Top House Liberal: Obama Signaled On Call He Understands How Serious We Are About Public Option
I just got off the phone with Dem Rep. Raul Grijalva, one of more than two dozen House progressives who held a conference call with President Obama today to discuss the public option’s fate.
Says Grijalva: The call left him with no doubt that Obama understands House libs are dead serious about not backing any bill without a public plan in it.
“He understands how serious we are about this,” said Grijalva, one of the co-chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, in describing the tone of the conversation. “For many of us this is not a political dance. He got that point.”
Grijalva says Obama asked how far liberals were willing to compromise on the public option, another sign, Grijalva noted, that he grasps that they mean what they say. He added that Obama asked a number of “frank” and “probing” questions, though he declined to say precisely what they were.
In another newsworthy tidbit, Grijalva says Obama signaled that discussions about the public option would continue even after his big speech before a joint session of Congress next week. That may be an indication that Obama won’t be mentioning the public option in his speech, but doesn’t want liberals to despair at that prospect.
Said Grijalva: “I didn’t come away from this discussion feeling that we were dead.”
This blog’s homepage is here. RSS feed here. Twitter feed here. Email me here.
Eff that, he can’t avoid the d@mn topic. If he does he will look even weaker! Leadership calls for making decisions sometimes that may or may not correspond to polling. He would be better off making a decision on the public option now and going with it. The truth is even on a political level he loses nothing by coming out strong for a public option on Wednesday because even later he can make the claim that he pushed it but it just didn’t fly. But either not talking about it or walking away from it on Wednesday is going to hurt him. People aren’t going to be pushing his agenda nearly as hard if he gives many of them his @ss to kiss. It is what it is man.
I keep thinking of LBJ’s Civil Rights and Voting Rights speeches. I would love to hear that kind of leadership and unequivocal statement coming from Obama but maybe the historic parallels don’t hold up. I can “hope”, can’t I?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxEauRq1WxQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKfoJJA5xWM
Quick note to readers: We had a tech change that has temporarily slowed up the process of clearing any comments that were flagged for approval. So apologies if any of you experienced long delays on that front. Should stop happening now.
…and have a great break, all. see you around here over the weekend.
I guess you people have never been in a negotiation before. When someone asks “how serious are you” about some deal point, it is not usually indicative that they are thinking that’s a part they want to a agree to. The naivete of pinkos is stunning sometimes, but it explains a lot.
Wishful thinking, Baby Hemorrhoid.
Mr. Sargent:
“Said Grijalva: “I didn’t come away from this discussion feeling that we were dead.””
Well, if you look at the glass being half-full, you say:
“We’re still breathing”
If you look at it half-empty, you take away:
“That just means he hasn’t killed us yet.”
@Baby Hugo
Yesterday, you posted that you are HIV Negative.
What sort of risky behavior were you engaging in, that forced you to have yourself test for HIV?
Were you just being a good Right Wing Christian, and not wearing any protection, because, like Granny Palin, you do not believe in any form of contraception!
I keep thinking of LBJ’s Civil Rights and Voting Rights speeches. I would love to hear that kind of leadership and unequivocal statement coming from Obama but maybe the historic parallels don’t hold up.
Of course, MLK was outside of the government. The politicians of the day often didn’t have much to say.
My impression is Obama’s style is to listen very respectfully to everyone, and to ask thoughtful, probing questions of everyone, and then go ahead and do what he had already decided to do.
Poor old Hope, it is just lying there, all pale and anemic.
Remember back when someone promised not to let that happen, and would always be there to donate a pint or more of Audacity, to keep Hope Alive.
Who was it, that made that promise?
Not dead yet? So like… undead? Awesome, leave it to Obama to turn the public option into something only teenage girls like and sparkles in the sun. Frak this.
undead = zombies = obamabots…..right?
Did someone think this might be easy?
1) taking office with an economy in the worst shape since the depression
2) attempting an overhaul of medical insurance and delivery which not even Nixon could pull off
3) two wars (started by the prior administration) in progress
4) facing a completely cynical and unprincipled campaign of all-out-warfare from the right
We knew, didn’t we, that the modern right would play this much as they are doing? We knew, surely, how the financial interests would combat health reform and that they’d use propaganda techniques like the Brooks Brothers Riots, and invest multi-millions in an attempt to kill health reform (as they did in 93, didn’t we?
The one thing that has truly surprised me is the virulence of the fear and hatred these folks would create and encourage. That did surprise me. I didn’t really imagine people were or would get this evil and purposefully bring such a situation about.
But, on the other hand, perhaps they’ll right their own ship, steer away from this madness, and then nominate Michelle Bauchmann or Sarah Palin.
Thank you, Bernie, for speaking with some common sense on this. Between the dreadful virulence on one side and panicked tantrums on the other, it’s just been depressing.
You are absolutely right Bernie. But the one that really shocks me is that so many of the folks shouting the loudest could benefit as much as anyone from reforming the insurance industry, and yes, dare I say it, a public option.
All will be well with the government in charge. Just take a look ..
http://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/CT-Solitaire-Draws-Criticism-57146112.html
Most of the people I know can play solitaire and listen at the same time.
It seems from the comments here and elsewhere that many progressives now believe Obama lied to them and that neither his expressed intent nor his explicit word can be trusted.
Just wondering why anyone on the other side of the aisle should trust anything he says?
“no tax increase for those making less than $250K”
“you’ll be able to keep your insurance plan”
Right.
The three Rs the way it used to be done when America was America before there were vile Presidents trying to indoctrinate the nations students in partisan political ideology…
Readin’ and Ritin’ and Reaganomics
On November 14, 1988, Reagan addressed and took questions from students from four area middle schools in the Old Executive Office Building. According to press secretary Marvin Fitzwater, the speech was broadcast live and rebroadcast by C-Span, and Instructional Television Network fed the program “t o schools nationwide on three different days.” Much of Reagan’s speech that day covered the American “vision of self-government” and the need “to keep faith with the unfinished vision of the greatness and wonder of America” but in the middle of the speech, the president went off on a tangent about the importance of low taxes:
“Today, to a degree never before seen in human history, one nation, the United States, has become the model to be followed and imitated by the rest of the world. But America’s world leadership goes well beyond the tide toward democracy. We also find that more countries than ever before are following America’s revolutionary economic message of free enterprise, low taxes, and open world trade. These days, whenever I see foreign leaders, they tell me about their plans for reducing taxes, and other economic reforms that they are using, copying what we have done here in our country.”
Yeppers. We’re deep deep in crazyland now.
Hi ABC. Hoping here that all is well.
A continual claim from a lot of the posters here who determine themselves as good conservative (meaning, belonging to the only true or proper branch or sect of conservativism) is that conservatives and the RNC haven’t moved to the right at all.
And perhaps there’s something to that. Perhaps they’ve just stayed right where they were. But they’ve gone insane.
As more than a few folks have noted, Bill Buckley, Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater and others stood up at a prior point in the past and declared that the John Birch crowd and movement were dangerous extremists who did not represent any coherent or rational or even mildly educated version of conservative thought. Buckley put out a special edition of the NR in this cause.
As a young fellow up in Canada, I used to watch Firing Line regularly (broadcast on the commie PBS network and carried by the commie Canadian public network). I loved the show. Buckley was as smart as anyone on TV talking politics, had on other smart guests, and debated, in most cases, with grace, manners and dignity, though he could certainly be snide. Facts were important. Evidence was important. The truth of things was important.
And as his son, recently let go from his dad’s publication for insufficient doctrinal purity) has suggested, if his father were around now, he wouldn’t be welcome in what now calls itself the conservative movement.
Nor would Goldwater.
I noted earlier that the younger Murdoch running the show in Britain has recently been waging a propaganda offensive against the BBC. It’s not going so well…
“Viewers and listeners are rallying around the BBC, according to a Guardian/ICM poll published today. It shows rising levels of trust in the broadcaster and increased public support for the licence fee.
The results challenge claims that the BBC’s growth has a “chilling” effect on consumer choice, made last month in a speech by James Murdoch, European chief executive of News International. His comments opened up debate about the future of the corporation, which is protected by its guaranteed licence fee while some other media organisations are facing sharp falls in revenue.
Murdoch criticised what he called the “expansion of state-sponsored journalism” on the BBC’s website, but today’s poll suggests public respect for the BBC’s output is growing.
An overwhelming majority, 77%, think the BBC is an institution people should be proud of – up from 68% in an equivalent ICM poll carried out five years ago. Most, 63%, also think it provides good value for money – up from 59% in 2004.” http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/sep/04/bbc-icm-poll-james-murdoch
Brits have a long and treasure fondness for the quality of BBC reporting and, of course, they have Murdoch’s media operations as a point of comparison. An appeal to a theoretical ideology doesn’t trump their own experience and shouldn’t.
Last night I had a dream that Elvis, bearded and wearing a long dusty white robe in a Las Vegas chapel done up like an Afghan cave, ushered into the state of holy matrimony Glenn Beck and Orly Taitz. I woke with a mix of emotions.
I had a dream that we sent all the birthers, death panel believers, school speech fear mongers, Obama as Hitler parasites, keep your hands off my medicare idiots, I like my insurance company morons, Glen Beck and Orly Taitz to Texas and then put a big fence around it.
Obama had A conference call with two dozen progressives in congress. Wow! He’s MET three times with Grassley alone … and called him three time on top of that.
I wonder if he asked Grassley how far he’d be willing to compromise on the public option?
I really like all the talk about Triggers. Didn’t that horse already leave the barn? It’s especially fun how the R’s talk about wanting reform, just a different kind of reform. Hmmmm…. Eight years of nothin’. Now it’s tort reform, lower taxes, mandates, AWESOME.
“The Prince Of Dispassion”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/05/opinion/05blow.html
This opinion piece in the NY Times is something you should read.
It describes the President’s lack of passion and human emotion. It is something that has bothered me, for some time. He now reads his speeches, in a monotonous tone, as if the words he writes, are all that matters in a speech.
I was astonished at how dispassionately he read his eulogy for Senator Ted Kennedy. He showed not a iota of grief, or any real emotion over the loss of the man, that he supposedly was very fond of. It might as well have been a eulogy given over the loss of cuff link.
