AP FACT CHECK: Kimmel's take on health care harder to refute

msn.com ^ | 9/22/17 | Ass Press

[SoFloFreeper]

Who's right — President Donald Trump and Sen. Bill Cassidy, or late-night host Jimmy Kimmel?

None has really captured the complexity of the debate over who might lose insurance protections in the latest Republican health care bill. But of the three, the TV guy is the hardest to refute.

[SoFloFreeper]

A sop to a tv fake entertainer. Which plan is closer to our Constitutional moorings? Graham-Cassidy.

Rand Paul is right that it isn't the ideal solution. But it is better than Obamacare.

Meanwhile, the Ass Press is kissing little Jimmy's backside. Pathetic.

[Cicero]

The title alone is enough to put paid to this article. A.P. wouldn’t know a fact from a hole in the ground.

Or, rather, they support the liberal principle that a “fact” is whatever I say it is.

[sourcery]

Refuting is as easy as this:

To say you have a claim to my property is to say you have a claim to the labor I performed to obtain it. To say you have a claim to my labor is to say that I am your slave.

The fruits of a person's labor absolutely do belong to the person, and to no one else. To claim otherwise is to make that person your slave.

The right to property, to liberty or even to life itself cannot rightfully be transmuted into any right to make others your unwilling slaves. Valid rights can do no more than keep others out of your affairs; they cannot conscript others into your army.

If we "owe" society for all the good deeds performed without our consent to pay for them, then we must also "owe" society for all the bad deeds done without our consent or approval. That would make us guilty for every theft, every vandalism, every rape, every murder and every genocide, just because we are members of the society or community.

Transitive debt also entails transitive guilt. One fully and ineluctably requires the other. But such a theory of transitive responsibility (whether blame or credit) has no social utility. And it would create logical contradictions. And a logical contradiction is an absolute falsification.

Fortunately, that's not how the ethical algebra works:

We don't owe "the community" anything just because we live in it, because debts can only accrue because the debtor has agreed to them or because the debtor violated someone's rights. But if all of a person's interactions with others are consensual, and all contractual obligations are met, then there is no residual debt to anyone, and therefore no debt to the community as a whole.

At most, a person living in a community (or in a society) would owe specific people the remaining balance on any loans and/or for any violations of rights that had occurred. But even if that's the case, owing finite amounts to specific people is not any sort of debt to "the community" (or to society.)

Society (or the community) has no just claim to some percentage of our property or our profits just because we live in it and do business with others who also live in it. If doing business with others gave those others a residual claim against a person's property or profits that remained after the person had transacted with them as agreed, it would not be society who had any such claim, but rather those specific individuals.

Transactions only give the counter-parties those rights and obligations that are specifically agreed to by the parties. If you don't agree that having bought eggs from the grocery store at an agreed price also (without any such statement in the agreement) gives the grocer a claim on your income, then no such claim is ethically valid.

Bottom line: We each own ourselves, and so own our labor. We don't owe anyone else anything just because we exist, or just because we perform work, or just because we exchange goods and services with others who agree to make those exchanges with us.

Others do not own you because you are of the same species, live in the same locale, speak the same language, or exchange goods and services with them by mutual consent.

[BobinIL]

Jimmy Kimmel??? When is he going to give us “Girls on Trampolines”!!!!

[sourcery]

[T-Bird45]

“Jimmy Kimmel??? When is he going to give us “Girls on Trampolines”!!!!”

Talk about “jumped the shark” (pun intended) when Jimmy decided that men liking to watch the boobs bounce on his program made him valuable as a commentator on the political milieu. Then he found some other “boobs” with the money to make that happen.

[Buckeye McFrog]

Meanwhile late-night TV viewers yearn for the days of Johnny Carson, who was actually FUNNY.

[Yaelle]

What is Kimmel asking for? All sick children getting free health care?

What about fee for service health care, some basic catastrophic insurance that you pay monthly forever from birth, and great charities to help certain victims?

People, focus on the surgeries and medical departments that are fee for service. Like cosmetic procedures. You pay more in Beverly Hills. Less in Tijuana. And everywhere else, something in between. And many plastic surgeons take trips to third world countries and provide free surgeries for the desperate injured or disfigured people.

Capitalism works, combined with the desire to do altruistic things. It’s not perfect but it works.

Make all medicine like cosmetic medicine. Like the alternative therapies not covered. If people really want them, they find a way. Bariatric surgeons in Mexico are building bigger hospitals and clinics. Think, people. It’s easy.

