Text 12213, 143 rader
Skriven 2007-02-13 22:01:29 av Rob Perkins (15654.babylon5)
     Kommentar till en text av rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated
Ärende: Re: Cath0licism and Creati=nism
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On 2/13/07 6:57 PM, in article 9so4t2tkd8lrqana5n0jgd0q6bovd1qeru@4ax.com,
"Josh Hill" <usereplyto@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, 11 Feb 2007 20:27:10 -0800, Rob Perkins <rperkins@usa.net>
> wrote:
> 
>>> Katrina was grotesque, the most spectacular demonstration of
>>> incompetence I've ever seen from the Federal Government.
>> 
>> Oh, I quite agree. Systemic indifferent incompetence.
>> 
>> Spanning 30-40 years across 15-20 Congresses and four or five Presidents of
>> both parties, of course.
> 
> The Clinton Administration left FEMA in tip-top shape.

Let's be very honest here: The Clinton Administration left FEMA in the best
shape it could, given the federal bureaucracy. I would not call that
"tip-top" shape, and there is no way to tell how a Clinton FEMA would really
have behaved had it been unchanged for Katrina's landfall.

> Thing is, I don't expect local officials to do anything but fail in a
> case like this. The best public servants tend to go to Washington.

Buh? Support that. Cincinnatus went back to his farm.

> And, in any case, this was way too big a problem for any state.

That's certainly true. I hope you didn't miss my condemnation of the federal
"effort".

> New Orleans seems to me a perfect example of what's wrong with the
> conservative love affair with decentralization: expecting the mayor of
> a dirt-poor medium-sized city to deal with a disaster of this
> magnitude is like expecting the dogcatcher to stand in for the SWAT
> squad.

An exaggeration. Nagin's failure was that of transporting the willing poor
out of harm's way. Permitting the regular imperatives of a bus drivers'
union from letting him act in an emergency.

> That isn't to say that I want to centralize everything, or that I
> don't think the Feds sometimes stick their nose where they shouldn't.
> I just don't think that /any/ policy works when it becomes a matter of
> ideology, of religious belief, rather than of practicality, of
> empiricism.

Can't disagree with that.

> Sure. Still, I was thinking today about how low our expectations have
> fallen since Reagan took office.

Lower than 1974-1978? I doubt it. There's a lot more volume about "how bad
it is"

> mention something like defeating global warming, and people say, "Oh,
> it's government, government can't do that." But of course it could.

Little argument there as well. Government is good for long term projects.
Plans for the next decade, where private corps seem good only for the next
three months. 

> I don't know how to put a value on a life, but I do know that with the
> violence increasing, we are fast approaching and may have reached the
> point at which the war is taking more lives than Saddam did. And I
> think that speaks for itself.

Putting a value might be moral, as long as that value is not monetized. We
might not trade in lives for gain but we should think about economizing the
greater good. 

I'm relatively sure that whatever actual monstrous effects the neocons have
unleashed, they sincerely believed that their now-debunked theories were in
the service of the greater good.

> According to the National Coalition on Health Care, "the number of
> excess deaths among uninsured adults age 25-64 is in the range of
> 18,000 a year." I don't know why the figures don't include those under
> 25 years of age.

Probably because the National Coalition on Health Care was misusing a
statistic. 

I consider it valuable to think of health care in terms of what was
available 40 years ago as opposed to today. 40 years ago, there wasn't a
health insurance industry to speak of, because there wasn't much a doctor
could do for something as simple as a stomach ulcer, let alone a clogged
artery or even adult-onset diabetes. $1000/scan MRI's were out of the
question; no computer could process the data fast enough. Sonograms did not
exist. And so forth.

Today the attitude seems to be that no matter one's economic status, only
the newest and best health care approaches are even worth trying. Rather
than set a child's broken arm while she is awake, we require full sedation
and a surgeon's touch, even for a clean break, effecting not just a
functional repair, but also a cosmetic one.

40 years ago, that bone would have been set in the family practitioner's
office, and plaster-cast right there.

Without overemphasizing the point, the current dollar cost of that visit
would have been about $300-$400. Today's approaches, just to avoid the very
possibility of litigation, come to about $2500. Just to set a five year
old's ulna, fractured cleanly away from her growth plates.

>>> I just don't see how I can put a smiling face on that.
>> 
>> Well, you can't, but I'd not consider it at all the worst of all possible
>> worlds.
> 
> I'd just like it to be better!

Then look around you! Even in the face of a widening gap between rich and
poor, and the "shrinking of the middle class", *people still come to the
U.S., to improve their lives*. In droves and without regard for the barely
heeded gentlemen's agreements between our bordering nations.

Even so, I share your hope that a positive-sum optimist will take the White
House. Someone like Obama might not be all that experienced, but neither was
Clinton, when he moved up from AR, it seems to me.

I have the same impression about Mitt Romney. Whatever his position on this
or that issue, he comes across as remarkably positive. Of course I have no
confidence in the Republican machine to look past his religious faith during
the primaries. 
 
>> Rob, still hoping for peace in Iraq, somehow
> 
> Partition. I've always suspected that, but the Turks were in the way.
> Well, it's time to tell them to take a hike -- or, more realistically,
> come up with a Federal arrangement that wouldn't encourage Turkish
> Kurds to rebel.

Encourage them to emigrate to Kurdish Iraq, would be my recommendation. And
friends of mine have suggested de facto partitioning as well. It makes a
kind of resigned sense to me.

Rob
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