I disagree that Hillary changes her stance based on popular opinion or desires of the majority, the evidence contradicts this; she has switched back and forth on just about every major political view our county has considered, from abortion to gay marriage to taxes, sometimes multiple times and seemingly on a whim with no regard for polls. This indicates to me that she says whatever the current highest bidder has backed her to say.
Boy, I wish somebody had ever paid her not to support American overseas militarism, especially since she was relentless in pushing Obama towards it.
In other words, this is simply wrong. Hillary has lots of principles that have been consistant through the last decade, some for her entire public life. She was a political activist from a young age and showed principles then, too.
Her voting record in the Senate is near-identical to Bernie Sanders, for pete's sake. Is he also a paid shill changing his opinions from moment to moment?
Is it true that Hillary Clinton, as a public figure and politician, frequently triangulated with her views to seem more acceptable to the public/the party/who she was working with? Sure (and Bill did that too, and so does Obama to a somewhat lesser extent). But to push that to "whatever the current highest bidder" etc etc is nonsensical. Her push for health care is well known. Her push for improvements to early child care is consistent. Her hawkishness is infamous. Part of the reason her about-face on the TPP was considered disingenuous was because she was a well-known advocate for trade. And so on and so forth.
You're making a caricature out of a person. That is incompatible with actually understanding that person.
If that is what Jill Stein is trying to do, I'll eat the laptop I'm typing this on. For one thing, if Jill Stein wanted to be a Democrat, she would be one. Nothing was stopping her before. Her entire campaign (like any Green Party or Libertarian campaign) was nothing but a vanity run, destined to go nowhere, not even the 5% threshold for federal matching funds. For another, my shoelaces have a better chance of getting picked for the Democratic nomination in 2020 than Jill Stein does.
The deep contempt for third parties and their voters in the US confuses me. I would rather imagine that like other Green Party (and Libertarian party) leaders, she was running to help call attention to issues that concern her. Nothing is "destined to go nowhere" until the votes are counted - Donald Trump was destined to go nowhere a year ago.
The Republican party was making a "vanity run" after splitting from the Whigs, once upon a time. Wonder what happened to them?
And to reiterate, the Russian hack worked exactly as intended. The margin in WI, PA, and MI was so small that it can almost certainly be chalked up to people on the left simply refusing to pull the lever for Clinton.
I don't agree. You could say that was already factored in to why those states were so close to begin with. Also, regardless of the situation, if Clinton couldn't get the left to vote for her, it is her fault. The first and most important job of a politician is to win the election. She didn't get the votes where she needed them (and got a ton where she didn't). As long as actual vote fraud didn't occur, the blame ultimately rests on her.
I also disagree that it in any way proven that the Russian government was working towards, actually intended, or expected that Trump was going to win the election. The media likes pretending it did because the media loves Evul Russia stories, but I've yet to see a shred of evidence for it beyond "Trump said a nice thing about Putin that time" and that the DNC hack was purportedly Russian (I frankly don't believe anything that comes out of US intelligence without a third party, since they lie all the time, but for the sake of argument let's say they weren't here). That's pretty weak sauce for a hackjob that was only relevant to the Democratic primaries, and thus not directly relevant to Trump at all.
(The fact that Russia had to scramble to put together a dossier on Trump earlier this year to get some idea as to what he might actually do as President also suggests they weren't really planning for it during the primaries.)
@Ayiekie We will simply have to agree to disagree on every one of your points.
Hum. Well, some of the things I said are easily fact-checked (like the similarity of her voting record to that of Bernie Sanders - they voted the same on 93% of bills while in the Senate), but I'll try one different tack:
There is no such thing as a person who has worked in government for well over two decades who does not have a principle or causes they fight for. None. Maybe they're "corrupt" or in hock to moneyed interests, but nobody is in politics for no other reason than lobbyist largesse. You may not agree with or respect those causes (and neither do I, in some cases), but they do exist. If you can't identify "This is what they believe in, this is the change they are fighting for", then you have allowed yourself to stop seeing that man or woman as a person.
It won't matter for Hillary Clinton - her public career is done, with a legacy of (what I would consider) both good and bad, and the complex judgement of history she'll endure for being the first female presidential candidate (and, of course, being unsuccessful in the election). But thinking of politicians you dislike as if they are real people will give you a better grok on them.
(I hope that didn't come off condescending. Thinking of people with abhorrent political views as people is hard, it's human nature to dehumanise others at the drop of a hat.)
