Eclipsed from the headlines by the ongoing carnage, there is an active
civil resistance in Iraq that opposes the occupation, the torture regime
it protects, and the jihadi and Ba'athist 'resistance' alike.
Submitted by Rusty Sullivan (not verified) on Sun, 02/17/2008 - 22:24.
The fact remains that what is not explicitly stated in the Constitution as the domain of the federal government is specifically NOT the domain of the federal government.
The statements regarding the desires of Lincoln and the Union to dip into the wealth of the Southern states is quite true, but the reasons are unimportant. The fact that Lincoln and the legislative branch trampled all over states' rights and set the downward spiral of federal concentration of power that has led us into the situations we find ourselves in today.
Regardless of one's political leanings, the federal government has proven itself to be horrid at handling anything that they are given jurisdiction over. Housing: Screwed that up. Health Care for the elderly and poor: Screwed it up. Social Security: Screwed that up. Roads and infrastructure: Screwed that up. Education: Screwed that up too.
Education
There was a time, when the education system in the United States was ranked number 1 in the world. During that time, the schools operated in a manner that was answerable to the state, while receiving blanket funding from the federal government. The Feds did not hand down mandates for what shoudl and should not be taught and did not require that teachers ply their crafts in a "government approved" manner. When the federal government took over via the Department of Education in 1981 (signed into law in 1979, thank you, Jimmy Carter), what occurred was a re-segregation of schools. No, not from a racial perspective (true desegregation never really ocurred, as any inner city teacher can tell you), but from an economic one. the schools that were struggling began to fall more and more behind, as the feds started trying to use national test scores in federally approved subjects to determine the amount of funding that each school received.
The problem with this funding scheme is that it was set up completely opposite to what should have been. The suburban and rural schools which were doign well on national tests were showered with funding while the inner city schools and others which traditionally did not do as well on these tests were treated as pariahs. Hence, the schools that needed funding for such frivolous things as TEACHERS and BOOKS and SPECIAL EDUCATION PROGRAMS were outcast and the schools that were doing well were boosted by more funding. It is the educational equivalent of the old "rich get richer and the poor get poorer" addage. Perhaps Bill's target on the last post is the beneficiary of a DoE-administered education, resulting in a lack of closure of parentheses.
Health Care
As far as health care goes, a couple little-known facts about the microcosms of socialized medicine that exist in this country:
The Veterans' Administration
After 5:00 pm, nary a doctor can be found in an active role. They are paid until, and told to leave at, the end of their shift. If they stay, they are not compensated.
A VA doctor cannot be sued for anything but the most gross forms of malpractice. Amputation of the wrong limb? Nope. That is not gross malpractice. In order to sue a VA doc, you must be dead by his/her explicit fault
Medicare and Medicaid
Medicaid survives by massively under-reimbursing the providers. While a typical doctor must pay anywhere from $50,000 to $80,000 per year for malpractice insurance, licensing fees, and continuing education for him/herself and all related staff, Medicaid pays, on average, 33% of the reimbursal amounts that even Medicare does.
Due to disparity of care laws, a Medicare/Medicaid provider is NOT ALLOWED to give free care to someone who does not financially or situationally qualify (for instance, losing a $40,000 per year job in September and being unable to qualify based on the years' income) for one of these or a similar program. The only exception to this is the non-profit health care industry (hospitals, university- and church-related organizations and the like).
Reimbursals are continuously denied by Medicare and Medicaid based on minor paperwork errors. When was the last time you were allowed to refuse the payment of a bill due to a typo in your home address, even though the bill notification reached you?
Social Security
Social Security was set up to make sure that the elderly were taken care of after they reached the traditional retirement age. It took part of the burden off of companies that had begun, independently, to set up retirement programs for employees after the Great Depession. The sentiment behind the Social Security Insurance Program was presumably a pure one, but there were several lapses in forethought when setting it up:
Population increases in cycles. After large-scale events in human history, population ebbs and flows depending on the circumstances of those events. After the Great Depression, the intial effect was a contraction of the population, as it is difficult to feed and care for a large family. This resulted in people limiting the number of children they had. This contraction ended abruptly with the onset of WWII. The wartime economy prospered, wealth began to be accrued again. After the war was over, returning soldiers engaged in coital activity the likes of which the world had not seen since the heyday of Greco-Roman dominance in Europe. The resulting population explosion became known as the "Baby Boom".
