Chances are if you are here on scholarship your roommate or neighbor will have a minifridge and they will let you put stuff in theirs’.

It was a pleasure to banter with a thoughtful mind.
For that much alone I gave you a thumb-up, I wish I could give a dozen of them!

I’m sure we’ll all find our way to that more perfect Union…we always do, and it’s through these types of exchanges we get there.

Contrary to some opinions, this was about an exchange of ideas, not winners or losers (kind of sad that’s all they took away from this, points to how much improvement our education system needs), but as my debate coach would have told me…”CB, don’t allow your blood to boil, it’s just a debate. Think it through.”

Did you go to the gouch when it was still all girls? because the price has gone up since then….

Bacon wins.

But seriously, this is silly.

To be fair, however, CB did have me down for the count towards the end there and if he’d stuck to it I would have admitted I have no good answer. What he said, assuming I interpreted it correctly (I’m sure he’ll tell me if I didn’t, lol), is that if, as my taxing schema relies on, most tax dollars are spent on the local level it will ensure an endless perpetuation of the upper class. I still think that most tax dollars should be spent on those things maintained by the localities, police and fire departments, our road systems, our schools and that local governments are in the best position to effectively manage these sorts of day-to-day resources. At the same time, however, if no adjustments are made that means that the wealthier communities hold on to their wealth and get better services overall and the poorer communities are left to scrape by. If CB had stuck to that argument instead of going off on the healthcare tangent I woulda been the undeniable loser of this little back and forth.

I guess my response is that there would need to be modifications and redistributions, maybe even at the state level, to spread the wealth a bit. I still wouldn’t do it through the Feds because a lot more than mere financial calculations go into what a City or town needs – often the most per-student cost is associated with the poorest performing schools. Clearly that’s not a problem with the money so much as the way it’s spent and I think that the Feds do not have the resources available to take all the different variables into account while redistributing wealth/resources. CB was right that the wealthy residents support the election campaigns so that sort of embitters any opportunity for real redistribution of wealth – but that’s true at a federal level as well and I think doing it at a state level leaves more room for transparency and accountability and less for sketchiness.

In the end it’s not like this little debate is going to go away – the proper apportionment of power between the individual states and the feds is a discussion that’s been going on since the Constitution was signed. I just like weighing in sometimes because I feel that folks don’t expect my viewpoints. I say I’m all for state’s rights and they somehow hear “anti-tax,” (as noted, I would not have anyone pay less tax, just pay it differently) and “screw the little guy” (I support social services, really). I enjoy playing with those preconceived notions a little. And quite frankly, being a law student, I live for the intellectual challenge of an argument with an educated opponent. I’m disappointed when the tone of the conversation degenerates quite as quickly as this one did. I guess CB wasn’t having as much fun as I was lol.

Listen up, asshole, even if you don’t know who it DOES belong to, you sure as shit know it does NOT belong to you. If there’s half a tuna sandwich or leftover Thai food in the fridge, and you didn’t put it there, DON’T EAT IT. It is NOT yours. WTF is so damn hard about that?

And wow. I thought it might be a good idea to read previous comments before I posted, just in case 30 people made this point before me. Turns out this is way deeper for some of you than it is for me.

Information on the MASSACHSUETTS Health Care Reform Act (which is neither Medicare nor Medicaid ) in case you’re truly curious.

You’re making it really difficult to refrain from excessively snide comments because of your insistence on throwing insults into what has been an interesting intellectual and political discussion. I think you may be taking this all more seriously than I am.

Look – even assuming you and yours worked on Obamacare it’s complex. It’s large, it’s complex, implementation will be a nightmare (which is why there is still a complete lack of guidance and regulations), it won’t be perfect – no legislation is, ever; something this new will need fiddling with, calibrating, adjustments, adaptability; there will be unanticipated and unintended consequences; there will be ways to improve; to evolve the system as society changes; courts will spend decades interpreting it because of gray areas. That’s inevitable with any large scale legislation and you could tell me you’re the Albert Einstein of drafting legislation with a specialty in health care and I would tell you that’s all still true. This isn’t a personal attack – for serious. You don’t need to cuss me out It’s ok, really. And all I’m saying, all I ever said, in the entirety of this conversation, was that States move faster in implementing changes to existing legislation to reflect the realities of what’s happening. States can address concerns that arise faster. There is more than one way to skin a cat, the states can examine them, try different things, see what works, and learn from experiences (their own and other states). Please, please – if you insist on name calling again at least write “Voldemort” at the bottom so that I know you read this; I’m starting to suspect you’re not reading any of my responses and are just carrying on an interesting political diatribe against an imagined foe.

se – I guess I have more faith than you, I think that the states would eventually all adopt health care plans. I think it would take longer, but I think that the advantage of that is the ability of state legislatures to learn from the experiences of other states and to try new things. I can’t cite any examples off the top of my head but it’s my belief that states tend to follow the others leads on stuff like this (I know freedom of information statues worked that way). Hopefully even with Obamacare the states will be inspired to take a step above that, to implement their own systems, and Obamacare will be merely a floor like the federal minimum wage.