US Politics: Culture Club

[Martell Spy]

1 minute ago, Fragile Bird said:

Er, sarcasm, right? So hard to tell...

This is a big event, even I've heard of Gilroy and their garlic festival. Gilroy calls itself the garlic capital of the US. Trump country? Trump put tariffs on Chinese garlic to help American farmers.

Yeah, that was sarcasm, damn Internet. 

[Fragile Bird]

2 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

Yeah, that was sarcasm, damn Internet. 

Yeah, sorry, hero with a gun indeed.

[Martell Spy]

42 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

 

I won't do this again, as I like TPM a great deal and don't want to slide around their paywall too much, but consider it a sample, I guess. I thought it was worth reading, if a little depressing. I did not actually copy the whole remainder, for technicality's sake: I dropped a few paragraphs about a Marist poll that reports that public support for Medicare for All drops dramatically if people don't think they will get to keep their private insurance. 

  Reveal hidden contents

There is an obvious logic to Medicare for All, not only substantively but politically. Democrats made herculean efforts and suffered massive political blowback for Obamacare, which was a framework first devised by Republicans as a way to oppose and counter a single payer type national plan. It was engineered specifically to preserve not only the existence but profitability of private carriers. But for all this, health insurance companies did no more than tolerate the effort at best and often actively worked against it, as did most of the rest of the health care industry, the entirety of the GOP and much of the federal judiciary.

Critically, the very complexity required to operate within the structure of the private health care system forced an often byzantine and regulation heavy approach that often frustrated the public and became a ready target for industry and political opponents. In other words, precisely the workarounds that were included to protect private insurers and make the plan more “market-friendly” ended up providing the cudgels those companies and their Republican allies used to make the argument against it. If industry will be at permanent war with any effort to provide universal coverage and fight plans designed to ensure their viability why not just go all the way, simplify the whole thing like most other countries do and gain the efficiencies which Medicare already provides to generations of seniors?

Why not indeed? The United States is burdened with a deep lock-in to private health insurance provision that most Americans don’t want to give up or at least don’t want to be forced to give up. This is the challenge universal coverage advocates have faced for decades. Indeed, it’s what got us to Obamacare in the first place.

The reaction to these stark numbers from Medicare for All advocates has been telling and instructive. Of course, if you focus on perceived negatives or scare tactics, support falls! But this makes no sense. You can’t understand the popularity or political viability of a policy without figuring in counter-arguments that will certainly be used in the political arena. This is especially the case with counter-arguments which are actually true!

The secondary response has settled down to daring people to find anyone who likes their insurance company. Nobody likes their insurance company ergo these numbers can’t be true or don’t mean anything or don’t matter. It’s a pretty effective dare. Who raises their hand at a town hall meeting to give a big thumbs up to their health insurance company? Unfortunately that doesn’t really prove anything or at least what advocates what it to prove.

Here we have the kernel of magical thinking inspiring this whole debate: advocates belief that if something doesn’t make sense, it actually can’t be true. It’s certainly true that more or less everyone has complaints about their insurance company. And it’s hard to find people who affirmatively like or have some devotion to their insurance company since the whole system is a mess. But it simply doesn’t flow from that that people support doing away with private insurance or being forced to give up their current insurance. To pretend otherwise ignores basically everything we know about public risk aversion, especially tied to health care, and people’s perception that while what they currently may not be ideal something else might be worse. Call it relative privilege or advantage and people’s resistance to losing it.

Don’t believe me? Simply look at every survey of public opinion to see what people support once they hear people who currently have private health care insurance would be forced to give that up in favor of the new system. The fact that that doesn’t make sense to you doesn’t matter. The fact that many countries have systems like single payer (Canada) or public/private hybrid systems (Germany) that ensure universal coverage and it works well and those publics wouldn’t think of switching to our system doesn’t matter either. Fundamentally changing our system of national health care provision requires first accepting the massive resistance to the most logical paths to doing so. And that is popular resistance, what people actually think and their basic attitudes toward change. We’re not even talking about the avalanche of scare tactics and lies that would certainly rush forth like a tsunami from all the corporations (health care insurers, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and more) which would fight such plans as an existential threat.