I haven’t been following all the ins and outs of what is in the legislation that’s under consideration. And apparently unlike most of the angry protestors against health reform, I haven’t read any 1000 page bills. I also don’t know what the chances of getting a public option are. I would say this, however. One of the main things that needs to be addressed in any reform is the fact that private insurers can deny claims pretty much at will. That’s a main reason why so many people who are forced into bankruptcy for medical reasons are actually people with insurance. Whether or not there’s a public option in what is passed–either initially or triggered by lack of compliance in the private sphere–I think VA, Medicaid, and Medicare coverage should be used as a template for all coverage. There needs to be a standard for what care is always paid for and there seems to be nothing like that now, which yanks any safety net away from just about everybody. I am concerned about people who can’t afford insurance or are excluded from getting it because of pre-existing conditions. But we also need to be focused on the way those who actually are insured are at real risk without reform.
Hanging in there, Bernie.
“Reliving The Past”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/05/opinion/05herbert.html
While you are at it, I would recommend that you also read Bob Herbert’s fine column about how President Obama is heading down the, sure to fail, escalation path, in Afghanistan, just like happened in Vietnam. VP Biden is urging the President not to plunge into that quagmire, like we did in Vietnam, but the President appears to be ignoring that sage advice.
Liam:
“While you are at it, I would recommend that you also read Bob Herbert’s fine column about how President Obama is heading down the, sure to fail, escalation path, in Afghanistan, just like happened in Vietnam.’
Ah, yes….Liberal Moonbats and their “Viet Nam Quagmire” disease.
Well, Liam, it’s rather obvious that you haven’t been keeping abreast of cureent events, but Afghanistan is NOT Viet Nam.
The Surge, despite relentless caterwauling to the contrary, seems to, coupled with the “Anbar Awakening”, have worked out.
Now, Afghanistan is not Irag either, but the culture and the enemies there are certainly a lot more similar than Viet Nam’s,
But here you are, still wetting your pants when some other moonbat hits that ol’ “Viet Nam Quagmire” button.
And not to start another argument, but the only thing that made Viet Nam a “quagmire” was a dipsh*t Democratic President who listened to the Commie fellow-travelers of the Far Left.
A ground invasion across the 17th parallel coupled with an amphibious assault further north, and the North Viet Namese would have had more immediate worries than the plight of some rag-tag group of wretched VC beggars down south.
Nixon was heading in the right diection with his incursion into the NVA havens in Cambodia. After that rat’s nest was cleaned out in 1970, it took the NVA until 1972 to mount another offensive.
Of course, by that time, the group-chanting in the New Left sweat-lodge had convinced enough people that South viet Nam was a “lost cause”.
Bilge Rat has swallowed the rat poison.
He is an insane torture loving, “nuke them” nut case.
Sane people remember Gerald Ford’s exit from Vietnam, off the rooftops, while N. Vietnam’s conquering forces were capturing the city all around the US Embassy.
Sane people also remember how President Reagan, ran with his tail between his legs, from Beirut, after he got hundreds of sitting duck marines blown to smithereens. Of course that did not stop Reagan from sending arms for hostages to the same people who killed all those marines.
Reagan did not stop running,until he stopped to wag the dog in Grenada, in order to distract people’s attention away from how he ran from the terrorist in Beirut.
Ronald Reagan was the real appeaser and rewarder of terrorists, who inspired Bin Laden to come after us.
Latest polling on Obama Job Approval (per Real Clear Politics average):
53% approve
41% disapprove
Although this is near historic lows for any President at this point in his first term, he is still doing better than the Congress:
29% approve
60% disapprove
I suppose it doesn’t help that Rangel “forgot” about a million dollars in assets and doesn’t pay his taxes, that Murtha earmearked $150 million for an airport in his district that no one uses. Very progressive, these guys.
Effective July 24, 2009, the federal minimum wage increases to $7.25 per hour. This change reflects the third and final federal minimum wage increase as amended under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). [Was $5.15 prior to July 2007].
The teenage unemployment rate [for August 2009], however, is at 25.5 percent, its highest level since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began keeping track of such data in 1948.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/04/oh-what-a-time-to-be-young/
Another gift from these same folks in the Democratic Congress. Particularly for low-skilled teenagers trying to get some work experience. How progressive.
Freehold, you’ve demonstrated a complete misunderstanding of why there’s high teenage unemployment- with adults out of work, they’ve been forced to take jobs that normally college students and non-college high school graduates would do, which in turn results in those two groups doing jobs that high school students would typically do (cash register at grocery and convenience stores, bagging groceries etc)
Trickle down economics brother, Reaganomics works both ways.
additionally, of course, with people buying less, retailers are forced to hire fewer people, and teenagers are the first employees on the chopping block.
Its sales, not minimum wage
sorry I left that out of the original response
Liam:
“Bilge Rat has swallowed the rat poison.
He is an insane torture loving, “nuke them” nut case. ”
Yeah-yeah…whatever.
But you ducked the point that all one needs to do to get a moonbat to soil his loin-cloth is to say the words:
“Viet Nam” and “Quagmire” in the same sentence.
Didja see that?
Just my posting that caused entire dormitories full of students at Bard College to burst into tears, dive under their beds, and curl up in the fetal position sucking their thumbs.
“Sane people also remember how President Reagan, ran with his tail between his legs, from Beirut, after he got hundreds of sitting duck marines blown to smithereens.”
Yeah, half a dozen of them were friends of mine from Infantry Training School.
As I have posted before, I am done with the Democratic Party if the health care reform legislation is not passed with a strong public option. I will vote Green or Independence Party for as long as I live and work vigorously to defeat both Democrats and Republicans, since there isn’t a nickels worth of difference between the two.
Republicans will stop at nothing to make themselves out to be the good guys in this health care debate. Even give credit to Bush for SCHIP. This video is unbelievable.
http://progressnotcongress.org/?p=2795
holyhandgrenaid,
Good point, and I agree that there is some of that displacement in play also.
But there is a ton of evidence and real-world common sense that increasing the minimum wage results in reducing hiring of teens. Many teens – with few skills, little experience, and no demonstrated work record – are just initially not worth that much to employers.
Whether it working unloading boxcars (my first part time job), or janitorial work (my next job), clean-up crew on a construction site, stocking grocery shelves, delivering mail and making coffee in an office (another job I had), etc. – in a huge number of cases those jobs are invaluable experience for the kid but just barely justified for the employer.
If the kid is worth more in the market, they will get paid more.
I think there is also real-world evidence and common sense that raising wages for the working class ensures a better environment for their families.
Among the glories of the free market capitalism is that it has done more than anything else in the world to create a better environment for the working class and their families.
The working class is incredibly better off today than at any time in history. Shelter, ample food, cloths, access to education and entertainment, opportunity for advancement – all best exemplified by the United States, and all resulting from free market capitalism.
And one can add to that hundreds of millions, probably bliterally billions of people pulled out of abject poverty around the world.
And it will continue to get better, if we don’t mess it up.
Out of work people, and even the previously wealthy, have taken to cutting their own lawns. That is just one stark example of why jobs for teenagers have dried up, and it has nothing to do with the minimum wage standard.
The American Middle class, which grew mostly out of union wage household,after the second world war, is now disappearing.
The unfair trade con game is what is killing them. China, etc now has all their jobs, and the blue collar working class, is being left without a pot to pee in, or a window to throw it out of.
Good luck trying to put one of their children through college, on the starvation pay levels that the Robber Barons, and their Republican hand maidens, have being imposing on the once upwardly mobile working class households in America.
Sorry Freehold, we already took a bite out of that apple and we’re not buying.
“And it will continue to get better, if we don’t mess it up.”
Have you looked around you lately? On this planet I mean.
Freehold: It’s pretty tough to draw inference from a single month’s data, particularly in light of the fact that month-to-month teenage unemployment figures are very volatile. It’s also important to note that in the recession of the early ’80s teenage unemployment topped 24%. The economic conditions we’re in now seem somewhat worse than the early 80’s, so wouldn’t we expect to see a comparatively larger negative impact on teenage employment?
As a writer from Seeking Alpha noted, it would be interesting to see comparisons among states. Some states had minimum wages above the federal level, and thus were unaffected by the recent increase. If the “minimum wage theory” is correct, we should see increases in teenage unemployment ONLY in states who’s minimum isn’t already in excess of the federal rate.
To me, there appear to be two camps trying to misconstrue this data to achieve their ideological goals. First are the anti-minimum wagers who take the line you do here. Considering the ideology at the WSJ, I expect they’ll pick up this meme over the next week.
There is also an angle from the anti-immigrant brigade who explain that this is caused by employers preferring cheap immigrants with experience over inexperienced cheap teenagers. They argue that if we just kicked out all the immigrants that there would be plenty of jobs for teenagers. Interestingly, this highlights my own belief: that employers hire kids for the same reason they like to hire (illegal) immigrants: these workers are easy to take advantage of. In the real environment, the “market” can easily ensure that a kid (or anyone) is replaced when their contribution to the business reaches the point where they expect to be paid more (or frequently they are replaced to avoid providing benefits).
A corporatist will always pay the least they can for labor. There is nothing to indicate that this type of “market” leads to increased wages for people who make themselves more “valuable”. All indicators are that the unskilled(retail, labor, etc) wage “market” is determined by the minimum allowed by law. The only place where this seems to not be the case is in industries where unionization has created a “prevailing wage” in which case, non-union shops provide better-than-minimum (but far less than union) wages because unions provide some competitive pressure. Corporations simply “competing” with each other have ZERO motivation to roll profits back into wages – they tend to pocket a huge chunk for themselves and pass the rest on to shareholders while holding meetings on the topic of how to pay less and get the same work product to maximize even more profits.
This “self-correcting market” GOPper-types keep blathering on about is a total fantasy of the same magnitude as the idea of a socialist utopia. Both mental formulations rely on an assumption that humans will act honorably – in the face of historical reality that this belief is unsustainable. Game Theory demonstrates that rational markets can not be expected to exist. A single individual rewarded with more money than a lifetime requires will happily kill the goose laying golden eggs that the rest of society needs to survive. Unapologetic greed is the most unaccounted for law of economics.
This would make me feel more comfortable. Biden seems to speak the truth…good or bad. Just honest I guess. O, he just worries me.
Not that explaining anything to Freehold will change that person’s mind. You can’t change the minds of those devoted to a cause via data.
