In just about every comment I make, I include links to resources that support my opinions. Whenever you see colored text, those are hyperlinks. You're obviously free to differ, and also free to provide citations to support why you disagree.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Medical loss ratio' is what you're talking about.
And the insurance industry has already figured out the way around it.
Don't believe me? Don't want to take my word for it? You don't have to. Go call Wendell Potter and Lawrence O'Donnell Iiars:
On Countdown with Keith Olbermann, whistleblower Wendell Potter talks with Lawrence O'Donnell about where the con game (medical loss ratio, the amount of money insurers must spend on health care) is in the legislation, and how it will enable insurance companies to continue to price gauge and keep obscene profits instead of delivering affordable and quality medical care to policy-holders.
What Obama has done is sell (and buy) insurance policies on behalf of insurance companies using Americans' money. Over-priced, lousy insurance policies, at that. That's a pretty neat trick, btw, to sell and buy. It's like playing chess with yourself.
Having insurance doesn't mean getting healthcare. BIG DIFFERENCE.
There are no cost controls in Obama's legislation, much less mechanisms for lowering the costs of medical care. No controls over co-pays, no controls on deductibles. The only "first step" this is is toward ending all public health programs. This goes in the wrong direction. It institutionalizes, sets in concrete, the privatization of healthcare and the insurance industry as the gatekeeper to who can access affordable quality medical treatment. If you think otherwise, then explain how, step-by-step, you see getting to affordable, quality medical care for everyone from ACA. Lay it out how you think that's going to happen.
With the nation going bankrupt, this is a first step toward ENDING all public healthcare programs. What we're going to see first is a state-by-state curtailment of Medicaid services.
If you think a Republican president would work to repeal Obama's healthcare legislation, then you need to ask yourself why Obama couldn't/wouldn't work to get the real healthcare reform that voters put him and Democrats into office to get.
FWIW, Obama's healthcare was designed by the rightwing's Heritage Foundation. If Republicans were to repeal it, they would get pass it again under their own name, with a new title, and neither you nor Republican voters would know the true origin -- Republican voters would love it because it had an 'R' on it, and you would hate it because of that 'R' on it.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Obama and the DLC-controlled Democratic Party got the healthcare legislation through that the insurance industry and PhRma wanted. ACA originated in the rightwing think tank, the Heritage Foundation.
From Amy Goodman's interview with whistleblower Wendell Potter, former CIGNA executive:
AMY GOODMAN: But don’t the insurance companies like this legislation?
WENDELL POTTER: They do. And that’s why this will not be repealed. They like a lot about it. This legislation, we call it "healthcare reform," but it doesn’t really reform the system. There are a lot of good things in there that does make some of the practices of the insurance industry illegal, things that should have been made illegal a long time ago, so that—
AMY GOODMAN: Like?
WENDELL POTTER:—for that matter, there are good things here. But it doesn’t reform the system. It is built around our health insurance system, as the President said. And they want to keep it in place, because it also guarantees that they will have a lot of new members and billions of dollars in new revenue in the years to come.
AMY GOODMAN: How does it ensure that?
WENDELL POTTER: One of the—the core component of this—and it’s kind of ironic, but the one thing that the Republicans and conservatives are saying they want to repeal is the provision that we all have to buy coverage from private insurance companies.
AMY GOODMAN: Like we do for auto insurance.
WENDELL POTTER: Exactly, right. And they’re citing or they’re saying that that’s unconstitutional. That’s also all for show, because it is just an effort to try to, in a sense, turn people away from the idea of reform. It sounds complicated, but it’s part of the insurance companies’ strategy.
The only "start" that ACA is is the institutionalization of insurance companies as the gatekeepers to medical care. Insurance companies add nothing to the relationship between someone who is sick and someone who can provide treatment. Insurance companies exist to make profits off of DENYING care.
I've never been impressed with the analogy of car insurance to health insurance, because for one thing people don't have to drive.
Perhaps a more equivalent comparison with healthcare in this democracy where everyone needs medical treatment throughout their lifetime might be other necessities for survival, such as food, water, and shelter (protection from the elements). We subsidize food costs, heating oil expenses, housing, because it's necessary for human survival.
There are resources that should be nationalized, such as water and oil and land. They belong to all of us, as our birthright, to share, and not for the 1% to take and sell them for profit, for their own private gain.
There are services which we recognize are necessary, like fire-fighting and policing, that are non-profit. Or used to be. We chipped in through our taxes to pay for these services, in order to get these services for a reasonable price.
The same should be true for medical treatment. When Americans say, "Don't touch my Medicare", that is what they are saying that they want.
Obama took single payer (Medicare For All) off the table, because if the goal is to get affordable quality medical care for all then everything else pales in comparison. He's preserving an anachronistic and failed insurance industry and employer-provided system for medical care. It's government-sanctioned racketeering.
Insurance adds NOTHING to the medical model. The insurance industry is the 'Don Fanucci' (Godfather, Part II -- "I don't want a lot...Just enough to wet my beak") of medical care, letting you get medical care only if you pay them a gratuity up front.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
health insurance ≠ medical treatment
Obama's healthcare legislation doesn't control costs and doesn't deliver medical treatment to everyone (not even those who think they're going to get it). ACA Unlikely to Stem Medical Bankruptcies
People who voted for Obama and Democrats voted to get affordable, quality medical treatment. That was NOT a vote to protect and further enrich the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. Voters did NOT send Obama and Democrats into power to entrench the insurance industry as the gatekeepers to being able to get medical treatment. Voters did NOT send Obama and Democrats to Washington to continue tying insurance benefits to their employment.
Yet that is precisely what Obama and the DLC-controlled Democrats did.
Meet The New 1%: - Healthcare CEOs replace bankers as America's best paid:
Pity Wall Street's bankers. Once the highest-paid bosses in the land, they are now also-rans. The real money is in healthcare and drugs, according to the latest survey of executive pay. One example is Joel Gemunder, CEO Omnicare, who had a total pay package in 2010 worth $98 million.
