The WSJ piece is wrong about one detail: there are TV commercials for health insurance. The day rarely goes by that I don't see at least one for Cinergy Health.

Also, the tax incentives they describe are real, but mitigated by the fact that health care expenses--including insurance premiums--in excess of 3% of income are deductible. I can tell you from experience that it's real easy to spend well over 3% of income on health insurance premiums when you're buying your own.

Power blog post, Amy. One quibble.

(Y'ever notice how the articles and columns that mean the most are the ones that you don't save? This comment will be about one of those.)

About a year ago Dalrymple wrote a column about the British fondness for public drunkeness, and noted that one cause of it is the nanny state. The government will handle everything, if you let it. Food, work, television, health care... The only choices left are who to have sex with (any choice is approved!) and where to go for drinks during the generous holidays.

As divorce (with a preponderance of marginally competent single motherhood) becomes more common, it's literally true that the strongest 'relationship' in many lives is that with the government... And as Insty noted today, this is one reason that sensible people are offended that the President now wants to speak directly to schoolchildren. He has no business doing so.

So all I'm saying is, don't hate the intrusive, busybody government only because it haphazardly distributes hard earned wealth. It also steals the very meaning of life: our responsibility for ourselves in the company of a few people who are precious to us.

The govenment also funds PBS

and the reason I mention that is

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=7806570

about a munite in

Inst my niece the cutest thing EVER

Crid, been a little crazed with the book, and I meant to blog about Obama's wanting to speak to school children -- it creeps me out. I think we need to teach a lack of respect for government (teach children to look critically at it) and there's this president-as-star thing getting in the way. Also, it comes off to me as very Big Brother/scene out of Apple's 1984 commercial.

PBS should not be funded by the government. Any arts organization that is valid will earn enough or be able to beg for enough funding from people who give it voluntarily (or corporations who do) to stay afloat. Others should sink.

It's true that for a lot of people today their relationship with the government is the most significant relationship in their lives.

Many people have little contact with much of their family, don't have a partner, aren't involved much with other organizations or community activity, perhaps don't work or only work sporadically. For a lot of people, dealing with various government bureaucracies to handle their needs is pretty much the sole purpose of their existence and the only real connection to society they have.

This boneheaded BIG program (which would be nothing more than buying more votes from the same type of constituency that gave us Obama), in its costs estimation, fails to calculate what those of us here already realize... that there will be a mass exodus from the work force as people start living on their BIG checks. The recession that would no doubt follow will then be an excuse for more BIG. And anyone who opposes it will be voted out of office by the enornmous (bought) constituency of dependants.

It's a no brainer.

@Crid: "As divorce (with a preponderance of marginally competent single motherhood) becomes more common, it's literally true that the strongest 'relationship' in many lives is that with the government"
___________

Hence the loss of family and community. What the government does for people, people and community stop doing for each other.

It's amazing how our system can start a crusade to address a problem by providing incentive to exacerbate the problem.

They wonder about illegitimacy, while paying young girls to have babies.

They wonder about fatherlessness, while young mothers get more money from the father if they dump him and sue for child support.

They wonder why there is a high divorce rate while making it financially and lifestyle attractive for women to divorce. Why fulfill your wifely duties when the courts will make the husband take care of you if you leave him, even for another man? (Funny, they worried so much about men abandoning their families that, in their effort to make it painful for the man to leave, they started paying women to throw men out.)

Yes, more no brainers. I'd like to say our government is short on brains. Unfortunately, I think too much of them know exactly what they are doing--buy votes through creating dependancy, giving away money (either directly from another, or indirectly through the government) and fostering anger.

The only reason I mentioned PBS was tro post a news story with my niece in it as the story mentioned PBS - so start fawning already people.

Now that I m awake enough for an argument though. . .

While I agree in theory that arts programs NPR, PBS, and those stations down in the 80's of the FM band should not be funded by the government.

I really have no problem with it given the amounts of tax monies and tax defural sports franchies and multi million dollar industries get.

When the NFL and MLB start paying for their own fucking staduims and the goverment stops paying corperate farms to NOT grow food I'll argue againts the fraction of that funding the arts gets.

Now tell me my niece is cute or I swear I'll stop using spell check

See my post Be Afraid, about the dangers of excessive trust in government.

I remember reading an article a couple of years ago. Someone - possibly a government official - from Africa was being given a tour of welfare housing in England. The housing was fundamentally nice, certainly better than anything people would be "given" where he was from, but the people took no care of it: yards full of trash, dirty houses, people just spending their lives drunk or vegetating in front of the television. He talked with the people, and tried to understand why - having been given enough money to live in luxury (by African standards) they didn't take care of themselves or their homes.