The glories of the free market also led to the creation of unions, and that happened because the glories of the free market don’t prevent the abuse of employees by employers.
The free market rewards the haves more than it rewards the have-nots, regardless of whether the haves are gaining that reward via mistreatment of others or not.
That, too is common sense.
“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”
- John Kenneth Galbraith
oddjob – word.
Of course the employer pays the least they can for labor. And steel, and computers, etc. No reason it should be otherwise.
Labor, and the guy selling steel, and computers, try to get the most they can. No reason it should be otherwise.
They come to an agreement, or move on to the next buyer/seller. Its not perfect, but it mostly works pretty well.
Its a problem when either the buyer or selling is a monopoly. If GM, and Ford, and Chrysler can only buy labor from the UAW … thats a problem. If everyone in Detroit can only buy groceries from Giant Foods …thats a problem. These situations take care of themselves unless you make the “can only” status a law.
If you’ve ever tried to hire employees at below market rate wages, it becomes clear pretty quickly how this works. Pay below market wages = only below average people will work there. Pay above market wages = you get to among lots of applicants, and can pick above average employees. Pay at market wages = you get some choice among average employees, and other factors become important.
If you want to run a business and pay above market rates to you employees, feel free to do so.
But you don’t get any morality points for giving away other peoples time and property.
Does the monopoly of the health care industry bother you at all, or do you see the shoddiness of their cutomer service as a market force? You seem to have a little problem now that we’re talking about monopolies and corporate, share holder profits in the same breath as the delivery of health care in this country and the strangle hold they have on the American people.
If everone in 40 states can only buy insurance from one provider that’s a problem. Yes?
oddjob:
“The glories of the free market also led to the creation of unions, and that happened because the glories of the free market don’t prevent the abuse of employees by employers.”
Not so.
If you want to utterly discombobulate a glazed-eye “Free Trader” absolutist, ask him who he plans to sell his product or services TO if he offshores all of the high-paying jobs that make up his market?
The market WILL correct abusive employers. I’ve seen it happen, both with unionized companies and with independents.
People won’t work for a dung-ball outfit, they’ll exodus to the competition, or form a union, or sabotage that company’s products and services so that the reprisal comes from the marketplace.
There’s an old saying that union organizers live by:
“A Company that NEEDS a union GETS a union.”
From experience though, I can tell you that companies that need unions are on a death spiral. Because a union, as it’s practiced in the US today, is actually going to hasten the decline.
Smart companies succeed and prosper, and nowadays, the smart executive is almost as concerned with his employee turnover as he is with his stock’s performance.
When stock analysts start taking into account what the employee turnover is, (and I think they’ve started to), you will see much less need for unionization.
And as a guy who spent 20 years as a rank and filer in a seaman’s union, firing the union puts more money in the worker’s pocket.
That is what it’s about.
Insinca,
I’d like to see more competition in health care, and in health insurance. I don’t see a provider monopoly in general in either case, although I wouldn’t be surprise to see an effective monopoly in smaller markets.
That’s part of the reason many people are strongly opposed to the public option. It is widely believed that this will lead over time to a single payer monopoly, regardless of what may be in the initial bill. Many single payer advocates are quite open about this being their strategy (there’s a very concise interview with Barney Frank on youtube on exactly this point). And with enough regulation, it won’t really matter if the health care providers or the insurance companies appear to be independent entities, in reality they will all be managed by some G-12s bureaucrats in DC.
Single choice in 40 states is a problem. I’d like to see people able to buy health insurance across state lines, i.e. a national market, with no regulation on what must be covered.
I can only speak about availability in my state. I bought coverage for my daughter after she aged out of my family coverage and before she got coverage herself from work. There were literally pages and pages of vendors and plans available to choose from. The one we picked – basic coverage with a $2,500 or $5,000 deductible – was about $80/month. Bought it over the internet in 20 minutes, and she filed no claims.
I understand, but have not researched, that if you live in say New York or New Jersey, that they have mandated such all-the-bells-and-whistles Cadillac coverage that the premiums are much, much higher. That is a problem too.
Bilgeman – thanks for the post, that is an interesting perspective, and flanged up to what I’ve observed. As a manager, I spent a LOT of time trying to make sure my employees were treated well. Turnover was specifically tracked, and managers who had a turnover problem didn’t last long. Its usually and indication of other problems, and is very expensive as well. Of course is your turnover is zero, that’s another set of problems
great job getting the scoop. Keep up the great work.
Imsinca,
One other thought.
I’d like to see more competition in education too.
I understand that there are logistical issues with population density, but ideally I’d like to have a choice of 2 or 3 schools systems, plus a few smaller specialty schools, for my child.
I’d like the schools to compete for students, because the students bring the funding (vouchers) with them to the school of their choice. And I’d like the schools to compete for teachers, because the best teachers bring more students. I’d like the really, really good math teacher to make $100K because she can draw the students. And I’d like to see to school fire the teachers who can’t teach.
And I’d like each of the schools to be looking over their shoulders at their competitors, and thinking about how to be better schools, every day.
I think even a little of this would help, but I would guess you need about 30% of the market to be outside the monopoly to really get the benefit. I think it would help the most in the urban areas where the public schools are effectively a monopoly today.
I think we will forever disagree Freehold, but I appreciate your well thought out post. I happen to live in a state where we have many choices for medical insurance, but their rates with the exception of Kaiser are almost identical. A young, healthy person such as your daughter can still get affordable insurance with a high deductible.
People with pre-existing conditions, even youthful ones, cannot buy insurance period. They will be denied within minutes of filling out their application. Kaiser has somewhat lower rates but their clinics are widely scattered and their denials are just as prevalent.
I know people worry that the public option is the slippery slope to single payer but I don’t necessarily agree. If the public option is on the table and we are able to put competetive pressure on the market, everyone will be better off. Why assume everyone will run to the public option? It’s not going to be free.
I have no objection to opening up the market on a national level. My problem with the insurance industry as it exists today is that too may people have no insurance whatsoever, people are being dropped because of an illness, and the caps are so high that too many lose everything because of an illness. Not to mention the rapidy rising cost of premiums. I know people who have insurance but are afraid to use it because of the fear of being cancelled. This doesn’t bode too well for preventive care.
One way to bring down cost is to mandate insurance coverage. The only way this will work though is to offer the choice of a public option, otherwise the insurance industry will have more customers but no incentive to lower costs. We will end up in an even worse place than we are now if the mandates pass without the public option.
Also, sorry I believe in the public school system. We need to make a lot of improvements for sure. But vouchers are not the best way to incentivize schools, teachers or academic achievement.
The separation of church and state is one of our strongest foundations and I’m not about to see it eroded by school vouchers. On the surface vouchers sound like a good competetive idea but in reality they undermine the public school system and I just don’t want to go there.
We need to do a lot of work within the system so it better serves our students and teachers. The funding needs to be allocated so it reaches the classroom and those teachers who are getting the best results. No reason to assume there can’t be competion for the jobs based on performance.
Imsinca I think a single payer school system would be MUCH better than the brutaly iequitable situation such as it exists, and you describe, throught the thousdands school ditricts across the country.
Bernie:
Brits have a long and treasure fondness for the quality of BBC reporting…
I lived in the UK for 7 years. The quality of the BBC’s reporting on politics, particularly on the US, was abysmal. They routinely got simple fact wrong, and the country outside the Washington beltway or New York cosmopilitan elite is, to them, a mysterious and incomprehensible place. Even their own US correspondent admitted to writing anti-American screeds.
“America is often portrayed as an ignorant, unsophisticated sort of place, full of bible bashers and ruled to a dangerous extent by trashy television, superstition and religious bigotry, a place lacking in respect for evidence based knowledge. I know that is how it is portrayed because I have done my bit to paint that picture…” – BBC’s former Washington correspondent Justin Webb
The BBC regularly displays bias about subjects far and wide, a fact admitted by its own employees.
“The BBC is not impartial or neutral. It’s a publicly funded, urban organisation with an abnormally large number of young people, ethnic minorities and gay people. It has a liberal bias not so much a party-political bias. It is better expressed as a cultural liberal bias” – BBC presenter Andrew Marr
“It’s not a conspiracy. It’s visceral. They think they are on the middle ground” – Jeff Randall, former BBC Business editor
“I do remember… the corridors of Broadcasting House were strewn with empty champagne bottles. I’ll always remember that” – BBC Five Live presenter Jane Garvey, remarking on the reaction at the BBC upon the election of Tony Blair
Sometimes “admitted” isn’t quite the right word. “Declared” would be more appropriate.
“We need to foster peculiarity, idiosyncrasy, stubborn-mindedness, left-of-centre thinking.” – Ben Stephenson, commission controller, BBC Drama
And as for the way it is funded, even some of the highest profile personalities at the BBC recognize it as the anachronism that it is.
“The idea of a tax on the ownership of a television belongs in the 1950s. Why not tax people for owning a washing machine to fund the manufacture of Persil?” – Jeremy Paxman, presenter of BBC’s Newsnight
It is true that most Brits love the BBC. But my informal and unscientific survey while I lived there suggested to me that it wasn’t the incisive political analysis, astute reporting, compelling dramas, or hilarious comedies that they loved so much. Asked why they liked the BBC so much, the answer more often than not was simple: ”No commercials.”
Bernie:
4) facing a completely cynical and unprincipled campaign of all-out-warfare from the right
You could have been less verbose and simply said “Facing typical American politics.”
I didn’t really imagine people were or would get this evil and purposefully bring such a situation about.
Can you name some of these people who are “evil”, and explain how it is that you know they are evil? And tell me…are they objectively evil, or is it just the imaginings of your own mind that make them so?
Solerso,
What we have now is a single payer educational system and I agree it does not work in many areas of the country. Unfortunately, I don’t see how a voucher system would bring quality and affordability to many of the underserved areas of the country. Don’t you think we could instead improve the quality of education in the poorer communities of the country and incentivize good teachers to teach in these areas. It is the relationship between the teacher and the student and the involvement of the parents that creates the best educational opportunity for our children.
Bernie:
As for the objectivity of our own press, the NYT gives us its own demonstration of fair and accurate reporting.
This was your countryman, Mark Steyn, speaking last week about the Obama school address:
“Obviously we’re not talking about the cult of personality on the Saddam Hussein/Kim Jong-Il scale.”
