U.S. Politics: That's too bad for Carrots

[GrimTuesday]

1 hour ago, Darzin said:

The ACA makes most of this illegal. As insurance companies are not allowed to discriminate based on pre-existing conditions. Also in Germany most people use the public plan. If the public plan really is better, and I fully believe it will be as it doesn't need to turn a profit and can even operate at a loss do you really think people and companies  are loyal enough to their health insurance companies that they won't choose a cheaper and better option? I certainly don't think  so.

  Also I'm fundamentally against banning services unless they are harmful. Workers work hard for their money and they have a right to spend it how they choose. In our society the government provides free roads, free education, free security, yet we don't ban people from purchasing private alternates. The existence of private security has not caused the police department to collapse. I was all for Bernie Sanders bill until I found out it banned private insurance, that's like a cartoon conservative parody of universal health care.

I was talking about her equating the Fed giving loans to banks with the government spending money. Those are not the same thing and even if they were congress doesn't control the Fed. I don't disagree that we should spend much more money on healthcare but there was definitley a white lie there. 

 

You realize that humans are not rational beings, right? Humans are infinitely manipulable and fear most things that they do not know about. Americans in particular have been conditioned to see government as a bad thing, and what is going to happen is the healthcare lobby is going to bring all their strength to bear to destroy this before it even gets off the ground much less once it passes and suddenly they have to compete with it. This is also why it is silly not to start at the position of abolishing all private healthcare insurers, because if you start at a public option, you have already take away your leverage, because the insurance lobby is going to use the same attack on whatever your opening proposal is, and if they cry bloody murder at getting rid of them, you can come back with the public option and suddenly you've compromised and it is much harder for them to use the same attack a second time and have it resonate in the same way.

Here is the thing about private vs public and mixed systems, it is harmful. By creating a system where someone isn't getting the benefit, even if they have opted out of it, you have sown the seeds of destruction. You brought up schools as an example, to which I say do you not know about "School Choice" and charter schools? Charter schools are quite literally an attempt to covertly subvert and starve the public school system of funds while delivering third rate education. And yet even Democrats, because they hear the word choice, think that this is somehow a good thing that they have this option. Sure, only a small percentage of people actually use those things, but still year after year, more and more money gets funneled into these programs by Democratic and Republican administrations while the school choice people point out that public schools are crumbling before our eyes because they are mostly funded through property taxes and unless you're in a high income area, the school is probably underfunded in part because money that would have gone to them has been diverted to charter schools.

Now that we've gone over that, imagine that the lobbyists aren't insurgent maniacs like Betsy DeVos, and instead have at least some sway with every single establishment figure on both sides of the aisle. The combination of obscene amounts of money to run public relations campaigns against government healthcare and influence with lawmakers gives the insurance industry a massive amount of power to effect the impression that the populous has. Look at the energy industry, where we are getting progressively better and better green technology and you still have people fighting against the righteous destruction of coal mining despite the fact that there are only about 50,000 coal miners in the US because that is what they have always known, meanwhile coal run offs are poisoning waterways and kills about 13000 people each year.

Finally, I'll end on this before I got to get some sleep (I'll still respond when I wake up if you respond), if you are hoping markets will save us, you are are going to be sadly disappointed. The free market will continue to bleed you dry until government once again puts a boot on its neck and the soon that happens, the better off we will be.

[Gaston de Foix]

11 hours ago, GrimTuesday said:

Pete was relevant for one night after getting jerked off by the media for weeks and literally only focusing on Iowa, basically anyone could get hot for a minute in those circumstances.

He is from Indiana, so sure it would be really funny to see him flail at winning a state wide race in Indiana, but the reality is that the only role he is going to have is a national level, something that involves either being a party leader, a federally appointed position, or working in the media.

I'm not saying put him of a raft and float him into the Atlantic, just that he is not particularly special nor does he align with the left wing trajectory the Democratic party seems to be drifting (ever so slowly) towards.

See, the problem is that most of those 74 million are more likely to call him a homophobic slur than vote for him. They don't care if he is a good boy from a small Midwestern city, he is a Democrat, and therefore a commie bastard who wants to take their guns and kill god.

It's so silly that we're talking about appealing to people who do not agree with us and who will never agree with us while just abandoning any attempt to reach out to those who have been completely abandoned by the political system. 34% of Americans do not vote, and if we figure that Republicans are going to keep doing their thing, if Democrats can get even .5%  somewhere in the realm of 400k votes (I think that is right, as illustrated earlier in the week my math skills are questionable at best), which as we saw this year, could be the difference in a close race in some states.

