A thread for Democrats Only by THGRRI

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by captaincrunch:

It's comprehensive, affordable and it makes perfect sense.

Of course, it'll never happen here with that selfish PoS in the WH and boot licking Reps ruling the senate.

Even if the President was a Democrat and the Senate was a majority Democrat, it won't happen. There will be a crooked Democratic Senator, such as Joe Lieberman, to make it fail:
"Senate Democrats Drop the Public Option to Woo Lieberman, and Liberals Howl"
December 21, 2009
www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/newsletter-article/senate-democr
ats-drop-public-option-woo-lieberman-and-liberals-howl

The present healthcare system is more expensive, as a percent of GNP, than any other in the world and the Senate will insure it stays that way.
www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-spending-u-s-compa
re-countries/#item-relative-size-wealth-u-s-spends-disproportionate-amount-health

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, January 22, 2020 1:16 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

SECOND, you're not telling me anything I haven't already posted about.

I really appreciate the article; I find the Dutch choice- to do away with their public healthcare to prop up the private one - a curious one, but they made it workable (so far, even tho the article hints that the future may not be so rosy). I do intend to re-read the article again, to make sure that I understand what it's saying.

They seem to have retained small-business capitalism by keeping specialists as private practitioners.

But they made their system workable by doing things - like having nonprofit insurances and nonprofit hospitals (no listings on the stock exchanges for THOSE entities! No Boards of Directors, no shareholders meetings...) - which would be just as unacceptable to the healthcare industry here as Medicare for All, or even the public option.

The sense I get of the Dutch system was that it was written to be acceptable to individual doctors/practitioners there, while the ACA was written to be acceptable to corporations here. When the law was written I'm sure that every interested corporation - every insurance, every hospital corp, every pharmaceutical company, every rehab center, every laboratory- assessed how much they might make or lose on each provision of the bill, and the bill wouldn't be passed until each corporation (and its lobbyists) blessed it.

So the real reason why we have such a fucked up system (in pretty much everything, from foreign policy to food production to healthcare to banking) isn't because of Democrats or Republicans or some flaw in the construction of Congress or what-have-you, it is simply because (in essence) one dollar equals one vote, and those with the most dollars get the most votes. We are, truly, an oligarchy with only the trappings of democracy.

Anyway, I do like the idea of keeping doctors and other practitioners as competing small businesses, but the for-profit hospitals and insurances and pharmas would have to disappear if we wanted to achieve cost savings. I don't see any reason why practitioners CAN'T continue as snall businesses, and compete with each other, even if they're getting paid by the government.

One more thing to keep in mind: HMOs, even presumed non-profits like Kaiser, aren't the answer either. Kaiser has a provision in its charter that technically makes it a non-profit but in reality skews the behavior of both the doctors AND the institution as a whole: Kaiser gets it contractual per-person funding, but at the end of the year the money that it DOESN'T spend on patient care goes into the doctors' pockets.

In theory, you could say that this encourages cost-effective preventive care - spending money on diabetes medication instead of leg amputation - but IN REALITY that means tests not run, and problems ignored. I've known three people PERSONALLY whose cancer diagnoses were too-long delayed, and that's not counting our DDs medical trauma.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

Happy New Year, WISHY. I edited out your psychopathic screed!

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Wednesday, January 22, 2020 2:48 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

The VOX project EVERYBODY COVERED examines more than the Netherlands' system.

https://www.vox.com/2020/1/13/21055327/everybody-covered

It looks at

- Taiwan’s single-payer success story — and its lessons for America
- https://vox.com/health-care/2020/1/13/21028702/medicare-for-all-taiwan
-health-insurance

- Two sisters. Two different journeys through Australia’s health care system.
- https://vox.com/2020/1/15/21030568/australia-health-insurance-medicare

- The Netherlands has universal health insurance — and it’s all private
- https://vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/1/17/21046874/netherlands-uni
versal-health-insurance-private

- The answer to America’s health care cost problem might be in Maryland
- https://vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/1/22/21055118/maryland-health
-care-global-hospital-budget

and will include
- United Kingdom (coming January 24).

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Wednesday, January 22, 2020 2:53 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

No system is perfect, though here in the US we seem to have created a system that disadvantages everybody but the corporations. That's the basic take-home message.

In the Netherlands BTW the hospitals are non-profit, the doctors' groups are cooperatives (not corporations), every participant including pharmacies is TIGHTLY regulated by government - a point made multiple times in the article - and it's the one system out of those examined where - as indicated in the article - more people have a hard time paying their bills.

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Wednesday, January 22, 2020 4:00 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND, you're not telling me anything I haven't already posted about.

So the real reason why we have such a fucked up system (in pretty much everything, from foreign policy to food production to healthcare to banking) isn't because of Democrats or Republicans or some flaw in the construction of Congress or what-have-you, it is simply because (in essence) one dollar equals one vote, and those with the most dollars get the most votes. We are, truly, an oligarchy with only the trappings of democracy.

It might be the famous checks and balances are the problem. A focused and wealthy group outside government can apply a small pressure on exactly the right spot to make the Federal government lose consciousness: the “Death Touch” or dim mak. The government has never been healthy and robust. It is sickly, almost directionless, always tending toward ineffectiveness in Congress, by Constitutional design. When the Constitution faces a very determined group that wants to stop the Federal government from functioning, we know what happens since it has happened thousands of times since the Constitution was ratified. Somebody ought to fix that. Anybody want a new Constitutional convention? Anybody?

www.medicaldaily.com/truth-about-pressure-points-which-ones-can-kill-y
ou-and-which-ones-are-just-myths-316528

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Thursday, January 23, 2020 8:33 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
No system is perfect, though here in the US we seem to have created a system that disadvantages everybody but the corporations. That's the basic take-home message.

In the Netherlands BTW the hospitals are non-profit, the doctors' groups are cooperatives (not corporations), every participant including pharmacies is TIGHTLY regulated by government - a point made multiple times in the article - and it's the one system out of those examined where - as indicated in the article - more people have a hard time paying their bills.

Long ago I was what is called a Control Systems Engineer, a CSE. CSE designs all the stuff in the Control Room of a petrochemical plant. Believe it or not, this actually has application to government. The CSE is responsible for the safety shutdown system in the chemical plant, the system that takes over if the human operators fall asleep on the job, or panic, or do exactly the wrong thing while being absolutely certain they are doing the right thing because they fundamentally misunderstand what the control room displays are telling them.

