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 RivenSkull wrote:

Just Imagine:

2 Month limit on campaigning, a month to be able to vote at your town hall/post office, and a set holiday for voting to round up the remaining votes. Compulsory may be pushing it, but ensuring that more than 35% of people actually show up would be a plus.

Here's an even better option: install a voting booth at every major grocery store or even at gas stations, where all you have to do is swipe your driver's license (or other approved ID) to activate it. Everybody has to go to the grocery store or gas station sometimes, right? That would eliminate the inconvenience of going out of your way to wherever the voting station is. Just think, even outside of election times, such machines could still be used to allow people to vote on various policies to give the politicians an idea of what's going on.

6 bills the GOP should pass: Column

From pot to crony capitalism, here are suggestions for the Republican-controlled Congress.

So Republicans have taken back the Senate and in January will control both houses of Congress. That brings them to the question posed by a famous political book: You won — Now what?

The problem for Republicans is that because they do not have a veto-proof majority, they can pass bills but can't get them past President Obama. It doesn't mean that they're doomed to futility. They can pass three kinds of bills: those Obama will want to sign; those he won't want to sign but will have to; and those he'll veto, but where a veto is unpopular. With that in mind, I have six suggestions for the new GOP-controlled Congress:

1 End the federally imposed 21-year-old drinking age. The limit was dreamed up in the 1980s as a bit of political posturing by then-secretary of Transportation Elizabeth Dole. It has been a disaster. College drinking hasn't been reduced; it has just moved out of bars and into dorm rooms, fraternities/sororities and house parties. The result has been a boom in alcohol problems on campus. While drunken driving has declined, it was declining before the age was raised and has declined just as fast in Canada, where the drinking age is 18 or 19 depending on the province.

As John McCardell, vice chancellor of the University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn., writes, "If you infantilize someone, do not be surprised when infantile behavior — like binge drinking — results." Easing pressure on states to raise their own drinking ages is consistent with GOP ideals. Obama hasn't been hot on lowering the drinking age, but it's hard to imagine him vetoing this.

2 Decriminalize marijuana at the federal level. Many states have legalized marijuana, but it remains illegal under federal law. That's bound to change sooner or later — and the GOP might as well get ahead of it. Would Obama veto it? Doubtful.

3 Repeal the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This awful law passed in the Clinton era is a giveaway to the entertainment industry. It places major burdens on Internet and computer users and electronic innovators. In fact, we should reform copyright law in general: A 28-year term was good enough when America was new; double that would be fair enough now as opposed to the nearly perpetual duration copyrights enjoy today. Shorter copyrights would encourage Hollywood and the music industry to produce new material, instead of endlessly recycling old stuff.

Bonus for Republicans: The entertainment industries hate them, so this would be a species of payback. Would Obama veto this, protecting fat-cat industry types who were his own big contributors? Probably, but it wouldn't look good.

4 Make birth-control pills available over the counter. Cory Gardner made this a part of his winning platform in Colorado's Senate race. Let women choose. If Obama vetoed this, Republicans could accuse him of waging "war on women."

5 End public-sector employee unions. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker eliminated dues-withholding for public employee unions in his state. The unions were so angry that they organized a recall campaign against him. They lost. They then tried to recall a Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who upheld his action. They lost. They then tried to beat Walker in last week's election. They lost again.

President Franklin Roosevelt opposed public employee unions because he thought that people whose salaries came from the taxpayers shouldn't have the right to collectively bargain against citizens whose taxes were being collected by force, and that collective bargaining by public employees was a conflict of interest. He was right. Obama would veto this, but his veto would be highly unpopular and set up an issue for 2016.

6 Institute a "revolving door" surtax on those who make more in post-government employment. Leave a Treasury job making $150,000 a year to take one in private industry paying $750,000, and you'll pay 50% surtax on the $600,000 difference. Most of the increased pay is based on knowledge and connections you got while on Uncle Sam's dime, so why shouldn't Uncle Sam get a share? An Obama veto would be unpopular.

These are my suggestions, and they look like easy point-scorers for the GOP Congress, with the added advantage that they're the right thing to do. Plus, passing them, and watching the reaction, would be fun. At this point, I think we all deserve a little fun.

This!

Especially #6.

