Democratic (Party) Direction

i mean, we're all just being trolled here, right?

axios is bad

Just to update the story higher up in the thread, Daniel Biss's new running mate is Litesa Wallace, a state rep from Rockford.

i hate to be cynical, but something in me feels that thinking it matters who the democrats run in 2020 is sort of like thinking the paris accords are going to save us all from climate apocalypse. the "smart money" democrats are smart enough to know this, but when people don't have any viable alternatives they're going to tend to do the same shit they always did.

Even Cory Booker endorsed Bernie's single payer bill!

This is a great sign imo.

btw Kaine is still in the swamp

.@timkaine pretty much rules out getting on single-payer bill, tells me and @PeterSullivan4 he prefers more choice in marketplace

— Jeff Stein (@JStein_Vox) September 11, 2017

it *is* a good sign but it's only a start. they need to be pushed much harder on a variety of issues.

I like the cut of this OH gubernatorial candidate's jib: http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2017/09/governor_candidate_connie_pill.html

The Cincinnati Democrat announced her plan Tuesday morning, just hours before the first Democratic debate. She called it an "education stimulus" that will create jobs and shore up Ohio's workforce.

"I want to make a transformative investment in education," Pillich said. "Over the last seven years our ranking has fallen from 5th to 22nd and obviously that's a result of having the wrong priorities in Columbus."

The plan includes universal pre-kindergarten for 4-year-olds, increasing funding for and revamping the K-12 state aid formula to make it more equitable and providing free vocational workforce training.

Perhaps most ambitious is Pillich's proposal for free higher education, which would radically alter the university system.

Under Pillich's plan, students with an income or family income of less than $100,000 who attend a public university would receive deferred tuition. The deferment would last for 10 years if the student stays in Ohio post-graduation.

If after the 10-year mark those students are still in Ohio, the full cost would be forgiven.

Here are some of the other planks:

Give businesses a $1,000 tax credit for each licensed apprentice they hire
Start middle and high school days no earlier than 8:50 a.m. per recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics
Increased STEM education in classrooms including computer coding
Create a fund to help current college graduates with debt
Require public universities to freeze costs at current rates, adjusted for inflation
Create the Ohio Service Corps Program and forgive graduates' student loan debt after two or three years of service

That college tuition plan is pretty brilliant aside from the wrinkle of "what happens to students who study a field where they can't get employment in Ohio?"

Like, what does that mean for contractors who need to travel? I'm thinking past technical people; what about, for example, musicians who travel across state lines for extended gigs, or people who tour? If you are an author, does your publisher need to be in Ohio in order to count towards deferment/forgiveness?

Seems to be modeled on Cuomo's scheme in New York - I think similar questions were raised about that but I haven't read anything that comprehensively takes these issues on. You'd like to think somebody's thought about them. Obviously it starts to sound like a creepy indentured servitude to the state and you can imagine people stuck in dead-end jobs not in their field, with something great available just across the border but unavailable because getting slammed with a wall of debt is not so appealing.

or companies in other parts of the country figure out they can afford the one-time write-off of a relocation incentive that includes the student loan and the smart ones leave anyway. which is fine, really.

basically if you want to major in an orchestra instrument or become an academic, assume 2-3 years of poverty in the Ohio Service Corps (doing what, who knows, probably cutting into public sector union work though)

how about this, your parents pay taxes, corporations pay taxes, all the kids who qualify get to go to college for a nominal fee. none of these absurd strings to try and hold people down after they graduate.

Would never work

Sike

That college tuition plan is pretty brilliant

It's pretty brilliant that she calls it "free higher education" when it's not free!

xp: what Tomboto said. "Free higher education" would mean "free like high school" -- it's a service you get in exchange for your taxes, no conditions.

well the conditions should be "able & inclined to keep up with the material"

yeah these types of programs feel like a way to get something that sounds bernie-esque and populist in place at the state level (which obviously does restrict your options - hard to tax Wall Street from Columbus)... without raising any taxes or pissing off any on-the-fence suburban republican types. "don't worry, don't worry, they'll be humiliatingly indentured to the state and have to jump through whatever hoops we make them! you like that, right?" i mean it might really help out tons and tons of people i guess so that's not to be entirely sneezed at but i'm with tombot and wish we could skip past these lame compromise-in-advance half-measures.

timkaine... prefers more choice in marketplace

This is such crap. If you have the ability to choose your doctor and together with your doctor you can choose your course of treatment, you've got the important choices covered. Why is a choice of which insurance company's arcane rules and impenetrable charges you are subjected to supposed to be of value to a sick person?

first time I've ever heard of Tim Kaine being pro choice https://t.co/JSKQDRYJSi

— maura quint (@behindyourback) September 11, 2017

you go, bernie. our current health care system is evil and bad for the economy both. put the (russian-colluding / deficit-spending / silver-spoon knob-slobbering / anti-christian) republicans on the defensive, dems

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/13/opinion/bernie-sanders-medicare-single-payer.html?mcubz=3&_r=0

Meanwhile I get my cable back after #Irmanonsense, turn on MSNBC, and listen to Chuck Todd with palpable enthusiasm wondering if Medicaid for all will "split" the party.

