Mr. GOH!

I know I'm late to the party, but I just wanted to respond to Yant's description of the healthcare situation to Chronxial. Buying and selling insurance policies across state lines is something we both agree on! Though it matters little if states retain their inconsistent hodge-podge of insurance regulations. For it to be effective in lowering premiums, there would need to be some sort of federal action beyond a law allowing insurance companies to sell across state lines. As it stands, health insurance is mainly regulated by each state, aside from a few provisions of Obamacare that have already gone into effect (adult child coverage and coverage for pre-existing conditions). If the state regulations are effective on out-of-state insurers, then the only efficiencies gained would be operational efficiencies (cheaper operating costs), which would not involve very big savings for the end consumer. If the regulations of each state are *not* binding on out of state insurers, then the market could work. But it would be federal action at the expense of states' autonomy. I have no issues with this at all. In fact, if buying and selling policies across state lines were to pass someday, I'd rather have federal regulation of basic health insurance if only to encourage a faster development of a national marketplace. I think insurance is one of the few markets where fewer sellers would be salutary (as my advocacy for single payer insurance no doubt attests), as insurance companies with larger customer bases would face less risk overall and be able to offer more affordable insurance for folks who are more risky; as the pool grows, each marginal risky customer would have less effect on the company's overall risk. I'm always leery of tort reform. In my experience (I'm an attorney specializing in federal civil litigation and several of my cases involve health insurance companies, but no torts of the kind tort reform would affect), health care providers offer unnecessary tests not because they're afraid of getting sued, but primarily because they make more money that way. That behavior will always exist as long as the provider and the payer are different entities and would remain unaffected by tort reform. I'm a big believer in the concept of citizens attorneys-general and the corrective power of lawsuits when it comes to consumer protection, and a lot of tort reform would gut the ability of people to seek redress for harms inflicted upon them by powerful organizations. In some cases, legal reform amounts to a license for large companies to break the law because there are no ways to currently address certain types of wrongdoing.

Yant, socialism is a specific set of methods of economic control, not the idea of the welfare state. Those policies you point out are progressive/liberal/leftist, sure, but not socialist per se. In a socialist country there is universal healthcare provided by state institutions, not the requirement that folks buy private healthcare. The method distinguishes the centrist individual mandate from socialist state-provided healthcare. Redistribution via taxes is also not inherently socialist; the justification for progressive taxation is liberal/leftist, but not specifically socialist. The belief that it's all a slippery slope to socialism and, ultimately, the communal farms of communism is just not warranted. The Democrats, and Obama, LOVE market capitalism. They're just interventionists with a very minor, in the context of history and other nations' policies, side of redistribution. Liberalism/progressivism and socialism are two separate species within the order of Left politics, much like how fascism (in the Peronist/Francoist sense) and Libertarianism are different species in Right politics.

No, the basis of socialism is worker/state/common control of the means of production, not every single means of redistributing wealth. If all redistribution is socialism, then patently non-socialist redistributions (redistribution for the benefit of the wealthy or capitalists) would be socialism. So eminent domain for the benefit of private interests, like when a municipality rezones a poor neighborhood of single-family homes into an industrial zone for the benefit of a new manufacturing plant, would amount to socialism under your rubric. That is simply not socialism even though it is redistribution. Then again, all taxes are redistribution of wealth, too, and a great many laws that aren't taxes are designed not to redistribute, exactly, but rather to allocate the distribution of wealth. Just because Heritage supports something *usually* means that it's wrong. It also usually means that it's not socialist.

Time and Newsweek are just resorting to sensationalism to sell their advertising circulars. Also: Obama is not a leftist socialist. The core idea of Obamacare, the individual mandate (at least for catastrophic coverage), was developed and advocated by the Heritage Foundation in the 80's, for heaven's sakes. Generally, the government forcing folks to transfer their wealth to private enterprise is antithetical to socialism. Obama does not push for mass nationalization of private industry in any form common to socialist philosophy. When it comes to the economy, Obama is a centrist who pushes certain regulations, but regulatory regimes are not inherently socialist. He *is* a market interventionist, which socialists are as well. But calling all interventionists socialists is like calling all Christians Catholic; the categories overlap, but are not the same. Indeed, socialist market intervention would be very different than anything proposed by Obama or the Democrats.

