Who Thinks Like This?

[UPDATE] 2:

Just looking at the comments I'm ... well, stunned. I simply don't understand people whose default position seems to be a fear that all of our nation's problems will be solved by calling in the law. Aren't you people the ones telling us the free hand of the market solves everything? Why do you assume the American people will call in the National Guard to fix every problem like, for example, a shortage of rural doctors? Why wouldn't your default position be that we'd reach for market-based solutions and incentives (which is what we've done?) Or perhaps reach for other government solutions, such as funding doctor recruitment programs at the National Health Services Corps? I mean, it's like your worldview is so narrow, you can only imagine the government as having a narrow police state enforcement function.

Again: what the fuck is wrong with you people?
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[UPDATE]:

The headline says it all: Health Insurers Making Record Profits as Many Postpone Care. Yes Libertarians, please run on how health care is not a "right" and health insurance is completely necessary.

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Rand Paul is a nutwagon. Via Digby, who transcribed his rant equating healthcare with slavery:

With regard to the idea of whether you have a right to health care, you have realize what that implies. It’s not an abstraction. I’m a physician. That means you have a right to come to my house and conscript me. It means you believe in slavery. It means that you’re going to enslave not only me, but the janitor at my hospital, the person who cleans my office, the assistants who work in my office, the nurses.

Basically, once you imply a belief in a right to someone’s services — do you have a right to plumbing? Do you have a right to water? Do you have right to food? — you’re basically saying you believe in slavery.

I’m a physician in your community and you say you have a right to health care. You have a right to beat down my door with the police, escort me away and force me to take care of you? That’s ultimately what the right to free health care would be.

Oh my God. Who thinks like this? Is he fucking nuts or what? No one is saying this at all. Free healthcare? Where? Where does he get this shit, from Aqua Buddha? Has someone been hitting the bong a little too hard lately?

What Rand Paul is really saying is: if you think you have a RIGHT to healthcare, that means you will FORCE ME TO TREAT YOU. You will HUNT ME DOWN and force me to be your monkey and give you glasses.

And trust me, I would not go near that guy, not if he were the last breathing optometrist or ophthalmologist or whatever the fuck brand of medicine it is he allegedly practices because swear to God the guy is crazy and I don’t want crazy treating me for anything. Dude you are the last physician I'd want touching me, I promise you. So put down the crack pipe, dude, and chillax. No one is forcing you to do anything.

Who the hell thinks this way?

You know what my problem with Libertarians is? They’re a bunch of whiny babies. Whaaaah! Because someone, somewhere, feels they should be allowed to access our healthcare system at the same fair price as everyone else without some insurance company flunky telling them they can’t, suddenly it’s all about Rand Paul being oppressed! His freedom has been infringed upon and the jackbooted liberal thugs are gonna come and force him to give people glasses.

Grow the fuck up, already. People are dying because of assholes like you, folks who harp on about your precious freedoms, like the freedom not to treat someone (anyone in particular, perhaps? Hey, based on your past comments about the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it's a fair question.) Why dream up crazy-assed scenarios like the police breaking down your door forcing you to treat someone? What the hell is wrong with you? People are dying, do you even get that? That’s not an abstraction either, that’s called reality. If you don't want to do your job, fuck off, we'll find someone else who can. You're not the last physician on earth.

Get over your damn self. Jerk.

Here’s the video:

Dude You HAVE No Fire Protection

[UPDATE]:

I think there has been some misinformation out there about this story. To my knowledge, the South Fulton, TN fire department is not privatized. However, this is a very rural area, and if they are going to provide fire protection service beyond the South Fulton community out into Obion County then they charge an additional service fee. To the best of my understanding, that is how the arrangement works. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

People from metropolitan areas need to understand that rural areas do not -- can not -- maintain services out into the hinterlands. There simply is not the tax base for it. When I lived in rural Kentucky we did not have trash service, for example. You either contracted with a private company or dealt with your household waste yourself. Some people were responsible and hauled stuff to the county dump once a month. Some burned it in backyard fire pits. Some people are assholes and dump their trash by the side of the road.

