Boy, are you as sick of listening to a bunch of guys who completely screwed things up from an economic standpoint try to argue that the Democrats are doing everything wrong as I am? Talk about hypocrisy!
One of the favorite conservative arguments against health care reform, particularly when the public option was still on the table, was that an overhaul of the country's health care system would badly exacerbate the already huge budget deficit Obama created with his stimulus program, bank bailouts, and other big-government spending initiatives. I'm amazed that anyone with two braincells to rub together would be buying this load of horse crap. Did all those Republicans fall down and hit their heads or something?!?
The argument suffers from two major problems. First, the Congressional Budget Office found that both the House and Senate health care reform bills, even with the public option, would reduce the deficit. Second, as much as conservatives would like to think that Obama, the big-spending liberal, is responsible for the deficit, the real blame lies with his predecessor. You know, George Bush, the guy who thought that the Iraq war would "practically pay for itself".
A Center on Budget and Policy Priorities study released this week found that the Bush tax cuts and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan account for over $500 billion of this year's $1.4 trillion deficit. The economic downturn accounts for another $400 billion and over the next 10 years, Bush's tax cuts and war spending will account for $7.1 trillion! Let me say that again, $7.1 trillion! The CBPP's data meshes nicely with a New York Times analysis from June finding that Bush's tax cutting and war mongering were the major contributing factors to this year's deficit not the stimulus as Republicans would have us all believe.
With that in mind, it was interesting to see conservatives, who wholeheartedly supported Bush's economic policies, take to the airwaves this week to trash Obama and lie about his economic policies.
Karl Rove, who just might have an ulterior motive for bashing the president, declared that the stimulus package "impeded" economic recovery, even though CBO found that it created or saved hundreds of thousands of jobs and added greatly to the GDP. OK, so I can understand why Karl Rove might be delusional, but why is it then when he speaks, all conservatives fall to their knees and bow in his direction? He's one of the chief architects of the "big lie" in politics, and people actually believe him! It's amazing...
The crew of Fox & Friends also took a few jabs at the stimulus, falsely claiming that the government spent money to "save" a wine train in Napa Valley. You have to wonder where this so-called news organization gets it's facts. 5 minutes of fact checking would have uncovered the truth. The money was actually for an Army Corps of Engineers project to keep downtown Napa from flooding. But, hey, Fox News has never let the facts get in the way of a juicy slam of the President. No sir, as a matter of fact, if there aren't any facts to be had, they just go ahead and make up what ever works best for the story they want to write. I guess that's one reason I call them Faux News
Stephen Moore of The Wall Street Journal responded to an increase in the number of people filing for unemployment in early December by attacking Obama for predicting "strong job growth" after the Labor Department released a report on November's dropping unemployment rate. Obama had actually said that "there are going to be some months where the [unemployment] reports are a little better, some months where the reports are worse." Another case of the facts getting in the way of a reporter at a right wing rag who wants to slant a story, so he just ignores them.
And then there's Limbaugh. To have an intelligent discussion on economics, one must first have a semi-firm grasp on reality. Limbaugh has demonstrated that he can't fulfill even that basic requirement, declaring the two Bush presidencies, which oversaw three recessions, "eight years of prosperity." Well, I'm sure that for rich fat cats like Rush, they were, but for ordinary working people, they were a disaster. As a matter of fact, it goes all the way back to Ronald Regan. That's when the middle class really started to slide down hill. Real earnings for the middle class have been shrinking ever since, the taxes on the middle class have gone up, and the cost of health insurance has just about crippled the American Middle Class. But does Rush notice any of this? Does he care? I imagine that in the fantasy land he lives in on a daily basis all of this is lost on him.
You get the sense that they might be trying to cover their tracks. After eight years of conservative stewardship of the economy that they supported, media conservatives look at the mess that was left to us, blame it all on the guy who's been in office for 11 months, and attack him for not pursuing the policies that got us into this mess in the first place. This reminds me of the classic definition of insanity "doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results". That's the Republican Party of today, insane!
And the even more right-wing wackos in the tea party movement are even crazier. If anyone is responsible for the problems we face today, it's the Republicans. They should be out there protesting them. Most of them are middle class or poor, and they have taken the brunt of what Republican voodoo economics has has created over the last 25 years or so. Yet are they going after the pople that created the problems? Nope.
This brings me to yet another topic, which I will save for another posting. But think about this, in most countries, an economic decline, especially of the middle class, has typically given rise to right wing ideology. Back to my tea party friends, you keep comparing Obama to Hitler. Actually, it's the other way around. Nazism is more closely aligned to the right than it is to the left. Remember, Hitler came to power, in part, due to the economic difficulties in German after the first world war. And it was the middle class and the poor who were taking the brunt of that and paved the way for Hitler.
It's time to wake up folks, take back our country from the right wing wackos, the rich fat cats, and the corporations. None of them has our (as in the middle class's) best interest at heart. All they care about is lining their own pockets. Unfortunately the money they are lining their pockets with belongs to you and me and the children of the middle class for generations to come. Not that those kids will have to worry about it, because at this rate the palnet will be completely uninhabitable by then anyway. But that's yet another post.
