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BillBrasky Memorial Political Chat Thread

birdman said:
There is basically an order of operations though, right? If we don't have control of our own elections, how can we ever hope to control health care policy. Step 1) Get the Russians out of our elections, Step 2) get money and corporations out of our elections, Step 3) fix the completely broken health care system, Step 4) Profit?
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No. There’s not. Healthcare costs have been out of control for a long time, well before 2016 , and there will *always* be other shit that Democrats claim takes higher precedence than economics and poverty. Always. That’s not acceptable. *If* there is going to be hierarchy, than healthcare and poverty are way more important. More important than any candidate, and election
 
Louis Gossett Jr said:
I see why Ph is so sick of you, you've got the progressive stick up your ass and it gives you a jolt anytime you can try to find something to be aggrieved about. I was saying that the cost of the testing is even less than 8 dollars making it even more ridiculous. We deal with this all the time where a company comes and says we have a test, it does this this and this. What is the cost, oh its only 200 dollars a test. Ok, well it can't be used in global health your costs need to be less than a dollar so your target is the US healthcare market and overseas to private companies like mining.
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Everything in your post read as you defending the cost of the test, and that’s how I responded to it. Don’t drag PH into this.
 
myDeaconmyhand said:
No. There’s not. Healthcare costs have been out of control for a long time, well before 2016 , and there will *always* be other shit that Democrats claim takes higher precedence than economics and poverty. Always. That’s not acceptable. *If* there is going to be hierarchy, than healthcare and poverty are way more important. More important than any candidate, and election
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Ok, but...How do you effect public policy or health care policy if your democracy has collapsed? You basically have 4 avenues for affecting public policy, 1) voting, 2) making purchasing decisions to try and influence how business and corporations behave, 3) trying to influence how other people vote and act as consumers through education and your own actions, and 4) running for office or making a career as a public servant in some capacity. Three of the 4 of those at least partially require functional electoral systems and Russians, or the GOP, or both in cahoots, fucking up the electoral system is big and urgent problem that dominates our ability as a society to address any other problem.

Beside, Democrats have been trying to fix the heath care system for decades, mostly unsuccessful or incomplete attempts, but even so they've been working on it for a long time. I'm not sure where you get the idea that the party has not had the issue at the top of it's priority list for ages.
 
Education and misinformation have pretty much doomed democracy. I would say that in the past the best way to show people that there is a different and better way was to actually show them. Usually can accomplish something like that on a small scale at the state level. Thinking something like legalized marijuana didn't lead to gangs and violence or whatever dumb shit people believed. In addition while it may not be the here and now and ultimate end goal fast enough, incremental changes allow people to accept more and once something is accepted its a lot harder to put it back in the bag. Like in ACA and pre-existing conditions, its one of the reasons why overturning is such a losing issue. With that said I think its becoming a losing battle because not only do you need to show people that something didn't doom them and was good for them, you also need to combat whatever brainwashing crazy is being put into their head, the I hate obamacare but like the ACA effect.
 
Political Chat Thread - All Topics & Rants Welcome

That’s a good post Birdman, thank you for responding. I think the notion of America having a “functional democracy” is a myth of American exceptionalism. Our election systems have been broken for a long time, but we have normalized and accepted their brokenness. What has or could Russian “interference” do that’s any worse than the Supreme Court refusing to re-count Floridas votes, giving the election to W. Bush? Or dozens of states purposefully closing polling stations in poor and black neighborhoods, so that innumerable voters are blatantly disenfranchised, Kemp keeping new voting machines wrapped up in warehouses while broken voting machines created long wait times in inner city polling places. On top of all that, we’ve got state by state gerrymandering that’s so bad it’s created Democratic inequality scientifically measured as worse than nearly every other country in the world.

In the context of *all that*, I do actually think that the attention being given to Russian interference is ridiculous, and very indicative of Americans being more interested in Cold War adversarial foreign policy than fixing our own damn infrastructure.
 
