Are you willing to compensate me for doing so?
Yes. But neither can most of us (except through some serious effort) pull out of paying income taxes to support the general functioning of the Federal Government or sales taxes to support the State Governments or property tax to support the local government or excise taxes to support whoever is levying the excise, save by not participating in any economic activity. (BTW, the idea that my contribution to Social Security is being put away towards “my” retirement is a fictional artifice anyway; my contribution to Social Security is going into financing the overall entire construct of Social Security; it’s a plain ol’ tax. ) If having the government declare that a certain policy is going to be financed by having everyone mandated to become paying participants, is “socialist dictatorship”, then there may not be one free country in the developed world, including the US of A.
In any case, SA, it’s becoming apparent that you really, really, badly want, no, need to believe – or even to be existentially certain – that Rodham is some sort of dangerous ultraleft radical. Which like I said, must make real ultraleft radicals pull their hair out. I don’t think there’s anything we can do but respond to your Title Question with: “No, Hillary wouldn’t be a socialist dictator, in the sense the term is normally understood by a majority of people either expert or lay,” and be aware that you may refuse to believe it.
Okay, so wait a minute — Starving Artist is in a huff because a politician was born in the North, and went to college in Massachusetts, is putting on a phony Southern accent? Answer carefully, Starving Artist — we may not be thinking of the same two people.
Lastly, I agree with Left Hand of Dorkness: the Evul Libruls had a secret plan behind closed doors that they didn’t tell anybody, yet somehow all their political enemies know alllllll about it. Somehow I’m not seeing how it got from the one place to the other. You don’t suppose Hillary had this idea in her head, which she didn’t tell anybody but Bill, and one of the two of them leaked the idea to Rush Limbaugh for safekeeping?
Don’t forget that they had this evil plan, and they didn’t do it, and they’re being faulted for even thinking of this evil plan (and sharing it with Rush Limbaugh before deciding not to do it). It is as if Michael Moore told us about Cheney’s plan to throw people in jail for not driving SUVs, and we believed Moore, despite the fact that this didn’t appear in Cheney’s energy proposal.
Daniel
Actually, I think the real problem here is that SA is the sort (of which sort the less said, and the fewer born, the better) who would categorize FDR as a “socialist dictator.” (Not that there’s any comparison between HRC and FDR.)
Who are you thinking of, Fish?
He’s been a Texan long enough for the accent to be real by now, ISTM.
Carol, I’m thinking of Dubya — but if Dubya has an “authentic” accent because he was governor in Texas, why isn’t Hillary’s accent similarly authentic for being the governor’s wife in Arkansas?
President Bush didn’t go to college in Massachusetts, btw.
While Hillary was First Lady of Arkansas for about 12 years, the President has lived in Texas since age 2, so I’d think his accent is more authentic.
We already covered the bit about the accent here , it was a put on, but Hilary wasn’t disguising that it was one, and the clip was deliberately edited to make her look bad. Starving Artist, to his credit, conceded that he’d been misled on this point.
Oh, forgive me — Dubya went to boarding school in Massachusetts and went to college in Connecticut. So where’s that “lived in Texas since he was 2” now?
He also went to Harvard Business School. Which is in Massachusetts.
You are correct. I missed the Harvard Business School part of his resume.
Little known laws of human behavior #338: It is constitutionally impossible to have a thread about either Mr. or Mrs. William J. Clinton or Mr. George W. Bush, without doing a compare-and-contrast series of “He started it when he hit me back” polemic posts paralleling high crimes, misdemeanors, and minor pecadilloes attributed to one to those attributed to the other.
Let me ask Starving Artist, without condemning his basic point: What evidence (as opposed to speculation by blogsters and bloviators) is there that Sen. Clinton would, if elected, act in a manner that might reasonably be termed “dictatorial” by anyone using the word in any normal sense, or that she would advance “socialism” as that term is normally defined. If the usage was hyperbole for “she would force through mandatory programs much further left than I would find acceptable,” I can honor your right to hyperbole – but I’d dearly love to know, over 200 posts into this thread, exactly what we’re supposed to be disproving for you.
