The face of creeping communism, apparently.
Ezra is offering to debate Michelle Malkin about S-CHIP, now that Malkin has whined that it’s liberals who make bad faith arguments. Apparently, in her topsy-turvy world, a good faith policy debate is conducted by harassing people who offer up standard issue examples of how good policy works. Sending out your minions to send the message that participation in the democratic process will be punished through harassment by a bunch of right wing thugs is a “good faith” argument.
I don’t imagine Michelle will take him up on the offer. She will either have him mop the floor with her anti-intellectual ass or she’ll just scream him into oblivion.
This entire debacle has managed to freak me out for some reason, which puzzled me for a bit, since as a blogger and political writer I spend a lot of time contemplating horrible right wing nuttery. Then I realized that it was giving me flashbacks to my and Melissa’s stint as a target of this Wingnut Flying Monkeys brigade. Except this is like 100 times worse, since she and I at least were probably aware of how sick and evil the assholosphere was going in. I’m sure for the Frosts, this is coming out of left field.
The entire situation is highlighting the profound differences in vision that the left and right have for what government and economy is for. I think that it really gets to the heart of it, actually. The left generally seeks a society with widespread middle class prosperity, where all people have access to the good life, defined as having roughly these things:
- Decent housing with some privacy.
- Education.
- Useful employment with a fair wage.
- Health care.
- Enough free time to pursue some pleasures in life and have a family life.
- The ability to retire.
- The right to free and equal participation in society.
- The right to self-determination.
Of course to have these things, we can’t have an elite hoarding all the wealth (generated by the workers, mind you) for themselves. We can’t have Enron holding entire states hostage so they can charge grandmothers $400 a month for electricity. The elite will have to suffer sharing some of their wealth with the people who actually create it. It’s this point that is up for contention.
This is the vision the right has for the world:
Are there even a thousand really poor people in all of America? Really poor. Dying-on-the-sidewalks-with-open-sores poor?
There you go—anything less than reducing the population to a bunch of people dying on the sidewalks with open sores while the rich blow by us in armored vehicles is spoiling America.
Of course, there are many different opinions on how much economic inequality we should tolerate—the pro-open sores voters are a mercifully small group, even if they are loud and will show up at your house demanding to know why you chose to get some government assistance rather than live in a tent city. The great irony of our era is that conservatives, unable to gin up much real support for their economic vision for the country,* instead sell people a romantic vision of the 1950s—i.e. they sell them a story about a time when marginal tax rates were 90% and widespread social spending helped create a large middle class that’s since been disappearing. But they blame sex and uppity black people for the changes to deflect attention, and thanks to an appalling lazy and right wing media, they get away with that ridiculous story.
There’s almost no point to this, except to vent why I’ve been hoovering aspirin since this Frost family attack squad kicked into gear.
*Most voters being averse to having open sores in order to do their part for the wealthy.
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Prepare yourself for the next phase: Ridiculous lockstep hyperfocus on the tat on Ms. Frost’s foot.
One thing that bugs the piss out of me: why do we claim to be a society where the best and brightest rise to the top on merit, yet retain a privilege based educational system where the entitled get affirmative action regardless of merit, sometimes even at the expense of the children of the newly wealthy?
Let’s face it: the wingnuts live in dread terror of a society that presents a level playing field to its youth. Sure, they may scream “welfare state”, but at the expense of what made this country great early on. Universal literacy or damn near it was built into the infrastructure of colonial religion, if not civic life, and was widely blamed for much of the uprising we know as the Revolutionary War.
“Prepare yourself for the next phase: Ridiculous lockstep hyperfocus on the tat on Ms. Frost’s foot.”
Roxanne, I already seen it over at John Cole’s blog… (look in the comments)
I take one look at that picture and I wonder: how long until the majority of winguts realize that they ARE NOT BETTER OFF THAN THEY WERE EIGHT YEARS AGO! How many will realize they are at the stern and the Frosts at the bow of the same boat?
I don’t think Malkin wants them to think too hard about it. Seeing people like this, with their 4 kids and small business and white skin barely making it on hard work … better demonize them quick before they notice how wet their feet are too!
I think you give the Flying Monkey Brigade too much credit, Amanda. They’re not focused on the ’50’s; they’re focused on Victorian times, when even the mention of sex was dirty, nobles held all the power, women couldn’t vote, divorce was impossible, and the Cratchetts were probably considered rich because they had their own hovel. If these folks saw Tiny Tim, they’d say “Well, he’s not begging on the streets, so he has nothing to complain about.”
It’s not just grandmothers with $400 electric bills. My electric bills regularly total $200 or more a month, and that’s 2 people in a small apartment with the A/C turned up during the day when we’re not here. Goddamned Entergy and their fucking “fuel adjustment fees”….
oh, man. They’re so very predictable.