Here is the very same Mark Steyn, as interpreted by the venerable paper of record:
“Mark Steyn, a Canadian author and political commentator, speaking on the Rush Limbaugh show on Wednesday, accused Mr. Obama of trying to create a cult of personality, comparing him to Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il, the North Korean leader.”
The right-wing press strikes again, I guess.
Scott C. : “They [BBC] routinely got simple fact wrong, and the country outside the Washington beltway or New York cosmopilitan elite is, to them, a mysterious and incomprehensible place.”
Uh…and there’s some other Brit network which covers middle america better? Or, for another perspective…shall we go looking for coverage (we won’t even ask for the accuracy criterion) of Shropshire (or for that matter, Saskatchewan) from FOX or ABC? BBC news coverage of the rest of the world outside of Britain is incomparably superior in range, depth and accuracy to American network news coverage of the world outside of America.
ps…I’m guessing your quotes are from Bernard Goldberg? Having lived there for some years, it’s possible you might be familiar with Dennis Potter. Are you?
Bernie said: “4) facing a completely cynical and unprincipled campaign of all-out-warfare from the right”
Scott C. said: “You could have been less verbose and simply said “Facing typical American politics.””
I could have if such a generalized claim had much capacity to do more than obscure. Let’s turn this around. Reagan was a typical american politician and his ideas/policies were of no special note, merely instances of all that came before and will come after. Obama and Reagan without notable differences. Liberalism has always looked as it does now, and conservatism has never been notably different through periods of American history. The early fifties of Joe McCarthy marks no special period nor does the late sixties. Again, you make a simplistic formulation which is easy and rather lazy in its avoidance of the difficult or the complex. It’s worse than unhelpful.
Bernie said: “I didn’t really imagine people were or would get this evil and purposefully bring such a situation about.”
Scott C. said: “Can you name some of these people who are “evil”, and explain how it is that you know they are evil? And tell me…are they objectively evil, or is it just the imaginings of your own mind that make them so?”"
Of course, I knew you’d point there. And it’s valid for you to do so. “Evil” is a word I normally avoid because of it’s serial misuses in our language and history (here’s an instance where Hitchens gets it right). But whether the term is grounded in my personal preferences or in community consensus via biology or in the architecture of the universe, we all use some form of the good/bad evaluation to express our notions of what hurts us or might hurt us. Others will have, inevitably, different notions. We then either work this out through negotiations and form up some version of a consensus-established social contract or a dominating entity establishes his/its preferences on everyone else.
Now the problem here is if you are indisposed to allowing for actual and significant differences between points in US history or movements in American history, then there’s obviously no point in discussing (or even thinking about) whether this point in time includes aspects which one ought to worry about.
But the facts of things are that, if you look at the press/media from the first six months of Reagan’s term, Ford’s term or Carter’s term or of George Bush 1’s term or George W Bush’s term, nothing like what is happening now was happening then in quantity degree of sustained negative strategies and propaganda all directed towards bringing down a President. The only comparable instance is Clinton. The methods used (mainly deceits, outright lies, and purposeful creation of fear and hatred in the population) is of such a level that anyone half sane will be deeply alarmed. A man whose library at home is filled with Hannity and O’Reilly and Goldberg et al calmly walks into a chuch and begins blowing away parishoners with a shotgun, leaving a note on his car seat about hating “liberals”. An abortion doctor joins the ranks of those in the US and Canada who have been assassinated for providing a service american and canadian women want but which are, to those political assassins, too “liberal”. Threats to murder the President increase 4 to 5 times what they’ve ever been before.
The degree of malice and hatred which has been purposefully cultivated and stimulated nationwide is the most morally repugnant and dangerous political phenomenon I’ve experienced in any western country in my lifetime.
The capacity is here for you guys to cripple yourselves, as a governable democracy and as a voice or model representing a desirable or functional social arrangement. Other economies are rising fast. Other western democracies are not merely far more satisfied with their social arrangement than are americans but they are also organizing themselves such that their economies may well prove far more viable than america’s.
You are ripping yourselves apart. It is deeply self-destructive and pathological.
Scott C. “The right-wing press strikes again, I guess.”
As is commonly understood by scientists and other rational people, the anecdotal is what settles all questions as it provides a representation of broad and pervasive truths by the nature of it being a single instance.
Bernie:
More from the right-wing press, namely the Washington Post:
White House environmental adviser Van Jones resigned late Saturday after weeks of pressure from the right over his past activism.
Weeks of pressure from the right? Hmmmm….number of words in the Washington Post about Van Jones prior to Friday? Zero.
What an ingenius strategy to apply political pressure…get the Washington press to say nothing at all about the subject! Damn those devious, press-controlling right-wingers.
Bernie:
Uh…and there’s some other Brit network which covers middle america better?
Not really. But no one is forced to pay for their ignorance. And no one here is wrongly proclaiming their excellence.
Or, for another perspective…shall we go looking for coverage (we won’t even ask for the accuracy criterion) of Shropshire (or for that matter, Saskatchewan) from FOX or ABC?
The lack of coverage of Shropshire or Saskatchewan is more a function of their own lack of significance. But, regardless, I do not hold up FOX or ABC as a standard of excellence. Nor is anyone forced to subsidize them.
BBC news coverage of the rest of the world outside of Britain is incomparably superior in range, depth and accuracy to American network news coverage of the world outside of America.
Which is not to say it is any good at all, particularly on politically controversial issues.
I’m guessing your quotes are from Bernard Goldberg?
You guess wrong. I am not aware of Goldberg commenting on the UK press at all.
I don’t know why the source of the quotes matter at all, if they are indeed real, but if you must know I recall the Webb quotation well from when I first read it on the BBC website, because it was such a stark admission. The other quotes came fromBiased BBC, which specializes in both exposing the bias at the BBC and opposing the licence fee.
Again, you make a simplistic formulation which is easy and rather lazy in its avoidance of the difficult or the complex.
Untrue. All I have done is point out the absurdity in thinking that the right is somehow engaging in some unprecedented strategy, as if the left has never engaged in cynical, unprincipled, no-holds-barred politics. Indeed, the right has learned well from the left. It is you, not me, who is avoiding things.
we all use some form of the good/bad evaluation to express our notions of what hurts us or might hurt us.
Yes. But we don’t all reject the objective reality of our moral notions, as you do, which makes me wonder what significance you think your judgment ought to have for anyone else. I also wonder, still, who it is that are these evil characters.
Just because most readers here would probably have no idea, Van Jones resigns. FNC’s Beck 1, Obama admin 0.
Ummmm… didn’t beck lose 50+ sponsors for calling Obama anti white and a rascist? So isn’t it like Obama 50 – Beck 1?
No
Perfect example of game theory at work. A quote from an article I read this morning.
“Van Jones was the best person for the job he just relinquished. He would have helped Republican lawmakers in their districts. He would have created jobs. He would have made a difference. It seems passably clear that the folks who launched the smear campaign against him knew this. They didn’t care. Mutually assured distraction is the name of the game, and both sides are expert at it.”
“The winner? No one. The loser? First and foremost, America. Runner-up: Health care reform, a strong climate change bill, better education, and, for the GOP, the scariest thing on Earth: Obama’s brighter tomorrow. Solution: stop playing games with the future of the nation?”
You’re quite a character, Scott. BBC Bias links up top to Murdoch’s Sky. On of the key figures (Vance) at the site has this in his latest personal blog post…
“As I sit here watching the bikes go by, and my flag flapping in the wind I count my blessings. With a Marxist in the White House and the enemy at the gates we forget sometimes who we are. It’s days like this that remind me. I live in the greatest place on earth.
America blessed by God, home of the free and the brave. That pretty much say’s it all.”
A Marxist? Ya figure?
But aside from your choices in reading and information sources, your response above is pretty poor. You are filling a propagandist role here which is evident mostly from a near absolute refusal to criticize the modern right or to admit that it is in any manner distinguishable or notable other than in its unique hold on fundamental truths.
But you do it with a practiced and sophisticated hand. You aren’t new to this. Your writing and rhetorical styles make an academic or journalism background close to a certainty. But there’s almost zero give and take in what you write. No reflection on certainties (or at least no public admission your certainties deserve to be reflected upon or might deserve a Socratic humility) and no hint of any admission that contrasting ideas might have merit. In these ways, what you are doing here is highly non-academic or non-journalistic. Those are features of modern rightwing discourse as is an extremely closeted and partisan universe of reference material (as an american historian you note reading, you advised it was Jonah Goldberg, for gods sake…no actual historian this rather dim and seriously under-educated partisan shill).
Your posts have no balance, merely an unrelenting insistence that your certainties and ideology represent unquestionable foundational truths. Which makes you, I’m sincerely sorry to conclude, probably not worth engaging.
I’ve no idea who you are nor what you do professionally but, as I said, you are not new at this. Perhaps your arrival here and your hopes for what might go on here are different than they appear to me but I see little evidence for either possibility. Bloody pity.
In any case, as one person to another, I wish you the best.
“. But there’s almost zero give and take in what you write. No reflection on certainties (or at least no public admission your certainties deserve to be reflected upon or might deserve a Socratic humility) and no hint of any admission that contrasting ideas might have merit.”
Translated from Bernie’s “Pompous-ese”:
{You haven’t thrown me ONE bone, here! Not one lousy, stinkin’ bone for my self-esteem, you wingnut meanie, it’s not FAIR!}
“Your posts have no balance, merely an unrelenting insistence that your certainties and ideology represent unquestionable foundational truths. Which makes you, I’m sincerely sorry to conclude, probably not worth engaging.”
Translation:
{I disagree with you! I’ve maxed out the limit on my “Pomosity Card”!}
“In any case, as one person to another, I wish you the best.”
Translation:
{Scr*w YOU! I’m going home!}
“The nation could improve with a little more disavowing of conspiracy theorists and political extremists.”
Yes, that’s something we can agree on sbj.
I agree with SBJ as well, but i won’t credit it to beck. He screams conspiracy theory every chance he gets, he was bound to get it right once. Take this as my “I’m glad we have sbj post, I may disagree, but he tends to give me something to think about” statment.
Bernie:
BBC Bias links up top to Murdoch’s Sky.
So what?
