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Tom Knapp: ‘What individuals should do’

Posted by Tom Knapp at Kn@ppster:


[Note: This is part of an informal “what X should do” series about ObamaCare; I’ve previously posted on “what President Obama should do” and “what the insurance companies should do”]

To quote Nancy Reagan, “just say no”.

Specifically, just say no to this:

[U]nder my plan, individuals will be required to carry basic health insurance — just as most states require you to carry auto insurance. Likewise — likewise, businesses will be required to either offer their workers health care, or chip in to help cover the cost of their workers. There will be a hardship waiver for those individuals who still can’t afford coverage, and 95 percent of all small businesses, because of their size and narrow profit margin, would be exempt from these requirements. But we can’t have large businesses and individuals who can afford coverage game the system by avoiding responsibility to themselves or their employees. Improving our health care system only works if everybody does their part.

To forestall immediate descent into partisan Obama bashing, a brief digression: Obama cribbed the “individual mandate” described above from “conservative” Republican Mitt Romney, who signed it into law as governor of Massachusetts and then bragged about / defended it (rather than vetoing it as he did eight other provisions of the law, including an “employer mandate” similar to the one described above) in 2006. So please … don’t try to turn this into a “left/right” thing.

The insurance companies are drooling over this, of course, and their water carriers in Congress from both major parties will support it (while quietly gutting the “unicorns and ice cream for everyone” restrictions on pre-existing condition refusal, payment caps, etc.) if they can get away with supporting it.

So, the first thing to do is let your congresscritter know that (s)he can’t get away with supporting it.

The second thing? Obey little, resist much.

It just so happens that I am, at this particular moment, insured. And while I’m glad, at this particular moment, to be insured (I have dental coverage, and that coverage is saving me about $1200 on the mass extraction/denture procedure I’m getting ready for — for those who have been following the saga, I got the molds made last week and should get the teeth yanked some time in the two to four weeks), I’ve lived a good part of my life without insurance.

If the proposal described in President Obama’s speech is passed and signed into law, I’ll be returning to uninsured status ASAP — and giving anyone who comes calling to collect a fine a close-up look at my middle finger when I hold out my hands for them to put the cuffs on.

Anyone who’s in a position to do likewise, should.

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25 Comments

  1. click here October 9, 2009

    We loved the site, really loved it!

  2. paulie September 19, 2009

    corporatized “liberals” in Washington will and are trying to create their own police state, despite a lack of resources, power and even any ideological motive to do such a thing.

    The “liberal” and “conservative” cryptofascists have the power and resources, and power is its own ideology so the excuses are being worked on continuously regardless of who is in which office.

  3. Thomas L. Knapp September 19, 2009

    scatterbrain,

    If you want to make a point about my “lack of integrity,” you might want to start by making a point about my lack of integrity.

    So far, what I’ve seen from you is a) that you don’t think we live in a police state, and b) that you think I do think that we live in a police state. I don’t see that a difference of opinion on the matter constitutes lack of integrity on anyone’s part.

    FWIW, yes, I do believe that we live in a police state of sorts . I began believing that at a time when “liberals” weren’t in charge in Washington.

  4. scatterbrain September 19, 2009

    Everyone seems to be ignoring my original point about Knapp’s lack of integrity and going off on police state tangents.

    Anyway, to be honest, I’m more corcerned about the fact that some people believe the idea that those weak, corporatized “liberals” in Washington will and are trying to create their own police state, despite a lack of resources, power and even any ideological motive to do such a thing.

  5. paulie September 17, 2009

    Brian , YOU dont live in a police-state but I sure do .I could lose everything including my kids for something that should never be a crime and is peaceful . I worry about that every day , everywhere I go and in everything I do . thats reality for millions of Americans.

    True, but to be fair I haven’t disappeared yet for writing these words. Yet. How much longer?

    The “legal” mechanisms are in place. The precedent set. Camps allegedly being constructed and contingency plans being mapped out. The census next year is supposed to GPS every household. ETC.

  6. paulie September 17, 2009

    @17 How so? Leftists don’t complain about the slide to a police state?

  7. libertariangirl September 17, 2009

    Brian , YOU dont live in a police-state but I sure do .I could lose everything including my kids for something that should never be a crime and is peaceful . I worry about that every day , everywhere I go and in everything I do . thats reality for millions of Americans.

  8. libertariangirl September 17, 2009

    to me the worst aspect of the police state isnt even anything concrete , its the constant fear and intimidation.I am soooooooo tired of being piss-pants scared over a traffic stop cause ive got a joint in my purse. its enuf to make ya stay at home most of the time
    and the added alienation from the most of the rest of society when youve been arrested and jailed , its monumenatal .
    what about the threats of having your kids stolen because you smoke herb , what about fostering a snitch culture , yada and so on

    all those things are huge by-products of the police-state . But mostly the fear , its immobilizing sometimes .

