US Politics Mega-thread - Page 7085

On March 09 2017 07:23 Simberto wrote:


Yes. On some theoretical level, i know how shitty your system is. But every time i read stories like that, i am utterly disgusted. Why do people put up with that shit? Why do people defend that system? My only explanation is that they have simply never experienced anything else, and thus think that that is just the way things have to work.

Basically, WTF. Even ignoring the whole ruining people's lives thing, and the fact that you pay way more for worse healthcare than any other developed nation, why are people willing to deal with their healthcare being such a constant hassle?

Let me tell you how it works for me. If i am sick, i go to the doctor (Any doctor i like). I hand them my insurance card. I get treatment. Maybe they write a recipe for some meds, which i have to get from the apothecary. It is possible that i may have to pay about 10-20€ for those meds, if they are not completely covered. I head back home and lay in bed until i am healthy again. The end.

I am in constant disbelief why anyone would choose the US system. Or defend it. I don't understand it. It seems utterly irrational and insane to NOT want to simply steal a healthcare system from any random european nation instead. Roll a die or whatever. Any one of them is better than your shit.

And instead you have insane idiots trying to make your system even worse, and the people are cheering on that. The whole situation is incomprehensible. I think that everyone from the US should just experience being sick in a reasonable system once. I don't think that any of them would want to go back afterwards.

On March 09 2017 07:45 Sbrubbles wrote:


I don't think I've ever heard that theory (large bureaucracies being a pretty good defence against totalitarian despots). Where/who is that from?

On March 09 2017 07:52 KwarK wrote:

Anyone who has worked in any large organization will understand that there is significant inertia to any top down change, purely because people are pretty resistant to doing anything that isn't what they want to be doing. Almost everyone in any job believes they understand their job better than people above them in the chain and will continue to do it their way if they can. I wouldn't necessarily describe it as a rational actor, more the product of institutional failure and inertia.

On March 09 2017 07:55 Sbrubbles wrote:


Ah, ok, I assumed you were talking about some actual political theory. Carry on.

On March 09 2017 07:52 m4ini wrote:


There's a simple explanation to this actually, as i found out a year or so ago when i had a discussion about the same issue with someone. Don't remember who.

His arguments were along the line of "being locked into certain doctors", "huge queues every day", etc.

Like, if you listen to the average american, what he thinks how our health system works, you get the impression that they're spoon fed bullshit by companies who'd go bust if they can't screw poor people anymore. It almost boils down to some dystopian Arstotzka in their minds.

As someone who lived in and used said health care system, it's ridiculous. As in, not just the US system (and the defense for it) is incomprehensible, but even more so the statements you get if you ask people what they think our systems look like.

On March 09 2017 06:28 Gahlo wrote:


Good lord if that bad writing. It looks like somebody looked up any word with "feasance" to throw on the end and just put it in there. This is the first time I've gotten semantic satiation from a single sentence.

On March 09 2017 08:06 KwarK wrote:

Well it was Nyxisto who said the bureaucracy might be a defence against despotism. My interpretation of his words may well be wrong but in my experience bureaucracy is a defence against pretty much any kind of activity and a despot who is powerless to change things is no real despot. I'm sure somewhere in the Department of Homeland Security there is a HR team who insists that 15,000 new border agents means 15,000 new individual job listings, each of which has to pass through an approval queue and be signed off on by four different offices, two of which also currently have vacancies which will need to be filled before anything can happen. Not because the organization is ideologically opposed to Trump, just because it's ideologically opposed to work.

On March 09 2017 08:15 IgnE wrote:


have you considered whether maybe those words have different meanings and that only including one of them would be an incomplete description of the CIA's failures in Kucinich's opinion? it looks to me like someone who intentionally included each word for a specific reason: failed action, inaction, and ill-intentioned action

On March 09 2017 08:06 LegalLord wrote:
Biggest problem of UHC is that it is subject to the whims of government budgets. Compared to our current system, that is a trifle.

On March 09 2017 09:43 Mohdoo wrote:

How often is Canada's health care system suffering from budget cuts? Germany? I ask because I actually don't know. Perhaps other posters from other countries can comment.

On March 09 2017 10:16 LegalLord wrote:
Jon Huntsman new ambassador to Russia.

