As I’m sure most of you by now know Terry Schiavo died today. Yes my last entry I stated that I believed that the tube should remain removed and that Terry should be allowed to die. She should have been allowed to die in 2001 the first time the tube was removed. Even so I give my sympathy to her parents, and hope that now that it is final that they will be able to move on with their lives and continue to live their lives with happy memories of Terry rather than the years of legal battles and television interviews that they forced themselves to go through. It is my hope that they can come to see the this final answer is what was best for Terry, even if it’s not what they wanted.
However, I keep hearing certain things repeated over and over … and I’m tired of it.
The courts killed Terry.
No, they didn’t. That is simply the rhetoric of the ‘right to life’ crowd … the courts did not order that Terry be killed, nor did they order that anyone kill her. The court’s ruling was simple … that Michael Schiavo was Terry’s legal guardian and, as such, he had the legal right to have the tube removed. The court also ruled that it would be ‘unlawful’ for anyone to prevent him from removing the tube or otherwise interfere without Michael’s consent.
Given the fact that Michael wanted the tube removed did that ruling mean that Terry would likely die because Michael would remove the tube? Yes. But although it may seem cold and heartless, that isn’t the concern of the court … the concern of the court was … who in the eyes of the law has the authority to make that decision in the case of Terry Schiavo?
If she’d had a living will we wouldn’t be having this fight.
More than likely this is incorrect. First off, living wills aren’t quite so cut and dry and they ultimately rely on an executor that is willing to carry them out. Secondly, just like a normal ‘last will and testament’, they can be contested by family members that disagree with the situation. From what I’ve seen of the parents they would likely have contested any living will bringing us right back to the court battle that we’ve had over the last several years.
This creates a precedent that could lead to the court condemning handicapped people to death.
No, not at all. First there is the point I made above, the court ruling did not order Terry’s death. It ruled that Michael, as her legal guardian, had sole authority to make that choice and no one could interfere with it. Second off, because of the previous statement, there would have to be a legal guardian that was trying to kill the handicapped person through removal of a feeding tube or other form of life support …
The court ignored the law passed by congress and the President.
Well … there are a whole slew of issues there. Ignoring the issues with passing a law for a specific person and the questions of whether congress or the president should be involved at all, there is a very dangerous precedent in that. The ‘law’ that congress passed stated that the Court HAD to review the case as if it was a brand new case and had never before been heard by the court. … What’s the danger in that you ask? Simple … it opens the door to congress forcing ANY ruling that they don’t agree with to be reheard by the court as a new case. If the result of that review wasn’t to their liking they could just bounce it back to the court again … and again … and again … until they get a ruling they like and clogging up the judicial system in the mean time. (Or until they just couldn’t get enough votes to pass the ‘law’)
I don’t always agree with the courts, but I believe that in this case they did their job.
Thursday, March 31, 2005
Saturday, March 19, 2005
Time to Let Go
I’m sure by now that you have all heard about the Terry Schiavo case in Florida. The woman is brain damaged and some doctors say that she is in a ‘persistent vegetative state.’ She has been this way for 15 years. Her husband says that she had told him that she did not want her life artificially extended through life support, her parents deny that.
But her parents are in denial about a lot of things. Not the least of which is the fact that their daughter is already gone. I challenge just about anyone that reads this to watch the video of Terry that the family has released and tell me that you would WANT to live that way. What quality of life does Terry have … they say that her husband is trying to murder her … it looks to me more like they are trying to torture her.
The good news is that if Terry DOES somehow … against the best projections of doctors … ‘wake up’ she’ll have completely missed the Clinton presidency and all of the insanity that went with it.
They say that the courts and the doctors are ‘playing God’ in forcing the removal of the feeding tube … the only way that Terry is able to get the nutrition that she needs to keep her alive. I would say that the people ‘playing God’ are the people keeping her alive through artificial means. If you want to bring God into this then take the feeding tube out and let God decide if Terry lives or dies … if God wants her to live then she’ll recover enough to eat and drink in order to get the nutrition that she needs to continue to survive.
