US Politics Mega-thread - Page 8067

On July 12 2017 22:11 Nebuchad wrote:


The distraction argument works like this:

- The democratic party seems to be doing pretty bad right now, it lost a lot of seats to a party that is the closest thing to "transparently evil" that I've seen in my lifetime.
- Perhaps we ought to do something to change that?
- If we do something to change that, that's probably not too beneficial for me, me and my ideological friends are the ones in charge right now and after a change, we might not be. So instead of talking about how pathetic it is that we're losing to the Republicans, we're going to talk about how bad the other guys are, that's going to be our strategy.
- "Have you seen the other guys?"

There's absolutely no need to lie or inflate anything to achieve that. The other guys are bad.

Ten House Democrats will unveil a new plan to fix Obamacare, highlighting the parts of the law that have struggled to work and offering modest steps to improve them. The proposal includes more funding to help insurance plans cover the sickest patients, along with possibly changing the timing of the open enrollment season in hopes of attracting more Americans to sign up for insurance.

These Democrats are agitating for a new strategy, one where they speak openly about the health law’s weak spots — particularly the individual market — and how to shore them up. The party has so far been reticent to highlight Obamacare’s problems at a moment when Democrats are fighting against Republican efforts to repeal parts of the law.

“We need an alternative to the ‘just say no’ policy that has pervaded Democrats up until now,” says Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-OR), who is involved with the new proposal. “Let’s have that conversation. Let’s fix the damn thing and get real.”

The plan notably does not come from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s office, which has not put forward any similar proposal. An aide said Pelosi was aware of this effort and supportive of the discussion, although did not comment on the specific policies.

Still, it represents a shift from congressional Democrats’ Obamacare strategy thus far, which has largely focused on defending the law — alongside a mounting push for a single-payer-style health plan to replace it eventually.

“Some Democrats are fearful to talk about what is wrong with [Obamacare] for fear we’ll be seen as abandoning it,” says Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT), a relatively progressive Democrat who supports Medicare-for-all. But he says now is a moment to talk about fixing Obamacare, and not single-payer. “There is the practical reality that we’ve got a Republican president and a Republican Congress,” he says. “That’s not the opportune moment for Medicare-for-all. We’ve got to defend what we have.”

On July 12 2017 22:49 Biff The Understudy wrote:

We can talk about more than one thing at the same time no? I can assure you there has been plenty of discussions in the time about democratic defeat, Hillary and so on and so on. By your book, everything can be qualified as a distraction. If the Times was talking more about Hillary, it would be a distraction from the Russian investigation? These nonsense accusations lead absolutely nowhere.

It just happens that right now the president and his administration seem to have colluded with a foreign power to get elected and have been lying for months about it.

But hey HILLARY!!! and it's all gossip (GH, seriousfuckingly, you've been flooding for a year the forum about accusations against Clinton that are nothing compared to what we are talking about. Get real.)

On July 12 2017 22:38 Mercy13 wrote:
I take back some of the mean things I said about Democrat legislatures last week:


Exclusive: House Democrats introduce new plan to fix Obamacare

Here are the plan bullet points:

- Creating a permanent fund to offset the costs of especially expensive patients
- Making permanent the health law’s cost-sharing reduction subsidies
- Enforcing the individual mandate and advertising open enrollment
- Possibly changing the open enrollment period to align with tax season
- A Medicare buy-in for older Americans

These are modest changes to the existing law, but they represent a step in the right direction. They are clearly designed to be palatable to moderate Republicans and represent a serious effort at bipartisanship. Stuff like this is important if McConnell makes good on his threat to work with Democrats on healthcare reform.

On July 12 2017 22:49 Biff The Understudy wrote:

We can talk about more than one thing at the same time no? I can assure you there has been plenty of discussions in the time about democratic defeat, Hillary and so on and so on. By your book, everything can be qualified as a distraction. If the Times was talking more about Hillary, it would be a distraction from the Russian investigation? These nonsense accusations lead absolutely nowhere.