Number 6 is rather vague. What about someone who worked a $150,000 government job, then went on to work for $750,000 a year in a completely unrelated field that has nothing to do with their former government work? Does it apply to the privates making $20,000 a year who leaves the Marines and then gets a job worth 60k? #6 strikes me as rather radical hypocrisy for a party that demands we not tax the rich (unless you got rich by some specific arbitrary standard*). That would not end well for Repubs. It's stupid, and too easy to turn around in their faces.

The rest of that list is actually okay by me, though the Reps are never going to back #4. It would be smart, but they'll never do it. I'm also not sure #5 is accurate. Yeah, that might fly in Wisconsin, but it's Wisconsin. That would go over very very badly in key battle ground states like Virginia, PA, and Florida. I question if a veto on that would be as unpopular as the author wants to believe nationwide.

*I fail to see how someone who got rich via government connections they've collected over their lives is somehow less worthy of being rich than someone born into a six figure hedge fund, or you know, people who got rich via non-government connections they've collected over their lives. Granted, I'm all for taxing the rich, but deciding one guy making 700k deserves to be taxed more more than another making 700k over something so arbitrary smacks of a distasteful double standard.

Number 6 is a bad idea. You are literally punishing someone for serving their country.

 LordofHats wrote:
Number 6 is rather vague. What about someone who worked a $150,000 government job, then went on to work for $750,000 a year in a completely unrelated field that has nothing to do with their former government work? Does it apply to the privates making $20,000 a year who leaves the Marines and then gets a job worth 60k? #6 strikes me as rather radical hypocrisy for a party that demands we not tax the rich (unless you got rich by some specific arbitrary standard*). That would not end well for Repubs. It's stupid, and too easy to turn around in their faces.

The rest of that list is actually okay by me, though the Reps are never going to back #4. It would be smart, but they'll never do it. I'm also not sure #5 is accurate. Yeah, that might fly in Wisconsin, but it's Wisconsin. That would go over very very badly in key battle ground states like Virginia, PA, and Florida. I question if a veto on that would be as unpopular as the author wants to believe nationwide.

*I fail to see how someone who got rich via government connections they've collected over their lives is somehow less worthy of being rich than someone born into a six figure hedge fund, or you know, people who got rich via non-government connections they've collected over their lives.

I definitely take it as being one based solely on "insider knowledge" I mean, your Marine Private who makes 20k a year, gets a security job with "blackwater" or someone like it making 60k isn't using insider knowledge. He's using his trained skills.

A Colonel who was the military "head" of a major project, such as the Apache Longbow project. He retires from the army, and gets a job at whatever company it is that makes/ does RnD for the Apache has insider knowledge. Of course, anyone who's had a DoD "ethics" briefing knows that that is unethical, and shouldn't be done (but we all kind of know does happen)

 Grey Templar wrote:
Number 6 is a bad idea. You are literally punishing someone for serving their country.

Okay... then, remember that when someone complains about what CEO earns.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

I definitely take it as being one based solely on "insider knowledge" I mean, your Marine Private who makes 20k a year, gets a security job with "blackwater" or someone like it making 60k isn't using insider knowledge. He's using his trained skills.

A Colonel who was the military "head" of a major project, such as the Apache Longbow project. He retires from the army, and gets a job at whatever company it is that makes/ does RnD for the Apache has insider knowledge. Of course, anyone who's had a DoD "ethics" briefing knows that that is unethical, and shouldn't be done (but we all kind of know does happen)

Yeah... what you said.

Well I don't give 2 figs about what any CEO earns.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
I definitely take it as being one based solely on "insider knowledge" I mean,

Most people in the business world have insider knowledge. Ever wonder why companies in the same industry have a tendency to play musical chairs with the same set of executives? Raging that a government employee makes money, then goes on to make more money, has nothing to do with insider knowledge. It's just raging that someone did what everyone in the business world does. Use connections gained in one business deal to move up into their next business deal. Except in that previous business deal they got tax dollars as salary, so now you demand they pay the tax payers back with interest, only the interest never runs out.

That was mostly a good wishlist that isn't going to happen at all.What you are going to see:

Many, many bills to defund the ACA. These will be vetoed. This process will be repeated over and over again.

New federal restrictions on abortion, or attempts to do the same.

