Don’t Give Up on Gun Control or America
But the religious component is too much of a stumbling block for her and she’s particularly hung up on the cliches that are used in AA.
Her trouble is that ‘But For the Grace of God’ is a subjunctive, a counterfactual, she says, and can make sense only when introducing a conditional clause, like e.g. ‘But For the Grace of God I would have died on Molly Notkin’s bathroom floor,’ so that an indicative transposition like ‘I’m here but But For the Grace of God’ is she says, literally senseless, and regardless of whether she hears it or not it’s meaningless, and that the foamy enthusiasm with which these folks can say what in fact means nothing at all makes her want to put her head in the Radarange at the thought that Substances have brought her to the sort of pass where this is the sort of language she has to have Blind Faith in.
Now, if it isn’t clear how this discussion of A.A. applies to our politics, I can understand that. It really applies to our attitude towards a politics of gridlock and disregard for reason. It applies to any situation where you discover that things absolutely need to change but you find yourself totally incapable of changing them. The addict who can’t kick often becomes consumed with self-loathing and they disguise this with feigned apathy, dark humor, and lame self-justifications for their helplessness. That way lies death.
When it comes to guns, we’re a nation of addicts. Like addicts, we have two voices in our heads. One sees the problem and considers it as urgent that something change. The other voice will go to any length to rationalize the status quo so it can continue its self-destructive behavior. The addict voice is winning.
Addiction combined with violence is often rooted in a psychiatric disorder. The deadly cocktail of poor mental health care – thanking astrology, Nancy and Ronald – and the second amendment of the U.S. Constitution cannot be solved by weapons addict treatment or prayer to the Almighty. God never said just sit back and your problem will be solved. Congressional gridlock is the cause of much pain in the U.S. and where our military are dispatched on bogus intelligence.
The Chaplain, the Reverend Patrick J. Conroy, offered the following prayer:
Loving God, we give You thanks for giving us another day. We also give You thanks that You have given to us the goals of justice and the designs of freedom and that these are our heritage as Americans.
Bless the Members of the people’s House with the understanding that it is their work to develop the strategies and the plans for achieving those goals and the trust to know that Your spirit is with them in their work.
Grace this assembly with the resolve to be faithful in its tasks, responsible in its actions, and fervent in its desire to serve a nation which so many hope will live beyond the current difficulties into an ever greater realization of both justice and freedom.
May all that is done today be for Your greater honor and glory. Amen.…
This serves as a sad example of just the impact on the South Carolina Guard members. Senate Democrats need to stop holding military funding hostage.
In conclusion, God bless our troops, and we will never forget September the 11th in the global war on terrorism.
○ U.S. Among Most Depressed Countries in the World
In my high school years in St. Louis, it was compulsory to read some books about Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Although I am a religious person, I recall in his theory about the classes, religion was called the opiate of the people. Besides religion, US foreign adventures with CIA support introduced plenty more drugs into our nation. Thinking specifically about the Vietnam War and the military intervention of right-wing death squads in Central and South America.
Furher reading, right-wing abuse of Abraham Lincoln‘s “all men are created equal” …
○ Tell the ADL to Stop ‘Jewsplaining’ to African-American Political Leaders | Tikun Olam |
Yeah. We read “The Communist Manifesto”. I took a lot of flak for saying that it was an accurate indictment of nineteenth century capitalism, although I dodn’t agree with the remedy.
With all the sexual abuse stuff coming out I guess the 21’st century capitalism is the same as the 19th.
Last week I heard about an executive who is being accused by 70 women. SEVENTY! I asked my wife how he found time to do his job.
You write:
There is a simple answer to this:
In this current, totally fucked-up corporate world, the higher the level an executive reaches, the less job that executive must do. Rising in the corporate system is now mostly a matter of not getting caught making mistakes. Talented ass-coverers always have underlings that can be blamed, and those underlings do most of the real work. Take a real look at Trump for all you need to know on that account. Tweets are not “job,” they are mental/emotional masturbation. He jerks himself off a lot. Bet on it. Or…take a look at the history of organized crime in the U.S. The bosses spend less time in jail than do their soldiers, and quite often the only “fail” those bosses really experience is when some disgruntled soldiers kill them or rat them out.
Ergo…70 extracurricular flings is a no-brainer. Gotta fill the days with something, right?
AG
P.S. I have a hunch that this latest Trump administration cop-out to Mueller…Rick Gates…is going to be Trump’s John Dean. I predicted something like this…someone like this…would be the coup de grace for Trump. Gates fits the bill…a weakish underling seeking to save his own ass at the late stages of a politically-motivated, long drawn out investigation, someone who can claim that he was “only doing his job” with no knowledge of the big picture. A slap on the wrist jailing, a few years out of the limelight and then…POOF!!! Like magic!!! Back in the DC revolving door culture once again.
