What can we agree on?
I think we can all agree, or at least I thought we could agree, that we pretty much understand that Wall Street (Goldman Sachs especially) and the mentality it cultivates are more a part of the problem then lawmakers in this country. Aren’t they? Can’t we agree also that politicians pockets are lined with donations from special interest groups? After all, the person with the most money usually wins right, not the most people donating? We all know that lobbyists grew in number to some 14000 folks and that was just those that were registered as such. Sure, there are some groups that represent good causes I think though they are far and few between.
If I move beyond that premise and suppose that if we can all agree that people, greedy people, have their dirty little fingers all over everything that happens in Washington, where does the disconnect happen between people like the Townhallers, Birthers, Deathers, Teabaggers and the protesters usually found on the left (code pink, red hat society, the rotary club etc) occur? If policies put in place stand to impact businesses/industries that make tens of billions of dollars in profits where is the outrage from both sides? Do those people really care about what happens to a majority of people in this country? If people are so sure that they are educated and understand what is going on with a given topic why does there seem to be this huge, missing, glaringly obvious hole in their thought process? Where does the logic train stop? Where is its’ last stop? Why do people think that a decision that is in the best interest of our health and well being wont be overrided by people that stand to lose their livelihoods if a certain bill becomes law?
Can we all stop to ask who stands to gain the most from whatever it is we are against? Shouldn’t that be a question we ask first? Sort of like when you go shopping and you like something but don’t see a price tag on it. One of the things you do before you buy it is ask how much it costs. It’s a reflex, you automatically need to know this one immensely important thing before you make your decision. I hate to be specific because no doubt an idiot will read this and jump all over it. There are several examples we could use though so feel free to list a few in the comments.
I just really wish that people would ask who stands to win and who stands to lose. It seems that people are misinformed, stay misinformed and continue to speak against their own self interests. When something doesn’t even apply to them, they fight for it. When something goes against their fundamental belief as a Christian, they vote against it. When it goes against the constitution, they are more than happy to turn a blind eye because they can’t fathom it would every apply to them. Everyone is afraid of Socialism but they don’t know what it is and rally violently that it is the end of the world. Yet, they don’t look at decisions made by current and previous decisions makers and act equally as upset. People want a free market but look beyond the half a trillion bailout given to the banks. People don’t want socialized medicine but are fine with Medicare. People don’t want us to appease terrorists but here we are funding Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the 80’s and 90’s and selling weapons illegally to Iran. If you want credibility then you have to apply your litmus test to everything.
You don’t get to nuance it either. If it looks like a turd and smells like a turd, then it is one. Even if that turd came out of the guy/gal you voted for.
I just wish that the outrage was there all the time man. I love that people are so filled with anger and hate. That is awesome. I love the fact that they are willing to disrupt some bullshit town hall meeting with scripted questions and pre-screened questioners. It’s horseshit theater anyway. Disrupt those shills. I just wish that people on both sides truly believed what they say when the other person is in power. I wish that those crying the constitution is being shredded really wanted to uphold the constitution, all of it. I wish that people cared about their fellow man and more importantly their fellow American. I wish we could agree on helping those that need to be helped. I wish people could think for themselves. I wish people would ask why. I wish people would question authority and follow the money.
I wish we could agree to any of that. Thus far I’m seeing the same people being rewarded and the same people being screwed that have been for the past 8 years, hell 30 plus. Thus far I’m seeing the same people defend the people that have done the screwing and when they direct their anger at something or someone it is usually against a neighbor or someone in their own social class, Church, gym or office. They never directed up towards the people that are going to lose the most.
Here is what we can agree on, if you put the state in charge of everything we will run out of even the basics:
Cuba, in the grip of a serious economic crisis, is running short of toilet paper and may not get sufficient supplies until the end of the year, officials with state-run companies said Friday
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/us_crisis_toiletpaper_odd
sigh
Doesn’t it suck when they lead by example, poorly ?
I just really wish that people would ask who stands to win and who stands to lose.
People do this all of the time. But the people who spend a decent amount of time trying to push government in a direction that may support its citizens some of the time can keep focused on their goal and keep pushing towards it or you can jump up and down about how corrupt it all is.