What we lack –and what they so desperately need– is a lottery. Shirley Jackson style.
I saw a ludicrous comment somewhere yesterday where the commenter was proclaiming that all the Frost’s had to do was “go to the bank and tap the equity in their home and all would be right with the world.”
Like they need some predatory lending institution to give them a sweetheart loan with jacked-up interest rates so that the bank can foreclose down the road and really put the whole family out on the street.
Of course, logic and the wing nut noise machine have never really had more than a passing acquaintance if that.
I think Ms Kate has an important point.
The fact that folks like the Frosts need a government program ostensibly targeted at the poor in order to keep their lives from being destroyed by medical costs is a terrible indictment of our society and the plutocrats who run it. Therefore the Frosts must be faking it.
I’m not going to get this next part right, but I think there’s an analogy to the hostility that many people in abusive relationships show toward the minority who speak up and get out — seeing someone else admit that their situation is unsustainable makes it oh so much harder for you to keep lying about your own.
I think the purpose of the flying monkey squads is to shut us all up.
if I’m scared to tell the story of how this program helped my family, they’re happy. Because I’m blowing the lid off their denial.
How dare we, or the Frosts, speak up for the kids whose parents are less educated, white, entrepreneurial, articulate, privileged than we are? It makes the whole system look bad when people like us are getting welfare.
Someone actually said that to me in the process of giving my child the health care she needed.
I responded, Has it crossed your mind that maybe the whole system IS bad, and that’s why realities like me not being able to buy my kid’s health care for cash looks bad to you?
What we lack –and what they so desperately need– is a lottery. Shirley Jackson style
And they’d set it up so the number of tickets you got were inversely proportional to your wealth.
I too have been more bothered than usual by this bit of lunacy - I think it is because of what a chilling effect things like this have on political speech in this country. And the fact that it was aided and abetted by Republicans like McConnell in Congress. Unnerving and disgusting.
BREAKING DRUDGE STORY!! Benefits from taxing management fees for hedge funds at capital gains rates (15%) instead of the normal income tax rate (35%) generally go to people who live in mansions! Right-wing blogosphere up in arms at the injustice of it all.
What the wingnuts don’t understand is that I don’t want the government to give everyone that middle class lifestyle you describe; I want it to remove whatever barriers it can so I can get it for myself. Build roads so I can get to work. Send cops when somebody robs me. Protect reproductive freedoms so I can build a family how, when, and if I want to.
And get my back when something catastrophic and unexpected happens, so I don’t have to start back over at zero.
The government would step in if a family were about to lose everything they owned to a thief, or a fire, or a hurricane. (OK, bad example.) Why shouldn’t they step in to keep the family from losing everything they own to financial destitution brought on by health care bills?
And they’d set it up so the number of tickets you got were inversely proportional to your wealth.
or you define wealth based upon how many tickets a person is willing to take. if you don’t want any risk, you can live off that grid. a minimal risk, 1 ticket, earns you the minimal security, each additional ticket you take would net you, say, an additional dollar spending cash, with a 50,000 dollar cap.
you know, like that episode of Sliders. back when it was good.
Paul, I’m not sure I agree with you here:
“The fact that folks like the Frosts need a government program ostensibly targeted at the poor in order to keep their lives from being destroyed by medical costs is a terrible indictment of our society and the plutocrats who run it.”
A more benign interpretation is that middle class and upper class lifestyles depend on interactions between the state and the supposed ‘private’ sphere much more than the conservative ideology allows. Far from being an example of socialism, S-Chip is an example of American capitalism - the state takes on a role as guarantor of last resort for certain risks so that the American population can actually take more risks, which drive the American economy. In the same way that Social security, by providing a nest egg, let’s people actually invest more in riskier ventures (or, really, have mutual funds managers do it for them), S-Chip means, in the Frost’s case, that starting a business doesn’t mean gambling with your kid’s health - and really, that means more businesses can, theoretically, be started. In other words, that the Frost’s can chose an entrepreneurial lifestyle is a celebration of America’s innovative economic system. The social welfare system is still unfortunately stuck, in the public mind, in the early sixties - but in truth, not only is there nothing wrong with the state helping the middle class in this way, but it has the effect of really making the whole economic system stronger. In other words - the state isn’t the enemy of capitalism. The big guys know this - thus, the rescue operation of the Fed this summer for the insane marketmakers of the stock market. It is time for people to stop thinking it is a disaster that they can’t pay for their kids health and start thinking - this is a social cost that the state should assume, spreading the cost to all taxpayers. In the same way that your kid’s education could be a disaster if you didn’t have a good, tax financed educational system to fall back on. Yes, sometimes the state has to help the poor, but a lot of times, the state just works to make the system work, helping … the middle class. I think tying the state’s intervention into the economy solely to helping poor people is simply a massive distortion of how things really work.
