The Republicans are already bragging about how they will take back the house and how that will allow them to have hearings on everybody and everything that the Democrats have touched. That would be a good thing if the object were to make sure the Democrats were running the country correctly but that’s not the reason the Right is looking forward to having this subpoena power. What they are really looking to do is create the same kind of gridlock that they accomplished during Clinton’s second term. That’s when they wasted four years of the country’s progress in order to try and show that Clinton and his people were corrupt. The only thing they proved was that he was horny and from revelations across the board, it seems the same is true for most politicians. But does the country need grid-lock right now? Is the only thing the Republicans have to offer another version of their current policy of “No”?
What Forces Will Decide The Election?
The anti-Obama forces have two serious platforms on which they will attack Democrats in the coming election, healthcare and the economy. They have strong points on both which will appeal to a broad segment of the electorate. I had a discussion this weekend with an intelligent man who was dead set against health care. He didn’t really know why but he did know that the country can’t afford it (he was factually incorrect, it will in the long run save money) and he didn’t think it would create better health care, He was perfectly satisfied with his program which seemed to cover everything. Of course this man is fairly wealthy and pays about$16K per year in premiums. How many of you can afford that?
Healthcare:
The Democrats second biggest problem this election seems to be the misconceptions about the Healthcare bill. I keep looking at it and saying, sure, it’s not perfect, far from it, but it’s far better for both the health of the country and the health of the economy than anything that existed before. Why don’t people see that? Why do it’s opponents or just those who listen to them, not understand that, (a) it will give people greater choice and, (b) will not increase the long term national debt but in fact will reduce it?
Let’s look at the bill and what it proposes in broad form because any bill that is 2000 pages long is going to have a lot of little nooks and crannies where you can hide a lot of bad stuff. This may be the biggest problem with the bill. It’s so long that almost no one has actually read it, so anyone can say anything about it without being contradicted. The Republicans have cleverly taken advantage of this situation to make some damaging claims about the bill. Maybe some of them are true, maybe not but those statements, like a lot of proven Republican lies, (Obama is a Muslim, Obama is not American born), are accepted by a gullible constituency without reservation or rational thought.
Actually the only sane way to consider the bill is to examine what existed before and compare that to the new bill.
1-The system we were living with before the new bill was a disaster destined to lead
the country into bankruptcy. From 2001-2009 healthcare premiums doubled rising 3.7 times faster than wages. This was just not sustainable.
2-Too many plans allowed for only a limited number of doctor choices.
3- Over half the personal bankruptcies in this country were cause by astronomical
medical bills.
4- There were severe flaws in health care delivery.
5-25% of all medical spending went for administration and overhead.
6- Paper record-keeping systems caused tremendous costs and were inefficient.
7-There were not enough preventative medicine costs allowed by the short sighted insurance companies.
The basic concept of the new bill was to be:
1-Strengthen employer based coverage.
2- Allow patients a broad choice of doctors.
3-Individual costs to go down approximately $2,500.00 per year.
4-Electronic record keeping system to save up to $77billion per year by
eliminating duplicate and unnecessary procedures.
5- Guarantee eligibility of patients for all insurance plans.
6- Create a national exchange to help businesses find & provide healthcare.
7- Provide tax credits to families & small businesses, who can’t afford insurance.
8- Require all large businesses to contribute toward health care for employees.
9- Require all children to have healthcare.
10- Call for flexibility in all state plans.
Sure, all the old stuff sounds terrible and all the new stuff sounds great but that isn’t necessarily the way it works out and it certainly hasn’t stopped the Republicans from setting their hair on fire. And they’re not always wrong. The biggest thing they were right about was Tort Reform. There’s a very good reason why lawyers and insurance companies are the most hated entities in the United States and their favorite place to get together and feed off each other is medical malpractice. I’m not saying that all malpractice suits are phonies, they aren’t and doctors who don’t keep up their standards must be held accountable, but this legal procedure is so over abused and so costly to the system that it must be brought under control. I won’t get into the cure right now, probably something simple like an arbitration system would be best. Of course the lawyers would lobby against it, spend billions, which is what they’re making on it now and that’s why the Republicans were correct in demanding Tort Reform as part of the Healthcare bill. Why didn’t it get in? It was partly their own fault. They held firm with no Republicans willing to vote for the bill so Obama needed every single democratic vote to pass it. Many bleeding heart liberals wouldn’t give Obama his majority if Tort Reform was included. I know, we all hate insurance companies but there are better ways to handle medical malpractice than letting the whole thing run wild.