A laughably unpassable budget that dramatically slashes social programs, keeps the military where it is or increases it, has no hope of being signed, and is intended solely for use as a thin veneer of making an effort - "well, we proposed a budget! Why won't the president work with us?"

In other words, 2 years of stupidity and shenanigans, just as the American public wanted.

 Ouze wrote:
That was mostly a good wishlist that isn't going to happen at all.What you are going to see:

Many, many bills to defund the ACA. These will be vetoed. This process will be repeated over and over again.

Yup.

Or... better yet, if the Subsidy is ruled by the SC to only cover State Exchange. The gak will hit the fan.

New federal restrictions on abortion, or attempts to do the same.

Doubt it.

A laughably unpassable budget that dramatically slashes social programs, keeps the military where it is or increases it, has no hope of being signed, and is intended solely for use as a thin veneer of making an effort - "well, we proposed a budget! Why won't the president work with us?"

We'll see... eh? Seems like you've already made up your mind.

In other words, 2 years of stupidity and shenanigans, just as the American public wanted.

Precisely

 whembly wrote:
We'll see... eh? Seems like you've already made up your mind.

It could also be that Ouze can read and can add 2+2.

 Ahtman wrote:

 whembly wrote:
We'll see... eh? Seems like you've already made up your mind.

It could also be that Ouze can read and can add 2+2.

Read what exactly? There's no proposal yet.

Sounds rough for you guys

I doubt it will be as bad as what's happening in oz though

the government here is basically dismantling everything the country has been working towards since its inception until the next election

 whembly wrote:

Ahtman wrote:It could also be that Ouze can read and can add 2+2.

Read what exactly?

What has been said and done in the past.

I'm OK with #1 if they also raise the minimum driving age to 18 (or more precisely threaten the states into doing so like they did originally to get 16) Like how the UK does it (IIRC). To put it simply, 95% of 16-17 y.o. do not need to drive, and (IIRC) there was thing thing they did in NJ that proved that the number crashes went down when drivers started at 18. Obviously with some sort of grandfathering.

 mitch_rifle wrote:
Sounds rough for you guys

I doubt it will be as bad as what's happening in oz though

the government here is basically dismantling everything the country has been working towards since its inception until the next election

Yeah, that's one of the reasons the founding fathers built our government the way we did. It's effectively impossible to get anything major done, ever. It's not a bug, it's a feature.

See... this is why we can't have honest debates... especially regarding Obamacare...

In a newly surfaced video, one of Obamacare’s architects admits a “lack of transparency” helped the Obama administration and congressional Democrats pass the Affordable Care Act. The conservative group American Commitment posted Jonathan Gruber’s remarks, reportedly from an Oct. 17, 2013, event, on YouTube.

“Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage,” says the MIT economist who helped write Obamacare. “And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass.”

Translation: It's okay that we lied to you about this... because we know how to run your life better than you do.

 Bromsy wrote:

 mitch_rifle wrote:
Sounds rough for you guys

I doubt it will be as bad as what's happening in oz though

the government here is basically dismantling everything the country has been working towards since its inception until the next election

Yeah, that's one of the reasons the founding fathers built our government the way we did. It's effectively impossible to get anything major done, ever. It's not a bug, it's a feature.

The difference is, the founding fathers actually understand the meaning of the word compromise, and were able to do so.

 whembly wrote:

Translation: It's okay that we lied to you about this... because we know how to run your life better than you do.

When did lying come into Gruber's argument?

I also find it amusing that a video which ostensibly is about the absence of transparency began in the middle of its subject's sentence.

 dogma wrote:

 whembly wrote:

Translation: It's okay that we lied to you about this... because we know how to run your life better than you do.

When did lying come into Gruber's argument?

You mean Gruber's speak-o incident?

 whembly wrote:

You mean Gruber's speak-o incident?

No? That isn't even related to the first video.

Please answer the question.

 dogma wrote:

 whembly wrote:

You mean Gruber's speak-o incident?

No? That isn't even related to the first video.

Please answer the question.

He admits in that clip that the text of Obamacare was deliberately written in a "tortured" way to conceal the fact that the mandate was in fact a tax, because if it were perceived (accurately) as a tax, the American public would not have abided it.