I applied for food stamps for the first time this month. From the point of view of someone in as much financial trouble as I am, it was reassuring to see how many people seemed middle class, because it made it seem less shameful. And yet at the same time, it was a searing indictment of our economy.
is she kidding? there’s at least that many on skid row in downtown los angeles every night, and yes, with open sores, and dying on the sidewalks! please! i see about 10 of them a day in my westside neighborhood!
as usual, the freepers take things at face value, and don’t bother to actually investigate. the frost’s extra asset, bought with a mortgage they are still paying off for $160,000 in 1999, is worth a staggering $160,500, so they’ve made a huge profit of $500 in 8 years. wow! veritable rockafellers! (ps they’re still paying off a second mortgage on their palatial home, too).
and the kids get subsidies to attend the schools. personally, i can’t wait to see ezra debate michelle. it’s the rope-a-dope-ya in blogtopia!
The central lie used at the heart of so much opposition to healthcare access is the one being used against the Frosts: “If you give people access, they will take too much and bankrupt the country.” The double standard is that this argument is only applied to the NotSuperRich. Because it’s ok if the SuperRich take too much and bankrupt the country.
The downsides of letting them do so, like the upsides of giving everyone access to health care, just…never seem to register with these people. Even if the SuperRich are screwing them too.
The mental disconnect that lets someone see a 12 year old child plead for healthcare for his disabled sister and himself, and not feel pity, is about as good a definition of sociopathy as I can think of.
There you go—anything less than reducing the population to a bunch of people dying on the sidewalks with open sores while the rich blow by us in armored vehicles is spoiling America.
That’s the sadistic premise at the heart of wingnuttery, that providing help before the needy are at death’s door will only (God forbid) encourage them. It’s a deeply sick way to relate to other people.
I would offer to pay for their therapy, but since they have internet access they can obviously afford it themselves.
I’d like to throw another point into the debate, there.
Who owns the world?
This is a silly thought, and I blush to admit it, brought on by reading “Battlefield Earth”. A plot point in the books is that the Psyclos are considered the owners of the earth (but they also have a mortgage on it). And how can you argue with that? In the end, the only government that matters accepts that they are the owners.
Now, it’s a ridiculous book (but decent pulp fiction), but think about it. Either we, humanity, own the earth, or we say that might makes right, that whoever has (or can demand) the biggest guns has ownership of whatever they say.
I say that we, collectively, own the earth. Giving people ownership of property is so overwhelmingly important that it must be considered as close to sacred as can be but in the end, the idea of property is to bring benefit to all, not just the mighty.
So it’s not just that the rich should share the wealth that the workers create for them… it’s they also must accept that their wealth comes from the world that we all own collectively. There wouldn’t be a factory to run, but for the granting of land and raw materials to them, which means denying those things to any who might otherwise use them.
Um. I’m riding one of my hobby horses again, aren’t I?
roger,
What you’re describing is a form of market socialism. Europe, particularly the traditional powers of the north and west, is capitalist. It’s also socialist.
Their economies may be more mixed than our own, with the state playing a larger role in the distribution of things like health care, but let’s cut the charade that the state isn’t heavily involved in economic life here. It’s about the bloody infrastructure; it’s about student loans; it’s about guaranteed loans for first-time home-buyers; it’s about backing up investments. The state is knee-deep in markets.
While conservatives seemingly object to state interventions into the markets, what they really object to are state interventions that don’t benefit them. C’mon, it’s the bourgeoisie who actually understand themselves to be a class for themselves, and act accordingly. While the left gets accused of class warfare when it uses mild rhetoric, the capitalists have been actively and enthusiastically engaging in said warfare.
The sad thing is that a universal system, even a single-payer system, would be favorable for our capitalist classes over the current employer-based system. But, their ideology (everything commodified and capitalized) actually is blinding them to their own interests (what would gain them the most in profits) in this case.
I’d also like to point out something: S-CHIP is *not* about helping “the poor”. Medicaid is meant to help “the poor”. S-CHIP is meant to help folks who make too much for Medicaid (like the Frosts) but don’t have reasonable access to private insurance (like the Frosts). The limits are based upon three times the poverty level, which is quite a bit of money (63k for a family of 4?) so it’s *supposed* to help even the “above water, not sinking” as well as the people who could be destitute.
People complain that the Frosts don’t mortgage their home or their former place of business to buy health insurance… well, the various CHIPs programs are meant to prevent exactly that… to make sure that folks don’t have to risk their homes or other assets… to give them a bit more of a chance to succeed, or at least get by.
Yes, it’s a “handout” that is intended to help people… but I’m not the least bit ashamed to say that helping people make it on their own is what the government should be doing.