The other big mistake was not allowing policies to be sold across state lines. This would have created more competition and lower rates but the company’s who were big in a couple of key states, company’s who had their own Democratic senator or congressman firmly tucked away in their inside pocket were able play that bought and sold congressman the same way the lawyers did on Tort reform.
The Republicans, who if they aren’t in the pockets of the insurance companies, sure act like it, seem to have decided that the big lie is the best way to fight a bill that everyone had agreed for forty years, was desperately needed. The current big lie, that it just isn’t the right bill or that it’s not a good enough bill is just so much BS. In almost half a century no one seems to have been able to come up with just the right bill so any bill is better than no bill and now that we have a bill on the books we can benefit from what are its good points and fix its bad ones but at least we have something. So to all those self serving slobs who are ranting against the bill, maybe a trip to an emergency ward on a Friday night would be an educational experience.
Usually when we want to make the point that something is absurdly fictitious we say that it has replaced the third great lie. In this case the Republicans have replaced all three with, the president is setting up death panels, the new bill will cost more than the existing one and the government wants to take over health care and nationalize it. Unfortunately, the people who most need the healthcare bill, many of whom are the same dolts who bought into gay marriage and abortion as the most important national issues during the 2004 election, are the ones who are again buying the great Right Wing lie. The Insurance companies are spending millions to get the Healthcare bill reversed. Why? Mainly because of one little item hidden away in those 2000 plus pages. It’s an item that requires the insurance companies to spend 85% of their premium income on actual care, not on overhead, administration or profits. This is a billion dollar item and one that is driving the insurance companies to distraction. The money stream to their Republican cronies will stop if this item isn’t crushed and the Republicans who are telling the world that the healthcare bill is bad for us know it and are cowering at the huge loss of campaign contributions from the insurance companies if the bill stays in place.
The Economy:
How do we get out of the recession?
Well, the Republican answer to the economy is to cut taxes and reduce the deficit. That’s a great idea but as I mentioned somewhere else lately, the last time there was a guy on this planet capable of pulling off that kind of magic they crucified him. The problem is that tax cuts only lead to spending in a booming market. This market isn’t booming so tax cuts in this market haven’t lead to spending because people are using them for savings and paying down personal debt. Besides, no Republican so far has been able to name even one place to cut spending to balance the tax cuts. The main reason the Stimulus seems to have failed is that 40% of it has gone to balance out the losses caused by Bush’s tax cuts and the failure to repeal them instead of going to infrastructure building and job creating. We still have two wars to support. States are cutting back and causing more job loses. Paralysis, caused by the fall election is taking hold and will make things worse before November.
There is growth, 2% but it is too slow and it is not accompanied by employment gains. The economy is not creating jobs. Businesses used the recession to lay off huge numbers of workers. This protected their bottom line and their stockholders but now they aren’t in a position to hire back because those laid-off workers aren’t spending and there’s no one buying products so there’s no inventory to replace.
So the government has to spend to help create jobs in new industries which will help put money in peoples pockets so that they can consume and thereby create a need for new inventory and by that create new jobs, etc., etc. But there are only two places to get that money. Cut spending to create surpluses or increase debt.
A new Stimulus package would fund infrastructure programs and create instant work. A new Stimulus package will fund industries that will build the products of the 22nd century, products that will hasten the elimination of the use of fossil fuels, empower the expansion of broadband and allow for a huge expansion of mass transit. By fueling these industries we will be accomplishing three things. We will be creating work for our unemployed, we will be creating industries that can supply not only us, but the whole world, and thereby increasing our share of worldwide business and we will be helping to thwart the impending global warming disaster. I know, the shamans of the Right say there is no such thing as global warming but the real scientists assure us that there is. Who ya gonna believe the scientists or the faith mongers? Actually you don’t have to believe either one. All you have to do s look at the pictures of the almost non-existent ice caps at either pole or the all but completely non-existent glaciers that once covered the great mountains of the world. This isn’t something that has happened over millennia like previous global change. This is something that has happened in the last fifty years, a lightning strike in any global time frame and while it doesn’t prove beyond an “unreasonable” doubt that we are the cause of it; it sure looks that way.
