Politics Plus

I hate to, but have to admit that there’s a lot about Obamacare I don’t like.  However, it is a step in the right direction.  It’s a shame that, because Republicans have forced so many cuts in the number of government employees, the design and implementation of the website had to be outsourced to corporate contractors.  What we’re really seeing is a failure of the too poorly regulated free market to deliver goods and services as promised.  However I agree with the best solution, the one Paul Krugman suggests.

The good news about HealthCare.gov, the portal to Obamacare’s health exchange, is that the administration is no longer minimizing its problems. That’s the first step toward fixing the mess — and it will get fixed, although it’s anyone’s guess whether the new promise of a smoothly functioning system by the end of November will be met. We know, after all, that Obamacare is workable, since many states that chose to run their own exchanges are doing quite well.

But while we wait for the geeks to do their stuff, let’s ask a related question: Why did this thing have to be so complicated in the first place?

It’s true that the Affordable Care Act isn’t as complex as opponents make it out to be. Basically, it requires that insurance companies offer the same policies to everyone; it requires that each individual then buy one of these policies (the individual mandate); and it offers subsidies, depending on income, to keep insurance affordable.

Still, there’s a lot for people to go through. Not only do they have to choose insurers and plans, they have to submit a lot of personal information so the government can determine the size of their subsidies. And the software has to integrate all this information, getting it to all the relevant parties — which isn’t happening yet on the federal site.

Imagine, now, a much simpler system in which the government just pays your major medical expenses. In this hypothetical system you wouldn’t have to shop for insurance, nor would you have to provide lots of personal details. The government would be your insurer, and you’d be covered automatically by virtue of being an American.

Of course, we don’t have to imagine such a system, because it already exists. It’s called Medicare, it covers all Americans 65 and older, and it’s enormously popular. So why didn’t we just extend that system to cover everyone?… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <NY Times>

Click through for the rest, please.

The answer, of course, is that Medicare for all could never have survived the Republican filibuster preventing its passage.  Even during the few brief days that Democrats had a super-majority in the Senate, a very small number of DINOs took payola from Big Insurance and goose-stepped with the Republicans.  Medicare for all remains the best solution, and we’ll get there eventually.  In the meantime, Obamacare, with all the website problems, is a big improvement over RepubliCare, which offers only the RepubliCare Death Benefit.  If you cannot pay, you get to die for free.

Republicans are always hammering the talking point that government spending is wasteful.  As a knee jerk, we often try to prove that it is not, and in the process stake out a losing position.  Some government spending is not at all wasteful, but some is extremely wasteful.  There is a good measuring stick for determining wastefulness.  The higher an item is on Republican spending priorities, the more wasteful it is.

I sometimes get into debates with my fellow progressives over whether we should ever talk about the idea of waste in government sending. Some of my friends argue that we shouldn’t because it only reinforces conservative talking points but my view is very different that that. I believe that most Americans feel very strongly that there is waste in government spending, that we will never talk them out of that idea, and that when we ignore the subject, we leave that fertile ground wide open to conservatives to define what waste is on their own terms.

Then there’s this: there is a lot of waste in government spending. It’s just a fact we should deal honestly with. But here’s where the conservatives get it all wrong: it is not wasteful to make sure a hungry 8 year old gets a school lunch; it isn’t wasteful for an 85 year old with no pension to have their $15,000 a year in Social Security keep up with inflation, or to get decent health care through Medicare; it isn’t wasteful to invest in the future by teaching our kids, helping students go to college, and building roads and bridges. What is wasteful in government spending is when we directly subsidize huge corporate interests: sweetheart contracting deals, lobbyist-designed special tax loopholes, and direct subsidies to big profitable companies.

Far worse than simple corporate subsidy waste, though, is when we hand out money to companies to do things that actively harm us. One of the worst examples of this right now is the federal government, through the Export-Import Bank, is directly subsidizing overseas carbon-vomiting coal production. Because Ex-Im is handing out money to extract coal in places like Australia, this doesn’t even create American jobs. Meanwhile, it is going to contribute dramatically to over-heating the planet even faster. It is an obscenity that our government is doing this… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Crooks and Liars>

The author is spot-on!  Watch this video on climate change.

Every penny Republicans take out of YOUR pocket to give to the Koch Brothers and their ilk, helping them to destroy the earth, is wasteful spending of the most obscene kind.

Here is the thirty-third article in our Republicans on Parade series, featuring individuals who personify what the Republican Party has become. Today’s honoree is former [just resigned] Republican Party official Don Yelton.  He is being honored because of the Republican manner in which he demonstrated Republican outreach to minorities.

Last night, The Daily Show’s Aasif Mandvi introduced the world to Don Yelton, the Republican precinct chairman for North Carolina’s Asheville area.

Don Yelton is an unashamed, blatant, in-your-face racist. Listening to him talk about ‘lazy blacks’ and how you used to ‘have’ to ‘call them negros’ but now they get to say ‘nig-er this and nig-er that’ but he doesn’t get to but it’s all good because one of his best friends is black…on national TV mind you…my jaw dropped. When Mandvi asked if he understood that ‘we could hear him’ (as in, you do know that you are saying these things out loud…right?), I cheered.

Today, Don Yelton resigned. Good riddance to bad trash. Despicable man.

He did, however, open the door to what is really happening in North Carolina regarding voter suppression. Sure, we all know the real motives behind the new voter ID laws but accusations are never as powerful as admissions. And at a time when McCrory is making it clear that he is not happy that the Attorney General responsible for defending the new measures is ‘out’ as being very opposed to them himself. Ha!…

Inserted from <Daily Kos>

Rachel Maddow covered this story and a few other related ones. (If this embed will not play in your country, you can follow the link to her show and find the video on her Friday night show.)

If nothing else Yelton demonstrated perfectly how Republicans reach out to minorities.  Republicans in power SAY they are not racist, but they DO racist things.  Yelton is not the rare exception, beyond being stupid enough to brag about it on TV.