Text 12241, 220 rader
Skriven 2007-02-14 20:59:48 av Josh Hill (15682.babylon5)
     Kommentar till en text av rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated
Ärende: Re: Cath0licism and Creati=nism
=======================================
On Tue, 13 Feb 2007 22:01:29 -0800, Rob Perkins <rperkins@usa.net>
wrote:

>
>
>
>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.

I don't buy any of that, Rob. There are Federal bureaucracies that are
remarkably effective at what they do, in some cases more so than
comparable private companies. And FEMA's reaction to disasters during
the Clinton years was top notch. We can't of course say exactly what
would have happened in this specific instance, but given the array of
mind-boggling fuckups in Katrina and the good Clinton record it's a
slim chance indeed that it wouldn't have been far, far better.

>> 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.

Seems self-evident: capable people tend to seek the most challenging
jobs. Including farming, albeit I was describing working public
servants, not retired ones.

>> 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.

I think the idea was to make it an exaggeration. 

>> 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"

I'm thinking a bit of smoothing is in order. The decline probably
began under Nixon, continued under Ford and Carter, an idealist, but a
hapless one. But it was Reagan who was the anti-Roosevelt, who purged
from the public consciousness the idea -- amply demonstrated by the
wonderfully successful progressive policies of the first half of the
20th century -- that government could make society better, that
society could /get/ better.

>> 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. 

Sure. In general, for anything private enterprise can't or doesn't
want to do, and occasionally for things it doesn't do well.

>> 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. 

Sure.

>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.

I think so too. The problem is that they were wrong, not that they had
some kind of ulterior motive (plenty of that paranoid talk back then).

>> 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.

Your timing's off! Which is to say I'm fogy enough to remember the
medicine of 1967, which, while not the equal of today's, treated my
mother's perforated ulcer (surgery) and clogged arteries (venous
bypass graft) and my grandmother's adult-onset diabetes (restricted
diet).

That being said, sure, medicine has become more expensive.

>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.

Well, the flip side of that is that I've noticed a severe and shameful
degradation in the quality of medical care since HMO's came on the
scene and started rationing.

>>>> 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.

Sure, they come from dismal poverty to American-level poverty. This to
me doesn't justify what's happening to our middle and working classes.

>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 tend to think the "experience" thing is a stand-in for "Hmmm, can we
really trust a black dude not to screw up?"

I'm more concerned with Obama's slickness. I want a policy wonk, not
another talking head. We've made the "Hah, ahm Jimmy Carter" mistake
again and again, voting for the smooth guy with the smile rather than
the committed guy with the ideas and the integrity. I don't yet judge
Obama because I don't know enough, but the entire process seems wrong
to me at this point, to be asking the wrong questions of candidates.
In politics, as in other work, the best performers are frequently
/not/ the most socially engaging.

>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. 

Sadly, from what I've read, that seems to be true.. And the man I
regard as the strongest Republican candidate, Rudy Giuliani -- the man
who, alone among the Democrats and Republicans in the running, seems
to me capable of true greatness -- will probably lose because he
favors gay rights and abortion. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
 
>>> 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.

Most conflicts were along tribal lines. I noticed a long while back
that the countries in which various nationalities coexist successfully
are either grim dictatorships like Saddam's Ira, or are together by
/choice./

-- 
Josh

[Truly] I say to you, [...] angel [...] power will be able to see that [...]
these to whom [...] holy generations [...]. After Jesus said this, he departed.

- The Gospel of Judas
--- SBBSecho 2.12-Win32
 * Origin: Time Warp of the Future BBS - Home of League 10 (1:14/400)