He also admits the law was written in order to hide from the public the fact that the whole point of Obamacare is a forced subsidy from the healthy to the sick... ie a tax.

He's obviously proud of this. He says that given the choice between transparency and no Obamacare, on one hand, and deception and Obamacare, on the other, he'd choose the latter every time.

Translation AGAIN: It's okay that we lied to you about this... because we know how to run your life better than you do.

EDIT: I just saw this:
The original video that contained Gruber’s comments was deleted from YouTube on Monday morning.

Um, hey, University of Pennsylvania: Pulling the Gruber video now really doesn't help your cause. http://t.co/KoW7Kx2WLb

— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) November 10, 2014

 whembly wrote:

He admits in that clip that the text of Obamacare was deliberately written in a "tortured" way to conceal the fact that the mandate was in fact a tax, because if it were perceived (accurately) as a tax, the American public would not have abided it.

No he doesn't.

He does say that the bill was written in a "tortured" way so that CBO wouldn't "...score the mandate as taxes...", and that if CBO did score the mandate as a tax the bill would die. I know it may be shocking, but perception is important in politics, and admitting as much is not bad.

 whembly wrote:

He also admits the law was written in order to hide from the public the fact that the whole point of Obamacare is a forced subsidy from the healthy to the sick... ie a tax.

No, that isn't at all what was said. He said that a law explicitly requiring healthy people to subsidize the sick would not have passed.

 whembly wrote:

He's obviously proud of this. He says that given the choice between transparency and no Obamacare, on one hand, and deception and Obamacare, on the other, he'd choose the latter every time.

No he isn't, he explicitly states that it is a "...second best argument..." while expressing a preference for his fellow panelist's opinion; whatever that may be.

Dude... how do you NOT get dizzy from all this spin?

He admitted that "the stupid American public" has to be lied to in order to get them to do the "progressive" right thing.

And he's proud of lying to the public in this way! At least he provided one of the most honest assessment of the process that produced the bill he both helped create and advocated.

 agnosto wrote:


Look, I know nothing I can type here will make you think that the tax payer's money is being put to good use; you've already made up your mind that every federal agency is the devil. Let me put it to you this way. Education is currently massively underfunded by states across the country. Some states like Kansas and Oklahoma think it's a better idea to give rich people tax breaks than fund the education of their children which is why Oklahoma has cut education spending 23% since 2008 and teachers in the state are the lowest paid in the region. So, yeah, leave it all up to states, I'm sure they'll make great decisions on education. Meanwhile, US students continue to perform poorly compared to their peers in other countries with national education systems and proper supportive educational mechanisms. I've taught in the US, Japan and S. Korea and I bet you can guess which two countries had the better educational systems and adequate funding for schools....a hint is that neither begins with a "U". You can compare education to the US of 200 years ago or even 50 years ago all you like but every other country has progressed since then, why shouldn't we? Oh, conservative values, yeah, those will really make our work force more competitive in a global market... Federal education funding has been around since the ESEA was first founded under Johnson's War on Poverty in 1965.

The states seem to be really good at funding education, huh?

Local and state governments are much more responsive to the will of the people and cognizant of the actual conditions in the school system. The state legislature, governor, school boards, school superintendents, principals, PTAs, etc. are all much better suited to determine the needs of the schools than the federal govt. Do you really think that Congress, collectively, has a better grasp on what should be happening inside public schools in Oklahoma than Oklahomans? The students and faculty in public schools in Okla are only known to Congress in the aggregate, as nameless, faceless statistics. You get one vote for your congressional rep who is outnumbered by the rest of the Okla delegation and that delegation is outnumbered by delegations from larger states like California. You are of little importance to your representative who is in turn of little importance in regards to how federal education money is doled out. Why would you want people thousands of miles away who don't know you, your kids, or your schools interfering with how they are run?

You're right the DoE is only about 4% of the federal budget, which strengthens my point that it's a waste of time and money. The federal govt is only spending 4% of their budget on the DoE and only a fraction of that 4% is spent on K-12 education. I could be wrong but I believe they spend a bulk fo their funding on student loans for college (parting the cart before the horse but hey, that's govt). And that fraction of 4% that's spent on K-12 education is dispersed to all 50 states so Okla is getting a fraction of a fraction of 4%. Clearly Congress really cares about Okla public schools (sarcasm). Is the money that does flow from the federal govt to K-12 public schools in Okla targeted in such a way as to maximize the benefit to students' learning? No, because it literally takes an Act of Congress to authorize the funding and specify how it's spent so you only get big one size fits all solutions even if in some (or most or all) instances they're not very beneficial at all because that's what you can get past a vote in Congress. That doesn't strike me as a good recipe for fixing schools.