Which group of people has a better chance of getting something accomplished?
Special interests have been a part of the process since whenever. And as long as pols need alot of money to run they will stay a part of the process. You can wave contributions in a pol’s face and try to shame them into better behavior, but hey. If you want pols to represent you and only you the entire funding system of campaigns must change. Period. And until you are ready to take that on, you will find yourself on the side of alot of righteous anger and not much to show for it.
You don’t get to nuance it either.
While I am not sure what you are getting at here, it is not a weakness to be able to look at the playing field from every perspective. Nor is it a weakness to be able to at least articulate why something — even something you don’t much like — may be in play. That seems more rational to me than jumping up and down with nothing to be gained except another bit of theater.
We all get it about the money. Most of us can even go track it down to a fairtheewell. While the money is the problem, the money won’t get changed. You step up to change what you can.
“I just really wish that people would ask who stands to win and who stands to lose.”
We all stand to win and we all stand to lose. The question is how much standing we want the government to have in determining the winners and losers.
Wall Street will never change, their sole mission is to exploit every opportunity to do one thing-produce earnings.
Washington DC should and must enact regulations which permit risk and reward but not mayhem and tragic loss.
I blame Washington for the latest mess.
While we are talking about the last 30 years I am always curious how Joe Biden gets a pass on how he shilled for the credit card companies at the expense of consumers? How he could be the darling of the Teachers Union but he never sent his three kids to one day of public school?
Mike Protack
dv–you and I are not in each other’s fan clubs–
But this is the best piece of blogging anywhere in DE in months.
And, unfortunately, most of the people on all sides of the question seem (willfully) to miss your goddamn point.
As for the comments by farsider and Protack
sigh
Truth is, if one tries to read the bill itself, I am pretty sure one could prove the congress is in favor of imbedding rabid weasels up everyones ass, without fear of successful contradiction.
As for rationing I refer to an earlier comment
Here is what we can agree on, if you put the state in charge of everything we will run out of even the basics:
Cuba, in the grip of a serious economic crisis, is running short of toilet paper and may not get sufficient supplies until the end of the year, officials with state-run companies said Friday
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/us_crisis_toiletpaper_odd
farsider – are you confusing communism and socialism again? We get it, Cuba is poor because it is a communist country. I am sure the fact that their largest neighbor has had an embargo on them for 40 years has no influence on their production.
farsider,
Riddle me this: the State is always potentially dangerous to human liberty because it represents a gigantic accumulation of power difficult for citizens to check.
Capital is one form of power.
Mega-corporations represent gigantic accumulations of power difficult for citizens to check.
In what way is not corporate statism effectively as detrimental to human freedom as nation-statism?
And please–spare me the idiotic Cuba shit
The shit is on when Steve Newton is jumping you. You ain’t got no defense for the Libertarian voodoo of his. 🙂
I’m punchy tonight…
You’re punchy? I think I’m on acid. I just wrote a post praising dv.
There is a great difference between the state and a corporation, The state has the military to back it up for one. The state in the end runs the courts that determine whether or not to apply the laws of the land. Capital can be siezed by the state. That is the difference. Look you favor an expansion of state control. Governments like cuba are the example of full state control They are running out of toilet paper. ‘Nuff said.
I expect Cuba to be confiscating toilet paper at gunpoint very soon now.
Yes, Steve. Anon did warn about the brown acid earlier. Shoulda listened.
farsider
Give me a break
1) At least a dozen international corporations employ security forces that are as large as the armies of small countries, which they use for active military intervention in the developing world. Start with Executive Outcomes in the early 1990s and work forward through Sandline and MPRI to Blackwater, Airscan, and Xe if you would like to be educated. Moreover, the corporations are expert at conning the state into using its military to back up their interests: the National Guard began its modern existence in the northeast as strike-breakers for corporations. That’s one down.
2) The State and the courts? Give me a break. Corporations used the courts in the 1870s, with the guiding hand of Associate Justice Stephen Feild to gain a series of precedent-setting Supreme Court decisions that remain in force to this day giving business entities not only the status of legal personhood and shielding all investors from any personal liability for force or fraud committed by their instrument, but made them legally immortal as well. This changed decades of American and centuries of English common law in favor of corporations.
