US Politics Mega-thread - Page 630

On November 16 2013 03:35 xDaunt wrote:

Are you surprised? I've never had any doubt that the crazies on the left who think like Obama believe that shit.

On November 16 2013 02:28 xDaunt wrote:


No, they won't. The Tea Party won't let the republicans do anything less than fully repeal Obamacare. Boehner has already taken that position. Besides, the Republicans would be stupid to have any part of Obamacare at this point. There's no political risk for them to do nothing. Passing a bill that allows people to keep their current plans isn't going to fix anything. It will merely give the democrats an excuse to wash their hands of what they have done. The plans that are gone are gone permanently.



The mainstream media isn't bothering to bail Obama out because it can't. Just look at the New York Times article that I cited above. Obamacare is the disaster that everyone on the right predicted that it would be. The harm is no longer theoretical. The chickens have come home to roost.

On November 16 2013 00:56 xDaunt wrote:
You know it's bad when the New York Times is comparing Obamacare to Katrina.

Let's set the failure of the website aside for a moment. The real disaster for democrats is that the hidden costs of Obamacare are being laid bare for everyone to see. People who had good, legitimate health coverage are losing their plans by design under Obamacare. Obamacare only works if millions of healthy people are thrown off their current plans and forced into more the more expensive exchanges where they can subsidize care for others. As I mentioned previously, I'm one of those people, and there are millions more.

No social program has ever been a free lunch, and Obamacare isn't any different in that regard. What is different is that people are seeing the real costs of a policy like Obamacare in very stark, unmistakable terms that have real consequences for them personally beyond just paying a little more money in taxes. Various conservative commentators are talking about how this may be the "death knell" for liberalism. I'm not ready to go that far yet, but it is very clear that the repercussions will be fatal for many democrat politicians.

And the democrat politicians know it too. That is why all of the democrat senators who are up for reelection next year met with Obama privately last week on these very issues. That is why Diane Feinstein, a democrat senator in a solidly blue state, has demanded that legislation be passed allowing people to keep their current plans. That is why Bill Clinton came out and said the same thing, triggering a revolt among all elected democrats to fix Obamacare and allow people to keep their coverage.

Unfortunately for them, they aren't going to get that fix. Republicans won't give it to them. Frankly, it wouldn't matter if they did. The insurance plans that are being destroyed right now aren't coming back. The damage has been done. All that's left is for democrats to explain to their angry constituents why they had to peddle Obama's lie that people could keep their health plans if they wanted to. Republican politicians will just eat popcorn.

Oh, and does anyone think that tea party politicians who did everything possible to stop this from happening aren't going to benefit politically from this? Just some food for thought.

So yeah, this is a huge political story.

On November 16 2013 09:24 FallDownMarigold wrote:

Being that it's an NYT piece--and not a trashy blog post or a Forbes Op/Ed rant--one expects at least a touch of honest reporting and an effort to avoid letting one loud narrative dictate the piece entirely. Indeed, if you actually read past the title of the piece, there's more to it than, "See, look, it's *so bad* that the NYT is endorsing comparisons to the Katrina response catastrophe!". Certain superficial parallels may be drawn, but there are stark contrasts too, which are mentioned in the piece. If you're only listening to the loud Republicans interviewed then you will only hear what you want to hear. In short, this piece is far from plainly obvious evidence of how bad "Obamacare" is -- it merely offers an insight into how certain Republican leaders and talking heads choose to think about and compare the current health care rollout problems. Moreover, this example of reporting does nothing to answer my question and explain specifically how PPACA is going to "fail hugely on the 'world stage'" as you described so dramatically. Explain the mechanisms of this impending failure and provide evidence at each point along the way so I can follow along and learn -- don't just tell me without doing any showing whatsoever.

Yes, it's probably a good idea to set website failure aside not just for "a moment" but permanently considering that it's a sideshow distraction -- it doesn't seem overly charitable to assume that technical issues will be fixed in time, even if not right away. Could you provide evidence/data to support your claim that the bulk, or even many, of those with lost plans indeed had "good, legitimate health coverage" to begin with, and that many of them did not, in fact, instead have inadequate plans that were already sub-par and thus discontinued under PPACA? I'm sure out there some people with reasonable plans lost them and would reasonably like them back, and perhaps these people should be able to do so. But what about all those that were under the misled impression that they had "good, legitimate plans", when in reality they had something that merely *seemed* good while actually being totally inadequate thanks to slimy insurance practices? Since you are certain that there are millions of genuinely "good, legitimate plans" lost, please provide the data. Is it really as you say it is, or are you just guessing based on things you've heard?