    But Brian would never understand that , cause he’s in an ivory tower and law-abiding to a fault , im sure.

  9. scatterbrain September 17, 2009

    I like starting off trends; I’ll do it more often…

    Knapp, I still question your integrity; if you want to “rebel” against government that’s fine, in fact, my anti-authoritarian learnings encourage that spirit(you little scamp!), but I can’t help but attack your use of language, and the motivations and ideology behind that language, as bitter and generically right-wing as that as say Americas’s prime on-air arseholes such as Glenn Beck, or Michael Savage.

  10. paulie September 17, 2009

    Brian, you don’t have to tell me how bad the drug war is. I was caught up in it as a teen and almost died many times, and I’ve been fighting against it for over 20 years. Before I was an LP member, it was the single issue that I worked on the most by far.

    But is it the only police state problem we have? No. Police states consist of a lot more than incarceration.

    For instance, I can no longer get on a commercial flight or Amtrak, or leave the country by any means and come back. This is because of new rules in the “war on terror” that A) made getting a new ID more difficult and B) made it a requirement for any of those things. So now that my ID is expired and can’t be renewed, I am stuck in US and riding the greyhound bus.

    And of course I’ve been stopped, questioned, detained, harassed, frisked, etc., more times than I can count. The vast majority of those times involved no incarceration, but they add to a police state atmosphere of intimidation. This has all gotten much worse since 9/11, although the wars on drugs and migrants are behind a lot of this as well.

    Some other things that don’t involve incarceration that are elements of a police state:

    Being videotaped all over the place while out and about.

    Having your email and phone calls monitored.

    On those two counts, the “war on terror” is just as much or more to blame than the “war on drugs.”

    Being held indefinitely, without outside communication, legal representation or charges. That one is thanks to the terror war.

    Being tortured while in custody. That happens in the drug war, but at least the regime does not try to justify and legalize it – that’s all thanks to the terror war.

    Having your dog shot by cops. That one usually has the proximate cause of the drug war, but much of the extra paramilitary weapons and training, recent combat experience, bad attitude and piles of extra funds going to police departments are due to the terror war.

    Having your stuff destroyed or confiscated by cops. See last item.

    Having your life destroyed after you get out of jail. Sure, a felony record, trauma from prison rape, etc., destroy the lives of many people caught up in the drug war. But what happens to people caught up in the sex war can be even worse. Quoting from the same article again:

    If our children happen to be released then the real torture begins. They are branded by the cruel laws that opportunistic politicians imposed to satisfy fearful voters. First, the child will be photographed. His or her photo will be published for the world to see, much like the poor boy above. The government hit lists, called sex offender registries, will tell any would-be vigilante where to find this child. The address will be given, if the child is lucky enough to be able to live at home, and not institutionalized.

    The sex offender laws will kick in and are guaranteed to destroy any ambition your child may have for success. Any attempts to better themselves, or become productive members of your community, will be throttled by these laws. Every road they try to pursue will become a dead end. It may be impossible for them to finish school. Any job they seek will require them to reveal their “sex offender” status to their employer. Any curious neighbor can find out the “crime” that was committed, though not the circumstances. Years down the road, this child, now an adult, will be listed as someone who committed lewd acts on a child. People will imagine an adult raping a child, not two children playing doctor.

    Each time the child moves the police will help him feel welcomed by handing out fliers to the neighbors warning them that a “sex offender” is now living nearby. Rocks thrown through windows can be mild compared to some welcomes that are given. One young man in Maine, opened his door to be executed on the spot, by a stranger. His crime was that he, as a teen, had sex with his girlfriend. In puritanical America that is enough to make him a sex offender. For that he was murdered with his mother only a few feet away. In jurisdiction after jurisdiction this “offender” will find that most of the community is zoned off limits to him. He can’t live too close to a school, too close to a park, too close to a bus stop, too close to…., the list is almost endless and growing all the time.

    Every so often he will be required to visit the police and report to them. They may show up at his home anytime they want and demand to inspect it. He could be banned from social networking websites, or from the Internet completely.

    If you child grows up to have a family, a normal relationship will be forbidden. He may well be banned from all activities at his children’s school. They may be in a play; he won’t be allowed to watch it. If the kids play on a sport’s team, their father won’t be allowed to attend. Ditto for Little League. Forget having friends over for a birthday party. Dad is a pariah until he dies and his children, and his wife, will be forced to endure the torture with him.

