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What's good for the goose...
Message
From
15/07/2009 11:55:23
 
 
To
14/07/2009 17:18:51
John Ryan
Captain-Cooker Appreciation Society
Taumata Whakatangi ..., New Zealand
General information
Forum:
Politics
Category:
Other
Miscellaneous
Thread ID:
01408488
Message ID:
01412509
Views:
76
>Personally, having dealt with State bureaucracy a great deal in recent years, I do not want them anywhere near my family's health care decisions. I'll take the crappy HMO bureaucracy over the State every time, because at least the HMO has to answer to customers, the State bureaucracy does not.
>
>So there's your real justification: you dislike and distrust government in principle, based on your own bad experiences. Why not just say that?

I have said that, quite clearly. My family has dealt with the bureaucracy for years. We've been fighting the same fight over and over again for literally decades.

Take water as a simple example. As I've stated before we live on a family farm and cattle ranch so water access and rights are very important. 30 years ago there was a major drought in California, my grandfather had to purchase water because the river which flows through our property had slowed up during the growing season, months earlier than normal. The water is purchased from a supplier upstream, released into the river and flows down to our pumps. 20 years ago my father had to fight the water board to ensure our right to the water in the river as they attempted to restrict our use based on arbitrary new guidelines, regardless of our vested right. We proved our vested right in court. That should've been the end of it. Recently we had to prove our vested right again as a new set of bureaucrats, armed with the same old information brought the issue up again. This time they claimed an environmental impact because the water isn't flowing at the same rate it was 30 years ago. HELLO! That's because we purchased extra water 30 years ago! Of course the river flowed higher. The people change but the bureaucracy and it's mentality never does, and more importantly and dangerous is that as more time passes, fewer and fewer people remember their history and what it means to have these rights. We know for a fact that the finding regarding the water level is still on file, just waiting to be used again on some unsuspecting citizen in the future.

The problem is inherent in the State itself and cannot be rectified except through lessening the central power.

My experience is by no means uncommon nor anecdotally irrelevant. There's a reason family farms have dwindled over the years and it's not the big bad corporations or the laziness of the citizenry. It is directly related to the power of the State and their ability to drive people out of business, whether through direct seizure or crippling regulation. The burden becomes so great that to deal with the State requires a team of lawyers and the purchasing of politicians, which only large corporations can afford.

My family's health care is too important to leave to the whimsy of whichever set of government bureaucrats and politicians happen to be in power at the time of a personal health crisis. I do not want the game changing nature of partisan politics directly affecting my family's access to care. The 3rd party insurance model is not ideal and it need reform to put the power back in the hands of the citizenry and their health care providers, but it's infinitely better than handing control over to the State's domineering machine from which we will never again be able to wrest control.
Wine is sunlight, held together by water - Galileo Galilei
Un jour sans vin est comme un jour sans soleil - Louis Pasteur
Water separates the people of the world; wine unites them - anonymous
Wine is the most civilized thing in the world - Ernest Hemingway
Wine makes daily living easier, less hurried, with fewer tensions and more tolerance - Benjamin Franklin
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