One of the advantages of the Medicare brand is that everyone knows relatives who are on it, know that people can’t wait to get on it and that it’s both metaphorically and literally a lifesaver. Retirees know it’s not some dystopian hellscape because they have it and know it’s awesome. But actually seniors are the demographic most opposed to Medicare for All. Some of this is due to the fact that in our current politics, seniors trend to the right. But it’s also because liking what they have a lot they fear that Medicare for All would take something away from what they currently have.

Medicare for All advocates have responded to these dismal surveys by citing a small number of polls that suggest that losing access to private care is acceptable if people are promised they can keep their doctor. But the difference is limited and it assumes the ability to shape the political question without counterclaims.

It’s worth noting that there are other aspects of Medicare for All that are less clear cut, more intermingled with scare tactics, but also drive down support sharply. Private carriers reimburse at higher rates than Medicare. (That’s the cost savings we want from Medicare!) But a significant amount of our health care system is financed by those more generous reimbursements. Take away those rates and some significant numbers of hospitals really would have to retrench or close. It wouldn’t be the dystopian nightmare the lobbyists and 30 second commercials will portray. But it won’t all be propaganda.

The more realistic approaches to implementation would have Medicare for All reimbursements pushed up closer to current private insurance rates at the outsets and then gain the Medicare cost savings over time with Medicare’s bargaining power. That would work. But it means that a lot of the savings from Medicare for All don’t show up at the outset. They come from Medicare’s assumed and probably real ability to bend the cost curve over time.

Taxes are of course the other big cudgels for industry opponents. Medicare for All would involve a huge amount of new taxes. And simply presented as big new taxes that makes public support drop markedly too. But as advocates rightly explain you can’t really capture what that means without also noting that no one would pay health insurance premiums any more. If I pay $800 a month in new taxes who cares if I’m no longer paying $800 a month to my insurance company? Even more so if the new system has no copays or deductibles and exclusions. If it’s better, more reliable care with the same amount of money going to taxes as went to Aetna. This is a solid and good and perhaps viable political response. My own concern, both political and substantive is that it won’t be this simple.

New taxes will be to individuals. But most private health care premiums (for most of the population) are paid by employers. (Roughly 2/3s of Americans have private coverage; just over half of Americans get that through an employer.) It’s textbook economics that costs paid in benefits are de facto income to the employee, even though they don’t show up in the bottom line of your paycheck. Economists will tell you that workers pay roughly 15% in payroll taxes on the first $125,000 or so of income, for instance, even though technically you pay half and your employer pays half. But it doesn’t necessarily work this way in the wild.

If in 2022, we switch to a Medicare for All system and private insurance disappears do you really think that most or all employers will give their employees a raise on a dollar for dollar basis to what the company had been paying in health care premiums? Over time something like that probably (maybe?) will happen. Certainly some employers will do just that either to maintain employee morale or retention. But the baseline reality of our economy is limited power for workers vis a vis employers in most sectors of the economy. So it’s not clear to me why most or at least a substantial percentage of employers won’t pocket some or all of that windfall and leave employees with a very real and pretty big tax increase.

I don’t argue that any of these issues are insurmountable. The point of advocacy is to advocate and change minds. My point is that beyond the abolition of private insurance for all but supplemental policies (which is the real achilles heel politically) there are a number of political and substantive road blocks which most polls don’t get into until the secondary or tertiary questions which lead advocates and many Democrats to greatly overstate the popularity of this approach underestimate the steep political peril for any candidate – like a presidential candidate running nationally – not running in a pretty liberal district or state.

Of course, none of this means that people shouldn’t support Medicare for All or other comparable single player plans on the merits. A substantial minority of Americans do support it. Indeed, more practically, without a vibrant left supporting such a model the public debate is inevitably skewed to the right. A decade ago the legislative debate on Capitol Hill largely focused on whether or not what we now call Obamacare would include a “public option.” It failed because of stiff opposition from insurers and opposition from centrist Senate Democrats. Now that’s basically the centrist fallback position and Republicans running for office, as opposed to working the courts, have basically given up on gutting Obamacare. Indeed, ‘Medicare for America’, one of the major Medicare buy-in style plans proposed by wonks at the Center for American Progress, is as the name implies in large measure a reaction to the Medicare for All push. But that’s not what the proposal entitled “Medicare for All” actually does. It’s a single payer plan in which private health care plans would be prohibited except for supplemental plans which covers services or deductibles not covered by the standard plan.