    The lucky ones barely manage to hold on. Those who are not so lucky simply end their lives. Others have the option of suicide robbed from them by vigilantes. They quickly learn to give up ambitions and dreams. To excel in life is not possible. To merely survive is hard enough. And some, robbed of all normality, robbed of all hope, mentally and emotionally raped by the state, decide they may as well become the monsters that they are imagined to be.

    It takes so little for this happen to a child. A girl in school has oral sex with a boy in school. She becomes a sex offender for the rest of her life. Streaking a school event, as a practical joke, becomes a sex crime in the new America. Two kids “moon” a passerby and are incarcerated in jail as sex offenders, where they may well learn a lesson or two about rape. A teenager, who takes a sexy of photo of him, or herself, is paraded around the community as a “child pornographer” for the rest of his or her life. Two kids in the back seat of a car have fumbling sex. The law says one is an offender because the other is a “victim.” One week later, a birthday passes, and it is no longer a crime. One week’s difference and a life is ruined. In other cases an act that is legal on Monday is illegal on Tuesday because the older of the two turned one year older. That becomes enough to qualify him, or her, as an offender.

    These laws are not so much protecting children from predators as they are turning them into predators. Look at this chart. Individuals who are legally defined as sex offenders. When you look at the ages of the offenders you see that 14-year-olds are apparently the most sexually dangerous group in America. The rate declines from there, but throughout adolescence the law is far more likely to deem kids as offenders. You may imagine the dirty old man down the street. But with age people are less likely to “offend”. One reason is that they are more mature. But another reason is clear. Once you reach a certain age, having sex with people your own age is normally not considered a crime. The explosion of “youthful sex offenders” is not the result of our kids becoming perverts. It is the result of the law criminalizing what is a normal part of growing up.

    These kids are criminals, not necessarily because they violated the life, liberty or property of another person. They are criminals because the politicians defined them as criminals. These damned “family values” conservatives, and compassionate feminist Leftists, who banded together to “save the children,” turned America’s kids into sex offenders by fiat. And they feel good about it. They are satisfied by it and only wish more had been rounded up earlier. The Left wants everyone in therapy and under the perpetual care of the state, and the Right wants everyone in prison, or in fear of the law, and under the thumb of the police. And that is what is happening.

    http://freestudents.blogspot.com/2009/09/there-is-fury-and-and-sadness-inside.html

    So to sum up, there are many more aspects to police states that we are experiencing than just incarceration, and many more excuses than only the “war on drugs.”

  11. Brian Holtz September 17, 2009

    In terms of person-years of unjust incarceration, I’d wager that the war on drugs is at least two orders of magnitude — i.e. 100 times — worse than all the other problems you’ve mentioned combined. There are hundreds of thousands of people doing time for victimless drug crimes. How many people do you think are doing time for consensual teenage sex? Care to give us an integer answer?

    And again, my thesis is about trends. To refute it, you can’t just say “X sucks in 2009”. You have to offer evidence that X was better in previous decades, and reasons to believe that X will be even worse in coming decades.

  12. paulie September 17, 2009

    Brian, there are afar more people in prison, jail, on parole and probation than there were several decades ago. There are way more police cameras, police stops, SWAT raids, stop-and-frisks, checkpoints, run a makes, etc so on.

    Gestapo is all I could think of every time I went through US customs. And now that I can’t afford the regime permission slip to leave this country anymore, I am thinking of it more and more.

    And before anyone says anything, yes, I have been all over the world and seen real police states in action.

    You might think differently about whether you live in a “police state” if you were a black kept from voting,

    As more and more are due to the criminal injustice system, which includes but is not limited to the drug war.


    or a teenager needing an illegal abortion,

    How about a teenager facing a life of sex offender status as a result of concensual sex between teens? See link in comment 9.


    or a demonstrator jailed for burning a flag, or a poker dealer busted for running an underground game.

    Arrests at demonstrations are commonplace these days. In fact if you are walking through the area unaware that there is a demonstration going on you may get stomped by a horse or whacked by a police baton. It has happened to people I know and almost happened to me.

    And yes, there are still raids of underground poker games going and a new crackdown on internet gambling (not very effective, but nevertheless real).

  13. Brian Holtz September 16, 2009

    Conviction rates obviously involve selection effects, and a snapshot of current rates is not evidence for or against a trend. I’m curious what conviction rate you would take to be optimal.

    You might think differently about whether you live in a “police state” if you were a black kept from voting, or a wife whose rape by her husband was legal, or a gay convicted of sodomy, or a teenager needing an illegal abortion, or a demonstrator jailed for burning a flag, or a poker dealer busted for running an underground game. So yes, I take “police state” to broadly implicate any police-enforced restrictions on our personal/civil liberties. A narrow definition of “police state” would only involve restrictions on dissent and exit, and America is very free on that score.