As one who has enjoyed a "brief inside view of Dem party politics" as you claim, you know that you do not rise within either political party unless you have run the gauntlet and proven you're one of the team. You have to buy into the group think, and that group think accepts the status quo that they are beholden to transnational corporations.
Howard Dean isn't any prize. He talks a good populist game, but he's as much a corporate Democrat when push comes to shove as any DLCer. Dean wants desperately to be in with the DLC insiders, to play with the big boys so badly, but they don't want him.
Most voters judge politicians by their personalities and mistakenly assume politicians' ideological positions for their own when they've decided they personally like the politician. That's certainly true of Howard Dean.
Howard Dean's a nice guy, but he's not a liberal and definitely not 'married' to what I would say are sacrosanct Democratic Party positions, like pro-choice and public health care. He's a politician, just like all the rest of them (the Ickes, the Shrums, the Davises). And even Dean, with his slightly leftward bent as evidenced by the 50-state strategy, was kicked to the curb by Obama and Rahm Emanuel after it successfully put Obama, the candidate perceived to be a liberal by voters in 2008, into power.
Anyone in the Democratic Party establishment has drunk the Kool-Ade.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
The DemocraticParty is trying to move the party even farther to the right of the right-of-center (from where the DLC has moved the party to) in order to attract into the DemocraticParty the moderate Republicans (the politicians and their supporters) who have been disenfranchised from the RepublicanParty since the Chrlstian right took over control of the party in the 1980s. In order to make the DemocraticParty the one true 'Corporate Party' of the US, thereby marginalizing both the far rightwing and the left (the base of the DemocraticParty).
The first Democratic president to actually sign onto privatizing and deregulation was JimmyCarter, and it's been a collaboration between Democrats and Republicans ever since. Democrats go for the "go slower" approach than Republicans in order to cloak the fact that they're just as committed to a corporatocracy as Republicans -- That's the only way to have the illusion of two parties with different ideologies. But it's the same end that both parties are working towards.
While Democrats and Republicans have different party platforms (written documents, that state clearly what the party stands for, with an agenda and list of goals), Democratic politicians gave up long ago following its party platform's planks.
For example, the DemocraticParty's platform is crystal clear on reproductive rights and abortion; Democrats"unequivocally support Ree v. Wade and a woman's right to choose a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay, and oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right".
ProChoice doesn't mean you can be anti-abortion. It doesn't mean you can be anti-abortion as long as you keep your mouth shut. You can't have anti-choice politicians in the DemocraticParty, receiving money and support from the DemocraticParty's members and the party's machinery. Yet just about all professional Democratic politicians want to make the DemocraticParty hospitable to anti-choice people (and all 'other siders' of the DemocraticParty's different special interest groups) , as noted in this article from 12/04.
The only way to do that is for the party to not take a stance on abortion, to remove any reference to 'choice'. That's certainly true of HowardDean. During HowardDean's tenure as chairman of the DNC, he indicated in several interviews that the intent was to move the DemocraticParty from referring to abortion at all in its platform. Here's one of those interviews, from 11/1/05: Video | Transcript
January 14, 2005 - Dems May Waver on Choice, Repro Rights
KEEP READING
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
All that BushCheney did was build on the foundation laid by Bill Clinton, who built upon what ReaganBush did. "New World Order".
The Cold War never ended - Obama is already fighting a proxy war with Russia
http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/dotmil/2012/06/21/is-syria-becoming-a-proxy-war-between-us-and-russia
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?c>
U.S. foreign policy remains pretty much the same no matter which party gets into the White House - All that changes is cosmetic, or in other words, the rhetoric in how "defense" spending is portrayed.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Romney wasn't the Tea Party's pick. He's the Republican establishment's pick. Romney's record as governor isn't much different than Obama's as president. There were even moments of liberalism to Romney's record (gun control, state co-pays for abortion, etc.) - Certainly more progressive than Obama.
They're both corporate tools, but the bigger truth is that Obama's nothing but a politician at a time when we need real leadership. And I mean 'politician' in the worst sense of the word. In the 'used car salesman' sense. It turns out that doing what's right for transnational corporations is what Obama is about, and trying to sell it as good for Americans is what he does afterwards. He's the epitome of the 1950s Republican, "What's good for GM is good for America," just like Romney. He did a snow job on everybody.
Both men say one thing when they're running for office and then do something entirely different once they're in the job. So the talk of Romney pandering to the rightwing now really means nothing. It's tragic what American politics has become.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
A NewtGingrich happens when you "look forward, not back".
When you refuse to impeach BushCheney because "Republicans'll say it's just because they impeached Clinton".
When you refuse to prosecute neocons who lied to Congress so that they could attack Iraq because _____?
When you don't uphold the laws of the land, when you don't drive discredited offenders out of the halls of power, they return to the public stage, only to raise the ante on what they're willing to do.
You can't go forward unless and until you've looked back, assessed and corrected what went wrong.
What's become crystal clear is that Democrats have adopted the Republicans' casual relationship with (and disrespect for) the rule of law. Preserving the rule of law underpins how the US has been the most successful, longest running democracy in world history.
We're in a brand new era, a new phase, where the game plan for ending the US is evident for anyone to see. And it begins and ends with the rule of law. By refusing to investigate and prosecute Bush, by "looking forward, not back", Obama has broken the covenant that the American people have with their government.
BushCo broke federal US laws; the rule of law applies to all Americans, elected officials, too. Elected officials especially.
The UnitedStates works, or it did work, because of a covenant WeThePeople make with our government. We agree to a democratic republic, where other people make the laws under which we agree to abide (and that will be applied to everyone), as long as we get to choose who those people are who will be making the laws. It is under those conditions that we consent to be governed.
When we no longer trust in the process, when we no longer trust that the selection process by which our elected representatives is fair and accurate, or that the laws don't apply equally to all, then all bets are off. And no government can stand once that happens.
For a president of the UnitedStates not to equally apply the law to all people, presidents, too, means that the grand experiment is over.