When the chemical plant is only drawings on paper, before it becomes reality in steel and concrete, we do a very formal safety review, looking for malfunctions that could explode the whole plant, spreading fire and pollution everywhere. No system is perfect, but much can be done at this safety review to make the chemical plant closer to perfect. Now for the political part:

The Founding Fathers never did a formal safety review on their design while it was only words on paper of the Constitution. Their thinking only went as far as the next election will bring in new people to extinguish the fires caused by the old people operating the government. How much can go wrong in the years between elections? A great deal can, more than the Founding Fathers imagined. And the result of never having a safety review is metaphorically, sometime literally, fires and explosions and human suffering that never burns itself out and stops, all caused by government. It would be nice if humans in control of the government always understood what they were doing wrong, like it would be nice if the operators of a chemical plant always understood what they were doing, but you can't depend on humans doing the right thing. Your design has to look into the details of human failure that extends year after year, election after election.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Thursday, January 23, 2020 8:40 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Here’s something I missed when it first came out a few weeks ago. It turns out that Chase Manhattan Bank was instrumental in getting the Shah of Iran admitted to the United States for medical treatment in 1979, which led directly to the Iran hostage crisis that eventually doomed Jimmy Carter’s presidency. The whole thing was called Project Eagle and was coordinated by Joseph Reed, the chief of staff to the bank’s chairman, David Rockefeller.

But that’s not all. After touching off the hostage crisis, Project Eagle was then redirected to ensuring that they didn’t get released too soon:

After the hostages were taken, the Carter administration worked desperately to try to free the captives….[But] the team around Mr. Rockefeller, a lifelong Republican with a dim view of Mr. Carter’s dovish foreign policy, collaborated closely with the Reagan campaign in its efforts to pre-empt and discourage what it derisively labeled an “October surprise” — a pre-election release of the American hostages, the papers show.

The Chase team helped the Reagan campaign gather and spread rumors about possible payoffs to win the release, a propaganda effort that Carter administration officials have said impeded talks to free the captives.

“I had given my all” to thwarting any effort by the Carter officials “to pull off the long-suspected ‘October surprise,’” Mr. Reed wrote in a letter to his family after the election, apparently referring to the Chase effort to track and discourage a hostage release deal. He was later named Mr. Reagan’s ambassador to Morocco.

This is a conspiracy theory of longstanding—namely that the Reagan campaign tried to prevent the release of the Iranian hostages before Election Day 1980. But according to notes he wrote at the time, it sure sounds like Reed worked closely with Reagan’s people on exactly that. Such patriots.

www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/01/reagan-and-the-hostages/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Thursday, January 23, 2020 10:24 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Here’s something I missed when it first came out a few weeks ago. It turns out that Chase Manhattan Bank was instrumental in getting the Shah of Iran admitted to the United States for medical treatment in 1979, which led directly to the Iran hostage crisis that eventually doomed Jimmy Carter’s presidency. The whole thing was called Project Eagle and was coordinated by Joseph Reed, the chief of staff to the bank’s chairman, David Rockefeller.

But that’s not all. After touching off the hostage crisis, Project Eagle was then redirected to ensuring that they didn’t get released too soon:

After the hostages were taken, the Carter administration worked desperately to try to free the captives….[But] the team around Mr. Rockefeller, a lifelong Republican with a dim view of Mr. Carter’s dovish foreign policy, collaborated closely with the Reagan campaign in its efforts to pre-empt and discourage what it derisively labeled an “October surprise” — a pre-election release of the American hostages, the papers show.

The Chase team helped the Reagan campaign gather and spread rumors about possible payoffs to win the release, a propaganda effort that Carter administration officials have said impeded talks to free the captives.

“I had given my all” to thwarting any effort by the Carter officials “to pull off the long-suspected ‘October surprise,’” Mr. Reed wrote in a letter to his family after the election, apparently referring to the Chase effort to track and discourage a hostage release deal. He was later named Mr. Reagan’s ambassador to Morocco.

This is a conspiracy theory of longstanding—namely that the Reagan campaign tried to prevent the release of the Iranian hostages before Election Day 1980. But according to notes he wrote at the time, it sure sounds like Reed worked closely with Reagan’s people on exactly that. Such patriots.

www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/01/reagan-and-the-hostages/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

This probably did happen.

I'm just wondering how you can believe that this happens, but at the same time you don't see the media manipulation against Trump on a daily basis. Or at the very least, why you don't even question it.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Thursday, January 23, 2020 11:31 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

This probably did happen.

I'm just wondering how you can believe that this happens, but at the same time you don't see the media manipulation against Trump on a daily basis. Or at the very least, why you don't even question it.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

I know actual GOP politicians - Senators Cruz and Cornyn. I also watch Trump give speeches and answer questions. These people are fucked up in the head. The MSM does not have to tell me this. The GOP tells me this very loudly and clearly. I also know that the people who vote for GOP, except the very richest ones who I respect their judgement, don't share my opinion. Me and the rich GOP voters perfectly understand what is seriously wrong with the GOP, it is just that the rich are bought by the money the GOP pours into their bank accounts.

Let's make it even simpler for you to understand: the richest GOP voters know that Trump is a crook, a liar, a tax cheater, a stupid man with diarrhea of the mouth. Talking about it won't make Trump change, so why would the rich bother? But they can depend on Trump looking after his own wealth and as a side effect making the rich GOP voters even richer.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Thursday, January 23, 2020 11:47 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

This probably did happen.

I'm just wondering how you can believe that this happens, but at the same time you don't see the media manipulation against Trump on a daily basis. Or at the very least, why you don't even question it.

Do Right, Be Right. :)
I know actual GOP politicians - Senators Cruz and Cornyn. I also watch Trump give speeches and answer questions. These people are fucked up in the head. The MSM does not have to tell me this. The GOP tells me this very loudly and clearly. I also know that the people who vote for GOP, except the very richest ones who I respect their judgement, don't share my opinion. Me and the rich GOP voters perfectly understand what is seriously wrong with the GOP, it is just that the rich are bought by the money the GOP pours into their bank accounts.

Let's make it even simpler for you to understand: the richest GOP voters know that Trump is a crook, a liar, a tax cheater, a stupid man with diarrhea of the mouth. Talking about it won't make Trump change, so why would the rich bother? But they can depend on Trump looking after his own wealth and as a side effect making the rich GOP voters even richer.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

lol. Come from a biased place, much?

