(No time to phoneticize this, much tho I'd like.)

In Like a Lion, Out Like a Lion. After being silenced for a couple of weeks by severely cold weather all around the Northern Hemisphere, the bullsh*t artist inventors of "manmade global warming" are back spewing ridiculous propaganda about ice melting in Antarctica. They rely upon people's geographic ignorance. "Ice is melting in Antarctica when it's still freezing here? Oh no!" These people don't understand that just as winter just ended for us a few days ago, summer just ended for Antarctica a few days ago, and just as it is still frigid here, it is still (relatively) very warm there. Of course ice melts in the summer, everywhere. If it didn't, we'd be wailing in panic about "global cooling".
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In truth, there has this year been serious cooling in the Northern Hemisphere, where the bulk of the world's people reside and, thus, where the bulk of manmade pollutants, including "greenhouse gases" are produced. As I write, in late afternoon on the last day of March, the temperature in Newark, New Jersey, is 48 degrees Fahrenheit, and last nite's temps fell to the neighborhood of freezing, for the third or fourth nite in a row in this frigid early spring. It has been almost consistently colder than normal by 5 to 10 degrees this entire month, and we won't have our first really springlike day until tomorrow, April. No "lamb" for March this year at all.
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No Vote for Colonies! Commentators on the Democratic Presidential race have observed that Billary could catch up with Obama in the popular vote in, of all places, Puerto Rico, a U.S. colony of 4 million people. Why on Earth is there a presidential primary in Puerto Rico? Puerto Rico is not entitled to vote in the general election, so why should it have any say whatsoever in the determination of the candidate for that election? Constitutionally, only states and the District of Columbia are entitled to cast votes for President. Puerto Rico has consistently refused to step up to statehood, preferring its semi-independence, yet it asserts the right to play a role in mainland politics? Absolutely not.
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The Democratic Party has played Puerto Rico's stupid game of demanding rights but assuming no responsibilities for entirely too long. It's time for Puerto Rico to get into the Union or get OUT. If a COLONY ends up tipping the popular vote for the Democratic candidates, we will have to act to end this outrage once and for all and FORCE Puerto Rico into independence by unilaterally terminating "Commonwealth" status and requiring Puerto Rico to petition for statehood or assume all responsibilities — including financial responsibilities; PR is now an $11 billion-a-year drain on mainland taxpayers — of any other independent country. Puerto Ricans who take any office in an independent Puerto Rican government or vote in any election of an independent Puerto Rico would by that act renounce their U.S. citizenship and be required to turn in their U.S. passport and lose the right to travel to the mainland but have to apply for a visa like anybody else, a visa that could be denied. Indeed, for the first five years, visas from Puerto Rico should routinely be denied. You want independence? We'll help. We'll treat you like the foreigners you want to be.
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Same thing for Guam, which also has a presidential primary (May 3rd; nine delegates at issue), and the Virgin Islands, which already held its Democratic primary February 9th. That preponderantly black territory voted 89.9% for Obama and only 7.6% for Billary. Even the Republicans are having a territorial meeting April 5th. What is this madness? The Virgin Islands is not entitled to vote for President, so should be as thoroly ignored in the primary process as in the general election.
