Today the Outrage provides two fine examples of why Hillary was right.
There are indeed grave problems with America’s current system of health care, whereby critical medical services are denied to good Americans like Emil Matasareanu. Other Americans are being denied their constitutional right to, uh, well, see below.
LESSON ONE
Emil Matasareanu and Larry Phillips were well prepared. They wore full-body armor and carried a number of automatic weapons. After preparing for full-scale war, they attempted to rob a Bank of America branch in North Hollywood on February 28, 1997.
Banks are also well prepared for robbery, so it should be no surprise that Los Angeles police officers responded in mass. There ensued a wild shoot-out during which the two bank robbers exhausted the ammunition in their rifles, and then calmly reached into the trunk of their car to get weapons with fresh clips.
The firefight left eleven police officers, as well as five bystanders, wounded. The shooting spree also left Matasareanu dead, shot 29 times by the police officers who returned his fire.
Matasareanu is suing. Well no, that’s not quite correct – even in America dead men can’t file lawsuits. A lawyer, Stephen Yagman, is filing suit on behalf of the dead thief. In his federal civil-rights lawsuit, Yagman maintains that the police department “cold-bloodedly murdered” Matasareanu by not providing adequate medical attention as he lay bleeding in the street. (Cold blooded? We normally think of that phrase in reference to attacks on undefended, unarmed, unprepared innocents. But lawyers and language have never been close friends.)
Of course, it’s possible that medical personnel were busy attending to some of the sixteen people that the robbers had shot.
To recap: men rob bank, shoot 16 people and endanger the lives of many others. Of course it then follows that taxpayers have an obligation to provide prompt medical service to the men that started the shoot-out.
Technically, the suit has been filed on behalf of the robber’s two children – and we’re sure he was a great dad. You may think that this is all too absurd to take seriously – after all, no one survives 29 gunshot wounds, and Matasareanu would have spent the rest of his life in jail anyway. But think again – the Justice Department is using your tax dollars to launch an extensive investigation to determine whether the gunman was, in fact, denied adequate medical care.
LESSON TWO
A satisfying sexual life is one of the rights granted, or at least implied, by the US Constitution, so we applaud the decision of Medicaid programs to provide the new impotence drug Viagra to those who can’t afford it.
“The sex drive being what it is in some people, it may very well have a lot to do with the mental well-being of a person,” said state representative Ron Johnson, a Republican who heads the Medicaid Oversight Committee in Alabama. Of course, it goes without saying that the “mental well-being” of a person is the responsibility of the government.
Alabama and Florida pay for four state-funded satisfying encounters per month, Arkansas, Louisiana and Maryland cover six, and the home of polygamy, Utah, springs for 10. Go Boy Go!
(We wonder if the real men live in Rhode Island. The state began offering to pay for Viagra recently – but no one has yet applied.)
This is a great opportunity for America. If taxpayers fund an increase in the virility of those on Medicaid, we may well also get the opportunity to increase the cycle of subsidy – to pay for the birth, education, and medical expenses of the resulting children. Or perhaps we can pay for some more federally funded abortions.
WHAT WE CAN LEARN
Obviously we need to be more sensitive to the needs of wounded bank-robbers and the impotent poor. We should also prepare for the next wave of lawsuits, which will come from those whose unsatisfying sexual lives forced them to get killed while robbing banks in order to pay for Viagra denied them by the state.
There was just a story about these guys on TV a while ago. They stated that NOBODY was shot except for the two robbers (one took his own life). I’m not sure where the 16 other people figure came from…
Time: 5/22/98 (17:0:47)
Time: 5/22/98 (7:44:10)
Time: 5/12/98 (9:43:49)
Time: 5/11/98 (16:46:54)
Time: 5/11/98 (14:53:37)
Time: 5/10/98 (21:54:38)
Time: 5/10/98 (19:15:3)
Time: 5/10/98 (19:10:34)
I think we should set up a trust fund for the Matasareanu kid based on the fact that their father gave us such great video footage on how NOT to do gun battle with anyone… let alone the police. Come on, that’s gotta be worth SOMEthing!
Respectfully…
I agree with the premise of your article. However, Utah is not the HOME of polygamy. First of all it’s illegal. And second of all when the Mormon church did practice polygamy the practice began in Illinois.
Why should my tax dollars go toward Viagra, when Birth Control pills are not covered under health insurance?
Think about it?
I guess since Men want it, it’s okay, but if a woman needs it, it’s expensive and considered not necessary.
This comment might be written in vain due to the age of this article, but after reading through the various postings about this topic, I felt compelled to respond. As with most Americans, I found this incident in North Hollywood, CA. to be almost unbelievable. What would drive two young men to such desperation? I witnessed this madness as most of you did; through the all-seeing eye-in-the-sky of the various Los Angeles news cameras. As with most crimes that are caught on photographic media, the “shock value” that is so desperately sought after for ratings has a tendency to sway public opinion (as the postings on this web site would contest to.) Regardless of what these two apparently insane Americans did, if the Los Angeles public service departments in question did indeed allow Emil Matasareanu to pass away due to his injuries via intentional negligence, then the Matasareanu’s family legal consultation does have the right to seek compensation! My first impression of some of the personal comments posted to this web site was that I was reading the ranting of preadolescence school children. It boggles my mind that Americans appear to be so willing to jeopardize their personal rights when they witness fellow Americans being depraved of the civil liberties, and respond with the mental dullness that has been displayed by the individuals that have posted their opinions here, on this web site. I am not here to justify the apparently crazed actions of these two madmen, but I do feel strongly that if the individuals that are hired into the various organizations that are obligated to protect my personal liberties are allowed to decided who lives and who dies, then some freaking heads should roll. For those of you who feel that individuals like me should find another country to live in, then I respond that I, as a veteran of the U.S. military who has been involved in defending this country’s in actual combat, have more of a right to live in this country then 98% of you. Maybe you should think of moving to South Africa or Haiti (where street justice apparently thrives.)
Doesn’t it now follow that the poor impotents should be allowed to sue the government for all of the benefits they “could” have received from the government if they’d been allowed more viagra and allowed to produce more children. By the government depriving them of the necessary viagra that would allow them to create more children, impotents will not be eligible for hundreds of thousands of dollars of benefits from the government. Think of the potential of their personal financial losses of food stamps, medical, cash, housing, and education they will not get because the government wouldn’t give them more viagra. In a sense, isn’t the government indeed, actually killing these children because it is depriving them of life by not allowing poor impotents unlimited access to viagra!
I think this site is stupid!