There is every reason to believe that Medicare for All would be a major electoral liability for a Democratic presidential candidate in a general election – just on the basis of what the plan actually does, let alone the way the GOP and the health care industry writ large would pile on to that with a campaign of lies, horror stories and propaganda. It could well mean the difference between Trump’s defeat or reelection by effectively nullifying the Democrats big advantage on health care and giving the GOP a cudgel to sour a significant amount of the electorate on the Democratic candidate.

 

As @DMC noted, Medicare for All can mean a lot of different things. I'm somewhat agnostic on it, as long as healthcare is expanded. Definitely not happy with Biden's plan to just tinker around with Obamacare though.

I think politically speaking, it'd be great to put the Republicans on defense by repeatedly expanding healthcare. I'm thinking about the Medicaid expansion and how popular it was. If we were to say expand healthcare not once, but 3 to 6 times, we'd force Republicans to play the role of the Scrooge Paul Ryan asshole that wants to deny people healthcare access several times. So something like, more Medicaid expansions, lowering of the Medicare age, and expansion of the Obamacare insurance subsidies. There's a lot of low-hanging fruit there for both policy and political wins.

Also, I've never believed that we will have 60 Senate votes any time soon. Which puts a ceiling on what can be done. But massive expansions of already existing healthcare systems are quite easy to do.

[Fragile Bird]

Sounds like the Gilroy shooter dropped his gun and melted away into the crowd. That doesn’t usually happen. And it’s night now in California, finding him may be tough.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

3 hours ago, Triskele said:

There's long piece here (NYT, limited clicks) titled "It's Easy to Forget, but a Program to Forgive Student Loans Already Exists."  

It's about the Public Service Loan Forgiveness and what a mess it's been, but this author argues that it's only a matter of time before many more people start getting this forgiveness.  

But as this article points out you need to be something close to a "perfect borrower" in order to qualify, so this thing might be an enormous help to those that receive it but of no use whatsoever to others.  

ETA:  The comments from this article are not impressed. 

I started it, and when I went back to school for my PhD it was put on hold. My thinking is that either way, I'm going to be nearly 50 before my student loan debt goes away, and at that point, buying a home wouldn't make sense. To be honest, I think I'll spend most of my adult life with this burden over me, and to some people (no one here, to be clear), that's blame at my own feet.

[Martell Spy]

17 minutes ago, Triskele said:

A question that just occurred to me:

For the states with GOP leaders that turned down Obamacare Medicaid money is that federal money still a standing offer?  That is to ask, are there any states that could eventually still take this money if they get a different governor in place?

I feel like the media overall has not really been talking up that fact that there really does appear to be a scenario where all of Obamacare gets thrown out.  Not only would a lot of people lose coverage but everyone else would be exposed to more risk like the old system with respect to pre-existing conditions.  I could see this disaster both enormously harming Republicans in an election and maybe a better healthcare fix could be passed, but that's a lot of pain and risk in the meantime.  And if one needs 60 votes then who knows if even this disaster gets another bill passed.  

I believe so. Roberts ruling was basically that states could not be coerced into taking the Medicaid expansion.

[Bonnot OG]

Disgusting. 

[DMC]

1 hour ago, Bonnot OG said:

Disgusting. 

I agree it's disgusting, but I don't really think it violates the spirit of the Posse Comitatus Act:

Quote

Following bitter election contests in four Southern states, Hayes won the presidency by one electoral vote. Many felt that the federal troops, which supported Hayes and the Reconstructionist Republican candidates for Congress, intimidated Southerners who would have voted for Samuel Tilden, the Democratic candidate.

The resulting Democratic Congress was at odds with the Republican President Hayes. In response to what was seen as undue influence over the 1876 election, Congress outlawed the practice of posse comitatus by enacting the Posse Comitatus Act (PCA) (as 20 Stat. 152) as a rider to the Army Appropriation Act for 1880. The act stated: "Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both."

