US Politics: Culture Club

[Martell Spy]

Quote

 

But if you look at the Trump-voting districts that flipped to Democrats in the 2018 midterms, it starts to look like the conventional wisdom is wrong. Contrary to the perception that a rebounding economy will work to the president’s benefit, there is growing evidence in Michigan and throughout the Rust Belt that metro areas that are bouncing back—and there are a bunch—are turning blue again. Indeed, communities that continue to flounder—and unfortunately there are still many of those, too—are likely to double down on Trumpism.

Why do I believe this? Just look at what’s happened to two of Michigan’s most crucial Congressional districts, the 8th and the 11th , which voted for Trump and Republican Congressmen in 2016 but swung back to the Democrats in the last cycle. There are a lot of factors at play in 2018—the unpopularity of Trump, the strength of female candidates like Elissa Slotkin and Haley Stevens, among other things—but one of the factors that didn’t get as much attention as it should is the economic trajectory of those communities.

 

Why a Strong Economy Will Actually Help Democrats in 2020
Rebounding parts of the Rust Belt are moving away from Trump as the still-suffering areas double down.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/07/27/2020-democrats-economy-rust-belt-227484

[Centrist Simon Steele]

2 hours ago, No one of consequence said:

It is, of course, only racist when Trump says it. 

 

https://www.baltimoresun.com/politics/bs-md-sanders-baltimore-20151207-story.html

So, one uses derogatory language to devalue the humanity of the poor, while the other is pointing out how the wealth gap is impacting fellow humans, and to you that's the same?

[Martell Spy]

1 hour ago, Simon Steele said:

So, one uses derogatory language to devalue the humanity of the poor, while the other is pointing out how the wealth gap is impacting fellow humans, and to you that's the same?

Well, you have to admit that the poor suck. They are not even wearing $50 t-shirts.

Yeah, so Trump is basically, "I get to put brown children in cages because black people totally suck." And this is somehow related.

Also, his plan involving Antifa is hugely flawed. If those Antifa protesters happen to be white, and he tries to put them into prison without an actual crime, it will be the end of Trump and his entire rat-infested family. 

Why? Because this is a white supremacist country. And also, every white dude in the entire country, right or left, or in between, will understand that the race war has turned into a war on white people.

[all swedes are racist]

....what

[Varysblackfyre321]

On 7/26/2019 at 5:02 PM, Rippounet said:

Unlike humans, all thoughts are not born equal. 

True. If it were, we’d have to accept a man who spouts out how America needs to remain a majority white country and in control of whites at all costs, as doing something not worthy of condemnation. “He’s just expressing a opinion”

I’m of the position only closeted/open hardcore racists, idiots, and cowards, wouldn’t think a man who does such thing along with his gross ideas should be stigmatized. 

[Varysblackfyre321]

Almost forgot about the Convington incident: 

https://www.businessinsider.com/covington-student-nick-sandmann-defamation-lawsuit-washington-post-2019-7

I have a feeling this kid will in the end succeed no matter how ludicrous his case is. Trump would love to see the media-outlets Sandman is suing to be financially devastated and this sort of case could erode the press’ ability to do anything to stand against him.

The only side that should be covered is  the side that supports Trump. 

 

[Mexal]

40 minutes ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

Almost forgot about the Convington incident: 

https://www.businessinsider.com/covington-student-nick-sandmann-defamation-lawsuit-washington-post-2019-7

I have a feeling this kid will in the end succeed no matter how ludicrous his case is. Trump would love to see the media-outlets Sandman is suing to be financially devastated and this sort of case could erode the press’ ability to do anything to stand against him.

The only side that should be covered is  the side that supports Trump. 

 

Huh? It was dismissed?

[Martell Spy]

‘The Wire’ Creator David Simon Calls Trump “Racist Moron” Over Baltimore Comments

https://deadline.com/2019/07/the-wire-creator-david-simon-calls-trump-racist-moron-over-baltimore-comments-1202655841/

Quote

 

“The Wire” creator David Simon unloaded on President Donald Trump Saturday, after the president called Baltimore a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” while criticizing Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings.

