On Tue, 18 Nov 2003 22:19:21 GMT, Bert brought
forth from the murky depths:

Larry Jaques wrote:

Uh, Jim. I wasn't standing up for Wally World. I was ranting
about our government chasing the wrong bad guys. Crikey, they
need to find at least SOME sense of what our priorities are.

So we should just forget about enforcing any laws other than the
handful that address the most urgent issues? Are you contending that
people (and companies) should be allowed to break laws with impunity
as long as they aren't breaking high-priority laws?

Wouldn't it have been possible for a single pair of detectives
to find out what Wally World did and bring them to court? I feel
that the case was given far too much time and manpower to bring
in. YMMV.


Do you actually know of any cases where the IRS spent $10K to go after
someone who owed them $32.12? It is my understanding (and I could be

No, but I've seen editorials showing lists given to them
by the IRS which show the millions of dollars owed by large
companies which they never went after. They showed the small
amounts the service collected and the vast majority was from
people making under $100k. I'll see if it was googled and
linked in one of the forums I browse and list it for you if
I can.


Incidentally, it's up to Congress, not the IRS, to plug the loopholes.

ACK.


If we stopped coddling the AMA to focus on preventive medicine...

Not exactly sure what you're talking about here...

Stop letting doctors get away with giving people -seventeen-
different prescriptions and make them actually cure the
patient if possible. Point in case: My father was up to 17
different drugs 2 years before he died. My sister and I looked
into it and asked the doctor to remove the obvious ones.

He had high blood pressure so they gave him a blood pressure
drug, Lopressor (IIRC). It caused nausea so they gave him an
anti-nausea drug which caused itchiness so they give him an
anti-itch drug. "BTW, Doc, he still has high blood pressure.
WTF are you trying to do to my father, or do you care?"

Anyway, we got him down to 10 or so plus some herbs and he
had a much better time for those two last years with CHF,
Congestive Heart Failure.

If doctors did their job, people wouldn't suffer like they
do. Do you know that new doctors don't have to sign the
Hippocratic Oath any longer? Don't quote me on this but I
think the new motto required to graduate from med school is
"GIVE ME ALL YOUR MONEY!"


If the gov't stopped funding elections and used public pots
(donations anonymous) which were distributed evenly to each
eligible delegate...

By "funding elections" are you referring to paying for the logistics
of elections (printing the ballots, setting up polling places, etc.),
or are you talking about the Presidential Election Campaign Fund?

Sorry. Call it campaign funding. Better term. But not just
presidential. ALL campaigns, from city council on up.


it's the latter, why do you think "distributing evenly" would be
better than distributing based on the existing matching funds concept?

1) Because it wouldn't be publically funded. (we'd save money)
2) Because if the money went into a non-disclosure kitty,
it wouldn't be subject to the abuses which now exist.

One can buy a politician nowadays, y'know. Just donate a million
bucks to his campaign fund. If Candidates A, B, C, and D received
$400, $25k, $125k, and $14M for their campaign and donors were
listed, who do you think would be a bought (wo)man? Now put it
all into a kitty containing $14,150,400. Each candidate now gets
$3,537,600 to run their campaign but nobody knows who donated
what and no single man was bought. (Of course, the large donor
probably wouldn't be putting that much into the fund, would he?)
Wouldn't you feel better listening to all the candidates equally
vs. just the one who had the money to run 400 commercials and buy
double spreads in the newspaper? I'd like to slow, if not stop,
the corruption in our government.


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