So what’s the big problem? What is holding us back from pursuing this path? If we don’t build solar panels the rest of the world will and instead of manufacturing windmills in Colorado someone will be manufacturing them in Beijing and that goes for every single product of the new economy, meaning that all those manufacturing jobs will be filled by people who don’t live in the United States. But still the Republicans, who never worried about increasing the debt when they were in office, are screaming about bankrupting our children’s future. If we don’t create jobs now, our children will have no future. You have to spend money to make money. It’s a basic principle of economics. If we ignore that, if we don’t spend our way out of this economic disaster created by the Republicans, our children won’t have a future to bankrupt. We need to spend money now. In the best of all possible worlds it would come from the private sector, which is sitting on over $1.8 trillion in cash reserves but has loaned out almost none of it.
Right now there are proven technologies that need to be financed in order to get products into the market place and to create employment. There is also a certain amount of training that has to take place to give unemployed workers the skills to manage these technologies. I’m not speaking here about experimental technologies, I’m speaking about solar products, electric car technologies and the technologies that I don’t even begin to understand that are necessary for the expansion of broadband and things like it. If we don’t create those companies and fill those jobs here they are going to be filled overseas by foreign companies with foreign workers. Investment in businesses that manufacture these products would give a huge boost to the economy but starting a business or adapting one to new technologies costs money. That money has to be either loaned by the banks or come in the form of a new Stimulus. The best solution would be for the banks to step in and give back some of that money they have been sitting on but if they won’t finance this expansion of new technology then the government has to. Before you conservatives get all bent out of shape and start screaming about a government take-over of American manufacturing grab hold of the fact that American manufacturing is becoming non-existent, partly because banks won’t lend the money for it to function. Despite that, I’m not saying the government has to go into the technology business. What I’m saying is that the government has to finance companies that will.
They can do this two possible ways:
(1) Guarantee bank loans for businesses that are creating jobs and legislate that the banks must loan a certain percentage of their available funds for business expansion specifically aimed at creating jobs. This is not something that Obama can do alone. It would take congressional approval and legislating to get it done. All the rich Park Avenue millionaires who clamor for smaller government will scream at this one. “More Government regulation!” Absolutely, just like the zoning regulations that keep MacDonalds from opening across the street from your luxury co-op
(2) The government could give the low interest loans that the banks won’t, to businesses that want to create manufacturing jobs in new technologies. Sure some of them will fail. Some business always fail but many of them will succeed, just like in real life and those that do succeed will make up for the losses of those that fail just the way they do in any economy. But the money has to come from someplace and that place will have to be in the form of a second Stimulus package. Many people are against this, terrified of increasing the deficit, but if increasing the deficit now when interest rates are as low as they are ever going to get, helps create jobs, then that is an increase that will pay itself back. There will never be a better time for the government to borrow money than now.
So who is against this, who is telling people to be afraid of increasing the deficit despite the long-term advantages of doing it now? The Republicans. Why? Because the Republicans have no agenda of their own, no solution to the unemployment problem they created, and the only hope they have of ever again getting elected is to have Obama fail. Of course if Obama fails, the country fails just as the country failed when Bush failed. But they don’t care about that. They don’t care about the guy who lost his job, feeding his kids. They have theirs and they don’t care about anyone else. Caring about those who are less fortunate is socialism, they say. That’s what Barak’s going to bring to this country, or is it Fascism. It’s hard to tell which “ism” Obama is supposed to be promoting at any given time because his opponents will say anything, create any lie, to achieve their goal, which is for Barak Obama to fail. They don’t care if that also means the country fails and that attitude is the most disgustingly un-American position any political group has ever held in the history of this nation.