You don't have to convince me that states aren't great at allocating education spending. My sister in law teaches special ed in a public school here in NC, she's woefully underpaid, I know I see her W-2s when I help her file her taxes. There's only two must have ingredients for schools, teachers and buildings and somehow the state manages to fail to priortize either in a budget. And this isn't a politcal party issue, both parties are more devoted to pandering than problem solving. A few years ago the state passed legislation so they could run a lottery for the benefit of schools, it's even officially called the Education Lottery. The state spends millions of dollars on marketing, adminstration and prize money so that about $0.25 of every dollar can be split up amongst various education and other funds. So to get a ludicrous amount of like $0.05 of every dollar for school refurbishment or new construction the state spends millions and only people dumb enough to buy lottery tickets have to foot the bill. It would make so much more sense to just take $5 from everybody who files a state income tax return every year for 5 years and have a nice pile of money to spend on fixing up existing school buildings or constructing new ones. Then in another decade or two when they're due for another facelift collect another short term specific tax. That seems smarter than spending millions trying to entice people to gamble their money away so that schools can earn pennies from every dollar.

Even with all that I still want education budgets to be controlled on the local and state level. That's where people can have an impact. My wife volunteers to help in class at our kids' school, we buy stuff for the class that's on the teacher's wish list, we participate in school fundraisers, we vote in every election and do our best to be informed in local races and we've made friends with the parents of our kids' friends and the only time we really discuss politics with them is when it's regarding our kids and their education which is something we all care about. It's much easier for me to inform other parents about school board elections, county elections, state legislator elections etc. Most of the time they're not terribly well informed themselves so all I need to do is say Well I'm voting for X because... and that gives them a reason to pick a name out on the ballot and that's really all the encouragement they need. It's much harder to have an impact on a federal campaign and it's much harder for anyone I send to Congress to have much of an impact.

I think we likely agree on a lot of the problems hampering public schools and our primary differences lie in the solutions we believe in. I care about my kids and their schools that's why I don't wand Congress messing with them.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 agnosto wrote:

 whembly wrote:

 Easy E wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
The DoE was created under Carter in 1979 and officially started working several months later in May of 1980. Reagan promised to abolish the DoE during his campaign but never actually did it once he was in office. Reagan was a mixed bag, he did a good job of selling conservative priniciples to the public and sometimes he governed in concert with them but there were plenty of instances where he compromised or violated conservative principles. Depending on where you fall on the political spectrum you can find various aspects of Reagan's terms to like or dislike.

Conservativism can not fail. It can only be failed.

I would like to hear how decentralizing education will help us improve the overall education process? I mean, how would we hold anyone accountable without centralized, annual testing!

Because the "one-size-fits-all" mantra in Federal Education policies is asinine.

To be fair, that's a result of No Child Left Behind, that concept didn't exist under previous iterations of the ESEA.

No Child Left Behind is a new creation yes, but it's the perfect illustration of how the Feds screw up their "help." Parents want better schools for their kids, so in order to tap into that issue to help win elections, politicians come up with programs like NCLB. Parents want to know their kids are getting a good education so politicians offer to help them out by tying annual standardized testing to federal school funds. That lets politicians use the federal funding as an enticement to keep voters sending them back to DC and it lets parents push off the burden of taking the time and effort of being actively involved with their kids' school to Congress and belive that their kids are getting the education they need as long as enough students are passing their annual tests. Since funding is tied to performance teachers need to teach to the test to help kids pass. Instead of teaching the lesson plans they want they need to carve out time for test prep. This leads to politicians dictating class time activities rather than the professional educators who have spent years learning various methodologies and practices to make teaching effective and learning enjoyable. It also puts young children in the position of having to spend hours sitting in silence filling out multiple choice tests that cover months of lessons which is stressful, not a particularly accurate way to gauge student retention and teacher performance and has the effect of reducing the funding for schools that struggle the most which makes it harder to improve results in following years. To tie funding to test performance but not have a voucher system to allow parents to remove kids from failing schools is just cruel, if the govt is going to label a school as bad why should parents have to send their kids there? How can a bad school attract good teachers to help improve performance? That's the kind of gak that Congress does when it tries to "solve" problems that it is inherently incapable of solving.

 whembly wrote:

Dude... how do you NOT get dizzy from all this spin?

