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The EFF's anti-SCO congressional letter campaignThe EFF's anti-SCO congressional letter campaignPosted Aug 29, 2003 16:29 UTC (Fri) by ccchips (subscriber, #3222)In reply to: The EFF's anti-SCO congressional letter campaign by ss Parent article: The EFF's anti-SCO congressional letter campaign That is right. They also prefer hand-written ones, although *my* handwritten ones never make it past my friends' editing and I wind up typing them. When the Commerce Committe was doing their thing, I used the "digitalconcumer.org" fax thingy to fax a few, and they allowed me to make all the changes I wanted to, but I have no idea if any of those "gentlemen's club" types ever looked at any of them. I'm sure the mass-produced letters are sorted by letterhead. Maybe they even have a technology whereby they can weigh stacks of them for that "potential gold" or "potential boatride" feature behind the sender. Oh...I've read people talking about their reps's opinion of mass-produced mail. The idea is that working-people, who rarely have the time even to sit down at a table and write letters, don't count if they use a mass-mailing service like this to help them along. The rep's think such people "don't care enough" to take the time. Oh---they care enough, alright. They don't take the time because they're too busy paying their masters and keep their jobs. Maybe when enough of us lose our jobs, the Congress will be flooded with mail. That's the sort of thing *I* used to do when I was unemployed. As far as I'm concerned, representative government in the United States is a sham. Otherwise, everyone would have health care, education, and all the rest I can think of..... Hey---wouldn't it be better to write the commissions directly? What does the larger Congress or Senate have to do with this, anyway?
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The EFF's anti-SCO congressional letter campaign Posted Aug 29, 2003 18:19 UTC (Fri) by zonker (guest, #7867) [Link] The idea is that working-people, who rarely have the time even to sit down at a table and write letters, don't count if they use a mass-mailing service like this to help them along. The rep's think such people "don't care enough" to take the time.I don't agree with this. I've gotten relatively good response from my rep, not so much from my senators, using forms from the EFF and other groups. I think the response has more to do with the fact that my rep. is more in tune with the EFF and such than the two senators from Colorado. The fact that someone takes the time to respond at all shows that person is informed and more likely to vote than people who don't bother in the first place.
The EFF's anti-SCO congressional letter campaign Posted Aug 29, 2003 18:33 UTC (Fri) by dbhost (guest, #3461) [Link] What does representative democracy have to do with Socialized medicine? Liberals have been trying to get that socialist idea rammed down our throats for decades, and the opinion polls consistently, and overwhelmingly reflect one simple fact. AMERICANS DO NOT WANT SOCIALIZED MEDICINE! We live close enough to Canada to realize that we do not want to wait a month to see a doctor for an emergency, nor do we want to be treated with 1950s methods or technologies. So yes Virginia, representative democracy does work, to a point... and no, I do not blindly think they will always do the right thing, but every now and then they do get it right...
The EFF's anti-SCO congressional letter campaign Posted Aug 29, 2003 19:40 UTC (Fri) by chad.netzer (✭ supporter ✭, #4257) [Link] Seems like YOU are the one trying to ram ideas, and generalizations, down people's throats. The polls I've seen show that the majority of americans do favor some form of national or universal healthcare, but no one quite agrees how to achieve it (and the businesses that profit from the status quo lobby heavily against ANY change, even relatively non-socialist ones). Certainly people don't want a massive tax increase to get it.Hopefully some Canadians will comment on the inaccuracies in your portrayal of their health care system (even if it is quite off topic). Btw, I'm not socialist, I'm a liberaltarian.
The EFF's anti-SCO congressional letter campaign Posted Aug 29, 2003 23:11 UTC (Fri) by jeff@uclinux.org (guest, #8024) [Link] Sure. He doesn't know what he's talking about. Smacks of propaganda.When I have an emergency, I can go to any of a handful of public or private You're just wrong, the social safety net is something that _works_ and is worth Jeff.
Let's stick to Linux politics Posted Aug 30, 2003 4:08 UTC (Sat) by dwalters (guest, #4207) [Link] Hey people. Please let's all just stop talking about politics that has nothing to do with Linux and free software.Most of us do have political opinions on important matters such as healthcare and education, but expressing them in this forum is not appropriate. It's always tempting to reply to political or religious statements that we don't agree with, but on LWN such postings are just noise and put people off reading the comments. Let's talk about the political issues we do have in common, like how we can stop SCO from trashing Linux.
Let's stick to Linux politics Posted Sep 1, 2003 17:05 UTC (Mon) by ccchips (subscriber, #3222) [Link] I was using the example of universal health care just to make my point: People in high places generally don't like it much if people who do the work for them are too educated, too well off, or too healthy.Just educated enough, well-off enough, and healthy enough to get to work in the morning and make them a profit is fine by them. This is the impression I'm left with, living here in the United States all my life. The few times things were different, those gentry did nothing but throw tantrums and spew out scare-tactics. That's what I see, sorry if you don't like it. It's also why I have doubts about asking Congress for anything, much less trying to get them entangled with the Judiciary branch more than they already are. If you can't make somebody some money, don't expect them to side with you here in U.S.A.
