http://www.salon.com/news/opin...4/manning/index.html

So much for the land of the free.

You know, I'd sooner live in China than the US. At least China doesn't pretend that it's citizens have rights and freedoms.

I find that funny in the extreme, but then again I had to give up stuff to get here.  And just as something to think on, all the other parts mentioned that are regulated, don’t demand an absolute purchase of the product.  Income requirements for instance are only a necessity if your company is over a certain size and/or you have some many follow employed workers (Barket, 2001).  Other services are something that most people use, so they take them for granted, but are not mandatory.  I don’t have to pay for natural gas, since I don’t use it.  That’s a choice that I am willing to make, but in the case of the health care, I am taxed for using it and fined for not using it.  I know this because I read the entire bill.  If you haven’t I strongly suggest you, because so far the news hasn’t covered half of it.

That was a soldier, subject to military justice, not a citizen. as much as I support Assange in publishing I also don't have any problem with this. He betrayed the trust of his country and his fellow soldiers, and the need for harsh punishments for that within a military environment are pretty clear cut. at the same time the article was extreemly overhyped- *nearly* solitary confinement as a form of torture? I know plenty of people who *voluntarilly* spend less than an hour a day arround other people.

I also don't have any problem with this

Do you have any conception of what solitary confinement is like? For seven months in a row? That's pure torture. Hell, it's murder. That sort of treatment turns people SUICIDAL.

He betrayed the trust of his country and his fellow soldiers, and the need for harsh punishments for that within a military environment are pretty clear cut

No. No they're not. Have you read the American constitution? Note the Eighth Amendment. The ban on Cruel and Unusual punishment?
This message was last edited by the player at 03:23, Thu 16 Dec 2010.

Solitary confinement isn’t cruel and unusual punishment.   And simply being confined can turn People suicidal (e.g. Warner, 2001).  I’ve been through solitary confinement, it’s not that bad. I was in it for six months straight.  I’ve already been to a therapist, because when I got here it was mandatory given my background, and the guy ran a bunch of tests and said I was fine.   So I have to disagree its not cruel or unusual.  The Supreme Court has also ruled it isn’t either See Madison VS U.S, 2000.   If he had done the same thing in plenty of other countries he’d be facing far worse.

A lot of psychologists disagree.

http://www.cnn.com/US/9801/09/solitary.confinement/#1

If he had done the same thing in plenty of other countries he’d be facing far worse.

Ah, of course. Other people are worse, so that justifies anything we do.
This message was last edited by the player at 04:26, Thu 16 Dec 2010.

We are a nation of laws. Those laws bind us, the military, and Mr. Manning. Should Mr. Manning be tried and punished for any crimes he's committed? Yes. And should it be by military law? Yes.

Meanwhile, the military must follow its own laws. If solitary confinement has been outlawed, they shouldn't be storing Mr. Manning in solitary confinement. If law requires he have a trial already, he should probably have his trial already.

So you link to another article selectively quoting one psychologist. Sure that's evidence.
Any information about how long a person has to be in solitary for such symptoms to set in? Or How much contact is required to prevent them? What you have is liek a quote fro someone talking about sleep deprivation causing halucination (which it does after 3 nights of no sleep) and saying that this makes waking someone up early in the morning cruel and unsussal punishment.

It varies, individuals with a high threshold for low sensory stimulation can be placed in solitary confinement for prolonged periods of time, where people used to high levels of stimulation  begin to suffer ill affects more quickly (e.g. Marcus, 2001;2002; 2003; Whitefield & lyal, 1998).  It should be noted that ill affects consist of depression, suicidal thoughts, increased aggressiveness, etc.  Hallucinations are not considered by all to be damaging, as many neural psychologists have  suggested based on findings that these are attempts by the brain to self stimulate; these are also more common under sleep deregulation, which can occur in sensory depredating situations, but are not necessitated by it (See Philips, 2008 for a review).