Terry’s parents say that her husband, Michael Schiavo, is just trying to get her life insurance money … but Michael has turned down offers of millions of dollars to let her live … they also say that he just wants her dead so that he can marry his girlfriend and have begged him to divorce their daughter and let them care for her.
That would have been the easy way out for Michael. This battle has been raging since 2001 … the first time that the courts ordered the tube removed … it was then ordered re-inserted when a new witness surfaced. The tube was ordered removed again in 2003 but 6 days later Gov Jeb Bush of Florida passed a law called “Terry’s Law” that effectively made Terry a ward of the state and took away Michael’s rights to her care and had the tube re-inserted again. The Florida Supreme Court later ruled that the Governor had overstepped his authority and declared “Terry’s Law” unconstitutional leading to the Feb 2005 court ruling to remove the tube for a third time.
So why would someone turn down millions of dollars to continue the legal fight to let his wife die naturally? Why would he refuse the easy ‘uncontested’ divorce in favor of long drawn out court battles? Money? Not likely … the trust fund from her malpractice suit has been emptied and I find it unlikely that her ‘life insurance’ would match the offers of millions. To marry another? I’m sure that Michael will likely re-marry after Terry dies … he has children and has been involved with this other woman for several years now … but it would have been much easier to do that if he’d just given in and divorced Terry. The only answer that truly makes sense is that he really believes that it is what Terry wants … and that he could not, in clear conscious, let her parents have their way against Terry’s wishes.
There are plenty of you that read this and know me personally … to all of you I say publicly don’t let that happen to me. I do not want to be kept alive through artificial means … I don’t want to be a lump in a hospital bed with machines keeping me alive. If it is me there in Terry’s place … pull the plug … and if the government tells you that you can’t pull the plug … put a bullet in my head instead.
To Terry’s parents I say … your daughter is gone … you are not helping her with this fight … you are not giving her a better life … you are not saving her. It’s time to let her go.
But her parents are in denial about a lot of things. Not the least of which is the fact that their daughter is already gone. I challenge just about anyone that reads this to watch the video of Terry that the family has released and tell me that you would WANT to live that way. What quality of life does Terry have … they say that her husband is trying to murder her … it looks to me more like they are trying to torture her.
The good news is that if Terry DOES somehow … against the best projections of doctors … ‘wake up’ she’ll have completely missed the Clinton presidency and all of the insanity that went with it.
They say that the courts and the doctors are ‘playing God’ in forcing the removal of the feeding tube … the only way that Terry is able to get the nutrition that she needs to keep her alive. I would say that the people ‘playing God’ are the people keeping her alive through artificial means. If you want to bring God into this then take the feeding tube out and let God decide if Terry lives or dies … if God wants her to live then she’ll recover enough to eat and drink in order to get the nutrition that she needs to continue to survive.
Terry’s parents say that her husband, Michael Schiavo, is just trying to get her life insurance money … but Michael has turned down offers of millions of dollars to let her live … they also say that he just wants her dead so that he can marry his girlfriend and have begged him to divorce their daughter and let them care for her.
That would have been the easy way out for Michael. This battle has been raging since 2001 … the first time that the courts ordered the tube removed … it was then ordered re-inserted when a new witness surfaced. The tube was ordered removed again in 2003 but 6 days later Gov Jeb Bush of Florida passed a law called “Terry’s Law” that effectively made Terry a ward of the state and took away Michael’s rights to her care and had the tube re-inserted again. The Florida Supreme Court later ruled that the Governor had overstepped his authority and declared “Terry’s Law” unconstitutional leading to the Feb 2005 court ruling to remove the tube for a third time.
So why would someone turn down millions of dollars to continue the legal fight to let his wife die naturally? Why would he refuse the easy ‘uncontested’ divorce in favor of long drawn out court battles? Money? Not likely … the trust fund from her malpractice suit has been emptied and I find it unlikely that her ‘life insurance’ would match the offers of millions. To marry another? I’m sure that Michael will likely re-marry after Terry dies … he has children and has been involved with this other woman for several years now … but it would have been much easier to do that if he’d just given in and divorced Terry. The only answer that truly makes sense is that he really believes that it is what Terry wants … and that he could not, in clear conscious, let her parents have their way against Terry’s wishes.