Not prosecuting BushCo's destroying the country. It's allowing precedents to stand, that'll only mean future presidents will build upon those past precedents set by Bush. From those precedents spring aberration -- Obama's already built upon Bush's claims of 'UnitaryExecutive', asserting that he has the right to kill American citizens with no due process, no oversight, no legislative or judicial review. Obama's already imposed a policy of 'indefinite preventive detention', again, imprisoning anyone, anywhere, anytime, forever, if a president chooses, with NO DUE PROCESS, no oversight.
How any Democrat defends that is beyond my understanding.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
As for not prosecuting Bush et al., it would create precedence for incoming presidents to initiate criminal investigations into a predecessor of the other party. That is not the direction we can go and still ensure future peaceful transition of power.==============================
Democrats enjoyed a greater majority in both houses of Congress than either party has had in decades. Even without 60 (but the Democratic Caucus in the Senate had 60). But one example is that Obama didn't need 60 to pass real healthcare reform. All Democrats needed was 50 plus Biden (reconciliation), which is what they did in the end anyway. But Democrats did it, reconciliation, for a corporate-pork-laden bill with no cost constraints that doesn't provide affordable quality medical treatment for anyone, much less everyone (what they were put into office to get).
Democrats also have refused to exercise the discretion that Senate Rule 22 allows: Making Republicans actually filibuster, instead of just threatening to do it.
Rule 22 gives the SenateMajorityLeader the discretion to actually make the call. Filibustering is hard on those soft, pampered bodies. HarryReid has refused to make them do it, letting them merely threaten. Reid should. Americans love reality TV. 'Survivor-Washington, DC'.
The few times Reid has forced Republicans to actually filibuster, when Democrats have really needed whatever the issue was (like when Jim Bunning threatened to filibuster over extending unemployment benefits), Republicans caved.
Reid lets them merely threaten. Still. All that talk about changing filibuster rules, and nothing has come of it. Senate rules can be changed at any time, and not just at the start of a new Congress - It can be done at any time (see page 6 - http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/45448.pdf ).
Nor is there just one way (or even two or three or more ways) for Democrats to get bills passed despite Republicans' obstructionistic tactics. But first they have to want to do it, with the fierce urgency of now (don't click on that link, don't watch it, if you aren't prepared and can't bear to have your cherished illusions about Obama destroyed).
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
If you wouldn't call me a liberal, then you don't know what a liberal is. But that's neither here nor there.
What one votes for in a democratic system is the candidate or policy that works for them, that's in their best interest. Neither Obama nor Romney is it. There are other choices and other strategies for achieving what's in the best interests of the 99%. That lead to fixing this broken system, and what's required is not supporting the status quo.
When Obama reneged on just about everything he campaigned on in 2008, voters took to the polls in 2010 and voted out incumbents. Big time. It looks like that trend will repeat itself this election. On the Democratic side, Blue Dogs lost; liberals only lost 3 seats. And Obama was no help - He and the DNC worked their butts off to prevent progressives from getting into office.
I and many other Democrats are looking at the big picture and working toward the longer term. Since the DLC-controlled Democratic Party sabotages populist campaigns and prevents Democratic voters from exercising their rights to pick the candidates they want through primary challenges then they have to go.
And since Obama's most ardent fans support him no matter what, the fault and blame if Republicans win fall on the fans. Stop keeping Obama's numbers high and he'll start delivering to the 99% in order to get our votes.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Every single thing? How about any single thing? We haven't gotten anything.
Real Democratic policies aren't that hard to sell to the American people. When tea-partiers yell, "Get government out of healthcare" and in the same breath, "Don't touch my Medicare!", then education is the solution.
The DLC got into power by refusing to defend the word 'liberal', educate the starstruck fans of Ronald Reagan when Reagan, Lee Atwater and KarlRove were demonizing the word. Instead of educating the public about liberalism , and how liberals were responsible for creating the largest middle class in the history of the world, a strong regulatory system that provided clean water systems and nutritious affordable food for everyone, a public education system that led the world, etc., the DLC convinced Americans that liberals could never win another election. The DLC attributed to ideology what is more accurately explained by lousy campaigns outgvnned by election dirty tricks & fraud.
When informed of the issues, most Americans agree with liberal policies. Neither they (nor I) would characterize themselves as far-anything or extreme, but mainstream. For example, nobody likes the idea of abortion, but most Americans do not want the government involved if they find themselves in the predicament of an unwanted pregnancy. And if you frame it as, "You like to k!ll babies?!?! ?!?!", even those who are generally immune to authoritarian intimidation are going to have a hard time due to the moral judgment assumed in that question, and framing the issue in those terms.
If the Bush years taught us anything, it's that anyone can sell anything to Americans, if you're stolid and relentless in your sales pitch and tactics. It's not that Bush and Rove were geniuses and knew something that nobody else knew; Bush and Rove were just more ruthless in doing what politicians and the parties had gone to great lengths to hide from Americans -- If you keep at it, escalate your attacks, don't take 'no' for an answer and never back away, you will wear the opposition down.
Obama knows how to do this. He does it to get Republican policies and legislation through.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Unless and until there is drastic and uncompromising change to our campaign financing system, until corporations are no longer 'persons' and are prohibited from participating in elections and politics, all efforts to reform government are useless.
But that is NOT going to happen under Obama or the DLC-controlled Democratic Party. It's not even on their 'To Do' list. It's not on either party's agenda.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Obama doesn't support OWS. Democratic mayors are getting federal aid in shutting OWS down all around the country.
Doing what is good for transnati0nal corporations is what Obama is about, and trying to sell it as good for Americans is what he does afterwards. He's the epitome of the 1950s RepubIican, "What's good for GM is good for America."
How to get Democratic politicians to behave like Democrats? How to get Democratic policies and legislation passed?
I've laid out solutions, beginning with "Stop voting for DLC-controlled Democrats". All roads (to campaign finance reform, clean and green energy, ending corporate personhood, strong banking/environmental/etc. regulations, JOBS, education, no more resource wars, gay rights, civil rights restoration, affordable quality medical treatment for everyone, and so on) begin with that. Everything that has been done these past 30 years has been done with Democrats' compliance -- Couldn't have happened without Democrats signing on.
Do you really not understand the problem and how to fix it?