Beyond that, what do you propose to do to to reach out to those people who don't agree with us? Should we just start running to the right? Come on, the future of the United States, and the future of the world depends on moving to at the very least a hybrid model where private capital has been stripped of much of it's power, and whether we move right, or stay on the same neo-liberal track we are on now, we're either never getting there, or we're not getting there soon enough.

 

Indiana's actually a good example of why I think your argument is mistaken.  Let's remember Obama carried it in 2008 by 1%.  It sent a Democrat to the Senate for decades, first Evan Bayh and then Joe Donnelly in 2012.  Those Democrats voted for the ACA and against overturning it.  But for their votes the most significant progressive achievement (no matter how much you think it fell short) of the last 40 years would be dust.  And if they you think those folks are irrelevant because they got taken out - Jon Tester, Joe Manchin and Sherrod Brown continue to represent red states in the Senate.  There's no Dem majority without them. 

And yet we all agree that it is now inhospitable terrain and Pete (or any other Dem you care to name) would lose a statewide race.  So what's changed?  

Obama won at a time when many, even Republicans, wanted to believe in a better politics of unity, not division.  When even Republicans privately conceded that the last 8 years of Republican rule had been a failure.  And the economy fell off a cliff and people were suddenly hurting or at least financially insecure. 

Here's what I find interesting: those conditions held true in 2020 as well.  We have just had an election with record turnout (66.7% of eligible voters).  A higher turnout election was actually favorable to Republicans (compared to the 2018 midterms).  And Indiana is now solidly red with not even a tinge of purple.  It's not the only one.  LA, MO, OH, ND, SD, NE.  Hell, Arkansas had two Dem Senators in Obama's first two years giving him a super-majority. 

2020 was, for most of us, a once-in-a-generation opportunity to move the country significantly to the left.  We failed. 

You and I agree on the practical urgency and moral imperative of climate change legislation.  If you want to govern, you have to win.  And if you want to win, and your electorate is significantly to the right of where you are, you need to try to win their votes.  

[Centrist Simon Steele]

14 hours ago, A True Kaniggit said:

The last thing I want is the government having any “noticeable difference in my life”

But this is what I'm going off of. 

It doesn't help you said your dad was in the military, the most socialist organization in our entire country. I don't know your relationship with him, but odds are you were a major beneficiary of socialism growing up. 

I want to respond to a few things in your conversation--but I'll start here. I was in the military and it's definitely an operation with heavy socialist policies. When you're low rank and don't have anything, you get housing and food provided. You can get better things if you choose, but you are provided with shelter and food. In exchange for your service, you are provided with things like tuition assistance and loan repayment (in addition to income). If there are five E-5s (sergeants) in your unit, so long as they are E-5 pay scale, none of them makes more than the other. If you're sent to a hazardous area--you and your family are compensated for that. When I deployed, we had the best insurance and it was free (Tri-Care). My son was born while I was deployed, and we didn't a get a single bill. I was flown home to see my son's birth and under some provision, half of my personal travel expenses were reimbursed. When I left home and headed back, my son had jaundice, and the last time I saw him was when a medical person delivered a weird suitcase with ultraviolet lights on it, and he was sleeping in there (I'll never get that image out of my head). But all free. 

The military also practices a lot of things like gun control, paid leave, etc. To me these are minimum requirements of normal living.

The argument about raising taxes is odd. So much of this could be paid for without raising taxes on most Americans (because a few have most of the money). People who don't make a million a year shouldn't see an increase. From there, it elevates based on how wealthy you are. 

Either way, the fight to get others to pay their fair share for the upkeep of this country is the most baffling fight in which I've ever participated. 

Also, you mentioned Trump getting more Latino voters than Biden. It's interesting, in the primaries, Latino voters loved Bernie Sanders. There's something in the centrist Dem message that turns them off I think.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

6 hours ago, Darzin said:

The ACA makes most of this illegal. As insurance companies are not allowed to discriminate based on pre-existing conditions. Also in Germany most people use the public plan. If the public plan really is better, and I fully believe it will be as it doesn't need to turn a profit and can even operate at a loss do you really think people and companies  are loyal enough to their health insurance companies that they won't choose a cheaper and better option? I certainly don't think  so.

  Also I'm fundamentally against banning services unless they are harmful. Workers work hard for their money and they have a right to spend it how they choose. In our society the government provides free roads, free education, free security, yet we don't ban people from purchasing private alternates. The existence of private security has not caused the police department to collapse. I was all for Bernie Sanders bill until I found out it banned private insurance, that's like a cartoon conservative parody of universal health care.

I was talking about her equating the Fed giving loans to banks with the government spending money. Those are not the same thing and even if they were congress doesn't control the Fed. I don't disagree that we should spend much more money on healthcare but there was definitley a white lie there. 

