[ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine"

[spike]

From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson



 

>.The constitution only protects the privacy of US citizens, and possibly
visitors to the USA.

 

Ah EXCELLENT!  Finally someone who has found where in the constitution it
says anything about US citizens having the inalienable right to privacy.  I
have been searching for that since I don't know how long.  Kelly, where did
you find that?

 

>.Ms. Merkel is a foreign national who is not protected by the constitution.

 

I agree.  Now where in the constitution does it say anything about privacy?

 

My heartburn with it is not that it is illegal but rather that it would piss
off the one who should be our strongest ally.  One day soon we will wake up
and discover that China, Japan and Germany are the only three countries in
the world capable of loaning money in the kinds of absurd quantities we
USians demand of other countries, and I am not so sure about Japan. 

 

 

>.Which is why they shouldn't have gotten caught. Don't we have the
obligation to make sure our "friends" are really our friends, even behind
closed doors?

 

They aren't really friends Kelly.  There are no friends.  Only potential
bankers.

 

We see the current bunch are saying the Tea Party patriots are terrorists
and coming very close to identifying them as national enemies.  OK then what
happens if they get a bunch of seats in congress next fall, more than they
already have?  

>.History is not with them on gaining seats during the second term of a lame
duck president.

 

The midterms a year from today will be a referendum on ObamaCare.  One year
from now, very little else will matter.  If this thing crashes as hard as I
think it will, the Democrat party will lose a bunch of seats, the
Republicans will break even or lose a few and the Tea Party will be a force
to be with reckoned.  If O-care succeeds, just the opposite.  Nothing else
will matter much. 

 

 

>.But Obamacare failing is exactly what will lead to a single payer system.
It's too big to fail, remember?

 

That isn't clear to me.  It sure appears to be set up for failure, but it
isn't at all clear the next step is single payer.  I would go for that if
done at a state level, or if we get a national balanced budget amendment to
go with it.  Or we destroy our credit rating, so no sane party will loan us
money.

 

>.They can't help but fail. It is the government we're talking about. They
never really succeed at anything really important. Yes, they occasionally
build a bridge to somewhere. Yes, they did defend us against Hitler. But
generally speaking if you want something screwed up badly enough you give it
to the government and you are assured it will be.

 

Agreed, so why do you think this current misadventure is a step toward
single payer?

 

 >.I would love to see the youth of America revolt against this. It is them
who are getting the biggest shaft from O-care. Paying for insurance that
THEY DON'T NEED. It is redistribution of health. Only it is from the poorest
youth of America who can't get a job coming out of college, to the richest,
the older folk in America, who are the most well off demographic. I thought
socialism was supposed to help the poor.

Don't worry Kelly, the young will revolt bigtime.  It will be like the old
burn the draft card days, but this one may have some damn serious
consequences.  That business about setting the IRS to where they can demand
payment but not place any criminal sanctions for non-payment nor issue liens
against property or bank accounts for non-payment will hurt us.  It will
send a message to a generation that they do not need to pay their taxes.
The whole scheme dilutes the power of the IRS, which could have catastrophic
consequences.

 

>.Obama lied, grandma died.

 

Oooh that's cold.  {8^D

 

 

My favorite I have thought of so far:

 

Tune In, Turn On, Opt Out

 

>.LOL. That will work for a few years, until the penalties are so large that
you have to pay attention to them.

 

No sir.  Even if you pay attention to them, the IRS still has no means of
collecting the opt-out fees.  I notice a lot of the articles on the topic
say things like "The ACA didn't include any provisions for the IRS to
enforce collection of the penalties."  This kinda misses the point by
understatement: the ACA clearly specifically forbids the IRS from enforcing
the penalties.  They are free to DEMAND payment, they can even send a bill.
They just can't do anything if the taxpayer just says no.  

 

Next, note that the ACA is designed to be difficult or impossible to modify
without nullifying the whole thing.  That is why they specifically removed
the isolation clauses.  They didn't forget them, they carefully extracted
them, so the insurance companies wouldn't be left holding the bag.

 

 

The section which explicitly forbids the IRS from collecting the opt-out tax
is cross linked to the section on the insurance companies requirement to
sell to any zombie who staggers thru the door.  If they kill the prohibition
for the IRS to collect, they kill the requirement for the insurance company
to sell to zombies.  If those two things go out, the only thing that is left
of O-care is a pile of wood pulp, granted a tall one.  That linking of those
two things was intentional and carefully designed by those who wrote this
bill behind closed doors in Senate private chambers, with one party and a
collection of insurance company reps with plenty of campaign donations to
hand out freely.  Kelly, is this all making sense now? 

 

 

>.I have already failed at selling T-Shirts, remember Caucasians for Mitt
Romney?

 

{8^D

 

>.Of course, I haven't learned my lesson, I'm now working on a T-Shirt deal
for http://www.itanimulli.com (Note that is illuminati.com spelled
backwards. You should see what happens when you type that into a web
browser.

 

Haaaaahahahahahhaaaaa!  Excellent gag, me lad.  The New World Order crowd
just keeps falling for the same gag, over and over and over.  It seems they
just cannot learn.  They were falling for that back when I was in high
school, they still are.  That crowd doesn't seem to get it: the New World
Order isn't some big secret evil conspiracy; that isn't necessary.  We
create the New World Order by borrowing two million dollars per second with
no credible means of repaying it, then identify as enemies of the state
anyone who points out that this madness is madness.

 

I've always liked:

You can keep the Change, but I want my Hope back.

 

-Kelly

 

We will not be keeping the change.  We already saw the 1 November fix date
blow by, the HealthCare.gov site isn't fixed.  We are already seeing what
looks to me like pre-emptive apologies for not making the 1 December date
with a report I heard just today: the site never even attempted to encrypt
any of the information they were collecting.  Didn't even try!  I know it
takes more than four weeks to tack on after the fact some kind of encryption
that could scale to millions of applicants, considering how complicated that
site is and how many leaky contractors are involved.  That whole task should
never have involved the Fed, it should have been done by the insurance
companies.  They would each have smaller, more manageable systems in place
and would have incentive to keep their own customer's data private.  

 

But back to the most interesting claim you made right at first Kelly: where
did you find in the constitution anything about US citizens being entitled
to privacy?  I know the legal system has laws and that "reasonable
expectation of privacy" phrase that determines the legality of snooping, but
where is it in the constitution?

 

spike

 

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