[sauropod]

Time for good ol’ Fulton Huxtable:

What is a Right?

A right is the sovereignty to act without the permission of others. The concept of a right carries with it an implicit, un-stated footnote: you may exercise your rights as long as you do not violate the same rights of another—within this context, rights are an absolute.

A right is universal—meaning: it applies to all men, not just to a few. There is no such thing as a “right” for one man, or a group of men, that is not possessed by all. This means there are no special “rights” unique to women or men, blacks or white, the elderly or the young, homosexuals or heterosexuals, the rich or the poor, doctors or patients or any other group.

A right must be exercised through your own initiative and action. It is not a claim on others. A right is not actualized and implemented by the actions of others. This means you do not have the right to the time in another person’s life. You do not have a right to other peoples money. You do not have the right to another person’s property. If you wish to acquire some money from another person, you must earn it—then you have a right to it. If you wish to gain some benefit from the time of another person’s life, you must gain it through the voluntary cooperation of that individual—not through coercion. If you wish to possess some item of property of another individual, you must buy it on terms acceptable to the owner—not gain it through theft.

Alone in a wilderness, the concept of a right would never occur to you, even though in such isolation you have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In this solitude, you would be free to take the actions needed to sustain your life: hunt for food, grow crops, build a shelter and so on. If a hundred new settlers suddenly arrive in your area and establish a community, you do not gain any additional rights by living in such a society nor do you lose any; you simply retain the same rights you possessed when you were alone.

A right defines what you may do without the permission of those other men and it erects a moral and legal barrier across which they may not cross. It is your protection against those who attempt to forcibly take some of your life’s time, your money or property.

Animals do not have rights. Rights only apply to beings capable of thought, capable of defining rights and creating an organized means—government—of protecting such rights. Thus, a fly or mosquito does not possess rights of any kind, including the right to life. You may swat a fly or mosquito, killing them both. You do not have the right to do the same to another human being, except in self-defense. You may own and raise cows, keep them in captivity and milk them for all they are worth. You do not have the right to do the same to other men, although that is what statists effectively do to you.

There is only one, fundamental right, the right to life—which is: the sovereignty to follow your own judgment, without anyone’s permission, about the actions in your life. All other rights are applications of this right to specific contexts, such as property and freedom of speech.

The right to property is the right to take the action needed to create and/or earn the material means needed for living. Once you have earned it, then that particular property is yours—which means: you have the right to control the use and disposal of that property. It may not be taken from you or used by others without your permission.

Freedom of speech is the right to say anything you wish, using any medium of communication you can afford. It is not the responsibility of others to pay for some means of expression or to provide you with a platform on which to speak. If a newspaper or television station refuses to allow you to express your views utilizing their property, your right to freedom of speech has not been violated and this is not censorship. Censorship is a concept that only applies to government action, the action of forcibly forbidding and/or punishing the expression of certain ideas.

Statists have corrupted the actual meaning of a right and have converted it, in the minds of most, into its opposite: into a claim on the life of another. With the growth of statism, over the past few decades, we have seen an explosion of these “rights”—which, in fact, have gradually eroded your actual right to your life, money and property.

Statists declare you have a “right” to housing, to a job, to health care, to an education, to a minimum wage, to preferential treatment if you are a minority and so on. These “rights” are all a claim, a lien, on your life and the lives of others. These “rights” impose a form of involuntary servitude on you and others. These “rights” force you to pay for someone’s housing, their health care, their education, for training for a job—and, it forces others to provide special treatment for certain groups and to pay higher-than-necessary wages.

Under statism, “rights” are a means of enslavement: it places a mortgage on your life—and statists are the mortgage holders, on the receiving end of unearned payments forcibly extracted from your life and your earnings. You do not have a right to your life, others do. Others do not have a right to their lives, either, but you have a “right” to theirs. Such a concept of “rights” forcibly hog-ties everyone to everyone else, making everyone a slave to everyone else—except for those masters, statist politicians, who pull the strings and crack the whips.

Actual rights—those actions to which you are entitled by your nature as man—give you clear title to your life. A right is your declaration of independence. A statist “right” is their declaration of your dependence on others and other’s dependence on you. Until these bogus “rights” are repudiated, your freedom to live your life as you see fit will continue to slowly disappear.

[VanDeKoik]

He, and all of the other big mouths on late-night, could pony up 1 million each + get a million from every rich bastard that comes on, and pool it into an endowment and provide free healthcare to every kid in America....if they really cared that much.

Instead they buy 5-10 million dollar mansions.