Obama is disingenuous, and I freely admit that most folks who feel any personal affection for him, aside from folks who know him personally, are likely just projecting. This is true of all politicians. I mean, I don't think there's been a pres candidate since Carter who wasn't disingenuous. Carter had many, many other problems, however. But I do like how folks voting for Romney do not like him personally and sort of distrust him. Which makes sense, since he's an empty suit.

Oh, that totally happened. Cheney has a lesbian daughter. I *did* say, at the time, that I was surprised and I was happy at least one prominent Republican came out in support. I also said his whole fabricating claims to lead us to a war in Iraq and his callous disregard for human life was a political dealbreaker for me and that of course neocons don't give two shits about social issue policy, really, because they're all about flexing our military abroad and transferring wealth from taxpayers to Halliburton and its ilk.

No, I meant this: "Makes various changes to limit collective bargaining for most public employees to wages." That means certain things are non-negotiable. That limits the aggregate right to contract. Edited to add: At least Obama finally stopped waffling. Not gonna convince anyone to vote for him, and it will scare away some homophobes. Hopefully the increase in donations will offset the assholes who hate gay marriage not voting or, worse, voting for the empty suit and funny underwear aficionado Mitt Romney.

But that wasn't where the meat of the savings came from; it came from the cost-shifting. I also am amused that an advocate for freedom is touting a governor who passed a law restricting how certain contracts may be negotiated.

Really, Yant, shifting costs to consumers from the state saved the state money? What a revelation. I notice the WSJ was silent on the effects this shift had on the folks who had their healthcare yanked away.

Austrian economics: ignorance. Willful ignorance because it rejects empirical evidence. But that's par for the course with the Right. Trickle-down economics: ignorance of unfettered markets' disastrous effects and fear of a bogeyman government. Defense spending: fear National security policy: fear Mexican border militarization: fear Intelligent design: ignorance. Global warming denial: ignorance Anti-science: ignorance Basing core values on arbitrary supernatural belief systems featuring angry sky ghosts, and insisting America was founded to privilege certain arbitrary supernatural belief systems over others and over rational belief systems: ignorance and fear Then again, it is true; I only vote Dem because I truly fear what a GOP government of madmen, the corrupt and fools would do to America.

Just because she's a hypocrite (which I dispute, but whatever) doesn't mean her position is incorrect.

"One of the two major parties, the Republican Party, has become an insurgent outlier — ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition." -Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein in It's Even Worse Than It Looks Here's an article about the book. Note that Mann and Ornstein have mean things to say about the Dems, too. Ornstein works for the conservative American Enterprise Institute, but that doesn't stop him from recognizing that the modern GOP is terrifying and plays to ignorance and base fear. Edit: Here's the link. http://www.npr.org/2012/04/30/151522725/even-worse-than-it-looks-extremism-in-congress

I think Romney will win, because it is impossible to underestimate the intelligence and morality of the American people.

The New York Sex Offender registry is actually one of the better ones. Folks charged with public indecency or other non-aggressive sex crimes wouldn't be affected. Rapists and pedophiles are the obvious targets of the sweep. New York also has a somewhat liberal statutory rape law; folks who are three or four years apart in age (generally) may have consensual sex, so statutory rape isn't much of an issue here. That said, I still have mixed feeling with the action, leaning towards being okay with it. I also suspect the ban is relatively easy to get around for the concerned sex cons.

The scientists who grab the headlines and distort findings are a minority, in my experience. But I agree they tarnish the reputation of empiricism and the scientific method as much as scriptural literalists tarnish the reputation of faith and religion.

I am in favor of dollar coins, I mean. At least convenience-wise. Dunno the cost-benefit analysis in the context of money supply policy.

I wish we'd kill the penny and the dollar bill. Just because I hate small bills and smaller coins. What gives the U.S. the right? Because the U.S. says so, that's what. And its words are backed with all sorts of threats, both military and economic.

