Who are American politicians beholden to? The People? The Constitution?

[molly bloom]

MB: Churchill left the conservatives and joined the liberal party because he believed in social reforms, and served as MP until going to the Admiralty. I thought he was still involved in liberal politics at the time of the suffrage vote, but perhaps not.

Do you mean the issue of Free Trade ?

Churchill was Home Secretary for part of the struggle to achieve voting rights for women, and not well-liked. I'm still intrigued by the notion he fought for better working conditions.

Perhaps you're confusing him with Robert Owen and/or George Lansbury.

[Straybow]

I've talked to too many elderly Americans who are living on or below the poverty line and suffering terribly from relatively minor ailments because they can't afford to even get to treatment centres to buy into that crap.

Tell me their city or town at noon Pacific Time on Monday. I'll bet you that I can find free rides and free-to-cheap medical clinic for them in one hour. You could too, but instead you say, "Why doesn't the government do something I'm too lazy or inconsiderate to do myself?"

Oh right, so you want to have healthcare, you just don't want to pay for it right?

You think emergency room care is an efficient delivery and cost method?

No, I did have health care, I just didn't have health insurance except that attached to my driver's insurance. So it is for most of the "50 million" the Dumbocrats claim to act for. I know this issue is so confusing to you.

I didn't go to an emergency room, I used a device called a "telephone" to make an appointment with a GP I had met once or twice. He examined me the next day and gave me a scrip. Paid for the visit and the meds out of pocket, about $110 iirc. My wife didn't go to an emergency room, she made an appointment with a clinic and after a couple days got everything she needed. If she needed emergency service she could have gone to an ER and paid for that out of pocket.

No, no-one has the option of not paying and then expecting someone else to. Quite right.

I didn't expect someone else to pay, I paid it myself.

The government that governs best governs least.

Very silly. See Somalia.

Only an idiot would think Somalia is an example of "government."

So basically you just keep ducking the question. Ok, what happens if you don't have a family able to raise the money? Should people just shut up and die?

I typed "help me raise money" in google and here are the first two resources: GrantSpace.org and GoFundMe.com, and there are dozens more. When my daughter had heart surgery we were on a site called Caring Bridge. If necessary one could use it to raise money directly. No computer? Go to local stores and restaurants and ask to place flyers and collection jars, as people have done for decades.

I suppose if you're already so poor you have no online access and so feeble you can't go out, and so antisocial you have no friends to help you, and so stubborn or proud you refuse to seek charities who will help, then you will die without help. But the same could happen in Britain to a misanthrope who doesn't believe in doctors and medicine and friends and charity.

Blah, blah, blah. Yes, regulation is a necessary evil. What we don't do is put the EPA in charge of every aspect of business just because some might pollute. And we don't want the government in charge of everyone's healthcare just because some might fall through the cracks.

That's EXACTLY why you put government in charge of those things. Because otherwise the little guy gets screwed.

No, you let the government and charities work with the existing healthcare system to help the ones who've fallen through the cracks, and leave the rest alone.

So mighty America isn't capable of running its own version of a system that countries with far less resources have run fine for decades. Fair enough.

Capable, perhaps, but not what the Dumbocrats have put in Obamacare.

Go talk to Guy.

He's welcome to chime in if his experience is germane. Where were his choices for med school? What were his options for obligation scholarships, like military service? I suspect he didn't need to rack up huge debts, but he chose that because he found service obligations objectionable.

Healthcare is not like shopping for a car. You're not picking a treatment that's a pretty colour or will go well with your wallpaper. the idea of 'choice' in healthcare (apart from things like paying for private rooms/experimental treatments etc) is a nonsense.

You do choose health insurance the way you would choose a car. If you can get by without a car you don't buy one. You pay for transit or cab fare or rental when you need it. If you can get by without insurance you don't buy it. You pay for health care out of pocket when you need it. If you don't have enough on hand any doctor or hospital will bill you and you can pay it off over time.

If you need an insurance policy you can buy a big fancy one or a little economical one, just like choosing a car. You can even choose health care like choosing a car, especially if you're talking about GP. You can meet many and choose one you prefer because of reputation, location, hair color or whatever strikes your fancy.

Poverty rates in one country are not equivalent to all other countries. We have poor people, but you have poorer ones. To be homeless, hungry and without healthcare here takes real effort.

It takes effort here, too. About 90% of the homeless in the USA are homeless because they are on drugs and would have to be clean to get Section 8 housing, or they have refused treatment for mental disorders and can't hold a job or abide the rules of housing resources available to them. Others refuse steady employment because of their wacky ideology and think the rest of us should support them while they camp at an Occupy movement and crap on the sidewalk.

