My scores:
| You are a Social Liberal (95% permissive) and an... Economic Liberal (0% permissive) You are best described as a:
You exhibit a very well-developed sense of Right and Wrong and believe in economic fairness. l Link: The Politics Test |
Please leave me a comment and let me know what you are!
Also, on my Christmas list this year, the following bumper stickers for my Volvo:
On health care issues:
I support Ron Paul, a Libertarian, because he supports a patient's right to health care freedom (give the patient options and let the patient choose), because he opposes forced vaccinations, and because he is into alternative and natural health.
I support Dennis Kucinich, a Green Democrat, because he wants a single-payer, not-for-profit national health care system.
Wouldn't it be great if we could have both?
Health care freedom and free health care for all!
BOTH candidates would like to abolish the time limits for filing a medical malpractice claim, which I completely agree with.
I will blog about this issue separately soon, as I have been through health care hell and have a lot to write about on this issue.
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DEFINITIONS:
Socialism is when the public wealth is moderately controlled by a governing body so as to make sure that there is a public trust to provide necessities to all of the people, (i.e. education, housing, food, water, health care, clothing, etc.).
Fascism is when the government is tightly in bed with the corporations and makes decisions that benefit the corporations first. It assumes that all people and corporations have the same needs and anyone who disagrees is seen as an enemy. It is also heavily nationalistic.
Capitalism allows all wealth to be owned and amassed privately and prefers that the only control applied is the actions of the market upon corporations. It provides no guarantee of necessary services to the public good.
Posts
12 comments:
I had a helluva time trying to get the html to render properly in either blogpsot comment, blogspot post, myspace comment and myspace post. I could eventually figure it out, but, hey, that kinda stuff is my job and I don't feel like working today! So here is the pertinent data:
Social Liberal: 61% permissive
Economic Moderate: 55% permissive
I'm best described as Centrist
I exhibit a very well-developed sense of Right and Wrong and believe in economic fairness.
My dot was in the white circle. If I were more extreme, it would be in the Libertarian slice.
If I were to describe myself, I'd say I lean toward social liberality and fiscal conservatism. I certainly don't want to have people starving in the streets. I also take a dim view of people cranking out kids that I have to support, when it'll be hard enough for me to help get my own daughter through college. If resources were unlimited, then I'd be all for vast government spending on social programs, but they aren't unlimited, they partially come from my pocket, and I have my own modest financial responsibilities for which I'm accountable. I'm a registered Independent, because sooner or later every political party disappoints me.
No matter how many different versions of this test I take, I always get the same thing. I guess that I am pretty radical in a sense, seeing that I always end up right up against that corner, but none of the other answers make any sense to me at all.
However, I get along just fine with anyone to the left of center.
I have no respect for the health care right. I fear health care professionals who put profit before people. And health care professionals who believe that addictions (past or present) make a person a criminal, not worthy of the finest treatments, and sometimes not worthy of treatment at all. And health care professionals who play God. And since it seems that that is now the rule, rather than the exception, it may explain why I have become so radical. To balance out the health care fascists.
I will just never believe that money is more important than life. Or people.
People who steal money are doing more time these days in prison than people who kill other people.
Doctors who kill do no jail time at all.
I'm fortunate to have a good doctor, who is a true partner in maintaining my health. He's not quick to prescribe drugs, and is respectful of information that I bring to him. When it was time for me to have my high blood pressure controlled through medication, he allowed me to pick the drug which my research led me to believe was the safest. MY HBP is controlled within normal, and I have no nasty side-effects.
On the one hand I agree with you that incompetent medical personnel should be penalized. On the other hand, I think to sue a doctor who made a human error (as long as it wasn't made out of willful neglect) for outrageous sums of money is one of the factors taking the cost of health care out of the reach of so many average people.
I agree that money is not more important than life or people. Money is an abstract representation of resources, of which there is a finite amount. If a family needs welfare, I'm all for providing it. But I'm with Jesse Jackson in saying that what they need is a hand up and not a hand out.
When it comes to people in jail, I've recently been wondering why we don't allow felons to associate with other felons when they're released from prison, but we force them to associate with each other in prison. We so often hear of convicts seeming to undergo moral conversions on death row, I think it might be more beneficial, as well as more economical, if all prisoners spend time in solitary, to reflect on their actions and to study to improve themselves in worthwile endeavors, instead of hanging out with each other trading B&E skills and other counterproductive pursuits.
Bob,
Yes, you are fortunate to have a great doctor. I got stuck with a dentist from hell who falsified my medical/dental records, making it impossible for me to get treatment. She then refused to accept or acknowledge any research information I brought her. She was without a doubt willfully negligent (falsifying records is gross malpractice).
I do agree that too many greedy people go after doctors who make HONEST mistakes, and that that is wrong. It penalizes the doctors who TRY to help. I think it is only the doctors who don't TRY to help that should be penalized.
Doctors are one of the best positions to give people a hand up when they are compassionate enough to help put sick people back on their feet. My dentist actually tried to "take me down" on the belief that "only people from the lowest walks of life" get sick. Other people can't afford to get a hand up from a doctor because they can't afford insurance.
>My dentist actually tried to "take me down" on the belief that "only people from the lowest walks of life" get sick.