Similarly, people who live in Obion County are given the option of contracting with the (public) South Fulton fire department for their fire protection or dealing with fire protection themselves.

When you live out in the sticks that's just how it is.
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Okay, I don’t mean to be flippant, but some people need to get a freaking clue:

A local neighborhood is furious after firefighters watched as an Obion County, Tennessee, home burned to the ground.

The homeowner, Gene Cranick, said he offered to pay whatever it would take for firefighters to put out the flames, but was told it was too late.  They wouldn't do anything to stop his house from burning.

Each year, Obion County residents must pay $75 if they want fire protection from the city of South Fulton.  But the Cranicks did not pay.

The mayor said if homeowners don't pay, they're out of luck.

This fire went on for hours because garden hoses just wouldn't put it out. It wasn't until that fire spread to a neighbor's property, that anyone would respond.

Turns out, the neighbor had paid the fee.

"I thought they'd come out and put it out, even if you hadn't paid your $75, but I was wrong," said Gene Cranick.

Yes, that was the point of the fee.

Because guess what: things like fire departments don’t grow on trees. You don’t just add water and *poof* fire trucks and trained firefighters and gear just magically appear. These things need to be paid for and maintained in advance. So they are there when you need them. If everyone waited for their homes to catch fire and then paid the fee, that would seriously muck up the system, wouldn’t it?

Now, I don’t for a minute think the fire department did the right thing here. Once Mr. Cranick said he’d “pay anything” they should have charged him double and some kind of extra service fee, got the cash upfront and then put out his house fire. Hopefully this would deter him and others like him from not having coverage.

Alternately, they could make having fire protection mandatory, like they’re doing with our health insurance coverage. Because if you make it optional and then people don’t have it when they need it and want it, they tend to whine a lot. People don’t like being forced to buy things, but Mr. Cranick might still have a house had he done so.

And then there’s this:

To give you an idea of just how intense the feelings got in this situation, soon after the fire department returned to the station, the Obion County Sheriff's Department said someone went there and assaulted one of the firefighters.

Well that’s lovely.

Look, people. Services don’t rain down out of the sky. There isn’t some great “fire protection” farm out there, just like there isn’t a “police protection tree” off in the hills. If you need the fire department or the police department, you have to pay for it. Here in Davidson County our property taxes pay for fire protection; rural areas operate a little differently but it’s the same principle.

As it happens, I know South Fulton fairly well. I used to live not too terribly far from there by rural Kentucky standards. It’s smack dab on the Tennessee-Kentucky state line, real boondocks country. We’re talking east of East Jesus. Other than some tiny little farm towns, there’s literally nothing but corn and soybean fields around there. There isn’t even a dang interstate for miles. You’re stuck in a vast expanse of farmland, and no fast way out.

This can have its charms, if you like this sort of thing; I’m not knocking it, I’m just saying, city services as we know them here in Nashville do not exist. I’m trying to be fair to Mr. Cranick; I can see how someone who lives out in the boonies like this might think fire protection is optional and perhaps not even very effective: by the time a fire truck arrives, your house might be completely gone anyway. But $75 doesn’t seem like too terribly much to pay just in case. And remember: your $75 pays to maintain a system that someone else will use.

I had to call the fire department once. It was around this time of year: fall, a breezy day, everything dry as straw. My neighbor’s lawn guy had something go wrong with the lawn mower and he was trying to fix it. Something happened and the mower coughed to life, tearing his thumb off and throwing sparks into the hedge separating our two houses. The hedge immediately caught fire. I happened to be outside at the time and heard the guy shout; I knew my hose wouldn’t reach and called 911. The fire department and ambulance came, put out the fire, found the guy’s thumb in the bushes, and packed him and his thumb off the hospital (by the way, can anyone tell me why whenever you call for an ambulance a fire truck automatically comes too?).

So as they were packing up I was chatting with one of the firefighters in my neighbor's driveway. This was right before the 2000 election and he pointed to my Gore/Lieberman campaign sign and joked, “now, if that sign was in front of this house I might not have stopped the truck!”

