American Politics Thread 2013: I'm a cool Rodham grandma in the USA

yeah we got srs issues

I had a totally bizarre conversation with one of these anti-ACA crazies in the shop a few days ago - small business owner who was lamenting how the ACA was going to destroy small business because he couldnt afford to buy his employees health care so all the good employees were going to jump ship to someone who could. my external reaction was "uh huh" but my internal reaction was "well good you fuckin crybaby".

I had a bizarre conversation on ILX a few months back where no one really cared that my health care costs were going to triple next year.

Because, you know, my health care was going to be better.

Assuming I can simply afford it.

the funny thing is that inequality is a major issue is prob the thing the country agrees upon most but of course its impossible to do anything about it because the elites control everything, which is why we call them elites i guess

"thats the market at work eh" should have been the reply jjj

don I thought you were employed by a public school district...?

not employed, but they should pay me for the work I do

iirc obamacare doesnt even go into effect until the new year

yeah but I need to bitch about it now ;)

if you dont mind sharing id be curious to hear the particulars of your situation

that is the weird mind set with these people, they want to be all "I built this" bumpersticker about everything, but when faced with their own non-competitive ability to provide workers with basic needs, its not their goddamn fault, its the bootheel of government crushing the backbone of america. when big business is able to take BETTER care of their employees than you are, you basically are doing it wrong and fucking suck.

xposts

how small is his small business isnt there an exemption for upto 50 employees

"I have a small business" is the dumbest excuse ever.

Dunno what the floor is; for some federal laws it is 25 employees.

A stoner libertarian tried to engage me in the "Federal government shouldn't be trusted with healthcare because they've already proven that they're bad at doing, you know, STUFF" argument on Monday night. I excused myself citing a curiously empty beer that needed refilling.

People care a lot less what someone else is getting when they're getting enough to feel comfortable themselves.
--Tottenham Heelspur (in orbit)

Generally yeah, but even aside from the mechanics of the GOP "scapegoat the blacks" machine, you've got billionaire Randroids sincerely arguing that we should get rid of food stamps.

the decline of straight white male dominance as a fundamental of conservative enmity cannot be overstated, but i feel like the huge increase in general inequality in the country over the last ~40 years is playing a big part in fueling the whole thing, traditional stright whites are feeling its effects and blaming that on their threatened place in the american hierarchy, i suspect that if we didnt have this inequality problem and the rising tide really was lifting all boats white mans would be having an easier time adjusting to new realities, which is not to say some of us wouldnt be mad but just that maybe not as many would be as mad

― lag∞n, Wednesday, October 16, 2013 4:17 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this times 10000. the real story here is how the gop fooled these reactionaries into fighting obamacare and not the real policy issue(s) thats threatening the country - giving away the whole fucking store to the rich

yes! basically he is bitching because other mega corps have horned in on his industry that are capable of providing health care, but of course this isnt their fault or his, its OBAMAAAAAA!

xpost

The fed hasn't done a very good job with the VA hospital system (for a variety of reasons.)

Don, I recall that your situation is difficult, but I hope you're not suggesting that health care costs have never risen for anyone in prior years, and that no one has ever had issues with insurance companies in the US before.

or put another way, hes angry because the ACA will force large businesses to not treat their employees like shit, which in turn makes his employees realize that he has been treating them like shit for years.

xposts again

A stoner libertarian tried to engage me in the "Federal government shouldn't be trusted with healthcare because they've already proven that they're bad at doing, you know, STUFF" argument on Monday night. I excused myself citing a curiously empty beer that needed refilling.

― Tottenham Heelspur (in orbit), Wednesday, October 16, 2013 12:30 PM (49 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

medicare and medicare are consistently the highest rated health insurance providers, only surpassed by the veterans administration, the federal government already operates like all of the best healthcare systems

anyway, thats from what i can tell where a lot of the "ACA is unfair to small business" rhetoric comes from as far as i can tell.

The fed hasn't done a very good job with the VA hospital system (for a variety of reasons.)

