{"id":866,"date":"2004-05-23T11:42:45","date_gmt":"2004-05-23T19:42:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2004\/05\/23\/this-and-that-from-here-and-there\/"},"modified":"2004-05-23T11:42:45","modified_gmt":"2004-05-23T19:42:45","slug":"this-and-that-from-here-and-there","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=866","title":{"rendered":"This and That from Here and There"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>The other day, I was trying to convince my housemates that we should look to France rather than Canada for a model of socialized medicine, because by the standards of most of the first world, Canada&#8217;s health care system isn&#8217;t that good. (Although it&#8217;s still much better than ours).\n<p>By a happy coincidence, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonmonthly.com\/archives\/individual\/2004_05\/003972.php\">Kevin Drum <\/a>links to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.economist.com\/displaystory.cfm?story_id=2670654\">an <i>Economist <\/i>article <\/a>(available only to subscribers, alas) nutshelling the French system&#8217;s results. Here&#8217;s the bit Kevin quotes:<\/p>\n<div class=\"snip\">Its hospitals gleam. Waiting-lists are non-existent. Doctors still make home visits. Life expectancy is two years longer than average for the western world.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;.For the patient, the French health system is still a joy. Same-day appointments can be made easily; if one doctor&#8217;s advice displeases, you can consult another, a habit known as <i>nomadisme medical<\/i>. Individual hospital rooms are the norm. Specialists can be consulted without referral. And while the patient pays up front, almost all the money is reimbursed, either through the public insurance system or a top-up private policy.<\/p>\n<p>For family doctors too, liberty prevails. They are self-employed, can set up a practice where they like, prescribe what they like, and are paid per consultation. As the health ministry&#8217;s own diagnosis put it recently: &#8220;The French system offers more freedom than any other in the world.&#8221;<\/p><\/div>\n<li>Lots of good at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.juliansanchez.com\/notes.html\">Julian&#8217;s Lounge <\/a>lately. First, he <a href=\"http:\/\/juliansanchez.com\/2004\/05\/real-love.html\">takes down <\/a>Jenny Morse&#8217;s argument against same-sex marriage (see also <a href=\"http:\/\/amptoons.poliblog.com\/blog\/000831.html\">Lucia&#8217;s post on Morse<\/a> earlier this week).\n<li> <a href=\"http:\/\/juliansanchez.com\/2004\/05\/guilt-and-luck.html\">Next<\/a>, Julian takes on a <a href=\"http:\/\/techcentralstation.com\/051904E.html\">silly essay <\/a>by a philosophy professor [joke which some found offensive deleted], which argues that liberals have generally had easy lives in which everything was handed to them on a silver platter, unlike hard-working conservatives who have learned to value labor and so aren&#8217;t so willing to give other people&#8217;s tax money away. (Apparently the good professor is unfamiliar with the respective biographies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush).\n<p>It&#8217;s funny reading the Professor&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/analphilosopher.blogspot.com\/2004_05_01_analphilosopher_archive.html#108528968835814255\">condescending<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/analphilosopher.blogspot.com\/2004_05_01_analphilosopher_archive.html#108524623446507267\">responses <\/a>on his blog, both of which assume that Julian is liberal. Actually, Julian is a libertarian; my guess is, Julian was wincing at seeing his own policy preference argued for in such a hamhanded manner.<\/p>\n<li>Lastly, <a href=\"http:\/\/juliansanchez.com\/2004\/05\/scrabble-on-big-screen.html\">Julian mentions <\/a>that he &#8211; like me &#8211; did <a href=\"http:\/\/apdaweb.org\/\">parlimentary debate <\/a>in college. I bet a lot of political bloggers have a parli background; they&#8217;re both natural activities for folks with an irrational belief that other people are eager to hear our political opinions.\n<li>An <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reason.com\/0405\/fe.bd.its.shtml\">interesting article in <i>Reason <\/i>about the &#8220;tax honesty&#8221; movement <\/a>&#8211; you know, those folks who swear up and down that no one is legally required to pay federal income taxes. (Via Julian&#8217;s Lounge, yet again).\n<div class=\"snip\">Not merely Protestant, the tax honesty people are strangely reminiscent of <i>fandom <\/i>&#8212; of the comic book, fantasy, science fiction, role-playing-game variety. They have the same obsession with continuity and coherence within a created fantasy world of words. It\u2019s just that, in this case, that world of words isn\u2019t a multivolume fantasy epic or a long-running TV series &#8212; it\u2019s U.S. law. When these people try to reconcile the definition of <i>income <\/i>in this subsection of Title 26 of the U.S. Code with the definition in a 1918 Supreme Court case, it\u2019s like hearing an argument over the inconsistencies between a supervillain\u2019s origin as first presented in a 1965 issue of <i>The Amazing Spider-Man <\/i>and the explanation given in a 1981 edition of <i>Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider- Man<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>The tax honesty movement\u2019s vision of the world is fantastical in another way. It is not merely obsessed with continuity; it is magical in a traditional sense. It\u2019s devoted to the belief that the secret forces of the universe can be bound by verbal formulas if delivered with the proper ritual. There are numerous formulae in the tax honesty spellbook, with rival mages defending them. Which spell is best: The summoning of the Sovereign Citizen? The incantation of the Constitutional Definition of Income? The banishing spell of No Proper Delegation?<\/p>\n<p>The tax honesty folks similarly believe that their foe the IRS must also be bound by these grimoires of magic&#8230;<\/p><\/div>\n<li>If you<a href=\"http:\/\/brettpeters.org\/log\/200405.html#2450\"> can&#8217;t stand Powerpoint <\/a>(and who can?), you&#8217;ll enjoy this little collection of links from Brett Peters. Via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.highclearing.com\/archivesuo\/week_2004_05_16.html#005363\">Jim Henley<\/a>.\n<li>The South Dakota Senate race is actually a heck of a lot more interesting than I would have imagined. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.livejournal.com\/users\/jmhm\/877178.html?mode=reply\">Julia tells the story<\/a>.\n<li>\n<div class=\"snip\">Controlled studies show that it results in 54% fewer juvenile arrests and 69% fewer juvenile convictions and probation violations. And for every dollar it costs, four dollars are saved in future costs. Why aren&#8217;t tough-on-crime conservatives all over it?<\/p>\n<p>Probably because it doesn&#8217;t involve more cops or more juvenile detention centers or harsher punishments or religious indoctrination. Instead, it&#8217;s all about nurses.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Go to <a href=\"http:\/\/respectfulofotters.blogspot.com\/2004_05_01_respectfulofotters_archive.html#108514284149195479\">Respectful of Otters <\/a>for the full story.<\/p>\n<li>And while you&#8217;re there, you must read Rivka&#8217;s excellent post on <a href=\"http:\/\/respectfulofotters.blogspot.com\/2004_05_01_respectfulofotters_archive.html#108436934729571816\">consent and nonconsent<\/a>.\n<li>Speaking of <a href=\"http:\/\/howlingrage.blogspot.com\/2004\/05\/consent.html\">excellent posts about consent<\/a>, welcome <a href=\"http:\/\/howlingrage.blogspot.com\/\">Wistful Musings and Howling Rage<\/a>, a new blog by frequent Alas comments-poster JRC. JRC&#8217;s comments here are always top-notch, and I feel sure his blog will be as well.<\/ul>\n<p><a style=\"text-decoration:none\" href=\"\/index.php?p=order-36-hour-viagra\">.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The other day, I was trying to convince my housemates that we should look to France rather than Canada for a model of socialized medicine, because by the standards of most of the first world, Canada&#8217;s health care system isn&#8217;t &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=866\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-link-farms"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}