They don’t care, because they believe (quite accurately) that nobody, not even the President, and least of all the newspapers, can stop them or bring them to justice.

Seriously, we now know about an significant number of CIA illegal and murderous activities *for sure*, but has anyone gone to prison for *any* of them?

Medicare. And Tricare (DoD). Oh, and Canadian Medicare and the British NHS (where people complain only because it’s *too* efficient at denying worthless tests and treatments — not because it’s “less efficient”!).

Run the stats, it’s awesome how ineffcient private sector medical insurance is. There are good economic reasons for this; medicine has very unusual economic properties, and you can ask a serious health care economist about it.

But outside medicine, fire protection has similar economic properties, and is simply run more efficiently by the government. So does policing; although there are many problems with government police, they are certainly more efficient than private police (who incidentally seem to have all the same problems).

In another arena, government is also more efficient at provision of sewer and water systems, and electric systems, according to nationwide comparative studies.

These all have distinctive economic properties. Most if not all are natural monopolies.

On my first day at Lackland AFB for Air Force basic training, our Training Instructor “parked” the 50 of us as we waited to march to the next stop (shots?) for the day. We had to stand there quietly, hands behind our backs, at parade rest UNLESS you really had to have a smoke, in which case you could stand over there in a painted box with your other smoker buddies, milling about and chatting (and smoking) until the TI got back.

How long did it take me to buy a pack of cigarettes at the Base Exchange so I could join in? Just as soon as I possibly could. Once I was on the flightline fixing jets I switched to chewing tobacco (no smoking around jets), but the smoking habit was definitely pushed as part of being a military man (along with drinking gallons of coffee during the day and gallons of beer at night).

I don’t agree with a ban on smoking in the military. ‘Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em’ is fine by me, but don’t actively discourage OR encourage it, and definitely don’t subsidize it.

Good on you, lads!

Jesus. Do we have ANYONE with balls left in the US?

What really got me (on the extended version) was one of the students saying “Get out of here!” and then some lady grabs the guy and drags him out of the classroom. Here’s the longer version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EwTPQjT0hA&feature=related

Of course not. The producers will simply attempt to recover the difference from the individual patient, and if they don’t pay up, well then that’s more work for the collection agencies.

Any business that deals with the public never takes a loss, they just pass it on to the consumer.

A completely legitimate criticism. With so many real abuses in government, it’s silly for stupid myths to continue to be spread.

“The new moral is that numbers, taken as self-explanatory truths by the public and the press, can in fact be the woefully distorted products of a broken accounting system.”

So basically, we don’t have a government that spends $600 on a hammer, we have a government with a broken accounting system that doesn’t even know how much it spent. What a model of efficiency…

http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/1298/120798t1.htm

Why is pay for play a scandal again?

Standard libertarian disclaimers aside…it’s a problem because the people who support the ACU do so with the belief their donations, efforts, and signatures are going to promote conservative causes. The ACU not only does advocacy work, but are very closely linked to a lot of the press. The ACU pretends to represent conservatives and their values. Apparently, they just use that image and devotion to sell advertising. If I was a member, I would feel very used.

Also, this story gets the “doublebad” stamp because the ACU weren’t just corrupted by dangling money; they sought payment out.

I don’t see the problem, it’s done every day.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/15/AR2009071502761.html

Of course, the article states that they won’t ban war-zone smoking. Presumably, bases might still be subject to a ban.

There shouldn’t be any trans fats in MREs, either.

But apparently that is a risk worth taking, while the same cannot be said for burning a heater.