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If the people in our various colonies want to vote in national elections, they will have to make their area a state or part of a larger state. If they refuse to do that, they should be treated as foreigners and expelled from the U.S. realm altogether. The nation that started the modern anticolonial drive should never itself have had colonies. It is a disgrace, and that disgrace must end. All our colonies — Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas — should step up to statehood or "assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them".
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In the case of the small insular territories with sparse population, they would have to be merged into a larger state. The Pacific territories should be merged into a "Big Hawaii". The Virgin Islands would have to join at very least with Puerto Rico, but if Puerto Rico refuses citizenship and is forced into independence, the Virgin Islands could be merged into Florida or some other mainland state (perhaps Rhode Island would be a nice fit). In no event should any representative or Senator be admitted from a colony. Statehood or independence: fish or cut bait.
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Honoring the Butchers of Beijing. Again, the world of sport shows itself morally bankrupt, with the International Olympic Committee co-conspiring in the continuing murderous rampage of the Butchers of Beijing against the people of Tibet (and the rest of China). It is far more important to athlete scum that they get to perform in an Olympics than that they stand on any principle. They have no conscience, no morality. Top athletes are monomaniacal egotists who care only about themselves. All the self-justifying crap they utter about sports bringing people together and promoting good fellowship is just a bunch of bullsh*t. So Beijing kills a couple hundred Tibetans? So what? That's no skin off the nose of swimmers or runners or pole vaulters. Those people live in their own little compartmentalized world, in which sport has no responsibilities but excellence in something so stupid and empty-headed that no sane person would devote so much as one thousandth the time and effort that top athletes devote to their obsessive, repetitious exercises in uselessness.
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The so-called "ping-pong diplomacy" of the 1970s fed into athletes' exaggerated sense of their own importance. But what, exactly, did that "diplomacy" achieve for planet Earth and the human race? It whitewashed Red China and led to vast ecological devastation as the government of Communist China raced to destroy forests and poison rivers to produce the goods that Western corporations were all too happy to buy, no matter the cost in human misery, ecological destruction, and economic dislocations not just within China but all around the world. Now we have one of the world's most vicious regimes plotting war against the United States and using our own money, and the money of Europeans and other people all over the planet, to build a monstrous military under the control of the very people who are slautering Tibetans. And athletes cannot wait to flock to Beijing to put their stamp of approval on the Butchers of Beijing and spit on the graves of Tibetans. Hundreds of millions of people around the world look forward to sitting in front of their TV sets in August and watching the world's athletes perform their little tricks for trinkets on ribbons. And the legitimacy and good feeling for the Butchers of Beijing that such a spectacle produces will push people's thoughts away from the inexorable drive by those same Butchers to drive the United States out of Asia, at any cost, including full-scale nuclear war, and establish them as the Butchers of Earth. What a wonderful thing is sport.
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When the Olympic torch escapes the confines of Communist China and makes the rounds of free countries, the runners should be stopped, the flame doused, and the torch destroyed. If anyone provides a replacement torch with a replacement flame, that too should be doused and destroyed. No Olympics for mass murdering Communists!
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 7:51 PM

