US Politics: Meet the New Right, same as the Old Right

[grumdin]

Proof was provided. You did not accept it as proof. Your inability to recognize a sniper with rifle leveled as a "threat" does not negate the existence of the thread.

"Failure to pay federal grazing fees" is not what we're talking about here, but thanks again for your dishonest goal-post shifting. Bundy has refused to comply with a court order for sixteen years, and interfered with federal agents attempting to do their jobs.

ETA: The next step in your sad little dance is going to be to post the definition of "rampant," isn't it?

Even if I accepted that the dude with the rifle was pointing his gun at a cop, and neither you or I can know that, it still doesn't back up your assetion that a militia army, no less, was threatening federal officials.

Here's video of the demonstration

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_XqdQjTflc

The only voices I hear on this are people saying they won't leave that they're unarmed and that the cops will have to shoot them. But for you this consitutes some scary army who threatened Federal officials? Apart from a few demonstrators legally carrying holstered sidearms the majority were unarmed.

[TrackerNeil]

I feel as though predictions about the ACA will follow a pattern similar to assurances that the WMD supposedly in Iraq would one day be found. Conservatives will be forever certain that the collapse of the health care system is just one day away, and every day that dawns without said collapse is just grace. Eventually, when it's 2020 and hospitals and doctors still exist and are solvent, conservatives will have forgotten all ACA complaints, and in fact will be defending the exchanges against the Democrats' single-payer proposals.

[DanteGabriel]

Okay, after you're done dancing around the word "rampant," I expect you'll want a full debate over the words "armed" and "army." Let me guess... something like "an army consists of multiple divisions of thousands of soldiers each, so the militia group gathered with weapons at Bundy's ranch does not qualify as an army. But I forgive you for being as big a "rambling hyperbolist" as me."

Hackity hack!

ETA: Please respond to Ini's well-reasoned arguments. He is giving you much more respect than I am and deserves a response.

[grumdin]

Okay, after you're done dancing around the word "rampant," I expect you'll want a full debate over the words "armed" and "army." Let me guess... something like "an army consists of multiple divisions of thousands of soldiers each, so the militia group gathered with weapons at Bundy's ranch does not qualify as an army. But I forgive you for being as big a "rambling hyperbolist" as me."

Hackity hack!

I don't know, you're the one that used the term, please provide your own definition. When someone uses the word army it generally means an organized group of some description out to defeat an opponent or take a position through force of arms. Given your avowed hostility to the aims of the protestors I didn't think you meant the salvation kind.

Personally I'd call them a peaceful group of protestors exercising their 1A rights.

[Inigima]

By the by, could we please go with less blatantly partisan thread titles in the future? I know we lean left collectively, but we do occasionally get conservatives who debate in good faith and it would be nice if they weren't made to feel unwelcome before they even enter the thread.

[DanteGabriel]

I don't know, you're the one that used the term, please provie your own definition.

Ah, is someone getting petulant? You seemed to have no trouble before filling in the meanings of my words for me, so I'm a little surprised at your newfound hesitancy.

[grumdin]

By the by, could we please go with less blatantly partisan thread titles in the future? I know we lean left collectively, but we do occasionally get conservatives who debate in good faith and it would be nice if they weren't made to feel unwelcome before they even enter the thread.

Unwelcome? Pfft, you guys are awesome.

[grumdin]

Ah, is someone getting petulant? You seemed to have no trouble before filling in the meanings of my words for me, so I'm a little surprised at your newfound hesitancy.

I posted too early, thank God for the edit button

[Shryke]

I don't agree- 'feudalist' might be a bit too historically specific, but I think there's plenty of the aristocratic/authoritarian to libertarian thought. I read a pretty good collection of essays called The Reactionary Mind a while back, the basic through-argument was to assert a unity to the historical right, located on elitism and romanticism. Here's an essay which connects Nietzche and libertarian darling Friedrich Hayek. I think he makes a solid case for the persistence of 'old right' ideas, even among right-neoliberals.

Enter libertarian folk-hero Cliven Bundy, with thoughts on 'the Negro' having been better off under slavery, being told what work to do.

Indeed. The right and it's obsession with "job creators" and such has an increadibly obvious streak of paternalism and noblesse obilge. Jobs are a gift from our hard working, wealthy betters, conferred onto us lazy wage-slaves as a courtesy.

Solo is right and wrong I think. The old school conservatism has not gone away, we've simply changed the traditional system where a man knows his places from actual feudalism to the new, shiny capitalist neo-feudalism of the Gilded Ages (the last one and the present one).

[BloodRider]

It's not the original scandal but the lies to cover it up that'll get ya.

I am amazed that you finally absorbed that lesson.

[BloodRider]

Some of the arguments against Obamacare were that it was a job killer, so I presume all this healthcare spending puts that argument to rest a little bit, yes?