Congressional debates indicate that the PCA was intended to stop army troops from answering the call of a marshal to perform direct law enforcement duties and aid in execution of the law. Further legislative history indicates that the more immediate objective was to put an end to the use of federal troops to police elections in ex-Confederate states where civil power had been reestablished.

This isn't anything near the same thing.  It sucks, but it's not really the same thing.  Can you make the argument the PCA should extend to this?  Sure and I would, but it's not as black and white as that tweet makes it out to be.  Link.

ETA:  Clarification, my problem obviously has nothing to do with the objection to the policy.  But it's not an issue that you need to raise the PCA about.  This is a constitutional issue.  We've spent a little more than the past century or so "incorporating" the Bill of Rights to the states - or at least the ones and/or parts that matter.  How bout we extend those protections to asylum seekers?  What's the argument against that?  Because when you start framing it you're either an idiot or know all you're protecting is racists, seems pretty damn clear to me.

[Varysblackfyre321]

And Trump pulled the race card(again), after complaining about Democrats using the race card:https://www.bing.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1035466

To be clear, it’s unclear who Trump thinks Cummings is racist against exactly. I have a feeling he’ll cry he’s only being attacked because he’s white. Framing opposition to him as literal evidence of hatred of the white race, much as he’s framed  opposition against him as tantamount of showing hatred of America(as opposed to merely thinking Trump is running the country in a way that hurts it). 

Though  I also suspect he might say Cummings is really the one racist against blacks.  

Though this is more likely than not just a diversion for issues that may actually shake some of the public’s confidence with the man. Him being racist isn’t something that’s going to drive down his support apparently.

I’m sure many in the anti-Pc crowd are outraged at Trump throwing out an accusation of racism with no apparent explanation.

They were so outraged at Trump being called racist just for assuming three women of color weren’t American for no apparent reason other than their race. Truly their threshold for who could be called racist is really high, and I cannot imagine them not condemning Trump for so brazenly throwing out accusations of racism Willy nilly.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Where’s my three, four, five, maybe even six percent growth?

[Martell Spy]

11 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Where’s my three, four, five, maybe even six percent growth?

Should have elected Jeb Bush. He was going to do 4 percent growth. It would never vary, just 4 all the way through his terms.

Kamala Harris Unveils Her Version Of ‘Medicare For All’
It’s government-run insurance, but with a 10-year transition and a private alternative for those who want it.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/kamala-harris-medicare-for-all-plan_n_5d3e03d8e4b0c31569ecd420

Quote

 

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) has been campaigning for president on a pledge of support for “Medicare for All.” Now she is telling voters exactly what she means by that.

Harris on Monday released a plan to create a new, government-run insurance plan designed to cover all Americans and pay for nearly all their medical expenses. 

It would eventually replace employer-sponsored plans, over the course of a decadelong transition, but it would allow private insurers to offer an alternative form of coverage, much as they do today for seniors on Medicare.

The campaign shared an overview of the plan with several media outlets, including HuffPost, over the weekend. Like many campaign documents, it is more a framework than a point-by-point proposal, with many unanswered questions about the transition, the financing, and other key matters.

Even so, the material from Harris contains enough information to convey the general approach she has in mind and how it compares with the plans from rival candidates. Crudely speaking, the Harris plan calls for a more sweeping transformation than the reforms supported by former Vice President Joe Biden. But it would stop short of the change to wholly government-run insurance that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has championed.

Exactly where along that spectrum the Harris plan exists depends a bit on your perspective. But its overall goal is unambiguous. If fully implemented, the Harris plan would result in every American having comprehensive health insurance, achieving an objective that Democrats have been pursuing for nearly a century, most recently with the Affordable Care Act.

 

 

[Fragile Bird]

Once again, 3 dead and 12 injured is not enough for discussion, right?

 

[Kalbear]

1 minute ago, Fragile Bird said:

Once again, 3 dead and 12 injured is not enough for discussion, right?

 

It's a white guy so no. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

19 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Once again, 3 dead and 12 injured is not enough for discussion, right?

 

 

17 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

It's a white guy so no. 