Simon, a former Baltimore Sun reporter, documented life in Baltimore over five seasons of his HBO series. While the critically-acclaimed drama didn’t exactly paint Charm City in a positive light with its brazen drug dealing, out-of-control violence and rampant political corruption, Simon pushed back against Trump by calling him a “race-hating fraud.”

“If this empty-suit, race-hating fraud had to actually visit West Baltimore for five minutes and meet any of the American citizens who endure there, he’d wet himself,” Simon tweeted.

 

 

George Will Changes His Mind—But Stays True to His Convictions
The columnist’s latest book is marked by a new emphasis on the machinery of government—and by one purposeful omission.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/what-makes-a-true-conservative/594889/

Quote

 

Will replied that he hoped Trump supporters are right—but he’s pretty sure they are wrong when they say that what Trump is doing to our culture, our politics, and our civic discourse is ephemeral.

Trump’s supporters on the right “misunderstand the importance of culture, the viscosity of culture, and I think they are not conservatives, because they don’t understand this,” Will said. “Nixon’s surreptitious burglaries were surreptitious; that is, they were done in secret because they were unacceptable to the country, and once exposed, they were punished and the country moved on. What Mr. Trump has done is make acceptable, make normal, a form of behavior that would get a third grader sent to the principal’s office or to bed without dessert.” Will argues that Trump’s agenda, to the degree it pleases conservatives, is what any Republican president would have done. “So the question is, What does Trump bring that’s distinctive?” Will said. “And it’s all vulgarity, coarsening, semi-criminality.”

I pressed the point, asking about the concrete, tangible harm of Trump’s conduct.

“The answer is in the terms themselves,” Will replied. “The norms, that is, what are normal and what are normative, cease to be normal. And cease to be normative.” His point is that Nixon, for all his crimes, evaded norms; he didn’t challenge them. He didn’t dispute them. He didn’t degrade them. In fact, he was ultimately done in by them. Donald Trump promised when he ran for president that he would overturn our norms, Will has said, and that’s one promise he’s kept.

 

 

[DMC]

27 minutes ago, Triskele said:

A little more on why sweeping healthcare reform will be so difficult.  

And this article only barely gets at this, but consider that in the Obamacare push they'd mostly brought industry groups along, and it was still that tough to get it done.  

That article is referring to a Californian battle that's, ultimately, pretty damn old news.  They lost the fight a while ago - and not just with "Medicare for All," whatever that means, but for the public option.  There's this from February:

Quote

Many California Democrats say they support single-payer health care, but none introduced a new version of the state’s landmark single-payer bill before a key deadline last week.

Stephanie Roberson, a lobbyist for the California Nurses Association, said the union was in talks with Sen. Mike McGuire about running a bill this year, but those discussions fell through.

“Senator McGuire’s admission that he could not get enough political consensus to move a bill around this issue is troubling,” Roberson said in a statement. “To not have a comprehensive solution on the table in the first year of a two-year session in the most progressive legislature in the country is baffling.”

I agree with you that nobody should be talking about taking away private insurance.  I get paid right now as a grad assistant to an old professor that's about to retire, and most of my job entails explaining to her the new progressivism and its agenda - perhaps a rather ironic role for me if you've read these threads.  Point is, people get scared when you say you're gonna take their insurance away.  She worked for 40 years all the way to the point she was a vice provost until a year ago, so yeah, she wants her retirement benefits.  

Anyway, that's a long way of saying I agree with you that no one should be talking about taking away private insurance, at all, and it's a very very stupid position to take in the general election.  Except I don't think anyone really is except Sanders.  Harris said it months back in that CNN thing but then cleaned it up.  Has anyone else?  Generally, I think they're all using "Medicare for All" as a crutch because, again, nobody really knows what that means.  Myself included.