[CivilWarBrewing]

Jimmy Kimmel is a mouth piece for his butt boy Obama. That’s all this is.

[caligatrux]

I’ll listen to Kimmel’s opinions on Obamacare as soon as he and his family are actually on Obamacare. I can almost guarantee that he isn’t.

[Political Junkie Too]

We don't owe "the community" anything just because we live in it...

Your first sentence is brilliant. I have posted the same thought as well, as far back as 2005.

However, I have a quibble with the line cited above.

I do believe that we do owe the community that we live in. What we owe is basic fealty to the law - call it "consent of the governed." We consent to obey traffic lights, stops signs, speed limits, other people's property and privacy, etc.

It's what makes a society "civil."

-PJ

[cymbeline]

“Meanwhile late-night TV viewers yearn for the days of Johnny Carson, who was actually FUNNY”

They run old Carson show one of our over-the-air channels at 10PM every weeknight. You’re absolutely correct. He was (is) actually funny. Numerous comedians of the past were very funny without being coarse or dirty or exploiting political hot issues.

[Lionheartusa1]

jimmie kimmel , late night media whore .

[sourcery]

I only owe you what you consent to owe me in return. Rights are inherently reciprocal: You only have those rights you reciprocally respect for others. Otherwise, self-defense would not be ethically valid.

[Political Junkie Too]

Sure, but "consent of the governed" implies a consent amongst us as the basis of civil society, doesn't it? At a minimum, we both owe each other the common consent of the governed. That is the basis of the Declaration of Independence, and a requirement to be an American.

If someone refuses this basic consent, then they should be ousted from the community. That is what we each "owe" the others who make up the community, that is, common consent to abide by the civil rules of the community. We cannot wait to confirm a mutual agreement; we must offer the consent independently and trust that the others in the community will likewise reciprocate.

That is the basis of a community, and what each of us "owes" to it as the cost of membership in order to establish and sustain that community. All the rest (contracts between members) is consensual and discretionary.

-PJ

[sourcery]

Peter cannot consent to the violation of Paul’s rights.

“The mythology surrounding the constitution alleges that it served as a sort of contract between the people in general and their new ‘servants’ in congress. But there is not a shred of truth to that. One cannot by signing a contract, bind someone else to an ‘agreement.’ The idea that a few dozen white, male, wealthy landowners could enter an agreement on behalf of over two million other people is absurd. But the absurdity does not stop there. No contract can ever create a right held by none of the participants, which is what all ‘government’ constitutions pretend to do. The form of the document makes it clear that it was not an actual contract, but an attempt to fabricate out of thin air the right to rule, however ‘limited’ it was supposed to be.

An actual agreement by contract is a fundamentally different thing from any document purporting to create a ‘government.’ For example, if a thousand American colonists had signed an agreement saying ‘We agree to give a tenth of whatever we produce, in exchange for the protection services of George Washington Protection Company,’ they could be morally bound by such an agreement. (Making an agreement and breaching it is a form of theft, akin to going to a store and taking something without paying for it.) But they could not bind anyone else to the agreement, nor could they use such an agreement to give the ‘George Washington Protection Company’ the right to start robbing or otherwise controlling people who had nothing to do with the contract. Additionally while the constitution pretends to authorise ‘congress’ to do various things, it does not actually require congress to do anything. Who in their right mind would sign a contract which did not bind the other party to do anything? (In DeDhanney v. Winnebago, 489 U.S. 189, even the U.S. Supreme Court officially declared that ‘government’ has no actual duty to protect the public.) The result is that the constitution, rather than being a brilliant, useful valid contract, was an insane attempt by a handful of men to unilaterally subject millions of other people to the control of a machine of aggression, in exchange for no guarantee of anything. The fact that millions of constitutionalists are desperately trying to get back to that, in hopes that it can save their ‘country’ if the people try it again - after it completely failed on the first attempt - is a testament to the power and the insanity, of the superstition of ‘authority.’” +Larken Rose , _The Most Dangerous Superstition_

[Political Junkie Too]

But what happens when nobody agrees that a red light means stop?

How does a community thrive when each member feels that the civic agreement that we stop at red lights as a condition of living here doesn't apply to *me*?

Don't I "owe" it to the other members of my community to stop at red lights, too?

-PJ

[blueplum]

Everyone will lose health care under the current federal program

Everyone will gain health care under their state’s new programs

If people are afraid they will lose coverage, they must not trust their own state legislatures. And that is a problem the federales can’t fix for them.