Watch.
Very true. Their talent is the talent of character assassination and office intrigue. Truly the scum rises to the top.
Neil deGrasse Tyson:
For me Tyson as a thinker is right up there with Stephen Jay Gould. Still miss Gould’s (and Molly Ivins) voice but Tyson is very much alive and kicking ass.
off Guardian : truth v lies
One quibble.
Not false. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. However in support of Off Guardian, one should bet that way. Not betting “Aha! I have no evidence. It must be true.” I have no evidence that Hillary Clinton is an agent of Putin (or Satan). But that doesn’t mean she isn’t (of either or both). Nor does it mean it’s true. Maybe she is Bill Clinton’s evil twin in drag? You have no evidence to prove that she isn’t, do you?
Otherwise an excellent article. I had read the Moon of Alabama post cited in the article. Both articles are in contrast to the hysteria on the front page of Booman Tribune. I’m old enough to remember McCarthy (and I’m not referring to Eugene).
I had asked for data about the report, in what I thought was a very noncontroversial matter, on the front page. I was roundly attacked by the usual lynch mob.
I don’t know how long I will continue to look for pearls in this pig sty. Thank you for pointing to a large pearl.
wrt your quibble. If one knows what evidence is being sought and one has searched high and low for evidence and sufficient time and money has been available to find evidence and one comes up with no shred, then the absence of evidence is evidence of absence. Plus not even the Russia-Putin believers have ever been able to provide a plausible narrative about how the fantasy Russia-Putin-Trump collusion impacted the election.
Did Mueller look into the allegation of Macedonian troll farms that HRC claimed interfered in the election? Or has that been dropped to pave the way for it acceptance to the EU?
Any troll farms in Israel? Wouldn’t surprise me if there were. But that isn’t and won’t be investigated. I’m mostly indifferent to this because bots don’t appear to be any more persuasive than the once feared subliminal ads were. Not that there aren’t subliminal cues that are effective, but those require real life person-to-person contact.
I stay out of the FP Russia-Putin threads. Long past the point where reason, logic, and facts carried any weight with the believers. Learned from the great WMD hoax when to shut up and wait until their faith is impossible for them to hold onto. Not that more than a few were able to acknowledge how dumb/gullible they’d been. The others just wanted to forget all about it and reminders from me only increased their dislike of me.
That’s why I said it was a quibble. Logically true (my statement) but in practice a foolish way to bet as I hope my whimsical examples showed.
Reminded me of “When logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead
And the white knight is talking backwards
And the red queen’s off with her head”
I had always thought that the lines were “…When logic and proportion have fallen far behind.” and “the Red Queen’s off her head”. But that’s what comes of listening to music in a convertible. Was even worse with AM radio.
What galls me was that I quite unemotionally and non-confrontationally asked what the report actually indicted them for. Partly what angered them,. I suppose, was my statement that half the possible charges didn’t excite me much because the US government had done them itself so many times in foreign elections.
Even assassination of an ally! I’m thinking of Diem although I’m sure Oui can come up with more examples.
How about Allende? Didn’t we “meddle” in that country’s politics to the extent of deposing a legitimately elected government and installing a right wing military dictatorship?
There’s your mistake right there. Remember back in the early days of the Iraq invasion a “WMD found” headline popped up every once in a while. Believers would bite the head off a skeptic that asked “what was found?” Most of the believers were running with the headline and they assumed the skeptic was asking a fake innocent question to in some way trap them. Believers that had read beyond the headline, weren’t critical thinkers and the media described a pile of firecrackers with vague terms that sounded very scary. The “informed” believers would chew out the skeptic for not having read the report and being too stupid to understand the lethality of what was found.
A waste of time to ask believers. Easy to know what they’ll do with a headline that “fits” what they want to believe. What I did first was read the indictments. Started to make a few notes. Until the contradictions and meaningless of the charges became overwhelming. (Not often is an indictment this ludicrous.) Then I began looking for rational and critical thinkers who read the damn thing to get their take. (No need to look at rightwing, Republican, centrist, or Democratic “analysis” as they would all see whatever it is that they want to see.) Not many public voices with a high enough profile to fit that bill. (Same back in 2002-03 when I searched for WMD skeptics.) But they do exist.
The most cynical aspect of the indictments is that Mueller knows that he will never have to prosecute this in a court of law. So he could toss out the standard Comey used for HRC — proving the charges beyond reasonable doubt. Essentially, he split the baby and left it up to the WH and “Resistance” to duke it out in public forums.
Correct on all counts. I was unconsciously thing of the old BT, but what I found was dkos.
I didn’t wade through the indictments because my eyes glaze over with legalese.
