Torturing the People; a question of rights.

View 795 Monday, October 21, 2013

“Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.”

President Barack Obama, January 31, 2009

 

Christians to Beirut. Alawites to the grave.

Syrian Freedom Fighters

 

What we have now is all we will ever have.

Conservationist motto

I got the stitches taken out of my face today, and we managed to get in a better than half hour walk, with Sable, so we can count it a good day and I am recovering. I am still in a situation to say that you really don’t want to fall out of bed and tear holes in your face.

The stories continue to pour in of government officials – particularly for some reason Parks Department employees including Rangers – taking care to make life miserable for citizens as a matter of policy. Precisely where this policy originated is not known, but considerable money was spent on the operation. The World War II, Viet Nam War, and Korean War monuments on the Mall are not attended and are open for anyone to stroll through, and they are meaningful to the veterans of those wars. The nearest barricades would be in some Park Department storage place a good way from the Mall. Had the government shut down simply removed the park people from the site, it would have cost nothing to ask the American Legion, WFW, and other such outfits to provide monitors; but it was very costly to bring out the barricades and post park police around those monuments to keep the veterans away from them. Yet that was done.

The same with the access off-ramp to the privately owned parking lot at the privately owned and operated Mount Vernon: it costs nothing to operate and no one parks on government property; but at considerable expense barricades were put up to block the off ramp, and federal employees were sent to enforce the shutdown of the turnoff. Same story for the off highway viewpoints for Mount Rushmore; at considerable expense they were closed. And tourists on a tour bus that stopped to look were forbidden to “recreate” by taking photographs of Old Faithful; it took people on duty to do that. This wasn’t saving money, this was intended to be hard on people, presumably so they would blame the Republicans for shutting down the government.

Now you might argue that these acts originated in low level management, but after the first couple of days the President and every senior officer in government had to be aware of them, but nothing was done. Apparently it was decided that this was a reasonable policy. It would seem to be a good subject for investigation with possible firing of government employees under the Hatch Act, but I suppose all the teeth were taken out of that a long time ago. Civil Servants are supposed to be officially politically neutral in exchange for job security when administrations change; clearly that is not working today, and something ought to be done about it. The theory of civil service is that it beats the spoils system by keeping experienced and efficient officials on the job when administrations change. It has a cost: under the “spoils system” it is much easier to hold elected officials responsible for the actions of government. We seem to be working out a system that has all the disadvantages of both.

Rights, etc.

The cardiologist quoted by Mark makes a number of important points. One of them in particular got my attention.

"Why do many Americans think that healthcare is not a right for its own taxpaying citizens?"

What made the author think that it isn’t a right? Please define "right". It is a word that is bandied about a lot, too often by people who manifestly have no notion of its actual meaning. Simply put, a right is something that you can do without requiring the permission of another. Therefore, a right is an action, not an entitlement.

That may sound pedantic, but it is really important. I have the right to be an astronaut, in that no one can forbid me outright. Does that mean I can demand that NASA send me up on the next available flight (whenever that will be)? Of course not. There are other considerations.

By the same token, everyone has the right to high-quality health care, a superior education, comfortable housing, etc. No one can be denied, "just because". If I can pay for it, it’s mine. If I can’t pay for it, I can certainly govern myself ("self-government", see?) so that I can accumulate whatever resources I need to have what I want. That is my right.

It is also my right to be a lazy, indigent, wastrel. No one can force me to be responsible. Can I then demand that others provide me with what I refuse to provide for myself?

That is the central question of economic policy in the modern age.

(I’m so proud I thought of that. I never spent even a nanosecond in an economics class.)

Richard White

Austin, Texas

The Constitution of the United States does not confer positive rights in the sense of welfare, pensions, and health care. The Bill of Rights was negative and prohibited the Federal government from certain actions — Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion did not prohibit the seven states that had established churches in 1787 from maintaining them, and indeed the last state church was not disestablished until well into the 19^th Century.. The Civil War Amendments did prohibit the states from certain actions, but whether they, by sort of incorporating the Bill of Rights into prohibitions on the state government, forbade what amount to socialism was not settled until the Roosevelt Administration and then not by anything like unanimous consent. Child Labor Amendments were proposed and failed, as were Amendments allowing Congress to set minimum wages. Eventually the Warren court worked its revolution to the point that State Senates, modeled after the US Senate, were forced to change their districting by the Federal government, and mysteriously Child Labor Laws and minimum wages became constitutional without an amendment.

The point being that it is only recently than anyone could or would dream that anyone had a federal right to health care. It’s not in the Constitution. Neither is education.

And because these “rights” have been sort of decided to sort of apply, but that was done without the debates of a Constitutional Amendment, and there is nothing like agreement as to what rights one gets because your father lay with your mother: how that obligates someone not related to you at all; whether it is enough just to live here to get the right to be paid for being disabled (or being able to pretend to be disabled for that matter) – all of these are matters never really debated, and not really settled.

Your view of ‘right’ is about that of the Framers, and what used to be meant when we said “It’s a free country.” I can do that because there is no one with the authority to say I can’t. It’s my right to shout my opinions, although there are limits (I can’t yell Fire! in a crowded theater). But now we talk of a right to an education, which is odd because the word is not in the Constitution and no one in 1792 had any idea of a right to an education. And the right to a doctor who would be paid by someone else simply did not occur to anyone at all. That was what charities were for.

Now no one is surprised when we speak of a right to health care, but what it really means is that someone else has an obligation to pay your doctor and hospital bills. You need not worry about who that would be. Vaguely “the rich” I suppose, but in fact soaking the rich won’t solve that problem.

Enslaving the doctors and nurses might accomplish that goal, but no one is suggesting that.

And why a person who eats fats and sweets until he is morbidly obese while smoking cigarettes and drinking rum should have free “health care” has not been established by anyone I know. Of course this chap has a right to his fats and sweets and tobacco and rum in the sense that “it’s a free country”, but what entitles him to have his health care paid for by you and me is not clear. (Note that you are free to support him if you like, probably through a charity; that is your right because it’s a free country. Our discussion is where he acquired a right to your involuntary support, that right to be enforced by the tax collector and if you resist by armed police.)

Just as it is not clear why Social Security which at least attempts to look like savings/insurance –you enroll in it and pay into it so long as you can, in order for you, or your dependents to get something out of it – should make payments to someone who has never worked because he is disabled has never been established. Sure, a guy works for years and is disabled has some claim on Social Security as either insurance or savings, but someone who is simply emotionally unstable and cannot work and has never worked? Even if the permanently disabled have a “right” to be supported, why should it be from the forced savings of those who work? Shouldn’t that be from the general fund? Veterans have earned benefits, but not from Social Security. If we are going to fund the disabled it ought to be from a special appropriation, not something extracted from social security or veteran’s affairs.

As I said earlier, the question of health care cannot be separated from the obligation of the society to support the poor – and that brings us to the question of the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor; and does not settle just who is now obligated to pay, and at what level the payment should be. And until all these issues are debated we will not even understand the question, much less come to an agreement.

It’s late, and I am tired. This will have to do for the day. My thanks to all those who responded to last week’s Pledge Drive and subscribed or renewed.