u.s. politics: molotov cocktail through the overton window

[Shryke]

1 hour ago, ThinkerX said:

Yet, until Obama came along, it kept getting shut down, often within the democratic party itself.  And as universal health care schemes go, the ACA is both weak and badly flawed.

And now, we have Clinton making statements that CAN be interpreted as saying that 'any serious Universal Health Care scheme is unrealistic.' 

For myself (can't track the links at the moment) the proposal that interests me is the 'Medicare Buy-In.'  Ordinary people, regardless of income level being allowed to simply buy into Medicare.  The Employer health plans remain untouched.  Medicare/Medicaid taxes go up some. Give Medicare/Medicaid full authority to aggressively negotiate with medical providers on top of that, and we have something that might work without everybody going broke and has a shot of getting through Congress.  I forget which congress critter was pushing that proposal.

Healthcare reform had several major pushes but when they fail they tend to send the issue off into the wilderness for another like decade or two till someone decides to try again.

And Clinton is not saying "any UHC scheme is unrealistic" and any interpretation as such, given it's fucking Hillary Clinton, is goddamn dumb. She does think the numbers on Sanders proposals don't work but then, like, so do most people who work on health care policy.

The truth is that, like a lot of issues recently of this sort, the politics of this stuff have moved FAST recently. Just 8 years ago when the ACA was getting pushed through things like the public option and medicare buy-in couldn't get 60 votes in the Senate and so were stripped out. Now the politics may have shifted enough to make such things viable. Certainly they've shifted enough that anyone thinking of running in 2020 thinks they at least have to put their name in as having supported single payer. How viable it actually is politically is ... unknown and uncertain.

[Shryke]

7 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

I know we've basically moved past this, but I watched the Maddow interview with Hillary tonight and I'm just left to wonder where this person was during the campaign. I don't know if it's just that she's just so much better at communicating one on one than she is to a crowd or what, but she comes off so much better in this format than she does making a speech.

 

 

/Solid interview. 

That person was not being covered by the press is where she was.

Or being covered in really stupid ways.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

1 minute ago, Shryke said:

That person was not being covered by the press is where she was.

Or being covered in really stupid ways.

Did she do a one on one interview of that length during the campaign? I honestly don't remember. It would have had a different tenor regardless, but I can't remember seeing a bit of media during the campaign that she handled nearly as well. Maybe the first Bernie debate? I don't know. 

[ThinkerX]

1 hour ago, Shryke said:

Healthcare reform had several major pushes but when they fail they tend to send the issue off into the wilderness for another like decade or two till someone decides to try again.

And Clinton is not saying "any UHC scheme is unrealistic" and any interpretation as such, given it's fucking Hillary Clinton, is goddamn dumb. She does think the numbers on Sanders proposals don't work but then, like, so do most people who work on health care policy.

The truth is that, like a lot of issues recently of this sort, the politics of this stuff have moved FAST recently. Just 8 years ago when the ACA was getting pushed through things like the public option and medicare buy-in couldn't get 60 votes in the Senate and so were stripped out. Now the politics may have shifted enough to make such things viable. Certainly they've shifted enough that anyone thinking of running in 2020 thinks they at least have to put their name in as having supported single payer. How viable it actually is politically is ... unknown and uncertain.

Something that got pointed out in the Obama years, when he repeatedly clashed with Republican dominated Congress.  Something being overlooked on the democratic side NOW.

 

Back then, the democrats would dream up a policy for something or other, be it health care or taxes or whatnot.  They would then take that bill to Congress - and the republicans would tear it to shreds.  Start hacking pieces off right away.  So they either caved completely or got a few token things here and there.

 

Back then, the republicans also proposed legislation of various sorts.  They didn't start from the reasonable end, they demanded everything right up to and including the proverbial kitchen sink.  When those proposals got whittled away, what was left was usually close to the best they could get.

 

Perhaps the Sanders proposal should be viewed not as an end result, but as a starting point.  Yes, it'll get whittled down.  But what's left after that might be workable, politically and money wise. A democratic attempt to copy a successful republican strategy.  Sanders *might* understand this (not likely, but possible.)  Clinton, though, probably does not.  Hence, AS A STARTING POINT, Sanders scheme has a better chance of getting to UHC than Clintons.

 

I view this as being a little like the used cars I used to buy and sell all the time.  You NEVER asked for what the vehicle was worth or what you'd take, instead, you'd ask for the most you thought you could get.  Then bargain down from there.  Republican congress critters appear to grasp this stratagem.  Their democratic counterparts do not. 

 

 

[Rippounet]

20 hours ago, Lew Theobald said:

Okay.  Sure.  But that seems a perfect analogy to the example of Voltaire and his servants, when he told his mistress "Don't tell the servants there's no God -- they might steal the silverware!"