I thought this horse died two days ago.
Seriously though, work has kept me exceptionally busy the last few days and I apologize that I haven’t had the time to devote to this thread that I had when I began it. I’ve especially wanted to address LHoD’s post (before he went back over to the dark side with his last post 
) and Frank’s, but I just haven’t had the time. So let me just say to both of you that your points have been recognized and for the most part taken to heart.
Zoe, I’m very worried about you, dear one. Please get well soon (and let me know what the surgeon says). I’d email you instead of posting here but I’m afraid you might not see it for a month or two. 
Email me at the address in my profile if you’d like.
(And please don’t get a facelift; it’s hard enough keeping my distance as it is.)
Hey, ever since I found out the Dark Side has cookies, I’ve been here :).
My last post, though, is just an elaboration of a part of post 137. I really do find the theory about the enforced-public-health-care to be implausible, just as implausible as if Cheney threatened to throw me in jail for buying an economy car. It’s even more implausible to me that Cheney would come up with such a plan in a secret meeting, let the liberal press know about it, and then not follow through on it. Yes, Cheney has many friends in the oil industry and is likely to return to the oil industry in 2009, and yes, such a move would lead to greater profits in his and his friends’ pockets, but it’s still wholly implausible. Only a politically tone-deaf person would propose any such thing. Cheney may be a right bastard who doesn’t care much about what the plebes think, but he’s not politically tone deaf.
And neither is Clinton.
Daniel
If it is a reasonable fee in my view, I may be. I really would like to know once and for all what the truth is, and the truth is in that bill. I tried really hard to read it. I spent almost an hour with it. But all the … insert “of” after 198(2a) and delete “as to”… kind of stuff drove me to utter distraction. What would it cost for you to review it and let us know? In addition to whether the charge is accurate, I’d like to know how, in your opinion and in the event that the charge is not accurate, other legal scholars, such as those at Cato, drew the conclusion they did. Maybe the bill I linked to was not the original that the Clintons proposed, in which case I guess I could contact Cato itself to get the information, but I’d have to pay them too.
One thing can be said for certain. Even if there are no direct sanctions against those who seek health care outside they system under whatever plan eventually is proposed again, there will be an automatic penalty, in that you will be taxed for the government system whether you choose to use it or not, in a similar fashion to how folks who send their kids to private school are still taxed to support the public system.
As regards to health care, in order to have any real choice, some kind of voucher system would have to be in place. This would retain the private nature of current health care. Of course, Hillary would consider health care vouchers to be something that would “undermine the public system”, so yeah, you might be able to “choose your doctor” but the doctor will still be in the miserable public system. But I doubt that the choice of doctor will be even possible. To continue the public school analogy, can you imagine the uproar from the NEA if parents were allowed to select the teachers or even the school their kids went to? Puhleeez.
Under government health care doctors will be forced to unionize, the AMA will morph into the doctor’s union (it is most of the way there already) and doctors will become just as effective as our teachers in the long haul. At that point, choice of provider will be taken away, just as in the school system. This is not an outcome I would desire.
No, Hillary will not become a socialist dictator. What she will do is try to move our country in a socialist direction in every way, large and small, that she can possibly wangle. This is why I will not be voting for her.
And notice how this really does create a two-tier system, just as we have now in education. One for the elite who can afford to pay TWICE for health care, and one for the hoi polloi. Guess which group Hillary falls into? Guess which group YOU probably fall into?
Right now neither, because I lost my Health care by having to go part time because of college, I’m currently looking for a new job, but this points also to something that even the big capitalists do understand:
What is good for General motors…
Large corporations are realizing global competition is killing them also in the area of health care, many companies are now thinking twice in coming to the US because of the health care cost, and it is naive to ignore that the cost is also a reason why big corporations are leaving the US.
At the local level, I can say that many small companies begin with a disadvantage by not being able to give good heath care to their workers, so right away many new industries begin to compete with the fact that large corporations get a break because many preexisting conditions are ignored when there is a large pool of workers.
And I do remember hearing that even though some large HMO’s are insuring **less ** people than before, they are charging more to all the people remaining in their systems.