$ jlc (10,301)

Once again, thank you for a providing a small oasis in the day.

Jan

Thank you, dino.

Jan

You might want to read the actual text of the law before you comment. I have exercised self-control and not Pasted the entire text of the new law here, but for your ease of access, here is the first clause. (The rest may be found at: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill...

48.

Animal crushing
(a)

Offenses
(1)

Crushing

It shall be unlawful for any person to purposely engage in animal crushing in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce or within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States.
(2)

Creation of animal crush videos

It shall be unlawful for any person to knowingly create an animal crush video, if—
(A)

the person intends or has reason to know that the animal crush video will be distributed in, or using a means or facility of, interstate or foreign commerce; or
(B)

the animal crush video is distributed in, or using a means or facility of, interstate or foreign commerce.
(3)

Distribution of animal crush videos

It shall be unlawful for any person to knowingly sell, market, advertise, exchange, or distribute an animal crush video in, or using a means or facility of, interstate or foreign commer

It will be interesting to see what you say when we do not keep interrupting you with our comments and jokes...:>)

Jan

Bought it.

Jan

I would agree with 'they do not want to'. There is nothing implausible about calculating how much they would need to charge for a procedure in order to maintain the burden of non-payers. Upcharging for aspirin is not the right way to do this.

Every one who sells something has the problem of needing to increase base prices in order to compensate for non-payers and problem-children. It can be done, and it would benefit the patients, but it requires Change...the dreaded Change!

Jan

You really need to have some concept of 'healthcare as a right' in a civilized society. Let's say that a poorly-dressed, dirty person is found passed out on the sidewalk. What do you do? Well, you take her to the hospital and treat her.

Is this pro-bono healthcare? Not really, because that dirty poorly dressed person is hypothetically 'me'. Maybe I was replacing a fence on my property (hence poorly dressed and dirty) and I have to make a trip to Home Depot to get something I inevitably forgot or ran out of. I do not feel well, step out of my car (leaving my purse behind), stagger a couple of steps and then pass out. I have medical insurance, but I do not have it 'on' me at the time I am found.

So, in order for me to be safe in our society, I have to endorse that hospitals take care of homeless people...because they are indistinguishable from me-building-fences.

I actually think that there should be a minimal healthcare safety net, intended for people without insurance, and I would be willing to pay for that because it would also catch me under the abovementioned circumstance.

Jan

I have helped design (train, implement, etc) medical billing software. The hospitals have leveraged the fact that they genuinely do not 'know' how much a procedure will cost, into a system of deliberately concealing even a viable estimate. For example, the same procedure, requiring the same length of hospital stay, for two patients, may result in different amounts. The diagnosis, insurance company, age, and other factors can change the reimbursement. You can estimate it ahead of time (estimate because you do not know ahead of time if there will be complications) but you have to do it for each individual patient. Or, you can do what a business does and charge a flat fee and make more profit in some cases than in others...but hospitals do not want to do that...

Jan

I tend to agree with term2 and DrZ. The sweet spot for changing healthcare is slightly offset from your question: Posting prices allows a lower granularity of consumer choice - little decisions made by individual people to meet their own needs. With obscure pricing, you are 'buying' a black box of medicine. If you know what each part costs, you at least have the ability to select what you want and where you want to go. Without the prices, you do not have that information as a tool to use.

Jan

We agree on the essentials, we are just weighting things in opposite directions.

Jan

I am only on a few lists, but I do note that those few tend to a 'throw out the baby with the bathwater' approach. If someone who has 'cooties' (political, social, religious, whatever) makes a good suggestion, they lambast it because of the source.

So, while I understand and agree with what you said, in trying to avoid doing that, I state that it is fine to praise medieval Muslim scholarship. At that time, they (and the Song dynasty in China) were the socially progressive and scientific luminaries of the planet, and they should justly get credit for it. (Now they are not; and should not.)

Jan

I do not have any problems with the first part of that statement. Muslim mathematicians - Hurrah! Muslim terrorists - blam! blam! blam!

On the other hand, our advances in space are to our credit, not theirs, obviously: dozens of countries benefited from the intellectual achievements of Muslim mathematicians and scholars...but only Russia and the US went into space.

Jan

I love the "seeing eye captain"...

I will definitely think about what you have said.

Jan

You may be on to something there: spreading out more might make a discernible change in the social environment. I am really looking forward to the changes that autodriving vehicles and low level robots will bring.

