Plagiarism – The Highest Compliment

Rare as it may be, every once in a while someone lifts a line or two from something I’ve written and uses it without permission.  Some people suggest I should be offended my work has been stolen without consent.  On the contrary, I’m usually flattered and honored.  Just think of it.  Someone thinks enough of your work to actually go to the effort of pirating it.  If the thief makes a wheelbarrow full of money with it, I’ll reconsider.  But until then all I can say is “Thanks for the compliment.”

Hopefully, the author of this little piece feels the same way.  I would ask permission if I only knew the source.  It came to me via one of those circuitous email forwards that winds its way through email list after email list, some blind, some public.  Regardless of the source, it was just too cute to not steal.  I’m not the author.  I wish I was the author.  If enough time passes without the author stepping forward, maybe I’ll pretend to be the author.  But for now, I’m offering it to you like I’m peddling a set of hot hubcaps.  Take it and run.  (Incidentally, I stole the image too.  Once a thief – twice a thief.)

A significant majority of Americans believe it is high time the world’s richest country provide fundamental health care for its citizens.  It is the only civilized country that doesn’t.  Here’s one anonymous author’s view of the current insurance industry ruse to scare a gullible American public using the phantom “evils of socialism” approach.

This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the U.S. Department of Energy.

I then took a shower in the clean water provided by a municipal water utility.

After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC-regulated channels to see what the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like, using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

I watched this while eating my breakfast of U.S. Department of Agriculture-inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

At the appropriate time, as regulated by the U.S. Congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the U.S. Naval Observatory, I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration-approved automobile and set out to work on the roads build by the local, state, and federal Departments of Transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank.

On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the U.S. Postal Service and drop the kids off at the public school.

After spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the workplace regulations imposed by the Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, enjoying another two meals which again do not kill me because of the USDA, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to my house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and Fire Marshal’s inspection, and which has not been plundered of all its valuables thanks to the local police department.

And then I log on to the internet — which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration — and post on Freerepublic.com and Fox News forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can’t do anything right.

The author of this post really brings it home.  The time for change is now.  Hopefully, most Americans will continue to see through the nonsense being put out by the insurance industry through their puppets at FOX.  Surely, we’re smarter than that.

To mitigate my confession of plagiarism, I offer round-about thanks to Rich Stage (http://limerickfun.blogspot.com/2009/08/best-pro-government-health-care-post.html), Ozone on Fark (http://www.fark.com/cgi/users.pl?login=ozone), and arpit (http://bitsnbytesoflife.wordpress.com/2008/10/02/a-meeting-with-plagiarism/)