In other words, a person can face sleep deprivation in sensory depriving situations, but this heavily linked to personality attributes, and sensory habituation; as little as three minutes of stimulation, even self-stimulation (i.e. singing, touching, tapping on a wall), have been demonstrated both neurologically and through self-report to keep  undesired symptoms from occurring.  This is true even if the person is heavily sleep deprived (Decker, 2000; Walter, 2007).   Sleep deprivation and sensory deprivation are two of the most heavily studied topics in the realm of neurochemistry and neural cognitive science; I’ve only begun to scratch the service with what is above.

Now, taking a different approach, the documents being referred to where classified.  This means that they were private property of the government (New York VS Carrolton, 1988).  Given this it can be said that the parties involved were handling stolen property, property, all parties new this as some of the documents are marked classified.  It does not matter if some of the information, or speaking hypothetically, if all the documents contained information that existed in other forms.  If the individual is holding information, in whatever form, then they are committing a crime.  This is in addition, to any other issue related to the seriousness of distribution, possible reckless endangerment as a result of distribution, etc, etc.

Not to derail the current conversation (please feel free to carry on with it), but I saw something in a letter to the editor the other day that has been bouncing around in my head and I wanted to see what you guys thought of it.

As you probably know, a judge a ruled against the Health Care law passed earlier this year, and everyone expect it to end up in the supreme court.  The major objection that opponents of the law have is with the mandate to buy insurance.  All this has been shouted about over and over, so nothing new yet.  What got my attention the other day was someone suggesting the that problem with the law was mostly one of branding/marketing (and also of the details of implementation).  Calling it a "mandate" to buy it comes off very differently then giving a tax break for buying it, even though the effects in each case are pretty much exactly the same.  Technically, I think the mandate is actually set up as a tax that you can avoid if you buy insurance, rather than a fine if you don't, but it's been presented the other way around.  The thing that really jumped out at me, though, was someone making the comparison with the income tax deduction for mortgages.  Basically, if you've bought a house and are paying a mortgage, you get a very sizable deduction to your income tax.  In fact, I've been told many times it's only really worthwhile to do itemized deductions if you've got a mortgage (which I can't really verify, because I don't have a mortgage, and thus have never done itemized deductions. Add to that the fact that I'm now living in the UK, and only have to pay US income tax if I make over something like $80 over here because of tax reciprocity between the US and UK, and you get the fact that I'm far from an expert on the mortgage deduction).  Anyway, the question becomes this:  Is the mortgage deduction an effective "mandate" to buy a house?  Has the government overstepped its power by "forcing" me to entering into an agreement with a bank, and buy a home, going so far as to "fine" me if I don't?

It sounds a bit comically, and to a degree, it is, but at the end of the day, many people pay higher taxes because they don't have a mortgage.  Call it a break for those who do have mortgages, or call it a fine on those who don't, the effect is the same either way.  To my knowledge, there isn't a major movement pushing to have the mortgage deduction ruled unconstitutional.  Is the difference between health care and home ownership largely one of how they've described the system?  Would it have been less controversial if Obama and the dems had described it as a "tax break for people with health insurance" from the start, rather than a "mandate" to buy insurance?

There is a difference between the ways the two policies are implemented, which is probably worth pointing out.  The mortgage deduction is applied to income tax, whereas the health care "fine" is a new tax introduced just for this purpose, and not directly related to income.  Had the system been implemented such that you loose $5k of your deductions (or whatever the "fine" is) or something along those lines (well, it'd have to be slightly different because a $5k deduction doesn't lower your taxes by $5k, but hopefully you can see where I'm going with this), would there be less objection to it now?  Those with lower incomes already get assistance in buying insurance in the health care law, so the fact that some people don't pay $5k (or whatever) in taxes presumably wouldn't break the system.

What do people think?  Is there anything to this idea that the failure is mostly one of marketing/branding of the health care law?  Is the mortgage deduction effectively a mandate forcing us to buy homes?

In reply to Tycho (msg #72):

That would be great, the only problem is, and I can say this, because a friend of mine read the entire bill, this individual actually works as a secretary for one of the congressman from Carolina, the wording of the bill doesn’t allow for that.  There really aren’t any specifications for any major tax breaks in it.  There is some miner ones, but nothing worth being overly happy with.  As for what you said about mortgages, it’s true; several of my relatives have them, and have gotten better tax returns when going itemized.  That’s my ten cents worth.