3) Capital can be seized by the State. Yep: sure can. And corporations routinely purchase not only politicians (here) to insulate themselves from that, but entire governments in the developing world.
4) Cuba is a military dictatorship, a nearly failed State, a subject of a decades-long embargo designed by another State to destroy it, and hardly the poster child for comparison in any way shape of form to an actual industrial nation-state.
If you insist that I favor an expansion of State control, you are only going to make everybody here laugh.
My problem with you is that you give actual libertarians a bad name–and that’s tough to do.
I expect Cuba to be confiscating toilet paper at gunpoint very soon now.
Explains the empty rolls in the house tonight. Mother ####er!!! I had to settle for the 60-grit I found in the garage, next to the tools. Dios-freaking-mio!
Anyone have an extra soft cushion I can borrow? Maybe some of Steve’s magical acid?
Can I ask what experts in racial and ethnic disparity have to do with a health care benefits advisory committee ?
http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h3200/text
SEC. 123. HEALTH BENEFITS ADVISORY COMMITTEE.
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.
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(5) PARTICIPATION- The membership of the Health Benefits Advisory Committee shall at least reflect providers, consumer representatives, employers, labor, health insurance issuers, experts in health care financing and delivery, experts in racial and ethnic disparities, experts in care for those with disabilities, representatives of relevant governmental agencies. and at least one practicing physician or other health professional and an expert on children’s health and shall represent a balance among various sectors of the health care system so that no single sector unduly influences the recommendations of such Committee
If it looks like a turd and smells like a turd, then it is one. Even if that turd came out of the guy/gal you voted for.
DV, Washington is a turd factory. Politicians aren’t going to start crapping gold bricks for you.
Real progressives were for Edwards or Kucinich on health care. What did you expect?
Can I ask what experts in racial and ethnic disparity have to do with a health care benefits advisory committee
Would responding to this question be “a teachable moment,” or would it be “arguing with an idiot?”
I am asking myself what a wise Latina would do. Damn my WASPish upbringing…
If you are not offended by the ideas proposed in this bill you are not paying attention.
Funny how they are concenerned “no single sector unduly influences the recommendations of such Committee” yet 17 of the 27 positions are apppointed by the president alone.
Is President Obama a sector?
The only ideas that you have a problem with, seem to be false ones. Where is “The State” in charge of everything? The State is in charge of several health programs now and they are more efficient than private insurance. Seriously, have you ever seen your health insurance company advertise on TV? Who paid for that?
Have you ever seen an ad for the VA? Didn’t think so.
I have health insurance now through my employer. If the bill passed as it is now, I’ll have health insurance through my employer. What part don’t you get?
No, President Obama is a Sect leader. No sector will be more important than another, the 17 reps from the president will carry the day every time.
As for VA advertising, I would expect they do marketing within the armed services. They don’t provide commercial services so why would they advertise on tv ? I am sure you have heard nightmarish stories of VA care over the years, though I hear that is largely in better shape since the last scandal.
It is, and it runs very efficiently.
And just FYI a sector is a term that describes various industries or fields. For example, there may be a seat there for an expert in Child health and another for a bio-ethicist. Perhaps you think that we should elect those seat holders using the electoral college?
thank you Steve
and thank you everyone else for entertaining a troll that completely hijacked the post.
Losing your cool? 🙂
I never have understood this corporation fetish juxtaposed with the demonization of the government. At least the government is theoretically accountable to the public. Corporations are basically accountable to only the largest shareholders and can claim that most of their inter workings are privileged with no transparency at all.
I think we should be skeptical of both, not one or the other.
Oh, and as usual, you tussle with Professor Newton at your own peril. Man, that farsider dude got spun around and looked ridiculous. Nice work SN.
I do not suppose that the seat holders should be elected through the electoral college – I think there should be no panel. I am well aware of what a sector is – and none will dominate this panel. Instead hand picked cronies of the president will dominate this panel.
Government cronies are still more exposed to public pressure than corporate lackeys and lobbyists.