Not much to say, Huntsman is a relatively low-profile diplomat who was ambassador to China last time around.

Homelessness advocates in America’s second largest city were savoring a seeming double victory after Los Angeles voters appeared to choose to tax themselves to raise more than $3.5bn for homeless services over the next decade, and comprehensively knocked down a second measure that would have slammed the brakes on many housing developments.

Tuesday’s election was the second in a row in which voters aligned with LA’s political leadership in calling for a massive funding effort to move tens of thousands of homeless people into permanent housing and provide the “wraparound” services they need to overcome addiction, mental health and other challenges.

The sales tax increase required a two-thirds majority, and its apparent close passage – like the passage of a $1.2bn bond measure last November – was a measure of the depth of both LA’s homelessness crisis, which has worsened sharply over the past eight years, and of a countywide housing shortage pushing prices out of reach for many working families.

The revenue from the quarter-cent sales tax increase would “enable the most comprehensive plan to combat homelessness in the history of Los Angeles County”, the head of the county Homeless Initiative, Phil Ansell, said shortly before the election.

If the sales tax increase is confirmed, the county of Los Angeles would have the means to deliver on its own promise to house 45,000 homeless people and help another 30,000 people avoid losing their homes over the next five years.

Those plans could have been in jeopardy if voters in the city of Los Angeles had approved another measure on the ballot, Measure S, which took aim at big developers and sought to impose a two-year moratorium on any projects – including many earmarked for homeless people – that required exemptions from the city’s decades-old planning rules. Measure S was rejected by a 70-30 margin.

For many decades, Los Angeles was notorious among homelessness advocates for its reluctance to do more than provide basic services and conduct police sweeps at encampments of homeless people, particularly in the Skid Row area downtown and in Venice Beach.

Now, Los Angeles’ popular mayor, Eric Garcetti (who won re-election on Tuesday with more than 80% of the vote), and other local leaders are embracing a movement of big-city mayors, including New York’s Bill de Blasio, who argue that ending homelessness is an economic as well as a social priority.

Owing to entanglements with the healthcare and law enforcement systems, homeless people “become the most expensive individuals to the public purse in any community”, said Philip Mangano, a former homelessness czar under both George W Bush and Barack Obama who now leads a Boston-based nonprofit, the American Roundtable to Abolish Homelessness.

The challenge for Los Angeles now is to deliver on its promises. While Mayor Garcetti and many Los Angeles city council members were re-elected easily on Tuesday, they have had to answer concerns from the political right that homeless people are being given too much leeway to set up tents and, from the political left, that they are not moving fast enough.

“How Los Angeles invests its money will be the critical element,” Mangano said.

The city hopes to break ground on 10 initial homeless housing projects within two years and is setting up teams of social workers, housing experts, and addiction counselors to assess the extent of the problem and tailor its services to the needs of the homeless population. The details of budgeting, however, have yet to be worked out and will require unprecedented cooperation between city and county bureaucracies.

“If the money is not invested primarily in housing, it will have less of an impact,” Mangano warned. “If you dissipate resources across the entire breadth of the problem, you’ll just be reinforcing the status quo. It sounds obvious, but the priority has to be housing first.”

On March 09 2017 07:45 Sbrubbles wrote:


I don't think I've ever heard that theory (large bureaucracies being a pretty good defence against totalitarian despots). Where/who is that from?

On March 09 2017 10:00 LegalLord wrote:

Well Britain's NHS is in some trouble right now because of monetary issues.

Though if any Brits here would prefer the US system to the current troubled NHS you have, I invite you to speak up.

On March 09 2017 10:00 LegalLord wrote:

Well Britain's NHS is in some trouble right now because of monetary issues.

Though if any Brits here would prefer the US system to the current troubled NHS you have, I invite you to speak up.

Germany has long had the most restriction-free and consumer-oriented healthcare system in Europe. Patients are allowed to seek almost any type of care they wish whenever they want it.

We could add 20% to the NHS budget without breaking a sweat.

President Donald Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn wrote an op-ed on Election Day calling for the U.S. to kick out an anti-government Turkish cleric without disclosing he was being paid by a firm linked to the Turkish government, according to documents newly filed with the Justice Department.