(And I’m going to puke if I hear another wingnut complain about the taxpayers the Frosts are ripping off who are worse off than the Frosts.)
“Who owns the world?”
Well, it’s gotta be either Bill Gates or the Walton (WalMart) heirs, right?…
In the bible, it says, “the meek shall inherit the earth”. Unstated is the fact that they will only get it after everything of value has been extracted and the whole thing is turned into a radioactive desert covered with the rusting hulks of huge SUV’s and greasy fast-food wrappers…
Once again, I’m utterly amazed at the propensity for pocket fascists such as this lady to pontificate endlessly on subjects they know absolutely nothing whatsoever about.
Not only is she not in the ballpark, she’s not even playing the same sport.
Here’s what confuses the hell out of me–who wants to be cooped up in a gated fortress, constantly afraid that the starving barbarians outside will crash in and eat their children? It doesn’t sound like much fun for either the extremely rich or the extremely poor. So who is it that wants that?“Here’s what confuses the hell out of me–who wants to be cooped up in a gated fortress, constantly afraid that the starving barbarians outside will crash in and eat their children?”
But the rich can live in the satisfaction that they are on the INSIDE, while the poor grasping hoards on on the OUTSIDE.
As far as the possibility of the barbarians eating their children, that’s what Blackwater is for…
Shirley Jackson? Wasn’t she on What’s Happening! ? I think I’m in the lottery for a home-cooked burger with Rog and Rerun!
Italics off!
You know they ain’t rich because their stoop is brick, not Maryland marble. Marble is the classic stoop on a Baltimore rowhouse (pronounced “REH-oo-HEY-ahs.”) Lot of broke ass people can afford marble, they are stuck with brick. On the other hand, they have actual brick walls, not formstone like their neighbors, which IS a step up.
Italics off!
You’re still pissed about being dropped from the Fantastic Four movie, aren’t you FontMan?
Well, it didn’t take long for Malkin to chicken out of the debate. And of course, it’s because Ezra is dishonest, not because she’s actually scared to debate him. blah blah blah
I probably shouldn’t be surprised anymore, but the moral callousness and disingenuousness of the right really is appalling. Thousands of people dying in the streets is a sign that something is catastrophically wrong with society as a whole. Using that as your metric is sorta like saying there are no public health problems in America because we don’t have people walking around with suppurating, plague-infested buboes.
Jesus had something to say about folks who didn’t properly manage their money or other people’s, and who squandered free gifts and good will.
Note that the wingnut can’t even come up with a good Jesus-rags-on-the-poor quote, and has to shift gears into the story of the adulteress (carefully dancing around where he asks the Focus on the Family types of his day if they can cast the first stone). Probably because Jesus wasn’t so much with the capitalism.
I don’t imagine Michelle will take him up on the offer. She will either have him mop the floor with her anti-intellectual ass or she’ll just scream him into oblivion.
Everybody knows that Ezra would kick her ass in a fair debate.
Debates used to have rules.
Now it’s all about screaming and interrupting. In the wingnut world that means you win.
Ezra is far too civilized for that. What the hell is going on?
I used private-sector subsidized healthcare back when it cost me $40/week to get from a $175 weekly paycheck. Was I evil? (Yeah, I guess so. I should have admitted to being poor and gone on federally-subsidized state aid.)
I survived many years on federally-subsidized student loans my wife and I received. Was I a blight on society? (I must admit it. Now that I’m gainfully employed in the field I chose for graduate school, I realize I should have avoided my children entirely and worked all night as well as during the day.)
After graduating with an advanced degree, I couldn’t find work right away and went on food stamps and federally-subsidized state aid. Am I to be shunned forever? (I guess so, since I took money just so I could spend time filling out applications and sending them out with tailored resumes seeking any job almost anywhere nationwide and considering seeking employment in Europe or Australia since I wasn’t getting a chance at home.)
And then, after getting a decent-paying job in my home town, I still found myself in quite a hole financially. My wife and I filed for bankruptcy. We still have to pay off our student loans, but we are able to start over financially. And that’s a great relief even though it will affect almost everything we do for the next decade. Are we just freeloaders? (Damn right. Hard work and clean living really should have been the way we rolled, even though it was.)
Never mind that we did all of the above while trying to live the American Dream, adopted a child, bought a home, had another child, sold the home so we could finish college, and even went without some things most Americans find essential. Since we didn’t support the GOP, we must have done it all wrong. Or something. I guess we were selfish to have children, but I’m sure a few abortions wouldn’t have given me a richer life. But I won’t ask them to say that directly to my children’s faces, since they probably actually would.
I took government aid, and I’m still a liberal. Suck it, right wing assholes! And now that I’m making a decent wage, I still support progressive taxation! I must be utterly deluded financially, or am I just someone with a heart? And even if it’s both, I can live with that even without stalking those with differing opinions.