 
How Big Iz tha Sun, Hou Smaul Maan.

(This blog is published, first, in phonetic (Fanetik) spelling and only then in standard English spelling. If you wish to skip to the traditionally spelled text (albeit with a few simplifications here and there), click here.)
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Fienale sum sens haaz eemerjd agenst tha yeerz-laung kaampaen uv propagaanda about "maan-maed gloebal waurming". Aan ekstreemle saveer winter, not just in the Yoonietad Staets but in the Orktik, Yuerap, aand Chiena aaz wel, haaz fienale kauzd lorj numberz uv peepool tu kweschan tha fervant, neerle-reelijas aurtthadokse, tha reeseevd wizdam thaat peepool or berning the Ertth tu a sinder. Maebe thair'z hoep faur tha hyueman raes aafter aul.
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Hou iz it posibool thaat we kood haav a maur saveer winter in ene yeer thaan tha yeer beefaur if peepool or kauzing the Ertth tu waurm ineksarable tu tha point uv gloebal dazertifikaeshan, maas ekstingkshanz, aand the end uv lief on this plaanat aaz faurtoeld bi tha "gloebal-waurming" Profats uv Duem, aurkastraetad under tha baton uv Miestro Aal Gaur? Did we fienale end aul outpauringz uv korban dieyoksied, metthaen, aand uther "greenhous gaasaz"? Aand did we stop palueting the oeshanz aand thus dastroiying fietoeplaangktan, such thaat aul theez stork chaenjaz haav sudanle permitad green plaants werldwied tu abzaurb CO₂ aand loewer tha plaanatere tempracher? Did we in faakt chaenj ENEETTHING this paast yeer aaz tu driev tempracherz doun? No, we did not. Hou, then, kood tha tempracher posible haav plumatad?
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Tha premis thaat Maan iz reesponsibool faur gloebal waurming iz fauls, aand haaz just bin dispruevd beeyond reedeeming.
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It iz not tha tiene, insignifikant nutthing in tha kozmik yuenivers, Maan (witth Wooman, aand Chieyald) thaat deeterminz gloebal waurmtth aur koeld, but tha Sun. Peereeyad. Thaat shood be the end uv tha diskushan. But it woen't be. Beekauz peepool or stuepid aand aaragant. "Yes, it's aul about yu", aaz komade rieterz or wunt tu poot in tha mouthz uv kondasending kaarakterz riele pungkchering a preetenshas fuel'z baluen. Thaat meenz, uv kaurs, the opasit: it's not about yu, aat aul.
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Tha Sun duz not reevolv around the Ertth, aand the Ertth duz not reevolv around Maan. Maan iz aan iesalaetad, triveeyahl ekskresans in tha tieneeyast fraakshan uv tha loewast paurshan uv aan eenaurmas aatmasfeer, okyoopieying in signifikant numberz perhaaps 12% uv tha plaanat's serfas. Aabsant fool-skail nuekleeyer waur, nutthing Maan duz kaan chaenj tha plaanat's kliemat. Aand eevan a "nuekleeyer winter" woodan't laast maur thaan a fyu yeerz, beeyond hwich aul tha naurmz uv plaanatere kliemat wood reezuem thair yuezhuewal kaurs, aaz tho nuekleeyer winter haad never akerd, aand Maan haad never egzistad.
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We kaan't stop taurnaedoez frum faurming, naur eether stop naur stort herikaenz. We kaan't eevan maek it raen reelieyable, eevan hwen kloudz or prezant. Aand we kaan't pradues kloudz frum dri air. We kaan't raez tha plaanat's tempracher naur loewer it. We kaan't du eneetthing about tha wether (shaurt-faez meeteeyaralojikal vaareeyaeshan), much les tha kliemat. Maan iz nutthing. Beefaur Maan arievd on this plaanat, thair wer waurm peereeyadz aand koeld peereeyadz, tiemz hwen tha poelz wer ies-fre, aand uther tiemz hwen maasiv sheets uv ies aadvaanst tthouzandz uv mieyalz out frum boetth poelz, witthout Maan duewing eneetthing tu kauz eether fanomanon.
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In tha waurm peereeyadz, lief flerisht oever moest uv tha plaanat's serfas aand in its seez. Tha bode tempracher uv eech kreecher toodae mae indeed be aan ortifaakt uv tha tempracher hwen thaat speesheez eevolvd. Hwen Ies Aejaz dastroid evreetthing on tha ground oever milyanz uv skwair mieyalz, lief kantinyued tu flerish hwair the ies wuz not, aand aaz the ies reetreetad, lief foloed, aafter a fyu dekaedz (aur senchereeez) in hwich plaants re-estaablisht themselvz, aaz praviedad aanimalz sumtthing tu eet.
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Hwen Maan in hiz infinit stuepidite aand eevool haaz dastroid himself tthru oeverpopyoolaeshan aand waurz, tha plaanat wil go on, witth waurm yeerz aand koeld, witth speesheez yet unoen filing evre nich nou fild bi Maan. We or nutthing, aand tha suener we reeyaliez it aand aproech tha werld witth hyuemilite, tha suener we wil taek ouwer plaes in tha graand skeem aand stop tthingking we or tha graand skeem.
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(Tha kerant Y.S. militere detth toel in Eerok, akaurding tu tha websiet "Eerok Koewalishan Kaazhuewalteez", iz 4,000 — faur Izreeyal.)
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How Big Is the Sun, How Small Man.