[all swedes are racist]

loving harris’ new student loan debt forgiveness program that is apparently been written by the same algorithm that created those bizarre extremely targeted  t-shirt ads on facebook

[Larry of the Lawn]

2 hours ago, a good and nice guy said:

loving harris’ new student loan debt forgiveness program that is apparently been written by the same algorithm that created those bizarre extremely targeted  t-shirt ads on facebook

I love how it's designed to help, like, .005% of student debt holders.  

[all swedes are racist]

27 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

I love how it's designed to help, like, .005% of student debt holders.  

yeah my husband is a pell grant recipient who graduated college and opened a business for three years in a disadvantaged neighborhood and he’s an aeries and a little bit crazy and bought me this shirt while watching ncis... don’t mess with me!

[all swedes are racist]

On 7/27/2019 at 5:24 PM, Kalbear said:

I think what Sanders said 4 _YEARS_ ago is also bad. It isn't quite so blatantly racist, but it is certainly not great.

That said, Sanders was saying this to the people of West Baltimore (which isn't only Cumming's district) WHILE HE WAS THERE. He was literally speaking to them and with them about their issues. He wasn't a coward about it. 

sorry to jump back to this, but @Kalbear, wondering if you could expand a little on what exactly is your issue with sanders’ statement there, re: baltimore and the material conditions of its residents? 

[Martell Spy]

2 hours ago, Triskele said:

Yeah, why even announce you're putting a plan out of it's one that will excite almost no one.

ETA:  Does anyone know to what extent student loan policy is something that can be done just via Dept of Education rather than through Congress?   

Wondering about something really ambitious like the Sanders or Warren plans and whether they'd need 60 votes to happen or whether since Dept. of Education handles the loans if they can just say balances gone because President Sanders or President Warren tells their new Education person post Betsy to do it.  

Reminder too that Trump actually claimed to give a shit about student loan debt but has done nothing that I'm aware of other than having DeVos do what big business wants.  

They could do it in reconciliation if it would survive the Byrd Bath. Assuming it isn't opposed by enough moderate Dem Senators.

Police Respond to Active Shooter at California Gilroy Garlic Festival
Ambulance crews were reportedly told 11 people were down.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/gilroy-garlic-festival-police-respond-to-active-shooter-at-california-event?ref=home

Quote

 

Police and ambulances responded Sunday to reports of an active shooter at the Gilroy Garlic Festival near San Jose, California, according to multiple reports. According to NBC Bay Area, ambulance crews were told 11 people were shot.

The festival is held annually on the last weekend of July and was wrapping up its third and final day when the shooting reports came in.

 

 

[Fragile Bird]

I was watching the series about movies on CNN (really good, I highly recommend it) and they've interrupted it to talk about Gilroy. So I see the post above from 56 minutes ago, I guess CNN wanted to put together some information before showing the breaking news.

A witness is being interviewed now says it's a white shooter with an assault rifle. They were about 15 feet away when he started shooting, dressed in army fatigues. They were lucky to escape.

[DanteGabriel]

20 hours ago, Triskele said:

On that note, wish I could read the rest of this Josh Marshall post on TPM, but it's behind the paywall.  But there's a solid amount of stuff to discuss right here:

 

 

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. 

Spoiler

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.

 

[Martell Spy]

40 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

I was watching the series about movies on CNN (really good, I highly recommend it) and they've interrupted it to talk about Gilroy. So I see the post above from 56 minutes ago, I guess CNN wanted to put together some information before showing the breaking news.

A witness is being interviewed now says it's a white shooter with an assault rifle. They were about 15 feet away when he started shooting, dressed in army fatigues. They were lucky to escape.

So, you're saying the hero with a gun showed up to save everyone?

[Darth Richard II]

Jesus fucking Christ, a garlic festival?

[Fragile Bird]

8 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

So, you're saying the hero with a gun showed up to save everyone?

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

4 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Jesus fucking Christ, a garlic festival?

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.

[Darth Richard II]

It just seems like, fuck, what hasn’t had a shooting yet?