    The positive trend in criminal procedure to which I refer involves Miranda rights, exclusionary rules, probable cause, capital punishment, cruel and unusual punishment, jury selection, assistance of counsel, juvenile justice, justice for the mentally impaired, discovery rules, etc. For details, see the long list of court decisions e.g. here, most of which advanced civil liberties.

    We’re a long way from my libertopia, but to proclaim in public using your real name that we live in a “police state” is simply self-refuting.

  14. Thomas L. Knapp September 16, 2009

    “The long-term trends on racism, civil rights, divorce rights, sexual freedom, reproductive freedom, gay rights, criminal procedure, free expression, gambling are all positive.”

    None of which, except for criminal procedure, has any bearing on whether or not a state is a police state.

    I’m not sure what it is you consider “positive” about the trend in criminal procedure.

    The last time I looked at the statistics, 98.x% of charges resulted in “convictions,” and only 6.x% of those were the result of trial by jury. The other 92% were plea bargains — and I have seen at first hand the tactics prosecutors use to make those happen.

    Anyone believes that 98.x% of those charged with crimes are guilty of those crimes should say so. After they take the crack pipe out of their mouth, that is.

  15. Who's Thumbing Who? September 16, 2009

    Must be my imagination. All those police cameras, robocops, ID checkpoints, corrections corporations. Yep, I’m just having a nightmare. Somebody wake me up.

  16. Brian Holtz September 16, 2009

    Repeating “gestapo” over and over doesn’t make it so. “War on terror” and migration complaints are nothing compared to the drug war. The long-term trends on racism, civil rights, divorce rights, sexual freedom, reproductive freedom, gay rights, criminal procedure, free expression, gambling are all positive.

  17. paulie September 16, 2009

    The drug war is the outlier.

    Au contraire. The migration gestapo, the homeland security apparatus/”terror war”, etc., are no outlier. 100,000 SWAT raids a year, 2 million in jails and prisons and several million more on parole and probation, the TSA, and it just goes on and gets worse no matter who is in office.

  18. libertariangirl September 16, 2009

    and incidentally more people were arrested for weed during the Clinton Administration than the Bush one.

  19. libertariangirl September 16, 2009

    the police state isnt around the corner
    Its here , no propaganda , no paranoia just facts.
    No other Nation on earth has ever imprisoned a higher % of its own people . we ARE the worlds leading jailer , this is predominantly because of unjust drug laws . and on and on , you know the spiel .

  20. paulie September 16, 2009

    paranoid, partisan, acting like the police state is just around the corner; left-libertarian my arse!

    I’m not only a left-libertarian, but a former radical leftist in the standard modern US sense. I seem to recall many of us being concerned with a police state being just around the corner during the Reagan and Bush I administrations, and I saw much of the same among leftists during the W years – and fully agreed with them. Little on that score has changed in my evolution from leftist to libertarian to left-libertarian, except that I now see an equal police state danger from regimes such as those of Clinton and Obama.

  21. Thomas L. Knapp September 16, 2009

    scatterbrain,

    The “individual mandate” described by Obama, according to a Washington Post article I read this morning, calls for a fine of $750-$950 to be imposed on anyone who declines to purchase insurance coverage.

    I won’t buy the coverage, and I won’t pay the fine.

    Are you suggesting that people who a) break the law and b) refuse to pay a fine are not carted off to jail in the US?

    As far as “partisanship” is concerned, well, yes, I am a partisan Libertarian. As I point out in the post, the “individual mandate” was actually a Republican idea; Obama’s just riffing on it in a different key.

  22. scatterbrain September 16, 2009

    “If the proposal described in President Obama’s speech is passed and signed into law, I’ll be returning to uninsured status ASAP — and giving anyone who comes calling to collect a fine a close-up look at my middle finger when I hold out my hands for them to put the cuffs on.”

    Knapp, you really are no better than the common teabagger; paranoid, partisan, acting like the police state is just around the corner; left-libertarian my arse!

  23. Aroundtheblockafewtimes September 16, 2009

    I’m fine with that, but the “free rider” problem must be answered. How about it be handled like the Amish do with social security – you someday need it but have agreed not to take it?
    In other words, no insurance then no obligation for hospitals and other health care providers to give you anything. Put up a letter of credit before treatment or depend on charity. Those who sob (and there are a lot of them in America) about people dying in the emergency room parking lot can start giving their charity contributions to hospitals instead of non-life prolonging stuff like the ballet, kids soccer league, art galleries, “toothbrushes for our troops,” etc.

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