@Ayiekie Hmm...it seems as though you are requesting that I engage. I will respond to the bulk of your comments with a video that was posted several pages back, although i do not believe this even scratches the surface (the video, like Anti-trump adds, only has what she is saying). This is why I say we will have to agree to disagree, because our opinion of true facts are different. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jeHCiVgh-Y8
As far as other your other main point, it seems your are exploring into the realm of psychology. I will only say in response to that, I believe politicians do horrible things because they believe it is for the "greater good". The "greater good" gets them off the hook with their conscience and simultaneously minimalizes the harm they cause in their own minds. It is the great lie leaders of history tell themselves to rationalize atrocities.
Mathematically the vote in those three states looks wrong. I
@smeagolheart can you explain why the math "looks wrong"?
Computer Scientists /Statisticians Urged Hillary Clinton to Challenge Election Results in Three Swing States. Hillary Clinton didn't take the urging, but Jill Stein did agree that it was something to look into.
The group of statisticians, which includes voting-rights attorney John Bonifaz and J. Alex Halderman, the director of the University of Michigan Center for Computer Security and Society, believes they’ve found persuasive evidence that results in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania may have been manipulated or hacked.
The academics presented findings showing that in Wisconsin, Clinton received 7 percent fewer votes in counties that relied on electronic-voting machines compared with counties that used optical scanners and paper ballots. Based on this statistical analysis, Clinton may have been denied as many as 30,000 votes; she lost Wisconsin by 27,000. While it’s important to note the group has not found proof of hacking or manipulation, they are arguing to the campaign that the suspicious pattern merits an independent review
If she inadvertently exposes any more Democratic voter fraud, she may just kiss that opportunity goodbye!
Pretty sure some nobody on youtube's video doesn't qualify as knowing actually what's going on in michigan. But sure that foreign accented guy can spin a good story if you like conspiracy theories.
Yeah, those crazy Russians frauding all our voting methods amitrite?
I didn't think that guy's accent was russian. Just some rando dude who wanted to spread conspiracy theories.
I really should stop trying to be sarcastic in text
Hillary hasn't. Doesn't mean the Democrat establishment didn't. What you came up with is a complete strawman.
The Democratic establishment hasn't done anything either. Jill Stein crowd-funded the recount. I've said from the beginning it's pointless and will mean nothing. There IS NO effort on the part of the Democratic Party to overturn these election results (such as they are). Jill Stein is as far removed from the Democratic Party establishment as Mercury is to Pluto. She isn't some cipher being used to do their bidding.
"Changing the result" was never the point of the exercise. The object is to weaken the office of president by undermining claims of legitimacy. On the grounds that a weak president can do less damage. Of course, that does long term damage to both the "parties of government", which is why the Democrats are so ambivalent about it.
Much like the "he wasn't born in America, therefore can't be president rhetoric" eight (four?) years ago that a Republican outsider started so it wouldn't taint the main party.
@Ayiekie Hmm...it seems as though you are requesting that I engage. I will respond to the bulk of your comments with a video that was posted several pages back, although i do not believe this even scratches the surface (the video, like Anti-trump adds, only has what she is saying). This is why I say we will have to agree to disagree, because our opinion of true facts are different. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jeHCiVgh-Y8
I was more trying to sway you to not have reductionist views of politicians you dislike, because you seem reasonable enough that you might (if not now, then sometime) rethink it. As for the video, I won't watch it, partially because I departed in the last post from trying to sway your opinion on Clinton, but also because a) I have never seen a hit piece youtube clip that was worth the time to watch, and b) my router got fried by lightning earlier in the week and my emergency backup internet is too bad and bandwidth-limited to watch videos anyway.
That being said, there is no "opinion of true facts". There are facts, and there are opinions. People do choose to disregard facts when it suits them, but facts are facts nonetheless.
As far as other your other main point, it seems your are exploring into the realm of psychology. I will only say in response to that, I believe politicians do horrible things because they believe it is for the "greater good". The "greater good" gets them off the hook with their conscience and simultaneously minimalizes the harm they cause in their own minds. It is the great lie leaders of history tell themselves to rationalize atrocities.
In one final appeal, I will note - could I fairly use something this simplistic to accurately describe your thinking and why you take actions? If not, why is it likely to be accurate for anyone else?
