US Politics: Plan for the Future of Immigration

[Shryke]

Some potential interesting developments here:

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/A_Witness_Wants_To_Talk

I've wondered for a while about how thoroughly disappeared from our "war" on terror Zacarias Moussaoui had become. Here we had the "20th hijacker" of the 9/11 attacks, or so we were told, and allegedly the only survivor among the people tasked with carrying out the actual plot, and he gets tried and convicted in a civilian court, and he gets shuffled off to SuperMax, and thereafter the whole discussion about those attacks, and about the various foreign and domestic policy debacles for which the attacks were an excuse, went on without him. Now, Moussaoui went completely batshit during his trial, and anything he says in the future should be taken with a salt mine, but, nonetheless, apparently, he's willing to sing, and he has so informed the lawyers who are pursuing a lawsuit on behalf of the families of some of the 9/11 victims. And some of his proferred testimony has the potential to make some people very, very nervous.

The imprisoned Zacarias Moussaoui recently wrote to federal courts in New York and Oklahoma, claiming he can offer inside information about the inner workings of al-Qaida to boost legal claims that the government of Saudi Arabia and financial institutions supported terrorism

"There's nothing in it about national security," Walter Jones, a Republican congressman from North Carolina who has read the missing pages, contends. "It's about the Bush Administration and its relationship with the Saudis." Stephen Lynch, a Massachusetts Democrat, told me that the document is "stunning in its clarity," and that it offers direct evidence of complicity on the part of certain Saudi individuals and entities in Al Qaeda's attack on America.

So potentially some new information coming out about the Saudi complicity in 9/11 and the Bush family's ties to them.

[Suttree]

So you liberals on this board are apparently the only ones who want Obamacare.

Totes bro.

This weekend, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick appeared at a dinner in New York and, in a few words, fatally undercut the premise of the Republican Party’s economic philosophy. Kalanick told reporters that Obamacare had been a crucial element in his firm’s success. “It’s huge," he said, according to BuzzFeed. “The democratization of those types of benefits allow people to have more flexible ways to make a living. They don’t have to be working for The Man.”

The destructive power of this blunt statement works in two ways. The first, of course, is that it rebuts the Republican indictment of Obamacare, opposition to which is a matter of holy writ within the party. Of all the grounds for Republican hatred of Obamacare, the most deeply held is the belief that it amounts to onerous regulation that holds back capitalistic dynamism. That belief is not only foundational on the right, but nebulous enough that, even as conservative predictions about Obamacare’s cost and functionality obviously fail, the deeper suspicion that it is invisibly rotting away the foundations of capitalism can linger without any real evidence.

[TerraPrime]

Totes bro.

I've been making this argument many, many times in the years leading up to PPACA - locking access to healthcare to particular employment deters labor mobility and free market competition for talents. You'd think the party that supposedly wants more free market would support it on this ground alone, but no. I think it's because they're not pro free market as much as they are pro-business/pro-capital.

[theprincethatwasntpromised]

Totes bro.

Glad that makes you feel better. I'd imagine you're in the minority there as well.

[Shryke]

I've been making this argument many, many times in the years leading up to PPACA - locking access to healthcare to particular employment deters labor mobility and free market competition for talents. You'd think the party that supposedly wants more free market would support it on this ground alone, but no. I think it's because they're not pro free market as much as they are pro-business/pro-capital.

Well yeah. I mean, this has always been obvious.

Though even this takes it too far since they are really pro-specific-kinds-of-business. They exhibit a narrow philosophy that benefits a narrow group of very wealthy people and doesn't care about anyone else beyond their ability to be influenced by that philosophy.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

http://www.gallup.com/poll/179426/new-enrollment-period-starts-aca-approval.aspx

So you liberals on this board are apparently the only ones who want Obamacare. Better hope you win the white house in '16, because this will be history of you don't.

Check back in when your boys come up with a viable candidate.

[theprincethatwasntpromised]

Check back in when your boys come up with a viable candidate.

With all the damage Obama is doing to your party, I don't think it matters! Hillary = viable is absolutely hilarious to me. Practically forfeiting the White House.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

Oh yeah, and have fun trying to bring back pre-existing conditions as a reason to deny coverage. Everyone loved that!

[theprincethatwasntpromised]

Oh yeah, and have fun trying to bring back pre-existing conditions as a reason to deny coverage. Everyone loved that!

Because Obamacare was the only way to address that issue. You must be one of those voters that Gruber was referring to!

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

With all the damage Obama is doing to your party, I don't think it matters! Hillary = viable is absolutely hilarious to me. Practically forfeiting the White House.

Funnier than Marco Rubio? Little Pauly Ryan? Chris Christie? :lmao:

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

Because Obamacare was the only way to address that issue. You must be one of those voters that Gruber was referring to!

Right, cause the Republicans were totally going to address that.