Once I was in family court with DCFS saying that my looking for a compromise solution was an admission of guilt. I told the judge, “When confronted with a problem, engineers try to fix the problem. Lawyers try to fix blame.” A very true statement, but judges are also lawyers. Might as well be hung for being a Ram instead of a Lamb.
The “old BT,” or original BT, was more centrist and conservative than dKos at that time. I registered but doubt I ever posted a comment and quickly left because I can get the same perspective from the MSM. After 2008 dKos started its metamorphosis into “my Democratic President, right or wrong” — and the purges of those that didn’t toe that line began. BT stayed where it had been and by 2012 wasn’t the church of the elite DP as dKos was. BT got there by election day 2016. Those that resisted the DP groupthink were called Putin stooges and accused of being on Russia’s payroll. Who the hell wants to be an internet troll for ten cents a tweet or comment? (David Brock was paying better than that.) Perhaps the notion behind those allegations was that only the Russian would be stupid enough to pay for trolls on BT.
🙂
btw — I also found this interesting.
The only one I’ve seen that actually describes the alleged nefarious building instead of reposting a single photo of a building:
If the Internet Research Agency actually exists or existed and has occupied a suite in one of the buildings, the odds of it being in the building photographed and accompanying all the western press stories of Russian trolls is probably low.
David Axelrod:
What a stupid ass. In 2012, Stein received 21,897 votes in MI. In 2016 Bernie won the MI primary with 598,943 votes. So, at most Stein picked up less than 5% of Bernie primary voters. In Axelrod world, not voters with a conscience that couldn’t see their way to vote for the woman who rigged the Democratic primary but voters manipulated by Russian trolls.
He also conveniently ignores the 172,000 that couldn’t stomach Trump or Clinton and voted for Johnson. An increase of 147,000 from the 2012 combined total of Johnson (as a write-in) and Goode. Also ignores the 16,000 that voted for the U.S. Taxpayer party and 11,855 that wrote in McMullin. 2016 turnout was up by 68,000 from that of 2012. Down by 210,000 from 2008 but that was a hope and change year that didn’t end up delivering.
Aaron Mate’s response to Axelrod:
Ray McGovern:
Food for thought:
Maybe, just maybe, a plurality of voters in MI, PA, and WI don’t want war with Russia.
Folks here in IL are certainly sick of the Forever War. This state has real problems and they are not being addressed. One reason I favor Pritzker is because of his endorsement by the established powers. Chris Kennedy says he’s going to go to Springfield and fight both the Republicans and the entrenched Democratic powers, specifically Speaker Madigan. That means to me another four years of wrangling with nothing being done just like idealistic reformer Pat Quinn who was rejected by the voters as a “do nothing” Governor. If anyone is going to get anything done, it will have to involve back room deals. That’s how the sausage factory works. The (R) Governor Rauner is fighting a challenge on his right from Jeanne Ives, a Christian conservative. She was attacked in public because of her “family values” ads attacking gay marriage and Illinois being a sanctuary state. But those values resonate with many voters in the suburbs, exurbs and rural areas. Right now Rauner is attacking her with ads quoting her as attacking Rauner for treating Madigan shabbily, quoting her saying “You don’t treat a man like Mike Madigan that way.” The ads call her a Madigan lackey, but the statement is true. You don’t openly disrespect powerful men whose OK is needed to accomplish anything. I suspect that she may win her primary. Certainly the republicans I know have no love for Rauner who most consider a corporate Democrat in disguise.
Interesting reading.
Democrats aren’t the only party with an identity crisis.
More Interesting Reading
If two Republican newspapers want Kennedy, why should Democrats?
Many here tell me that my vote for Stein was a vote for Trump. No, it was a vote for Stein. If Stein was not on the ballot, I would not have voted for Clinton or Trump. I would have left President blank. Although, since I live in Cook County, my blank vote might have been recorded as (D). I’m sure my long dead mother is still voting (D). She’s still on the rolls. I told them that she is dead. She died right here in Cook County. They want a certified copy of (their own!) death certificate, which has a fee. I wonder if she is in the 2010 census. She died January 1, 2007 at 2:00AM, although I suspect it was December 31, 2016. The difference being whether the nursing home got her December SS payment.
A stale loser argument by supporters of a candidate that can’t close the deal. One that’s heard more frequently from Democrats than Republicans. Hell, in 2016 there were Republicans urging possible GOP gets to vote for Johnson b/c Trump was so hideous. Don’t hear HRC/Dems whining that Johnson cut into Trump’s totals.
Partisan Democrats believe a couple of simplistic things about presidential elections that aren’t true. 1) high turnout, the Democrat wins and 2) no competition from the left, the Democrat wins.