Since it's under discussion, 538 very effectively pointed out the holes in the evidence that the vote was "hacked" or otherwise massively fraudulent, but then made the argument for why an audit of the vote could be valuable anyway:
(In the previous article, linked to from that one, they also showed that the evidence for irregularities at polls with voting machines evapourates upon closer examination.)
@Ayiekie The video simply shows Clinton taking previous stance on very important political that contradict her current stances, and show that she votes very differently compared to how she has voted before. These are facts that I believe to be true. You have said you don't believe these facts are true. That is what I meant by opinions of true facts. Regardless, if you are not going to watch, there is no point in continuing this conversation. I certainly do believe that I find ways to justify my mistakes. But I also choose to hold true to standards that are higher than my own beliefs. I do not put my own beliefs higher than someone else's rights, which is what the "greater good" philosophy permits you to do.
Since it's under discussion, 538 very effectively pointed out the holes in the evidence that the vote was "hacked" or otherwise massively fraudulent, but then made the argument for why an audit of the vote could be valuable anyway:
(In the previous article, linked to from that one, they also showed that the evidence for irregularities at polls with voting machines evapourates upon closer examination.)
I'd agree with that. I don't know, I want to know if there was hacking, ineptitude, or malfunctions.
I'm nearly 100% unconcerned about in person voting fraud, I am concerned with potential machine failure or manipulation.
Election watchers can verify things all day long but when the machines start counting... That's when the "magic" might happen. So I want to know if the paper ballots match what the machines are saying or not.
A couple times, I've heard people mention that they knew people who voted Republican, but who did not realize that cutting Social Security and Medicare have been GOP goals for many years now. They assumed that the Republican politicians they voted for would never oppose the programs they liked.
But that's just two examples of purely anecdotal evidence.
A couple times, I've heard people mention that they knew people who voted Republican, but who did not realize that cutting Social Security and Medicare have been GOP goals for many years now. They assumed that the Republican politicians they voted for would never oppose the programs they liked.
But that's just two examples of purely anecdotal evidence.
This is mostly because voting for Republicans has very little to do with economic issues, in the end. Republican policies, when taken on their own in polls, consistently tank. People vote for them because they have a "sense" that their taxes won't go up, and for a myriad of other reasons, which I'll leave to the individual to figure out. But make NO mistake. Paul Ryan and his House Republicans have one goal in mind, and it's the absolute dismantling of the New Deal and aspects of the Johnson Administration. Medicare, one of the principle bedrocks of the social contract, is first on the list. Then Social Security.
Personally, I have no respect, tolerance, or sympathy for those who have voted Republican and didn't know this was coming down the pike. To hold that belief is to live in complete ignorance of the last 30 years of conservative politics. These people are going to find out damn quickly what the consequences of their vote are. But that's rather the point. They are all for taking social safety nets away from "those" people (minorities, the poor) but go into a hypocritical rage when they realize that maybe, just maybe, mom's nursing home care is now in danger, or that dad might have to move back into their house because of he can't afford his medical bills. Just the tip of the iceberg.
@jjstraka34: My position on Social Security and Medicare is actually much closer to the Republican position than the Democratic position.
For me, it's not about "those people." It's about cost: these are unusually large and expensive programs that cover a longer period of time than they were intended to, and I think the money would be better spent elsewhere.
Life expectancy was not nearly as high when Social Security and Medicare were created, yet the retirement age remains the same. This means these two programs are covering people for far longer than they used to. The postwar population boom also helped expand the program.
Part of this is my own self-interest. I'm a millenial, and millenials are actually the poorest generation in the U.S. considering the amount of student loan debt many of us are in. We can't actually look forward to these programs when we're older; they're projected to fail due to budget constraints long before we ever reach the retirement age. I'd be a little more okay with the programs if I knew I would ever get to benefit from them.
We can't just assume people are bigots because they disagree with us. There are many reasons people hold the positions they do.
I don't support privatizing them--that would be too extreme, and leave too many folks out in the cold--but I do support paring them down gradually.
The idea that they are going broke is self-fulfilling myth that the right has been pushing for years to undermine trust in government. It's true many younger people don't BELIEVE they are going to see Social Security, but that was precisely the tactic. Social Security is solvent for years to come, and the ONLY thing it would take to save it in perpetuity would be to raise the income cap it is taxed at. Millionaires are done paying Social Security taxes halfway through January. You don't pay anything into it at all after $118,000.