[theprincethatwasntpromised]

Funnier than Marco Rubio? Little Pauly Ryan? Chris Christie? :lmao:

Exactly. It's the pantsuits

[Starkess]

This is awesome.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/11/14/364152815/court-rejects-challenge-to-obamacare-rules-on-contraceptives?live=1

That is a very encouraging ruling. What are the chances it sticks on the way up?

[The Fallen]

http://www.gallup.com/poll/179426/new-enrollment-period-starts-aca-approval.aspx

So you liberals on this board are apparently the only ones who want Obamacare. Better hope you win the white house in '16, because this will be history of you don't.

I wonder how many of those people know anything about the ACA? I mean, in this poll (http://www.gallup.com/poll/179429/ebola) Americans were asked what their health concerns are, and Ebola ranked third with 17% mentioning it. Yes, a virus that has affected four(?) people, none of whom were infected in the States, is of more concern than obesity, cancer, diabetes, drug/alcohol abuse, etc ...

Question: How do you guys shorten the links or rename them?

[TrackerNeil]

Oh yeah, and have fun trying to bring back pre-existing conditions as a reason to deny coverage. Everyone loved that!

That's the thing that makes repeal so problematic; people now have benefits, and no politician is going to want to take them away. If those were black people, sure, the GOP'd cut them off in a New York minute, but there are going to be a whole lot of white people who will squawk if the ACA goes down. The status quo bias of our government, which made reform so hard to institute, now protects those reforms.

As to replacing the ACA, there's just no constituency in the Republican Party for doing so, and even if there were, what would they replace it with? A free market system? That's what the Affordable Care Act is, at heart. Repealing the ACA is politically impossible until 2017 at the earliest, at which time it will be politically unpalatable. No matter how many elections Republicans win, they're not going to zap benefits for millions of Americans. They didn't even have the nerve to privatize Social Security, as you may recall, when they had the power to do so. They were afraid, and rightly so, of how voters would react.

The only hope the GOP has is that the Supreme Court will use one of the bullshit cases filed by right-wing nutjobs to eviscerate the law, but that in my estimation is a faint hope indeed. I don't see why John Roberts would want to piss off the health care industry and strand millions of Americans; hell, he wasn't willing to pull that trigger in 2012, when the stakes were much, much lower. However, let's say Roberts decides that the reputation of the Court is secondary to weakening the Affordable Care Act, and he votes in the King case to deny subsidies to those on healthcare.gov. Aetna, Blue Cross, Wellpoint, and a host of other insurers lose millions of customers in a single day, and those millions of customers, now without health insurance, start flooding ERs across the nation for the care they cannot otherwise afford. Because DSH funds (which compensate hospitals for this free care) are going away in 2018, those health care providers are going to be expected to foot the bill for these millions. Republican legislatures and governors are going to be hounded by big business and constituents alike to do something to get the federal taps open again. I suspect that all but the most unsympathetic and uncaring of states (Mississippi, I am looking in your direction) are going to either set up their own exchanges or perform some legislative magic to adopt healthcare.gov as their own, thus qualifying themselves once again for federal subsidies. It will be the Affordable Care Act once again, except this time with a whole lot of disruption along the way.

Repeal is a fantasy. It's not going to happen. Battle over health care reform was joined, and conservatives lost. Now right-wingers can either throw more tantrums or they can accept the new state of affairs and work with Democrats to try to shape the law in ways more to their liking. That's what we call governing, which is something that Mitch McConnell promises the GOP will now do. We shall see.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

Repeal is a fantasy. It's not going to happen. Battle over health care reform was joined, and conservatives lost. Now right-wingers can either accept the new state of affairs, or they can work with Democrats to try to shape the law in ways more to their liking. That's what we call governing, which is something that Mitch McConnell promises the GOP will now do. We shall see.

Dare to dream, tptwp, dare to dream.

[The Fallen]

Do you guys think that the Republican party is using the ACA to string along people like the prince, continue to win elections, and then eventually, similar to what Tracker Neil is explaining, claim that there's nothing they can do about it? At which point they'll move on to the next hot topic which they can use to continue to string along their supporters?

[TrueMetis]

Because Obamacare was the only way to address that issue. You must be one of those voters that Gruber was referring to!

And your alternative is?

[theprincethatwasntpromised]

I wonder how many of those people know anything about the ACA? I mean, in this poll (http://www.gallup.com/poll/179429/ebola Americans were asked what their health concerns are, and Ebola ranked third with 17% mentioning it. Yes, a virus that has affected four(?) people, none of whom were infected in the States, is of more concern than obesity, cancer, diabetes, drug/alcohol abuse, etc ...

Question: How do you guys shorten the links or rename them?

I was wondering the same thing about the links... To your question, how many legislators really know anything about ACA? Don't forget about Pelosi's "we have to pass it to find out what's in it" gem. The fact is it was not to cost a dime. We knew better, and come to find out we were correct. It's just another redistribution policy. Your party used the stupidity of its base to pass this.

[Minsc]

Your party used the stupidity of its base to pass this.

And the Republicans have been using theirs to oppose it as seen in all the people still crying about death panels or how you had been crying that they want government out of their medicare.