Inglorious bastards
By Capt. Fogg
I never thought the Confederacy would take health insurance reform lying down; accept it any more than they willingly endured integration, voting rights for women or their former slaves, equal rights and opportunities for "cullids" and Jee-Yews and anything else that interfered with good, old fashioned, plantation feudalism. They're against anything those Yankees do even if in the long run insurance companies will profit from it and undoubtedly show their gratitude to the Gucci shod rebels in Tallahassee and other red state Capitals. Even though the ten thousand or so of my county's uninsured residents that now overwhelm the capacity of community outpatient clinics and emergency rooms are a liability and expense to me similar to uninsured motorists, the former are victims of Northern aggression while the latter do need to be forced to have liability insurance. Why? Well because a Yankee Democrat proposed it and Democrats did some of what the public elected them to do. OK, it's not quite a volley of cannon fire at Fort Sumter yet, but that was then and today's attacks on the concept that the government has any function beyond shocking and awing third world countries and keeping the slaves in line are more insidious. What else would you call slipping a rider into an innocuous and popular Life Insurance bill that declares the new Federal Health Insurance legislation unconstitutional. I know, I know, that's hardly the job of the Florida Legislature, the same distinguished body of statesmen who last year balked at adding an exclusion to a bill outlawing the observation of and participation in animal sex if it was for purposes of animal husbandry, because -- wait for this -- some Representatives thought animal husbandry referred to women marrying animals. But the spirit of Southern freedom isn't about the government standing up for freedom, it's about leaving us alone in our fantasy of primitive self sufficiency where we can do as we please and damn everyone else. Likewise the protection against being discriminated against by health insurers and protection against the public's indirect funding of health care for the uninsured must be about
I never thought the Confederacy would take health insurance reform lying down; accept it any more than they willingly endured integration, voting rights for women or their former slaves, equal rights and opportunities for "cullids" and Jee-Yews and anything else that interfered with good, old fashioned, plantation feudalism. They're against anything those Yankees do even if in the long run insurance companies will profit from it and undoubtedly show their gratitude to the Gucci shod rebels in Tallahassee and other red state Capitals. Even though the ten thousand or so of my county's uninsured residents that now overwhelm the capacity of community outpatient clinics and emergency rooms are a liability and expense to me similar to uninsured motorists, the former are victims of Northern aggression while the latter do need to be forced to have liability insurance. Why? Well because a Yankee Democrat proposed it and Democrats did some of what the public elected them to do. OK, it's not quite a volley of cannon fire at Fort Sumter yet, but that was then and today's attacks on the concept that the government has any function beyond shocking and awing third world countries and keeping the slaves in line are more insidious. What else would you call slipping a rider into an innocuous and popular Life Insurance bill that declares the new Federal Health Insurance legislation unconstitutional. I know, I know, that's hardly the job of the Florida Legislature, the same distinguished body of statesmen who last year balked at adding an exclusion to a bill outlawing the observation of and participation in animal sex if it was for purposes of animal husbandry, because -- wait for this -- some Representatives thought animal husbandry referred to women marrying animals. But the spirit of Southern freedom isn't about the government standing up for freedom, it's about leaving us alone in our fantasy of primitive self sufficiency where we can do as we please and damn everyone else. Likewise the protection against being discriminated against by health insurers and protection against the public's indirect funding of health care for the uninsured must be about
"defending the rights of individuals"as Rep. Ryan Nelson, R-Apopka told those assembled representatives of Florida Crackers, Swamp rats and toothless road-kill eaters called the Florida House of Representatives.