 

It's complicated though--if the government provided a good program like Medicare for anyone who wants it--I can see a lot of value of those of us with pre-existing conditions going there. I certainly would. I guess it shouldn't be required so we don't give insurance companies a foothold in discrimination again, but hell, when I was on medicaid a few years ago while transitioning jobs, I was in the throes of trying to figure out what was causing me so much pain (in my mid-30s). I saw probably twenty different specialists over the course of two years before we figured out I have psoriatic arthritis. Medicaid, which I've always been told will be horrible for someone like me, was a life saver. I don't ever remember waiting long periods of time to see specialists, and all the prescriptions I was given (before we knew what was wrong) were never disputed by Medicaid. Despite being out of pain now, my insurance is SO expensive I'm actually more stressed and unhappy than I was when I could move. My insurance company fights everything including the expensive medicine I take which wiped out all of my crippling pain.

In some ways, insurance companies still find ways to screw those of us with pre-existing conditions. I don't know what the answer is with a public option, but I don't think it'd be horrible for people like me to be given the government run insurance over private.

[Zorral]

58 minutes ago, Simon Steele said:

I want to respond to a few things in your conversation--but I'll start here. I was in the military and it's definitely an operation with heavy socialist policies. When you're low rank and don't have anything, you get housing and food provided. You can get better things if you choose, but you are provided with shelter and food. In exchange for your service, you are provided with things like tuition assistance and loan repayment (in addition to income). If there are five E-5s (sergeants) in your unit, so long as they are E-5 pay scale, none of them makes more than the other. If you're sent to a hazardous area--you and your family are compensated for that. When I deployed, we had the best insurance and it was free (Tri-Care). My son was born while I was deployed, and we didn't a get a single bill. I was flown home to see my son's birth and under some provision, half of my personal travel expenses were reimbursed. When I left home and headed back, my son had jaundice, and the last time I saw him was when a medical person delivered a weird suitcase with ultraviolet lights on it, and he was sleeping in there (I'll never get that image out of my head). But all free. 

The military also practices a lot of things like gun control, paid leave, etc. To me these are minimum requirements of normal living.

The argument about raising taxes is odd. So much of this could be paid for without raising taxes on most Americans (because a few have most of the money). People who don't make a million a year shouldn't see an increase. From there, it elevates based on how wealthy you are. 

Either way, the fight to get others to pay their fair share for the upkeep of this country is the most baffling fight in which I've ever participated. 

Also, you mentioned Trump getting more Latino voters than Biden. It's interesting, in the primaries, Latino voters loved Bernie Sanders. There's something in the centrist Dem message that turns them off I think.

Another BIL, not the one who got a most expensive specialist medical education via the Marines, and once he'd practiced for the mandated number of years, quit and went into dealing art (his attitudes about a very great deal has changed in the intervening years, including acquiring a hatred of Republicans)-- this BILwho is trumpist all the way, always a rethugger, a climate change poopooer -- and if there is such a thing I'm so smart I live where it won't affect me -- and continues to insist this is so though he had to stay indoors for months due to drought and wildfires, the BIL who plays blood thirsty pirate who rapes and murders with impunity as recreation -- he got his entire education via the army, never came close to going out in the field or under fire, because he was being trained as a computer tech, then got constant continuing education at no cost for the rest of his life while making the big bux -- and I do mean Big Bux as a provider of Big Tech for Big Biz all over the world -- howls all the time that he never got a thing from the government, despite when he needed serious surgery his cost him little or nothing due to being a vet.  Also he also gets housing loans at a very low rate.  (None of which, of course Black vets were were entitled to until relatively recently.)

It's like other NoDak relatives who howl constantly about Others getting gov handouts while they get nothing -- since, somehow, land banking, subsidies, etc., low cost loans to acquire more land, none of that seems to count as government programs 

[Fury Resurrected]

7 hours ago, Darzin said:

Also I'm fundamentally against banning services unless they are harmful.

 

Is your position that the current system of HMOs is not harmful?

[Mindwalker]

Apparently there are rumors that Biden wants to give the AG post to a Republican...

[Fragile Bird]

18 minutes ago, Mindwalker said:

Apparently there are rumors that Biden wants to give the AG post to a Republican...

A never-Trumper who wants to root out evil?

[Martell Spy]

Black Lives Matter helped shape the 2020 election. The movement now has its eyes on Georgia.
Founder Patrisse Cullors on the Senate runoffs, the impact of the protests, and what the movement wants from the Biden administration.

https://www.vox.com/21591560/black-lives-matter-protests-2020-election-georgia

Quote

 

Rachel Ramirez
How do you see Black Lives Matter’s relationship with the upcoming Biden administration? Tell me about the types of legislation the organization wants to push.