What’s Going on Here? 3
The Republicans are already bragging about how they will take back the house and how that will allow them to have hearings on everybody and everything that the Democrats have touched. That would be a good thing if the object were to make sure the Democrats were running the country correctly but that’s not the reason the Right is looking forward to having this subpoena power. What they are really looking to do is create the same kind of gridlock that they accomplished during Clinton’s second term. That’s when they wasted four years of the country’s progress in order to try and show that Clinton and his people were corrupt. The only thing they proved was that he was horny and from revelations across the board, it seems the same is true for most politicians. But does the country need grid-lock right now? Is the only thing the Republicans have to offer another version of their current policy of “No”?
What Forces Will Decide The Election?
The anti-Obama forces have two serious platforms on which they will attack Democrats in the coming election, healthcare and the economy. They have strong points on both which will appeal to a broad segment of the electorate. I had a discussion this weekend with an intelligent man who was dead set against health care. He didn’t really know why but he did know that the country can’t afford it (he was factually incorrect, it will in the long run save money) and he didn’t think it would create better health care, He was perfectly satisfied with his program which seemed to cover everything. Of course this man is fairly wealthy and pays about$16K per year in premiums. How many of you can afford that?
Healthcare:
The Democrats second biggest problem this election seems to be the misconceptions about the Healthcare bill. I keep looking at it and saying, sure, it’s not perfect, far from it, but it’s far better for both the health of the country and the health of the economy than anything that existed before. Why don’t people see that? Why do it’s opponents or just those who listen to them, not understand that, (a) it will give people greater choice and, (b) will not increase the long term national debt but in fact will reduce it?
Let’s look at the bill and what it proposes in broad form because any bill that is 2000 pages long is going to have a lot of little nooks and crannies where you can hide a lot of bad stuff. This may be the biggest problem with the bill. It’s so long that almost no one has actually read it, so anyone can say anything about it without being contradicted. The Republicans have cleverly taken advantage of this situation to make some damaging claims about the bill. Maybe some of them are true, maybe not but those statements, like a lot of proven Republican lies, (Obama is a Muslim, Obama is not American born), are accepted by a gullible constituency without reservation or rational thought.
Actually the only sane way to consider the bill is to examine what existed before and compare that to the new bill.
1-The system we were living with before the new bill was a disaster destined to lead
the country into bankruptcy. From 2001-2009 healthcare premiums doubled rising 3.7 times faster than wages. This was just not sustainable.
2-Too many plans allowed for only a limited number of doctor choices.
3- Over half the personal bankruptcies in this country were cause by astronomical
medical bills.
4- There were severe flaws in health care delivery.
5-25% of all medical spending went for administration and overhead.
6- Paper record-keeping systems caused tremendous costs and were inefficient.
7-There were not enough preventative medicine costs allowed by the short sighted insurance companies.
The basic concept of the new bill was to be:
1-Strengthen employer based coverage.
2- Allow patients a broad choice of doctors.
3-Individual costs to go down approximately $2,500.00 per year.
4-Electronic record keeping system to save up to $77billion per year by
eliminating duplicate and unnecessary procedures.
5- Guarantee eligibility of patients for all insurance plans.
6- Create a national exchange to help businesses find & provide healthcare.
7- Provide tax credits to families & small businesses, who can’t afford insurance.
8- Require all large businesses to contribute toward health care for employees.
9- Require all children to have healthcare.
10- Call for flexibility in all state plans.
Sure, all the old stuff sounds terrible and all the new stuff sounds great but that isn’t necessarily the way it works out and it certainly hasn’t stopped the Republicans from setting their hair on fire. And they’re not always wrong. The biggest thing they were right about was Tort Reform. There’s a very good reason why lawyers and insurance companies are the most hated entities in the United States and their favorite place to get together and feed off each other is medical malpractice. I’m not saying that all malpractice suits are phonies, they aren’t and doctors who don’t keep up their standards must be held accountable, but this legal procedure is so over abused and so costly to the system that it must be brought under control. I won’t get into the cure right now, probably something simple like an arbitration system would be best. Of course the lawyers would lobby against it, spend billions, which is what they’re making on it now and that’s why the Republicans were correct in demanding Tort Reform as part of the Healthcare bill. Why didn’t it get in? It was partly their own fault. They held firm with no Republicans willing to vote for the bill so Obama needed every single democratic vote to pass it. Many bleeding heart liberals wouldn’t give Obama his majority if Tort Reform was included. I know, we all hate insurance companies but there are better ways to handle medical malpractice than letting the whole thing run wild.