There is only one reason you wouldn't get to benefit from them (which you have already started paying into since the moment you held a job): The right-wing plan to dismantle and undermine the systems over the course of decades. Regardless, you are probably going to get your wish. And then people will understand the societal stability they provided and just how ridiculous things will get when they're gone.
I offer this testimonial from a reader of the liberal news site TPM on what the real-world consequences of what the repeal of the Affordable Care Act would mean to him and his family, without comment:
"I'm a longtime reader. Thank you for your wonderful reporting and analysis over so many years. I am prompted write to you for the first time because I appreciate very much your attempt to closely track the GOP's efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act."
So many times in these discussions words fail to capture the stakes of the issue. When we speak of 20 million, or 23 million people who may "lose their health insurance" if the ACA is repealed, I suspect most of your readers absorb that as a useful data point and then, quite naturally, move on. Their eyes slide to the sentence that follows.
I am writing in the hope that I can get your readers to pause for a moment and consider what this loss truly means, behind the abstractions.
My wife has advanced colo-rectal cancer. She was diagnosed in 2008 when our three children were 3, 2 and 9 months old.
At the time the only insurance available to her was California's Major Risk Insurance Program (MRIP). This was a program designed at the state level to address the insurance needs of people like my wife who have pre-existing conditions (she happens to have a genetic mutation that can lead to colo-rectal cancer). MRIP was better than nothing, but it was paltry: it had an annual cap of $75,000 per year. That first year, we blew through this cap by February. Same thing the second and third years, 2009 and 2010. All the rest of our medical bills -- for multiple surgeries, hospital stays, chemotherapy, radiation, CT-scans, etc. -- we had to pay entirely out of pocket. In 2011, to our huge relief, the ACA came into effect. Amid all the pain and the heartache and soothing our children and long days and nights and fears for the future, we at least knew that we had help with the expenses. We felt our country had our backs. For many families, if the GOP repeals the ACA it means that they will be thrown back on state programs like MRIP again, at best. Politicians will be able to say proudly that everyone with a pre-existing condition can still get insurance! But without the structure of the ACA and its mandate they will know full well that these insurance programs will severely limit what they cover. Private insurance plans would simply not have large enough pools to do better. State programs would lack funding. People like us would be left in the lurch once again.
This doesn't just mean that "millions will lose their health insurance."
it means someone's mother coughing blood. Or a father groaning in pain and yelling behind a closed door. It means parents or other family members arguing because after one of them missed a promotion at work -- because of all the time spent taking care of a loved one. It means slammed doors. It means missed dinners. Most of all, it means a child somewhere, in some inconsequential town, crying, heaving sobs into his pillow, because his parent is going to die. Another child sitting in stunned silence in class, not listening to a word the teacher says.
I want TPM's readers to visualize this as concretely as possible whenever they consider millions losing their health insurance. Of course I would like members of the GOP leadership and the Trump transition team to visualize this too. Repealing a health insurance program that has been working for millions of people is worse than proposing something ineffective. It demonstrates outright a willingness to be cruel. To hurt people unnecessarily. There is no other word for it. It is heartless.
I understand that many people rely on the affordable care act. I think most people are aware, unless they live in a cardboard box, that there are people who would be without healthcare if this was removed. But 20 million is not even close to our population, and there are still millions of Americans who don't have health insurance. Some estimates put it at 1 out of every 10 Americans do not have health insurance. The affordable care act was good because it opened the can of worms. But we need to acknowledge that, overall, it needs a lot of improvement, and we still have a long way to go. I honestly do not know why there is this huge scare tactic from the media that Trump is planning on leaving 20 million Americans without insurance. His policies are about changing, reforming, or replacing the plan, not abolishing it. I do not like how he plans to do it, with HSAs and other corporate-friendly methods, but abolishing Obamacare without a replacement is just a lie. He is planning on putting that responsibility back on the states and removing it's control from the Feds, which, in general, is a principle that I support--although I believe he will manipulate it to suit his own ends. https://www.greatagain.gov/policy/healthcare.html
Reporting tonight that the CIA has confirmed Russia inserted themselves in the American election with the express purpose of helping Trump win. If I ever hear another Republican or right-winger talk about "patriotism" again in my life, the conversation is simply going to end then and there. If anyone in the Trump campaign, or Trump himself, colluded in this, it amounts to nothing less than treason.
Reporting tonight that the CIA has confirmed Russia inserted themselves in the American election with the express purpose of helping Trump win. If I ever hear another Republican or right-winger talk about "patriotism" again in my life, the conversation is simply going to end then and there. If anyone in the Trump campaign, or Trump himself, colluded in this, it amounts to nothing less than treason.