The EFF's anti-SCO congressional letter campaign Posted Aug 30, 2003 13:48 UTC (Sat) by DancingProg (subscriber, #4816) [Link] He's reading the same polls that I am - socialized medicine is feared here.
OT: Use of "Socialist" to condemn concepts Posted Aug 30, 2003 12:04 UTC (Sat) by MLKahnt (guest, #6642) [Link] I find it interesting that most Americans have never sat in on a political meeting, or watched a political debate on television, where a candidate has pursued a Socialist platform, and yet the term, to some, constitutes an epitaph for all concepts counter-American and counter-liberty. Having active socialist parties in most European countries as well as here in Canada, we've encountered their platforms as well as their values and weaknesses. I do not personally support them, but I welcome the concepts and the expansion of the range of options they bring to the political debate. I also welcome hard-right wing contributions to the spectrum of political debate - so long as the debate is honest and free from scare tactics and slurs from any side, that is part of what makes democracy work - the open availability, evaluation, and collective popular choice from among various alternatives.On the issue of "socialised" medicine, the amount spent per person on health care in any "socialised medicine" country is substantively less than the average costs spent by an HMO system per member in the United States, representing part of the reason that sometimes a test or involved treatment cannot be conducted immediately. Having worked in the Life and Health Insurance industry on my "day-job" side for much of my working career, and having earned the Managed HealthCare Professional (MHP) designation from HIAA, I know some of the details involved here. This is an important consideration in why sometimes in the Canadian system services are not as widespread and immediately available as they are in the American environment. In Canada, there has not been the "pooling" of medical practices that exists within HMO (and sometimes PPP) environments, meaning that the cost savings and efficiencies as well as some improved services have not been realised. Additionally, there aren't the restrictions that exist in the HMO and to a lesser degree PPP systems to restrain usage and access within the health insurance supported aspects of the system. HMOs, by their basic structure, are market meddling and management tools to cap costs, and should not honestly ever be pointed to as "free market" examples - their basic premise is to close the market choice of the patient with respect to the coverage the HMO provides for the premium paid, or force the patient to turn to alternate resources to pay for any options "declined" by the HMO. Beyond those points, the premise of public medicine is that health is too important, and too unpredictable, to be left to the vagaries of the marketplace. While hospitals and medical practitioners in any country will address immediate trauma to stabilise the victim without concern of ability to pay, when it steps beyond the realm of "basic survival" and "preventing the spread of dangerous infectious diseases" the questions of costs arise. The Canadian version is a system that decides that certain ranges of additional services of hospitalisation to pursue recovery and health are in the nation and society's collective interest. Set rates are established between doctors' organisations and provincial health insurance systems on these plans, where the doctors are not permitted to charge additional amounts to this per procedure (similar to HMOs, although there the doctors' choice is between participating in the HMO or not, and quite often the HMO will pay doctors a set rate per "rostered" patient regardless of services provided.) Private health insurance still exists, but on matters outside the range of what the public plan covers - things like extra time in hospital after giving birth, or private hospital rooms, medical drug coverage, or better quality home recovery devices. What private insurance, or deep personal pockets doesn't permit in the Canadian system is to outbid anyone else for health care resources - health need and availability of treatment resources is the sole deciding point on priority for services in the Canadian system. American businesses operating in Canada encourage Canada to keep the public healthcare and insurance system, as it allows them to avoid significant costs in payroll that the provision of health insurance through employment constitutes to them in the United States. Why should employers be expected to finance health insurance, even at the reduced costs of HMO plans? Private basic health insurance in the United States is widely considered an aspect of standard remuneration where enough competing employers offer such coverage to gain/hold skilled staff - where basic health insurance is provided by the state, employers enjoy the liberty to compete for workers on the basis of the nature of the job, actual pay and actual work conditions. Additionally, when changing jobs, people in Canada don't need to worry about "pre-existing" health conditions arising and being denied coverage. Sure, the private health plans on top are nice, but with basic health care being provided from the tax rolls under public health insurance, private coverage is far less expensive to employers and far less of a consideration to employees.
The EFF's anti-SCO congressional letter campaign Posted Aug 31, 2003 1:00 UTC (Sun) by XERC (guest, #14626) [Link] I live in Estonia<http://www.riik.ee/en/>,Eastern Europe. In our case, we have a medical system, where any citizen, who works or is unemployed, gets a "healthcare card" which gives the person the right to get all the necessary medical care, that the local healthcare foundation has to offer. Serious operations are performed in the hospitals funded by the local healthcare foundations but there exist some small privately held (commercial)clinics and medical institutions, that deal with births, cosmetic surgery, psychotherapy, artificial fertilization, etc. Generally the state healthcare foundation does not cover the costs, if the medical services are provided in the commercial medical institution, but still pretty often even the commercial institutions have some kind of a contract, so that sometimes the healthcare foundation covers some part of the costs. Almost all of the dentists operate privately and if any of them used an 1950 technology, it would be definitely out of business in a month or two. The most advanced operations,
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