On of the key figures (Vance) at the site has this in his latest personal blog post…
Again, so what? I wasn’t extolling the virtues of the site, much less Vance, whoever he is. All I did was cite it as a place where the quotes I gave you could be found with sources linked. Do you dispute that the quotes are real? That the people I presented as saying them actually did say them, and that they were presented in context? If not, then stop trying to distract the discussion with misdirection about irrelavencies.
You are filling a propagandist role here which is evident mostly from a near absolute refusal to criticize the modern right or to admit that it is in any manner distinguishable or notable other than in its unique hold on fundamental truths.
This is just laughable. You sit here and say the most extreme and partisan things…the right is promoting hate, the right deliberately induces ignorance, the right is evil…with nary a word about the similar if not identical behavior engaged in by the left, and yet I’m the propagandist who refuses to look at my own movement? You are a psychiatrist’s wet dream, Bernie. You engage in more projection than a 15 screen theater.
Your writing and rhetorical styles make an academic or journalism background close to a certainty.
Your powers of deduction astound. (Umm, I’ve been in banking for over 20 years.)
But there’s almost zero give and take in what you write.
I give when giving is warranted. I don’t when it isn’t.
No reflection on certainties (or at least no public admission your certainties deserve to be reflected upon or might deserve a Socratic humility) and no hint of any admission that contrasting ideas might have merit.
More projection. I don’t know what “certainties” you are talking about with regard to me, but you seem dead certain that the right is currently engaging in a new an unprecedented evil, and whenever I suggest to you that you ought to reflect on such an absurd notion just a little bit, perhaps with some perspective on how the left has behaved in the past, all you do is shout “propagandist”.
Those are features of modern rightwing discourse as is an extremely closeted and partisan universe of reference material (as an american historian you note reading, you advised it was Jonah Goldberg, for gods sake…no actual historian this rather dim and seriously under-educated partisan shill).
Are you capable of making logical arguments, or does your entire repertoire consist of appeals to authority, ad hominems, and name-calling? If Goldberg’s thesis is wrong, it wrong because of what it says, not because you don’t like his politics, nor because he isn’t a member of your club. Bilgeman is not far off when he points out the depths of your pomposity.
As an aside, at the risk of putting a dent in your rather oversized sense of self-regard, you really should know that outside of academia itself, academics are not particularly well thought of. At least not simply because of their status as academics. Haven’t you ever heard of the dictum “Those who can, do, and those who can’t teach”?
Which makes you, I’m sincerely sorry to conclude, probably not worth engaging.
Suit yourself.
In any case, as one person to another, I wish you the best.
Gee thanks. But let’s see, I’m a shill and a propagandist for evil, but you wish me the best, eh? Sorry, but I doubt either your sincerity or your sanity.
Bernie:
I forgot this from earlier:
As is commonly understood by scientists and other rational people, the anecdotal is what settles all questions as it provides a representation of broad and pervasive truths by the nature of it being a single instance.
Is this an example of how, when faced with evidence contrary to your own notions, you “admit that a contrasting idea might have merit”?
And you have the unmitigated gall to accuse me of failing to be open to contrasting ideas?
Give me a P! Give me an R! Give me an O! Give me a J! Give me an…
So, should I take it that our date for Friday evening is off?
The law of averages demands that at some point in the future a deluge of truth will pour from Newt’s mouth. Perhaps he is practicing for that day… http://thinkprogress.org/2009/09/06/gingrich-alexander-education/
Has this been posted? It’s the final bit from George W. Bush’s speech to schoolkids (live on CNN, NBC and PBS) after encouraging them to study hard, etc…
“Let me know how you’re doing. Write me a letter — and I’m serious about this one — write me a letter about ways you can help us achieve our goals. I think you know the address.”
So far as I can find, there was a singular complaint from a Dem on this, reported in the Wash Times…
“Majority Leader Richard Gephardt said Wednesday the Education Department was financing “paid political advertising” by paying technical costs of broadcasting the president’s 12-minute speech from Alice Deal Junior High School.”
Now, if we were to compare this to today….
ps…h/t to Steve Benen on that
Steve has another post of some relevance…
HYPOCRISY WATCH…. Perhaps no one did more this week to push the mind-numbing “controversy” about President Obama encouraging young people to do well in school more than Jim Greer, the chairman of the Republican Party of Florida.
It was Greer who, in a striking tantrum, issued a statement condemning the president for, among other things, trying to “indoctrinate America’s children to his socialist agenda.” He added that Obama “has turned to American’s children to spread his liberal lies.” Greer’s hysterical press release said the very idea of a political figure taking a political message to school children is “infuriating” and “an invasive abuse of power.”
Obviously, for sane people, the claim itself is ridiculous. What we didn’t know at the time was that it was also remarkably hypocritical. The Orlando Sentinel’s Scott Maxwell had an important column today.
There once was a political operative who loved to tell crowds he had a simple way of explaining to children the difference between Republicans and Democrats.
“Republicans get up and go to work,” he would tell his son. “Democrats get up and go down to the mailbox to get their checks.”
This man not only talked to his son about Republican values, he went into public-school classrooms and talked about them as well.
That man is Jim Greer — the same Jim Greer who, as chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, just threw a nationwide hissy fit, claiming that the classroom is no place for politics and Barack Obama’s “indoctrination.”
One Seminole County mother, Barbara Wells, remembers the day Greer spoke to her son’s sixth-grade class. “My son said he made some sort of Hillary Clinton joke,” she recalled.
But you know what? Wells didn’t pitch a fit. She didn’t call up the local TV station to scream about Republican indoctrination. Instead, she advised her son: “Whatever you are told in life, remember there are two sides to every story.”
Greer argued on Thursday, “Before anybody talks to my children from a political perspective, I want to know what they have to say.” Of course, the administration is letting school districts know exactly what the president will say the day before his remarks. And how about Greer? Did he run his pro-Republican message by parents and school officials before he talked to school kids?
“That was different,” Greer said.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/
We can’t deny it is good to make differentiations.
Krugman – How did economists get it so wrong?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/magazine/06Economic-t.html?ref=magazine
Thought to end the day…
The Wash Post reported a couple of months ago that the insurance industry was spending $1.4 million per day to defeat healthcare reform. Over the long haul (and they’re in it for the long haul) that’s going to be a fair bit of moola and I’m figuring that those expenditures are going to be paid for not by you and me, the clients supporting the bazillions in exec pay and bazillions for staffs whose job it is to find ways to reject insurance claims, but by a hat being passed around in those boardrooms. That’s what I figure.
Bernie:
So is Gingrich outside of the evil right-wing cabal, or did he just not get the memo? And how in the world did FOX allow such things on the air? As a propaganda tool, it seems FOX has some learning to do.
BTW, Greer is (obviously) a buffoon.
From the WSJ this weekend, David Walker, former trustee for Social Security and Medicare and recently resigned head of the GAO, points out what a trainwreck SS and Medicare are.
One way the Peterson Foundation wants to change that is to bring big numbers down to earth so people can comprehend them. “Our $56 trillion in unfunded obligations amount to $483,000 per household. That’s 10 times the median household income—so it’s as if everyone had a second or third mortgage on a house equal to 10 times their income but no house they can lay claim to.” As for this year’s likely deficit of $1.8 trillion, Mr. Walker suggests its size be conveyed thusly: “A deficit that large is $3.4 million a minute, $200 million an hour, $5 billion a day,” he says. That does indeed put things into perspective.
Perhaps we ought to do something about these existing “successful” programs before we embark on making the situation even worse.
Bernie Latham:
“The Wash Post reported a couple of months ago that the insurance industry was spending $1.4 million per day to defeat healthcare reform. Over the long haul (and they’re in it for the long haul) that’s going to be a fair bit of moola and I’m figuring that those expenditures are going to be paid for not by you and me, the clients supporting the bazillions in exec pay and bazillions for staffs whose job it is to find ways to reject insurance claims, but by a hat being passed around in those boardrooms.”
Naturally, being as there are two sides to every story, one wonders how much money is being spent daily to PROMOTE healthcare reform.
We know the Democratic aliies in the unions, namely SEIU and AFSCME, are in favor of HCR, and are doubtless spending their PAC monies upon it.
That PAC money comes from the taxpayer, funneled through the unions’ membership and straight into the slush funds.
Which is why civil servants should be forbidden to join unions.
The taxpayer is financing a political initiative designed to have the taxpayer pay more taxes.
Scott C. “BTW, Greer is (obviously) a buffoon.”
Glenn Beck urges parents to keep students at home because the speech is “indoctrination” and “grabbing your kids”, adding “Stand guard America. Your republic is under attack.”
Mark Finklestein, contributing editor at Brent Bozell’s Newsbusters: “These schools will also be free, and staffed by special teachers, members of course of our wonderful labor unions, who correctly understand the president’s message and will be sure to imbue every student with correct thinking in the wisdom of the president before he or she is freed, um, graduates.
Will our MSM report on the interesting parallel between our president’s plan for our children and the approach of another Great Leader from the past?”
Michelle Malkin: “…parents have every right to worry about their children being used as Political Guinea Pigs for Change.” ” Malkin also linked the speech with “Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers’ pedagogical philosophy.” And, of course, “”School Indoctrination.”
Lauri Rosen at American Thinker: “Obama has turned his team of brainwashers on the task of indoctrinating America’s youth.”
Meridith Jessup at Townhall: “[L]eave our kids alone. … This massive abuse of government power — reaching into our kids’ classrooms — is unacceptable.”
Newsmax contributor Pamela Geller: “The fascist in chief is taking his special brand of brainwashing to the classroom. Keep your kids home.”
American Family Association’s Bryan Fisher: “Obama’s speech “is likely to be an exercise in nation-wide indoctrination”
Laura Ingraham (on FOX): “Obama Will Be Indoctrinating School Children Next Tuesday” And this dilly: “Obama is going to be doing something no other president as ever done, he’s going to be speaking directly to students across the nation”
Monica Crowley (on the same FOX news show): “Just when you think this administration can’t get any more surreal or Orwellian, here they come to indoctrinate our children.”
And how long do you think it would take me to find dozens more examples from FOX or conservative radio or conservative writers.
Scott C. re WSJ piece…here’s a bit you missed
Mr. Walker’s preferred solution is a plan that combines universal coverage for all Americans with an overall limit on the federal government’s annual health expenditures.
And Fund, ever of the fresh mind, does the unicorn cliche: “His description reminds me of the unicorn—a marvelous creature we all wish existed but is not likely to ever be seen on this earth.”