Interesting. What do the researchers, academics, economists, professors, etc., say? I tend not to care what "political commentators" have to say since, well, they're entertainers and not intellectuals -- conservative or liberal, or anything else. Why should I or indeed anyone care that a talking head made a fear-mongering remark along the lines of "this is a death knell for liberalism". Once again, I'm asking you to provide specific explanation/mechanism for how this thing is going to "fail hugely on the 'world stage'" -- I'm not asking for other fluff and pundit drivel.

Once again, too much TELLING, not enough SHOWING.

guess i'll check back to see if you can provide a somewhat more satisfactory response that answers the question instead of this rather empty block of text. Cheers

On November 16 2013 10:49 xDaunt wrote:

Let's start with the NYT piece. I have absolutely no idea how you managed to distill the piece down to the sentence -snip

President Obama is now threatened by a similar toxic mix. The disastrous rollout of his health care law not only threatens the rest of his agenda but also raises questions about his competence in the same way that the Bush administration’s botched response to Hurricane Katrina undermined any semblance of Republican efficiency.

But unlike Mr. Bush, who faced confrontational but occasionally cooperative Democrats, Mr. Obama is battling a Republican opposition that has refused to open the door to any legislative fixes to the health care law and has blocked him at virtually every turn. A contrite-sounding Mr. Obama repeatedly blamed himself on Thursday for the failed health care rollout, which he acknowledged had thrust difficult burdens on his political allies and hurt Americans’ trust in him.

Republicans readily made the Hurricane Katrina comparison. “The echoes to the fall of 2005 are really eerie,” said Peter D. Feaver, a top national security official in Mr. Bush’s second term. “Katrina, which is shorthand for bungled administration policy, matches to the rollout of the website.” Looking back, he said, “we can see that some of the things that we hoped were temporary or just blips turned out to be more systemic from a political sense. It’s a fair question of whether that’s happening to President Obama.”

The president’s top aides vehemently reject the comparison of Mr. Obama’s fifth year in office to the latter half of Mr. Bush’s second term. They say Americans lost confidence in Mr. Bush because of his administration’s ineptitude on Hurricane Katrina and its execution of the war in Iraq, while Mr. Obama is struggling to extend health care to millions of people who do not have it. Those are very different issues, they said.

Perhaps we aren't reading the same piece

Man: Mr. Chomsky, I'm wondering what specific qualifications you have to be able to speak all around the country about world affairs?

Noam: None whatsoever. I mean, the qualifications that I have to speak on world affairs are exactly the same ones Henry Kissinger has, and Walt Rostow has, or anybody in the Political Science Department, professional historians -- none, none that you don't have. The only difference is, I don't pretend to have qualifications, nor do I pretend that qualifications are needed. I mean, if somebody were to ask me to give a talk on quantum physics, I'd refuse -- because I don't understand enough. But world affairs are trivial: there's nothing in the social sciences or history or whatever that is beyond the intellectual capacities of an ordinary fifteen-year-old. You have to do a little work, you have to do some reading, you have to be able to think but there's nothing deep -- if there are any theories around that require some special kind of training to understand, then they've been kept a carefully guarded secret.

In fact, I think the idea that you're supposed to have special qualifications to talk about world affairs is just another scam -- it's kind of like Leninism [position that socialist revolution should be led by a "vanguard" party]: it's just another technique for making the population feel that they don't know anything, and they'd better just stay out of it and let us smart guys run it. In order to do that, what you pretend is that there's some esoteric discipline, and you've got to have some letters after your name before you can say anything about it. The fact is, that's a joke.

Man: But don't you also use that system too, because of your name-recognition and the fact that you're a famous linguist? I mean, would I be invited to go somewhere and give talks?