There are plenty of you that read this and know me personally … to all of you I say publicly don’t let that happen to me. I do not want to be kept alive through artificial means … I don’t want to be a lump in a hospital bed with machines keeping me alive. If it is me there in Terry’s place … pull the plug … and if the government tells you that you can’t pull the plug … put a bullet in my head instead.
To Terry’s parents I say … your daughter is gone … you are not helping her with this fight … you are not giving her a better life … you are not saving her. It’s time to let her go.
Thursday, March 03, 2005
Garage Jumping
Okay … The lawsuit mentality in this country is flat out of hand. No matter how stupid, or illegal, an act you commit it seems that you are not only able to sue someone else for it, but WIN.
Two cases I’ve heard about recently have really got my blood boiling … its ridiculous and it needs to be stopped. The problem, however, goes beyond just the courts system … it goes all the way down to the juries themselves. The juries have it in their power to STOP the nonsense but they continue to encourage it instead.
This isn’t a small problem either … it has MANY implications on things that too many people just don’t consider.
First let’s look at a case out of Orlando, FL. Just a bit of background … Some of the younger population of the Orlando area have taken to the trend of “Garage Jumping” … the art of jumping from the top of one parking garage to the top of another.
Well in the recent case, reported originally on Feb 28th 2005, one local teen was following his friends when he failed to reach the other side and fell 6 stories where he was knocked unconscious. So what is the father’s answer to his son’s stupidity? SUE THE GARAGE OWNER! Get me some phat cash for this one!!
Never mind the fact that they were trespassing … never mind that they entered the garage illegally … never mind that they chose of their own free will to try and jump between these garages. They knew the risk when they jumped … it was 6 stories to the ground … chances were pretty good that it would be a fatal fall. So the kid gets lucky and survives a failed attempt … and they are going to sue the city and the garage owner for not stopping him.
Okay … so now it is the responsibility of the city and private property owners to make sure that YOU don’t do something completely STUPID. Screw it … lets just make it so that everyone is completely safe no matter what stupid thing they try … lets gate all the sidewalks in cities so that people can’t stupidly step out in front of a car or truck. Require padding on all the walls and doors so people don’t accidentally run into them and hurt themselves.
How about this … lets lock the kid up for trespassing and reckless endangerment (of himself and anyone he might accidentally land on) … lets teach the kid a friggin lesson in personal responsibility because it’s obvious that his dad doesn’t have a clue.
The other case that I heard about in conjunction with this was a reported case (I haven’t been able to find specifics) in which a thief broke into a house, and in the process of robbing it fell down the stairs and broke his leg. After his arrest the thief sued the homeowner for personal injury and won the case…. I didn’t hear what the jury awarded the thief … but it was apparently a good sized sum of money.
Yes … that’s right … if someone BREAKS INTO YOUR HOUSE and gets injured robbing you they can SUE YOU … so make sure it’s safe glass and put safety equipment around to make sure that potential robbers don’t slip and fall or anything.
These lawsuits fail to teach people the lessons of personal responsibility that they need to be learning, but they have other detrimental effects as well. Namely and most importantly they drive up EVERYONE’S insurance premiums. Because, you see, they juries look at it as “well it’s just those rich insurance companies that have to pay … give them the money” … they always seem to conveniently forget that the insurance companies GET the money in the form of Insurance Premiums … as more of these suits go through and the awards get higher the Insurance companies have to raise premiums in order to cover possible law suits.
In other words … EVERYONE ends up paying for this crap. Do you know how much the imbedded liability cost is on everything you buy? Well … about 20% of what you pay at the store is sales tax and other imbedded taxes … about 40% is imbedded liability costs both the Liability Insurance that the companies have to carry AND the cost of the lawyers that the company must retain to help protect itself …. In other words … that parking garage has liability insurance … that cost makes up about 40% of the cost of parking there … if the suit is successful their insurance is going to go up … therefore the cost of parking is going to go up … plus they will tack on a portion of the cost associated with preventing other idiots from doing the same thing.