Seriously dude. You need to take a very long hard look into a mirror one day. You're totally fucked up.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Thursday, January 23, 2020 1:34 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

I think what bugs SECOND the most about Trump is that Trump is richer.

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Thursday, January 23, 2020 3:33 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

This probably did happen.

I'm just wondering how you can believe that this happens, but at the same time you don't see the media manipulation against Trump on a daily basis. Or at the very least, why you don't even question it.

Do Right, Be Right. :)
I know actual GOP politicians - Senators Cruz and Cornyn. I also watch Trump give speeches and answer questions. These people are fucked up in the head. The MSM does not have to tell me this. The GOP tells me this very loudly and clearly. I also know that the people who vote for GOP, except the very richest ones who I respect their judgement, don't share my opinion. Me and the rich GOP voters perfectly understand what is seriously wrong with the GOP, it is just that the rich are bought by the money the GOP pours into their bank accounts.

Let's make it even simpler for you to understand: the richest GOP voters know that Trump is a crook, a liar, a tax cheater, a stupid man with diarrhea of the mouth. Talking about it won't make Trump change, so why would the rich bother? But they can depend on Trump looking after his own wealth and as a side effect making the rich GOP voters even richer.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

lol. Come from a biased place, much?

Seriously dude. You need to take a very long hard look into a mirror one day. You're totally fucked up.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

Today, the Dilbert Comic covered approximately what I am talking about.

The Pointed Haired Boss said: "I donated to a few political campaigns, and coincidentally a law changed that I wanted changed. Now it's legal for us to sell drones that are armed with machine guns. I also got a tax break."

Dilbert: "I've never had less faith in my government."

https://dilbert.com/strip/2020-01-23
Thursday January 23, 2020 "Donating To Politicians"

6ix, I'm not real sure that you are worldly enough to comprehend even what Dilbert is talking about. I'm not gonna try explaining to you what precisely I'm talking about. You seem to have a learning disability, but I've seen it in EVERY TRUMP VOTER I know, except the rich ones. All the non-rich Trump voters struggle far too hard against the ordinary problems they have in life. When are they gonna get smarter and less fearful? When they come up against a tough problem, their lives end tragically, like a puppy wandering out on the highway of life at night and being run over by an 18 wheeler that never even noticed the bump as the dog is squashed on the pavement. You are that puppy. Stay off the roads if you want to live. Or at least look both ways before you cross the street.

https://dilbert.com/strip/2020-01-23

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Thursday, January 23, 2020 6:15 PM

lol. Whatever retard. Yup. I just don't "get it" is all.

You aren't even close to my level buddy. Go whine to somebody who gives a shit.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Friday, January 24, 2020 5:17 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
SIGNY: SECOND, you're not telling me anything I haven't already posted about.
So the real reason why we have such a fucked up system (in pretty much everything, from foreign policy to food production to healthcare to banking) isn't because of Democrats or Republicans or some flaw in the construction of Congress or what-have-you, it is simply because (in essence) one dollar equals one vote, and those with the most dollars get the most votes. We are, truly, an oligarchy with only the trappings of democracy.

SECOND: It might be the famous checks and balances

It might be the famous checkbook balances

Quote:
are the problem. A focused and wealthy group outside government can apply a small pressure on exactly the right spot to make the Federal government lose consciousness: the “Death Touch” or dim mak. The government has never been healthy and robust. It is sickly, almost directionless, always tending toward ineffectiveness in Congress, by Constitutional design. When the Constitution faces a very determined group that wants to stop the Federal government from functioning ...

Is it possible, SECOND, that you're simply not cynical ENOUGH?

You write about the government "functioning" but you haven't asked yourself ... "function" DOING WHAT?

If you assume that the function of the government is to funnel tax money to the very wealthy, then the government is functioning spectacularly! It's not "disabled" at all!

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

Happy New Year, WISHY. I edited out your psychopathic screed!

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Friday, January 24, 2020 5:28 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
KIKI
No system is perfect, though here in the US we seem to have created a system that disadvantages everybody but the corporations. That's the basic take-home message.

In the Netherlands BTW the hospitals are non-profit, the doctors' groups are cooperatives (not corporations), every participant including pharmacies is TIGHTLY regulated by government - a point made multiple times in the article - and it's the one system out of those examined where - as indicated in the article - more people have a hard time paying their bills.

SECOND: Long ago I was what is called a Control Systems Engineer, a CSE. CSE designs all the stuff in the Control Room of a petrochemical plant. Believe it or not, this actually has application to government. The CSE is responsible for the safety shutdown system in the chemical plant, the system that takes over if the human operators fall asleep on the job, or panic, or do exactly the wrong thing while being absolutely certain they are doing the right thing because they fundamentally misunderstand what the control room displays are telling them.

When the chemical plant is only drawings on paper, before it becomes reality in steel and concrete, we do a very formal safety review, looking for malfunctions that could explode the whole plant, spreading fire and pollution everywhere. No system is perfect, but much can be done at this safety review to make the chemical plant closer to perfect. Now for the political part:

The Founding Fathers never did a formal safety review on their design while it was only words on paper of the Constitution. Their thinking only went as far as the next election will bring in new people to extinguish the fires caused by the old people operating the government. How much can go wrong in the years between elections? A great deal can, more than the Founding Fathers imagined. And the result of never having a safety review is metaphorically, sometime literally, fires and explosions and human suffering that never burns itself out and stops, all caused by government. It would be nice if humans in control of the government always understood what they were doing wrong, like it would be nice if the operators of a chemical plant always understood what they were doing, but you can't depend on humans doing the right thing. Your design has to look into the details of human failure that extends year after year, election after election.

If you were really a CSE then you would know about feedback loops. You would also know that you can;t control multiple processes with one control system. Take commercial heating a cooling, for example: Two systems are alwys running in opposition to each other, that is how they stay balanced.

But let's look at government like a control system, and figure out what went wrong without trying to pin the blame on any group in particular *which you always seem to want to do. That spoils objective analysis.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

Happy New Year, WISHY. I edited out your psychopathic screed!

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Friday, January 24, 2020 7:57 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

If you were really a CSE then you would know about feedback loops. You would also know that you can;t control multiple processes with one control system. Take commercial heating a cooling, for example: Two systems are alwys running in opposition to each other, that is how they stay balanced.