I like what Walker has to say about the Pentagon (intersecting with government) but perhaps in his accountancy mindset he completely misses the primary role in military expenditures which are driven solely by corporate “necessity” to deliver profits. Remove Boeing, Northrup, and all the other enormous business entities profiting from war and weapons sales (and THEIR intersection with government) and the problem effectively disappears.
The US now spends more on war stuff than the rest of the world combined (or very close to that). The degree to which the present US economy is supported by militarism is a topic too infrequently mentioned. That is, it is damn near never mentioned or thought about.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/07/opinion/07mon1.html?hp
And the tobacco industry defends it right to target young people with their advertising. The rationale (though ostensibly a ‘free speech’ argument) is probably better considered as a classical Stoic position… Misfortune and travail make us stronger. Where we coddle, we weaken. Therefore it is a moral necessity that we get as many young people as sick with cancer and lung diseases as we can, as this is a proper route to strengthening the next generation in spirit and character. The bazillions in health care costs that accrue will also, as a quite separate benefit, build the inner constitutions of Americans as they fall increasingly into hardship and bankruptcy through the resulting increases in health insurance premiums.
The unfettered corporate/free enterprise/free speech paradigm must be forwarded and expanded or Americans will become wussies like the French except with tastier cigarettes.
Jesus H Christ! And then I bump into this…
WASHINGTON — Despite a recession that knocked down global arms sales last year, the United States expanded its role as the world’s leading weapons supplier, increasing its share to more than two-thirds of all foreign armaments deals, according to a new Congressional study.
The United States signed weapons agreements valued at $37.8 billion in 2008, or 68.4 percent of all business in the global arms bazaar, up significantly from American sales of $25.4 billion the year before.
Italy was a distant second, with $3.7 billion in worldwide weapons sales in 2008, while Russia was third with $3.5 billion in arms sales last year — down considerably from the $10.8 billion in weapons deals signed by Moscow in 2007.
The growth in weapons sales by the United States last year was particularly noticeable against worldwide trends. The value of global arms sales in 2008 was $55.2 billion, a drop of 7.6 percent from 2007 and the lowest total for international weapons agreements since 2005.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/07/world/07weapons.html?hpw
Anyone read Major Barbara lately?
And, if we find reason to fear the manipulation of governance systems by very wealthy corporate entities (government of the corporation, by the corporation and for the corporation, one might put it if one were a free market ideologue rather than Abe Lincoln) then this upcoming SC case is of serious importance…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/06/AR2009090601188.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
John Dewey’s observation that “Politics is the shadow cast by business” will not be undermined if this one goes the way it might, a possibility vastly increased with the addition of Roberts and Alito to the court. Dionne gets this one exactly right, I think.
And now I’m going golfing.
And then there is the drug industry, advertising in support of ObamaCare. From the 09 Aug 2009 New York Times …
WASHINGTON — The drug industry has authorized its lobbyists to spend as much as $150 million on television commercials supporting President Obama’s health care overhaul, beginning over the August Congressional recess, people briefed on the plans said Saturday.
Does it bother you that Big Pharma is on your side ?
Big Labor? Big Government?
Although one does wonder just how effective all this advertising is. Personally, I stopped watching TV a couple a years ago and dropped cable completely this year.
Oh well, off to do a little holiday work in my one-person, non-unionized, small business
Here’s another article I haven’t seen discussed much. As a banker Scott C., I’d like to get your take on this Wall Street, not sure what to call it, I guess “betting on death” works even though it has a negative connotation. You might call them “insurance bonds” I suppose.
Either way it brings back memories of the junk mortgage bonds of the last couple of years. These might work out better for investors though as long as we don’t find the cure for cancer, alzheimers, MS, etc.
Then, there’s the issue of the big insurance pay outs to investors and the rising cost of life insurance premiums. And of course another scam on seniors similar to reverse mortgages.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/business/06insurance.html?_r=1
Bernie Latham:
“And now I’m going golfing.”
At your private country-club?
“There are people who attack your humanity and tell you that the light in your heart is weakness. And they do this in the name of virtue.”
Go to the Dept. of Education’s website to preview the president’s speech to school kids tomorrow. Here’s one quote that sounds an awful lot like what my parents used to tell me and I in turn told my children.
“But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.
And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.
Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide.”
It’s really a stretch to find anything indoctrinating about this. I have to agree with Arne Duncan, all the hoopla is just silly.
“It’s really a stretch to find anything indoctrinating about this.”
Well what did anyone expect? Anyone sane, that is. The Right is not sane. The Right is simply on a roll at the moment, fomenting rebellion based on fantasies about who and what Obama is and they haven’t got one damn clue.
How removed from reality are these right wing wackos when they do not think that the insurance industry is making obscene profits? Case in point, George Will in this video.
http://progressnotcongress.org/?p=2815
Imsinca,
Interesting article. I looked into this a few years ago studying financial planning. These have been around for quite a while – as the AIDS example in the article points out. The idea is that the policy holder’s estate will get, say %500,000 when they die, but they would like to use that cash now, for living or medical expenses. (Very similar to a business selling their receivables at a discount, which happens very routinely.)
Someone else “buys” the policy from the policyholder, at some discounted price, say $400,000 today, becomes the new beneficiary, makes the payments until the policy holder dies, and then as the named beneficiary collects the $500,000 from the insurance company. Everybody wins, in theory.
Usually happens when the policyholder knows they don;t have long left, and would keep up the payments if at all possible for the benefit of their heirs anyway. You don’t cancel life insurance when you are diagnosed with cancer. I think for the insurance rate problem to be significant, you would have to buy up a lot of insurance of healthy people (say a couple in their early 50’s whose kids are recently out of the house, who might have dropped or reduced their insurance.)
The hard part is figuring out the right discount.
The risks pricing it correctly, for both sides, go up if the original policy holder’s lifespan is hard to determine.
The market for this has been fairly small, as such things go. A very specialized niche.
I personally don’t like the idea of securitizing this. I wouldn’t buy it – way not enough transparency. But then I would not have bought securitized mortgages either. As long as they can’t sell it to a Fannie Mae equivalent, i.e the buyer has their actual money in the game, it probably OK in “small” amounts.
(I think – by the way – that quite a few of the Wall Street guys should have gone to jail for what amounts to fraud. I think they substantially misrepresented what they were selling. But then I also think quite a few Congressmen should have gone with them for what they did to/with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Barney Frank is first on my list as a candidate for a perp walk.)
Normally for life insurance, you have to have “an insurable interest” in the person, which more or less means that you suffer a loss if the die. You can buy life insurance on your spouse, your business partner, etc, but not some random person (that’s considered gambling). Long experience and history as to why this is – google moral hazard.
An interesting side note is what was called “dead peasant” insurance – which had all the grace the name implies. Typically someone large like General Motors would take out insurance on lots of rank-and-file employees, naming themselves the beneficiary. I believe the advantage to them was tax based. I think this is against the law now.
“An interesting side note is what was called “dead peasant” insurance ”
It’s all so very “Dead Souls.”
Which just emphasizes the fact that Gogol was the first authentically modern writer.
I saw Will make that comment yesterday and just about choked on my coffee. Looking out from his glass tower while the debate drags on and more of us lose our insurance.
“Case in point, George Will in this video.”
You know, with HuffPo giving Will the lede for his Afghanistan statements, someone will have to put together a guide for me that shows when the Left likes Will and when the Left hates him again.
I just always used the one rule of thumb: George Will never says anything worth paying attention to.
Well I’m Fired up! and Ready to go!
Obama gave a classic Obama barn burner of a speech to the AFL-CIO today.
Go watch the vid – TPM has it, HuffPo has it – go watch it. You’ll be glad you did.
Freehold said: “Oh well, off to do a little holiday work in my one-person, non-unionized, small business”
I have one of those too. Though it’s actually two counting the wife or three counting our part-timer who we pay considerably more than minimum. Still, we are alike you and I, Freehold and I hope you don’t mind if I refer to you as comrade from here on out. It’s a brotherhood thing.
@Tena – It’s a dilly even while so different from what we were used to with those homey touches like “Does our children learn?”
A Research2000 poll finds that 49% of Kentuckians believe Obama was not born in the US or aren’t sure whether he was.
What’s the level of civic ethics here where a campaign of purposeful misinformation is forwarded to make citizens stupider?
What is it about Public Options that you feel make it so wonderful.
Public Options is nothing more then turning you medical needs over to a Lame Government that can’t even run the Post Office efficiently, or junkers for cash. You want a option fine, it’s you life.
Yep Tena, and brand new foundation. Throw out the Constitution and bring in our wonderful world of Socialism that has never yet worked anywhere, yet great Idea, get all fire up for more Government birth to death care, you will just love it and the 75% tax burden on all you make.
r.
“Why poor women with breast cancer should move to Canada
..A recent article in the journal of Clinical and Investigative Medicine finds that a move to Canadian-style wait times might actually be an improvement for the United States. The study, by Kevin Gorey and colleagues, compared wait times for breast cancer treatment in the United States with those in Canada, and found that low socioeconomic status was a major factor in creating long wait times for patients in the U.S., whereas it played no role in determining wait times in Canada.
On the whole, there were not group differences in wait times between the U.S. and Canada. The authors note that high-income Americans had shorter waits than the average Canadian, but that low-income Americans had longer waits than the average Canadian. Most notably, while Canadians might face slightly longer waits than wealthy Americans, they were all able to receive the treatment that they needed. By contrast, in the United States, many of the least well-off were subject to what the authors term “the longest wait of all.” That is, they received no treatment at all.
What does this tell us? Primarily that the Canadian system is far more equitable than the highly inequitable system observed in the United States, characterized by the polarized groups of people at the extremes of an income distribution. This is evidence, first and foremost, that we already ration care in the United States, not on the basis of need, but on the basis of price…” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/d-brad-wright/why-poor-women-with-breas_b_278762.html
And that’s it, of course. Those with no or little financial resources are rationed out. But, hell, screw ‘em. They must deserve their circumstances and those at the other end must equally deserve theirs. What could be more clear?
.
Bernie:
Well, the silent treatment didn’t last long.