Neither party is interested in ending corporate control over our government. It feathers their nests now and will take care of them once they've left office. Unless and until the money is out of politics, we're all just wasting our time, flapping our gums. Obama isn't interested in reforming that. He's not interested in reforming anything. He's only interested in making it look like he's reformed government. He's not alone -- All professional politicians has 'reform' as their campaign's centerpiece. A lot of promises to reform, and when it's time to get reelected and whatever happened in the previous 2 or 4 years is spun to try to convince voters (and more importantly, about 10% of the voters, Independents who see themselves as centrists) that the reform that they wanted they got with their side of the D&R equation.
Both parties generally take their bases for granted, but there is something to the adage, "Republicans fear their base and Democrats loathe their base".
So we're back to the question that has kept this farce going for so many election cycles now, moving the parties and the government farther to right while the people, when informed of the issues, tend to agree with and want liberal solutions):
Why should Obama-Democrats do anything for you if they know you're going to vote for them no matter what?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
I've never been impressed with the analogy of car insurance to health insurance, because for one thing people don't have to drive.
Perhaps a more equivalent comparison with healthcare in this democracy where everyone needs medical treatment throughout their lifetime might be other necessities for survival, such as food, water, and shelter (protection from the elements). We subsidize food costs, heating oil expenses, housing, because it's necessary for human survival.
There are resources that should be nationalized, such as water and oil and land. They belong to all of us, as our birthright, to share, and not for the 1% to take and sell them for profit, for their own private gain.
There are services which we recognize are necessary, like fire-fighting and policing, that are non-profit. Or used to be. We chipped in through our taxes to pay for these services, in order to get these services for a reasonable price.
The same should be true for medical treatment. When Americans say, "Don't touch my Medicare", that is what they are saying that they want.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
How Obama has handled the massive problems is EXACTLY how Republicans would've handled them (and how BushCheney was handling them). Obama's not governing as he had promised or as a real Democrat would have.
The real shame, the real tragedy for all of us is that Obama could have been a transcendent president, good for both business AND the People. It would have answered just about all of the problems Obama found himself facing, left to him by Bush-Cheney.
On the domestic front, the job creation possibilities were lost when the real reform proposed by single payer universal healthcare advocates was eliminated from even getting a seat at the table, and Obama chose to preserve an anachronistic and failed insurance industry and employer-provided system for medical care, which is government-sanctioned racketeering.
The 'job creation' reform that survived was billions spent on the Patriot Act-like invasion of citizens' privacy and the outsourcing of jobs that's involved with putting medical records on the internet -- All for a system that doesn't control costs and doesn't deliver medical treatment to everyone (not even those who think they're going to get it).
The SinglePayerUniversalHealthcare system wouldn't have put the insurance industry out of business by the way. It would've been a two-tiered system: Basic coverage for everyone and boutique coverage for those willing to pay for it. So nobody had to worry about poor Big Insurance and Pharma -- There would have been work for all. Big Insurance and Pharma would just had to have made smarter gambles, with no taxpayer bailouts.
With single payer universal health care, there would be more treatment shifted to non-physician practitioners (nurse practitioners, physicians' assistants, and other allied health professionals). Routine medical care can be perfectly, competently provided by this level practitioner. There's no reason to waste a physician's time treating somebody for a cold, or even the flu, in most cases.
It's true that if universal health coverage were to become an official reality, we'd need to expand training programs for both MDs and non-MD providers to insure there were enough to go around, but in the long run it would mean cheaper and more effective service, along with job creation. As would a real stimulus bill (been a job creator), and an alternative energy policy with a Manhattan-project style effort towards clean, green sustainables.
These are all good things, but Obama and Democrats have chosen the dark side. The corporate side.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Obama's accomplishments:
Guantanamo is now a permanent facility from which detainees convicted of nothing will never leave.
And torture is ongoing under Obama.
You or I could be next, as Obama has declared that a president can imprison, even kiII anyone, even an American citizen, with no due process. For having done NOTHING. Because Obama thinks that person might.
Torture statutes of limitation have been allowed to run, and passed, while investigations into torture and torture lawyers have been stifled, scripted, and microfocused to deliberately prevent focus on easily proven lapses. Torture has become openly and thoroughly bipartisan; there is no party of opposition to Executive branch power.
As a consequence to Obama’s election, evidence of presidential wrongdoing and war crimes are forever buried.
As a consequence of Obama’s election and other Democrats' elections, unconstitutional surveillance of citizens has been enshrined as bipartisan.
The Democrats have pushed the envelope on Executive power and have now openly endorsed Executive branch assassination.
More are impoverished.
The last best chance of reinstituting Glass-Stegall protections failed.
The public option has been killed more thoroughly than any Republicans could have pulled off. The same goes for drug reimportation. All so that Obama and the Democrats could hand over a public mandate that doesn't provide affordable, quality medical treatment for everybody.
The Department of Justice, an executive branch agency which is supposed to be above the fray of politics and independent of the White House has become an arm and the muscle for Obama. Whistleblowers and the truth have been attacked with a viciousness not possessed by the Bushies, as have journalists.
Those are just a few of Obama's "accomplishments".
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
ACA isn't improving anything and isn't intended to improve anything.
The only "start" that ACA is is the institutionalization of insurance companies as the gatekeepers to medical care. Insurance companies add nothing to the relationship between someone who is sick and someone who can provide treatment. Insurance companies exist to make profits off of DENYING care.
Obama's legislation not universal, it has no chance of expanding to cover everyone, and it leads to the end of all public healthcare programs (Medicaid, Medicare, SCHIP, CHAMPUS, veterans care, etc.). That's a fact.
Obama took single payer (Medicare For All) off the table, because if the goal is to get affordable quality medical care for all then everything else pales in comparison. He's preserving an anachronistic and failed insurance industry and employer-provided system for medical care. It's government-sanctioned racketeering.
Insurance adds NOTHING to the medical model. The insurance industry is the 'Don Fanucci' (Godfather, Part II -- "I don't want a lot...Just enough to wet my beak") of medical care, letting you get medical care only if you pay them a gratuity up front.
