or are you just making it up as you go? The notion that Thomas Jefferson owned slaves as a "luxury" is moronic and offensive - it's not a luxury to own and enslave another human being as though they were chattel, it's a crime against humanity. And Thomas Jefferson's lifestyle was based entirely on it. He owned hundreds of human beings to work his 5000-acre plantation. Thank you for announcing that you'll allow me to refute your points without any argument from you.

He didn't even know that NPR was on the radio. He's not ever going to listen to it. Why would he do that, when it's easier and simpler for him to simply assume that NPR is all liberals, all the time?Never mind, of course, that the way that you "pander to liberals" via news reporting is with good, accurate reporting. The guys who want the news skewed to privilege their pre-existing ideology are called "conservatives."

Politely, Jon, I disagree. The parent's right to raise their child is not absolute, and people have a human right to avoid being abused and harmfully brainwashed.Children are not the chattel property of their parents, and society's need to have competent and effective human beings is greater than the individual's privilege to produce tiny versions of themselves.Obviously the definitions are doing a lot of the heavy lifting, here. But, no, "berserker mass murderers" don't have the right to raise little brainwashed murderers of their own. Racists don't have the right to raise little racists. People have a right not to be harmfully brainwashed by their own parents.

I don't know what it's like where you live, but here in the US membership in racist organizations, a history of racist demonstrations, involvement in racially-motivated violence - all can be grounds for termination of parental rights. No, they don't. Parents certainly have the right to say racist things. But they have no right to expect that others won't try to communicate egalitarian speech to their children, they have no right to insulate their children from society so as to preserve the sanctity of their racist message, and they have no right to expose their children to the violence and danger inherent in racist movements.Sorry, Rahvin, but they absolutely do not. If you send your kids to Stormfront Summer Camp, the state may come in and move them into foster care. Having swastika tattoos can be a basis for losing custodial rights. Training your child to take part in the upcoming race wars is liable to result in jail time for you. No, we have actual police, who are empowered to intervene when the rights of individuals are threatened, for instance the right of a person not to be dangerously brainwashed by their parents into a violent and harmful ideology. Brainwashing is certainly real abuse.

Oh, so you're willing to countenance limits to a parent's right to indoctrinate their child; you just don't think that indoctrinating their child to be a mass murderer runs up against that limit. Is that about it? Why would I have anything to do with that determination? I didn't understand it the first time you said it, since not every child enjoys a public education. Can you elaborate?