Ha ha that’s so fucking funny I almost forgot to laugh. Well, we see where that Bush era brand of tax cutting and Libertarian “government is the enemy” politics got us: cities like Colorado City, laying off firefighters, police officers, shutting libraries, etc.

Last week NPR talked about the national shuttering of fire stations because of budget cuts. This is irresponsible anywhere; in California -- wildfire country -- it’s insane. It's true that Gene Cranick chose not to have his fire protection, but aren't the people of these other communities really making the same choice, by not funding their fire departments? Of course they are.

This will break your heart:

That's just what led to a tragedy in San Diego earlier this summer, when relatives brought a choking 2-year-old to the fire station down their block. The station was closed that day for budget reasons. It took 9 1/2 minutes for a paramedic to arrive. The boy did not survive.

Since when did public safety become a luxury? I just don’t get it. Since when did people in San Jose or San Diego become like Tennessee’s Gene Cranick, deciding these services aren’t worth paying for until they need them?

I’m trying to get a handle on this idea that we don’t want to pay for crucial services that we aren’t personally using, like the fire department and police department or schools. Is it part of a growing national selfishness? Is it part of a national spirit or recklessness? Some delusional belief that bad stuff will never happen to us, and if it happens to someone else, so what?

I suspect it's something else. I think we've always had the "why should my money pay for so-and-so's X, Y or Z" crowd out there, but that argument used to be countered by sane people who could explain exactly why. Somehow there's a lack of rational voices stepping up at city council meetings and in the op-ed pages of their local newspaper to say hell no you can't cut the fire department budget, this stuff's important! Public safety matters! I mean how crazy is it that we've had nearly 10 years of constant fear porn about how the terrorists are wanting to kill us all yet from coast to coast we're slashing our first responders? Does this make sense to anyone?

It doesn't make sense to me.

Saturday Book Review

Quite possibly the best most on-target book review I’ve ever read: What I Think About Atlas Shrugged.

That said, it’s a totally ridiculous book which can be summed up as Sociopathic idealized nerds collapse society because they don’t get enough hugs.

I mean, there’s tons more awesomeness in there, but I just read that and had to share it. Because damn it’s true. Once you say that you pretty much have said it all.

But what the hell, let’s go on:

All of this is fine, if one recognizes that the idealized world Ayn Rand has created to facilitate her wishful theorizing has no more logical connection to our real one than a world in which an author has imagined humanity ruled by intelligent cups of yogurt. This is most obviously revealed by the fact that in Ayn Rand’s world, a man who self-righteously instigates the collapse of society, thereby inevitably killing millions if not billions of people, is portrayed as a messiah figure rather than as a genocidal prick, which is what he’d be anywhere else. Yes, he’s a genocidal prick with excellent engineering skills. Good for him. He’s still a genocidal prick. Indeed, if John Galt were portrayed as an intelligent cup of yogurt rather than poured into human form, this would be obvious. Oh my god, that cup of yogurt wants to kill most of humanity to make a philosophical point! Somebody eat him quick! And that would be that.

You know, I saw one of those ridiculous “Who Is John Galt?” bumper stickers the other day and I just thought, oh you poor dears. Is the right so desperate for a hero that they must latch on to a narcissistic couch potato whose best idea for revenge on the world is to quite literally do nothing? (Okay, I confess, I haven’t read Atlas Shrugged in about 20 years and it kind of runs together in my head with The Fountainhead but near as I can recall that’s the basic premise ...)

Anyway, I remember feeling the same as John Scalzi did after reading both books: they're entertaining, fast-paced reads but completely fantasy based, morally suspect and certainly not the basis for a political movement in any reality-based world.

Can't wait for the movie though -- unless it suffers the same fate as the "Red Dawn" remake.

Colorado Springs: Christian Libertarian Paradise

It’s hard to imagine a city more conservative than Colorado Springs. This is the home of Focus on the Family, Pastor Ted Haggard’s New Life Church, and (at least for the time being) the John Jay Institute. You don’t get more right-wing than Colorado Springs.