If Charles Dickens were still around he’d sue the Malkinites for copyright infringement.
And, of course, when society is reduced to them and the destitute, open-sore-riddled homeless, they will bitch about having to look at the destitute, open-sore-riddled homeless from the windows of their SUVs. Can’t those disgusting, diseased, poor people go die somewhere else, so they don’t have to see it?
I went nuts over the attacks on the Frosts because it involves the safety of their children and I’ve posted the past two days on DailyKos and may do it again today. Yesterday’s dairy titled: Terrorist Freepers Want Perverts To Attack Frost Children
Both Hunter and Kos had good posts on this yesterday, including pointing out that when Kossaks retaliated by posting Malkins home address, after she had posted the addresses of people on the other side of the aisle (the links to their articles are in my dairy entry above), the editors of DailyKos decided to remove her address from all comments and diary entries.
Even so Malkin moved ostensibly for the safety of her children.
DailyKos elected to protect Malkin - freepers, Mailkin and now it looks like the very office of Mitch McConnell did not, or would not elect to take the high road and protect the Frost children.
Where are they going to go?
Oh and Vyan has a good post on this too.
We do need to support the Frost’s in any and all ways we can, because they now have to take more and maybe extreme measure to protect their children . . . which may cost money they don’t have.
inkybrain, Thousands of people dying in the streets is a sign that something is catastrophically wrong with society as a whole.
Historically, the big epidemics have often triggered long overdue improvements on public hygiene and health care. It seems that unless the rich are dying of cholera, too, no one understand why the poor should need clean water.
The other threat that vastly improved social insurances was that of revolution…
From the tax cuts to the gutting social programs to the tax breaks to big bidness shipping jobs overseas to the ‘war on terrorism’ to the ‘war on Iraq’, one thing is perfectly clear: Bush has done more harm to this country than Bin Laden ever could…
Did people miss the ‘Honeywell Security’ sticker in their window?
‘Folks that can afford to have that (sticker on their doors) should be able to afford healthcare’ I can hear the apparitions of the apocalypse hiss…
Pinky -
I heard on Thom Hartman yesterday that when the Bush rein began we had more home ownership than we do today. I can’t remember the numbers but so much for the “ownership society”
or did Bush mean that the top 1% owns everything, including the neo-serfs.
The sticker looks new, and as such may have been a response to the freeper publishing their address on the web
I have a friend who relocated the security box from their defunct business to their house. It looks like they have security: sticker, box with red light but it isn’t attached to anything. Just because you culd once afford something doesn’t mean that you have to take the tag off when you can no longer pay the bill.
Wingnuts are really the most impractical people I have ever rant about an issue. It is amazing that they can butter their toast in the morning.
culd= could
“I have ever rant” should have a heard in there somewhere.
No excuses, need to read after I type.
The sad thing is that the ONLY reason someone doesn’t put up a web site with the home addresses, Google views, personal snapshots, etc., of the right-wing blogosphere is that we all know that they would respond in kind and that they have more people willing to follow up on the information and kill us. We also already know the courts would inexplicably be unable to understand how the right-wing blogosphere actively encourages violent responses, but would see with razor-sharp clarity how the “radical left wing” does so.In other words, the right-wing blogosphere has already been successful at intimidating the rest of the country.
lol - Hawise, you, me and 19 thousand other people who have a slow brain to finger interface, and also have a badly written “edit/proof read, eye to brain to fingers,” algorithm
Skippy beat me to it but, yeah, if you think there are no people lying half-dead on the sidewalk covered with open sores, come visit me in Los Angeles. I’ll take you on a little tour, and we’ll only have to drive 15 minutes from my nice comfortable suburb.
When hospitals are dumping paraplegic patients on Skid Row, what you’ve got is a seriously damaged health care system, and no amount of screaming about how the Frosts should have sold everything they owned and lived out of their car to get health insurance for their kids is going to change that.
I’m glad you outlined the left’s desires for society. I’ve been wondering. As a extremist right-wing neo-conservative, libertarian nutcase, here are my desires.
Decent housing with complete privacy if desired.
Education.
Useful employment with a fair wage.
Health care.
Enough free time to pursue some pleasures in life and have a family life.
The ability to retire, although I plan to never fully retire.
The right to free and equal participation in society even by those wingnut talk show hosts.
The right to self-determination including what I do with the few dollars I make.
What I don’t like is paying medical bills for people who make as much as I do, probably could make more than I do if at least one of them worked full-time but are either too lazy, have too great of a sense of entitlement, are too unmotivated, choose to be under-acheivers and don’t care enough about their own kids to plan for the inevitable medical bills that come in some fashion or another.