Baby Boomers, as a whole, were worried about pursuits other than families. These feelings, along with the advent of the birth control pill and other effective and safe forms of contraception and the emergence of the Women's Liberation movement resulted in another population contraction.
These cycles and the ignorance of them by the original law establishing the Social Security Insurance program have led to the conundrum of the current post-Baby Boomer generation being expected to take care of a generation whose numbers far exceed what the work force is about to become. The numbers are not as dire as some pundits would have us believe, and Social Security is still viable, although lean, provided that the next point is changed.
There is no protection of the Social Security program from the people who put it into place. The feds (both sides of the aisle) have a history of dipping into Social Security whenever it suits their purposes. They look at it in the same manner as someone who borrows against their 401 (k) account. The difference is that they never pay it back (nor could they, as the federal government operates at a deficit even when they are not paying the bills).
Social Security is needlessly universal. For instance, Bill Gates will receive a Social Security check upon reaching legal retirement age. There is no reason for that. If even the top 2% of the population by income either were excluded from the program or donated the money received (especially since benefits received are based on money paid in during one's working years), then the stability of the program would greatly increase.
Roads and Infrastructure
There is a specific design of bridge that is present in most of the eastern 2/3 of the United States that has proven itself to be faulty. The government employed the design and had the bridges built due to cost. The contractors who built the bridges used cheap girders to hold them up. The bridges are collapsing. While this is going on, Congress is grilling Andy Petitt and Roger Clemens about--steroid use in baseball.
How can anyone defend anything that the federal government is doing? It is pathetic and woefully under-qualified to handle the situations and programs that it tries to centralize.
Yes, this post seems to have gone WAY off-topic, but it all comes back to one thing: Lincoln and his horridly poor interpretation of the Constitution.
Yes, arguments can come on the side of "Constitutionalists don't think, they just blindly follow the Constitution" and "The Constitution is a living document that was drafted in a time when the framers could never have imagined the world as it is today." Those arguments have a point. The framers also realized this, and that is why they provided for amendments. If something is so important as to necessitate a change from the original vision of some of the greatest minds the world has ever seen, then, by all means, it should be addressed. It just needs to be addressed by the most stable and supreme law of the land and not by people who wish to usurp the power of the populace by trying to make them think "it's for their own good" and other such nonsense. For mistrust of the people to govern their own affairs, and its mistrust of the states to govern affairs that are none of its business, the federal government needs to realize its fallacies and faults and return to what was proven to work and make rational, legal adjustments (by the Constitution and by observing the limits and separation of powers). Rather than passing easily thrown-out laws and overturned court rulings, Constitutional amendments a procedures are the only way to guarantee that the freedoms and protections required by the evolution of society are continually met and cannot be repealed by a select few who pretend to know what is best for all of us based on some printout or database with a skewed scope.
Of course, I expect the powers that be on this site to denounce what I am posting as glorifying some horrible social ill. Likely, that ill would be racism (due to my denouncement of Lincoln and the Civil War). The truth is that Lincoln created the wiggle room that allows the corruption that we (as "Paultards", NeoCons, Socialists, Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, whatever our label may be) continuously complain about. Lincoln was a great man for his accomplishments. Greatness can lead to beautiful things like the end of slavery. It can also lead to horrible tragedies, such as the de facto end of the government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Instead, we have a government of the power, by the power, and for the power, and any voice, regardless of the philosophy behind that voice, raises alarms.