But let's look at government like a control system, and figure out what went wrong without trying to pin the blame on any group in particular *which you always seem to want to do. That spoils objective analysis.

I guess you have never been in an actual control room of a chemical plant. It is a very boring place, with everything automatic. There will be coffee. There will be donuts. There will be an exercise machine so that the donuts don't make the human operator fat. The human operator (call him President) has very little to do unless a piece of machinery breaks down out in the plant and he calls maintenance. This is why Social Security checks still go out and tax money still comes in despite the human operator (keep calling him President) being an idiot. But the calmness of the control room is destroyed when the operator (or President) randomly pushes buttons, gets on the phone and calls firefighters when there are no fires, or stops and starts different parts of the chemical plant to show everybody who is really in charge.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, January 24, 2020 8:06 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
I think what bugs SECOND the most about Trump is that Trump is richer.

What bugs me about Trump and Trump voters, except wealthy Trump voters, is what they think about. Yesterday I received in the mail my Early Ballot to the Texas Primary. It had questionnaire attached. The questions show all the difference in the world between Democrats and Republicans. First the questions for the Dems:

Our Texas Bill of Rights will be voted on by Texans in the Democratic Primary Election and will guide our party, our campaigns, and our movement in the 2020 election.

1.) Right to Healthcare
Should everyone in Texas have a right to quality healthcare, protected by a universally accessible Medicare-style system that saves rural hospitals, reduces the cost of prescription drugs, and guarantees access to reproductive healthcare?

2.) Right to a 21st Century Public Education
Should everyone in Texas have the right to high-quality public education from pre-k to 12th grade, and affordable college and career training without the burden of crushing student loan debt?

3.) Right to Clean Air, Safe Water, and a Responsible Climate Policy
Should everyone in Texas have the right to clean air, safe water, affordable and sustainable alternative energy sources, and a responsible climate policy that recognizes and addresses the climate crisis as a real and serious threat that impacts every aspect of life on this planet?

4.) Right to Economic Security
Should everyone in Texas have the right to economic security, where all workers have earned paid family and sick leave, training to prepare for future economies, and a living wage that respects their hard work?

More at www.texasdemocrats.org/our-party/party-resources/our-texas-bill-of-rig
hts/

Republican Primary Ballot Propositions (Do you see a difference compared to Democrats?)

1.) Texas should not restrict or prohibit prayer in public schools.

2.) Texas should reject restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms.

3.) Texas should ban the practice of taxpayer-funded lobbying, which allows your tax dollars to be spent on lobbyists who work against the taxpayer. (Translation: Ban big cities with Democratic majorities from lobbying Austin. )

4.) Texas should support the construction of a physical barrier and use existing defense-grade surveillance equipment along the entire southern border of Texas. (Translation: Build Trump’s Wall)

More at www.texasgop.org/republican-primary-ballot-propositions/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, January 24, 2020 9:58 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is a case study of how lawmakers make themselves richer with the bills they pass. Legislation they championed — the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act — doled out nearly $150 billion in corporate tax savings last year alone. One effect: a big boost in stock prices.

Cutting tax rates for companies like Apple and hundreds of other stocks they own was one of many ways Republican lawmakers enriched themselves after they passed the tax law, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of the 186-page law and members’ financial disclosure forms. Not one Democrat voted for it.

More at www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/1/24/21078559/republicans-tax-cut
s-congress-profits

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, January 24, 2020 7:53 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
SIGNY:If you were really a CSE then you would know about feedback loops. You would also know that you can;t control multiple processes with one control system. Take commercial heating a cooling, for example: Two systems are alwys running in opposition to each other, that is how they stay balanced.

But let's look at government like a control system, and figure out what went wrong without trying to pin the blame on any group in particular *which you always seem to want to do. That spoils objective analysis.

SECOND: I guess you have never been in an actual control room of a chemical plant.

been in the control room of every large power plant in the area, one large refinery, a coker, cement plant, and a bunch of smaller operations (resin plants, printing press etc) but I deserved that comment because of my unnecessary snark

So, government as a control room.

Part of the problem is that we have to decide what we want this control room TO DO. With production plants it's easy: maximize propylene, or maximize gasoline, or maximize GWH given particular feedstocks/ fuels.

But what do you want government TO DO? Some people think our government should sweep in and right all wrongs and "help" people around the world. Other people think our government should make capitalism or the banking system stronger. Some people think we should enhance international trade, or fix global warming.

So....?

What should our government's essential function be? Until you answer that question, you can't possibly start designing anything.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

Happy New Year, WISHY. I edited out your psychopathic screed!

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Saturday, January 25, 2020 1:41 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
So, government as a control room.

Part of the problem is that we have to decide what we want this control room TO DO. With production plants it's easy: maximize propylene, or maximize gasoline, or maximize GWH given particular feedstocks/ fuels.

But what do you want government TO DO? Some people think our government should sweep in and right all wrongs and "help" people around the world. Other people think our government should make capitalism or the banking system stronger. Some people think we should enhance international trade, or fix global warming.

So....?

What should our government's essential function be? Until you answer that question, you can't possibly start designing anything.

So, any thoughts from anyone on what they think our government's essential function(s) SHOULD be???

I mean, I read a lot of bitching about very specific things (transgeneder rights! plastic pollution!), but so far nobody has come up with anything that sounds like it should be fundamental.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

Happy New Year, WISHY. I edited out your psychopathic screed!

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Saturday, January 25, 2020 8:00 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Ah, the sound of silence!

Apparently nobody has ANY idea what they think our government should be doing!

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

Happy New Year, WISHY. I edited out your psychopathic screed!

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Saturday, January 25, 2020 8:13 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

So, any thoughts from anyone on what they think our government's essential function(s) SHOULD be???

I mean, I read a lot of bitching about very specific things (transgeneder rights! plastic pollution!), but so far nobody has come up with anything that sounds like it should be fundamental.