Due to his melanin deficiencies, the only discussion we can have is about mental health.

[Martell Spy]

Strange, a violent and deadly attack, and Antifa is not involved at all.

 

An Instagram post under the shooting suspect's name mentioned a white supremacist book shortly before the attack

https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/29/us/gilroy-california-food-festival-shooting-monday/index.html

Quote

 

Gilroy, California (CNN)Instagram posts bearing the name of the suspected Gilroy Garlic Festival gunman mentioned a white supremacist book and showed a picture of people walking around the event, shortly before the shooting began.

The suspect -- identified by two law enforcement officials as Santino William Legan, 19 -- apparently entered the annual festival, which attracts about 100,000 people every year, by cutting through a back fence and then began shooting at random, Gilroy Police Chief Scot Smithee said.

 

 

[Bonnot OG]

9 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

Strange, a violent and deadly attack, and Antifa is not involved at all.

 

An Instagram post under the shooting suspect's name mentioned a white supremacist book shortly before the attack

https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/29/us/gilroy-california-food-festival-shooting-monday/index.html

 

I’m shocked it was a far right winger that preaches racist and misogynistic rhetoric. 

[Centrist Simon Steele]

I mean, this isn't even news or anything, but sometimes I read the shit Trump says, and I just don't even know what to think. Here is a quote from the article (about a speech Trump gave to 9/11 first responders): "I was down there also," the president said to an audience of 60 first responders and their families who had gathered in Washington to witness the signing ceremony. "But I'm not considering myself a first responder," he added. "

I mean at some point, even his most ardent supporter (who was a first responder or a military person or whatever) has to get offended by this kind of shit right? If I were there, I feel like I might have screamed back at him, "Don't worry, dope, no one thought you were a first responder. You fucking moron."

[Zorral]

5 hours ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

And Trump pulled the race card(again), after complaining about Democrats using the race card:https://www.bing.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1035466

To be clear, it’s unclear who Trump thinks Cummings is racist against exactly. I have a feeling he’ll cry he’s only being attacked because he’s white. Framing opposition to him as literal evidence of hatred of the white race, much as he’s framed  opposition against him as tantamount of showing hatred of America(as opposed to merely thinking Trump is running the country in a way that hurts it). 

Though  I also suspect he might say Cummings is really the one racist against blacks.  

Though this is more likely than not just a diversion for issues that may actually shake some of the public’s confidence with the man. Him being racist isn’t something that’s going to drive down his support apparently.

I’m sure many in the anti-Pc crowd are outraged at Trump throwing out an accusation of racism with no apparent explanation.

They were so outraged at Trump being called racist just for assuming three women of color weren’t American for no apparent reason other than their race. Truly their threshold for who could be called racist is really high, and I cannot imagine them not condemning Trump for so brazenly throwing out accusations of racism Willy nilly.

One cannot help suspecting that part of the attacks on Baltimore and the people who represent it in Congress are provoked by Jared owning a lot of property there, and committing effwad shenanigans.  JK is a terrible, terrible, terrible landlord from hell.  He also does his best to hide his ownership not only from tenants but from the IRS.

Rat-infested etc., this provides a nice, steady, dependable revenue stream for the creep, while he does nothing for upkeep.

This investigative piece is from 2017, and put the tvillain family into a seizure about the lying NY Times.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/23/magazine/jared-kushners-other-real-estate-empire.html

[Zorral]

1 minute ago, Simon Steele said:

I mean, this isn't even news or anything, but sometimes I read the shit Trump says, and I just don't even know what to think. Here is a quote from the article (about a speech Trump gave to 9/11 first responders): "I was down there also," the president said to an audience of 60 first responders and their families who had gathered in Washington to witness the signing ceremony. "But I'm not considering myself a first responder," he added. "

I mean at some point, even his most ardent supporter (who was a first responder or a military person or whatever) has to get offended by this kind of shit right? If I were there, I feel like I might have screamed back at him, "Don't worry, dope, no one thought you were a first responder. You fucking moron."

He was never there at all, ever!

[Fragile Bird]

6 minutes ago, Zorral said:

He was never there at all, ever!

Hey, his building was.