Friday, December 18, 2009
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Health-care Reform ... or rather lack thereof...
I have to wonder, are the Democrats as dumb as they seem? It looks to me like they are in for a beating come the 2010 elections because, among other things, they are blowing it on health-care reform. Seriously, folks, is it just me, or do you see how the Democrats got punked on this one?
Here's the way I see it. The bill that will come out of the Senate should be renamed the "Help the Insurance Companies Screw The American People on Health-care Act of 2009". Seriously, it sends a ton of new people and a ton of money to the insurers and basically provides nothing for us ordinary folks out here trynig to make a living.
As a matter of fact, as I see it, it's going to make things worse. For example, the provision that the Democrats keep pointing to that prohibts the insurance companies from refusing you coverage due to a pre-existing condition sounds great. Until you read it and find out that it allows the insurance companies to charge you up to 3 times as much if you have a pre-existing condition! Boy, let me guess what's going to happen ... everyone is going to have a pre-existing condition, and are going to have to pay more once this goes into effect. That's just the tip of the iceberg. Some of the other things, like the insurance exchange won't go into effect for years, but the taxes and the mandatory coverage all go into effect immediately. Yup, that's right folks, we can wait, but our friends in the insurance lobby made sure that the insurance companies will get all those new subscribers and money right away!
So, in the end, this bill has had any kind of protection from the greedy insurance companies stripped out of it. And any way that more money can be sent into insurance company coffers put into it. So can someone tell me why in gods name any self-respecting Democrat would vote for this piece of junk?
I suspect I know the answer, I think it's fear. Fear that if they don't pass something, that the same thing that happened in 1994 after the last time they failed to pass health-care reform is going to happen again, and I think that they are partially right. I think that they are looking at the same thing happening, but not just if they don't pass anything, but I think it will happen if they pass a piece of junk, like this current bill, too.
I think that they only way to keep the train from running off the cliff in 2010 is to scrap this abomination of a bill and start over. The new bill should be simple (Medicare for all!), it should take effect immediately (how long can it take to set up Medicare for all?), and it needs to help ordinary working folks in this country by actually reducing the cost of their health-care! If the Democrats do that, then they can justifiably say to the American people in 2010, here, here's what we did for you, look at your paycheck every month. Oh, and by the way, the Republicans (and that jerk Lieberman) tried to stop us from helping you! Again, look at your paycheck, it would be smaller if we weren't in power, help us to keep helping you!
What I don't understand is how out of touch the Democrats in Congress really are. All of this seems obvious to me. Pass meaningful health-care reform that takes effect before the 2010 elections, or die. What is it about that they don't understand?
--joerg
Here's the way I see it. The bill that will come out of the Senate should be renamed the "Help the Insurance Companies Screw The American People on Health-care Act of 2009". Seriously, it sends a ton of new people and a ton of money to the insurers and basically provides nothing for us ordinary folks out here trynig to make a living.
As a matter of fact, as I see it, it's going to make things worse. For example, the provision that the Democrats keep pointing to that prohibts the insurance companies from refusing you coverage due to a pre-existing condition sounds great. Until you read it and find out that it allows the insurance companies to charge you up to 3 times as much if you have a pre-existing condition! Boy, let me guess what's going to happen ... everyone is going to have a pre-existing condition, and are going to have to pay more once this goes into effect. That's just the tip of the iceberg. Some of the other things, like the insurance exchange won't go into effect for years, but the taxes and the mandatory coverage all go into effect immediately. Yup, that's right folks, we can wait, but our friends in the insurance lobby made sure that the insurance companies will get all those new subscribers and money right away!
So, in the end, this bill has had any kind of protection from the greedy insurance companies stripped out of it. And any way that more money can be sent into insurance company coffers put into it. So can someone tell me why in gods name any self-respecting Democrat would vote for this piece of junk?
I suspect I know the answer, I think it's fear. Fear that if they don't pass something, that the same thing that happened in 1994 after the last time they failed to pass health-care reform is going to happen again, and I think that they are partially right. I think that they are looking at the same thing happening, but not just if they don't pass anything, but I think it will happen if they pass a piece of junk, like this current bill, too.
I think that they only way to keep the train from running off the cliff in 2010 is to scrap this abomination of a bill and start over. The new bill should be simple (Medicare for all!), it should take effect immediately (how long can it take to set up Medicare for all?), and it needs to help ordinary working folks in this country by actually reducing the cost of their health-care! If the Democrats do that, then they can justifiably say to the American people in 2010, here, here's what we did for you, look at your paycheck every month. Oh, and by the way, the Republicans (and that jerk Lieberman) tried to stop us from helping you! Again, look at your paycheck, it would be smaller if we weren't in power, help us to keep helping you!
What I don't understand is how out of touch the Democrats in Congress really are. All of this seems obvious to me. Pass meaningful health-care reform that takes effect before the 2010 elections, or die. What is it about that they don't understand?
--joerg
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