Finally some sense has emerged against the years-long campaign of propaganda about "man-made global warming". An extremely severe winter, not just in the United States but in the Arctic, Europe, and China as well, has finally caused large numbers of people to question the fervent, nearly religious orthodoxy, the received wisdom that people are burning the Earth to a cinder. Maybe there's hope for the human race after all.
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How is it possible that we could have a more severe winter in any year than the year before if people are causing the Earth to warm inexorably to the point of global desertification, mass extinctions, and the end of life on this planet as foretold by the "global-warming" Prophets of Doom, orchestrated under the baton of Maestro Al Gore? Did we finally end all outpourings of carbon dioxide, methane, and other "greenhouse gases"? Did we regrow the rainforests and temperate forests that we had been cutting down? And did we stop polluting the oceans and thus destroying phytoplankton, such that all these stark changes have suddenly permitted green plants worldwide to absorb CO₂ and lower the planetary temperature? Did we in fact change ANYTHING this past year as to drive temperatures down? No, we did not. How, then, could the temperature possibly have plummeted?
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The premise that Man is responsible for global warming is false, and has just been disproved beyond redeeming.
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It is not the tiny, insignificant nothing in the cosmic universe, Man (with Woman, and Child) that determines global warmth or cold, but the Sun. Period. That should be the end of the discussion. But it won't be. Because people are stupid and arrogant. "Yes, it's all about you", as comedy writers are wont to put in the mouths of condescending characters wryly puncturing a pretentious fool's balloon. That means, of course, the opposite: it's not about you, at all.
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The Sun does not revolve around the Earth, and the Earth does not revolve around Man. Man is an isolated, trivial excrescence in the tiniest fraction of the lowest portion of an enormous atmosphere, occupying in significant numbers perhaps 12% of the planet's surface. Absent full-scale nuclear war, nothing man does can change the planet's climate. And even a "nuclear winter" wouldn't last more than a few years, beyond which all the norms of planetary climate would resume their usual course, as tho nuclear winter had never occurred, and Man had never existed.
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We can't stop tornados from forming, nor either stop nor start hurricanes. We can't even make it rain reliably, even when clouds are present. And we can't produce clouds from dry air. We can't raise the planet's temperature nor lower it. We can't do anything about the weather (short-phase meteorological variation), much less the climate. Man is nothing. Before Man arrived on this planet, there were warm periods and cold periods, times when the poles were ice-free, and other times when massive sheets of ice advanced thousands of miles out from both poles, without Man doing anything to cause either phenomenon.
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In the warm periods, life flourished over most of the planet's surface and in its seas. The body temperature of each creature today may indeed be an artifact of the temperature when that species evolved. When Ice Ages destroyed everything on the ground over millions of square miles, life continued to flourish where the ice was not, and as the ice retreated, life followed, after a few decades (or centuries) in which plants re-established themselves, as provided animals something to eat.
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When Man in his infinite stupidity and evil has destroyed himself thru overpopulation and wars, the planet will go on, with warm years and cold, with species yet unknown filling every niche now filled by Man. We are nothing, and the sooner we realize it and approach the world with humility, the sooner we will take our place in the grand scheme and stop thinking we are the grand scheme.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,000 — for Israel.)




- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:59 PM

 
The Human Race Is Slime, Part 17,000

[Note: Altho I would love to transliterate this into my Fanetik spelling system, I have been so pressed for time and energy of late that I am afraid that if I take the time to do that, I won't get this up onto the Internet. I have a number of other posts on my computer in draft form that didn't make it onto this blog, and I've got to streamline operations today.]

A group of pharmacists in Illinois are suing to stop the Illinois state government from forcing them to dispense the so-called "day-after pill". The Associated Press story, by one John O'Connor, willfully misstates the case:

A group of pharmacists asked the Illinois Supreme Court on Tuesday to throw out a rule that forces them to dispense emergency contraception despite moral objections, claiming it amounts to illegal coercion.

The "day-after pill" is not a contraceptive. It is an abortifacient. It does not prevent the conception of a human being; it merely prevents the embryo from attaching to the host woman's body to gain the nourishment it needs to grow itself to term. That is, it kills babies, period. But because the human race is slime, the readership of that article at AOL find no problem with that. At an early stage of the polling, 81% of readers "don't have a problem" with possibly killing babies with the day-after pill, and 70% think that pharmacists who regard it as murder should nonetheless be forced to sell it. The human race is slime, pure and simple. It's a pity there was no such pill to kill each and every one of the subhuman beasts who expressed themselves in favor of the day-after pill, before they could attach to their mother's womb, so we would be free of their grotesque immorality today and into the future.
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There is very little I admire about the various lines written for the actor Ronald Reagan during his extended run playing President, but I do heartily agree with this one:

I've noticed that everybody that is for abortion has already been born.
Ronald Reagan, quoted in New York Times, September 22, 1980.