1992 – t/o 55.2% (19% Perot)
1996 – t/o 49.0% (8.4% Perot)
2000 – t/o 51.2% (2.74% (left) and 0.79% (right))
2004 – t/o 56.7% (0.5% (left) and 0.4% (right))
2008 – t/o 58.2% (0.68% (left) and 0.59% (right))
2012 – t/o 54.9% (0.48% (left) and 1.08% (right))
2016 – t/0 55.7% (1.11% (left) and 3.95% (right))
Added to that, they’ve totally refused to acknowledge what the Perot factor meant by claiming that he took and equal number of votes from Democrats and Republicans in ’92 and those Democrats “came home” in ’96. Thus, they discounted Clinton’s inability to get a majority in ’96 and couldn’t hear the Perot echoes in Trump’s campaign.
If one wants to be simplistic, the it’s my turn candidate loses (with the exception of GHWB who in ’88 mucked up all simplistic interpretations of modern presidential elections). That’s because they personally have had no experience with closing the deal with generic not-strictly-partisan voters and not-strictly-aligned with the party PTB voters. (Slipping through in a statewide election against a very weak opponent as Clinton did in NY-2000 and Romney did in MA-2002 doesn’t count as closing the deal.)
Trump is really crappy, but so too was GWB in 2004. If Democrats run with it’s my turn Biden, they can expect the same result as they got with it’s my turn (and reporting for duty) Kerry.
A factor that’s also minimized is the ability of a candidate to generate small donor (under $201) contributions. This is a measure of the degree to which a candidate excites ordinary people. (The post-general election reports on this are relatively crappy because they don’t break out the numbers for the primary and general election and if the GE small donors are unique (wasn’t a small donor for the candidate’s primary.)) Third and fourth quarter FEC reports before the IA caucus are more informative on this point. Except for an ostensibly self-funded candidate like Trump (who also spent far less on his primary than either Sanders or Clinton)– then less quantifiable measures such as rally attendance numbers and enthusiasm and comparison of those measures to that of his/her opponent must be substituted.
Did Trump convert small donors to the other GOP contestants to himself for the general? Not that any except perhaps Paul and Carson had a large small donor base (and Carson’s was also mostly >$200 donors). (Large donors convert far more easily.) Did HRC? (So few of Sanders supporters exceeded $1,000 that conversion of them would have been irrelevant.)
(According to Open Secrets (their numbers don’t even add up) HRC raised $105 million (donations <$200) and Trump raised $87 million from small donors and yet Trump was declared the small donor king in the election! His $86 million was 26% of his total; whereas Clinton’s was only 18.7% of her total. (As of 8/31/16 Clinton claimed to have 2.3 million small donors and Trump claimed 2.1 million. Say they both ended up with 2.4 million by election day, neither can crow about those numbers or the average small donation amount. (Won’t bore you with more numbers.)
I really think she is going to run again. Her ego demands it. She will lose again. Also, agree about Biden, but aside from those two, who else is their? Rahm Emanuel? The centrists will never allow Sanders to run, besides he will be quite old. Terry McAwful? Pardon me while I barf.
I’m surprised that Clinton had over two million small donors. How many did Sanders get? Still, I remember past Clinton campaigns with nuns who had taken vows of poverty instructed to falsely sign donation checks. So, like the facebook posts, how many of those donations were by hirelings or fake donors?
Unlike pundits, numbers are never boring.
That number for all the candidates is necessarily the number the campaigns release because it’s a monumental task for outsiders to fact check. IOW it costs more money than any individual, group, or media org can afford.
So, I’ll bore you with more numbers. From the campaigns:
Obama ’08 as of the general election claimed it was just shy of four million donors.
Sanders ’16 primary claimed four million donors. That wasn’t viewed as credible.
As of 8/31/16 Clinton claimed to have 2.3 million donors and Trump claimed to have 2.1 million donors.
Were all of the campaigns diligent in totaling the small contributions from an individual donor to correctly record when that individual exceeded that $200? My wild-ass guess is that Clinton ’16 did that better than the others. However, Sanders is unlikely to have been far behind because the media and Clinton gang were on the hunt to challenge his $27 donation claim. Trump sold a lot of MAGA baseball caps.
Here’s what we do know from Open Secrets – for ’16 it’s a mess because the summary figures differ from the detail numbers for >$200 contributions. The latter is less for Sanders and higher for Clinton and Trump. So, which is wrong – the summary total individual contributions or the summary small contributions total? I don’t know.