Yes, Voltaire apparently thought the idea of divine justice/punishment was very useful to control the masses.
But let's be clear about the context. Voltaire was also the man who wrote (my translation) :

Quote

I think we disagree about the article on the people, which you think can be educated. I mean by people the masses that only have their hands to live. I doubt this order of citizens will ever have the time to educate itself ; they would die of hunger before becoming philosophers. I believe it is essential that there be ignorant peasants. If like me you owned land, and plows, you would agree. It is not the peasant that should be educated but the good bourgeois, it is the man who lives in the cities [...]. When the masses attempt to reason, everything is lost.

There is irony in using Voltaire to argue that it is natural to distrust a candidate running for office because he does not believe in God. You see, whatever they though about servants and peasants, Voltaire and the encyclopedists nonetheless wanted to rid at least the governing elite of superstition, bigotry, and fanaticism. How ironic it is for you to use Voltaire to condone the fact that the masses will now not trust such rulers!

But of course, it makes sense when one looks at the bigger picture of conservatism and liberalism, democrats and anti-democrats. Voltaire, as a man of his time, was not a democrat ; he looked down on the masses and was suspicious of them. The democrat in the story would be Rousseau, who happened to believe that fear of God was not a pre-requisite for morality.
And thus it is that, as always, when you dig deep enough, conservatism falls on the anti-democratic side. At the root of conservatism is always the idea that the masses cannot be trusted to govern, that they must be controled and manipulated by an enlightened elite that deserves its privileges and wealth. The greatest success of conservatism has been to convince the masses to vote against their own self-interest.

[Martell Spy]

Quote

 

Perhaps the Sanders proposal should be viewed not as an end result, but as a starting point.  Yes, it'll get whittled down.  But what's left after that might be workable, politically and money wise. A democratic attempt to copy a successful republican strategy.  Sanders *might* understand this (not likely, but possible.)  Clinton, though, probably does not.  Hence, AS A STARTING POINT, Sanders scheme has a better chance of getting to UHC than Clintons.

 

I see it as like the Fight for Fifteen and the 15$ minimum wage. The demands seemed unreasonable when they were first made. But while the goal of 15$ min. wage for the entire country hasn't been met, it has led to large increases all over the country, and even to 15 in some places. I certainly didn't think it would work. My experience with watching politics was that the Democrats raise it about a dollar every ten years and the Republicans always oppose a raise.

Obamacare is important because of the regulations that were passed by a 60 vote threshold in the Senate. Most importantly, the pre-existing condition clause. Now that it and other popular regulations are in place, they are pretty impossible for the Republicans to remove, especially the more popular ones. Because Obamacare is already in place, many steps towards universal healthcare can be taken in the Senate with only 50 votes. 

Also, ironically the worst feature of Obamacare, the marketplace, has made Americans think twice about private health insurance markets, even though it also helped make Obamacare more unpopular. Although the marketplaces are quite good for a certain type of American, mainly people that have some money and are sick,

Republicans have gotten away a long time with having their cake and eating it, too. They take every opportunity to attack Obamacare, using the weakness of the marketplaces. Yet, when they had a chance to go after Obamacare, they left the marketplaces in place, just with shittier subsidies. It's Medicaid they went after with a knife. They prefer private marketplaces of some sort and hate government programs like the Medicaid expansion.

If the Republicans or Trump really did succeed in destroying the marketplaces, they'd make the case for expanding Medicare and/or Medicaid even more pressing.

 

 

[The Mance]

18 minutes ago, Lew Theobald said:

 Progressive political 'correctness' tends to be tied to the idea that popular opinions must be managed, shaped and controlled by elite thinkers (and not the other way around)

What would be the other way around from that?  That elite thinkers should adopt and defend popular opinion?

[Rippounet]

1 hour ago, Lew Theobald said:

However, Rousseau believed in God, and was fairly religious.  It may well be, therefore, that he thought (as Voltaire did, and perhaps even more-so, since he was far more religious than Voltaire) that belief in God was not entirely irrelevant to morality.  You certainly do not provide a quote proving otherwise.

I had just such a quote (about fear of God) from one of his letters. Can't find it again unfortunately...

Rousseau is an unconfortable philosopher to use in support of atheism anyway. As you point out, he firmly believed in God, and certainly thought one should fear him. But he made a big distinction between faith and religion, which is why I always liked his work. And I think his most famous assumption, that man is fundamentally good, would go against the necessity of fearing God to be a moral creature:

Quote

The fundamental principle of all morality is this : that man is a naturally good being, who loves justice and order ; that there is no original perversity in the human heart, and that the first movements of nature are always right.