He came away convinced that welfare destroyed the soul.The people he saw had no need - and no longer any desire - to do anything, to make something of themselves. His conclusion was thathe would rather be starving in Africa than be on welfare in the West.

If one really wants to help people who are down and out, you would give them the opportunity to work. If they choose not to, they go hungry - that's their decision. But giving them something for nothing really is just wrong. It runs counter to basic human dignity.

The other problem with this idea: If the do-gooders only wanted to spend their own money, they would be welcome to - it's called charity. But no, they want to spend your money and mine, to force us to support their pet cause. No way.

government is the boogyman because we allow it to be so, quite conveniently. When we look at the governemnt and don't see ourselves, it happens. Of, By and For... you learn it in school, but then you stop seeing it, out of selfishness. Crid points out the responsibility to self... but we also have a responsibility to others. Unless you live on a remote island, you form part of a community, and you have a responsibility to them as well. As the web of that community becoems larger, it's harder to see it. What is your responsibility to someone in Botswana? You live on the same planet, right?

It's like bubblegum theory. I acosted a teenybopper once after she had thrown gum on a very busy sidewalk. "Who is going to clean that up?" I asked. I got a completely blank stare back: "dunno."

responsibility to other people, even ones we don't know is a function of individuals living outward. Mundane as the golden rule is, it works for this. You wanna leave people alone? Sure, but you still have to eat and breathe. So do they. You have to reach an understanding there.

The whole road thing is made of straw. We have roads because people need to move stuff, and it makes no sense to have individuals fight wars over who owns the right of way. That we imporve them is a community decision, even if that decision is a defensive one.

Seems to me that this falls down is where we BUY services, and divorce that from our own action. Bubblegum girl can claim that she pays taxes to a street cleaner who cleans up after her, so why should she care? We pay taxes for schools, so they owe us an education. That's the passive romance thing. The word is PASSIVE. You don't take ownership of it. I live across the street from a Highschool. I pay taxes on it, and it is mine. It is also everyone elses that pays taxes. We keep it for a community good. The sidewalk bubblegum gorth threw her gum one? Yeah, it's mine. It's also hers, and there is the disconnect for her. She might throw gum on her own floor in her room. Maybe once. She would understand that it was a bad idea then. If she looks at one molecule of that sidewalk as being hers, then she won't want to mess it up, and she will get mad if someone else does.

I know that ownership is a complex philisophical issue, so that'd be a different thing for a true argument. I'm talking a simpler idea of community commons as a building block. You use those blocks to build a nation, you don't form a nation at the top like a god and force everyone to live with it. Unless those people are too stupid to care, and just cede the control because they cannot be bothered...

heh, fire away, gridley.

> but we also have a responsibility
> to others.

That responsibility has boundaries.

Got it?

"That responsibility has boundaries.
Got it?" Crid

of course it does, and WE set them.

Fascinating, SwissArmyD.

I'm as free-market, libertarian, small-government, federalist as they come, but I have no problem with community-funded things if I can see that they are the best way to handle something in a given situation.

I mean good lord, when you talk about getting the government out of aspects of people's lives it has no business being involved in, some dork starts screaming at you about the roads.

I think of my condo association as being the most immediate example of collective cost-sharing in my life. Our dues pay for snow removal, lawn care, putting gutters on the garages (a capital improvement), maintaining elevators in each of the buildings, and trash collection, to name just a few. I mean, duh - this saves us money. It costs a lot less for the trash guy to come out and pick up 120 families' trash at once, rather than those 120 people each paying him separately. Ditto for the snow removal, and so on. Living in a condo also saves me money on utilities - I can't believe how little it costs. Yes we pay dues, but it's still cheaper than living in a house. Yet there are house owners in certain neighborhoods who collectivize their trash collection too. When you carve this kind of government up into small pieces, you can get a decent bang for your buck.

And it's *voluntary.* ALL voluntary. If you don't want to live in a condo and pay dues, say you want to be able to blast your stereo, then you can go live in a house and pay more for utilities and have to take care of all your own maintenance, you will just pay for those things out of pocket instead of paying dues. If that's what you want, great! To each his own.

When you expand out to the area of your city or county, you pay taxes at that level (usually in the form of property taxes), and that money pays for the roads in your city, or county highways, and it's not a lot of money, and you can see where it goes. (I leave schools out of this - not so sure we are getting our money's worth there in many places - but then look at how heavy-handed the federal government has gotten to be with schools.)

