friends:
earlier i have written of the caustic effect upon our very morals and ethics posed by the very concept of zeke & raham emanuel's "death panels." i suppose the emanuel boys just view it as another aspect of "service" a citizen might give society, ... , you know, to kick off in a "timely" fashion.
a lot of people have commented on this.
there is an aspect of this that has gotten short shrift, however, and that is the matter of the political corruption that would be attendant to such a system. "huh?", you might say?
judges take bribes. city planners take bribes. legislators take bribes, and peddle "influence," and even prostitutes, for that matter. cops fix tickets. people sell children in adoption scams, and procure babies for sale to the highest bidder amongst competitive adoptive parents. men and women and children sell sex, which means someone is buying.
you do not think that someone might not approach a "death panel" "judge" with a bribe, for life itself?
not influence, not leniency, not a zoning decision, or to fix a ticket, but to secure life. breathing. laughing. holding the grand children. watching the baseball game. feeling the breeze upon one's face, to feel the heat of the sun on one's shoulders. to hold and sleep beside a beloved. life.
the more adroit amongst you will immediately say, but that would take money, and the people who have money could afford medical treatment, so why would they have to bribe a death panel judge.
which is to say, without realizing it, that the people who can afford their own medical treatment have the money and can afford to bribe a death panel judge, so that they can secure public benefits and medical insurance benefits way more cheaply than having to pay for their own medical expenses out of their own pockets.
bribery and corruption flourish because it is cheaper than paying one's own way, it is, to use a concept quite dear to zeke emanuel's cold little heart, ... , more economical.
the "death panels" would not only encourage, but they would guarantee a corruption so massive and so corrosive to societal cohesion as to be almost unimaginable.
think of it.
in the civil war when the draft into military service was conceived, a practice was developed whereby the wealthy who were drafted could present as a substitute for their service a person whose services they bought. in short, rich people paid poor people to die for them, in the military service.
life was dear then. life was dear enough then that those who could afford it bought their life from others to whom the money paid to them was as dear as life itself.
do you think life any less dear now. do you think money any less dear now. do you think people who could afford to bribe a death panel judge in order to continue to receive public funds for their medical treatment, at a net expenditure way less than paying for their own medical treatment, would not?
in those situations in which political corruption reigns, and old fashion ward heeling goes on to this day, those persons desirous of serving in positions in which bribery is viewed as a "perq" of employment, bribe the officials who control access to those positions for such employment. everybody gets a little bite out of the pig at slaughter.
it would be no different here. what in g_d's name does this do to the ethics and morality of a proposed bureaucracy whose very integrity is derivative, supposedly, from the objectivity and detachment of those learned sociologists and medical- and bio-ethicists who would sit on such panels.
well, it would destroy the integrity of such a system, and mock the pretense of those who administered the system.
it would also absolutely destroy any "pretense" to justice, and destroy all faith in the public in the honest, honorable and fair administrative of such an idiotic concept. that it what the end result would be, ... , a system held in disrepute and distrust by the very persons it would be designed to "aid" in "the last dignified days" of their lives.
dignity, whilst scrambling about for the cheapest "death panel judge" to deliver the needed vote. an odd picture, that.
corruption not only ultimately destroys ethics and morality, but it cheapens it on the road to hell.
think about it.
tell me if i am wrong. convince me. i do not think you can.
judges take bribes. juries get fixed. cops tear up the tickets. legislators seek those who will buy their "influence." dealing in "mere" life, "death panels" would stay removed from this? who do they think they are kidding?
john jay @ 09.13.2009.
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