The problem is that the people demanding more from their government are perfectly willing to have *someone else* pay high taxes but not to pay higher taxes themselves.

Many people getting money back from taxes are getting *more* money than they paid in due to "refundable" credits such as the Earned Income Tax Credit. They *do* get some kind of "bonus" in that case. However the ~50% of us who fall into the "eeeeeeevil rich guy" category are the ones giving Uncle Sam an interest-free loan for 15 months, or paying a 3% APR penalty if we do not let them get enough principal for that interest-free loan.

FYI, did my return and owe money. And some of that 3% APR penalty as well.

He can, but he would have to be paid what any other person living here would be paid. The reason things are so much less expensive in some other countries is that their laws and regulations are different. A Chinese employer doesn't have to deal with the EPA, OSHA, the Department of Labor, Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, Obamacare/other Department of Health and Human Services mandates, etc. etc. A tariff or trade embargo would be the only way to stop the arbitrage based on the difference in regulations unless the regulations themselves change.

The rub is how that "true cost" gets assessed and who asseses it, because something like global warming is *extremely* hard to put a price on. That is not a free market interaction because the costs for environmental issues, especially the theoretical costs such as with global warming, are anything but easy to guess at. The government would have to do the assessing. As we know with the global warming issue, asking the government to do this job is *extremely* political. Some politicians would not put a single penny of extra cost on something because of global warming concerns, they think it's a load of crap. Others would hike the price up by an order of magnitude because they hang on Al Gore's every word.

The other thing to consider is that the likely reason the newspaper published this list was to invite retaliation against the firearms owners. There also was no legitimate public interest in disclosing these names, such as there would have been if say, you published everybody who made a campaign contribution to $POLITICAL_FIGURE in excess of $AMOUNT. I suggest we publish the telephone numbers, home addresses, and a list of everybody in the households of the newspaper's editorial staff. It's only fair to know who is behind a media outlet and having disproportionate influence on the public, isn't it?

The point brought up is that simply publishing the address is the harmful act. People with restraining orders against somebody tend to NOT want that somebody to know where they live and take measures to try to keep that information low-profile, such as not having it listed in the phone book. Ditto with informants and police officers. This newspaper just went and published a large list of people without their consent/knowledge and likely "outed" some of these people.

The question that needs to be asked before widely publishing personally-identifiable information gets published through FOIA is "will releasing this information cause harm/retaliation to the person?" Many of those examples you cited would cause a decent amount of harm to the person identified in the "outing." Outing a list of people who made consumer complaints and individual campaign donors (not corporations) could very well lead to retaliation. Publishing tax records isn't necessarily the best idea either as knowing that somebody has a lot of valuable items which may not be immediately obvious (such as several expensive pieces of equipment or vehicles hidden in an unassuming shed) could very easily lead to theft if anybody and everybody can access all of the records. The record publishing was originally done when you had to physically go and have a clerk get you certain records. It was much more difficult to data mine records for nefarious purposes for this reason. The government doesn't publish all of the personnel information of its employees such as addresses, SSNs/tax ID numbers, etc. I think that names, addresses, and financial information of others should fall under that same protection.

"Twilight sedation" is when you are given a drug to make you sedated but not actually to the point of unconsciousness as with general anesthesia. The big advantages of it is that you do not need an anesthesiologist around or quite the same level of monitoring, plus patients tend to come out of it quicker. Usually it is done with midazolam (Versed) which as a useful side effect generally makes people forget the procedure. Sometimes fentanyl is used as well, it also is a pain medication. Kids tend to get ketamine, adults less so because adults can be very agitated (dysphoric) when they come out of ketamine.

It's obvious- the ones foaming at the mouth are the ones who are the ones taking advantage of the system.

And apparently vote, judging by what happened in November.

Unless the patient is intolerant of iodine, which many people are. Granted, most are intolerant of *IV* iodinated contrast media rather than PO, but if they have "iodine in contrast" in their allergy list, what radiologist wants to risk getting sued for giving them Gastrografin? Not many I know of, for sure...

Layman's explanation: Contrast agent is something that shows up as a bright color on your scan. There are many different kinds of contrast used for many different purposes, too many to list here. Barium contrast is swallowed and shows up as bright white on regular X-rays and CT scans (CTs are a multitude of X-rays taken by a computerized scanner which is then turned into a quasi-3D representation.) The reason somebody would use barium is to look at the shape of the esophagus (food pipe), stomach, intestines, and rectum to see if there are any parts that are too wide, too narrow/pinched off, the wrong shape, if there is a blockage, etc.

Not so layman's explanation of the tests mentioned:
- Barium swallow: Barium is swallowed and a real-time series of X-rays (fluoroscopy) of the throat (pharynx) is done to see if the barium is swallowed properly. The resulting video shows where the barium goes. This is ordered if the doctor suspects the person may be having problems swallowing (aspiration or refluxing.)
- Esophogram: Barium is swallowed and fluoroscopy of the esophagus is performed to see if there are any abnormalities of the size/shape/anatomy of the esophagus. This is also ordered if somebody has trouble swallowing and the doctor suspects some problem like a stricture, widening of the esophagus (achalasia), abnormal anatomy of the esophagus (such as a diverticulum, malignancy, etc.)
- UGI = Upper gastrointestinal study. This fluoroscopy stufy follows the barium from being swallowed until it goes into the stomach. It shows all of the same things as the esophagram along with the size/shape/anatomy of the stomach as well. Ordered for the same reasons as the esophagram as well as if you suspect some anatomic problem with the stomach (e.g. stomach stapling/bypass not working correctly, etc.)
- Small bowel follow through: Barium is swallowed and then a series of individual X-rays taken at certain time intervals to track the progress of the barium through the stomach and small intestine. This is done to investigate things like the stomach emptying too slowly and obstructions in the small intestine.
- Barium enema: Barium is given via enema into the rectum to look at the anatomy of the rectum. This can investigate anatomic abnormalities of the rectum such as masses and fistulas (a hole from the rectum to somewhere else, this is abnormal.) This can also be used to both diagnose and treat intusussception (a disease of infants where part of the large intestine telescopes into itself.)

A small boxy vehicle made by Kia and advertised with rapping hamsters.

He continued the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that he vowed to stop, kept Guantanimo Bay open which he vowed to close, and then attacked Libya which Bush was NOT involved in. Oh, and by Obama's metrics (e.g. that the six highest tax rate years in the last 30 are the "baseline" and that collecting less in taxes is "spending" and has to be "paid for") he *did* in fact give a "tax cut" that increased spending.

So Obama is no different.

That is probably because Slashdot largely consists of people who are in their 20s and 30s. About half of the younger ones are doing better as four years ago they were in school and making little to no money and now they are one of the ~50% of fairly recent college grads who managed to find a job. The ones who appear to be in their 30s mostly say that they are better off because of being in a good relationship (or out of a bad one) and/or having children are why they are better off.

There are really two options.

1. Eveybody pays for themselves and they decide what they are willing to pay for or get a loan for.
2. The govenment steps in and dictates who gets what.

Neither one are good but there really aren't any good options in a distribution of scarce resources scenario. The first option leads to people dying because they can't afford treatment. The second option leads to government rationing boards, aka "death panels" if you wish. The first option in my opinion is *slightly* better because it technically leaves the choice in the hands of the individual and doesn't create a massive, bloated, unaccountable and unresponsive government buraeucracy. It also rewards people taking care of themselves with lifestyle choices, etc. But it still sucks as some people really do have bad luck in getting an inherited disease/hit by a bus/etc. and can't pay for something that wasn't their fault.