Although I can't find that specific quote again, I think it's fair to assume he didn't think morality came from fear. There's also this one:

Quote

Conscience! Conscience! Divine instinct; immortal and celestial voice; assured guide of a being who is ignorant and pressed hard, but intelligent and free ; infallible judge of good and evil, it is you who make man resemble God ; it is you who are responsible for the excellence of his nature and the morality of his actions ; without you I sense nothing within me which raises me above brute creation, except the unhappy privilege of straying from error to error.

Because Rousseau trusted human nature and conscience so much I always found it easy to see in him a natural defender of atheism. But that he was not ; that is only my own personal reading of his works.

 

1 hour ago, Lew Theobald said:

But if Rousseau and Voltaire were to run for POTUS in 2020, I'd definitely vote for Rousseau, the god-fearing democrat, and not Voltaire, the atheist elitist.

Well on that we agree, although for different reasons.

And since the topic is American politics, I think it would be interesting to see whether a deist rejecting religion could be elected to office. Like, someone claiming to be highly spiritual and praying to God, but not subscribing to any specific dogma.

1 hour ago, Lew Theobald said:

I might have agreed with you 20 years ago, but it is ironic to say this in an age where so-called "progressives" seem so eager to abandon so many of Rousseau's principles.  Regardless of whether that is true of "conservatives" (and it often is in this two-party corporate plutocracy) is is certainly true of progressives, and is more and more true the farther left you go.  Progressive political 'correctness' tends to be tied to the idea that popular opinions must be managed, shaped and controlled by elite thinkers (and not the other way around).  Atheist ideologues in particular are often filled with contempt at the masses, at the failure of the masses to abandon religion, and so atheist ideologues end up adopting undemocratic ideas.

I am honestly not sure what you are referring to here. Which of Rousseau's principles have been abandoned by progressives in the past 20 years?

 

[Zorral]

10 hours ago, ThinkerX said:

Perhaps the Sanders proposal should be viewed not as an end result, but as a starting point.  Yes, it'll get whittled down.  But what's left after that might be workable, politically and money wise. A democratic attempt to copy a successful republican strategy.  Sanders *might* understand this (not likely, but possible.)  Clinton, though, probably does not.  Hence, AS A STARTING POINT, Sanders scheme has a better chance of getting to UHC than Clintons.

Exactly.  Just as the ACA was part of the starting point, with the reasonable thoughts that as it was implemented its flaws and failings show up and Congress would readjust, amend, change it, over the sessions to improve it -- improve it for everyone.

And here we are again, discussing health care, about which for some reason I was scolded as equating this with the Dems, as if there is nothing else (which I didn't and don't).  However, health care is something that everyone in this country needs to be concerned with and almost everyone is already concerned with.  It is a debate that everyone can and will participate in.  It's not only something but a Huge Something that everyone identifies with in some way -- and in which already people participate in, in some way, whatever their plans or lack of plans.  How do we get medical care?  Where to do we get it?  How do we pay for it?  Each person has to answer these questions.

We also can easily identify what stands in the way for people in many places even to have answers to these questions, such as where do we get health care, when the nearest doctor or hospital is hundreds of miles away (like dentists and opthomologists too)?  This makes easy identifiying as to why a person has no health care -- the for profit health industry giants from for profit hospitals (remember when so many hospitals were Catholic hospitals, even in hugely predominately protestant areas, like my home town, and they were not for profit and so many of the nurses were nuns who weren't even paid?), the drug industry and the insurance industry.

What else is there, that can be a stand, a message, that communicates to all the voters across the board that the Dems put out there -- something that isn't lame such as a better deal.  That is without context, content or communication of anything.

[Week]

Who let this baby get access to his phone again?

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/09/trump-calls-kim-jong-un-rocket-man-in-presidential-tweets.html

[Shryke]

3 hours ago, Martell Spy said:

I see it as like the Fight for Fifteen and the 15$ minimum wage. The demands seemed unreasonable when they were first made. But while the goal of 15$ min. wage for the entire country hasn't been met, it has led to large increases all over the country, and even to 15 in some places. I certainly didn't think it would work. My experience with watching politics was that the Democrats raise it about a dollar every ten years and the Republicans always oppose a raise.

Obamacare is important because of the regulations that were passed by a 60 vote threshold in the Senate. Most importantly, the pre-existing condition clause. Now that it and other popular regulations are in place, they are pretty impossible for the Republicans to remove, especially the more popular ones. Because Obamacare is already in place, many steps towards universal healthcare can be taken in the Senate with only 50 votes. 

Also, ironically the worst feature of Obamacare, the marketplace, has made Americans think twice about private health insurance markets, even though it also helped make Obamacare more unpopular. Although the marketplaces are quite good for a certain type of American, mainly people that have some money and are sick,

Republicans have gotten away a long time with having their cake and eating it, too. They take every opportunity to attack Obamacare, using the weakness of the marketplaces. Yet, when they had a chance to go after Obamacare, they left the marketplaces in place, just with shittier subsidies. It's Medicaid they went after with a knife. They prefer private marketplaces of some sort and hate government programs like the Medicaid expansion.

