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<div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 7:02 PM, C. G. Estabrook <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:galliher@illinois.edu">galliher@illinois.edu</a>></span> wrote:</div>
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<blockquote style="BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; PADDING-LEFT: 1ex" class="gmail_quote">Not being a liberal but a socialist, I'm not looking for an escape route. I<br>wouldn't have wanted to miss the most interesting and affecting observation on<br>
this matter that I've seen on this list. --CGE<br></blockquote>
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<div>Thanks, Carl. Now here's the rejoinder to that, so as not to leave anyone out: </div>
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<div>If you and all the other self-styled "socialists" in this town were DOERS, as Melodye and Bob suggest, rather than mere talkers, you'd be organizing a credit union, for example, and we'd all pull our money out of Chase Bank and Bank of America and pool it in our very own Socialist Credit Union, which would pay far higher returns on investment because there'd be no profit incentive for stockholders, no big executive salaries, no annual bonuses, and low administrative costs. We'd loan money to our socialist members for home mortgages, to lessen the probablility of their losing their homes to foreclosure by faraway corporate behemoths trafficking in human lives via sub-prime mortgages and credit default swaps.</div>
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<div>We could also, for example, pool our money in a health insurance pool - from each according to his ability, and to each according to his need. That's how the modern-day health insurance companies started out, after all - as local benevolent associations organized among immigrant groups or co-workers.</div>
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<div>The possibilities are virtually limitless if one is willing to put one's money where one's mouth is. My experience of the "socialists" in this town is that it doesn't even occur to them to car-pool to meetings.</div>
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<div>John again</div>
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<blockquote style="BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; PADDING-LEFT: 1ex" class="gmail_quote">John W. wrote:<br>
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<div class="h5">On this list, three of us have been and are the harshest critics of the new<br>health care 'reform' bill: Carl, Dave Johnson, and me. I'm curious which of<br>the three of us has NOT, in the eyes of Bob and Melodye, worked our asses off<br>
to try to make both the local community and the larger society a better<br>place, according to our lights and talents. Name some fucking names.<br><br>The way I see it, most of the folks on this list have decent health insurance, so they have the luxury of being "ambivalent" about the health<br>
care bill, reminding us of its many virtues and counseling us to take a 'wait<br>and see' approach. I, on the other hand, have no health insurance, and will<br>NOT have Medicare when I'm 65 due to a quirk in the law over which I had and<br>
have no control. I can't speak for Carl and Dave, but I have actually<br>suffered the indignity of sitting in the Frances Nelson Clinic, getting a<br>different doctor every time, KNOWING that there were tests not being<br>
performed because Frances Nelson could not perform them in-house, and having<br>pills shoved at me which I KNEW would do no good but which were all that<br>Frances Nelson had to offer. Having to present proof of income documents over<br>
and over so that even Frances Nelson's precious and scarce resources would<br>not be "wasted" on me.<br><br>The only decent medical care I've received in LIFE was at McKinley Clinic<br>when I was a student at UIUC. They have government-run, "socialized"<br>
medicine there; the doctors are on salary and all the services are "free",<br>even the prescription meds, paid for by a student fee. There I finally found<br>a physician (female - God bless her) who cared about me as a human being, and<br>
ordered tests that were based on what I as a patient NEEDED rather than on<br>what I could afford or on what paid the doctor the most money. Sadly, when I<br>ceased to be a student I could no longer avail myself of her services. God<br>
bless her.<br><br>So I'm afraid I can't be as blase as the rest of you about this shitty bill<br>which leaves health insurance companies firmly in control. Nothing at all<br>has changed for me, not a God-damned thing. And you can bet that if nothing<br>
has changed for me, it's not changing for millions of other Americans who are<br>not, perhaps, as articulate as I am.<br><br>Oh, yes, I forgot. Something HAS changed for me after all, or it will in -<br>what? 2014? I'll be mandated to purchase a terrible private-sector health<br>
insurance plan, with money I don't have and with deductibles and co-pays so<br>high I won't ever be able to actually use it, or else I'll be fined for my<br>failure to purchase it. Please forgive me if I don't see that as a benefit.<br>
<br>Yeah, I'll shut up now. Every time I try to talk personal realities "on the<br>ground" rather than abstractions, all the liberals' eyes start darting around<br>the room, looking for an escape route. Don't think I don't see it.<br>
<br>John W.<br><br><br></div></div>
<div class="im">On Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 5:31 PM, Bob Illyes <<a href="mailto:illyes@uiuc.edu" target="_blank">illyes@uiuc.edu</a> <mailto:<a href="mailto:illyes@uiuc.edu" target="_blank">illyes@uiuc.edu</a>>> wrote:<br>
<br><br><br>Melodye writes:<br><br>"It never ceases to amaze me how some of the biggest critics (on every<br>subject) coming out of the shadows have done---- what?"<br><br>Precisely, Melodye.<br><br>Some pretext is generally behind this lack of accomplishment. A "Christian"<br>
pretext is that because of Original Sin it is not possible for a person to do<br>good. A "Marxist" pretext is that the middle class will always prevent<br>political progress, which isn't possible because the middle class is not yet<br>
destroyed. Market Fundamentalism supplies its own unsubstantiated theology.<br>But don't be fooled. These are just excuses to hold in contempt those who do their part to leave the world better rather than worse. These critics get off<br>
on contempt. They attempt to set up abusive relationships with those who<br>would do good.<br><br>On a slightly different subject, I confess I have never seen anything quite<br>so revolting as the Social Darwinian arguments coming from opponents of the<br>
efforts of our first black President and our first woman Speaker. (Their race<br>and gender have nothing to do with this, right?) In the Gilded Age, it was<br>seriously proposed that charity was vice, because it lessened the pressure on<br>
those on the bottom to change their evil ways. And now the new Gilded Age has<br> arrived, with the same recycled pseudo-scientific nonsense, that we all<br>already get what we deserve.....<br><br>Bob<br></div></blockquote>
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