Yearly Archives: 2006

Who’s Paying?

This entry was posted in Health Care Taxation on by

Jane Galt has written a series of posts on health care that are worth while reading for all. The latest in the series is here and both Tyler Cowan and Arnold Kling quote this sentence:

Have the government pay for all health care expenditures above 15% of adjusted gross income, and cover 100% of health care expenditures by people living under 200% of the poverty line.

Both have suggestions to tweak Jane’s proposal and you should also read their posts.
Jane’s proposal with some tweaks has a lot to recommend it but the framing, yes, the framing needs to change. It needs to change for this and all other discussions that include a phrase similar to “..the government pay…” Everyone needs to be clear that the government really does not pay for anything. It takes money from you and I, the payers, and gives the money to someone else, the payees.

So, one thing missing from the above statement is the mechanism for and the rate at which the government is going to take money from you and me and distribute it to others. Once this is defined then let the payers decide whether they will fund this.


Friday Ark #79

This entry was posted in Bird Blogging Cat Blogging Dog Blogging Friday Ark Invertebrate Blogging Pet Blogging Weekend Cat Blogging Weekend Dog Blogging on by

We’ll post links to sites that have Friday (plus or minus a few days) photos of their chosen animals (photoshops at our discretion and humans only in supporting roles). Watch the Exception category for rocks, beer, coffee cups, and….?

We will add your post to the list if you do one of the following:

Of course, if our staff goes on strike then we will link only those posts someone tells us about. Time permitting we will continue boardings until the Carnival of the Cats goes up on Sunday.

Do link to the Friday Ark whether you use trackbacks or not.

Visit each border and come back regularly Friday-Sunday to visit new boarders.

Extra, Extra: All Ark boarders are invited to shout out at the Friday Ark Frapper Map. (54 shouts as of 03/23) BTW, the slideshow of the pics folks included is pretty nifty!

Dog folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Dogs hosted by Mickey’s Musings.

Cat folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Cats which goes up every Sunday and the 105th edition will be hosted this week by Scribblings. There are more weekly cats at eatstuff’s Weekend Cat Blogging which has many participants who may not be familiar to Ark or Carnival participants. Do go shout out at The Catbloggers Frappr Map.

Bird folks: I and the Bird: A Blog Carnival for Bird Lovers is published every 2 weeks. The 19th edition edition is up and hosted by the Science and Politicsr. The 20th edition will be hosted by Bootstrap Analysis.

For the spineless: Circus of the Spineless. A monthly celebration of Insects, Arachnids, Molluscs, Crustaceans, Worms and most anything else that wiggles. The sixth edition is up at Science and Politics. The 7th edition is scheduled for March 31 and will be hosted by Research at a Snail’s Pace. You’ve got time to get those submissions sent in!

Arkive editions of the Friday Ark.
Cats

InvertebratesDogsBirdsOther VertebratesIn Memoriam
Didn’t Make It
Exceptions (inclusion not guaranteed)For other current carnivals check out The Conservative Cat’s Carnival Page, The Blog Carnival and The TTLB Uber Carnival

Note for Haloscan Users: Haloscan started (the end of July) rejecting trackbacks if they were submitted “too rapidly” by the same host. I don’t know what the timer is but it is long enough so that it was very difficult to ping everyone that is using Haloscan for trackbacks. I’m sure that they are doing this to try to hold back the tide of trackback spam but it makes the service pretty useless for carnival type posts. Perhaps you can contact them and urge some different solution. Update: Typepad appears to be doing the same thing. Everytime I update the Ark it appears the timers are reset and the long list of MT autogenerated pings fail. Yecchhhh….

The Republican Way

This entry was posted in Democrats Domestic Terrorism Drug Laws Republicans on by

John Cole’s description is pretty accurate:

The right wing of the Republican party has sold the libertarian/centrist wing of the party a bill of goods, and the modern ‘conservatives’ are clearly nothing more than statists who, rather than redistributing wealth like their brethern on the left, instead have decided that the state must have excessive rights in order to ‘protect’ us all from whatever the imagined fear du jour might be. Meanwhile, no one is left protecting us from the religionists and the the state itself.
In the new Republican era, only fetuses , tax shelters, and ‘traditional’ marriage deserve protection. According to the actions of the current Republican party, the rest of us need to be wiretapped, monitored, have our homes inspected for whatever reason without warrants, and are incapable of making decisions on our own.

He does give the left more of a break than deserved as they would like to control and protect us from every imagined ill that repugs haven’t latched on to and, sadly, both are strongly vested in many areas.

For example, the drug war. The case which kicked off John’s post was a 4th amendment case, Georgia V Randolph, in which the Georgia Supreme Court had ruled that the seizure of some cocaine was unconstitutional. Lawyers and pundits have spending many words over the privacy and search issues involved in the case. In a free country, one not proctored by the above mentioned dems and reps, this case would never happen. Unless, say, Randolph stole his cocaine. Otherwise there is no legitmate crime here.