The controlling meme that has been operational for the past 40 years, the sales pitch for privatizing government services and resources, is that "private industry can do it cheaper". While Republicans (Nixon) began it, Democrats joined in (Jimmy Carter). But it's just not true that private industry does it cheaper. Or even better.
What the insurance industry has charged anywhere from 12-39 percent for, the US government (Medicare) does spectacularly well for 4 percent.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Lily Ledbetter has been at the top of Obama's 'most ardent supporters' lists of his "accomplishments" and has gone unchallenged because to explain the ridiculousness of it as an "Obama accomplishment" can't be done in a 10-word sound byte.
To begin with, claiming Lily Ledbetter as Obama's achievement is like the driver of the winning car in this year's Le Mans race (Mike Rockenfeller) picking up a hitch-hiking Obama right before he crossed the finish line and saying Obama won the Le Mans. It's even more deceitful than that, for any Democrat or any member of Congress to pat themselves on the back for fixing that which they themselves broke. But even that doesn't quite explain it.
Obama and Democrats got into power on a pledge to change the way Washington works. Little is ever said or explained about what that really means. I'm going to attempt it:
By the time that elected officials manage to enact legislation, the problem the legislation is to address has usually grown and morphed into something beyond what the legislation would affect or change, making it either irrelevant or creating a boondoggle that gridlocks later congressional efforts. Or, something else.
With Lily Ledbetter, it took 45 years to have the legislature address a problem (statute of limitations for filing equal pay discrimination lawsuits in the Civil Rights Act of 1964) in what never should've been agreed to by Democrats in the first place in 1964. Lily Ledbetter really had nothing to do with "landmark sex discrimination". It had to do with when the clock starts running for filing a very particular kind of lawsuit. It doesn't affect statutes of limitation for any other kind of lawsuit. It doesn't apply to the filing of all lawsuits. It's just for a particular class of lawsuits - For the filing of an equal-pay lawsuit.
And it wasn't 45 years of Congresses trying to fix it. It was a year and a half. It was in response to the Supreme Court's decision in 2007 in one woman's lawsuit. It's not going to affect millions, or thousands or even hundreds of others - Ironically, if it were to affect more women, it never would have passed, no matter what party held the Congress (because it would have meant more money paid out from corporations to women, and Democrats work for corporations just as Republicans do).
If you want to tout passage of Lily Ledbetter then you're going to have to take the blame for not following it up immediately with legislation for transparency in pay. Being able to find out what everyone else is getting paid. It's a joke without it. It's like taking you to a Michelin star restaurant, blowing the aromas from the kitchen in your face, but not letting you eat anything at all.
KEEP READING
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
List of President Obamas accomplishments - Saving the American auto industry w/o a single Republican vote
What you claim are Obama's "accomplishments" are a public relations' firm's spin. For example, We haven't left Iraq. We're not out of Iraq. The troops aren't withdrawn from Iraq, nor will they all be. In addition to the thousands of mercenaries remaining there, there are thousands more being left to "protect" an 'embassy' (a CIA fortress) the size of Vatican City in the center of Baghdad. That cutback in troops by the Pentagon doesn't apply to State.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/30/world/middleeast/iraq-is-angered-by-us-drones-patrolling-its-skies.html
In addition to some 5,000 private security contractors now protecting the embassy’s 11,000-person staff, Iraq is rife with American-paid contractors, mercenaries, and is a war zone, with the dead piling up day in and day out.
Whenever there's been a cutback in the number of troops, there's been an increase in the number of mercenaries hired and paid for with US taxpayer dollars.
What's the objective, how is the military going about achieving it, and where are our tax dollars going?
And we're not leaving Afghanistan. The mission in Afghanistan wasn't to wipe out the Taliban. Congress didn't authorize either Bush or Obama to do that. You seem to be using 'Taliban' interchangeably with Al Qaeda -- Huge mistake. Only a neocon or a neolib would boast of Obama's "escalating" the war in Afghanistan. The truth of our failure in "exporting democracy" to Afghanistan is here.
The 10-year strategic partnership agreement that Obama and Karzai signed commits the US-- its troops and billions more dollars -- to Afghanistan for the indefinite future.
How many more enemies are being made for American citizens through Obama's drone killings of civilians across the globe?
Democratic voters didn't put Obama into the White House to militarize and indemnify the CIA, or continue the neocon wars on behalf of transnational corporations, yet that's precisely what's going on.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
health insurance ≠ medical treatment
Obama's healthcare legislation doesn't control costs and doesn't deliver medical treatment to everyone (not even those who think they're going to get it). ACA Unlikely to Stem Medical Bankruptcies
People who voted for Obama and Democrats voted to get affordable, quality medical treatment. That was NOT a vote to protect and further enrich the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. Voters did NOT send Obama and Democrats into power to entrench the insurance industry as the gatekeepers to being able to get medical treatment. Voters did NOT send Obama and Democrats to Washington to continue tying insurance benefits to their employment.
Yet that is precisely what Obama and the DLC-controlled Democrats did.
Meet The New 1%: - Healthcare CEOs replace bankers as America's best paid:
Pity Wall Street's bankers. Once the highest-paid bosses in the land, they are now also-rans. The real money is in healthcare and drugs, according to the latest survey of executive pay. One example is Joel Gemunder, CEO Omnicare, who had a total pay package in 2010 worth $98 million.
The American taxpayer has been subsidizing pharmaceutical companies for decades with the promise that the R&D we were paying for would result in lower prices and breakthrough cures. Instead, we've been stuck with higher prices (twice as much as other industrialized countries) while the pharmaceutical companies try to snag new markets overseas with what were to be our discounts.
Not only did Obama break his campaign pledge (of the government, PhRma biggest customer, negotiating for lower priced drugs, and reimporting pharmaceuticals), he gave PhRma a huge gift. The deal that Obama made with PhRma wasn't for PhRma to go up against Big Insurance; it was for PhRma to help sell a plan that makes more profits for Big Insurance.
PhRma paid chump change ($80 billion over 10 years, plus $150 million for ads to support a plan that had NO public option) so that they could keep massive profits and k!II public healthcare. Obama (who had dropped the public option and the universal requirement) let the pharmaceutical industry continue to make obscene profits, and gave the insurance industry a clear field and new customers, all paid for with taxpayers' money.