The advocates of abortion on demand all, without exception, deserve to die. Likewise, the advocates of embryonic stem-cell research should all, without exception, be killed — and chopped up for parts. How can they object? They advocate that one person, in his or her embryonic stage, be killed to be chopped up for parts for third parties, usually total strangers. Thus they cannot morally object to being killed themselves so their organs can be redistributed to strangers. What's the difference? You kill one person to chop him or her up for parts, or you kill another to chop him or her up for parts. There's no moral difference whatsoever. But people don't ever think about morality if they can avoid it, and they can usually avoid it. Right and wrong don't matter; only self as against others, and I do mean "against". Convenience as against inconvenience. If the wrong thing is easy but the right thing is hard, 99% of people will choose the immoral easy thing every time.
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A recent article about body language, hilited on AOL, actually advised people how to get away better with lying! — by looking people right in the triangle formed by the eyes and nose while lying. Oh, that's what we need: advice on more and better lying!
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Another report said that the typical American lies within 10 minutes of starting a conversation! Appalling. Yes, the human race is indeed slime.
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The United States seemed for a long time to be a place where we could improve, tho certainly not perfect, the human race, by giving people opportunity to advance themselves by their own efforts, and freedom from oppression so they could speak their minds. But no such thing has happened. We seemed to hit a high point in the early 1960s, our age of "Camelot" under John F. Kennedy, but have headed more or less steadily downward ever since. Now we're a Nation of liars, thieves, cheats, sado-masochistic degenerates, and hypocrites.
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Someone talks frankly about ANYTHING and the media pounce on it. Geraldine Ferraro dares to say that race matters in a Presidential contest, and liars by the boatload pretend indignation. They land on her assertion that Barack Obama wouldn't be where he is if he were not black, and let her go almost scot-free for the absurd suggestion that if he were a woman, of any race, Obama would not be a leading contender for the Presidency. Oh? So if Baracka Obama were saying the kinds of things Barack Obama is saying, coming from the same background, no one would pay attention to her? Nonsense. Obama's message would play even better if it came from a powerful black woman, and that black woman would wipe the floor with white-bitch Hillary.
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Pastor Jeremiah Wright dares to say that the United States has mistreated blacks at home and Palestinians abroad, and that our vicious, Radical Zionist foreign policy in the Middle East, slaughtering Arabs by the hundreds of thousands for Israel, incited the 9/11 attacks, and he is to be vilified? So we never did have slavery? So we didn't kill 500,000 Iraqis, mostly children, in the 11 years between the first Gulf War and Iraq invasion? — after shooting thousands of Iraqis in the back on the Highway of Death out of Kuwait? We're angels, is that what we are to believe? We never did anything to make people hate us and want us all dead? I beg to differ.
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This used to be a wonderful country. It no longer is. New York State rightly becomes indignant that their chief law enforcer was supporting a prostitution ring, and Eliot Spitzer is vilified for having his wife stand by him as he confessed his adultery. But mere days later, the very next New York Governor replays the same scene, save for the prostitution element, and confesses to multiple adulterous affairs, with his wife — who also committed adultery — standing right at HIS side, and nobody says anything. Is it because they are both cheaters and whores? Or because they're black (and we expect that of blacks). Or because he's 90% blind, and it would be mean to criticize a cripple? Why the double/triple/quadruple standard?
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Male strippers are practically a required element of parties thrown for brides-to-be the nite before their wedding, but there's no indignation at that ugly, insane perversity. No, that's just innocent fun! — stuffing dollar bills down a strange man's g-string and maybe making contact with his sexual organs in the process is, we are to believe, just silly, harmless fun. Nothing grotesque about it, no, not at all. Not in the United States of America in 2008.
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But gay marriage endangers heterosexual faithfulness. If it weren't for those damned faggots luring men away from their obligation to women, all marriages would be intact and last forever: "till death us do part". Yeah, right.
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Our visual media are filled with insanely depraved violence and sadism — as entertainment. "Gestapovision", I call it, this vile fixation on death and agony. This is entertainment for concentration-camp guards: Auschwitz TV and Dachau Films. A constant stream — nay, river, flood-stage — of toxic waste for the mind is destroying all sense of decency in this country, perfect preparation for a country in Permanent War. Make everyone callous to human suffering — no, make them ENJOY human suffering — and they will fill the armed forces for generations of war all over this planet.
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And what of the morality of the concentration of wealth into fewer and fewer hands, and the progressive reduction of the middle class and poor to economic slavery — wage slavery and debt slavery? Oh, there's no moral issue in that! No, the rich EARNED "their" money. And the poor and middle class ASKED FOR their debts. They WANT to pay 30% interest, or more. They wanted their mortgage payment to double! They asked for it, damned near begged for it. And so now, if they can't afford to quit a job when the benefits are cut and the medical insurance contribution rate triples, and maybe, even, the salaries drop because the company is in trouble, that's fine. No moral issue there. So the rich have a mansion in the exurbs, and a townhouse, and a vacation home, and a yacht, while thousands are homeless and millions are losing their own, much more modest homes. There's no moral dimension to that inequality. The rich just made good choices while the poor and middle class made bad choices, that's all.
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The rich deserve everything they've got, and shouldn't have to pay taxes on it — ideally none at all, because what they do brings jobs and wealth, via trickle-down (tho we don't hear that particular phrase anymore). The middle class and poor should be grateful! They should indeed pay the rich for the favors the rich do them! The rich earned every cent they made and are entitled to keep it all. Oh? Let's explode that bit of self-justifying and self-vaunting nonsense right now.
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Nobody Makes It On His Own. From an email making the rounds on the Internet:

Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian, is generally credited with the invention of radio. However, scientists from all over the world had to make contributions before radio could be a reality. For instance, an American, Joseph Henry, and an Englishman, Michael Faraday, proved that currents in one wire could produce currents in another. Edouard Branly, a Frenchman, invented a device that could receive Marconi's transmissions and ring a bell. John Fleming, an Englishman, invented the vacuum tube necessary to receive radio waves which was later improved by an American, Lee de Forest. But none of this would have been possible without a means to collect the sounds for transmissions. The common belief is that the microphone was invented by an Irishman. But this is purely a patent mike story. (By Stan Kegel)

This is the phenomenon often encapsulated as "we stand on the shoulders of giants". As a practical matter, however, all of society, all of civilization, actually stands on the labor of the 'lowest' worker. How is a businessman to run a business without electricity? How do you live without food and clean water?
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No electrical device would work without the electric power lines strung from pole to pole or laid in trenches dug by the common laborer. Even if one could create (now, during a time when we do have electric power lines) a self-contained solar power plant at an individual house or building, who is going to put it up and maintain it? Where did the technology come from? Could any of this have been developed without those telephone poles and ditches?
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The rich didn't do any of the actual WORK of society. None of it. They didn't create the water systems and pipes without which they couldn't boil pasta or take a shower. They didn't place the sewer lines without which they couldn't take a sh*t. There would be no heat, no electricity, no water, no toilets, no ANYTHING without the common laborer. NOW who's important, big shot? Your computer couldn't have been created. There would be no Internet without telephone lines and satellites. The tycoons couldn't fly to make their business deals in Asia if "the little people" hadn't built the planes and airports. Heck, they couldn't even get to the airport without the roads the "little people" built.
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The rich didn't do ANY of the work on which everything that they claim to have achieved "on their own" depends, not ANY of it. Who owes whom?
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So why are the rich unwilling to pay money they wouldn't miss, to provide universal healthcare so that the people who REALLY earned most of their money don't DIE or live in misery from things we can cure or surgically fix? And how are the rich to keep their wealth and tidy, elegant mansions? Are the rich going to walk the beat to keep criminals at bay? patrol prisons to keep the bad guys locked up? Will the rich pick up the garbage they generate, that would otherwise pile up all over their property? What the f*ck are the rich good for, really?
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To put the very best face on it, as regards justifying the continued existence of the rich, SOME of what the rich do benefits SOME people a LITTLE. Most of what they do has no value to anyone but themselves. Do commodities futures and hedge funds do ordinary people any good? No, none. Does stock-market speculation, buying and selling stocks, do society any good? No. The money went to the corporation at the first sale, and the corporation that offered the stocks and bonds does not share in the profit from any subsequent sale. So how do the rich "earn" a profit on the stocks or bonds of corporations they do not initially fund? Why shouldn't society seize 90% or more of such socially useless profits and devote them to what they were supposed to fund in the first place: jobs, research and development, new products, new services in the economy, and the myriad things government needs to do for people — all the people, not just the rich?
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Half-Assed and Immoral Universal Healthcare. My state, New Jersey, is now thinking about how to provide universal healthcare without regard to the Federal Government. But the current thinking seems to be along the lines of Massachusetts' despicable and illegal plan: forcing people to buy health insurance, whether they want to or not, whether they can afford it or not, whether they are healthy or sick, from PRIVATE companies. That cannot possibly be constitutional. How can you force people to spend their own money on things they don't want from private companies they do not care to do business with? I didn't have health insurance for 40 years, and didn't need it. I was never seriously ill and didn't have any serious accident. But the State of New Jersey is going to force healthy young people, who can barely afford the rent, a car payment, gas, heat, electricity, phone, food, clothing, and the other necessities of life, to send money to a private company they don't want to do business with for a service they don't need, for 40 years and more? If I had had to pay health insurance for the 40 