Mr. and Mrs. Frost do a very good job at looking pitiful in photos though. The left wing extremst radical because we are right people made a poor choice for poster parents. I feel sorry for the kids, not only because of their injuries, but because of whom they have raising them.
Of course to have these things, we can’t have an elite hoarding all the wealth (generated by the workers, mind you) for themselves.
Yes, I can’t understand why Kennedy, Kerry, Edwards, et al haven’t divested themselves of their ill-gotten wealth.
Blaspheme!!
Kennedy, Kerry, Edwards, et al haven’t divested themselves of their wealth, no. But they also don’t say that paying taxes on the wealth they’ve earned or inherited is somehow infamously unjust and evil. Unlike those of your ilk, DADvocate, they recognize that the wealth they’ve earned is due in no small part to the labor, infrastructure, and natural resources available to them in this country. Since this is the case, they see that it is their duty to pay some of that wealth back into the system.
Also, maybe one of them doesn’t work full-time because child care costs would eat up whatever earnings he or she made, making it pointless.
Also, let’s recap by a small comparison.
Annual cost of SCHIP (if veto of expanded coverage is overridden): $12 billion/year.
Cost of war in Iraq: $250 billion/year.
Priorities, priorities, priorities!
Also, I installed a faux-granite counter in my kitchen. The counter cost $48 at HOBO. Looks just like real granite until you get up close. Just sayin’.
Who owns the world?
This is a silly thought, and I blush to admit it, brought on by reading “Battlefield Earth”.
For further reading, put down the L-Ron and pick up “Uplift” for another perspective on Earth ownership under galactic law.
Lifetime Baltimore resident here. I live less than a mile from the Frosts, and used to live only a few blocks away.
Bruce:
Lots of rowhouses had wooden steps — check the Baltimore Historical Society website for pictures. And Formstone goes OVER the brick, it’s not an “instead of.” For a while the less prosperous were the ones without Formstone, now people pay to have it chemically removed, and you have to erect little foam dikes to stop runoff of the chemicals into the Bay and it’s not cheap. But it probably was the first couple of years people did it, before Bay savers got into the act. I can’t tell from the picture which it is and even so we can’t tell whether they or the previous owners did it on the cheap or followed the rules.
Anyway.
They bought in when the neighborhood was drug dealing and prostitution central. I used to go on neighborhood watch rides through Butcher’s Hill and saw (and called in) gang members selling drugs. They have a signal system where they’d stand on specific corners and whistle to each other that someone was observing, so there was no way any of them would get caught once they raised the alarm. They used to be called the Mailbox Boys because they started out blowing up people’s mailboxes for fun. Now the name is something more “dignified.”
Patterson Park, a couple of blocks from them, is still listed on both US and international prostitution tourism sites. Traditional (extortionate) prostitution and drugs go hand-in-hand.
The prices in the neighborhood have been falling recently, and gee, nobody noticed that they did get a second mortgage to modify the house for their now-disabled family members. They may owe more than their equity now.
DADvocate:
You and your wife and four children live on less than 80K?
These aren’t ordinary medical bills. Try having multiple family members need lifesaving intervention at a shock/trauma unit, then require 24-hour care for months, then require physical and occupational therapy for months.
All I saw were people being facetious, mocking the way right-wingers are talking about the Frosts. Unless I missed something (I didn’t read the whole thread, I just did a search for the word “tattoo”).
DADvocate - you can’t be a neoconservative and libertarian at the same time. Neoconservatives support expansive government, strong restrictions on privacy, torture, wars of aggression and taxpayer-funded nation building. Libertarians obviously oppose all those things.
I realize that to someone like yourself, a self-described nutcase, people only deserve what they can afford. For your sake I hope you’re filthy, filthy rich because if government actually functioned the way you think it should - tax funds not being used for collective good - I guarantee you, unless you’re at Paris Hilton levels of wealth, you would immediately become one of the poor. THAT is how much infrastructure, education, medical care and funding for research of all kinds affects our lives.
Here’s an example: My boyfriend’s mother was recently diagnosed with stage 3C ovarian cancer. She had surgery to remove tumors on her ovaries, small intestine and in her abdominal cavity. She’s in her first round of chemo, fifth treatment. She’s lost about half her hair. In a strange coincidence, her daughter, my boyfriend’s sister, was also diagnosed with cancer - about a month after her mother. She has stage 2 thyroid cancer. Half her thyroid was removed, as was one of her lymph nodes, where the cancer had spread. She just went in to the hospital the other day, after a two-week restricted diet of no iodine, salt or processed foods, in order to drink a radioactive formula that’s supposed to kill what’s left of the cancer, if it hasn’t spread.
Both my boyfriend’s mother and sister are receiving state aid for their medical treatment. If we lived in your special world, they’d be dead.