That reminds me of a book I read a long time ago. It was Erewhon by Samuel Butler. In that book, criminals were treated like sick people, and sick people were treated like criminals. Eerily prescient of today's society.
Thanks! I'll get that book and read it!
Just noticed you added the Ron Paul and Kucinich health care platforms.
I must admit, everytime I hear "Ron Paul" I think of "Rupaul" and wonder "Does s/he really think s/he can get elected?" Then I realize it's "Ron Paul" and I wonder, "Does he really think he can get elected?" Hah!
Still, there is much to like of the Libertarian way of seeing things. Also, I was a member of the Green/Rainbow party for a while, and I went to one of their conventions in Worcester. I don't remember why I switched to Independent from them, as it was several years ago.
The thing with health care is that it can't be affordable and offer everything to everybody. It can't be affordable if a couple waits until they're sixty to try to have kids with procedures that costs insurance tens of thousands of dollars. For that matter, stomach stapling shouldn't be covered, either. Hey, you want to weigh less? Stop eating so much! Don't make me chip in for an operation to do something that your own will should accomplish. I feel I can say this since I used to weigh more than forty pounds than I do now, thinking it was just a natural part of the aging process. But when I started having back pain and so forth, I got more conscientious about my diet (I'm now almost completely vegetarian) and went from my high of 200 pounds to about 170 pounds about seven years ago (157 pounds this morning) and no more back pain. So health care for everyone is fine, but people who smoke, and people who are overweight should contribute more than people in the same income bracket who don't smoke and are not overweight. Just to be fair about it.
We all need health care. And it should be free. Doctors should not be able to charge us tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars for our lives (i.e., necessary heart surgery or brain surgery). It is morally wrong.
But Ron Paul is smart. He is a doctor and he knows that other than these major health care purchases, that doctors contribute to major and more minor chronic illnesses when they use TOXINS (i.e, mercury fillings, drugs, vaccines) and that our treatments for chronic illnesses is for the most part SHAM other than to REMOVE the toxins.
NO MORE putting people on the chronic health care merry-go-round of "managed care" where the sick never get better but the doctors have a steady stream of income.
The even bigger problem is that the toxins are introduced through our food. One of the several reasons I'm vegetarian is because I don't like the hormones and antibiotics that get pumped into animals that are raised for food. In some communities, their water is contaminated with hormones and other toxins from industrial discharge.
Some of the high cost of health might be reduced if there were not so many frivolous lawsuits against doctors (jacking up their malpractice insurance, and getting in the way of substantive lawsuits.) Another reason why the cost is so high is due to the high cost of getting the education to become a doctor. Where is our capitalist competition dynamic when it comes to the cost of going to college? Every year it goes up and up. Why is the cost of college not getting driven down through competition? I'm not happy about it.
Another reason is high research costs. Investment needs to be recouped so research can continue. But I have no problem chipping in to the health care pot (whether through premiums or taxes, however it gets worked out) for treating people with life-threatening emergencies. But I look around and see a lot of people who don't seem to be taking responsibility for their own health. They smoke, drink, overeat, and don't exercise. I don't like that they will require health care resources that would be better allocated to the health of children in poverty.
In Massachusetts an Independent can vote in either the Republican or Democratic primary, not both. So one is faced with more of an ethical dilemma. I like a lot of what Kucinich has to say. He does seem to be a bit naive when it comes to the existence of elements who would be happy to kill us. Despite (or, perhaps, because of, being a veteran) I have discomfort with a militaristic outlook, but I perceive the terorist threat not as a war, but as a global police effort against militaristic criminals. I'm not sure that Kucinich perceives it as I do. But you know what? It's been a while since I checked out his platform. I should go refresh my memory.
Ok, I just read his statements on terrorism and national security, and I mostly agree with him. I like what he says about the world being threatened by "global warring and global warming" and that he is "anti-militarist, not anti-military." He sounds more reasonable than I remember. I agree that increasing economic fairness can help reduce terrorism. It can't eliminate it, though. It bears to keep in mind that most of the hijackers were privileged middle-class, and that their leaders are privileged professionals. Talk about evil doctors-- consider bin Laden's deputy, who was an Egyptian doctor! There is a fascistic element to the terrorist threat which does not derive from poverty, but from their desire to impose their view on the rest of the world. That will require global law enforcement to combat. I've always been uncomfortable with our presence in Iraq as jeopardizing our relations with other countries to get the cooperation needed to thwart the global menace.
Universal healthcare is needed to restore competitiveness and entrepreneurialism to America. Right now, Americans are slipping down the scales of risk taking:
http://tinyurl.com/36qf6p
A vital ingredient to building a dynamic economy.
America's health care system is more Politburo like in its inefficiencies. The fact that the nation spends twice as much for inferior outcome ought to convince any sane person that it is a broken system. But, of course, fundamentalist neoliberals have hijacked government policy.
BUT, you are right re: the health problems. There is a real crisis brewing in the UK's NHS due to problems caused by obesity. Though the causes of a society wide obesity pandemic are very complex involving education, society, community, industrial farming, processed foods, corn syrup, etc., the very real cost of this societal breakdown are bankrupting the common wealth of the nation.
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