Obama ’08 (primary and GE)
Individual contributions: $656 million
# Donors >$200: 320 thousand
Contributions <$200: $310 million
Contributions >$200: $346 million (average $1,081)
Sanders (primary only)
Individual contributions: $232 million
# Donors >$200: 246 thousand
Contributions <$200: $135 million
Contributions >$200: $88 million (average $358) (from detail – summary lists it as $97 million)
Clinton (primary and GE)
Individual contributions: $400 million
# Donors >$200: 466 thousand
Contributions <$200: $106 million (from summary)
Contributions >$200: $361 million (average $775) (from detail – summary lists it as $300 million)
Trump (GE)
Individual contributions: $132 million
# Donors >$200: 299 thousand
Contributions <$200: $87 million (from summary)
Contributions >$200: $63 million (average $211) (from detail – summary lists it as $47 million)
Why would HRC have so many more $200+ donors than Obama? Hate it when something appears screwy enough that I have to ask a question that then leads to doing more calculations. # of donors by contribution ranges ($200-$499, etc.) totals 330 thousand for Obama and 326 thousand for Clinton. (So, the above average donations are wrong as well. Are the total contributions >$200 also wrong? This is another reason why people don’t go back and look at this crap.
Assuming the small donor contribution totals are correct (yeah, I know a big assumption) and IF:
Obama had 3.5 million donors (<4 million minus large donors), his average would have been $88.57.
Clinton had 2.0 million <$200 donors (her 2.3 million number less those $200+ donors, her average would have been $52.50.
Sanders at 3.9 million – average $36.92.
Trump at 2 million – average $34.50
What we can sort of see is that Sanders wasn’t far off Obama’s mark for the number of $200+ donors and matched or exceeded the number of <$200 donors. On both, his averages would have at least doubled if he’d gone on to the general election and his GE contributions would have exceeded what Trump collected and the Pro-Trump SuperPacs spent. That assumes that HRC donors made no further ’16 contributions.
Too soon to tell. I’m not sensing that it’s as much on the table as it was at this point (fourteen months since the prior presidential election) as it was for the past four presidential elections. And we’ve never seen her informally and privately gearing up this early. She and the very vocal Clinton Democrats aren’t winning the debate that she lost to freaking Trump b/c of Putin/Russians. December 2017 her approval/disapproval numbers were 36/61 and #MeToo is hurting her (and Bill) and Mueller’s indictments are making Putin/Russia appear even lamer.
Her small donor base is too small and big buck donors in both parties don’t like putting more money into the last GE loser. The GOP hasn’t done that since ’48 and Democrats haven’t done that since ’56. Romney prayed for the nod in ’16 and Clinton may be praying for one in ’20. (btw — appears that Romney has already stepped into doo-doo in his UT (one of his five home states) Senate run by accepting Trump’s endorsement. Still time for him to get serious competition for the nomination. I’d need to take a lot of drugs even to imagine a GOP GE Senate loss in UT.) But if prayers worked for either of them, they wouldn’t have lost.
Feb ’02, etc.) Oddly, I can’t read it. As of Feb 2002, Feb 2006, Feb 2010, and Feb 2014 it was definitely on the table, but she only began gearing up before the midterms in ’14 (because that was her last reasonable chance). It was also the point in time when she was confident that her physical health was adequate. Definitely off the table as of June 2003. Also off as of May 2011. All in after the ’06 midterms because Democrats had done well. Formally in the ’08 race three months earlier than in ’16, but six to nine months less informal organization/prep work than for her ’16 run.
I’ll go out on a limb and make a prediction of absolutely no value, because it’s just from my gut and I’m not a pro. The predicted wave in Fall will not occur and Republicans will still hold Congress firmly and likely increase their hold on the Senate. Dems will blame Russian meddling and say the election was illegitimate.
Wave midterms are rare enough that I haven’t developed much of a nose for them. The only one that began setting up very early that I could see and Democrats played well enough was in ’06. That one began in early ’05 when GWB touched the “third rail” and was going to take us back to the moon and beyond.
Late in ’14, I was far too in the trees (polling) to see the Senate wave or the mini-wave in the House. Did only slightly in ’10 – saw the Senate losses but totally failed to detect the House tsunami. I recall in 2002 that Democrats were predicted a wave in their favor but I saw modest losses for them.
So, what are the ingredients of wave elections? WH, Senate, and House under the control of one party. That condition existed in ’94, almost in ’02, ’06 and ’10, but not in ’14. Another is if the guy in the WH has disappointed and/or disaffected his base. Then is the out-party able to exploit anger in its base by demonizing the guy in the WH and the policies he and his party are championing. Check marks on all of that in ’94, ’06, and ’10. And if we’re objective, the GOP won in opposing a national health care insurance policy in ’94, ’10, ’14, and ’16.
(Side note: What Democrats fail to appreciate is that health insurance coverage is a status symbol tied to being employed and which denotes that one is middle-class. In retrospect, it’s amazing that LBJ was able to shove Medicaid through, but he did so by accenting Medicare and that had utility to workers because it relieved them of covering medical costs of their senior parents and when they were seniors that would enjoy the same coverage. The public may have grumbled about Medicaid for poor women and children, but most of the Medicaid dollars went to indigent and very ill seniors. Plus, health insurance was a much smaller part of worker’s overall compensation and out-of-pocket insurance contributions and medical costs were a small part of the household income. And those dollar considerations increased slightly and slowly for another couple of decades. More so for employees than employers who were covering the bulk of the increases but the increased the personal status employees felt.)