POLITICO reported in November that Flynn's consulting firm, Flynn Intel Group, was lobbying for a Dutch consulting firm with ties to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The new documents confirm that Flynn lobbied for the Turkish-linked firm, Inovo BV, before and immediately after the election. They also reveal that members of Flynn’s firm secretly met with the Turkish foreign and energy ministers in New York less than two months before the election.

The documents reveal that Inovo BV paid Flynn's firm $535,000 between Sept. 9 and Nov. 14. The firm's assignment focused on Fethullah Gülen, a Turkish cleric living in exile in Pennsylvania whom the Turkish government accuses of masterminding a failed coup against Erdogan last summer. The filing was first spotted by The Huffington Post's Paul Blumenthal.

Flynn's firm disclosed that it was lobbying for Inovo in September but did not register with the Justice Department as a foreign agent. Robert Kelner, a lawyer for Flynn's firm, wrote in a letter to the Justice Department on Tuesday that the firm believed at the time that the congressional disclosure was sufficient but is now registered retroactively as a foreign agent.

"Nevertheless, because of the subject matter of Flynn Intel Group's work for Inovo, which focused on Mr. Fethullah Gulen, whose extradition is sought by the Government of Turkey, the engagement could be construed to have principally benefitted the Republic of Turkey," Kelner wrote. "To eliminate any potential doubt, the Flynn Intel Group therefore is electing to file a registration under FARA, in lieu of its prior LDA registration."

Flynn resigned from the Trump administration in February over calls he made to the Russian ambassador to the U.S. during the transition. Price Floyd, a spokesman for Flynn, said that Flynn had decided to retroactively register with the Justice Department “out of an abundance of caution.”

Of Flynn’s work, Price would say only that “ he was hired by Inovo BV to help repair the perception of the business climate in Turkey with key audiences in the U.S. following the attempted coup.”

Flynn's op-ed, published in The Hill, argued the U.S. shouldn't provide "safe haven" to Gülen, whom Flynn compared to Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini. "We need to see the world from Turkey’s perspective," Flynn wrote. "What would we have done if right after 9/11 we heard the news that Osama bin Laden lives in a nice villa at a Turkish resort while running 160 charter schools funded by the Turkish taxpayers?"

The op-ed never disclosed that Flynn was being paid to work against Gülen, describing Flynn only as a "former director of Defense Intelligence Agency and the author of New York Times Bestseller 'The Field of Fight.'" Floyd declined to comment on why Flynn didn’t make the disclosure.

Flynn’s firm continues to maintain his op-ed wasn’t tied to his firm’s work for Inovo.

“The op-ed was not written or published at the request of, or under the direction or control of, Inovo, the Republic of Turkey, or any other party,” Flynn’s firm reported in the filing. “No compensation was received for the publication of the op-ed.”

Kamil Ekim Alptekin, Inovo's founder and the chairman of the Turkish-American Business Council, an arm of Turkey's Foreign Economic Relations Board, told POLITICO in November that the op-ed hadn't been done for him.

"If he had asked me whether to publish it, I would have advised against it for a variety of reasons," Alptekin said at the time. "But frankly, I do not think General Flynn consults anyone before giving his opinion on national security issues."

Alptekin has also denied that Inovo is linked to the Turkish government. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

But Flynn’s firm’s statements repeatedly undermine its assertion that the op-ed wasn’t tied to its work for Inovo. Flynn’s firm acknowledged in a filing that Bijan Rafiekian, another member of Flynn’s firm who also registered as an agent of Inovo, “and an editor, Hank Cox, participated in the drafting” of the op-ed. Cox was paid $300 by Flynn’s firm several weeks later. (Rafiekian was later named to Trump's transition team working at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. He did not respond to a request for comment.)

Flynn’s firm also admitted that “the op-ed addresses subject matter related to the research that Flynn Intel Group conducted for Inovo, and a draft of the op-ed was shared with Inovo in advance of publication. No changes, other than technical edits, were made to the op-ed based on feedback from Inovo. To the best of our knowledge, Inovo did not communicate with the Republic of Turkey regarding the op-ed or provide the draft op-ed to the government.”

SGR LLC, a Washington firm that Flynn’s firm hired to do public affairs work on the Inovo project, also helped to place the op-ed in The Hill, according to the filing.