Beck, Ingraham, Rosen, et al are all being idiots, making much ado about nothing. Malkin has half a point when she says “…parents have every right to worry about their children being used as Political Guinea Pigs for Change,” but if they are concerned about such a thing, they ought to use the situation as a teaching opportunity. Trying to hide your kids from political messaging instead of teaching them about it is foolish.
(And no, I am not saying that Obama is planning on advancing a political message, but I don’t disparage those who fear he might be capable of doing so. With Obama, what you see is not necessarily what you get.)
BTW, I won’t ask you where you got your quotes, because I know it doesn’t matter, something you ought to think about.
And how long do you think it would take me to find dozens more examples from FOX or conservative radio or conservative writers.
Not long. It appears to me that the contagion of Bush Derangement Syndrome has morphed into a new strain…Obama Derangement Syndrome…and has afflicted many on the right.
re WSJ piece…here’s a bit you missed
I didn’t miss it. It was irrelevant to my point. I don’t really care that much whether Walker supports “universal healthcare”. What was interesting to me was the rather frightening numbers surrounding the socialized medicine we already have.
However, now that you brought it up:
Mr. Walker’s preferred solution is a plan that combines universal coverage for all Americans with an overall limit on the federal government’s annual health expenditures.
A limit on annual health expenditures? Isn’t that just a euphemism for rationing? Walker, at least, is honest about the economic necessities of any attempt to provide universal coverage. More than can be said for our president.
BTW, I excuse Fund’s lack of imagination. Being right is more important.
And, if we find reason to fear the manipulation of governance systems by very wealthy corporate entities…
I fear the ends towards which manipulation might take place more than manipulation itself. And if it is being manipulated for coercive ends, I don’t care whether it is a corporation or self-proclaimed saint doing the manipulation. Both are equally worrisome.
Bernie:
What does this tell us? Primarily that the Canadian system is far more equitable than the highly inequitable system observed in the United States,
Define “equitable”. Specifically, define “equitable” such that you explain how it can be “more equitable” for someone who pays nothing for a service to receive that service at the same time, or perhaps even sooner, than someone who is not only paying for their own use of the service, but also the other person’s.
Bernie:
“What does this tell us? Primarily that the Canadian system is far more equitable than the highly inequitable system observed in the United States,”
Then why did you move here,again?
And how was the round of golf? You never did answer my question if you are a member of a private country club.
Maybe you exercised your “public option”, today, eh?
A Canadian-emigre socialist shopkeeper with a “Golf Jones”…only in America!
Bernie:
A Research2000 poll finds that 49% of Kentuckians believe Obama was not born in the US or aren’t sure whether he was. What’s the level of civic ethics here where a campaign of purposeful misinformation is forwarded to make citizens stupider?
A May 2007 poll showed that 51% of Democrats either believed or weren’t sure whether Bush knew about the 9/11 attacks in advance. And this was 6 years after the event!
I guess the Truthers were even more effective at making Dems “stupider” than the Birthers have been at making Kentuckians ’stupider”. Perhaps, given their target audience, the Truthers had a head start.
Bernie:
Missed this point earlier:
This is evidence, first and foremost, that we already ration care in the United States, not on the basis of need, but on the basis of price…
Of course we do! That is precisely the function of prices in a free market….to regulate supply and demand so that limited resources can meet the demand for them. And this is precisely why some form of government rationing is an inevitability when the government takes over healthcare…because prices are no longer doing the job they are meant to do.
That limited supply is rationed to meet unlimited demand by prices in a free market is no secret and no great revelation. Anyone who understands free markets already knows this.
There is no issue as to whether health care is or will be rationed, despite the false assurances of our president to the contrary. The only question is how it will be rationed.
Whooops..cut off my last sentence:
The only question is how it will be rationed, either by the impersonal and impartial method of pricing, or by the arbitrary whims of politicians and the interest groups they favor.
So I have a real question for you guys.
In the debates on health care, there is frequent reference to “affordable” health care.
What does “affordable” actually mean in this context?
Freehold:
Good question.
Scott C
re ’silent treatment’… nobody else will date me. In this pinch, I’ll ignore your warty nose.
“‘Beck, Ingraham, Rosen, et al are all being idiots, making much ado about nothing.”
It’s hardly just them. It is also numerous Republicans in the Senate and Congress and state legislatures. It is also the full range of the talk radio/FOX propaganda universe. And it is hardly just idiocy if by idiocy you mean serious stupidhood. The goal is to wound your sitting President through the dissemination of misiniformation and through the fomenting of unwarranted fear. The consequence is a stupider and more fearful citizenry. It is destructive.
Malkin has half a point when she says “…parents have every right to worry about their children being used as Political Guinea Pigs for Change,”
She has a point only insofar as any communication has the potential to be used to inculcate an ideology to those susceptible (eg kids and the poorly educated, most particularly). But as my earlier post (re Reagan’s talk to school kids, that was a clear example of an ideology being communicated to students. There’s no evidence and no valid reason to assume Obama will do the same.
“Trying to hide your kids from political messaging instead of teaching them about it is foolish.”
Yes. Just try and get that one past your local conservative schoolboard (eg the current Texas textbook nuttiness). If folks such as those one get to realize their desires, the rest of the western world is going to outpace the US in science ed (and not merely that) in rather short order.
(And no, I am not saying that Obama is planning on advancing a political message, but I don’t disparage those who fear he might be capable of doing so. With Obama, what you see is not necessarily what you get.)
Why that silly addendum?
“BTW, I won’t ask you where you got your quotes, because I know it doesn’t matter, something you ought to think about.”
I did, precisely in the manner you hint at. There are important differences in the two cases but you don’t much care to tease apart what those differences might be and why they are important. You are happier with the beautiful elegance of symmetry. The following is another instance…
“It appears to me that the contagion of Bush Derangement Syndrome has morphed into a new strain…Obama Derangement Syndrome…and has afflicted many on the right.”
“I’m convinced that the jewish people are a true menace to the German people”. “I’m convinced the Nazis are a true menace to the jewish people”. Claims that look equal almost never are, unless we somehow need them to seem so.
“A limit on annual health expenditures? Isn’t that just a euphemism for rationing?”
No. You are merely counting on the connotations of that term in this conversation to portray any sort of budget sanity as liable to hurt people. My sister in law is the head adminstrator for a group of hospitals on Vancouver Island. She and her team, like any private clinic here, operate within budget considerations.
” Define “equitable”. Specifically, define “equitable” such that you explain how it can be “more equitable” for someone who pays nothing for a service to receive that service at the same time, or perhaps even sooner, than someone who is not only paying for their own use of the service, but also the other person’s.”
Last response. You and I are sucking up a lot of oxygen here and, to paraphrase a journalist for whom I have very little respect, “it isn’t our place”. From here on out, I’ll take a single argument you might advance on any day that I think interesting or just downright blind and address it.
What is fair or equitable is not a simple issue unless one is merely entranced by the simple or has trouble with the complex. To take all the wealth in a community and spread it evenly throughout is a simple formula and fulfills one notion of equity but leaves others quite unaddressed. On the other hand, as the research noted demonstrates, their is a far greater inequity in health services available to Americans than to Canadians as a consequence of differences in wealth. If one cares hardly a whit about human suffering then that inequity is easily trumped by other formulations regarding ‘equity’ or ‘fairness’.
Affordable health care is being able to meet the cost without unacceptable difficulty. What percentage of income can a family afford to spend on health care? While most Americans and businesses have, or offer health care there are millions without even the basics of preventive or catastrophic policies. This is the inequity that needs to be addressed and obviously there is great dissent on how we get there. Witness the philosophical differences between Bernie and Scott C.
Bernie who shoots below-par for pomposity sniffs:
“The goal is to wound your sitting President through the dissemination of misiniformation and through the fomenting of unwarranted fear. The consequence is a stupider and more fearful citizenry. It is destructive.”
Gee, a few years ago it was “Dissent is The Highest Form of Patriotism”…now it’s just “stupid”.
“She has a point only insofar as any communication has the potential to be used to inculcate an ideology to those susceptible ”
And this is what makes this such a GREAT “Teachable Moment” for the kids about politics.
You don’t HAVE to listen to the fatuous bullsh*t!
What a wonderful lesson for the youngsters to take away:
“Ignore the President”.
Bilgey said:
“What does this tell us? Primarily that the Canadian system is far more equitable than the highly inequitable system observed in the United States,”
Then why did you move here,again?
I married an American girl.
“And how was the round of golf? You never did answer my question if you are a member of a private country club.”
A public course. Not a very good one but I hadn’t picked up my clubs in six years so that wasn’t of much importance. Played my woods poorly and my irons pretty good. Putting stunk. Went out early and got on the course before anyone else thus allowing me to play at my pace and to hit multiple balls for practice and fun. But the cool aspect of the day began on the tenth when I was joined by another single who had, remarkably, the same first name as myself. Nice fellow and very smart. A lawyer who’d moved from DC to Portland where his son and family had moved. You’ll like this part too…he’s doing pro bono work for three Guantanamo inmates. Further, his wife worked in Hillary’s office during the Clinton administration. There’s just no telling who you might meet on a public golf course. It was a great morning.
“A Canadian-emigre socialist shopkeeper with a “Golf Jones”…only in America!”
Well, not really. My first wife (we’re chums and she gave me away at my second wedding) was a right-leaning American living in Canada who like to ski and kayak. Sheesh…what a woild, eh?
Michelle Malkin after release of speech…
“It’s not the speech, it’s the subtext.
It’s the radical activism of the White House Teaching Fellows who designed the education guides tied to Obama’s speech.”
Yeah, it’s in the subtext. And now Malkin is doing deconstructionist analyses. Her next book, out of Regnery, “The Declension of Social Metathemes – Upness and Downness Brokered Through Conceptive Filtrators”
Quick helpful tip on getting dumb. Read/listen to somebody dumb.
Lovely bit of title-snark from Brad DeLong…
“A Well Regulated Militia
About that dude toting the AR-15 to the Obama outside the Obama town-hall. He belongs to a church that claims the country is “run by faggots.” Oh, the pastor also prays for the President to die and go to hell.”
Quite a few “dissenters” seem to be trying to walk back their earlier statements on the “speech” now that they’ve actually read it. Talk about “teachable” moments. I thought dissent promoted vigorous and informed discussion on public affairs. Once we were informed that our leaders mis-informed us about the war in Iraq we were justified in dissenting. I don’t find stereotypical name calling ie. “commie-socialist” or “nazi-fascist” particularly informed discussion from either side.