Okay — at this point has Trump disappointed and/or discouraged the GOP base? Hardly possible considering that anger/hate and not hope drove them in ’16. Humongous tax cut — woo-hoo — not that most Republicans will realize any benefit. (GWB’s $100 tax rebate also kept them happy.)
What’s the Trump/GOP policy position and Trump’s personal characteristics that’s supposed to make Democrats/liberals hopping mad and energized? If ever there was an election to re-litigate in the midterms, it was 2002, but Democrats didn’t even attempt that (IMO it was because the elite (Clintons) needed to make Gore go away forever). Is Hillary Clinton stronger today than in 2016? Nope; she’s weaker. And as the last Democratic nominee, she’s left the party very poorly positioned for #MeToo and nothing new in this arena since the ’16 election has surfaced about Trump. The DP has put all its chips on Putin-Russia and Dreamers and doing its best to defeat progressive nominees.
Will have to look more closely at the Senate races but at a glance not seeing trouble spots for either party. Expect some (less than twenty) pick-ups for Democrats in the House given the large number of GOP retirements. But that’s a very preliminary and superficial take from me.
Your health Insurance take is very much appreciated. It explains why JB Pritzker’s proposal for Illinois to offer a public option to all residents is not getting any oxygen in the IL primary. I think Sanders’ Medicare for All got a good reception because it had the magic word “Medicare” instead of “single payer” which conjures up visions of the UK National Health and endless bureaucracy and shortages. Although the actual Englishmen that I know, all professional engineers, vastly preferred National Health to the US system which they regard as barbarous. One American colleague who interacted with it after a biking accident on holiday was very favorably impressed.
Re Trump base. IMHO their only disappointment is that he hasn’t gone far enough for them. They are certainly not about to turn Left. That’s the view from here in flyover country. I may be wrong because the Governor’s race with six Dem candidates, three of them viable and an R challenge from the Right is sucking up all the political oxygen. Our primary is March 20. There is another ABC televised debate coming up. This time I’ll tape it and try to post a diary.
No — it’s Canada’s single payer system that has been demonized in the US for decades that they hear and Canada doesn’t have endless bureaucracy (it’s very small compared to the US) and shortages that exist are often the result of specialty doctors immigrated to the US for much higher salaries. Average Americans don’t know squat about UK NHS but are quick to mention that Brits have terrible teeth with zero awareness that dental isn’t part of NHS.
NorCal Kaiser originated as a blue collar, working class health care option. The earliest among professional class subscribers were UK/European immigrants. My white collar co-workers turned their nose up at Kaiser which they equated with clinics for poor people, but then they complained about their premium share (2-4 times the Kaiser share) and out of pocket costs (a couple thousand for a baby compared to no more than $20 for pre-natal and delivery). As medical costs increased, all those “middle class” white switched to Kaiser, but they’re so demanding that costs escalated there too and now other than major medical co-pays, there’s no difference between regular costs. But unlike forty years ago, having Kaiser is a “middle-class” status symbol.
(Should also note that horror stories about health care at Kaiser were prevalent back then. Probably exaggerated, but as a major single area provider, it was easier to point a finger at their medical errors than the same number of errors/patient spread out among all the other providers.)
Kaiser as it was back then was very much like NHS except for the employer/employee premiums and employee co-pays for Kaiser.
As almost all Americans carry a positive frame or schema for Medicare. Simple enough for seniors to manage. They also think it’s cheap or cost effective. And for median and lower income people chocking on the cost of health care, Medicare-for-All sounds great. The problem is that it’s the most expensive senior health care insurance system in the world. All the other NH systems would crumble if their seniors consumed as many dollars and as large a proportion of the total national health care costs as Medicare does. Medicare (and Medicaid) wasn’t designed to be that way, but “tweaks” by both parties over the decades moved it from the public health providers to the private. That ended up decimating the public health systems that are now much too small and non-existent to do much more than indigent care with inadequate financial resources.
Why do so many Vets access VA health providers for all their care (and complain endlessly when it doesn’t deliver platinum care services)? Because it free to them. (It’s also very costly to provide — in part because of the unique health issues of its patient population (the hidden cost tail of our endless wars) but also because its structure can’t maximize efficiency). Free — and there’s also a status component; “I paid for it.”
FEHB BCBS standard family Monthly premium $1,719.32 even with Medicare primary! There’s a bill in Congress to force all federal retirees to enroll in Medicare. All the retiree organizations and unions oppose it. Me, I signed up at 65 even though I was still working. It’s now primary and BCBS is making a ton of cash off my premiums. Why isn’t there a bill to require FEHB to offer a different premium if it is secondary?
