I was going to title this “Two-Topic Thursdays” and get all crafty like people do on Instagram and call it “#TTT”, until I realized it was Wednesday. Nonetheless, I’d like to talk about two top issues and perhaps pose a question or two to my little fan base that I cherish so dearly.
One, the Obamacare rollout, which doesn’t really relate to race outside of people claiming that its critics are racist (which is a constant, and not all that much of a surprise).
This should go without saying, but people really, really need to stop trying to exercise their multiplicative inverse skills when they try to cite Republican “hypocrisy” with regard to how poorly this has gone so far. That hypocrisy is most often defined as Republicans criticizing the President for a program they wanted to fail from the start. Republicans didn’t propose, support, nor have any control over this. They set no deadlines. Democrats, by way of the President, were behind this fully and completely. You built that, now own it.
Forget the fact that one by one we are seeing Democratic representatives take a few minutes to stop, look around, and realize that– oh snap, I have to ensure I don’t get voted out over this— as they begin to voice their concerns over what only the most pussified Americans are calling a “glitch”. A glitch is when you try and open up Facebook and you get a 404 error that gets resolved in less than thirty seconds. This is not a glitch. I do not like buzzwords myself, so I have yet to latch on to the “this a trainwreck” movement, but frankly, calling it a trainwreck would be an understatement and here’s why:
It was recognized that a federal government would be necessary to provide for a nation that which states could not provide for themselves in a time of need. If that makes little to no sense to you, a quick example would be something like national defense– defense from invasion, natural disaster, and so on. Let’s say a state like Oklahoma, knowing that they are susceptible to being affected by devastating tornadoes, had an incredible early-warning, sheltering, and recovery system in place to deal with F-5s. One would imagine they would invest much cash into a system that worked, within the limits of the technology available. A state like North Dakota probably wouldn’t have such a system in place, as they rarely experience something like a tornado. But then BOOM– a crazy tornado rolls through North Dakota, devastating it and tearing it up like nothing ever before. The state alone is obviously not capable, nor would it be ready to deal with such a disaster. So the federal government would have a place in lending a hand. That might be a rough example, but whatever– the point here is that the federal government’s intent was to be a back up plan for accomplishing, within law, what states couldn’t on their own. Ignoring that and making the federal government trump the states in every way would be illogical– the goal of ‘MURICA was to not recreate another England 3,000 miles away from the throne.
There are a number of examples where one could see how the federal government’s role fits into the concept of a union of states. But unfortunately for those so supportive of the Affordable Car Act, healthcare has never been one of those things. Like ever.
Often we hear about the small portion of the populace that lacks coverage, and that is unfortunate. It truly is. But when you receive care from a health professional, that is a service. When a provider has a supply of a particular service, and that supply is dictated by a demand, quality always improves in the marketplace. The ACA, in essence, negates this demand. With an injection of funding, something like a universal healthcare plan might look safe, even feasible to many, but what it lacks is longevity. Never has such a thing worked, and in the cases of universal healthcare internationally that we draw examples from today, you are rarely given a glimpse of exactly how overworked & underpaid doctors are, and how poor the overall level of healthcare is in those countries. The idea of making things more affordable is one thing, but the government stepping in and claiming they can not only regulate but literally define the market is akin to taking a bite out of the forbidden fruit. It, quite simply, is the dumbest thing that could have ever been proposed by the President, and it was even more stupid– if not borderline criminal for the manner in which it passed through the Supreme Court.
Even with a flawless website, the system is inherently flawed. It matters little what is laid out in the 20,000+ pages that seek to provide order and regulation for it. The saddest part about this is we have lessons from around the world, and from our own country’s history, proving to us that allowing the federal government to dictate universal programs is dangerous as markets and situations are far from homogenous from the perspective of individual states. If you thought waiting in line at the DMV was bad, wait until that line becomes a reality at your local clinic. It is very, very possible.
I won’t get into the whole “if you like your plan you can keep it” bullshit in today’s post. Enough about O-Care. But claiming people aren’t being “denied” coverage but merely “transitioned” is a pitiful way of covering up the fact that millions of people that voted the President into office were straight up lied to. Sack up already.
On to number two, a quick question about the “apparent” lack of diversity in the Tea Party.
A number of people have often made the case for supposed racism in the Tea Party by citing that so few minorities are represented at rallies, events, and other Tea Party things. Is that really a fair argument “for” racism? No shit there are less minorities at Tea Party events– is it any surprise that a demographic that is so entrenched in the fallacies and fantasies of Democrat-led policy, is under-represented within a movement that seeks to push back against nearly every single one of those same policies?
Let’s say out of every one-hundred Tea Partiers at some big event, ten of them are black. That’s a poor percentage, surely, and obviously something Tea Partiers would love to see improve quickly. To the usual haters, that makes the Tea Party racist. You never hear the end of it, and if it’s not the odd account of some schmuck with a distasteful sign, it’s more often than not something like the example I just gave above. A lack of diversity. As if Tea Party members literally screen people before they show up for their demonstrations.
So now let’s say that out of every one-hundred black Americans that went to the election booth last November, ninety of them voted for Barack Obama. Since there’s less representation of the minority-race in that equation, that would spell out racism, right? Of course that number isn’t accurate though…
…because ninety-three (I’ve seen the numbers cite as high as 96 out of 100, but I’ll go with 93) out of every one-hundred black Americans voted for the President in 2012.
So let’s say there was someone taking the time to follow the Tea Party around the country, in order to count up the number of minorities in their ranks and formulate some kind of percentage about their diversity. This individual would be kind of close-minded in how he approached this study though, and he’d only count the number of African Americans at Tea Party events– not Hispanics, Asians, or “other”. If the number he came up with in the end was more than 7%, would that make black voters in this country “more racist” than the Tea Party? It’s funny, but I feel like anyone paying any mind to such a finding would immediately label the statistician behind it a racist.
Dat's Racis! 