I know (or, at least have been told) that the wording doesn't include a tax break.  But that's sort of the point:  If they had, instead of calling it a "penalty tax" on everyone who doesn't get health care, called it a "tax on everyone and everyone...but with a tax break for people who have insurance" would that have made a difference?  The effect would be exactly the same (i.e., people without insurance would have to pay the government, those with it wouldn't have to), but one is a "mandate," the other is just an "incentive."  Exact same effect, but is one "model" constitutional and the other not?

Oh, well that changes things, technically, yes, first because it violates the Tenth amendment, but most people don’t seem to care about that and the Fed has had a track record of violating that one for decades.  I’m not speaking of any one side in this regard.  Second, yes, because it violates article II, which states that the government shall not force upon any purchases.  In this case, you will tax people for not purchasing it, punishing them, and rewarding people that do.   You see it’s not a complete tax, since those that have it don’t have to pay the tax.   The difference in a mortgage is that you get a return on it at the end of the year, but you’ve still had to pay on it during the year, and the return doesn’t completely equal what you’ve paid. So, you are still paying money to the Fed, even if you have a mortgage, it’s just less, because you are paying somebody else, who gets taxed for the mortgage.  So, from a Federal standpoint the same amount of money is coming in. those this idea was proposed once before back in the eighties, I’ll try and dig up sources later, and a few economists pointed out a few problems with it, but I can’t remember what those were at the moment.  I should mention that if the bill was declared by the courts to be constitutional, then it would be at the very least something better than what is being proposed now.  The sad thing, is the there have been a number of reports on how most of the problems with the current insurance system could be fixed, without introducing a new system (e.g. Barber, et, Al. 2008).

I would agree though that yes, taking it off federal income taxes as a deduction makes more sense than adding it just as a 'health care tax'. I say this in part because people who have no money to be taxed (such as college students) will suffer more under the latter than the former, and that doesn't make sense.

Just have to vent...

Congress has 13 bills they have to pass every year to fund normal government funding. Every year, same thing. It's basically the only repeating duty that Congress is obligated to perform.

This year they failed to submit all but one until AFTER they were already due (10/1). The final document is a foot tall, including $10b in earmarks, and a whole lot of contentious line items, like Guatanamo Bay, the health care bill, and funding for Iraq. Because of this (warning, surprise ahead), some people didn't like the bill and refuse to sign it.

So after a full year of not doing their jobs, now almost the entire federal government is looking at a period of unpaid furlough, for an unknown period of time. Sure, they're likely to be paid back retroactively, but even so, we're talking about putting hundreds of thousands of people out of work for an indefinite period, because Congress didn't bother doing the one job they're actually paid to do.

And this isn't the first time it's happened either. I can remember at least two other times in the past four years that this sort of thing came up.

Say what you want about Obama, at least he actually turns up for work every day.

In reply to Tycho (msg #72):

First on the mandate to buy that is very likely unconstitutional that does not affect the rest of the law. The government can tax businesses, regulate interstate markets (insurance, drug companies etc.) and have the primary standing for Medicaid regulations as the Federal authority of the volunatary program. And how it was passed is not in the constitution they can decide internal mechanics of the two houses as they wish if both consent. It was just a new approach to the passing of a law.

Second if the mandate is axed and I see that likely the government has other weapons. They could say ok states you mandate the law with penalties that hurt to not be insured or we cut off all discretionary Federal dollars and cut off money for current project not demanded in the constitution - the state could then opt not to. Or they could pass regulations to say if you don't get insurance and can withing fair guidelines transitional breaks or the like it will cost MORE to get later say add 1% each month to premiums when you do decide to get into the system while blocking current medical problems from being covered for six months of a non-routine nature (diabetes fine, cancer your out of luck) and negate charity care laws for these persons. If they end up say 36 months and then decide to get it premiums will be 36% higher for you that to go into the system. And other measure like that that are allowed in the discretionary points of the law.