I'm not certain why folks (of all stripes) are so quick to extrapolate from smatterings of data. We've had millions of new enrollees into the system, obviously this is a time of great flux. You need at least a year to see what the effects are, and even that is too little.

The figures in the article Shryke posted are complicated and I certainly can't be the one to tell you what they do or don't mean, but I'm not going to automatically assume that the ACA is failing in its mission because health care spending went up, when there are so many complicating factors. For one, the increased health care spending is at least partially driven by the large number of people getting insurance and going to hospital visits. If someone had no insurance before and now they're spending out-of-pocket cash and getting subsidies for their new insurance plan, well of fucking course spending has gone up.

Second, the fact that costs may have gone up in that period is not an indicator of the ACA's failure -- costs were accelerating at ridiculous rates before the ACA. The ACA was supposed to at least slow down cost increases. I'm sure it could do a better job of it. So, fine, find where the problems are and try to refine the law to help arrest the rising costs. This is what government used to do with big complicated laws before the Know-Nothing Pass-Nothing incarnation of the Republican Party started throwing tantrums and refusing to allow any legislation that doesn't 100% match their demands.

There is also the question of volume. HC cost can rise and the ACA would still be a success. You see the hand waving from the right we see here trying to get you to look at total costs when what we should care about is COST PER PATIENT. So, yes health care costs may rise in total. But what do you expect with higher volume?

[Shryke]

White House economic adviser Jason Furman said the increase should not be a cause for alarm.

"Any upward pressure on healthcare spending growth from expanding insurance coverage will cease once coverage stabilizes at its new, higher level, so it does not affect the longer-term outlook for spending growth," he said in a statement.

Which is exactly what someone said earlier in the thread as well.

Obamacare provides coverage for residents who previously did not have health insurance, as well as subsidies to those who cannot afford monthly premiums. These transfers are helping to free-up income and more people are making visits to hospitals.

Economists said both the subsidies and hospital visits were contributing to the surge in healthcare spending.

"You have those two separate things that are working; the challenge is we don't know the split between newly insured and previously insured," said Alec Phillips, an economist at Goldman Sachs in Washington.

Healthcare spending could rise again in the second quarter, but probably not at the first-quarter's rapid pace.

Also, I found this bit from the WSJ a few months back that I think might help clear up some of what is being talked about wrt costs:

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014/03/03/obamacare-effects-account-for-most-of-income-spending-increases/

The Affordable Care Act, President Barack Barack Obama’s signature health law, is already boosting household income and spending.

The Commerce Department reported Monday that consumer spending rose a better-than-expected 0.4% and personal incomes climbed 0.3% in January. The new health-care law accounted for a big chunk of the increase on both fronts.

On the incomes side, the law’s expanded coverage boosted Medicaid benefits by an estimated $19.2 billion, according to Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis. The ACA also offered several refundable tax credits, including health insurance premium subsidies, which added up to $14.7 billion.

Taken together, the Obamacare provisions are responsible for about three-quarters of January’s overall rise in Americans’ incomes.

On the spending side, the BEA is assuming Obamacare is responsible for a $29 billion increase in health-care services. Separately, spending on utilities also saw a big jump due to rising demand for heat during the cold stretch.

Outside of the two categories, consumers spent less: Overall spending on goods declined for the second straight month.

“So there is indeed evidence of a shift in the composition in spending — consumers in January spent more on heating bills and health care at the expense of other goods and services,” said Michelle Girard, economist at Royal Bank of Scotland.

To be sure, the health-care numbers only represent the BEA’s best guess based on preliminary data. “Information on Medicaid benefits, on ACA insurance exchange enrollments, and other related information was used to prepare the estimates of consumer spending on these services,” the agency said.

That might help clear up what is going on with spending and such.

[sologdin]

ini--

feel free to make as many dull titles as you want.

[DanteGabriel]

I posted too early, thank God for the edit button

Yes, I see that I was right -- you really couldn't resist getting into another irrelevant semantic pissing match over the meaning of the word "army." And I notice still no response to Ini's well-reasoned critiques. Gosh, it's almost as if you're not actually interested in good faith debate!

[TerraPrime]

lockesnow had a good post on the last page of the last thread, so I want to bring it to attention here:

you know, one thing I really need to read more about is Chinese and Russian history. China and Russia took nearly a billion people, most of them rural agrarians who had more in common with people from 1900 B.C. than 1900 AD, and over an extraordinarily painful series of reforms went through centuries of change within decades. I'm not saying it was good, or even that it was as impressive as that probably wrong synopsis suggests, but I think we forget in Western Europe (or in our United States of infinite free land) just how much change the four hundred years from 1500-1900 manifested and accrued, and most of those benefits, education wise, piling primarily into the top 10%. it was only the hand-in-hand reforms of gutting the capitalists by stealing their precious child labor combined with compulsory education laws and the late cresting wave of "high school" construction of the progressive era (stridently opposed by all capitalists and decried with all the imprecations and denunciations you'd expect from the right wing today on any given "x" issue they're reflexively opposing at the moment), that started seeing the gains of 1500-1900 years meaningfully distributed down the social ladder.