Which kind of gets to my point. Yes, managing some things collectively makes sense - and to that extent, most of it happens at the local level. We really do not need the federal government to be doing much for us. Most of what it has gotten into are things that it does NOT make sense to collectivize. Yet there it is, sucking away more money from the economy than all the local taxes in the world would ever dream of doing. The people wouldn't allow it. So why do we allow it at the federal level? I mean would you dream of allowing your city or county to take 15% of your paycheck and stick into a pyramid scheme? No way! You'd move somewhere else.

I suppose the other thing that is forgotten about government is that it consists of people. The government is not some monolithic entity that fixes the roads (a good thing) or monitors your email without a warrant (not so good).

The government consists of people, some of whom are nice and some of whom are venal. And all of whom have their own personal agendas and priorities, which likely have nothing to do with their official roles and everything to do with job security, empire building, etc.

When deciding to ask the government to run something, one should consider: "do I want to hand off the responsibility for XXX to a crowd of strangers?". If the answer is yes, great. If this worries you - well then...

>> Inst my niece the cutest thing EVER

Absolutely cheeks, luj! Very adorable.

> of course it does, and
> WE set them

I want you to fall to your knees and blow that "WE", comrade.

Trust said: "... that there will be a mass exodus from the work force as people start living on their BIG checks. The recession that would no doubt follow will then be an excuse for more BIG."

You got it in one. Captured my feelings exactly. Bonus points for using the word "boneheaded", which I haven't heard in a while. Too many people would stop working if they knew they didn't have to. And then they'd complain when that freebie check wasn't enough to buy cellphones, HDTV's, and designer clothes. I am reminded of "If you give a mouse a cookie..."

The economist Solow has a point (and Edmund Burke might concur); Solid, stable, traditional, intergenerational (lasting through generations) public schools are valuable. Are we only economic creatures? Never to take pride in neighborhood, city, school and country?
And for the US Army (more accurately, the military or public service), I concur. I say "All in." Now we have a mercenary force. Hmm. Killing because the pay is good.
A line crossed? Yes. No one should ever kill any other human as the pay is good. Only in dire self-defense, or defense of country.
Universal conscription into two years of public service might do some brats some good.
Now, we have the right-wing hungering for wars, and more wars and more wars--as long as they don't pay the taxes and serve in uniform. Our current round of perma-wars is fought by mercenaries, and borrowed money. The Bushies simply would not tax themselves enough to pay his Iraqistan adventures, and you don't see the Bush twins in uniform.
The libertarian state means there is little loyalty to state. And why should I not sell secrets to the Commies, if they offer money? The Taliban? Why should I not import boatloads of hookers, and clean up bigtime in America? (ala San Gabriel Valley).
And if I am lower-class, and my country doesn't give a poop, should I give a poop about my country? The law?
In the end, there is such a thing as a social contract if we are going to have such a thing as social fabric.
In any event, living standards are higher than ever, and will continue to rise. The state is not hurting anybody, and I received a terrific education in the state of California, into graduate school. I have been a productive member of society ever since. I don't even talk on cell phones in public places! I don't even rudelt accost those who dare while I am around!

it wouldn't work out Crid, I'd bite, assuming I could find it.

you can be stupid for the sake of being that, I'll even defend your right to say it. But you can't live here alone, can't form ownership of anything alone. You can fence yourself in, but you can't fence the world out. I'm not your comrade or your friend, and if you don't want to help me set those boundires, then I'll tell you what they are. Without a little mutual understanding and compromise, our lives here are surprisingly fragile. You, me, eveyone.

Try Amy's enchanting new blog game, "Spot the Discontinuity!"

Round one... Ready? Go!

> set those boundires, then I'll
> tell you what they are. Without
> a little mutual understanding
> and compromise

"Spot the Discontinuity!"

it'd be where Crid conveniently removes himself from the context of:
"if you don't want to help me set those boundires"
and then claims to be the victim.
so what do I win, again?

Luj, that is the cutest child I have ever seen! (I say that about a kid or a baby about once a day, though, just so you know.)

My "help" has already been presented. You just don't like it, so now you're ready to use force. The whole thing's just a pathetic, naive power grab.

not at all Crid, if you don't stay engaged, you lose your chance to say, so? stay engaged. it isn't hard to figure out.

IOW "Stop me before I kill again..."