The other big mistake was not allowing policies to be sold across state lines. This would have created more competition and lower rates but the company’s who were big in a couple of key states, company’s who had their own Democratic senator or congressman firmly tucked away in their inside pocket were able play that bought and sold congressman the same way the lawyers did on Tort reform.
The Republicans, who if they aren’t in the pockets of the insurance companies, sure act like it, seem to have decided that the big lie is the best way to fight a bill that everyone had agreed for forty years, was desperately needed. The current big lie, that it just isn’t the right bill or that it’s not a good enough bill is just so much BS. In almost half a century no one seems to have been able to come up with just the right bill so any bill is better than no bill and now that we have a bill on the books we can benefit from what are its good points and fix its bad ones but at least we have something. So to all those self serving slobs who are ranting against the bill, maybe a trip to an emergency ward on a Friday night would be an educational experience.
Usually when we want to make the point that something is absurdly fictitious we say that it has replaced the third great lie. In this case the Republicans have replaced all three with, the president is setting up death panels, the new bill will cost more than the existing one and the government wants to take over health care and nationalize it. Unfortunately, the people who most need the healthcare bill, many of whom are the same dolts who bought into gay marriage and abortion as the most important national issues during the 2004 election, are the ones who are again buying the great Right Wing lie. The Insurance companies are spending millions to get the Healthcare bill reversed. Why? Mainly because of one little item hidden away in those 2000 plus pages. It’s an item that requires the insurance companies to spend 85% of their premium income on actual care, not on overhead, administration or profits. This is a billion dollar item and one that is driving the insurance companies to distraction. The money stream to their Republican cronies will stop if this item isn’t crushed and the Republicans who are telling the world that the healthcare bill is bad for us know it and are cowering at the huge loss of campaign contributions from the insurance companies if the bill stays in place.
The Economy:
How do we get out of the recession?
Well, the Republican answer to the economy is to cut taxes and reduce the deficit. That’s a great idea but as I mentioned somewhere else lately, the last time there was a guy on this planet capable of pulling off that kind of magic they crucified him. The problem is that tax cuts only lead to spending in a booming market. This market isn’t booming so tax cuts in this market haven’t lead to spending because people are using them for savings and paying down personal debt. Besides, no Republican so far has been able to name even one place to cut spending to balance the tax cuts. The main reason the Stimulus seems to have failed is that 40% of it has gone to balance out the losses caused by Bush’s tax cuts and the failure to repeal them instead of going to infrastructure building and job creating. We still have two wars to support. States are cutting back and causing more job loses. Paralysis, caused by the fall election is taking hold and will make things worse before November.
There is growth, 2% but it is too slow and it is not accompanied by employment gains. The economy is not creating jobs. Businesses used the recession to lay off huge numbers of workers. This protected their bottom line and their stockholders but now they aren’t in a position to hire back because those laid-off workers aren’t spending and there’s no one buying products so there’s no inventory to replace.
So the government has to spend to help create jobs in new industries which will help put money in peoples pockets so that they can consume and thereby create a need for new inventory and by that create new jobs, etc., etc. But there are only two places to get that money. Cut spending to create surpluses or increase debt.
A new Stimulus package would fund infrastructure programs and create instant work. A new Stimulus package will fund industries that will build the products of the 22nd century, products that will hasten the elimination of the use of fossil fuels, empower the expansion of broadband and allow for a huge expansion of mass transit. By fueling these industries we will be accomplishing three things. We will be creating work for our unemployed, we will be creating industries that can supply not only us, but the whole world, and thereby increasing our share of worldwide business and we will be helping to thwart the impending global warming disaster. I know, the shamans of the Right say there is no such thing as global warming but the real scientists assure us that there is. Who ya gonna believe the scientists or the faith mongers? Actually you don’t have to believe either one. All you have to do s look at the pictures of the almost non-existent ice caps at either pole or the all but completely non-existent glaciers that once covered the great mountains of the world. This isn’t something that has happened over millennia like previous global change. This is something that has happened in the last fifty years, a lightning strike in any global time frame and while it doesn’t prove beyond an “unreasonable” doubt that we are the cause of it; it sure looks that way.