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That is why controlling the cost of Health Care is actually more important than who pays for it
 
ChrisL68 said:
That is why controlling the cost of Health Care is actually more important than who pays for it
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unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the way Biden's health care platform is prioritizing things

some good measures to control drug prices, but nothing about other care costs on his health care plan webpage

mostly about expanding coverage through the public option
 
myDeaconmyhand said:
That’s a good post Birdman, thank you for responding. I think the notion of America having a “functional democracy” is a myth of American exceptionalism. Our election systems have been broken for a long time, but we have normalized and accepted their brokenness. What has or could Russian “interference” do that’s any worse than the Supreme Court refusing to re-count Floridas votes, giving the election to W. Bush? Or dozens of states purposefully closing polling stations in poor and black neighborhoods, so that innumerable voters are blatantly disenfranchised, Kemp keeping new voting machines wrapped up in warehouses while broken voting machines created long wait times in inner city polling places. On top of all that, we’ve got state by state gerrymandering that’s so bad it’s created Democratic inequality scientifically measured as worse than nearly every other country in the world.

In the context of *all that*, I do actually think that the attention being given to Russian interference is ridiculous, and very indicative of Americans being more interested in Cold War adversarial foreign policy than fixing our own damn infrastructure.
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I still think you are missing the point on the Russia front that the big problem in 2016 was not the Russians, but that the GOP at best gleefully ignored the issue and accepted their help, but more likely actively collaborated with them then actively inhibited any effort to prevent it from happening again. The Russia election interference story is really more about the GOP's actions and behavior than is it about Russia...or at least it should be. It is an extension of Kemp's egregious behavior in Georgia and the nationwide gerrymandering tactics of the GOP in the last 10 years but it gets more attention because it is more obvious.
 
JuiceCrewAllStar said:
unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the way Biden's health care platform is prioritizing things

some good measures to control drug prices, but nothing about other care costs on his health care plan webpage

mostly about expanding coverage through the public option
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Expanded public option would reimburse at Medicare rates, which would lower healthcare costs, and would hopefully have a domino effect as it became more popular. Lowering medicare to 60 would do the same for a high usage group of consumers.
 
I thought you were talking about direct intervention in health care cost controls and transparency not some three-step indirect method to get there
 
JuiceCrewAllStar said:
I thought you were talking about direct intervention in health care cost controls and transparency not some three-step indirect method to get there
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The cool thing about incrementalism is how we're always doing it yet it can never be considered a failure.
 
Quick rant....

Trump knowingly allowed a pandemic to decimate America, through his continued misinformation and woeful Governmental preparation. He also, having been confirmed by a number of sources, made horribly disparaging remarks about soldiers and fallen soldiers. His character is so suspect that every one that knows him thinks he is corrupt, insane and has no allegiance to America (mostly himself, maybe Putin).

People will still vote for him, I just can’t comprehend. Why are Americans so “team oriented” (Rs & Ds)?
 
JuiceCrewAllStar said:
I thought you were talking about direct intervention in health care cost controls and transparency not some three-step indirect method to get there
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M4A would control costs through the reimbursement process would it not?
 
myDeaconmyhand said:
In the context of *all that*, I do actually think that the attention being given to Russian interference is ridiculous, and very indicative of Americans being more interested in Cold War adversarial foreign policy than fixing our own damn infrastructure.
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I mean the extent of the Russian interference last time was like $150k spent by trolls on facebook, right? Seems like we had a weeee bit of an overreaction to internet trolling
 
We used to be Team America (F YEAH)

now we're team anti science, anti expertise, and self centered... and everyone else.
 
stugotz said:
I mean the extent of the Russian interference last time was like $150k spent by trolls on facebook, right? Seems like we had a weeee bit of an overreaction to internet trolling
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Well that and the Russian malware they found in two Florida county's election software, which is capable of deleting votes undetected.
 
BillBrasky said:
Well that and the Russian malware they found in two Florida county's election software, which is capable of deleting votes undetected.
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So like $150K in Facebook ads and possible vote tampering in the past or going forward.
 
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