What I don’t like is paying medical bills for people who make as much as I do, probably could make more than I do if at least one of them worked full-time but are either too lazy, have too great of a sense of entitlement, are too unmotivated, choose to be under-acheivers and don’t care enough about their own kids to plan for the inevitable medical bills that come in some fashion or another.
So, to conservatives, stay-at-home mothers are now horrible leeches on society instead of noble women doing the work that The Lord God made them for? (Let’s leave aside for now how entrepreneurs, the supposed backbone of this country, are now all selfish bastards who don’t care about their kids.)
Would it be too much to ask for you guys to get your stories straight? I mean, you can’t on the one hand lament about how mothers are damaging their families by working full-time, and then bitch and moan about how the few mothers who do stay home are lazy wenches who are damaging their families. Pick one and go with it, or you just look like a fucktard who’s grasping for any reason to bash people who aren’t you.
Majeff, actually, I don’t think what I am describing is confined to Europe. It is as american as apple pie and state universities, and was described long ago in Galbraith’s American capitalism. Ideology projects a certain Walter Mitty image of that capitalism - proud, private, pitted against the state - but just as Walter Mitty was really simply a nice schlep in a dead end job, American capitalism, even before the great depression, always operated in tandem with the state. This isn’t a dirty secret about the system - it is the key to its success. That is why I’d truly like to see the terms by which health care is discussed shift. It was fashionable for neo-liberal mags in the eighties and nineties to discuss middle class entitlements like they were some disgusting afterbirth of godzilla, and that so infected the supposed progressive Dems that they started to believe it. And, of course, where the neo-liberals have their strongholds - for instance, the Washington Post editorial page - this kind of thing is still around. But it is silly - to be against middle class entitlement is like being against the skeleton in the human body. Surely the muscles should be strong enough to hold us up by themselves! It is misplaced moralism, and presupposes a self-reliant code that is beautiful in theory and Arnold Schwartzenegger movies, but collapses in practice.
So instead of trying to prove the Frosts are ‘worthy’ of state aid, I’d be worried about proving that state aid here, works, as purely private forces can’t, to allow the Frosts to juggle serious medical problems, a house and a business. Bush is right - the S-Chip program is so successful that it will lead people to ask, why do we continue with the lousy system of medical provision we have right now, when we can do much better?
On a purely tactical level, I would bet Bush wins this battle. It does, after all, depend on the Republicans, and the last year has made clear that the Republicans respond much more to crazies like Malkin than they do to people like the Frosts - while the democrats are so afraid of offending the center-right conventional wisdom of D.C. that they will fall apart if it looks like ‘moderate’ Republicans don’t give them cover. Who knows, voting for the S-Chip might make them look like they are soft on terrorism! The Dems are in thrall to the upperclass white male demographic on almost all issues, and will go with that demographic in the face of their own constituency every time. And every time that constituency will forgive the Dems. But I do wonder how long this system is going to last.
DADVocate:
Could I borrow your shoes? I want to criticize the hell out of you, and I need to walk a mile in them to prove I have the moral high ground.
No, wait, there was a time when I believed I didn’t have to learn the truth before criticizing. There was a time I’d let prejudice guide me, when I’d speak hatefully of others without thinking.
So I have walked a mile in your shoes (metaphorically speaking).
Thankfully, I grew up.
Someday you’ll be old and sick and you’ll wish someone paid the medical bills that you can’t afford. Someone wealthier than you like, let’s say one of the Kennedy or Edwards or even one of the Bush.
Also, you could head to an european country and benefit from the health care provided to and by EVERYBODY. Indepently of their income. How sweet is it to know that the minimum wage worker that sits next to you in the waiting room is paying for your medical bills, at the same time you’re paying for his? And that all that investment of the whole society results cheaper than if everyone paid its own health plan?
And don’t worry about waiting times, or deficient care, or lack of medical advances: you can have some of the best ophtalmoligic clinics, the best onchology units, the most up-to-date equipment and an efficient organ donor system (didn’t you know? there’s a positive correlation in the number of donations: the most public the health system is, the most organ and blood donors there are). Not only that, but also if you want to sign a private plan, since the public system is pushing such an awesome competence, the prices of your premiums will be ridicously low. Like, 40$ per month for a basic premium. Hell, even my grandpa, who’s retired with an average benefit, can allow having a private plan!
You can stick to your egotisticalibertarian beliefs and keep millions of people in an unhealthy cliffhanger, but trust me, it does no good to your own business.
oh, this one s good.
Mmmh, something along the lines of “Leave everything you have and follow me?”
Hahah.i
Just to clarify:
1) 3x the poverty line may not be dirt poor, but it certainly ain’t rich. And anyone who can’t afford health insurance for their family is on the edge of poverty in my book.
2) If I were king, no one would have to go run through a bunch of hoops and sign piles of paperwork to get health care for their kids. It should be available to everybody. Heck, it should even be available to the rich.