Income disparity is hugely important and effects every man, woman and child in a country. Crime, education EVERYTHING is eventually effected. It's a poison and to shout 'class envy' when people bring it up is incredibly inane.

Really? How much to you earn? Does your pay go down just because somebody else earns more? No, income and wealth "inequality" is just whining. No criminal says he'd rather have a starting hourly wage job but he can't because somebody else is rich. Income disparity doesn't effect education, the property taxes would be the same no matter who owns the property.

The poor are no poorer merely because Bill Gates has $67B more than they do. If you took it away and gave it to the poor it would only be a few thousand per capita. They'd waste most of it and end up no better off. If you then forced Bill Gates to take on a fake identity (including plastic surgery) as a laid-off Microsoft programmer and prevented him from contacting all his existing connections and friends he would be back in the top 10% ($120k) as soon as he got a job, in the top 1% ($375k) in a few years, and probably back in the top 0.15% ($1M) in a decade as CEO of his own company because he knows how and has what it takes to get there.

[Dinner]

Which was ruled by a right wing junta between 1967 and 1974, and a Conservative government between 1974-1981 & 1990-1993. Rather pointless blaming Greece's financial woes simply on Socialism.

Sadly that's all the right wing in America ever seems to do. They see socialism under every rock and blame it for every thing which ever happens to them even when they get drunk and stub their toe.

[Straybow]

Churchill was Home Secretary for part of the struggle to achieve voting rights for women, and not well-liked. I'm still intrigued by the notion he fought for better working conditions.

Perhaps you're confusing him with Robert Owen and/or George Lansbury.

Since I don't know who either of them are, no. I was confusing Liberal for Labour, which amounts to the same thing. My bad. There were plenty of other upper class folks who espoused those reforms to make my point without Winnie.

[Straybow]

Sadly that's all the right wing in America ever seems to do. They see socialism under every rock and blame it for every thing which ever happens to them even when they get drunk and stub their toe.

I don't look under rocks, I look at their taxing and spending. Follow the money.

I like how you mockingly refer to 'the poor leftists who had been persecuted'.

I worked with an extremely cultured man who had survived the WWII liquidation of the ghetto in Thessaloniki, but it took the Colonel's junta to finally force him into exile- it was either that or be tortured and/or killed. And exile isn't and wasn't some kind of soft option.

Is this display of fake sympathy because the Junta were rightwing and still in N.A.T.O. ? Or because you have some notion that they used 'Torture Lite' ? Either way it's rather sad.

As for the rest, the gaps in your knowledge of modern Greek (and European!) history are showing.

I don't have much sympathy for communists, however cultured they may be. Seeing how almost anywhere in Europe was better off economically I don't see how exile was so bad. Of course, if he was unemployable it kinda plays into the stereotype. But still exile must have been OK. Just ask kentonio, he seems to think being on the dole in Europe is a sweet gig.

[kentonio]

No, it's you sad yank right wingers who bleat about how easy life on welfare must be.

[molly bloom]

Since I don't know who either of them are, no. I was confusing Liberal for Labour, which amounts to the same thing.

Ahuh. And in what universe is that, exactly ? The late 19th/early 20th Century Liberal Party did not 'equal' the Labour Party, in composition or politics.

There were plenty of other upper class folks who espoused those reforms to make my point without Winnie.

I know that some members of the aristocracy and some members of the upper middle classes could see the injustice in denying women the vote, and took part in the campaign for voting reform- just as Countess Markiewicz could fight the British in Ireland, but so what ? The majority didn't campaign or struggle for women's suffrage or Irish independence.

George Lansbury, a Labour M.P., resigned his seat and fought an election on the principle of votes for women. Clement Attlee, Labour leader and Prime Minister after WWII, worked as a social worker in the slums of the East End of London.

Annie Kenney (member of the Oldham Committee Of The Card And Blowingroom Operatives) :

I don't know how I had the audacity to talk votes for women to those thin, sallow, pinched, poverty-lined faces. I enjoyed their quick tongues, their prying little gosspis and their love of company. To give no offence I would drink a cup of tea with every woman I called to see.

Annie was just one of 96 000 organised women cotton workers.

Sylvia Pankhurst on the lack of support from the comfortable and well-off in London :

Its busy millions appeared to have no time to think of anything but their own affairs. The thoughtless apathy of those we met with money and leisure at their disposal....

It may come as a surprise to you, but the working classes and Socialists here have never lacked for intelligence and the ability to organise themselves.

I don't have much sympathy for communists, however cultured they may be.