It just happens that right now the president and his administration seem to have colluded with a foreign power to get elected and have been lying for months about it.

But hey HILLARY!!! and it's all gossip (GH, seriousfuckingly, you've been flooding for a year the forum with accusations against Clinton that are nothing compared to what we are talking about. Get real.)

On July 12 2017 22:58 Nebuchad wrote:


Everything can be accused of anything, that's how accusations work. You then assess the particular claim to determine whether it makes logical sense or not, and your mileage may vary there, thus leading to disagreements. In the case that you offered, the accusation doesn't make any sense, which is why it would lead nowhere. In the case that I offered, there is a logic and there is a direction.

I suspect you already knew that "some other accusations make no sense" is not a good answer to a particular accusation, so I'm not sure why you went there in the first place.

On July 12 2017 22:58 GreenHorizons wrote:


The last particular comment wasn't really about Hillary. It was to point out that slave labor wasn't the issue, it was trying to make NK and Russia look bad (they are).

That's only been made more clear since. I was literally talking about the same thing plansix was, I just wasn't talking about it to make a random point about Russia and NK, not to mention I didn't even touch that according to the article (only tangentially related to the state department in that they said it wasn't slavery) noted they actually get paid better than a lot of American slave labor.

On July 12 2017 23:25 Aldehyde wrote:


Plansix didn't link that article to make a random point about North Korean slave labour. He did it to show that NYT covers more than just this petty "distraction" that is the Russia story. I assume he linked that article because he found it interesting, not to make a point about it (other than, again, to just show that they do more than just cover Trump's Russia debacle).

On July 12 2017 23:09 Biff The Understudy wrote:

Because that one doesn't make sense either. The Times has had countless articles, editorials and opinion pieces about the failures of the democratic party, and the russian investigation is obviously the biggest story of this news cycle. If they were totally silent about Hillary and Sanders having killed twelve people while engaged on a sale of uranium to north korea and the biggest story on their home page was still the russian thing i would agree, but right now the guys are just doing their job, covering extensively a potential political earthquake while, of course discussing all kind of other things, including the state of the democratic party.

The only universe and narrative in which the russian investigation is a smoke screen is the fantasy world in which it is a non story and the DNC business is so much more worth talking about right now.

“ACI utilizes inmate labor to produce goods and services that are sold to governmental entities within the State,” the ACI website states. “The revenues generated go to offset the costs of incarceration and provide inmates with job skills and practical work experience.”

Participating prisoners are paid 25 to 75 cents per hour for their work, unlike inmate laborers in Arkansas, Georgia and Texas state prisons, who were not paid as of September. And they make more than federal prisoners, who get just 12 to 40 cents an hour, according to Mother Jones.

They may have it slightly better than inmates in other states, but Alabama prisoners still make far less than Alabama’s minimum hourly wage of $7.25.

That disparity has led to strikes, protests and other issues in recent years.

But ACI, which is a division of the state Department of Corrections, continues to be a productive program. Its products are sold via a showroom in Montgomery, an online catalog and printed order forms.

On July 12 2017 23:32 GreenHorizons wrote:


I forgive you because you're in France and you understanably have a very different perspective of how bad things besides Russia US relations are going and getting comparatively no coverage.

I mean, in this particular context, you realize we have states (meaning literally the government) dependent on slave labor, that is in turned used to feed corporate bottom lines though cheaper goods and services. Which further undermines the labor market at/near the bottom? Now it might be an acceptable tradeoff to one degree or another if they weren't pocketing profits and meanwhile basically just caging/penning people in half-assed work camps.

Here's Alabama for example: Posted April 02, 2017



Source

Like, I get that NK and Russia, and China are dicks, and we're supposed to make them the new axis of evil with Iran, but holy crap, can we end state ran slavery in the US first?

That's right, not as important as the tail chasing about Russia, which of course was in the headline because nothing grabs clicks like "Russia", throw in some "slavery" and you have a perfectly contextless story that ignores that America's slavery problem is a special kind of twisted all these years later.