Seriously though, Limbaugh is a comedian with a really narrow-minded political agenda. I understand why people listen to him (and even why people on Cenla Antics mimic him), but I’ve never believed he should be taken seriously.

Just today, Limbaugh repeated a ridiculous and patently absurd lie that Obama isn’t an “African-American,” because his father was from the Middle East. Problem is: Obama’s father is from Kenya– not exactly the Middle East.

Typical Limbaugh: Broadcasting ignorance in order to stoke paranoia, irrational fear, and bigotry.

I prefer NPR.

Why should I care anyway….my house is financed with a traditional mortgage with a 70/30 debt to equity ratio, neither of my vehicles are over colateralized, and to top it all off, I have a fairly secure job that comes with health insurance.

Perhaps I could be a little more compassionate. Thanks for providing me with some different perspectives on things besides my own. I gotta stop listening to RUSH…..Limbaugh, not the band.

Anyway, I think ensuring public health is the prerogative of government, and to that end, I agree with mandating health insurance for all Americans. We’re the only industrialized country in the world without a single-payer health care system. The “socialism” argument looks silly, considering the $700 billion bail-out our Republican President is proposing for Wall Street.

http://personalinsure.about.com/cs/healthinsurance1/a/aa060903a.htm

I too have had problems obtaining health insurance from time to time due to a pre-existing heart condition I had. Most folks likely would not have a problem with some sort of government regulation and/or supplements to assist those who the insurance companies won’t carry for reasons like yours.

I assume that the 47 million Americans who don’t have health insurance either can’t afford, can’t get it, or choose not to buy it. Providing them and everyone else with “universal” coverage is a noble goal but is not the role of our government. If we do that, then what’s next? Universal housing access…ooops we tried that and it failed. How about universal access to luxury cars, jobs, money, loose women, beer, wine…. you get my drift. None of these things are gauranteed by our constitution. They can package it however they want but it’s still socialism.

I think we both agree things can be better and should be better. This, in no way, should be taken as a criticism of the great people who volunteered to help their community (and their State) during a disaster. They were tremendous, particularly considering, as you point out, the terrible conditions.

Kudos.

I don’t think this is excusable, and I don’t think comparing this to expanding health care access for 47 million Americans is fair or appropriate.

Somehow, we can find $700 billion to bail out Wall Street, yet we’ve been told for decades how expanding health care would somehow bankrupt this country.

And for people like me, Darren, it’s not like we’re handing “health care” over to anyone because private insurance simply refuses to provide me with coverage.

Sorry to make it personal, but health care is an issue I don’t like joking about or excusing.

By the way– on a lighter note– I also saw the PBS documentary. It was fantastic, and thanks for referencing an amazing book. (John Barry was the keynote speaker at this year’s Rising Tide 3 blogger’s conference in NOLA).

“What was the result of Reagan’s “trickle-down economics,” as the policy was called? One result, which suggests that it worked, was that the economy, after its previous stagnation, began to expand again. Looking at the period from 1977 to 1988, the economy sustained an average annual growth rate of 2.2%–not spectacular but certainly an improvement over its previous stagnation. Arguably, therefore, the Reagan “trickle-down” policy produced results that justified it in terms of the Difference Principle [the idea that government policies are justified if they help the majority of citizens].
But actually this is not so. If we divide the population into income levels from the poorest tenth or decile to the wealthiest tenth and look at the gains and losses sustained by these income groups over the same period of time, we find that most people, particularly the poorest, lost income and only the very wealthy gained in income. Here are the figures, taken from the Republican political analyst Kevin Phillips’s The Politics of Rich and Poor (New York: Random House, 1990), p. 17 (again see references therein for ultimate sources of statistics):

Percentage Change in income for the period 1977-88, organized by income deciles from poorest to wealthiest:

Poorest tenth……. -14.8% Sixth……………. -5.4%
Second poorest……. -8.0% Seventh………….. -4.3%
Third poorest…….. -6.2% Eighth…………… -1.8%
Fourth…………… -6.6% Ninth……………. +1.0%
Fifth……………. -6.3% Tenth…………… +16.5%

Top 5%………….. +23.4% Top 1%………….. +49.8%

This tells an interesting tale. It is false that everyone was made better off by the Reaganite policy. The very wealthy, the top ten percent and especially the top one percent, were made significantly better off; some members of the upper middle class (the ninth decile) were made very slightly better off; everyone else, especially those in the poorest tenth, was made in varying degrees worse off. The Reaganite policy is not justified in terms of the Difference Principle. (There is some evidence that Reagan officials never expected their policy to work to everyone’s benefit; they only expected it to work to the advantage of the very wealthy. So, in their public statements explaining and justifying their economic policy, Reagan and the members of his administration lied to the American public.)”

Which, of course, is UNETHICAL.

I’m sorry, my friend, but no one expects “the comforts of home while away” at a shelter during a hurricane evacuation. However, I think everyone should expect that when we’re spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars every year to LEASE shelter space, that space should — AT LEAST– have air conditioning and adequate restroom facilities.

Of course we did a better job “evacuating the poor/sick/disabled,” because this time, we actually evacuated!

With regard to your three points:

1) Because of coastal erosion, no doubt, we’re all more vulnerable.

2) No offense, but only an ideologue would blame this on LBJ and the Great Society. Somehow, if there are more poor people in Louisiana, in your view, it’s because of the failure of the Great Society. Seriously? LBJ?

3) Agreed. And we should have zero tolerance for lives lost.