I would prefer to hear the rational arguments from both sides of an issue and make my own informed decision, emphasis on “rational”. The hysterical nature of the arguments coming from the far right, which now includes members of Congress as well as Fox entertainment celebrities trying to pass as news celebrities, the discussion has moved into the realm of “Twilight Zone”.
The sight of members of Congress repeating conspiracy theories such as “birthers”, “deathers” and “socialist propaganda” is like a time machine taking us back to the 50’s and we know how that turned out. McCarthyism belongs in the past, not our future.
Bernie:
Why did you skip this?
Just try and get that one past your local conservative schoolboard…
The trouble with allowing government to be responsible for education is that you end up with politicians making educational decisions.
Why that silly addendum?
I figured it would irritate you.
There are important differences in the two cases but you don’t much care to tease apart what those differences might be and why they are important.
I might if you cared to actually name or demonstrate such a differences, instead of, as you usually do, simply asserting it. So go ahead…name one. I accurately cited a series of quotations that supported my thesis, and you accurately cited a series of quotations that supported yours. Name even one of the “important differences” that makes a website that also cites my quotes relevant, but doesn’t make a website that cites yours relevant.
No. You are merely counting on the connotations of that term in this conversation to portray any sort of budget sanity as liable to hurt people.
That is a stupid, even willfully ignorant, accusation, particularly in light of the recent post in which I agree, nay proclaim, that in my preferred system, a free market system, prices effectively ration the limited supply of a product.
In any event, you said “No”. This is a remarkable claim, especially coming from someone of such self-proclaimed learning as you. Rationing means to restrict the consumption of some good or service. If the government is in charge of paying for healthcare, and it places limits on the amount it will pay each year, it is restricting the consumption of healthcare. How can you deny this with a straight face?
To take all the wealth in a community and spread it evenly throughout is a simple formula and fulfills one notion of equity but leaves others quite unaddressed.
Perhaps, but as you said, it isn’t a simple issue, so self-declared “simple formulas” won’t do. Unless, of course, your sense of equity is indeed as simple as you have it above. Is it?
On the other hand, as the research noted demonstrates, their is a far greater inequity in health services available to Americans than to Canadians as a consequence of differences in wealth.
Again, it all depends upon your definition of equity. All you have done is restate your original claim. You haven’t provided any insight or clarification whatsoever.
Gee Bernie if a righty said something like that about a minority they’d be labled a racist. Just one more thing lefties don’t have to worry about.
Imsinca,
Yours was the only response I saw to my question about “affordable”. Thanks.
Its a real question. I’ve been thinking about if for months, and think it might actually be useful to put some numbers to it.
I’m trying to ignore my political preferences for the moment, and think about as a systems specification problem (I write system specifications sometimes).
Some options might be:
1) $X dollars / year / person or family
2) Y% of personal or family income / year
3) Z% (where Z might be between say 1 and a 300) of some
national average (i.e. if the average health care cost is $7000/yr/person, affordable is 1% to 300% of that)
4) A% (again 1 to 300) of some other major expense category (housing, food, entertainment)
According to the 2007 Consumer Expenditure Survey released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor [latest data I could find],the average family (they call it consumer unit) spent about $16,900 on housing, $3465 on food at home, $2668 on food away from home, $2698 on entertainment, and $2853 on health care.
I’m not sure these are the best numbers, but I could find them in a few minutes. The health care number looks low to me – might this just be out of pocket?
If we just say “affordable”, some people hear zero, some hear $25/month, some hear “not more than cable with full sports package”, etc. Hard to design to that.
As a system designer, my ears perk up when I hear requirements stated like that – “affordable, fast, easy to use, reliable, etc.”. Somebody is thinking bicycle, somebody else is thinking BMW. One thing I often do as a designer is try to get people to quantify things. Often leads to quite useful discussions.
So I’m just curious.
Freehold, I agree some actual numbers would be quite useful. HR3200, simplified in the link below, deals with income levels whereby subsidies to low and middle income families will be given but does not design the actual insurance policy or the cost. Presumably, it will be less than the national average of a comparable private policy since it is intended to help drive the cost of insurance down.
The actual particulars of coverage will be designed to meet the minimum quality standard by an independent advisory committee of health care professionals and the Surgeon General. With the use of the word minimum I don’t think we’re talking about a BMW policy. It will be designed as an option especially for individuals and small businesses who cannot buy or afford insurance otherwise. I don’t believe this particular bill is designed to graduate into a single payer system because it will not meet the standards of wealthier individuals or businesses who can afford better coverage.
http://edlabor.house.gov/documents/111/pdf/publications/AAHCA-BILLSUMMARY-071409.pdf
Bernie:
“. But the cool aspect of the day began on the tenth when I was joined by another single who had, remarkably, the same first name as myself. Nice fellow and very smart. A lawyer who’d moved from DC to Portland where his son and family had moved. You’ll like this part too…he’s doing pro bono work for three Guantanamo inmates. Further, his wife worked in Hillary’s office during the Clinton administration. There’s just no telling who you might meet on a public golf course. It was a great morning.”
How lovely. Are you sure he was really a lawyer? If the FBI or CIA wanted to get somebody next to you in order to keep an eye on your activities, that would be a pretty good cover story, wouldn’t it?
If you meet up with him again, you might want to look his clubs over closely…they might be “too new”.
And you have to wonder at a guy who does pro-bono for Gitmo detainees moving to Oregon. That would make travelling to Cuba to consult with his clients a bit more difficult wouldn’t it?
Especially since it’s on his own ticket,
Not that Bilgeman is going to read this: but your “dipshit” Democratic president was hardly listening to the left re: Viet Nam. How many wars have you managed? LBJ listened to the Generals in the field and the so called “Wise Men” in the foreign policy establishment who all advocated escalation-hardly a leftist POV.
Chuck:
“LBJ listened to the Generals in the field and the so called “Wise Men” in the foreign policy establishment who all advocated escalation-hardly a leftist POV.”
Uhhhh, no. LBJ stayed nicely inside of the box that those “Wise Men” helped to put him in.
If LBJ HAD NOT let his bladder muscles weaken about their dire warnings of what China would do or what the Soviets would do or what the Euro-weenies would think, he would have invaded North Viet Nam in order to get South Viet Nam up and running.
He would have flattened Hanoi and Haiphong, as Nixon later did.
He would have mounted incursions into Cambodia and Laos in sufficient force to deny their uses as safe havens for the NVA, as Nixon later did.
He would have bombed the rice paddy dykes of the North, inflicting rice-crop failures and hunger upon the North Viet Namese people in order to destabilize Ho Chi Minh’s regime.
He did none of these things.
He confined our forces to an artificial construct of his adviser’s and his own minds…South Viet Namese territory. A fiction that was ignored by our NVA enemy.
And staying strictly upon the stage that the enemy had psyched him into, he there thought that doing the same thing, only more of it, would lead him to victory.
Nixon started doing these things, refusing to be constrained by the “conventional thinking” starting in 1970, but by then it was too late. LBJ had played too long at the rigged table and the enemy’s psyops against our homfront had ripened to the point where the effort couldn’t be susteined.
Had LBJ done earlier what Nixon started to do later, we’d have likely won in 1966 or 1967.
If you want a rough parallel, look at Bush 41’s decision to isolate his effort in 1991 to Kuwaiti territory, (for much the same reasons as LBJ’s).
This lead to a 12 year cease-fire and a stalemate that resulted in the necessity for another campaign to defeat Saddam Hussein.
When you open the can, don’t go halfway, and don’t let your enemy or his partisans decide the limit of your operations.
Who the hell were we supposed to be saving Vietnam from, the Vietnamese? You are a complete war mongering loon. You wanted America to kill more people than the millions that they killed, and all the agent orange deformed babies that have been born since, to save Vietnam from the Vietnamese. It was their war of Independence from the French, and we were the arrogant country that decided we were going to go into their country, and prevent them from taking back their own national destiny.
This Bilge Rat, is a piece of work.
The other day he was complaining about how foreigners should mind their own business, and not have anything to say about what is happening in America, I think that the fellow from Canada was the target of his Xenophobia, at the time. Later on Bilge Rat accused me of being a foreigner of some sort or other, because that is how he views the world. Anyone who has a different opinion, must be made different, in order to invalidate their opinions, because they just might be:”furners”
Now we come to the other side of the coin; Bilge Rat habitually comments and smears other countries. Like when he went on a tirade about how Holland provides health care, and now about how America has every right to attack or invade other countries. See how he wanted to kill millions more of Vietnamese in their own country, and recently he called for the nuking of N. Korea.
But what ever you do, make sure that Bernie from Canada is not allowed to have an opinion about how the USA functions.
In Bilge Rat’s sick mind, this country gets to order every other nation around, but no other nationality has any right to say anything about America.
He is The Ugly American.
Liam:
“Who the hell were we supposed to be saving Vietnam from, the Vietnamese?”
The Viet namese Communists who had massive amounts of support from the Communist Chinese and the Communist Russians,
“It was their war of Independence from the French,”
Nonsense. They won that war after Dien Ben Phu in 1954.
At the Peace talks, they agreed to split the country at the 17th paralllel into two separate nations.
Ho and the Viet Minh didn’t have the “stuff” to knock off the power players in the South, so he had to accept the deal, and on paper at least…he did.
“and we were the arrogant country that decided we were going to go into their country, and prevent them from taking back their own national destiny.”
Why do you think South Viet Nam was any less a legitimate nation because of Western support, but never even crosses your mind to accuse Ho Cho Minh of the same illegitimacy for his Chinese and Soviet support?
Well…you’re a Moonbat.
And as things turned out, the Viet Namese people didn’t exactly want to be Commie f*ck-things after all, did they?
I’ll let the rest of your barking moonbat fantasy strawmen stand as the monuments to ignorance and spite that they are.
and we were the arrogant country that decided we were going to go into their country, and prevent them from taking back their own national destiny.”
A roommate urged me to read this website, great post, fascinating read… keep up the cool work!
Interesting topic. I wished I could read more, but i have to go back to work now… But I’ll be back
Much Thanks for this good read. Now i know quite a lot more on this
can’t know too much heh…
good day. great read, reallyLearnt pretty many new things from your artice on your blog.