Bribescampaign contributions. Forcing everyone to enroll in SS is a tremendous windfall for the insurance companies. I think people are foolish not to sign up. the usual excuse is “I don’t get sick often.” Penny wise/Pound foolish. My sister spent six days in the hospital last September, came in through the ER and had lots of tests. Total bill over $40,000, all but $1300 (first day) paid by Medicare.The $1300 was paid by her Plan F (single person premium $400 a month).An example from a recent EOB for medical supplies (simple plastic parts) Charge $460, BCBS negotiated $150, Medicare allowed $60, Medicare paid $48, BCBS paid $12 (out of that $1700 premium).
All the supplemental insurance that Medicare enrollees carry (or get through their former employer/union aa a benefit) is evidence of its shortcomings. (Medicare Part C costs more for the USG than standard Medicare, but for those seniors with adequate income, it better protects their assets which they have more of then those that can’t afford it. Thus, it’s another driver of wealth inequality. I do include the federal costs of Part C in my comments about the costliness of Medicare because those costs are included in the Medicare accounting reports.)
Given a choice between being chopped up and drugged up to live longer with a poor quality of life and death, I’ll choose the latter.
The two big ones could be fixed easily. Change part B from 80% to 100%, raising the premium by 25% (and an increase in the tax, which would be less than 25%) and fold drugs in. at least generic drugs. There would be no need for part C.
I see a lot of TV ads for a private product for those who have Medicare AND Medicaid. WTF? They have zero co-pays and free drug coverage now. Why should Insco’s be involved?
As for your last sentence, many people agree and have living wills.
–sigh–
If your numbers (who did you borrow them from?) were remotely close to accurate, Part C wouldn’t cost the USG Treasury (that’s net of the increased premiums) more per beneficiary than Part B.
This is the same sort of bs that gets tossed around whenever some special interest group (corporations, churches, AARP, etc.) seeks to bamboozle the public into approving something that superficially sounds fair and feasible (ie the bs on a 10% flat tax and charter schools), but in reality screws everyone but the hidden outcome the special interest group seeks.
??? Those Part C plans are much cheaper than the Medicare Supplement Plans. I had to persuade my sister to give hers up for PartC medicare BlueAdvantage which also meant she no longer needed the $65 a month Part D drug plan.
The true Cadillac plans are my FEHB plan and similar which are expensive but I pay nothing but drug co-pays out of pocket. It’s only marginally more expensive than a Plan F plus a Plan D for me, but REALLY expensive when you add in that the government pays $1100 a month in addition. but that’s no skin off my nose.
I know nothing about how FEHB is administered and the accounting and cost of it. Or even if there are book entries to/from Medicare for retirees. However, $1,100/month is more than the average for USG Medicare dollars (net of premiums), including Plan C. That’s considered deferred compensation and federal employees aren’t the only ones that received such a benefit.
When you say “Those Part C plans are much cheaper than the Medicare Supplement Plans,” cheaper for who/what? This is also far afield from my point that Part C/beneficiary [Medicare Advantage] costs more in federal (net of premiums) dollars than standard Medicare B. All the supplemental plans are sold by private insurance companies (including Medicare Advantage). The difference between Part C and the other supplemental plans is that M-Advantage as a network health plan (or real HMO such as Kaiser) collects a set monthly fee per enrollee from Medicare to cover all the A and B coverage charges and that monthly charge is more than the average for A&B.
This allowed seniors to continue with the same health care coverage that they’d carried prior to retirement. And during the seventies and eighties, as I’ve stated elsewhere, real HMO coverage cost far less than FFS coverage. So, permitting this didn’t cost Medicare more dollars and may have cost less. It was “Hillarycare” that screwed this up as insurers set up fake HMOs — referred to as networks. And in 1997 the GOP Congress and Bill Clinton formalized this into Part C which gave the fake HMOs (insurers that set the FFS rates and coverages for those providers that signed onto a network).
All of this complication and extraordinary cost is because Americans refuse to sign onto a national health care system where governments operate the supply for the greatest good at the least cost. Private providers and insurance increases the aggregate cost. (Canada’s single-payer system cuts some of that cost but it’s inflation rate makes it far less impressive than US lefties believe it is. What isn’t included is drugs but unlike the US, they cap the purchase price for their market. Canada also has the disadvantage of having to compete with the US for providers. However, one reason why Canada’s single-payer systems works as well as it does is that income inequality in Canada is much lower than it is in the US.)
Americans truly believe that the US has the best health care in the world. Despite all the evidence that says that isn’t so. It’s actually the poorest system for a country with high income inequality (and would be even worse if there were handy-dandy wealth comparisons like GINI for income). There are additional complicating factors, but at each point in the “supply chain” from education through paying for services, private health providers are being heavily subsidized by public dollars and that means high salaries and profits for them.