Indeed.

The ending of feudalism did not transition directly to our current social norm. There was a significant period of simply replacing the aristocratic class with the capitalists class. You can see this very clearly in the 1911 revolution of China. The end of the Qing dynasty was followed by a couple decades of capitalists and industrialists carving out the resources and powers, with the quality of life of average peasants improving little to none at all. Even the communists, who took over in the mid 40s, could not completely shed the complication of power concentrating into the hands of the elites. I think they managed to collapse some of the veritcal barriers in the power structure, but they did not eradicate it by any means. By the 70s, the country was again ruled by a relatively small group of elites who disporportionately benefitted from the labor of the entire nation. The one benefit of the new regime is that it actually succeeded to improving the quality of life for most of its citizens, unlike the previous 2 systems where the accumulation of power resulted in almost none of that.

For my great grandparents, grandparents and parents generations, you could earn more in your lifetime by educating yourself and working your ass off than you would by trying to live off the inheritances you received from the previous generations. That won't be true for my children's generation, their success and livelyhood will be disconnected from the quality of their education or their work. Their success and livelyhood will be determined by volume of inheritance and the level/elite-ness of their social circles.

I don't know. I think inherited wealth has always been a huge factor - see Rockefeller, Carneige, Kennedy, Bush, etc. And to a lesser scale but with larger social impact is the accumnulation of heritable wealth between black and white people where racist economic policies prevented and/or disrupted the accumulation of wealth for black Americans over decades. But I do agree that more and more, heritable wealth is a larger determinant in quality of life achieved than individual merit is.

[grumdin]

Yes, I see that I was right -- you really couldn't resist getting into another irrelevant semantic pissing match over the meaning of the word "army." And I notice still no response to Ini's well-reasoned critiques. Gosh, it's almost as if you're not actually interested in good faith debate!

What the? You asked me what I thought an army was, I answered, then you strip my bones for indulging in semantic pissing matches?? YOU called the deomstrators a milita army, YOU said they were threatening federal officials, you can't back up your claims, duly noted. I'll leave it at that.

[DanteGabriel]

What the? You asked me what I thought an army was, I answered, then you strip my bones for indulging in semantic pissing matches?? YOU called the deomstrators a milita army, YOU said they were threatening federal officials, you can't back up your claims, duly noted. I'll leave it at that.

I predicted that you'd get huffy about the definition of "army" since you seem desperate to reduce me to your level by parsing everything I've said to find "hyperbole" equal to your unacknowledged lies. And I was right.

I've already explained my reasoning why I believe I'm right about using the words "threatening" and "criminal" and all the rest of this is just your whining and attempting to put words in my mouth to bolster your shitty arguments. All around a pretty sad performance from a one-trick pony whose trick is tired.

Not going to respond to Ini's questions? Do you need me to quote them for you? Man up, bro.

[Greywolf2375]

we could of course just retroactively amend all instances of criminal in these threads to one who has committed apparent criminal acts and has not yet been convicted. that should satisfy everyone's concerns over this guy.

I have mentally amended the thread to replace criminal with hedley lamar, however.

It's HEDEY Lamar. Who cares, it's 1862, YOU can sue HER!

(Blazing Saddles)

[Seli]

Inigima,

Deregulation of health care and banning third party insurance insuring that induivuduals have to pay for their own health care costs. In other words one that, like single payer, is unlikely to pass. As such we're left with a hybrid monstrosity that will make the existing problem worse.

I don't know. In principle you know have some tools in place to clamp down on costs. But they'll have to include insurance companies to lean down on medical service providers, government to lean on the pharmaceutical companies and the insurance companies, and insured people able to switch insurance providers. And even then it depends on how much profiteering there is in the system.

Of course student debts and the US claim (tort?) system throw separate spanners into the works. It isn't a simple system however one looks at it.

[Shryke]

And the war on women continues:

http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/4/tennessee-prenatalcarematernaldrugusebillhaslam.html

Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam on Tuesday signed into law a bill that punishes women for having drug-related pregnancy complications, ignoring calls for a veto and doctors’ objections. The bipartisan bill, SB 1391, passed both chambers of the state legislature earlier this month, paving a way for prosecution of new mothers on aggravated assault charges if it can be proved that their babies were born “addicted to” or “harmed by” narcotic drug use during pregnancy. Under this law, any woman in the state with an abnormal birth outcome feasibly attributed to drug use could face a criminal investigation and up to 15 years in prison.

WEEEE!!!