Texas Democrats picked 11 fundamental things here:

1.) Right to Healthcare
Should everyone in Texas have a right to quality healthcare, protected by a universally accessible Medicare-style system that saves rural hospitals, reduces the cost of prescription drugs, and guarantees access to reproductive healthcare?

www.texasdemocrats.org/our-party/party-resources/our-texas-bill-of-rig
hts/

You might want to ask yourself why none of those fundamental rights will become law. There is a famous example from the past that did not become law until events violently forced a decision that did not happen in Congress: ending slavery. The decision was made on the battle field by Confederate Generals. Other countries ended slavery after discussing it rationally in their legislatures. Not the good old USA! Blood had to be spilled. Hundreds of thousands had to die before there was a decision that covered the entire nation, for all times, about slavery. Not a very effective decision making process, was it? Why couldn't Congress make the decision and save all that death and destruction of the Civil War?

Once you get an answer that you believe in to why Congress could not make up its collective mind about slavery, then you will also know why it can't decide today about health care, for example. May I point out that everywhere else in the world, at least in the rich countries, the number 1 item on the Democratic list, Right to Healthcare, has already passed into law many years ago. But not in America! There is something fundamentally wrong with how Congress can so easily delay or forever avoid making decisions. And that has been true since the first Congressional session.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Saturday, January 25, 2020 8:20 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

SECOND ... Jeezus. stop telling me what you think other people think!

What do YOU think? YOU were the one who brought up the "government as a control room" analogy, and posted how badly designed our government is. That implies that you have an opinion on how it could be better, which implies that you have at least some nascent function in mind.

So, what is it?

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

Happy New Year, WISHY. I edited out your psychopathic screed!

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Saturday, January 25, 2020 8:34 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND ... Jeezus. stop telling me what you think other people think!

What do YOU think? YOU were the one who brought up the "government as a control room" analogy, and posted how badly designed our government is. That implies that you have an opinion on how it could be better, which implies that you have at least some nascent function in mind.

So, what is it?

You know how petrochemical plants handle their control rooms? They don't let any old fool get their hands on the controls. They don't have a vote where the biggest and best liar decides for everybody how the plant will operate. And if a fool does find his way into control, he gets forced out of the control room the first time he screws up, on the day he screwed up. The business world doesn't wait 4 years for a decision.

The board of directors, equivalent to Congress, might take 4 years to decide to build a new control room for a new chemical plant, but once it is built and gets through the startup stage where broken pumps are fixed, the plant either runs smoothly or else somebody is fired from their job for being stupid, incompetent, or not following orders from the board of directors, equivalent to Congress.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Saturday, January 25, 2020 9:05 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which was founded by those who worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II, and now includes 13 Nobel Laureates on the board, issued a statement on Thursday that read, "Humanity continues to face two simultaneous existential dangers—nuclear war and climate change—that are compounded by a threat multiplier, cyber-enabled information warfare, that undercuts society's ability to respond. The international security situation is dire, not just because these threats exist, but because world leaders have allowed the international political infrastructure for managing them to erode."

We share a common concern over the failure of the multilateral system to address the existential threats we face. From the US' withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and the Iran nuclear deal, to the deadlock at nuclear disarmament talks and division at the UN Security Council -- our mechanisms for collaboration are being undermined when we need them the most.

On the nuclear threat, we've seen unprecedented brinksmanship over the past 12 months by half a dozen nations, the termination of major arms control agreements, a dizzying proliferation of nuclear weapons, and an unsettling amount of loose talk about the mistaken idea that limited nuclear warfare is somehow possible or "winnable." (That is Trump and his new weapon, the W76-2 warhead www.defensenews.com/smr/nuclear-arsenal/2019/01/28/trumps-new-nuclear-
weapon-has-entered-production/ )

https://thebulletin.org/2020/01/press-release-it-is-now-100-seconds-to
-midnight/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Saturday, January 25, 2020 2:11 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:

SECOND ... Jeezus. stop telling me what you think other people think!
What do YOU think? YOU were the one who brought up the "government as a control room" analogy, and posted how badly designed our government is. That implies that you have an opinion on how it could be better, which implies that you have at least some nascent function in mind.
So, what is it?

SECOND: You know how petrochemical plants handle their control rooms? They don't let any old fool get their hands on the controls. They don't have a vote where the biggest and best liar decides for everybody how the plant will operate. And if a fool does find his way into control, he gets forced out of the control room the first time he screws up, on the day he screwed up. The business world doesn't wait 4 years for a decision.

The board of directors, equivalent to Congress, might take 4 years to decide to build a new control room for a new chemical plant, but once it is built and gets through the startup stage where broken pumps are fixed, the plant either runs smoothly or else somebody is fired from their job for being stupid, incompetent, or not following orders from the board of directors, equivalent to Congress.

Well, interesting, you would have (in essence) a Prime Minister selected by Congress. Who gets to be Minister for Defense, and Minister of Foreign Affairs?

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

Happy New Year, WISHY. I edited out your psychopathic screed!

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Saturday, January 25, 2020 2:43 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

That wouldn't solve SECOND's problem.

Congress - as he may not have noticed - is a political body, with political motives and goals. As long as the president is keeping Congress politically happy, nothing else matters. That is the sole standard by which Congress judges a president under his scenario.

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Saturday, January 25, 2020 2:52 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
That wouldn't solve SECOND's problem.

Congress - as he may not have noticed - is a political body, with political motives and goals. As long as the president is keeping Congress politically happy, nothing else matters. That is the sole standard by which Congress judges a president under his scenario.

It seemed to me that SECOND had a flash of inspiration based on his former career about how to make government work better; and I'm hoping he'll pursue that inspiration further; I'm really curious what he has to say.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

Happy New Year, WISHY. I edited out your psychopathic screed!

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Saturday, January 25, 2020 2:56 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

I wish you good fortune in your quest for an actual discussion with SECOND.

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Saturday, January 25, 2020 4:13 PM

It's been three years since I've been of sound mind and paying any attention and it hasn't happened yet.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Sunday, January 26, 2020 2:54 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Well, I guess SECOND isn't about to break his losing streak just yet.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

Happy New Year, WISHY. I edited out your psychopathic screed!

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Monday, January 27, 2020 8:45 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Seventy-five years into the nuclear era, we still haven’t come to grips with the destructive force we’ve put in the hands of Donald Trump.

Absent a nuclear attack upon the United States or our allies, no one human being should have the power to unilaterally unleash the most destructive forces ever devised by humankind. Yet under existing law, the President of the United States can start a nuclear war without provocation, without consultation, and without warning. It boggles the rational mind. I fear that, in the age of Trump, the cooler heads and strategic doctrine that we once relied upon as our last best hope against the unthinkable seem less reassuring than ever.