Medicare plus Medicaid plus supplemental health insurance sounds weird. (For the most part, Medicaid for seniors covers long-term nursing home care. This is complicated because care need not be in a facility and not all of it is paid for by the state Medicaid fund.) However, remember Medicaid is technically a loan and perhaps that insurance is purchased by family members to protect some asset at the death of the Medicaid beneficiary.
Wanted to add an observation since my comment on Trump and Democrats.
Game’s on between Trump/GOP/NRA and FL high school students. These kids get it that “it’s the guns, stupid” and that the NRA is evil. Trump’s base is only a plurality and not all of those that voted for him are gun nuts. Students don’t want to attend armed encampment schools. Nor should any rational adult think that’s a good idea or solution. Kids may have described schools as prisons sixty years ago, but we didn’t have to walk through metal detectors to get in, guards, or have active shooter drills. Schools, especially suburban schools, were safe. No weapons (iirc even slingshots were banned and confiscated if seen). Teachers, with very rare exceptions, were adults and not sexual predators (not that teens were without fantasies of such a relationship). How did we get here? With the President suggesting teachers should be armed with guns (as usual and because he’s gotten flak, he lies and denies he said that.)
A few obvious changes, first the NRA wasn’t a publicity operation for gun manufacturers. (It was political and conservative but didn’t have the level of funding that made it such a powerful political force.) Second, porn wasn’t everywhere 24/7. Rules at home and school. Some were stupid, but most encourage civility and responsibility. And income/wealth inequality in neighborhood, schools, and communities was much lower. It wasn’t that income/wealth differences were invisible; only that they weren’t so wide that they didn’t interfere with affiliation by common interests.
Not so rare at all. And in public schools too. And you should hear what the parochial school ex-students say about the “brothers”.
Oh! Miss DelGiaccomo! Oh!
Seriously, trump/NRA’s suggestion is wack7y. and why concealed carry? Isn’t the whole point to avoid a gun fight? I would approve some more taxes to pay for some armed cops in the school, however. Armed amateurs is just asking for trouble.
On that subject I have to say that gun control is not the answer or rather not the whole answer. Back before the JFK assassination, anyone could buy anything by mail order. You had to sign a form attesting that you were 21 and not a mental patient or a felon, but no one checked. You signed the form, sent your money and the gun came by mail. Even the government was in on it. In fact, I’m not sure if it was 18 or 21. When I was 18 I bought a surplus M-1 carbine and 600 rounds of ammunition from DoD’s Department of Civilian Marksmanship. Mail Order. One of my class mates bought a .45 automatic. it was supposed to be used but seeed to only have been test fired. But yet, I never heard of a school shooting until Columbine.
Since you haven’t been there for a while, you might appreciate this: Those devious Russian bots used actual facts!
Talk about doublethink!
Of course those “former facts” are soon to be placed in a memory hole and to think of them is thoughtcrime.
More bizarre than that — HRC Dems resemble the Red Queen combined with the Mad Hatter on uppers.
ROTFLMAO!
It’s not that good.
Liked this from Caitlin Johnstone:
I recall saying something similar after 9/11. The freaking whining by Americans was nauseating. So, like bullies in all times and places they went on another international killing spree to prove their cajones.
Well, I for one felt “Pearl Harbor” anger on September 11. I was sure that a government was behind it. I didn’t believe and still have trouble believing that a rag tag bunch of religious nut jobs in a cave planned and executed it. Al Queda reminds me of the branch Dravidian. The Saudi money connection lends credence to my initial reaction. And, BTW, why in HELL are we backing AL Qaeda in Syria! Just because Assad is a Cold war relic? You know my feelings about the Cold war. If you don’t just think of yours inverted. But the damn thing is supposed to be over. I think Putin stirred it up to cover failures at home. I think our powers that be (the term Deep state sounds too conspiracy theory for me) over here are glad to re-engage for the same reason. The Hundred Year’s War and the Napoleonic wars are over and France and England are neighborly allies. The two World Wars are over and Germany is an ally and business partner. Why does the ghost of the Cold War hang on? Maybe when I finish the Dulles book you recommended I’ll know. I haven’t started it, but it’s at the top of my non-fiction stack.
O/T Did I mention getting my 23andme results? I’m more than 50% Italian, 54.5% (surprised me) and around 4% Middle eastern. Well the Arab’s ruled Sicily for a century and my mother’s family came from Austria-Hungary and that part of the World has been a war zone of competing empires for millennia. But I was surprised to see her family tree so diverse. The Middle Eastern (they don’t seem to distinguish between Turkish, Persian and Arab, nor between French and German) may have come from her as likely as my Sicilian grandmother.
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