Oh, and by the way, $80 billion over 10 years is less than 1% of the profits PhRma makes a year.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
ACA, an invention of the Heritage Foundation, is Part 2 of Bush's Medicare Reform Act of 2003.
If Republicans succeed in repealing it, the reason is so that they can reintroduce it with a few minor changes to throw off the dumber of their constituents and collect their share of booty from the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.
If you don't want to believe that the parties work in tandem, build upon each other's 'successes' (on behalf of corporations), just look at Bush's 2003MedicareReformAct and RomneyCare, both of which mirror ACA, and keep the problem in place (insurance companies as the gatekeepers to Americans getting medical treatment and employment-provided insurance, both of which EVERYBODY wanted ended, skyrocketing costs of medical care, no cost controls and not universal)?
Fercrissakes, look at the donut hole!
The 'donut-hole' that never should have existed in the first place, and that the DLC-controlled Democrats created as a "compromise" for Bush's Medicare Reform Act of 2003 (another massive corporate giveaway package).
The whole of Medicare Part D was a scam and a scheme by both pro-corporate parties, a "first step" (as Obama's 'most ardent supporters' like to say) towards privatizing public healthcare.
In 2003, PhRMA lobbied hard and got Congress to insert language into the bill that created a Medicare drug benefit that prohibits Medicare from using its market clout to negotiate with manufacturers for lower drug prices and making sure the drug benefit was only available through private insurance plans.
The result was that Medicare members can only get drug coverage by joining a private insurance plan. People who have both Medicare and Medicaid (dual-eligibles) were switched from Medicaid prescription drug coverage to a private Medicare drug plan. Prescription drugs for this population cost 30% more under the new private Medicare drug plans than they did under Medicaid, increasing pharmaceutical companies' profits by at least $3.7 billion dollars in just the first two years of the program. For example, Bristol Myers earned a windfall of almost $400 million, thanks to higher prices for the stroke medication Plavix.
KEEP READING
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
I see the same fearful hysteria over the possibility of a Romney presidency as in 2008 over a John McCain presidency.
Who would have thought that when John McCain lost the 2008 election that we'd still be contending with his plans for governing?
If McCain Had Won
McCain would probably have approved a failed troop surge in Afghanistan, engaged in worldwide extrajudicial assassination, destabilized nuclear-armed Pakistan, failed to bring Israel’s BenjaminNetanyahu to the negotiating table, expanded prosecution of whistle-blowers, sought to expand executive branch power, failed to close Guantanamo, failed to act on climate change, pushed both nuclear energy and opened new areas to domestic oil drilling, failed to reform the financial sector enough to prevent another financial catastrophe, supported an extension of the BushTaxCuts for the rich, presided over a growing divide between rich and poor, and failed to lower the jobless rate.
Nothing reveals the true state of American politics today more, however, than the fact that has undertaken all of these actions and, even more significantly, left the DemocraticParty far weaker than it would have been had McCain been elected. Few issues are more important than seeing behind the screen of a myth-making mass media, and understanding what this demonstrates about how power in America really works—and what needs to be done to change it.
It's way past time to get the DLC-Democrats out of office, out of the Democratic Party, and put real Democrats in. That's what we thought we were doing when we put Obama in over Hillary Clinton. But in came Obama who put the Clinton team into the White House, and not one liberal in his administration. He actually kept liberals neutralized for close to a year, with vague promises and nomination paralysis (waiting to be confirmed, where they weren't free to speak out about his Republican-ways. No recess appointments, just half-hearted excuses.
Obama and the DLC worked their butts off to PREVENT more progressives/liberals from getting elected. Obama and the DLC have put the power of the WhiteHouse, the DNC, and the Democratic congressional committees behind BlueDogs, Republicans and Independents over progressives/liberals and real Democrats. Some, but not all, examples:
BlueDog BlancheLincoln over progressive Democrat Lt. Governor BillHalter.
Republican-turned-Independent ArlenSpecter over progressive Democrat JoeSestak.
Republican-turned-Independent LincolnChaffee over Democrat FrankCaprio (which, in turn, was an effective endorsement of the Republican JohnLoughlin over Democrat DavidCicilline for the congressional seat Democrat PatrickKennedy retired from, and all of the other seats up for grab in RhodeIsland).
Republican-turned-Independent CharlieCrist over liberal Democrat KendrickMeek.
Obama supports voting third parties, even when it risks Democratic turnout.
Republicans, with the smallest minority, have managed to thwart Democrats, who've had the greatest majority in decades. You would think that with Republicans controlling the House, Democrats would've turned the tables and thwarted Republicans' continuing legislation like Bush's tax cuts for the rich? Are Democrats just stupld?
Obama never pressured BenNelson (or BlancheLincoln, or any BlueDog). The Democratic leadership could've taken away committee chairs (BlancheLincoln's, too) of members in their caucus that filibustered a PublicOption for healthcare. They didn't.
The DNC could've taken away reelection funds. They didn't.
Reid could've actually forced Republicans and turncoat Democratic senators to filibuster. He didn't (and doesn't).
The ProgressiveCaucus could have kept their pledge about not voting for a bill that didn't include a robust PublicOption. They didn't.
Obama DID unleash the attack dogs to go after HowardDean when Dean said it was a lousy bill. Dean was then forced to get back into line. Obama went after Kucinich, the last remaining holdout on the ProgressiveCaucus, for threatening to vote no on the healthcare bill, and we all know how that ended.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
During the Bush years, Democrats said if the People wanted change, they had to put Democrats in the majority in Congress. So in 2006, we did.
Nothing changed.
Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, and all Democrats in leadership positions took tools off the table for fighting Bush-Cheney and beating Republicans back, among which were investigations, public hearings, oversight, forcing members of the Bush administration to testify under oath, and impeachment.
They said, "You have to give us more Democrats -- 60 in the Senate".
In 2008, we did. We gave them 60 for the Democratic Caucus. And, we gave them the White House.