I work at the port, outdoors in the California sunshine. Sometimes people, with what are I'm sure, the best of intentions, drop their unwanted cats off there, to fend for themselves outside. Invariably there will be some animal lovers who will then take up the role of "cat feeder" and will bring large bags of cat food to distribute. The cats become dependent on the handouts rather than catching the rats and crabs and such, and show up pretty regularly for feedings. Otherwise they are feral. I've seen about 30 cats sitting all around this feeding area when it got to about the time the animal loving coworkers do their hand out routine.
Problem is, they have babies. Just enough aren't spayed or neutered to knock them up and the turn around is darn quick. I've seen cats no more than 5 or 6 months old dragging fat bellies full of MORE cats which also won't be spayed or neutered. And they'll all be living on the 'dole, and shitting everywhere. They're not friendly, and they don't appreciate the food. They just expect it and keep on trashing their surroundings.
Reminds me of what would happen with the BiG idea.

BIG won't work long anyway. That HDTV or cell phone you want is likely made by a guy in China. You want to give him little green pieces of paper, which could be used for what, exactly? You don't make anything he wants. A farmer is going to bust his rear to feed you? Your faith is touching, but rest assured, the politicians will eat, even if you don't.

Welcome to the third world, kids. As the people learned under communism, "they pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work."

Okay, agreed government is far too intrusive and controlling but that roads bit was nothing but paranoid as hell. Is anarchy being suggested then? Government is the lesser of those two evils. And schools necessary if we don't want to wind up with thieves and beggars from the nation's poor. Let's not blame or punish kids for their parents.

This BIG thing is insane unless it has the caveat of work attached. However, one thing needs to be looked at. Figuring out where the jobs of the future will be and educating the kids for them instead of the jobs of the past that are largely being replaced by technology. Yes, this includes that sacred cow farming.

Luj, your neice is adorable. Every right to be a proud uncle.

Agreed, luj - what a cutie patootie. So you can keep, er ... using spellcheck.

I think that if parents can't afford to provide for the needs of their children (including education), they shouldn't be having children in the first place. However, it happens, and no, muggle, we should not punish kids for the idiocy of their parents.

But we don't have to have the government running the schools, just to have programs that help poor people pay for it. Something along the lines of vouchers would be the best way to go. We have food stamps without government-run grocery stores, after all, so nobody has to starve. And there's nothing saying the vouchers would have to exist at the federal level, either.

Agreed, PJ. If we had as many schools as grocery chains. The only other options in many places are soley religious. Where I am the only private schools are religious and military. There's no guarantee vouchers would open up secular private schools though, hopefully, this would be the case.

this is one reason that sensible people are offended that the President now wants to speak directly to schoolchildren. He has no business doing so.

I hope these same people were offended when Republican presidents like Reagan did so but I am nearly certain that was not the case. How can people be offended by the President offering an anodyne but positive message about the benefits of working hard and learning shit?

It wasn't the idea of the president speaking to children, Whatever.

It was the pre-speech "activities" that were "suggested" by the Department of Education.

Like having the children write letters to themselves in which they make specific promises about how they will help the President. Then collecting them and handing them back later to assess how well the children have lived up to their promises.

Some schools were also intending to (or already had) show that insipid video of a pile of leftist celebrities pledging "allegiance to my President, Barack Obama"

It's not the idea of the president addressing the people that rankles. It's the idea that the president IS America that rankles.

You'd do well to get more context before spouting. You won't get that from the New York Slime.

(in other news, if you only got your info from the traditional media, you still don't know WHY Van Jones resigned).

Like having the children write letters to themselves in which they make specific promises about how they will help the President. Then collecting them and handing them back later to assess how well the children have lived up to their promises.

Yep, these activities sound nefarious.:

Create posters of their goals. Posters could be formatted in quadrants, puzzle pieces, or trails marked with the following labels: personal, academic, community, and country. Each area could be labeled with three steps for achieving goals in that area. It might make sense to focus first on personal and academic goals so that community and country goals can be more readily created.

Write letters to themselves about how they can achieve their short-term and long-term education goals. Teachers would collect and redistribute these letters at an appropriate later date to enable students to monitor their progress.

God help us all! The dimmocrat president is going to talk to kids about things like setting goals, having persistence, being responsible and the importance of education in achieving goals. Whatever shall we do? It's Marxist indoctrination! I mean, at least when Reagan spoke to children he certainly didn't use the opportunity to push his policies. Right?

if you only got your info from the traditional media, you still don't know WHY Van Jones resigned

Van Jones signed some 9/11 Truther petition (the left's birther equivalent during the Bush administration).