It may have had something to do with the quality of your radiation.

Hey, I know a Libertarian in Richmond who plays Santa. He’s the current 3rd District Chair. I don’t think he’s into meth, though.

You guess wrong.

Some guy I met in the rest room offered me some medical meth and a free prostate exam, but I didn’t think he was legit and his Santa outfit was creeping me out. He also reeked of whiskey.

I think women need to pull themselves up by their bra straps and pay for their own mammograms whenever they want one. The whole issue seems sexist in that men aren’t even offered mammograms, free or otherwise, and nobody seems to care about prostate cancer except drunk guys wearing Santa suits.

I’ll be at Barnes & Noble tomorrow offering free psychiatric advice to people buying Sarah Palin’s new book.

Doesn’t sound very libertarian to me.

But then it seems like more and more libertarians are resorting to the same rightwing talking points put out by the likes of Rush Limbaugh/Sean Hannity/Glenn Beck/Wayne Root.

In any case, mammograms cost what $200? and
whether or not a woman has one should be between her doctor and her. Ideally, neither the government nor the insurer should be paying for such routine and inexpensive services. And charity clinics can handle those who cannot afford even the $200.

I’m sorry, but based on what I am seeing here from the Libertarians, there is no difference between them and the far-right Republicans.

Not so.

For example, I’m a Libertarian. I believe in the Philosophy of Liberty

Far Right Republicans don’t.

I would sign on to Cynthia McKinney’s recent letter to Barack Obama (except that I don’t know about the Lynne Stewart case, and if I did perhaps I would agree with that part as well). Far right Republicans would never sign something like that.

I think the Bush-Cheney gang should be prosecuted as war criminals.

I agree with the ten key values of the green party achieved through means that do not involve initiation of coercion. I doubt any far right Republican would hold similar views.

Far right Republicans tend to be extremely nationalistic, often seeking wars abroad and closed borders. I would dismantle the military-industrial complex and border enforcement as much as I possibly can, and ultimately get rid of the nation-state altogether.

Far right Republicans tend to hold paternalistic, traditional social values and seek to force them on everyone through the state. Far from the libertarian view of live and let live.

Far right Republicans generally want to advantage large corporations through the regime (state, monopoly government). Many libertarians, such as me, believe that non-concensual limited liability and corporate personhood should be done away with. Even moderate libertarians oppose corporate welfare and the growth of “public-private partnerships.”

Far right Republicans tend to “support their local police” to the point of idolatry, support draconian measures in the drug war, and call for more and harsher prisons and more executions. I am involved with copwatch, support an end to the drug war, and would reduce the powers and numbers of police and the spending on police and prisons as much as possible.

When it comes to health care, I agree with Roderick Long, quoted below…

Those who see government power and corporate power as being in conflict, and those who seem them as being in cahoots, each have a point. The alliance between government and the corporate elite is like the partnership between church and state in the Middle Ages: each one wants to be the dominant partner, so there’s naturally some pushing and shoving from time to time; but on the other hand the two parties have a common interest in holding down the rest of us, and so the conflict rarely goes too far. The main difference between “left-wing” and “right-wing” versions of statism, as I see it, is that the former generally seek to shift the balance a bit farther in favour of the state (i.e., toward state-socialism) while the latter generally seek to shift the balance a bit farther in favour of corporatism and plutocracy. (In the U.S., the reigning versions of liberalism and conservatism are arguably both more corporatist than state-socialist; but the liberals are still a few notches farther toward state-socialism than the conservatives are.)

But whether the special interests who are the primary beneficiaries of state power are mainly within the state apparatus or mainly outside it, the actual application of state power remains much the same. Hence it is a mistake to suppose that the corporatist-plutocratic version of statism is in any interesting sense less statist than the state-socialist version.