On Oct. 30, 2017, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing on whether the president needed new congressional authorization to use military force against terrorists around the world. When his turn came to ask questions, Democratic Sen. Edward Markey asked the witnesses whether Trump could launch a nuclear first strike without consulting anyone from Congress.

At first, the witnesses, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, hesitated, calling the question “hypothetical,” but Markey wouldn’t relent, and finally, Mattis allowed that the president could order a first strike if an adversary was seen “preparing” to launch an attack.

Markey, a longtime advocate of nuclear arms treaties, knew the answer before asking the question, but some of the senators were surprised. Among them was the Republican chairman, Bob Corker. A businessman from Tennessee, Corker was deeply conservative, but he was also agitated by stories he’d been hearing about Trump’s mental state. Recently Corker had made a stir by likening the White House to an “adult day center” and warning that Trump’s reckless threats toward other countries could pave a “path to World War III.”

After the hearing, Corker told his staff that he was “riled up” by Markey’s exchange with the two secretaries and that he wanted to hold a separate hearing on the subject as soon as possible—“something real sober,” as he put it, “pointing out that the president has the power to basically destroy the world.”

The hearing was held just two weeks later, on Nov. 14, the first such hearing on the subject in 41 years. The staff assembled three witnesses—one Democrat, one Republican and one retired four-star general. The general was C. Robert Kehler, former head of U.S. Strategic Command, which is in charge of plans and policies on nuclear weapons.

Kehler testified that the president did not have a completely free hand. “The United States military does not blindly follow orders,” he said. “A presidential order to employ U.S. nuclear weapons must be legal. The basic legal principles of military necessity, distinction, and proportionality apply to nuclear weapons, just as they do to every other nuclear weapon.”

Sen. Benjamin Cardin, the ranking Democrat on the panel, asked who would decide whether the order was illegal.

“Well,” Kehler replied, “that is one of the things that would be on the plate of the commander of Strategic Command.” If he thought the order was illegal, he would be “obligated to refuse to follow it.”

But on further questioning, Kehler’s bold assurance turned wobbly. Republican Sen. Ron Johnson asked him how, as Stratcom commander, he would have gone about refusing to follow an illegal order.

Kehler replied, “I would have said, ‘I have a question about this,’ and I would have said, ‘I’m not ready to proceed.’ ”

“And then what happens?” Johnson asked.

“Well,” Kehler said. He paused, and nervous laughter flitted through the hearing room. “As I say,” he went on, with a slight grin, “I don’t know exactly. Fortunately, we’ve never—these are all hypothetical scenarios. I mean, they’re real, in terms of—”

Johnson interrupted: “We are holding a hearing on this, so—”

“Exactly,” Kehler replied. “This is the human factor in our system. The human factor kicks in.”

And that opened the door to the question of what happens to the legal principles of war when the human is Donald Trump.

Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy made the point in the starkest terms. “Let me just pull back the cover for a minute from this hearing,” he began. “We are concerned that the president of the United States is so unstable, is so volatile, has a decision-making process that is so quixotic, that he might order a nuclear-weapons strike that is wildly out of step with U.S. national security interests. Let’s just recognize the exceptional nature of this moment in the discussion that we are having today.”

Remarkably, no one—not even any of the committee’s Republican senators—challenged this charge.

More at https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/01/trump-nuclear-weapons-fred
-kaplan-the-bomb.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, January 27, 2020 3:32 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
So, government as a control room.

Part of the problem is that we have to decide what we want this control room TO DO. With production plants it's easy: maximize propylene, or maximize gasoline, or maximize GWH given particular feedstocks/ fuels.

But what do you want government TO DO? Some people think our government should sweep in and right all wrongs and "help" people around the world. Other people think our government should make capitalism or the banking system stronger. Some people think we should enhance international trade, or fix global warming.

So....?

What should our government's essential function be? Until you answer that question, you can't possibly start designing anything.

Just, yanno, putting that essential question out there again: WHAT DO YOU WANT OUR GOVERNMENT TO DO? WHAT ARE IT'S ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS?

Until you can figure that out, you can't possibly fix anything.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

Happy New Year, WISHY. I edited out your psychopathic screed!

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Monday, January 27, 2020 4:26 PM

THG

Quote:
Originally posted by Oonjerah:
I'm an actual, registered Democrat.

But I'm not sure what the topic is. Democrats can post in here,
and talk about themselves ... about why they are democrats ...
or what democrats believe in?

My parents were Republicans.
I was an adult in my 40's before I found out I was a democrat.
I didn't really know what the 2 parties stood for, so I asked a
friend who loves politics what I was.

Republicans tend to be conservative. Democrats tend to be liberal.
Can I even say what those words mean? Not very well.
Conservatives stand for law & order. i.e., Authority.
Democrats believe in human rights and equality. i.e., Freedom.
Anarchists believe in every man for himself?

... oooOO}{OOooo ...

Deep state describes dedicated, educated professionals.

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Monday, January 27, 2020 4:29 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Quote:
Originally posted by Oonjerah:
I'm an actual, registered Democrat.

But I'm not sure what the topic is. Democrats can post in here,
and talk about themselves ... about why they are democrats ...
or what democrats believe in?

My parents were Republicans.
I was an adult in my 40's before I found out I was a democrat.
I didn't really know what the 2 parties stood for, so I asked a
friend who loves politics what I was.

Republicans tend to be conservative. Democrats tend to be liberal.
Can I even say what those words mean? Not very well.
Conservatives stand for law & order. i.e., Authority.
Democrats believe in human rights and equality. i.e., Freedom.
Anarchists believe in every man for himself?

... oooOO}{OOooo ...

T

Deep state describes dedicated, educated professionals.

All due respect to OONJ, but that is not a legitimate assessment of what Democrats and Republicans are in 2020 by a long shot. It certainly wasn't ever a legitimate assessment of what an Anarchist is.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Monday, January 27, 2020 4:31 PM

THG

Deep state describes dedicated, educated professionals.

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Tuesday, January 28, 2020 8:50 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Trump on Coal

The International Monetary Fund makes regular estimates of worldwide subsidies to fossil fuels — subsidies that partly take the form of tax breaks and outright cash grants, but mainly involve not holding the industry accountable for the indirect costs it imposes. In 2017 it put these subsidies at $5.2 trillion; yes, that’s trillion with a “T.” For the U.S., the subsidies amounted to $649 billion, which is about $3 million for every worker employed in the extraction of coal, oil and gas.