Anyway, Social Security should be a right, it's not in danger. If it is in danger, buy less tanks the army doesn't need. The main danger it is in is the GOP wants to privatize it. That means they want to get their donor's private companies a piece of the pie. They want to cash in on your social security.
Social Security needs to be a priority. And healthcare. That should be a right too. People need to demand this stuff. If we are getting business as usual tax cuts for the wealthy, bailouts for wall street, or whatever our politicians must be held accountable to the people and not their donors.
Reporting tonight that the CIA has confirmed Russia inserted themselves in the American election with the express purpose of helping Trump win. If I ever hear another Republican or right-winger talk about "patriotism" again in my life, the conversation is simply going to end then and there. If anyone in the Trump campaign, or Trump himself, colluded in this, it amounts to nothing less than treason.
Anyway, Social Security should be a right, it's not in danger. If it is in danger, buy less tanks the army doesn't need. The main danger it is in is the GOP wants to privatize it. That means they want to get their donor's private companies a piece of the pie. They want to cash in on your social security.
Social Security needs to be a priority. And healthcare. That should be a right too. People need to demand this stuff. If we are getting business as usual tax cuts for the wealthy, bailouts for wall street, or whatever our politicians must be held accountable to the people and not their donors.
The way healthcare in this country is handled is nothing less than an obscenity. Obamacare is FAR from perfect, but at least he made some good faith efforts to get people covered. There is no GOP plan. Health savings accounts are not a "plan".
As more concrete evidence comes out about Russia's involvement in Trump's win, the more of a cloud of illegitimacy it foments. While this is shaping up to be the most recent case of this, it has happened before. Nixon scuttled the Vietnam peace talks as a candidate, and Johnson was well aware, and all but said he was guilty of treason. Reagan's foreign policy team pushed for Iran to keep the hostages and ignore Carter's overtures and plan the release to make Reagan look like a hero. There is no precedent for this scurrilous behavior on the other side. And aside from the complete undermining of US interests, why exactly is it that these sinister foreign actors always seem to want to help the Republican win??
Comments
In other words, this is simply wrong. Hillary has lots of principles that have been consistant through the last decade, some for her entire public life. She was a political activist from a young age and showed principles then, too.
Her voting record in the Senate is near-identical to Bernie Sanders, for pete's sake. Is he also a paid shill changing his opinions from moment to moment?
Is it true that Hillary Clinton, as a public figure and politician, frequently triangulated with her views to seem more acceptable to the public/the party/who she was working with? Sure (and Bill did that too, and so does Obama to a somewhat lesser extent). But to push that to "whatever the current highest bidder" etc etc is nonsensical. Her push for health care is well known. Her push for improvements to early child care is consistent. Her hawkishness is infamous. Part of the reason her about-face on the TPP was considered disingenuous was because she was a well-known advocate for trade. And so on and so forth.
You're making a caricature out of a person. That is incompatible with actually understanding that person.
(And yes, this is true for Trump, too.)
We will simply have to agree to disagree on every one of your points.
The Republican party was making a "vanity run" after splitting from the Whigs, once upon a time. Wonder what happened to them?
I also disagree that it in any way proven that the Russian government was working towards, actually intended, or expected that Trump was going to win the election. The media likes pretending it did because the media loves Evul Russia stories, but I've yet to see a shred of evidence for it beyond "Trump said a nice thing about Putin that time" and that the DNC hack was purportedly Russian (I frankly don't believe anything that comes out of US intelligence without a third party, since they lie all the time, but for the sake of argument let's say they weren't here). That's pretty weak sauce for a hackjob that was only relevant to the Democratic primaries, and thus not directly relevant to Trump at all.
(The fact that Russia had to scramble to put together a dossier on Trump earlier this year to get some idea as to what he might actually do as President also suggests they weren't really planning for it during the primaries.)
There is no such thing as a person who has worked in government for well over two decades who does not have a principle or causes they fight for. None. Maybe they're "corrupt" or in hock to moneyed interests, but nobody is in politics for no other reason than lobbyist largesse. You may not agree with or respect those causes (and neither do I, in some cases), but they do exist. If you can't identify "This is what they believe in, this is the change they are fighting for", then you have allowed yourself to stop seeing that man or woman as a person.