How charitable. I don't recall stating his politics, and he wasn't a Communist in any case.

He simply didn't approve of right wing paramilitaries who assassinated politicians they didn't like, who illegally imprisoned and tortured students and political opponents, and who tried to assassinate Cyprus's democratically elected leader and overthrow its government. The end result ? Almost a war between two members of N.A.T.O., an invasion and partition of Cyprus, the loss of American bases in Greece and Turkey. Another great success for Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon...

Seeing how almost anywhere in Europe was better off economically I don't see how exile was so bad.

Of course you don't- I bet you regularly leave all your friends and neighbours behind, taking no money with you, unsure of gaining any future employment and go to live in a foreign country whose official language isn't English, risking imprisonment, torture and possibly death to get there, on a yearly basis- just for the sh!ts and giggles.

Unbelievable.

Of course, if he was unemployable it kinda plays into the stereotype.

Perhaps you should stop relying on your inaccurate, uninformed assumptions.

[Kidlicious]

No, it's you sad yank right wingers who bleat about how easy life on welfare must be.

It's a lot easier than having a job. That should go without saying.

[kentonio]

It's a lot easier than having a job. That should go without saying.

Sure, you get a load more free time to contemplate being poor and having a cold bleak future ahead of you.

[Dinner]

It's a lot easier than having a job. That should go without saying.

But $610 per month (assuming max pay out) doesn't buy much especially since they have to have multiple kids to get it. True, they can also get food stamps and (if they wait an average of eight years) a subsidy for housing but none of that amounts to anything attractive enough for someone with any job skills to speak of to willingly sit on it and not work.

[Kidlicious]

But $610 per month (assuming max pay out) doesn't buy much especially since they have to have multiple kids to get it. True, they can also get food stamps and (if they wait an average of eight years) a subsidy for housing but none of that amounts to anything attractive enough for someone with any job skills to speak of to willingly sit on it and not work.

I didn't say they were going to have more money. I said it was easier. Again, that goes without saying.

[Straybow]

No, it's you sad yank right wingers who bleat about how easy life on welfare must be.

No, we "bleat" about how sad life on welfare is, and how sad the Dumbocrats and liberals are continually trying to make life easier for the shiftless and layabouts.

[Straybow]

Since I don't know who either of them are, no. I was confusing Liberal for Labour, which amounts to the same thing.

Ahuh. And in what universe is that, exactly ? The late 19th/early 20th Century Liberal Party did not 'equal' the Labour Party, in composition or politics.

If you parse carefully you will see that I confused Liberal for Labour, and Labour amounts to the same thing as the two gents you mentioned.

With that my point was, and remains, solidly intact: many who were made well-to-do or even rich by the industrial revolution fought against its abuses. There is no equivalency between neglect and carelessness about the poor and the environment far in the dimmy past and the typical liberal screed of conservatives wanting to poison the environment and oppress women, gays, blacks, or what have you.

It may come as a surprise to you, but the working classes and Socialists here have never lacked for intelligence and the ability to organise themselves.

Yes, socialists of whatever class do not necessarily lack intelligence, they just lack its use. Did you read that Donna Brazile was genuinely confused about why her insurance rates went up when Obama promised they'd go down?

How charitable. I don't recall stating his politics, and he wasn't a Communist in any case.

Then I'd have sympathy for his case.

Another great success for Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon...

Only Nixon could go to China. And bomb Hanoi. Other than that he was a petty and ineffective President.

Of course you don't- I bet you regularly leave all your friends and neighbours behind, taking no money with you, unsure of gaining any future employment and go to live in a foreign country whose official language isn't English, risking imprisonment, torture and possibly death to get there, on a yearly basis- just for the sh!ts and giggles.

Neither did your friend. He left on a risky escape once, and after that had the opportunity to make the best of his situation. I'd bet almost every major European city had a vibrant Greek community he could join. Plenty of people took similar risks to cross the iron curtain and prospered in the West.

And, again, I'm just mocking kentonio's arguments about how Greece isn't a third world economy because of socialism, and how the poor are so much better off in socialist/progressive Europe than in eeevil/capitalist America.

[kentonio]

No, we "bleat" about how sad life on welfare is, and how sad the Dumbocrats and liberals are continually trying to make life easier for the shiftless and layabouts.

That's right, obviously if someone has a run of bad luck or lacks the life skills to make a financial success of themselves they should be left to starve in the gutter.

[regexcellent]

He's welcome to chime in if his experience is germane. Where were his choices for med school? What were his options for obligation scholarships, like military service?

Just gonna throw this out there: you know what you call a doctor who graduated in the bottom 5% of his med school class? Captain.