years I didn't have it, I'd have spent, in today's terms, over $120,000. For that $120,000, stolen from my pocket, I'd have had essentially no benefit whatsoever, since I was never very sick. To afford it, I'd have had to work a lot more in the paid economy, and a lot less on my own work (writing, editing, for various organizations and myself) than I was able to do without compelled health insurance. I might even have been forced to take a permanent job and give up my publishing activities, so end up having done nothing I wanted to do with my life. Is that the real intent of such compulsory health-insurance plans: to reduce even more of the population to wage-slavery, so they have to work, at whatever miserable rate of compensation corporations deign to pay, just to cover compelled health-insurance outlays?
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Health insurance is not comparable to car insurance, because you don't have to drive, and cars are dangerous so insurance is important. We're talking about being required to pay money on something you don't want, given to a private, for-profit corporation, just for the privilege of breathing. You live in X location, you have to spend your money as the government says. No. Absolutely not. The government has no more right to say that a healthy, young, single person has to buy health insurance than it does to say s/he has to subscribe to cable, buy soda or a car, or have life insurance or a thousand other things. No. Absolutely not.
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What we need is what Britain, Canada, France, and many other sane societies have: a single-payer national health program paid for from general revenues, to which the rich pay steeply more because they have vastly more but don't need vastly more. How many houses, cars, clothes does anyone need? The rich of this country, indeed, have so much money that they do not in fact have it all tied up in material possessions. Most is in stocks, financial instruments, and other socially useless things.
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It is absurd to think of ourselves as a democracy, which must mean a social democracy, if we have astronomical disparities in wealth, with thousands of people living in cardboard boxes or bedding down in sleeping bags under bridges, but others with billions of dollars each. In no other area is there such a disparity. No one is 30,000 times as tall, or heavy, or smart, or healthy, or goodlooking as anyone else. Only in the artificial measure of money, which is little more than numbers in a bank account or bits of paper that have no intrinsic value, do we have such appalling inequality.
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Without social democracy, of what value is political democracy? Do the homeless vote? I don't think so. A radical-egalitarian stance would be that, just as everyone has the same vote, one per customer, wealth should also be absolutely equal. We needn't go that far, and there do arise issues of motivation to accomplish things if financial benefit is entirely removed from the equation. But steeply progressive taxation that leaves the rich still rich, but not OBSCENELY rich, is something we can and should aspire to.
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We had that until 1986, the year of the Plutocratic Revolution, also called the "Reagan Revolution" and, more narrowly, the "Tax Reform Act of 1986". This has produced stark and intensifying economic inequality.

In the United States, wealth is highly concentrated in a relatively few hands. As of 2001, the top 1% of households (the upper class) owned 33.4% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 51%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 84%, leaving only 16% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers). In terms of financial wealth, the top 1% of households had an even greater share: 39.7%.

In early 2004, a study by the Office of Social Justice of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis produced these indicative statistics:

The [richest 1% of Americans] now own more than the bottom 90% [of Americans].

The top 10% [of Americans] own 71% of all private wealth.

Over 86 percent of the value of all stocks and mutual funds, including pensions, was held by the top 10 percent of households. In 1998, the top 1 percent of Americans owned 47.7 percent of all stock.

Bill Gates alone has as much wealth as the bottom 40% of U.S. households.

In the 22 years between 1976 and 1998, the share of the nation's private wealth held by the top 1% nearly doubled, going from 22% to 38%.

In 1982 the wealthiest 400 individuals in the "Forbes 400" owned $92 billion. By 2000 their wealth increased to over $1.2 trillion.

The commentator who reported this observed:

The concentration of wealth is accelerating.

Despicable and insupportable. Why do we tolerate this? Why would we want to make permanent the tax rates that have produced this grotesquerie? How much worse will we permit things to get before a population made comfortable with violence turns on the rich with genocidal rage?
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9/11 may prove, in the long run, to have been a walk in the park.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 5:54 PM