Patrisse Cullors
The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation sent a letter to Biden and Harris requesting a meeting. We did that the day they were announced as the Vice President-elect and President-elect. So we’re looking forward to having that meeting with them directly to discuss our agenda. We believe that we need legislation that affirms and values Black lives. It could be comprehensive and intersectional.

During the uprising in the summer, our movement came together with the movement for Black Lives when we wrote the BREATHE Act. We see it as a modern-day civil rights bill and the legislative love letter to Black people.

The BREATHE Act actually offers a complete reimagining of public safety, it offers community care, and it really reevaluates how we spend money as a society, especially towards the most marginalized parts of our communities.

It’s invested in non-punitive and non-carceral approaches to community safety — and it’s really trying to shrink the current criminal legal system that has completely decimated Black people. The BREATHE Act centers the protection of Black lives, including Black mothers, Black trans people, Black women, and Black men. So that is going to be a central piece of our work.

Rachel Ramirez
Some of the wins this election were ballot measures on police reform, but most of them aren’t nearly as radical as defunding the police. What can we expect to see in the future on upcoming ballots? What is some of the work you’re doing around that?

Patrisse Cullors
We’ll be working to support the implementation of Measure J, which is here in Los Angeles County. It doesn’t defund police, but that’s an oversimplification. What it does is actually allow for Los Angeles to fund solely a non-punitive system.

 

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Mindwalker said:

Apparently there are rumors that Biden wants to give the AG post to a Republican...

Rumors are just rumors. 

[Gaston de Foix]

1 hour ago, Fragile Bird said:

A never-Trumper who wants to root out evil?

I could see Jack Goldsmith doing an OK job.  The rest, not so much.  The trahison de clercs runs deep.  

[Mindwalker]

4 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Rumors are just rumors. 

Unless they are not, but are leaked...

@Fragile Bird, @Gaston de Foix, they mentioned a woman but i forgot her name... Sarah something...?

 

ETA: Ugh...

Report: Trump Considering 2024 Campaign Launch, Event To Disrupt Biden Inauguration

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/report-trump-considering-2024-campaign-launch-event-to-disrupt-biden-inauguration

[Gaston de Foix]

33 minutes ago, Mindwalker said:

Unless they are not, but are leaked...

@Fragile Bird, @Gaston de Foix, they mentioned a woman but i forgot her name... Sarah something...?

 

ETA: Ugh...

Report: Trump Considering 2024 Campaign Launch, Event To Disrupt Biden Inauguration

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/report-trump-considering-2024-campaign-launch-event-to-disrupt-biden-inauguration

Can't find anything on Google in the last 24 hours with a "Sarah" and "Attorney General".  Any chance you can retrace your footsteps?

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

6 minutes ago, Gaston de Foix said:

Can't find anything on Google in the last 24 hours with a "Sarah" and "Attorney General".  Any chance you can retrace your footsteps?

I can't find anything that suggests Biden will pick anyone other than the obvious choices. Jones or Yates are the likely bets in my book. 

[DireWolfSpirit]

3 hours ago, Fury Resurrected said:

Is your position that the current system of HMOs is not harmful?

 

[DMC]

Can't find anything on google or twitter either.  I'm hard-pressed to even come up with a plausible Republican candidate for AG named Sarah (NO DON'T GO THERE).  Sarah Lenti is executive director of The Lincoln Project but I have no idea if she's even a lawyer.

[Mindwalker]

15 minutes ago, DMC said:

Can't find anything on google or twitter either.  I'm hard-pressed to even come up with a plausible Republican candidate for AG named Sarah (NO DON'T GO THERE).  Sarah Lenti is executive director of The Lincoln Project but I have no idea if she's even a lawyer.

LOL. No, if you're thinking what I'm thinking, I would remember THAT name, plus no way in hell.

It was a msnbc panel (otherwise not very interesting on YT, I think t was this one:

7:30 ff  - Sally Yates is who they mention.

[GrimTuesday]

Great, one of the people most hostile towards the left is is slated to be running OMB. Neera Tanden has spent the last four years punching left constantly and is steeped in the Clintonian third way-ism. But I'm sure We'll be able to push her left

[Mindwalker]

Yah, I misunderstood. Shouldn't have multitasked at the time. I don't think they're seriously suggesting he'll make an R the AG. Sorry.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

3 minutes ago, GrimTuesday said:

Great, one of the people most hostile towards the left is is slated to be running OMB. Neera Tanden has spent the last four years punching left constantly and is steeped in the Clintonian third way-ism. But I'm sure We'll be able to push her left

Tanden is a pretty reasonable person overall. And she's perfectly qualified. Quit with your tribalistic bitching.