Naturally these folks don’t like taxes, even voting down a proposed tax increase to fund city services last year. And as expected, the city has made severe cuts to services like trash pick-up in parks, bus service, police protection, even deactivated nearly 9,000 city streetlights. Private groups have ponied up money to keep fountains running in some parks:

So a local swim club has taken over some of the pools. Volunteers pick up trash in parks. Some — meaning those who can afford it — pay extra to turn on the streetlights in front of their own houses.

The Springs, as locals call it, is a city in transition, a grand experiment in what might happen if a government really does hold the line on taxes — as some citizens demand — and starts curtailing services. No one knows what will result as government shrinks and citizens take up the slack.

Will wealthy neighborhoods thrive, while poor areas decline further? Will crime rise as cops go missing? Will charity transform Colorado Springs into a libertarian paradise?

Or will it be a colossal flop?

I think I know the answer. It seems to me we’ve been down this road before, many times. It seems to me that Americans are really, really bad at remembering their history. Will charity transform Colorado Springs into a libertarian paradise? Charity has never, ever been able to shoulder the burden of providing public services, not equitably and not over the long haul. For hundreds of years charity was supposed to do this and there’s a damn good reason we stopped relying on charity: it didn’t work. There’s not enough. It ends up being inequitable. Wealthy neighborhoods get the goodies, poor neighborhoods do not.

Wealthy people don’t bear the brunt of these cuts, the poor do:

"I was working up north in a little diner, and I had to quit because of the bus," said Joseph Williams, 18, while waiting for a Mountain Metro last week.

Added fellow passenger Rashad Lindon, 20: "There are times I have to work late, and I have to put $20 in people's gas tanks to get around. It's a pain — from having to pay $1.75, to paying $35 for a taxi, or getting somebody to pick me up."

Next, safety may become a concern. The city fire department is down 20 firefighters this year; the police department has 42 fewer cops on the streets. For both fire and police, there are no classes of recruits in training, which is unusual.

"In the last year and a half, we went from being a proactive, problem-solving to a reactive police department, to where we only go when we are called," said Pete Tomitsch, president of the Colorado Springs Police Protective Association.

"There is a lot of frustration within the department. There is a whole slew of calls we don't respond to that a year and a half ago we did."

In Libertarian Paradise, the wealthy always do well. Getting around town is never a problem because you own a car, and insurance, and mobility opens you to opportunity. The wealthy can hire private security companies to patrol their gated communities. They don’t need to go to the public swimming pool because they have private swimming pools, either at the country club or in their backyard. They can pay to have the streetlights turned on Privilege Drive whereas someone on Unfortunate Avenue cannot. Relying on charity creates Separate and very, very Unequal:

Not every neighborhood in the city, though, is streetlight- stingy. Nor is every median brown, or each park without trash cans.

So far, about 900 lights have been "adopted" by Colorado Springs residents — a fee was paid, and the light was turned back on.

In some cases, services can be restored through volunteer labor. Residents adopted more than 100 trash cans in parks by agreeing to empty them.

But which parks and which community centers will stay active? That depends on where individuals or groups are willing to step up. And private enterprise means higher fees.

Three public pools formerly run by the city are now operated by Colorado Springs Swim School, a private swim club that agreed to take on a five-year contract. Rates have gone up. Family admission at Wilson Ranch pool, for example, has vaulted from $10.50 to $20.

The swim club's efforts are surely community-minded.

"We just couldn't let it happen," said Tina Dessart, the owner of the swim school. "Our focus has been learn to swim for a long, long time. When pools shut down, drownings increase."

But the escalating costs for residents, along with other aspects of the budget cutting, are unfair, said City Councilwoman Jan Martin, who grew up in Colorado Springs.

"These medians and parks that are being adopted are in wealthy neighborhoods," she said. "We are seeing the creation of a community of haves and have nots."

Nobody could have anticipated that!

Somalia, Libertarian Paradise!

And now you have cholera! Take that, evil socialism!