We have 2 employees who always work remotely and one who does so one day a week. Almost everyone else does 'occasionally'. But. We also have at least 3 (brilliant) employees who cannot work without someone hovering over them.

Much of my management technique is 'managing by walking around'. What I find is that very often, someone is blocked by a problem that a different person can easily solve...but the threshold of 'getting around to asking for help' is so high (need I mention that we have primarily introverts in the CA office?) that the problem will go unsolved for weeks (or months). If I wander in and ask, "So. What's goin' on?" and I find out about something like this, I then wander across the hall, "Hey Joe: Can you call [yadda yadda] and get [this information]?" Problem solved.

So here are two instances where remote work does not...work. (And do not suggest that I call these people and talk to them every day when they work remotely. I too am a mega-introvert and I would find excuses for learning Egyptian hieroglyphics rather than do this.)

I too am looking for a location out of CA to move to when/if Schuyler House no longer needs me (ie if we sell the company). I think I have found a decent, though not perfect, location...but I am still monitoring it.

Jan

I think we are talking about different things. I am not talking about the Peyton Place of current politics. I am reflecting on the comments on this thread that Californians/Liberals are carrying their ideas to other areas and infecting them.

I think that, as our society becomes more technological and people move into cities, we become (as a culture, not a political party) estranged from reality. This is what has allowed the growth of many of the liberal doctrines and is justly associated with (a) cities, (b) places like CA where much of life is virtual, (c) our increase in technology. Thus it is not so much the movement of liberals to other states that are infecting those states with liberalism but the growth of cities per se that causes a liberal environment...and people from CA move there too.

If I am correct in the above assumptions, some of which I derive from reading, then the growth of liberalism is inexorable. While, historically, I see this pattern, I do note that it applies to social rather than economic patterns. So - if the conservatives get their act together - we may have a future that includes Capitalism but your grandchildren will probably not own guns, eat meat, or think of themselves as binary gendered.

I am not saying that I want this, nor that it is the fault of one political party or another. I am suggesting that this may be an aspect of being human, as all of the cultures that develop technology seem to go through this process (admittedly, that could be imitative). If this is an accurate perception, then we must include it in any vision we have of the future.

Jan

While I agree with a substantial portion of what you said and agree that your statements are historically correct, what I said about 'one generation' is also historically correct.

I know more than one person, of my father's generation, who was beaten with a razor stop - and in one case beaten so badly that he could not go to school for 2 weeks.

My paternal grandmother called blacks Niggers and thought they should not drink at the same drinking fountain that white folks used; one of my nun teachers mentioned that there were Negros in Africa who had no souls.

I have just unearthed a Reader's Digest article from the 1970's in which a woman said that she had no use for feminism and she was delighted to be known by her husband's name and to spend her life taking care of him and the kids and have him support her financially.

There was a cock-fighting ranch in my neighborhood that was raided and thousands of roosters removed. That was just a couple of years ago.

We are not arguing whether or not Conservatives should be saddled with the sins of our forefathers (but never with their virtues, one notes). What I am pointing out is that the liberals seem fore-ordained to win on a social level.

You and I agree on the granularity of decisions and the worth of freedom. D'souza is a force that may turn aside some of the steamroller of liberal economic planning (as may we in the Gulch) but there will be 'more' and 'virtually all' of our population who are distanced from reality because they never had to get up and feed the chickens in a thunderstorm. These people will keep voting for unworkable plans. And we are a democracy.

Jan

Let me start out by reminding everyone that I am strongly conservative.

That being said, I read a lot of Steven Pinker's books, and he laments that he expects - by the end of his life - to be forced to be vegetarian because, historically, the direction that liberals move now, becomes the culture of the future.

Think about it: The ideologies of what used to be termed "Bleeding Hearts" are now what we consider to be core values of our culture: We cannot overtly despise and discriminate against Negros, and Women, and Jews. It is not OK to bait bears and have dog fights or cock fights or light cats on fire. It is illegal to beat your child with a razor strop until his back is bloody.

All of these things have changed in a single generation! All of these things were also values that 'Liberals' fought with against 'Conservatives' who were trying to keep these as revered traditional values.

I do NOT agree with the touchy-feelie modern culture in California, but I am quite aware of what history shows. We cannot deal well with the future without cognizance of the past, and so far the past shows 'we lose; they win'. If we are to change this, we must understand it.