"every person within this state is and shall be free from governmental intrusion" in selecting health insurance coverage,says the amendment. What nasty things might escape from that Pandora's box should this thing be passed into law! After all, keeping companies from dropping you when sick or weaseling out of legitimate claims by stalling until you die or your daughter dies is "intrusion." isn't it? Making you take responsibility for staying off the welfare rolls and clogging up the hospitals or walking around spreading TB is just egregious "intrusion." Let's give absolute immunity from the law to insurers and all in the name of individual freedom. Massa knows what's best and what's best is that you only shop at the company store. What's more, the Florida Attorney General shall have the power to sue the Federal Government on behalf of any neo-Confederate who thinks I have to pay when his diseased ilk inflate the local hospital operating costs because he doesn't believe in health insurance - sue at the Taxpayer's expense, of course. I don't like slippery slope arguments and I'm not saying that this will lead to revolts against mandatory car insurance or boat insurance or any kind of required liability insurance, but the principle is indeed the same: "Damn Gummint cain't tell us what to do" even if that government is elected to do what it's doing by a majority of voters who presumably still have the right to decide such things: a right not inferior to the right of corporations to do as they please. The principle is the same: government is about what we the people want, not what we the voters want. Upside down elitism and corporate feudalism at it's purest. Yes, I'm surrounded by people who tell me that the 1861 revolt, or "the War of Northern Aggression," was about "freedom" without any sense of irony and they feel likewise about almost anything that requires any funding, except of course farm subsidies and special tax breaks for Exxon Mobil. Their revolt is about the same kind of "freedom" I guess. Sometimes that's my freedom, not theirs, since they're concerned about my heirs' inheritance taxes while theirs won't pay any, and a couple of percent more on my income taxes while more than half of them won't pay any this year or ever have incomes anywhere near the top 10%. Of course their freedom to go about uninsured Makes my outrageous health insurance premiums more outrageous, but it's the thought that counts, isn't it? (Cross posted from Human voices)
Labels: Florida, health care reform
posted by Capt. Fogg at
12:58 PM
3 Comments:
I suppose that your label of 'the Confederacy' is used to slander those opposed to the current version of health insurance reform, and convince those undecided citizens that anyone who isn't for insurance reform is a white supremacist, male chauvinist. It isn't true, neither is it true that the insurance reform is a partisan issue--though it is scarcely debatable that Democrats are generally in favour of policy which expands the role of government in private lives, while Republicans are generally in favour of individual liberty.
By
Insurance may not be a partisan issue, at 12:33 PM
If you need to blow your nose, get a Kleenex. Nobody wants your snotty condescension or those septic boogers on the upholstery. I don't much like supposers and posers or people with the gall to suggest that it's me making this thing a partisan issue when the disloyal, seditious opposition has made freedom of religion, history, science and even the goddamn weather a partisan issue.
But you suppose wrong, old sod and apparently you don't read well either -- And I in turn suppose your supposition is a bit of cliche' and stereotype ridden street theater that has no actual basis in anything I think or have written or has happened in the real world.
By confederates I mean angry, white, not so well informed people with a sense of inferiority and entitlement and a bizarre affection for feudal and monopolistic exploitation they somehow confuse with freedom. Yes, my Confederate forebears fought in that misbegotten bit of Kulturkampf so you can stick that supposition up your Fountainhead too.
Funny, your good old boys had little enough to say about "personal liberty" when that was severely curtailed by race, sex and religion. Hell they had nothing to say about unconstitutional domestic spying and the torture of suspects so forgive me for thinking you don't actually give a damn about liberty and it's all about some perceived threat to your "hard earned" money and your contempt for responsibility.
But enough of your silly stereotypes: let's get to it.
Insurance reform, particularly in this tepid form doesn't have a damn thing to do with your "individual liberty" unless you're someone whose been screwed over by Blue Cross, or impoverished by the Bush Recession -- or someone who simply was rejected by some corporate death panel who has to watch his children die so the stockholders will keep buying their bloody shares. In that case it may give you the only meaningful increment of personal freedom anyone has had since you "Conservative" creeps were forced to treat minorities like human beings with individual liberties.
It's been a long bloody fight but you've lost every time and you'll lose again and if you don't like it. . . well, you can suppose what I mean to say.
You know, you're talking to people who know quite well that Republicans have expanded the role of government, expanded and advocated the intrusion into private lives and privacy and private beliefs and expanded the debt far in excess of anything any one else has done in 50 years, so save it for the Tea Party, OK?.
I'm not interested in your canned speech about what Democrats favor either. I'm still interested in a discussion of insurance reform with honest people, not in evasive, captious, second-hand and insulting generalities from angry acolytes of Ayn Rand or Glenn Beck or Joe the goddamn plumber.
By
Capt. Fogg, at 3:16 PM
"it is scarcely debatable that Democrats are generally in favour of policy which expands the role of government in private lives, while Republicans are generally in favour of individual liberty."
Oh yes, I forgot to mention that the "scarcely debatable" opposition of those two selected options is in fact quite debatable. You haven't established the foundation of your argument and of course you can't.
By
Capt. Fogg, at 10:47 AM
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