I just don't see with all the interests that now benefit from the law like hospitals which want this to balance their budgets and make it easier to handle a stable financial base. Right now in Florida if your poor enough and the bar is modest the hospital can't bill you at all the hit is not good if the care is costly. And most other providers don't bother billing either at that point. That is passed into the system. The money is going to matter when they use the lobbiests to keep the law and noone can seny that here.

For me there is another pair consideration the entire system is so broken and biased against the consumer that its necessary to do this, that ability to protect and secure a market for fairness is also legitimate. They can break up monopolies for less than this industry. I also do see this as a jobs bill if each dollar in economic impact is five times per dollar Florida for example could see over the first ten years $150 billion of economic stimulation in the health care industry and related areas of reform (IT jobs, education) and in the ripple effect across the state.

All in all the bill is not going anywhere far at most the mandate goes away and they will need to find other ways to get people into the system, and its good for my state in jobs and a healthier more productive workforce among the lower income people.

And all that would be great, if the bill was actually going to do those things, but it doesn’t look like it will.  Section III, sub article for is going to deny hospitals funds, as only approved finances are going to be given to a hospital, on the bases of regional population, not regional use.  This means that a hospital that see’s more patients, but is in a small population zone won’t receive the funding that it necessity would mandate.  This is the major one there, there several smaller others, such as rationing of the number of specialists allowed at any given hospital.  Article IV, of the second section is great, as it then puts a decreased cap on the amount of money nurses could receive, without changing their hours, bet you didn’t know that was there did you?  I’m still reading through, got in brail in today’s mail.  I’m still reading through it, and it looks like it’s one full of stuff that doesn’t belong and two rather quickly thrown together.  I mean the Henderson bill that was debated during the Carter administration didn’t feel this rushed, but I digress.  Oh, as far as business and interstate regulation is concerned, the Federal government has rules that they have to follow (See Himerton, and Smith, 2004 for a review).  It can be kind of tricky to understand, as there are a lot of loop wholes in it, but essentially, the Federal government isn’t supposed to make demands on the entire health care system of any state, or hamper their abilities in regards to conducting basic civil processes in relation to such an affair.  This is in part the basis for the reason why it’s going before the Supreme Court; it is however, interestingly enough something that the TV news channels aren’t mentioning.  I heard it in the associated press, as well as in the Washington Post.  In short, the issue is going to have to go before the Supreme Court either way.  If they had a better bill, I think that there wouldn’t be as much fuss about it, just my opinion there, but there are points, where the bill is clearly lacking.  For instance, as far as it stands, I can’t find anything regarding to monitoring of the Feds end of the regulation part, which is supposed to be there, but it could be located elsewhere.  I’ll let you know when I find it.

I think under the current system, people with income below a certain level get subsidies for health care (don't recall at the moment just how that works, but I do remember it being considered a key part of the bill).

But to bring things back to the original question (to be honest, I had enough debate about the merits and flaws of the bill itself back when they were trying to get it past), what do people think about the mortgage deduction?  Is it a "mandate" to buy a home?  Is the government telling me that if I don't enter into a private agreement with a bank, then I should be "fined" as a penalty (through a higher income tax).  Is it an overstepping of government power to try to "make" me buy instead of rent?

I know it's a bit cheeky to put it that way, and I'm guessing most people won't actually see it as a problem, but to a degree that's the point.  The government already has systems in place where if you have to pay more taxes if you don't do X, Y, or Z.  Is the healthcare version all that different?  Is it just because it's been described differently that some people see it as such an overstepping?

I would say that, in general, if I have to pay something anyway (like taxes), and you say 'you don't have to pay as much taxes if you buy this', I don't see it as really mandating buying that. I would be paying taxes anyway. I've accepted that, it's part of life. If I didn't get a house, it's not like I could say 'I wouldn't be paying these darn taxes if it weren't for those pesky lawmakers!'  I almost certainly would, one way or another.