What I don’t like is paying medical bills for people who make as much as I do, probably could make more than I do if at least one of them worked full-time but are either too lazy, have too great of a sense of entitlement, are too unmotivated, choose to be under-acheivers and don’t care enough about their own kids to plan for the inevitable medical bills that come in some fashion or another.
—-
Who do you think pays for the majority of graduate medical training and bench research in this country?
Do you think you’d have decent health care to buy if it weren’t for taxpayer-funded investments in the education and sciences in this country?
What I don’t like is putting in the investment all these decades only to have ignorant young libertarians start claiming all the returns on those investments as their own.
Go to a deserted island. Start from scratch. Eat tree bark and make noise at the moon when you fall ill. Or clam it and enjoy your illusion of “self suffciency.” You’re as far into the public trough as the next guy; you just haven’t figured it out yet, or you have and think whistling Dixie out your ass will provide enough of a distraction that others won’t take notice.
Study: 41 Million In U.S. Can’t Afford Basics
Article that says a mouthful.
I do wonder though, how many of these people actually voted for Bush.
There is a MASSIVE number of people that are drowning, clinging on the belly of the beast that Bush and his minions have turned the US into, and drowning in the debt that they and Bush have racked up.
I heard a real hoot: something to the effect that ‘Shucks, the dollar is so low now that while things are going to get more expensive, there be tourists that will be pouring in to Bush’s America™”. Yah, just jumping to snap up those deals at the local Wal-Mart and buying the crap some of their countries export to Bush’s America™ and are marked up due to the incredibly shrinking dollar… Well, after many travel companies have rearranged their flights so they don’t pass through Bush’s Gulag. I doubt there be many tourists willing to dodge bullets and have theur underwear drawers tossed and phone calls freely recorded.
Heck-of-a-job there, Bushie boy. Bin Laden really couldn’t have done it better… Congrats… Your parents must be so proud.
I heard a real hoot: something to the effect that ‘Shucks, the dollar is so low now that while things are going to get more expensive, there be tourists that will be pouring in to Bush’s America™”.
I heard a Canadian author speak at my local library (Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, for you knitting geeks) and she was half-jokingly complaining about getting the full once-over from security because, as a middle-aged woman from Canada, she was clearly a dangerous terrorist who needed to be scrutinized to make sure she hadn’t managed to smuggle a bomb onto the plane this time.
So, no, there’s not going to be a huge influx of foreign tourists, because it’s just too damn much trouble to get through security right now.
gawd you guys are a trip
if a mother works you tell her she’s harming her child(ren) and is not a good parent
if she stays a home she is called lazy, an underacheiver and a bad parent
if a father works 10+ hours a day you tell him he’s being a bad father by not spending time with his children and a bad parent - children need fathers afterall (wwpks)
if he works an eight hour day you call him lazy, an underacheiver and a bad parent
if he works for someone else you tell him he’s less of a person because he doesn’t work for himself (lazy, an underacheiver, yada, yada. yada)
if he accepts a lower paying job but one the has some from of health care you call him lazy lazy, an underacheiver and a bad parent and bad provider
if he works for someone else he is less of a person because he will not take a risk (lazy, an underacheiver, yada, yada. yada)
if he takes a risk he is irresponsible
if he won’t accept under employment when it is a choice between having a job and not, you call him lazy,under-acheiver and a bad parent and provider
if he takes a job when things are tough where he accepts under employment, where he does not have benefits,but is anle to provide somewhat for his family you call him lazy,under-acheiver and a bad parent and provider
blah, blah, blah
in your world you can’t win, no matter what you do
and it all comes down to “I got mine, fuck everyone else.”
neo-conservatism + neo-robber barrons = neo-serfdom
Pinky I heard that too .. except they are having such trouble getting in, they are going elsewhere instead.
Idiots have no idea what a weakened dollar does ESPECIALLY when everyone is starting to bank on the Euro moving off the dollar.
Paul Krugman’s Friday column is about the GOP attack on the Frosts.
And one can even read David Brooks’ column today without muttering to oneself about his wrongness—he has noticed that the GOP candidates have nothing to offer the striving middle class, but that Hillary’s got a bucket of proposals for them.
Ahem. If I may, while there’s a national discussion about the expansion of S-CHIP, can I ask why it’s limited to children in the first place? I mean, I’ve been pretty fortunate in terms of injuries and serious illnesses, but if I had been in the car with Graeme Frost on the day of his accident, where would I, a 33-year old, uninsured American who at the time was making $25k a year, be today?
Short answer: Up shit creek. And if you asked a Republican, they’d say it was because you were too damned lazy to whittle yourself a paddle with your teeth and good old American can-do attitude.
Isn’t the Left more like the Persians in the movie “300″ ?