Obama came into office with the wind at his back. More people voted for him, a black man in good old r@c!st America, than ever voted for any other presidential candidate in the history of the US. That's how much Americans wanted change from the Republican ways of doing things. Voters did it because of Obama's ability to persuade, that he was going to change the system, end the corporatocracy, lobbyism in government -- Obama was going to be the People's president, not a corporate tool.
And no sooner did Obama get elected than he slammed the brakes on the momentum of his election and a filibuster-proof Senate (tentative yet, with 2 senators, Kennedy and Byrd, at death's door), Obama did a 180-degree turn on his promises and slowed everything down. To "work in a bipartisan manner with Republicans", after Republicans had already announced they were going to block everything Democrats wanted to do, vote no on everything, in lockstep.
Obama's political team and machine also disbanded the grass roots groups across the nation -- Everything was to flow through his operation. This was a dead giveaway that the last thing these politicians want is an active populist movement.
Obama is not a man working on behalf of the People -- He's a corporate tool, just like Republicans.
Since Obama has gotten into office, he's continued most of Bush's policies & his 'accomplishments' are being spun as "reform" when, in fact, they're Republican in nature.
There could be 100 "progressives" in the Senate and 435 in the House, and they and Obama would still find a way to deliver to corporations instead of the People. And then try to blame it on Republicans.
Worst of all, we're stuck with marshmallow-fluff-brained voters, who soak up the most ridiculous excuses, like "Republicans won't let us do it!", when, in fact, Obama and Democrats don't even try. Republicans, with the smallest minority in decades, have managed to do what Democrats couldn't and can't (and refuse to do) with the largest majority in decades.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Thanks, abby.
I've been writing about the DLC-controlled Democratic Party and prognosticating what was coming if Democratic voters bought into the 'lesser of two evils' campaigns for close to 3 decades. I get no satisfaction from having been proven correct in my predictions. Unless Obama's supporters cease supporting him, their worst fears will come to pass, but with Democrats having delivered them into it.
You would think that Obama's supporters would have gotten a clue when Obama reversed his zealous and aggressive campaign against undocumented workers because he needed the Hispanic vote. That's how you get Obama to do what you want -- You turn your back on him and stop supporting him. Why should he do anything for you when he knows you're terrified of Romney? Obama's most ardent supporters let him pander to conservatives, move to the right, let him satisfy the demands of Republican voters when they don't value their own selves and demand he fulfill his promises to Democratic voters.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Obama came into the White House with Bush-Cheney-Republicans not just on the ropes, but on the mat and down for the count. Obama issued a pardon and let them rise again.
After just one month in the White House, instead of going after Republicans and how their failed policies have brought us to the brink of destruction, instead of hammering Bush-Cheney-GOP for our economic woes and wars of choice, Obama and Rahm Emanuel went after Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh, two people with no role in the Republican Party.
Obama and Emanuel never mentioned Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Eric Canter, Karl R0ve, George W, H.W., Jeb Bush, Cheney, NOBODY who is actually IN the Republican Party as the problem. Obama still doesn't. During the Republican primaries, he mocked Donald Trump, an undeclared candidate for the presidency who every serious political pundit knew had no intention of actually running.
What makes Obama's most ardent supporters think he and Democrats would be any more successful achieving on our behalf in a second term? More importantly, should Obama win, what do his supporters believe that Obama will say he has a mandate to do? In his first term, he didn't do anything that he pledged to do in the 2008 campaign. As a matter of fact, he flip-flopped on just about every promise.
After the 2010 midterms, do you recall what Obama said that election's mandate was? "More of the same", "more bipartisanship", more caving to Republicans, watering down legislation to satisfy conservatives.
I don't hear a single word out of Obama, not one commitment to the policies of the left, of the 99%. Just more weak tea.
Whether it's Obama Watering Down Regulations More Than Bush, Study Shows, or making Americans more enemies by stepping up drone attacks on sovereign nations, or instituting Simpson-Bowles as he's expected to do, or pushing the job-outsourcing Trans-Pacific free trade treaty through like he did with the S. Korea and Colombia and Panama treaties, how is any of that good for us or any different than what Romney would do?
Get real, O'bots -- Both parties have us gamed.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
If Republicans are such scvm (and I believe they are) and "so dangerous", why isn't Obama investigating and prosecuting them? Why isn't Obama investigating and prosecuting the greatest heist on the People in all history? Why isn't Obama (or Pelosi and Reid for that matter) using every tool in their arsenal to beat Republicans back?
Why are Obama and Democrats continuing the war crimes of Bush & Cheney, and blocking investigations and prosecutions into their crimes?
How does a Democratic president, on the heels of the most criminal and corrupt administration in the nation's history, not replace Bush-era US attorneys? Presidents may fire US attorneys, and they do so routinely at the beginning of a new administration. It is unusual to fire US attorneys in mid-term (as Bush did) except in cases of gross misconduct (which wasn’t the case during the Bush administration). This is what Obama's US attorneys do instead of returning the democracy to the American people -- Instead we get Bush-style obscenity prosecutions.
And then there's Obama's Justice Department reversing his pledge about medicinal marijuana, shutting down hundreds around the nation.
Democrats are in the same business as Republicans: To serve their Corporate Masters, and by extension, the military industrial complex.
I suggest that you consider Democrats and Republicans as working on the same side, as tag relay teams (or like siblings competing for parental approval). 'Good cop/bad cop'. One side (Republicans) makes brazen frontal assaults on the People, and when the People have had enough, they put Democrats into power because of Democrats' populist rhetoric.
Once in power, Democrats consolidate Republicans' gains from previous years, and continue on with Republican policies but renamed, with new advertising campaigns. They throw the People a few bones, but once Democrats leave office, we learn that those bones really weren't what We, the People thought they were.
Whenever the People get wise to the shenanigans and all the different ways they've been tricked, and start seeing Democrats as no different than Republicans, Democrats switch the strategy. They invent new reasons for failing to achieve the People's business.