I agree with Blarman that the liberal tendencies are linked to a technological environment that is remote from reality. In 1900, 90% of the jobs in the use were related to 'agriculture'; now it is about 2%. Most of the current generation has not had to deal with the bottom levels of Maslow's pyramid. This is going to continue. Our culture is going to become more affluent and our next generations are going to be even further removed from reality.

Is there any way we can deal with this?

Jan

I have had a similar experience with his workbook, "If You Could Hear What I Cannot Say". It is a fantastic tool that a person can use - on their own - to discover hidden motivations and perceptions.

I endorse it for anyone who is interested in self-knowledge.

Jan

In an objective sense, we have eliminated much of poverty. Our 'poor people living in shacks' are better off than the chief of a Paleolithic village. Agamemnon could not eat ice cream. The poor people of the future will live in mansions, but will still be poor relative to the rich people. It is all a question of technology.

Now, that being said, I agree with the other posts on this page about the misappropriation of our taxes.

Jan

I think that will happen. The $15 minimum wage will cause the automation of entry-level positions.

Jan

"The problem isn't with Republicans, or conservatives in general, but with the image of them broadcast repeatedly by the Democrat-media propaganda machine that tells these groups not to bother associating with them."

I agree that this is a Big part of the problem - possibly more than half. (eg I have been told by some liberal friends that I cannot possibly be a Republican because I don't belong to a born-again religion,) But I have been among Conservatives at home and in the military, and many of them are decades behind liberals socially.

Race: Almost everyone, conservative and liberal, thinks that racial profiling has no place at work or in public life. We are, as a culture, finally looking at laying this bugaboo to rest.
Gender. Many many Conservatives are still struggling with the concept that a woman should not build her identity around 'husband and family'. Women are still pressured by their families into having children, so that they can be 'happy and fulfilled'. And they mean it.
Homosexuality. Most conservatives have reluctantly come to accept that homosexuals exist, and that they may not be sick or evil. That is about the best I can say for conservatives on this point - I know a lot of gay people who have to deal with this. (One of the reasons the SCA has a lot of gays is our enthusiastic acceptance of gays, as far back as the 1970s. Now we also have Trans.)
Religion. This is humorous. I do SCA -medieval reenactment. Each person gets to chose a 'persona' from before 1650. It is difficult to tell the Episcopal minister who happens to have a 'viking' persona from the genuine neopagan who has a viking persona.

I had forgotten about the walkaway movement - thank you for reminding me, DrZ. It is wonderful and hopeful.

Jan

Your points are clearly made and perceptive, but do not address my point of minorities, gays, pagans, and strong women feeling that they cannot be Republican (or Objectivist) because they would not be accepted or welcome.
What initiated this discussion was the Democrats making a statement that would alienate anyone who was religious. If 'we' (for some value of 'we') make a point of accepting people who are religious, people who are not, people who are gay, pagan, whatever as long as they believe in freedom and responsibility then we will have a strategic advantage.
Then I looked at the comments on this very list...and realized that we had to take the beam from our eye before the mote from another's (to also quote the Bible as an agnostic).

Jan

I would try to make an insightful reply to your post, DrZ, citing outside examples...but a brief scan of just the entries on this Objectivist thread is a pretty comprehensive tour of the rejection of homosexuality and pagans.

You and I and many others have friends who are gay and/or Wiccan, but the very first post (olduglycarl) equates witchcraft with communism and, if you read down the list, you can easily see what the reception these people would get in our Gulch...and we are probably more broad minded than the Republicans are.

All of these people do not want to be 'liberals', but if the liberals are the only people who will accept them, then that is where they will go.

Objectively speaking, what does someone's religion or sexual preferences have to do with valuing freedom and responsibility? Nothing, in my mind. So why do we slander them and make sure that anyone in those categories knows not to hang out with us?

Jan

Did you make that same offer to your daughter?

Jan :>)

I agree with Thoritsu: This is wonderful news, and we need to make sure it is spread around as widely as possible. There are tons of people who value a personal or traditional link to a religion and who will be offended by this exclusionary behavior.

The problem with conservative groups is that they have been so unfriendly to gay, minority, feminist, and non-normative groups that those groups have had no alternative but to adhere to the Democratic party vote. Conservative organizations need to have a blue-collar and religious plus techie, and non-normative "ya'll come on in here" sort of attitude. The only thing that matters is whether the individual believes in freedom and responsibility.

I guess I am saying that it is nice to see the opposition say something really stupid, but we need to clean house ourselves - and then capitalize on it.

Jan