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Tuesday, August 25, 2009

The Public Option for Dummies
Posted by Jill | 5:02 AM
Every idiot screeching about Hitler at town hall meetings should watch this:



OK, things like police and fire fighting are done and financed at the local level, so these are probably not the best examples, though they are examples of things to which people can perhaps relate more than they can to NOAA or the Department of Agriculture. But let's go to this essay of unknown attribution titled "I Am An American Conservative Shithead" that's been winding its way through the intartoobz for more of how government-run agencies and programs benefit people every day and how ludicrous it is for people to claim they don't want any government:
This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the U.S. Department of Energy.

I then took a shower in the clean water provided by a municipal water utility.

After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC-regulated channels to see what the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like, using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

I watched this while eating my breakfast of U.S. Department of Agriculture-inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

At the appropriate time, as regulated by the U.S. Congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the U.S. Naval Observatory, I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration-approved automobile and set out to work on the roads build by the local, state, and federal Departments of Transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank.

On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the U.S. Postal Service and drop the kids off at the public school.

After spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the workplace regulations imposed by the Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health administration, enjoying another two meals which again do not kill me because of the USDA, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to my house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and Fire Marshal's inspection, and which has not been plundered of all its valuables thanks to the local police department.

And then I log on to the internet -- which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration -- and post on Freerepublic.com and Fox News forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can't do anything right.

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6 Comments:
Blogger Jayhawk said...
"On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the U.S. Postal Service and drop the kids off at the public school."

In just this week I have received statements from two medical providers referencing bills that I never received. Both also referenced bills that I did receive, and I received the statements but the bills in question, two of them each of which was sent fisst class mail, never reached my mailbox.

In one week, two items from two different places, sent via first class mail, were not delivered to me at all. They were not slow, or mangled in some way, they simply never arrived. In fact, people mailing things to me and me not receiving them is quite common.

The law requires that the US Postal Service be used. For those medical providers to send those bills by any other method would be against the law. The law gives the US Postal Service a protected monopoly, and then the US Postal Service does not deliver the mail. This is not the USPS struggling or having a problem, this is the USPS having utterly failed in its mission. Total failure.

Congress should change the law, removing the monopoly that the USPS enjoys, allowing us to use a more reliable service.
8/25/09, 10:38 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...
>This is not the USPS struggling or having a problem, this is the USPS having utterly failed in its mission. Total failure.

And managing to lose billions of dollars every year in the process.
8/25/09, 10:44 AM  
Blogger Jayhawk said...
I wouldn't care how much they lost if they got the job done. I don't require my government to make money, or be efficient, or save money, or be small, or be "pure" in any sense. I require it to properly serve its citizens.
8/25/09, 11:35 AM  
Blogger Steve said...
Well, I did not receive my endowment life policy settlement on the date it was supposed to arrive, nor had I received it over a week later. When I called the company to find out if the USPS may have lost the check, as per Jayhawk above, I found out that, oops!, they hadn't sent it yet. "So very, very, sorry" said the young voice of the US company now coming all the way from India.

As if the insurance industry isn't making enough money in premium gouging it is now engaged in the useful and profitable pursuit of check kiting.

I'm surprised that the industry hasn't been pushing online billing like banks are but that would mean electronic deposits that would work both ways. F*ck that.

Don't know where Jayhawk lives but in all the years I have being getting mail via USPS they haven't lost any of it. Did have a problem a few years ago with a log jam of mail up at a main distribution facility. They fired or forced the PM into early retirement and that cleared the clog.
8/25/09, 11:52 AM  
Blogger Jayhawk said...
"fired or forced the PM into early retirement"

About three years ago we had a carrier who was visibly high/drunk much of the time; dropped mail on the ground and left it there, pocketed coupons, read postcards, etc. Complaints were unavialing. The postmaster said the guy was retiring in about a year and it was easier to just let him retire rather than try to discipline him. He did retire on schedule. Current carrier is not visibly impaired, but mail still frequently disappears.
8/25/09, 12:59 PM  
Blogger jurassicpork said...
Bravo to Andy.
8/25/09, 4:03 PM  
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