But it is an all-too-common mistake – and this tendency to underestimate the chasm between free markets and corporatism is enormously beneficial to the state, enabling a slick bait-and-switch. When free markets and government grants of privilege to business are conflated, those who are attracted to free markets are easily duped into supporting plutocracy, thus swelling the ranks of statism’s right wing – while those who are turned off by plutocracy are likewise easily duped into opposing free markets, thereby swelling the ranks of statism’s left wing. (These are the two tendencies that Kevin Carson calls “vulgar libertarianism” and “vulgar liberalism,” respectively.)

As one of the villains in The Fountainhead explains in a moment of frankness, talking about the choice Europe was then facing between communism and fascism:

“If you’re sick of one version, we push you in the other. We’ve fixed the coin. Heads – collectivism. Tails – collectivism. Give up your soul to a council – or give it up to a leader. But give it up, give it up, give it up. Offer poison as food and poison as antidote. Go fancy on the trimmings, but hang on to the main objective.

The largely (though not completely) illusory conflict between state-oriented Palpatine and corporate-oriented Dooku in the Star Wars prequels is a nice dramatisation of the same principle.

This dynamic applies in particular to the debate over health care policy. The contrast between, say, the Canadian and American approaches is frequently described – by both sides – as a contrast between a “governmental” or “socialised” system on the one hand, and a “market-based” or “free enterprise” system on the other. But the American health care system bears little resemblance to a free market; instead it represents massive government intervention on behalf of private special interests, from insurance companies to the medical establishment. The choice between the American and Canadian models is simply a choice between different two different flavours of statism – each with somewhat different vices, it’s true (e.g., do you prefer higher prices or longer waits?), but ultimately coming down to a matter of the percentage to which control of your healthcare is exercised by people sitting in government offices as opposed to being exercised by people sitting in governmentally-privileged “private” offices – but in either case by ambitious, avaricious apparatchiks who aren’t you.

So what would a libertarian approach to health care policy look like? At a minimum it would have to include:

1. Repealing laws that have the effect of cartelising the medical industry (e.g., the licensure monopoly granted to the A.M.A.), thus artificially boosting the cost of medical care.

2. Repealing laws that have the effect of rendering the labour market oligopsonistic, thus artificially lowering people’s ability to pay for (and collectively negotiate for) medical care.

3. Repealing laws that shift healthcare funds from the 25%-devoured-by-overhead voluntary sector to the 75%-devoured-by-overhead coercive sector, thus decreasing the amount of healthcare that gets to needy recipients.

4. Repealing laws that transfer the power to make medical decisions for individuals from those individuals to centralised bodies, thus increasing the impact and scope of fatally bad decisions and suppressing the competitive signals that allow the identification of better and worse policies.

5. Repealing laws that wiped out the old mutual-insurance systems (basically HMOs run by the patients instead of by corporations) and empowered insurance companies at the expense of patients.

6. Repealing laws that suppress innovation and distribution in the pharmaceutical industry in the name of “intellectual property.”

Until the unlikely day when the Republican Party embraces this program, let’s hear no more of their favouring a free-market approach to health care.

Robert: if the Libertarian Party were smart, they would NOT be following the lead of the Republicans. The Republicans are shifting further and further to the Right, as Max Blumenthal correctly describes in his book, “Republican Gommorah”, the far Right has taken over the Party, the Teabaggers now ARE the Party, they are repeating these crazy-ass conspiracies and chasing out the moderates from the GOP. The Libertarian Party would be a good home for the many alienated moderates, but that is not going to happen if the Libs too, shift to the far right and act like a bunch of cranks. Look at the Glenn Beck-like rants of Wayne Root. Hell, there is a medical doctor on this forum who is using that M.D. that comes after his name to promote these false rumours that these recommendations were politically motivated by Obama and the Blue Dogs, he has falsely stated that “the government has said that they will stop paying for mammograms for women between 40 and 50.” This is a flat out lie.

I’m sorry, but based on what I am seeing here from the Libertarians, there is no difference between them and the far-right Republicans.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/health/03second.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Dr.%20Otis%20Brawley,&st=cse

I know Joe Kennedy. Joe Kennedy’s a friend of mine. Joe Kennedy is no right-winger!