The Plan Would Be Fully Paid For By:

- snip -

A 2.2 percent income-based premium paid by households.

https://berniesanders.com/issues/medicare-for-all/

lol ill take it! the individual mandate penalty right now is 2.5% and that's for NOT having health care.

looking okay OK

http://newsok.com/democrats-win-special-election-in-norman/article/5563866

bernie is so fucking stupid it's unbelievable. chait otm

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/09/sanderss-bill-gets-u-s-zero-percent-closer-to-single-payer.html

lol

matt yglesias wrote an actually worthwhile version of this point of view recently: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/29/16196608/wonks-single-payer

chait is such a fuckin' tool.

I cannot tell anymore if sleepingbag is being sarcastic or just going all in for the SBs

I guess the "so fucking stupid it's unbelievable" is OTT enough to indicate not-actually-trolling

Chait is always a total jackass whenever anyone brings up nationalizing / re-nationalizing privatized services. His wife is a charter school network exec. I'm sure he was a big vote in favor of hiring Andrew Sullivan at nymag, too.

What I don't understand is how you go from writing The Big Con to being such a devoted capitalism-first neoliberal. When he writes shit like this he turns into the McArdle of the center-left

i like matt yglesias, i don't like jonathan chait or josh barro

— Sam (@VaguelySteamy) September 9, 2017

It's okay to push for something big without having every detail of its implementation worked out. Like your support for the Iraq War. https://t.co/ZqKb0mOgvT

— Matt Bors (@MattBors) September 13, 2017

matt yglesias wrote an actually worthwhile version of this point of view recently: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/29/16196608/wonks-single-payer

― k3vin k., Wednesday, September 13, 2017 4:26 PM (fourteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that's fine too. the problem is that leftists' interest in the particulars of something like this starts and ends with emotions, so you get someone with zero understanding of how to accomplish something potentially good like this leading the charge and turning it into 'well i don't know about you but i think things should be v good and not ever bad?... i guess i'm just not hitlery enough to not care about people dying?'. my feelings about bernie are basically what ppl keep saying to hillary: 'shut up, go away'

xp it's not that he doesn't have 'every' detail worked out, it's that he doesn't have 'any thing' worked out

Chait is often unreadable.

https://youtu.be/VxBQZPkdQMM

I don't think asshats like Chait understand how shitty the healthcare system is even for people with decent jobs and employer based plans. It's like they're using talking points from 20 years ago.

the problem is that leftists' interest in the particulars of something like this starts and ends with emotions

I think by "emotions" you mean "demolishing a system in which people die and/or are bankrupted needlessly as quickly and thoroughly as possiblr"

Ask me about my coworkers $35k medivac healthcare bill for her newborn son sometime. The hospital that signed off on it was owned by the insurer who refused to pay it. She's a lawyer, doesn't mean she has an extra $35k lying around.

My HSA plan is great though. I love having no idea what a pediatrician visit will cost.

let's all calm down and remember that single payer is and will always be impossible because the united states has unique complications that make it much harder to implement than the entire rest of the world

this is real exciting i am so glad to see something like this proposed for real even if it has no chance finally fucking finally.

i hope Bernie does this every year even with fools screaming at him along the way.

lets get this idea out there. if it's flawed let's come up with ways to make it better.

Just keeping it in the conversation is useful. At very worst it will scare insurers into behaving better temporarily and maybe lead to some minor Obamacare concession improvements

yeah, the more support it gets, the more reason the healthcare lobbies have for trying to ensure Obamacare remains viable. There's even a possibility for a gradual evolution towards single-payer as they cede risk pools and markets where they can't make a profit.

nationalize all health insurance companies imo

just eliminate them really, what are they for?

there will always be paperwork, just a lot less of it

I'm kinda bummed out. No attempt at a realistic price tag for the system, and a funding paper that's woefully inadequate. This could have been done in week one. It also reminds me why I disliked Sanders so much and kinda thought he was a sanctimonious asshole. Plus I now realize I'm probably two weeks away from another temp ban. Tops.
:(:(:(:(:(:(:(

Great bill, exciting to keep the conversation going. Sanders is offering a lot more than Hilary.

isn't it vague in kind of the classic way of legislation that you actually *do* hope to pass someday? so long as they acknowledge that they will have to pay for it ("additional tax revenue goes here" kinda thing) as opposed to republican "this tax cut will magically pay for itself with GROWTH!" talk.... imo beyond that are reasonable details to put off til you're really in the thick of hammering out a bill that's going to come to a vote.

strategically, i *personally* would be fine with marking the targets more explicitly, as sanders did during the campaign, but if a slightly vaguer bill helps him get all these different senators to buy in, who cares? it's a fucking paradigm shift for major party leaders to be publicly committing to this as an "aspirational" end goal.

a bunch of supposedly centrist, technocratic dem senators -- booker, gillibrand, etc -- have signed onto this idea -- but concern trolling from DaouBraous is definitely useful.

obviously, support for a single-payer plan should be a litmus test for dems, especially ones with national ambitions. i know many of us are used to the wildly successful obama-style "negotiate with yourself first" strategy, but bringing this issue to the forefront of left-leaning political discussion is a worthwhile goal, even if there's no chance for passage in the next 4 years. that said, democrats should use this downtime to actually come up with an improved version of the bill that can work in real life, rather than using the GOP strategy of campaigning on "repeal and replace" without actually having a workable replacement. getting broad support for the idea now is the correct first step

xp