Without these subsidies, it’s hard to imagine that anyone would still be investing in fossil fuels.

I still often find people — both right-wingers and climate activists — asserting that sharply reducing emissions would require a big decline in G.D.P. Everything we know, however, says that this is wrong, that we can decarbonize while continuing to achieve robust growth.

Given all this, however, why are people like Mnuchin and his boss Trump so adamantly pro-fossil fuel and anti-environmentalist?

Part of the answer, I believe, is that conservatives don’t want to admit that government action is ever justified. Once you concede that the government can do good by protecting the environment, people might start thinking that it can guarantee affordable health care, too.

The bigger issue, however, is sheer greed.

Given the scale of subsidies we give to fossil fuels, the industry as a whole should be regarded as a gigantic grift. It makes money by ripping off everyone else, to some extent through direct taxpayer subsidies, to a greater extent by shunting the true costs of its operations off onto innocent bystanders.

And let’s be clear: Many of those “costs” take the form of sickness and death, because that’s what local air pollution causes. Other costs take the form of “natural” disasters like the burning of Australia, which increasingly bear the signature of climate change.

In a sane world we’d be trying to shut this grift down. But the grifters — which overwhelmingly means corporations and investors, since little of that $3-million-per-worker subsidy trickles down to the workers themselves — have bought themselves a lot of political influence.

More at www.nytimes.com/2020/01/27/opinion/greta-thunberg-mnuchin.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, January 29, 2020 6:58 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Why We’re Polarized

People have always disagreed about politics, passionately and sometimes even violently. But in certain historical moments these disagreements were distributed without strong correlations, so that any one political party would contain a variety of views. In a representative democracy, that kind of distribution makes it easier to accomplish things. In contrast, today we see strong political polarization: members of any one party tend to line up with each other on a range of issues, and correspondingly view the other party with deep distrust. Political commentator Ezra Klein has seen this shift in action, and has studied it carefully in his new book Why We’re Polarized (out Jan. 28). We talk about the extent to which the apparent polarization is real, how we can trace its causes, and whether there’s anything we can do about it.

Polarization was not as high in the ’60s, in part that’s because, well, if you were a kind of moderate Democrat looking at the Republican Party, you saw a lot of people like yourself in it. Richard Nixon, domestically at least, did a lot of quite moderate and, even now looking back, liberal things. And conversely, Bill Clinton did some quite conservative things. But now, you look at the other side and they’re much more different from you demographically, they’re much more different than you ideologically. And so, the threat they pose to you and to your view of the good life is much more severe.

Some examples from many: The Republic Party’s overwhelmingly Christian. It used to be that both parties were. Now, the single largest religious group in the Democratic Party is people who are religiously unaffiliated. The Democratic Party is a coalition of a lot of different religious groups, liberal Christians, Buddhists, atheists, etc. On race, the Democratic Party is, I believe it is 44% non-white, at least in its 2016 primary vote, or in its 2016 vote. The Republican Party is over 90% white. You don’t have a ton of union members who are Republicans, you don’t have a ton of rural Southerners who are Democrats. And so, as that happens, and there’s a lot of evidence on this from outside of politics too, when you begin to stack identities the nature of disagreement becomes much deeper, it becomes much more threatening.

My background is in policy reporting, and so I have a lot of models for what happens when Congress starts working on a bill, and why it always collapses into total omni-shambles, but I didn’t have a model about why politics had seemingly gone off the rails in the way it had. And so this book was an opportunity for me to try to rebuild my understanding of politics from the ground up in a way that could help explain what was happening for me, and then hopefully for an audience.

More about Polarization, Politics, and Identity at
www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2020/01/27/81-ezra-klein-on-polar
ization-politics-and-identity/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Thursday, January 30, 2020 6:47 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Just, yanno, putting that essential question out there again: WHAT DO YOU WANT OUR GOVERNMENT TO DO? WHAT ARE IT'S ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS?

Until you can figure that out, you can't possibly fix anything.

No health care system can say yes to every desired treatment, in every context, at any price. All systems have to tell somebody no: Either providers cannot charge what they want, or patients cannot have what they want, or taxes are going to be much higher than anyone wants.

The American health care system is uniquely cruel in its approach to saying no. It says no through prices — but not, as in most other countries, by limiting the prices pharmaceutical companies and hospitals can charge for treatments. Rather, it says no by letting them charge whatever prices they want and denying care to those who can’t afford the cost.

The paradox of the American health system, then, is that it poses as a system with no limits — there is no centralized authority rationing care or negotiating treatments — even as it turns tens of millions of people away from services they need. But the system works quite well for those who can afford all that it has to offer. They can be mobilized by the health industry. When reformers threaten the profitable status quo, the health industry blankets airwaves with ads warning that under a different system, there will be someone who says no to you.

The US health care system has been designed as if, with enormous intelligence and intent, it was to be as resistant to cost control as possible.

The UK is the opposite of the US in how it says no. It has embraced the idea Americans fear most: rationing. There is, in the UK, a government agency that decides which treatments are worth covering, and for whom. It is an agency that has even decided, from the government’s perspective, how much a life is worth in hard currency. It has made the UK system uniquely centralized, transparent, and equitable. But it is built on a faith in government, and a political and social solidarity, that is hard to imagine in the US.

More at www.vox.com/2020/1/28/21074386/health-care-rationing-britain-nhs-nice-
medicare-for-all

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, January 31, 2020 7:39 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality

The traditional concepts of the common law of property were created for and by the ruling classes at a time when the bulk of their capital was land. Nowadays the great wealth lies in stocks, shares, bonds and the like, and is not just movable but mobile, crossing oceans at the touch of a key-pad…. In terms of legal theory and technique, however, there has been a profound if little discussed evolution by which the concepts originally devised for real property have been detached from their original object, only to survive and flourish as a means of handling abstract value. The feudal calculus lives and breeds, but its habitat is wealth, not land.