If Housepets Were Libertarians

I can't remember which smart leftie blogger first posted this, or I'd give a hat-tip.

I admit I get far too much pleasure out of poking fun at Libertarians than I should. They mean well, they really do, and some of their ideas are appealing, but the most rabid of the bunch are completely devoid of any sense of humor or irony. It's as if all of history has conspired to prove the "free hand of the market" completely wrong, yet they happily march along clutching their copies of "Atlas Shrugged" as if a 50-year-old piece of fiction is somehow more real than the world around them.

Most of the Libertarians I know are just conservatives too embarassed by the GOP to call themselves Republicans these days, anyway. But I'm sure this will earn me plenty of angry comments, which is fine, since I am having my same ISP troubles and can't access them anyway.

So, flame away, dear Libertarians. And everyone else, enjoy:

The End Of Libertarianism

Yesterday Slate asked: did the financial collapse kill Libertarianism?

God, I hope so.

Let’s face it, most Libertarians these days are really just Republicans embarrassed by the social conservatives who have hijacked their party. At least, that describes most of the Libertarians I know. These are people who seem almost apologetic about their political views, qualifying their position with “I’m really more of a Libertarian”--in other words, a Republican who likes to screw, smoke pot, gamble and doesn’t need to be in church three days a week.

Slate’s Jacob Weisberg writes:

Utopians of the right, libertarians are just as convinced that their ideas have yet to be tried, and that they would work beautifully if we could only just have a do-over of human history. Like all true ideologues, they find a way to interpret mounting evidence of error as proof that they were right all along.

To which the rest of us can only respond, Haven't you people done enough harm already?

Amen to that. I find Libertarians especially tiresome in that regard. We really have never tried a truly market-driven economy, blabbedy blah. Yeah, well, there’s a reason for that. There’s simply no such thing, it’s a total fantasy. The free hand of the market is a myth because it will always be controlled by the system that created it: human greed.

Anyway, Weisberg concedes that there’s plenty of blame to go around, but he calls out former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan, former Senate banking committee chair (and McCain adivsor) Phil Gramm, and SEC chairman Christopher Cox for causing the global economy to spiral down the drain. And, says Weisberg, they’re all either actual Libertarians (as in Greenspan’s case) or enacted disastrous Libertarian policies which got us into this mess:

Blame Greenspan for making the case that the exploding trade in derivatives was a benign way of hedging against risk. Blame Gramm for making sure derivatives weren't covered by the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, a bill he shepherded through Congress in 2000. Blame Cox for championing Bush's policy of "voluntary" regulation of investment banks at the SEC.

Cox and Gramm, in particular, are often accused of being in the pocket of the securities industry. That's not entirely fair; these men took the hands-off positions they did because of their political philosophy, which holds that markets are always right and governments always wrong to interfere.

By the way, let me point my finger and hold my gut while laughing uproariously at Republicans now spouting mealy-mouthed “now is not the time to place blame” dodges, before they slouch off to a corner to suck their thumbs.

Ever notice how it’s never time for the blame game when it’s primarily their fault?

I do agree that Democrats could have been more forceful in demanding oversight and regulations. Flush with cash and greed, they were drugged by the “let the markets run free and unfettered across the land” opium the Libertarians were selling, too.

Hey, people, “Atlas Shrugged” is fiction. As a writer, let me tell you something I know about fiction: you can always make the story turn out the way you want.

Sheesh.

Anyway, because of the failure of Libertarianism, we may be getting a nice little dose of Socialism in this country. But if we had to give some socialist ideas a try, I sure as hell wish it were socialized medicine, not nationalized banks. I don’t need a piece of a bank. I do need healthcare.

Oh, The Irony

Memo to all the folks furiously hammering their “Vote Ron Paul” and “Who Is Ron Paul” signs to every public utility pole and every square inch of public right-of-way in Davidson County: let me point out that if Libertarians had their way, you would be trespassing, because there would BE no public utility or public right of way under a Libertarian world view. Someone would own that grassy corner or utility pole and it is they, not you, who would have the say-so over the messages posted on their land.