If the Republicans or Trump really did succeed in destroying the marketplaces, they'd make the case for expanding Medicare and/or Medicaid even more pressing.

The Medicaid expansion has really been the biggest success of Obamacare coverage-wise.

And funnily enough, Medicaid seems to have gotten more popular because of it. Even people on the marketplaces would rather have Medicaid.

[Zorral]

57 minutes ago, Week said:

Who let this baby get access to his phone again?

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/09/trump-calls-kim-jong-un-rocket-man-in-presidential-tweets.html

What about 

http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/17/politics/trump-tweet-clinton/index.html

Who is talking about whom not being able to let go of the 2016 election?  That is not only ugly, but evil.  And should be criminal, just like him egging his rally supporters to howl "assassinate the bitch!"

[Rippounet]

38 minutes ago, Lew Theobald said:

Yeah, man.  I think you've stepped in some difficulty here.  Good luck finding that quote, but when you do, I have already found a few to put against it and/or put it in context.

I'm not even going to bother. I already agree that even if he did write that, compared to everything else he wrote about the fear of God, it would be easy to relativize.

38 minutes ago, Lew Theobald said:

I'm not sure what the distinction between "faith" and "religion" is. 

To have faith is to believe in God, to be religious is to follow some very specific doctrines and traditions. For example one can have faith in God and/or Christ and claim to be a Christian without following any of the specific Christian religions.

This distinction plagued Rousseau, though he sometimes had trouble articulating it. As some experts pointed out he sometimes used the word "religion" when he meant "faith" and vice-versa. His readership clearly understood he was attacking the Church though and accused him of being without religion, or even of being an atheist. In truth he was simply advocating a direct link between man and God.

38 minutes ago, Lew Theobald said:

That would be a mistake.  Rousseau's belief that man was naturally good went hand in hand with his belief that man was naturally religious, with a natural fear of his Creator; and with a conscience given him by his Creator as a guide to his conduct.

Hmmm yeah, he clearly thought conscience was the gift of God. Naturally fearful though? I'd honestly forgotten that. I shouldn't be surprised. I obviously read Rousseau in my own personal way.

[drawkcabi]

3 hours ago, Week said:

Who let this baby get access to his phone again?

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/09/trump-calls-kim-jong-un-rocket-man-in-presidential-tweets.html

All we need now is someone pasting Kim Jong Un's face over William Shatner's in his Rocket Man performance and Trump having Twitter access with it.

Defcon 1.

 

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

/On its' face, this looks like the worst proposal yet. 

[Zorral]

O yah, alt right's roots in skffy,

http://www.thedailybeast.com/from-lucifers-hammer-to-newts-moon-base-to-donalds-wallthe-sci-fi-roots-of-the-far-right

which includes so much of the Niven-Pournelle  stuff and nonsense:

Quote

 

Pournelle and Niven’s attitude toward civil-rights struggles and feminism wavers between condescension and irritation. Progressive issues are bumps on the road of progress. At their most dangerous, they radicalize lumpen segments of the population into dangerous terrorists: Antifa is one step on the way to the New Brotherhood Army.

Consequently, their attitudes on race and immigration come off as callous. In 2008, Niven told a DHS conference that “The problem [of hospitals going broke] is hugely exaggerated by illegal aliens who aren’t going to pay for anything anyway,” and then suggested spreading rumors in the Spanish Latino community that hospitals were killing patients to harvest their organs.

 

 

[Sivin]

33 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

/On its' face, this looks like the worst proposal yet. 

One can only hope voters get the results they voted for. 

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

2 hours ago, WinterFox said:

One can only hope voters get the results they voted for. 

Um yeah, no. I didn't vote for this shit. This effects everybody.

[Sivin]

48 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

Um yeah, no. I didn't vote for this shit. This effects everybody.

These are the representatives that the minority of Americans have chosen to act on all of our behalf's. I for one intend to allow the law to dictate my response to these undesirable inevitabilities. 

And since this in fact won't effect me, I'm not sure I can advocate any stronger a reprisal than moderate condemnation of the parties responsible for disenfranchising...20? million Americans. 

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

22 minutes ago, WinterFox said:

These are the representatives that the minority of Americans have chosen to act on all of our behalf's. I for one intend to allow the law to dictate my response to these undesirable inevitabilities. 

And since this in fact won't effect me, I'm not sure I can advocate any stronger a reprisal than moderate condemnation of the parties responsible for disenfranchising...20? million Americans. 

32 million, if the early estimates are to be believed. It won't directly effect my coverage either, but that's hardly the point. I can't take comfort in the fact that some of the folks who voted for these chumps will be screwing themselves when they're dragging down many others who didn't.