Not to mention that crap like this fills up the courts and is the result of about half our legal problems.
Let’s get a grip on this folks … charge the kid as I mentioned above, and slap the father with about a $500,000 fine for a frivolous lawsuit.
Two cases I’ve heard about recently have really got my blood boiling … its ridiculous and it needs to be stopped. The problem, however, goes beyond just the courts system … it goes all the way down to the juries themselves. The juries have it in their power to STOP the nonsense but they continue to encourage it instead.
This isn’t a small problem either … it has MANY implications on things that too many people just don’t consider.
First let’s look at a case out of Orlando, FL. Just a bit of background … Some of the younger population of the Orlando area have taken to the trend of “Garage Jumping” … the art of jumping from the top of one parking garage to the top of another.
Well in the recent case, reported originally on Feb 28th 2005, one local teen was following his friends when he failed to reach the other side and fell 6 stories where he was knocked unconscious. So what is the father’s answer to his son’s stupidity? SUE THE GARAGE OWNER! Get me some phat cash for this one!!
Never mind the fact that they were trespassing … never mind that they entered the garage illegally … never mind that they chose of their own free will to try and jump between these garages. They knew the risk when they jumped … it was 6 stories to the ground … chances were pretty good that it would be a fatal fall. So the kid gets lucky and survives a failed attempt … and they are going to sue the city and the garage owner for not stopping him.
Okay … so now it is the responsibility of the city and private property owners to make sure that YOU don’t do something completely STUPID. Screw it … lets just make it so that everyone is completely safe no matter what stupid thing they try … lets gate all the sidewalks in cities so that people can’t stupidly step out in front of a car or truck. Require padding on all the walls and doors so people don’t accidentally run into them and hurt themselves.
How about this … lets lock the kid up for trespassing and reckless endangerment (of himself and anyone he might accidentally land on) … lets teach the kid a friggin lesson in personal responsibility because it’s obvious that his dad doesn’t have a clue.
The other case that I heard about in conjunction with this was a reported case (I haven’t been able to find specifics) in which a thief broke into a house, and in the process of robbing it fell down the stairs and broke his leg. After his arrest the thief sued the homeowner for personal injury and won the case…. I didn’t hear what the jury awarded the thief … but it was apparently a good sized sum of money.
Yes … that’s right … if someone BREAKS INTO YOUR HOUSE and gets injured robbing you they can SUE YOU … so make sure it’s safe glass and put safety equipment around to make sure that potential robbers don’t slip and fall or anything.
These lawsuits fail to teach people the lessons of personal responsibility that they need to be learning, but they have other detrimental effects as well. Namely and most importantly they drive up EVERYONE’S insurance premiums. Because, you see, they juries look at it as “well it’s just those rich insurance companies that have to pay … give them the money” … they always seem to conveniently forget that the insurance companies GET the money in the form of Insurance Premiums … as more of these suits go through and the awards get higher the Insurance companies have to raise premiums in order to cover possible law suits.
In other words … EVERYONE ends up paying for this crap. Do you know how much the imbedded liability cost is on everything you buy? Well … about 20% of what you pay at the store is sales tax and other imbedded taxes … about 40% is imbedded liability costs both the Liability Insurance that the companies have to carry AND the cost of the lawyers that the company must retain to help protect itself …. In other words … that parking garage has liability insurance … that cost makes up about 40% of the cost of parking there … if the suit is successful their insurance is going to go up … therefore the cost of parking is going to go up … plus they will tack on a portion of the cost associated with preventing other idiots from doing the same thing.
Not to mention that crap like this fills up the courts and is the result of about half our legal problems.
Let’s get a grip on this folks … charge the kid as I mentioned above, and slap the father with about a $500,000 fine for a frivolous lawsuit.
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