That is all.

You Might Be A Libertarian If ...

There are a lot of folks out there calling themselves “Libertarians” these days. I hate to break it to you, but most of you are idiots.

The majority of you Libertarian converts have no freaking clue what Libertarians actually believe. All you know is that they aren’t Democrats, they aren’t Republicans, and they seem to have this thing against taxes. A lot of new Libertarians were recently Republicans, until the Republican Party got hijacked by a bunch of crazy Bible thumpers. Before that, I daresay a lot of you were Democrats, before the Democrats became a bunch of spineless wimps scared of their own shadows.

Face it, you just want a political affiliation that doesn’t embarrass you, right? Admit it, you know I’m right.

Well, before you fill out that Libertarian Party membership card, let’s take a look at the official Libertarian Party platform, shall we?

• Freedom of Speech. Personally, I love freedom of speech, but I also believe in limits. For example, I don’t think we should have televised executions, or let young children watch XXX porn. I don’t think we should publish blueprints of nuclear power plants on the internet, or tell people how to bypass Secret Service security measures to assassinate the president.

Libertarians don’t agree. Libertarians also believe in “full market ownership” of the airwaves and abolishing the FCC. That means anyone with a bucketload of money--say, Rupert Murdoch--could own all the media in this country and broadcast whatever he felt like. Sorta like Pravda, without the government (Or, in the case of Murdoch, with the government.) Bye-bye dissent, unless you can find someone with another bucketload of money to build you a radio station. If all of this sounds good to you, then you might be a Libertarian.

• Freedom of Religion. Libertarians believe in strict separation of church and state. No problem there. They “defend the rights of individuals to engage in (or abstain from) any religious activities that do not violate the rights of others.” This all sounds great on paper. Now, if you believe that Scientology, the Moonies, or even Pastafarians should be classified as a religion, then you may be a Libertarian.

• Property Rights. If you don’t believe in building codes, zoning ordinances, resource management like protecting the watershed or air quality, National Parks, State Parks, public parks like Centennial, public ballfields, levees and dams, public boat ramps, etc., then you may be a Libertarian. If you like the idea of paying a steep fee to put your canoe in at the Harpeth, to hike the trails at Warner Parks, or to picnic at Centennial, you may be a Libertarian. There’s a decidedly feudal principle at work here, this whole “all publicly owned infrastructures including dams and parks shall be returned to private ownership” thing. Don’t forget, we had revolutions over such things.

• Right To Privacy. True, the Libertarian platform emphatically opposes the government’s use of any kind of covert surveillance or snooping on citizens. They also oppose random sobriety checkpoints on holiday weekends. They also oppose any kind of government-issued identification: passports, Social Security cards, voter registration cards, etc. I can’t imagine how people are supposed to travel out of the country without a passport, or how elections are supposed to be managed without voter registration cards.

• Right To Bear Arms. No restrictions. None. Honey, is that Nike missile in your backyard, or are you just happy to see me?

• Conscription. An all-volunteer military service, with no Selective Service registration. In fact, the Selective Service System will be abolished and all records destroyed. I guess if a foreign army lands on American soil, we can all just aim our personal tanks and nuclear missiles in the right direction and fire away. Yee haw.

• Sexuality & Gender. Libertarians call for the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act, the Defense Dept.’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, “one man, one woman” marriage laws, etc. This sounds great on paper but I wonder how many “New Libertarians” are willing to take this to its next logical place: legalized polygamy, polyandry, marriages to pets and trees, etc. Just wondering.

• War On Drugs. It’s over! And the drugs won! If you believe in the legalization of marijuana, heroin, meth, cocaine, etc., and if you believe that all drug offenders should be pardoned and released from jail, then you might be a Libertarian. Also, if you think that children should be allowed to purchase these things, alcohol, and tobacco, you are definitely a Libertarian.

• Immigration. Give us your tired, your hungry, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Seriously, they mean it.

I’m sure some of this sounds good to a lot of us. But I don’t think the majority of self-professed “Libertarians” agree with half of this claptrap.