Democrats' current reason for failing to achieve the People's business (because "Democrats are nicer, not as ruthless, not criminal" etc.) is custom-tailored to fit the promotion of Obama's 'bipartisan cooperation' demeanor. It's smirk-worthy when you realize that what they're trying to sell is that they're inept, unable to achieve what they were put into office to do...And their ineptitude, like that's somehow "a good thing".
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
No. It's always "next election". 2008 was the last straw. After the stolen 2000 and 2004 elections, voters were ready for a real Democrat and real change. Ten million more people went to the polls to vote for a black man in good old racist America because they were persuaded he was that change candidate.
Obama got into office by misleading Democratic voters. He ran to the left of Hillary Clinton. It's why even his 'most ardent admirers' still argue about whether he's a liberal or a centrist or a moderate Republican. He convinced centrists that he was a centrist. He convinced liberals he was a liberal posing as a centrist. [News Flash: The debate is over: "Privately, Obama describes himself as a Blue Dog Democrat"]
The truth is that Obama's nothing but a politician, and I mean that in the worst sense of the word. In the 'used car salesman' sense. It turns out that doing what's right for transnational corporations is what Obama is about, and trying to sell it as good for Americans is what he does afterwards. He's the epitome of the 1950s Republican, "What's good for GM is good for America." Obama did a snow job on everybody.
And now his most ardent supporters, terrified of the Republican bogeyman who Obama governs just like, demand that we all continue the path of insanity.
Sorry, but following your lead got us into this mess.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
If you're so distraught over Cheney, you should be frantic that Obama has continued just about every Bush-Cheney policy, and then some.
How do any of Obama's 'most ardent supporters' explain Obama's doctrine that presidents have the right to kiII American citizens with no due process, no oversight, and his push for 'indefinite preventive detentlon' and no transparency of anything a president asserts should be his secret?
What about this?: America For Sale: Obama's Leaked Doc Exposes Foreign Corporations' Radical New Powers
And Obama's war on whistleblowers, and becoming the most secretive administration, more so even than Nixon!
Expanding wars, illegal drone attacks in sovereign nations, and assembling intelligence on every single American citizen.
Wake up!
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
And when all else fails, Obamabots yell, "The Supreme Court will be lost!"
The Supreme Court is lost already. Please remember that Scalia and Thomas made it through a Democratically-controlled Judiciary Committee and Senate. And Democrats voted to confirm Alito (58-42) and Roberts (78-22).
There is nothing that Bush-Cheney, and Reagan-Bush for that matter, did that Democrats couldn't have blocked. Democrats signed on to all of it!
Obama's appointments are really nothing to defend. Elena Kagan is the Goldman-Sacks seat, not to mention that she was the 5th vote in rolling back Miranda a couple of weeks ago.
And Sotomayor was with the Scalia-Thomas-Alito faction that boycotted the SOTU - Sotomayor was in Guam, addressing a group of students and swearing in new members of the Guam Bar Association, a first for a US Supreme Court Justice (are you kidding, Sonia, missing the most public showing of US democracy and the 3 branches of government by leaving the US for a 5 day trip to Guam?).
If who gets to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg was such a worry, don't you think she would step down now while it's assured a Democratic president would be choosing?
The only solution is ending corporate personhood and publicly financed campaigns. Any politician who isn't making that his first and only priority is corrupt to the bone. Neither party has this on their agenda, much less at the top of their list of things to do.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
I'm an old, OLD liberal Democrat and the "lesser of two evils"-argument just doesn't work anymore.
How can anyone say, and expect to be taken seriously, that Republicans are by far worse when Obama's continuing just about all the BushCheney policies, even going BushCo one better:
How do any of Obama's 'most ardent supporters' explain Obama's doctrine that presidents have the right to kill American citizens with no due process, no oversight, NDAA, and his push for 'indefinite preventive detention' and no transparency of anything a president asserts should be his secret? It's Pure Kafka.
I don't know how any Democrat can get behind this.
And it's Obama who's put SocialSecurity and Medicare and Medicaid on the table.
At this point, I'd argue that Obama-Democrats are worse. BushCheneyRomneyRepublicans make no bones or excuses for what they've done and who they are, whereas Obama-Democrats ran on knowing better.
Consider our elections as a business plan where the 'CorporateMastersOfTheUniverse' have charted out their plans years in advance and then they select the politician with the personality that's best able to achieve those plans in 4 year increments.
If you want to lie the country into war for oil and profiteering, then GeorgeWBush is your man to front it, with DickCheney, the former SecretaryOfDefense who initiated the privatizing of the military a decade earlier, actually running the operation from the shadows.
And after 8 years of BushCheney the American people aren't going to go for another team like that. They're going to want HOPE and CHANGE, with a persona they can believe in and trust. BarackObama.
Obama's 'most ardent admirers' just like the packaging better. I'm not talking skin color, although that may be a factor for some of them; I'm talking about how a 'D' after the name is a brand they trust believe and trust in, despite the fact that it's the same 'soap' (product).
You continue to support Obama-Democrats at the expense of your own best interests. As long as his numbers remain high, he does the bidding of corporations and establishment elites.
Why should Obama-Democrats do anything for you if they know they've got you over a barrel, that you're going to vote for them no matter what, because you're terrified of Republicans?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
I assume that Romney's records would reveal he's the king of the plutocrats.
That doesn't change the fact that Obama is a servant of the plutocrats and isn't working on the 99%'s behalf.
This story, along with the Bain story, is more misdirection from the issues affecting real ordinary Americans.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Here is the roll call vote on the 6/21/2012 US Senate vote on a bill to permit states to require any food, beverage or other edible product offered for sale have a label on it indicating that it contains a genetically engineered ingredient.
Guess who voted against this?
Democratic senators Al Franken, Sherrod Brown, Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin, Ben Cardin, Jeff Bingaman, Tom Harkin, Debbie Stabenow, among other Democrats. Monsanto has bought and paid for them.
Al Franken, fercrissakes.
This liberal Democrat is done with the Democratic Party.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
NSA Whistleblower: They're Assembling Information on every U.S Citizen
Another reason that this liberal Democrat won't be voting for Obama.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
© Blogger templates Newspaper by Ourblogtemplates.com 2008
Back to TOP