Noam: You think I was invited here because people know me as a linguist? Okay, if that was the reason, then it was a bad mistake. But there are plenty of other linguists around, and they aren't getting invited to places like this -- so I don't really think that can be the reason. I assumed that the reason is that these are topics that I've written a lot about, and I've spoken a lot about, and I've demonstrated a lot about, and I've gone to jail about, and so on and so forth -- I assumed that's the reason. If it's not, well, then it's a bad mistake. If anybody thinks you should listen to me because I'm a professor at M.I.T., that's nonsense. You should decide whether something makes sense by its content, not by the letters after the name of the person who says it. And the idea that you're supposed to have special qualifications to talk about things that are common sense, that's just another scam -- it's another way to try to marginalize people, and you shouldn't fall for it.

On November 16 2013 12:49 farvacola wrote:
I wouldn't get too high off of Chomsky lol.

On November 16 2013 13:13 paralleluniverse wrote:
The whole policy cancellation issue is completely overblown.

The ACA has a grandfather clause that allows plans that don't meet the minimum requirements to stay temporarily, as long as they don't change too much, including not raising the price sufficiently above medical inflation. Therefore, the plans that are now being cancelled both do not meet the minimum requirements and have changed in a way that is not covered by the grandfather clause. Not meeting the minimum requirements alone is not grounds for being disallowed under the ACA.

Obama did not promise to freeze the insurance market--no changes to any policies. Policies naturally get changed and cancelled all the time. What's different here is that these policies have changed so they're not really the same policy (otherwise they could have stayed under the grandfather clause), they're subpar policies that don't meet minimum standards, and there's a relentless war to destroy Obamacare.

Now the fix Obama has proposed, to allow these policies to stay for a year is a political move to prevent further backlash. But what it comes down to is that people on these subpar policies will more likely get screwed over by the insurance companies, instead of the the government, and in that event they are more likely to blame the insurance companies than the government (which is why it's a good political move).

The ideal solution would be for these policies to be cancelled without the huge misinformed political furor, without the insurance companies scams offering the sell policies twice as expensive as the ones being cancelled, despite cheaper policies being available, and for the website to be working in states without their own exchanges, so that people can find these cheaper alternatives and find out the subsidies they're eligible for. But given that's impossible, this is probably the next best thing.

There are winners and losers. The only losers should be young people who are too rich to get subsidies and people who would knowingly buy subpar policies that offered little protection if at all.

Lastly, on the complaints about covering child birth as a minimum requirement for health policies, that's simply a necessity to not price discriminate against women.

On November 16 2013 14:04 xDaunt wrote:


Other than the first line, this is all true. However, what's lost here is how limited and toothless the grandfather clause is.



The devil is in the details. There's a difference between meeting Obamacare's fairly arbitrary standards and being a good plan. Of course, there always inevitably will be problems when a bureaucracy forces a "one size fits all" approach. What's been particularly fun has been seeing liberal media figures complain about their canceled coverage that was perfectly fine from their perspective.

Even if it takes a change to the law, the president should honor the commitment the federal government made to those people and let them keep what they got.

--President Clinton on Tuesday

Recent disclosures about NSA surveillance have affected U.S. relations with allies and tainted America's image around the world. Now the fallout seems to be creeping into the U.S. tech sector.

Cisco Systems, which manufactures network equipment, posted disappointing first-quarter numbers this week and warned that revenues for the current quarter could drop as much as 10 percent from a year ago — partly as a consequence of the NSA revelations.

The company's chief financial officer, Frank Calderone, told analysts that reports the NSA is intercepting electronic data transfers have created "a level of uncertainty or concern" among customers, particularly in emerging markets.

Cisco shares plummeted, losing more than 11 percent of their value, on Wednesday's news.

Though the impact of the National Security Agency revelations isn't evenly shared across the tech sector, other companies are also feeling the bite.

Google's chief legal officer, David Drummond, cited Cisco's problems during remarks at a conference Thursday in Washington, D.C., saying his company has the same commercial concerns. Speaking before the World Affairs Councils, Drummond faulted the NSA's handling of the surveillance controversy.

"The justification has been couched as 'Don't worry. We're only snooping on foreigners,' " Drummond said. "For a company like ours, where most of our business and most of our users are non-American, that's not very helpful."