― the rofflestomper (dandydonweiner), Wednesday, October 16, 2013 12:32 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it consistently polls as the highest rated healthcare provider by its users, and also grades out as the most efficient system costwise

The fed hasn't done a very good job with the VA hospital system (for a variety of reasons.)

― the rofflestomper (dandydonweiner), Wednesday, October 16, 2013 11:32 AM (1 minute ago)

I'm not convinced of this. My father, 100% DAV from his 1st hip replacement in 1974 until his death last year, occasionally had to deal with inconvenience, but overall it was a very good system for him.

xposts

However, the Veterans disability application and review process is completely backlogged. But some folks would rather tear down "Barrycades" than vote for increased funding for a federal agency that rules on Veterans disability claims

My situation sux but it is what it is. And as I've noted, I will likely get some direct benefits from Obamacare, even if not obvious or large. FWIW, my annual premiums had been rising at (I think) around 15% or so for the past few years. Maybe more.

Would love to see a source for that study lagoon, just for the fun of it. Better to know for sure that I'm not making things up...the reason I say it is not well run is via my own experience.

There was lots of media coverage awhile back of problems with the VA hospital in DC; but I think they have now addressed those issues.

Would love to see a source for that study lagoon, just for the fun of it. Better to know for sure that I'm not making things up...the reason I say it is not well run is via my own experience.

― the rofflestomper (dandydonweiner), Wednesday, October 16, 2013 12:41 PM (7 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i didnt read this article i just google and picked one but theres tons of stuff out there if you want to read up http://health.usnews.com/usnews/health/articles/050718/18va.htm

i mean im sure the VA has its share of problems but there just not as bad as commercial healthcare which has much bigger problems

There was lots of media coverage awhile back of problems with the VA hospital in DC; but I think they have now addressed those issues.

― curmudgeon, Wednesday, October 16, 2013 12:42 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah and that was just one hospital in a huge system

Honestly, public hospitals are easier to scrutinize than private ones...and it's an easy news story to show how poorly (or not) vets are getting treated.

Republicans who shut down the government in a bid to undermine President Obama’s health-care program would win no major changes to the law. But they would get additional safeguards to ensure that people who receive subsidies to buy health insurance are in fact eligible.

Alas, no additional safeguards re farm aid and various tax deductions though.

the United States’ world-record health care costs are driven by a combination of policy factors, both on the private and the government side. In 2010 Mariah Blake showed how a cabal of medical supply behemoths keep the innovations of smaller companies off the market. In 2011 Phillip Longman showed how getting Medicare out of the fee-for-service business would improve things, and earlier this year showed how a GOP effort that kept cost-benefit research out of Obamacare is harming the health care system. Finally, again this year Haley Sweetland Edwards showed how a secret committee of doctors heavily weighted with specialists fixes the prices of Medicare.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2013_10/americas_projected_deficit_is047340.php

care at the VA is highly site dependent from my limited experience

Brit Hume:

In conventional terms, it seems inexplicable, but Senator Cruz and his adherents do not view things in conventional terms. They look back over the past half-century, including the supposedly golden era of Ronald Reagan, and see the uninterrupted forward march of the American left. Entitlement spending never stopped growing. The regulatory state continued to expand. The national debt grew and grew and finally in the Obama years, exploded. They see an American population becoming unrecognizable from the free and self-reliant people they thought they knew.

And they see the Republican Party as having utterly failed to stop the drift toward an unfree nation supervised by an overweening and bloated bureaucracy. They are not interested in Republican policies that merely slow the growth of this leviathan. They want to stop it and reverse it. And they want to show their supporters they’ll try anything to bring that about. And if some of those things turn out to be reckless and doomed, well so be it

yup, otm

how you know something is bullshit: it includes the word "unfree"

TS: "an American population becoming unrecognizable from the free and self-reliant people they thought they knew" versus "Most Americans will no longer have the ability to raise a family with dignity and freedom."