We need to quit quibbling over the minute details of language, punctuation, and other unimportant aspects of communication. What we need to realize is that we are all here because we know something is wrong with this country and the direction it is heading. We are here because we were purposefully seeking information on bringing about change for the better. Sure, that seeking may have been for someone that is polarizing, such as a Ron Paul, a Dennis Kucinic, a Barrack Obama, or it could have been searching for a controversial term, such as "WWIV", "Anarchy", "Socialism", "Constitutionalist", or whatever.
We all reaize that this country is going in the wrong direction. I think it is safe to say that, at least initially, the founders of this country had a pretty good idea that came from a deep first-hand understanding of what living under a tyrannical regime was like. The fact that any of us, as US citizens, can walk outside and be labelled as "enemy combatants" and whisked away to Guantanamo Bay and never see a judge is the scariest thing we as Americans have ever faced. This fear is compounded by the realization that, since the idea of having one's day in court is a pipe dream under the "Patriot Act", it is the first law that can NEVER be struck down by the Supreme Court, since they, by design, can never hear the case.
Arguments are going to happen between those of differing ideologies. It's a fact of life. What about the idea of working toward finding real solutions to bring about real change and real restoration of freedoms in the name of "resetting" and rebuilding the country in a coherent manner that makes sense, that protects the citizens and the sovreignty of the USA so that we can all guarantee that we are able to continue to have our differing opinions, voice those opinions, and act to bring about a re-emergence of the USA as a country to be proud of, no matter what one's personal ideologies are?
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Lincoln and the Hoodwinking of America.
The fact remains that what is not explicitly stated in the Constitution as the domain of the federal government is specifically NOT the domain of the federal government.
The statements regarding the desires of Lincoln and the Union to dip into the wealth of the Southern states is quite true, but the reasons are unimportant. The fact that Lincoln and the legislative branch trampled all over states' rights and set the downward spiral of federal concentration of power that has led us into the situations we find ourselves in today.
Regardless of one's political leanings, the federal government has proven itself to be horrid at handling anything that they are given jurisdiction over. Housing: Screwed that up. Health Care for the elderly and poor: Screwed it up. Social Security: Screwed that up. Roads and infrastructure: Screwed that up. Education: Screwed that up too.
Education
There was a time, when the education system in the United States was ranked number 1 in the world. During that time, the schools operated in a manner that was answerable to the state, while receiving blanket funding from the federal government. The Feds did not hand down mandates for what shoudl and should not be taught and did not require that teachers ply their crafts in a "government approved" manner. When the federal government took over via the Department of Education in 1981 (signed into law in 1979, thank you, Jimmy Carter), what occurred was a re-segregation of schools. No, not from a racial perspective (true desegregation never really ocurred, as any inner city teacher can tell you), but from an economic one. the schools that were struggling began to fall more and more behind, as the feds started trying to use national test scores in federally approved subjects to determine the amount of funding that each school received.
The problem with this funding scheme is that it was set up completely opposite to what should have been. The suburban and rural schools which were doign well on national tests were showered with funding while the inner city schools and others which traditionally did not do as well on these tests were treated as pariahs. Hence, the schools that needed funding for such frivolous things as TEACHERS and BOOKS and SPECIAL EDUCATION PROGRAMS were outcast and the schools that were doing well were boosted by more funding. It is the educational equivalent of the old "rich get richer and the poor get poorer" addage. Perhaps Bill's target on the last post is the beneficiary of a DoE-administered education, resulting in a lack of closure of parentheses.
Health Care
As far as health care goes, a couple little-known facts about the microcosms of socialized medicine that exist in this country:
The Veterans' Administration
Medicare and Medicaid
Social Security
Social Security was set up to make sure that the elderly were taken care of after they reached the traditional retirement age. It took part of the burden off of companies that had begun, independently, to set up retirement programs for employees after the Great Depession. The sentiment behind the Social Security Insurance Program was presumably a pure one, but there were several lapses in forethought when setting it up:
Baby Boomers, as a whole, were worried about pursuits other than families. These feelings, along with the advent of the birth control pill and other effective and safe forms of contraception and the emergence of the Women's Liberation movement resulted in another population contraction.