It won't matter for Hillary Clinton - her public career is done, with a legacy of (what I would consider) both good and bad, and the complex judgement of history she'll endure for being the first female presidential candidate (and, of course, being unsuccessful in the election). But thinking of politicians you dislike as if they are real people will give you a better grok on them.
(I hope that didn't come off condescending. Thinking of people with abhorrent political views as people is hard, it's human nature to dehumanise others at the drop of a hat.)
Hmm...it seems as though you are requesting that I engage. I will respond to the bulk of your comments with a video that was posted several pages back, although i do not believe this even scratches the surface (the video, like Anti-trump adds, only has what she is saying). This is why I say we will have to agree to disagree, because our opinion of true facts are different.
As far as other your other main point, it seems your are exploring into the realm of psychology. I will only say in response to that, I believe politicians do horrible things because they believe it is for the "greater good". The "greater good" gets them off the hook with their conscience and simultaneously minimalizes the harm they cause in their own minds. It is the great lie leaders of history tell themselves to rationalize atrocities.
The group of statisticians, which includes voting-rights attorney John Bonifaz and J. Alex Halderman, the director of the University of Michigan Center for Computer Security and Society, believes they’ve found persuasive evidence that results in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania may have been manipulated or hacked.
The academics presented findings showing that in Wisconsin, Clinton received 7 percent fewer votes in counties that relied on electronic-voting machines compared with counties that used optical scanners and paper ballots. Based on this statistical analysis, Clinton may have been denied as many as 30,000 votes; she lost Wisconsin by 27,000. While it’s important to note the group has not found proof of hacking or manipulation, they are arguing to the campaign that the suspicious pattern merits an independent review
@booinyoureyes
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/11/activists-urge-hillary-clinton-to-challenge-election-results.html
That being said, there is no "opinion of true facts". There are facts, and there are opinions. People do choose to disregard facts when it suits them, but facts are facts nonetheless. In one final appeal, I will note - could I fairly use something this simplistic to accurately describe your thinking and why you take actions? If not, why is it likely to be accurate for anyone else?
fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-i-support-an-election-audit-even-though-its-unlikely-to-change-the-outcome/
(In the previous article, linked to from that one, they also showed that the evidence for irregularities at polls with voting machines evapourates upon closer examination.)
The video simply shows Clinton taking previous stance on very important political that contradict her current stances, and show that she votes very differently compared to how she has voted before.
These are facts that I believe to be true. You have said you don't believe these facts are true. That is what I meant by opinions of true facts. Regardless, if you are not going to watch, there is no point in continuing this conversation.
I certainly do believe that I find ways to justify my mistakes. But I also choose to hold true to standards that are higher than my own beliefs. I do not put my own beliefs higher than someone else's rights, which is what the "greater good" philosophy permits you to do.
I'm nearly 100% unconcerned about in person voting fraud, I am concerned with potential machine failure or manipulation.
Election watchers can verify things all day long but when the machines start counting... That's when the "magic" might happen. So I want to know if the paper ballots match what the machines are saying or not.
Buyers remorse yet?
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/gop-introduces-plan-to-massively-cut-social-security-222200857.html
But that's just two examples of purely anecdotal evidence.
Personally, I have no respect, tolerance, or sympathy for those who have voted Republican and didn't know this was coming down the pike. To hold that belief is to live in complete ignorance of the last 30 years of conservative politics. These people are going to find out damn quickly what the consequences of their vote are. But that's rather the point. They are all for taking social safety nets away from "those" people (minorities, the poor) but go into a hypocritical rage when they realize that maybe, just maybe, mom's nursing home care is now in danger, or that dad might have to move back into their house because of he can't afford his medical bills. Just the tip of the iceberg.
For me, it's not about "those people." It's about cost: these are unusually large and expensive programs that cover a longer period of time than they were intended to, and I think the money would be better spent elsewhere.
Life expectancy was not nearly as high when Social Security and Medicare were created, yet the retirement age remains the same. This means these two programs are covering people for far longer than they used to. The postwar population boom also helped expand the program.
Part of this is my own self-interest. I'm a millenial, and millenials are actually the poorest generation in the U.S. considering the amount of student loan debt many of us are in. We can't actually look forward to these programs when we're older; they're projected to fail due to budget constraints long before we ever reach the retirement age. I'd be a little more okay with the programs if I knew I would ever get to benefit from them.
We can't just assume people are bigots because they disagree with us. There are many reasons people hold the positions they do.