I thought Reagan's trickle-down economics and HW Bush's and Dubya's was supposed to create wonderful private sector jobs for everyone so that no one would even want that entitlement spending

The national debt grew and grew and finally in the Obama years, exploded.

While, of course, the budget deficit shrank. But debt grew because these fuckers won't allow for any increases in tax revenue.

You can have low taxes, a low budget deficit, or low debt, and some combinations of two, but you can't have all three.

In short, these people are morons and deserve to be treated like morons.

aaaand The Houston Chronicle basically retracts its endorsement of Ted Cruz.

lurking behind all that (and the "47% freeloader" stuff from the '12 election) is a growing discomfort with participatory gov't itself.

if you want to shrink the state, well, then run on that, get elected, and do it. but the state, in more or less its current form, is electorally popular enough to be stable. it is hard to prune. GW did try to privatize social security and got fried, remember? you'd have to promise something better if you got rid of it. don't like the EPA? well, you could try to overturn the clean air and water acts, etc. go ahead and try!

and so the next step is a lot darker: the "right thing" may not be better for everybody, and may never be electorally popular. once you've decided on that, well...

wau @ that Houston Chronicle piece

from the free and self-reliant people Who populated the West by kicking out the Mexicans with the U.S. Army, killed or swept aside the Natives with the U.S. Army, homesteaded said stolen land thanks to the Homestead Act (Government largesse, anyone?) and traveled and did business thanks to government sponsored railroads. The totally free-market based Post Office then instituted free rural delivery. This all 19th century Federal government at work, enslaving honest Americans with hand-outs and eroding their dignity.

Their whole narrative is rampant and hypocritical self-regard dressed in puerile romanticism.

More on Cruz at Sullivan, from a reader who went to law school with him:

On the Ted Cruz ego vs. paranoia discussion, I will say I knew him pretty well in college, law school, and beyond, and it’s hard to believe that he’s actually become someone who believes this stuff. He’s incredibly well-educated, and at least used to have a circle of friends that included people very different from his general conservative bent. Sarah Palin, for instance, wouldn’t have survived a day at Princeton, and certainly not as an editor on the Harvard Law Review. My sense is that being in the Senate has taken him too far outside his natural skill-set. He has always been a debater at heart – someone who enjoys taking extreme positions – not because he believes them necessarily, but because it’s fun.

Being a lawyer was a great fit in that way because you are paid to take a side, knowing that you are not tasked with crafting the outcome, but instead are playing your part in an adversarial system. Making policy, on the other hand, requires a very different mindset, and rewards different skills. I didn’t watch the filibuster, but having heard about it, it’s completely in his comfort zone, and exactly the kind of thing he knows how to do – talk for hours about why an extreme position actually makes a lot of sense because working out compromises with fellow legislators, or considering the actual consequences of taking such extreme positions – not naturally his strong suit, and not what he enjoys doing.

Honestly, I think Obama could figure him out in five minutes. Hell, Obama probably managed people much like Ted when Obama was editor of the Harvard Law Review. More importantly, Obama’s natural strong suit – using the rope-a-dope strategy – is perfect for sending Ted back to the private sector (where he would probably be happier anyway). There is no limit to the extremism of the positions Ted would take, given the chance, and the right encouragement. He treats every political discussion like a college-style debate, and the more ordinary people see of his scorched-earth argument style, I think the less they’re going to like it.

yeah but freedom!

I don't want your freedom.

fredb • a minute ago −
It is hard to believe that the country has elected such an extreme radical to the presidency that for the first time threatened to default on debt payments rather than work with Republicans who wanted to prevent long-term economic disasters. Obama's anti-American and communist ideas cause him to want to default on our debt like they would in the African countries he draws his roots from rather than live up to debts as is the tradition in our country. He also figures that recessions are good for the country because they drive up the number of people dependent on the government otherwise known as the people who vote for him, but he is wrong in that aspect as a government default would have had little impact on our economy.

which congressperson gets the wwf-style champion belt for this, that's all this is about, right?