So what’s the big problem? What is holding us back from pursuing this path? If we don’t build solar panels the rest of the world will and instead of manufacturing windmills in Colorado someone will be manufacturing them in Beijing and that goes for every single product of the new economy, meaning that all those manufacturing jobs will be filled by people who don’t live in the United States. But still the Republicans, who never worried about increasing the debt when they were in office, are screaming about bankrupting our children’s future. If we don’t create jobs now, our children will have no future. You have to spend money to make money. It’s a basic principle of economics. If we ignore that, if we don’t spend our way out of this economic disaster created by the Republicans, our children won’t have a future to bankrupt. We need to spend money now. In the best of all possible worlds it would come from the private sector, which is sitting on over $1.8 trillion in cash reserves but has loaned out almost none of it.
Right now there are proven technologies that need to be financed in order to get products into the market place and to create employment. There is also a certain amount of training that has to take place to give unemployed workers the skills to manage these technologies. I’m not speaking here about experimental technologies, I’m speaking about solar products, electric car technologies and the technologies that I don’t even begin to understand that are necessary for the expansion of broadband and things like it. If we don’t create those companies and fill those jobs here they are going to be filled overseas by foreign companies with foreign workers. Investment in businesses that manufacture these products would give a huge boost to the economy but starting a business or adapting one to new technologies costs money. That money has to be either loaned by the banks or come in the form of a new Stimulus. The best solution would be for the banks to step in and give back some of that money they have been sitting on but if they won’t finance this expansion of new technology then the government has to. Before you conservatives get all bent out of shape and start screaming about a government take-over of American manufacturing grab hold of the fact that American manufacturing is becoming non-existent, partly because banks won’t lend the money for it to function. Despite that, I’m not saying the government has to go into the technology business. What I’m saying is that the government has to finance companies that will.
They can do this two possible ways:
(1) Guarantee bank loans for businesses that are creating jobs and legislate that the banks must loan a certain percentage of their available funds for business expansion specifically aimed at creating jobs. This is not something that Obama can do alone. It would take congressional approval and legislating to get it done. All the rich Park Avenue millionaires who clamor for smaller government will scream at this one. “More Government regulation!” Absolutely, just like the zoning regulations that keep MacDonalds from opening across the street from your luxury co-op
(2) The government could give the low interest loans that the banks won’t, to businesses that want to create manufacturing jobs in new technologies. Sure some of them will fail. Some business always fail but many of them will succeed, just like in real life and those that do succeed will make up for the losses of those that fail just the way they do in any economy. But the money has to come from someplace and that place will have to be in the form of a second Stimulus package. Many people are against this, terrified of increasing the deficit, but if increasing the deficit now when interest rates are as low as they are ever going to get, helps create jobs, then that is an increase that will pay itself back. There will never be a better time for the government to borrow money than now.
So who is against this, who is telling people to be afraid of increasing the deficit despite the long-term advantages of doing it now? The Republicans. Why? Because the Republicans have no agenda of their own, no solution to the unemployment problem they created, and the only hope they have of ever again getting elected is to have Obama fail. Of course if Obama fails, the country fails just as the country failed when Bush failed. But they don’t care about that. They don’t care about the guy who lost his job, feeding his kids. They have theirs and they don’t care about anyone else. Caring about those who are less fortunate is socialism, they say. That’s what Barak’s going to bring to this country, or is it Fascism. It’s hard to tell which “ism” Obama is supposed to be promoting at any given time because his opponents will say anything, create any lie, to achieve their goal, which is for Barak Obama to fail. They don’t care if that also means the country fails and that attitude is the most disgustingly un-American position any political group has ever held in the history of this nation.