What spin? All I've done is eliminate yours.

 whembly wrote:

He admitted that "the stupid American public" has to be lied to in order to get them to do the "progressive" right thing.

Why are you presenting "stupid American public" as something Gruber said?

 dogma wrote:

 whembly wrote:

He admitted that "the stupid American public" has to be lied to in order to get them to do the "progressive" right thing.

Why are you presenting "stupid American public" as something Gruber said?

That tells me that you didn't watch that youtube video.

I'm done here.

 dogma wrote:

 whembly wrote:

Dude... how do you NOT get dizzy from all this spin?

What spin? All I've done is eliminate yours.

 whembly wrote:

He admitted that "the stupid American public" has to be lied to in order to get them to do the "progressive" right thing.

Why are you presenting "stupid American public" as something Gruber said?

In the first Gruber youtube video posted Gruber clearly states that lack of transparency helps Congress pass legislation and that lack of transparency can also be called "the stupidity of the American public" he says it during the 30-37 second mark of the video. Now, IMHO, it would have been more truthful for him phrase it as the ignorance of the American public rather than the stupidity, it's not a matter of intelligence it's a matter of what is known vs unknown. Gruber clearly states that it's easy to pass legislation that does specific things that would be unpopular with the American people if you make sure that the American people are kept from knowing about the the unpopular functions of the legislation. That's an obvious endorsement of politicians deliberately deceiving the electorate to gain their misguided support.

 whembly wrote:
Translation AGAIN: It's okay that we lied to you about this... because we know how to run your life better than you do.

Sorry, you pushed one of my berzerk buttons, I'm going to have to rant now. Before I start I'll just mention that I don't think the lying to the public part is defensible, so please don't claim that's what I'm saying.

Why is it so damn inconceivable that the public might not know what is best for themselves? We regularly laugh at anti-vaccine people at this forum for disagreeing with with the medical consensus, but somehow the idea that someone might know something about you that you don't is dismissed without an explanation, as though it'd be self-explanatory why that isn't the case. in my experience, it's often seen (although not here on Dakka) as "are you suggesting that I don't know what's best for my child?!?!?!!" or something similar and it absolutely drives me nuts. It doesn't matter how awesome you think you are or how well you "know yourself", a doctor is with almost certainly going to be a LOT better at saving you from HIV-ebola-flu than you yourself are (assuming you're not a doctor yourself). Dismissing the notion that someone else might know better than you out of hand is sloppy and isn't actually backed up by anything other than zealous individualism and extreme anti-authoritarianism.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 whembly wrote:
Translation AGAIN: It's okay that we lied to you about this... because we know how to run your life better than you do.

Sorry, you pushed one of my berzerk buttons, I'm going to have to rant now. Before I start I'll just mention that I don't think the lying to the public part is defensible, so please don't claim that's what I'm saying.

Understood.

Why is it so damn inconceivable that the public might not know what is best for themselves?

Because we shouldn't always TRUST the gubmint!

We regularly laugh at anti-vaccine people at this forum for disagreeing with with the medical consensus, but somehow the idea that someone might know something about you that you don't is dismissed without an explanation, as though it'd be self-explanatory why that isn't the case. in my experience, it's often seen (although not here on Dakka) as "are you suggesting that I don't know what's best for my child?!?!?!!" or something similar and it absolutely drives me nuts. It doesn't matter how awesome you think you are or how well you "know yourself", a doctor is with almost certainly going to be a LOT better at saving you from HIV-ebola-flu than you yourself are (assuming you're not a doctor yourself). Dismissing the notion that someone else might know better than you out of hand is sloppy and isn't actually backed up by anything other than zealous individualism and extreme anti-authoritarianism.

fething government entities DON'T know what's best for MY healthcare.

Simple as that.