Klarinet Archive - Posting 000618.txt from 2004/07

From: "Ken Wolman" <kwolman@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] Political Rant - do not open if you are offended
Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2004 13:54:25 -0400

Lelia Loban wrote:

>>Walter, take a break and rest up or maybe seek help.>
>
> The classic retort of the demagogue who can't come up with a well-reasoned
> argument: Bluster that someone who disagrees with you must be mentally ill.
> Charming.

No comment required.

> The
> drug industry does its best to grab the news media by the gonads, too.
> Ever notice what a high percentage of the ads on the network and cable news
> programs are drug ads?

EVERY radio station in New York and New Jersey: "Cialis! Are you
ready?" No, I'm not, because I have the 17-year-old wood nymph,
remember? Or did she tell me she's a dryad?...oh well, I can faun on
her anyway.

> (When I finally left the hospital for good, the excellent
> surgeon, who knew I was a horror movie critic, put on his best leering "mad
> doctor" face and said, "I wish I could autopsy you to figure out why you're
> still alive.")

Lelia, you were too nice. I'd have sued him for every dime his
grandchildren might ever have, just to make his life miserable. What a
swine.

For every story of inappropriately huge jury awards for
> medical malpractice, I suspect there are many more untold horror stories
> like mine: I never sued anybody, because once I got my life back, I refused
> to waste the rest of it on obsessing over the trauma in court.

I don't blame you, but what if you ever get called to sit on a jury
where you were asked to render a judgment on malpractice? A lot of
really bad stuff might resurface. Malpractice awards are a direct
result of the open jury system which is becoming increasingly despised
in this country. It's why lawyers for MDs love to settle out of court.
Malpractice wasn't invented by "liberals" and it's the main reason
that these some people are screaming for tort reform--to protect their
buddies and sugar-daddies in the medical and pharma industries. It's
the reason my "primary care physician" tries to prescribe $30 brand name
drugs to me until I learned to insist on $10 generics: he gets expense
paid dinners and trips from drug companies. Sadly the ethical doctors
tend to suffer along with those less ethical. But that's what the
medical profession gets for not cleaning up its own house first--so you
get a managed-care system that has become farcically expensive. If a
case goes to trial, a lot of jurors award the plaintiff a huge amount of
money as a form of communal revenge against what they perceive
(sometimes rightly?) as a medical establishment that is structured to
screw them, or already has.

For the rest of your posting...Lelia, you are my hero, plain and simple,
and I'll say it loudly enough for Tom Ridge to hear me.

The lack of "right" to health insurance is the kind of putzerei I have
heard from guys like Limbaugh and Hannity. Die instead? Take two
aspirin for your cancer and call yourself in the morning? Sure,
Limbaugh had the money to load himself full of oxycontin and percocet.
Not all of us are that lucky:-). Suggesting that health care for the
citizenry is a right, not something tied to a job (I am extremely
fortunate this way) strikes me as perfectly sensible, as part of a
government's obligation. How, after all, can the government expect to
have a healthy population to fight its fraudulent wars if there isn't
universal healthcare to keep everyone feeling well? (Gee, maybe I
should run for Congress)

Schlock merchants like WalMart (setting aside their "clarinets") get
people to work under those vile conditions because there is nothing else
out there. An economic recovery where there are no real jobs and where
health insurance costs keep rising...where is the money going?
"Productivity is up"--sure it is when you're terrified of losing your
own job and when you're doing the job of three departed colleagues.
Places like WalMart pay benefits, but only if you're one of the handful
hired to work full-time, i.e., 30+ hours a week. Home Depot, by
comparison, pays badly too going in but every job comes with a benefits
package, and there is in fact room for advancement, i.e., they train you
to do something.

What is the declared Constitutional obligation of the Federal
government?--to protect us from foreign threats. Well, based on what
occurred 34 months ago in New York and DC, they did a great job of that,
didn't they...about as good as military intelligence did in December
1941 when they didn't see a Japanese fleet crossing 6,000 miles of the
Pacific. All the other stuff...Social Security, Federal loans to
college students, Medicaid, Medicare, etc., etc., are all New Deal or
Great Society "overlays." Fund the arts? There's been a vocal group in
DC for years that wants to do away with groups like the NEA and NEH
because of men like Andres Serrano and the late Robert Mapplethorpe.
Perhaps that SHOULD be done by private patrons and sponsors--but I
haven't seen a Medici or Borgia wandering around lately with a bag of
ducats. And by the way...what was Medici or Borgia patronage of a
painter or musician but a form of government subsidy?

Did you ever think of all the kinky things you can do with a clarinet?

Is this the only nation where medical care for all is NOT viewed as a
justified entitlement? Oh, you can probably name a couple of others but
I wonder if I'd want to go visit. Technology does not equal access does
not equal benefit of technology. What part of that do these people in
Congress not understand? All of it.

Instead of looking hard at real reforms in medical care and insurance,
job training, seed money for new businesses, income redistribution
(dirty words!), combatting instead of exploiting terrorism, the
government in DC and some states focuses on frippery: a marriage
amendment. I don't care what you think of gay/lesbians getting married,
that is a primarily religious issue, but I DO care about time being
spent on silliness like a marriage amendment when the country is
disintegrating. How do we live with our own increasing cynicism even
toward our own citizens?--reportedly, the prison guards at Abu Ghraib
were selected on the basis that they're "hillbillies" (this was actually
supposed to have been said by a government official) who were so stupid
they would do the obscene things they did because someone higher up told
them that's how to behave. I don't see Rummy or Cheney taking the fall
for what happened then, just Lindy England and her brothers in arms who
were probably living in so much terror that no behavior seemed to
ghastly. But she'll be dishonorably discharged while Dick Cheney maybe
goes back to Blair House.

Once again, Lelia nailed it. Listen to the radio commentators.
Dissenter equals traitor. We question, ergo we are treasonous or at
least our status as Americans is besmirched and called into question.
Fine, call me names.

If someone comes back and suggests I'm proposing perpetuation of the
welfare state, you got that right. I am. Nothing like saying it all.
The only thing of which I can stand accused is going off-topic.

Ken
--
Kenneth Wolman
Proposal Development Department
Room SW334
Sarnoff Corporation
609-734-2538

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