There is only one reason you wouldn't get to benefit from them (which you have already started paying into since the moment you held a job): The right-wing plan to dismantle and undermine the systems over the course of decades. Regardless, you are probably going to get your wish. And then people will understand the societal stability they provided and just how ridiculous things will get when they're gone.
"I'm a longtime reader. Thank you for your wonderful reporting and analysis over so many years.
I am prompted write to you for the first time because I appreciate very much your attempt to closely track the GOP's efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act."
So many times in these discussions words fail to capture the stakes of the issue. When we speak of 20 million, or 23 million people who may "lose their health insurance" if the ACA is repealed, I suspect most of your readers absorb that as a useful data point and then, quite naturally, move on. Their eyes slide to the sentence that follows.
I am writing in the hope that I can get your readers to pause for a moment and consider what this loss truly means, behind the abstractions.
My wife has advanced colo-rectal cancer. She was diagnosed in 2008 when our three children were 3, 2 and 9 months old.
At the time the only insurance available to her was California's Major Risk Insurance Program (MRIP). This was a program designed at the state level to address the insurance needs of people like my wife who have pre-existing conditions (she happens to have a genetic mutation that can lead to colo-rectal cancer). MRIP was better than nothing, but it was paltry: it had an annual cap of $75,000 per year. That first year, we blew through this cap by February. Same thing the second and third years, 2009 and 2010. All the rest of our medical bills -- for multiple surgeries, hospital stays, chemotherapy, radiation, CT-scans, etc. -- we had to pay entirely out of pocket. In 2011, to our huge relief, the ACA came into effect. Amid all the pain and the heartache and soothing our children and long days and nights and fears for the future, we at least knew that we had help with the expenses. We felt our country had our backs.
For many families, if the GOP repeals the ACA it means that they will be thrown back on state programs like MRIP again, at best. Politicians will be able to say proudly that everyone with a pre-existing condition can still get insurance! But without the structure of the ACA and its mandate they will know full well that these insurance programs will severely limit what they cover. Private insurance plans would simply not have large enough pools to do better. State programs would lack funding. People like us would be left in the lurch once again.
This doesn't just mean that "millions will lose their health insurance."
it means someone's mother coughing blood. Or a father groaning in pain and yelling behind a closed door. It means parents or other family members arguing because after one of them missed a promotion at work -- because of all the time spent taking care of a loved one. It means slammed doors. It means missed dinners. Most of all, it means a child somewhere, in some inconsequential town, crying, heaving sobs into his pillow, because his parent is going to die. Another child sitting in stunned silence in class, not listening to a word the teacher says.
I want TPM's readers to visualize this as concretely as possible whenever they consider millions losing their health insurance. Of course I would like members of the GOP leadership and the Trump transition team to visualize this too. Repealing a health insurance program that has been working for millions of people is worse than proposing something ineffective. It demonstrates outright a willingness to be cruel. To hurt people unnecessarily. There is no other word for it. It is heartless.
But 20 million is not even close to our population, and there are still millions of Americans who don't have health insurance. Some estimates put it at 1 out of every 10 Americans do not have health insurance.
The affordable care act was good because it opened the can of worms. But we need to acknowledge that, overall, it needs a lot of improvement, and we still have a long way to go.
I honestly do not know why there is this huge scare tactic from the media that Trump is planning on leaving 20 million Americans without insurance. His policies are about changing, reforming, or replacing the plan, not abolishing it.
I do not like how he plans to do it, with HSAs and other corporate-friendly methods, but abolishing Obamacare without a replacement is just a lie. He is planning on putting that responsibility back on the states and removing it's control from the Feds, which, in general, is a principle that I support--although I believe he will manipulate it to suit his own ends.
https://www.greatagain.gov/policy/healthcare.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/obama-orders-review-of-russian-hacking-during-presidential-campaign/2016/12/09/31d6b300-be2a-11e6-94ac-3d324840106c_story.html?tid=sm_tw&utm_term=.00a396d52e96
Anyway, Social Security should be a right, it's not in danger. If it is in danger, buy less tanks the army doesn't need. The main danger it is in is the GOP wants to privatize it. That means they want to get their donor's private companies a piece of the pie. They want to cash in on your social security.
Social Security needs to be a priority. And healthcare. That should be a right too. People need to demand this stuff. If we are getting business as usual tax cuts for the wealthy, bailouts for wall street, or whatever our politicians must be held accountable to the people and not their donors.