What? Bash can write? Well, he can write absurdist stream-of-consciousness "Hey, look at Japan! Isn't it weird, guys? I like exclamation points!" bullshit, I suppose. His "substantive" writing is facile and his style is grating. Maybe he's a nice guy, but I cannot stand him as a writer. Edit: To be clear, I do not object to the subjects Bash covers. I think Kotaku can feature whatever content it wants to. I just really don't think Bash is a good writer at all. Though the sensationalist angle he takes on all things Japan is a bit tiresome.

Well, Ethan, maybe it's more efficient to let private bodies formulate standards and compete for adoption and then shift the cost onto the folks actually using these esoteric standards? Better than the rest of us subsidizing government to buy and publicize the standards. Or, heaven forfend, altering copyright law (which never ever ever indulges rent seekers a single bit) to turn such standards over to the public domain upon adoption (with appropriate repayment to satisfy that pesky Takings clause in the Fifth Amendment). And, let's be honest, most of these sorts of standards are used by businesses who can afford the books. Even the small businesses should be able to. If your firm can't cough up a couple hundy for standards books, well, your business has a lot of other problems it should address.

I think worrying about what men dead 200 years intended and letting that determine how laws should be read and applied is one of the silliest activities anyone's every proposed. Then again, it's also pretty frightening if laws can be reinterpreted at will. Good thing that legislatures and the people can override the courts. Battra; you wouldn't be damned either way if your stances were logically consistent. I mean, if you're against big government, why does it matter if it's constitutionally permissible or not? It could be bad *and* allowed. What are the reasons, independent from legality, that you're okay with the Post Office? I assume that legality is a necessary condition but not a sufficient reason that the government should act/make agencies/whatever. Ooh, standards incorporated by reference! I love me some regulatory law! I'm all for encheapening access to statutes, regulations and the like. Hell, I get pissed off by PACER's $.08 a page charge. Just post it all online for free. Library of Congress or, better, the GPO could handle it. Standards incorporated by reference can be crucial for small businesses, yet relatively expensive or complicated to obtain. The government should not expect folks to adhere to standards that are not freely available. As it stands, incorporation by reference is just falling prey rent-seeking behavior from whatever entity promulgates the incorporated standard.

It's easier than thinking about the issue! It also is nice and parallel to the unthinking belief in the Bible or Torah or Koran. You know, fanatic adherence to a document. Appeals to an empty authority, at least vis a vis policy debates. I wonder if battra is okay with slavery, or whether he was just okay with it until the Constitution was magically amended to outlaw it. If we're speaking what's *permissible* rather than what *should* be, then an appeal to the constitution fully makes sense. But that's legal argumentation. For example, I believe that personal ownership of a wide variety of firearms is permissible because of the Constitution. I do not think such a policy *ought* to exist, however. I also acknowledge that America loves its guns and its fantasies of righteous violence, so I spend my advocacy efforts in more fruitful areas than trying to defeat or amend the Second Amendment.

All I'm saying, yant, is that without the current set of laws, the distribution of wealth would be different. Indeed, without any laws enforcing contracts and providing a solid underlying order, businesses would not create as much wealth. Thus the current wealthy benefit from the law. We all get the stability, but the wealthy get the capital. They are not the Elect, ordained by God. They are clever folks, perhaps, but ultimately beneficiaries of the underlying social order. Just because we believe in evolution does not mean that we believe in social Darwinism. Evolution is value-free and operates blindly as a function of the universe. Just because a thing survives does not mean it is morally good.The social order, unlike physical laws, is amenable to change and direction, preferably by agreement among its members.

The rich financially benefit more from living in an ordered society provided by government. It makes sense that, as they accrue more benefits, that they pay more taxes. I do not see why this is hard to understand. and taxing folks who cannot afford to pay is fucking retarded, Yant.

Finished it last night. What a lame-ass ending. Shouldn't be surprised; the writing in ME3 overall was worse than that in ME1 and ME2.