However, if the lawmakers actually make and enforce a law that serves me a fine because I didn't (or did) do X, I would say that's a requirement. If I get a speeding ticket, they are requiring me not to speed. It's not like I was going to pay $200 anyway to the city, and I just get a discount for not speeding. No, it's a specific penalty that is not otherwise required. I can certainly say 'if it weren't for that pesky cop, I wouldn't be paying this $200', because it's true. This is despite the fact that my city uses speeding tickets to shore up its budget deficit - so yes, if no one sped, they WOULD increase my taxes, and I'd be paying it one way or another.

I will pay my fair share. But don't make me pay extra when I fail to meet yet another law.

And yes, a lot of that is psychology. The emotional penalty for getting something taken away or being punished is heavier than the emotional bonus from something added. It's human nature. Unless Obama is actually an android (I've had my suspicions), he should have realized that 'fining people for not supporting this idea' will piss people off while 'giving people a tax break for supporting my idea' is, at minimum, a little less insulting.

there are a few points that I want to bring up, because there is more to this bill then just the part about buying insurance.  If it were just hay if you don’t buy health insurance, then you are going to be taxed more heavily then if you don’t, then the fuss wouldn’t be there, or at least there wouldn’t be as big of a fuss.  Here we have something that Congress is famous for, I’m not pointing at any one party, because certain members of both parties have been guilty of this, there are pages and pages and pages, of stuff here that goes into hospital regulation, mandates for doctors, etc, etc.  I had to stop reading because my fingers got tired.  That probably sounds a little weard if you’ve never felt brail.  That’s when you wade through it, I think the real problem.  As an aside I think we should put a limit on the Number of years someone can serve in Congress, what do the rest of you think?

Oh, thanks for pointing out the error.
This message was last edited by the player at 13:06, Sat 18 Dec 2010.

I think your post get cut off in the middle, Apoplexies.

Katisara, it's sounding a bit like you're saying that to a degree, describing the situation differently would have made a significant difference?  That calling it a "tax break for those who buy insurance" rather than "a tax on people who don't" might have avoided some of the anger aimed at the law?   Do you think it's too late to "re-brand" so to speak?  Could people change their mind about the law if the dems just start describing it differently?

They could have done so earlier in the bill’s history, but it’s probably too late now.  It’s already gone to the point of becoming a catch phrase.  I mean most people have had it stuck in their minds that this bill is bad, even if they don’t really know, or understand what it’s about.  Even if one side tries to re-package it, their political opponents, and there have been Democrats that have apposed this bill as well, will immediately point out that they are just trying to push the same bill in through different language.  In short, business will continue as usual.

In reply to katisara (msg #77):

Yeah, the trouble is that democracies end up with the types of government they deserve.  Suckers like us keep voting for the people who point at the other side and yell "Evil!" rather than for people who say "I'll work with the other guys to get the hard stuff done."  Americans always say they want bi-partisanship, but then always vote for the most partisan candidate they can find, it seems.  A number of the republican who got elected in the most recent election stated openly that they wanted to shut the government down.  The republicans more or less purged moderates from their party the last few years, and I just read an article saying that the democrats seem to be doing the same in the other direction.  sigh.

The politicians will get better when we voters stop rewarding them for acting like children.

More signifigantly than that most Americans don't even know the policies of teh group they are voting for. Do you think Republicans could have won back in November with a proclamation of "We're going to stick it to first responders to save teh tax cuts on the wealthiest 2% of Americans?" Obviously they believe in their policies enough to make teh dramatic statements after the election and stick to what they are saying, but they also know enough not to campaign on the truth.
And unfortunately nobody is pointing out what teh truth is, except for more political hacks from teh other side who bend and distort what they are reporting, so that an 'expose' on Acorn is filled with 'evidence' that is ultimately inadmissable in court and gets the people who shot the video sentanced to jail, but it makes the president look like he's mafia so it makes it up on Fox News.

Actually that was pretty much the rallying cry of Democrats in my state, it didn’t work.  And if you look it from a purely tax perspective, (see Richards and Stine, 2008; GOA, 2009), the wealthy already pay more here then anywhere else.  Sometimes I wonder why more of them don’t apply for citizenship elsewhere.