These cycles and the ignorance of them by the original law establishing the Social Security Insurance program have led to the conundrum of the current post-Baby Boomer generation being expected to take care of a generation whose numbers far exceed what the work force is about to become. The numbers are not as dire as some pundits would have us believe, and Social Security is still viable, although lean, provided that the next point is changed.
Roads and Infrastructure
There is a specific design of bridge that is present in most of the eastern 2/3 of the United States that has proven itself to be faulty. The government employed the design and had the bridges built due to cost. The contractors who built the bridges used cheap girders to hold them up. The bridges are collapsing. While this is going on, Congress is grilling Andy Petitt and Roger Clemens about--steroid use in baseball.
How can anyone defend anything that the federal government is doing? It is pathetic and woefully under-qualified to handle the situations and programs that it tries to centralize.
Yes, this post seems to have gone WAY off-topic, but it all comes back to one thing: Lincoln and his horridly poor interpretation of the Constitution.
Yes, arguments can come on the side of "Constitutionalists don't think, they just blindly follow the Constitution" and "The Constitution is a living document that was drafted in a time when the framers could never have imagined the world as it is today." Those arguments have a point. The framers also realized this, and that is why they provided for amendments. If something is so important as to necessitate a change from the original vision of some of the greatest minds the world has ever seen, then, by all means, it should be addressed. It just needs to be addressed by the most stable and supreme law of the land and not by people who wish to usurp the power of the populace by trying to make them think "it's for their own good" and other such nonsense. For mistrust of the people to govern their own affairs, and its mistrust of the states to govern affairs that are none of its business, the federal government needs to realize its fallacies and faults and return to what was proven to work and make rational, legal adjustments (by the Constitution and by observing the limits and separation of powers). Rather than passing easily thrown-out laws and overturned court rulings, Constitutional amendments a procedures are the only way to guarantee that the freedoms and protections required by the evolution of society are continually met and cannot be repealed by a select few who pretend to know what is best for all of us based on some printout or database with a skewed scope.
Of course, I expect the powers that be on this site to denounce what I am posting as glorifying some horrible social ill. Likely, that ill would be racism (due to my denouncement of Lincoln and the Civil War). The truth is that Lincoln created the wiggle room that allows the corruption that we (as "Paultards", NeoCons, Socialists, Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, whatever our label may be) continuously complain about. Lincoln was a great man for his accomplishments. Greatness can lead to beautiful things like the end of slavery. It can also lead to horrible tragedies, such as the de facto end of the government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Instead, we have a government of the power, by the power, and for the power, and any voice, regardless of the philosophy behind that voice, raises alarms.
We need to quit quibbling over the minute details of language, punctuation, and other unimportant aspects of communication. What we need to realize is that we are all here because we know something is wrong with this country and the direction it is heading. We are here because we were purposefully seeking information on bringing about change for the better. Sure, that seeking may have been for someone that is polarizing, such as a Ron Paul, a Dennis Kucinic, a Barrack Obama, or it could have been searching for a controversial term, such as "WWIV", "Anarchy", "Socialism", "Constitutionalist", or whatever.
We all reaize that this country is going in the wrong direction. I think it is safe to say that, at least initially, the founders of this country had a pretty good idea that came from a deep first-hand understanding of what living under a tyrannical regime was like. The fact that any of us, as US citizens, can walk outside and be labelled as "enemy combatants" and whisked away to Guantanamo Bay and never see a judge is the scariest thing we as Americans have ever faced. This fear is compounded by the realization that, since the idea of having one's day in court is a pipe dream under the "Patriot Act", it is the first law that can NEVER be struck down by the Supreme Court, since they, by design, can never hear the case.
Arguments are going to happen between those of differing ideologies. It's a fact of life. What about the idea of working toward finding real solutions to bring about real change and real restoration of freedoms in the name of "resetting" and rebuilding the country in a coherent manner that makes sense, that protects the citizens and the sovreignty of the USA so that we can all guarantee that we are able to continue to have our differing opinions, voice those opinions, and act to bring about a re-emergence of the USA as a country to be proud of, no matter what one's personal ideologies are?