The enduring entanglement of modern property law with this original “feudal calculus” is a thread running throughout Pistor’s book. Most importantly, it informs her skepticism about the alignment that is commonly assumed in liberal grand narratives among progress, property rights, and the rule of law (understood in the sense of the universal applicability of general rules, such that no one class received preferential treatment by the state). There have been revolutionary moments, Pistor concedes, in which property owners did line up behind the demand for general rights—the American and French Revolutions being cases in point. But once their property was established, owners became, like their feudal predecessors, defenders of privilege. They have advocated not universal binding rules, but what Max Weber called a “modern particularism,” finding ways around the law when it suited their interests.

In the twenty-first century, examples of this modern particularism are rife. Pistor describes, for instance, the exceptions from general bankruptcy rules negotiated by the derivatives industry. In normal bankruptcy cases, secured creditors can claim access to their collateral first, and unsecured creditors have to divide what remains of the company or estate. For fast-moving financial transactions, that procedure is too cumbersome, so the collateral pledged in derivatives deals is granted an exemption from the usual queue of claims. In cases of bankruptcy, it is transferred directly to the counterparty, leaving unsecured creditors empty-handed. Another example would be the right claimed by foreign investors to challenge the normal operation of national courts in their host countries. Or the deals negotiated annually with the authorities by large taxpayers over what their tax bill will actually be. Or the haggling between regulators and banks over whether they meet the criteria laid down by the Dodd-Frank legislation of 2010.

The result is a legal order that is relentlessly insistent on the priority of rights, and of property rights above all, and yet shot through with special exceptions and reservations.

More at www.nybooks.com/articles/2020/02/13/how-big-law-makes-big-money/

The Code of Capital by Katharina Pistor PDF
https://1337x.to/search/The+Code+of+Capital/1/
https://1337x.to/torrent/4211386/The-Code-of-Capital-by-Katharina-Pist
or-PDF/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Saturday, February 1, 2020 6:30 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Does it matter who the Democrats choose for President?

It’s still far from clear who will come out on top in the primary, but it’s enough to think about what would happen if either of the two current front-runners, Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden, were to become president — and also have strong enough coattails to produce a Democratic Senate, because otherwise nothing will happen.

Sanders has a hugely ambitious agenda; Medicare for All is just part of it. Paying for that agenda would be difficult — so turning Sanders’s vision into reality would require large tax increases, not just on the wealthy, but on the middle class; without those tax increases it would be highly inflationary.

But not to worry: it won’t happen. Even if he made it to the White House, Sanders would have to deal with a Congress (and a public) considerably less radical than he is, and would be obliged to settle for a more modest progressive agenda.

It’s true that Sanders enthusiasts believe that they can rally a hidden majority of Americans around an aggressively populist agenda, and in so doing also push Congress into going along. But we had a test in the midterm elections: Progressives ran a number of candidates in Trump districts, and if even one of them had won they would have claimed vindication for their faith in transformative populism. But none did; the sweeping Democratic victory came entirely from moderates running conventional campaigns.

The usual take on this progressive setback is that it raises questions about Sanders’s electability. But it also has a very different implication: Moderates worried about a radical presidency should cool it. A President Sanders wouldn’t be especially radical in practice.

What about Joe Biden? The Sanders campaign has claimed that Biden endorsed Paul Ryan’s plans for sharp cuts in Social Security and Medicare; that claim is false. What is true is that in the past Biden has often gone along with the Beltway consensus that we need “adjustments” — a euphemism for at least modest cuts — in Social Security.

But the Democratic Party as a whole has moved left on these issues, and Biden has moved with it. Even if he has a lingering desire to strike a Grand Bargain with Republicans — which I doubt — he would face such a huge intraparty backlash that he would be forced to back off.

So in terms of policy, here’s what I think would happen if Sanders wins: we’ll get a significant but not gigantic expansion of the social safety net, paid for by significant new taxes on the rich. On the other hand, if Biden wins, we’ll get a significant but not gigantic expansion of the social safety net, paid for by significant new taxes on the rich.

More at www.nytimes.com/2020/01/31/opinion/does-it-matter-who-the-democrats-ch
oose.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Saturday, February 1, 2020 7:04 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Does it matter who the Democrats choose for President?

Nope. They're not going to win either way.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Saturday, February 1, 2020 8:44 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Does it matter who the Democrats choose for President?

Nope. They're not going to win either way.

The Dems can show Trump voters that they have been used and betrayed by Trump. The Dems would be wise not to focus on their candidate but instead pour money into negative advertising, shaming Trump for making promises that he knew he wouldn’t deliver on: Hillary has not been prosecuted; Mexico has paid for no wall; great manufacturing jobs are not going to Ohioans; there are more suicides, drug overdose deaths, and grieving families. Negative advertising will increase the likelihood that these folks stay home on Election Day and not vote for Trump.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Saturday, February 1, 2020 8:46 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Does it matter who the Democrats choose for President?

Nope. They're not going to win either way.
The Dems can show Trump voters that they have been used and betrayed by Trump. The Dems would be wise not to focus on their candidate but instead pour money into negative advertising, shaming Trump for making promises that he knew he wouldn’t deliver on: Hillary has not been prosecuted; Mexico has paid for no wall; great manufacturing jobs are not going to Ohioans; there are more suicides, drug overdose deaths, and grieving families. Negative advertising will increase the likelihood that these folks stay home on Election Day and not vote for Trump.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

That's all you got left.

Negativity. The heart and soul of the Democrat.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Saturday, February 1, 2020 9:11 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

That's all you got left.

Negativity. The heart and soul of the Democrat.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

The Dems could praise V.P. Mike Pence as calm, thoughtful, intelligent, truthful, pays his taxes, never bribed hookers, never bankrupt, never been sued then forced to pay millions in compensation. Vote for Vice President Pence because if Trump dies America will need someone who is the complete opposite of the President.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Saturday, February 1, 2020 12:03 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

That's all you got left.

Negativity. The heart and soul of the Democrat.

Do Right, Be Right. :)
The Dems could praise V.P. Mike Pence as calm, thoughtful, intelligent, truthful, pays his taxes, never bribed hookers, never bankrupt, never been sued then forced to pay millions in compensation. Vote for Vice President Pence because if Trump dies America will need someone who is the complete opposite of the President.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Or they could just do nothing. Because if Trump dies then America gets President Pence.

Are you huffing glue on Saturday or something?

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Saturday, February 1, 2020 1:20 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

That's all you got left.

Negativity. The heart and soul of the Democrat.

Do Right, Be Right. :)
The Dems could praise V.P. Mike Pence as calm, thoughtful, intelligent, truthful, pays his taxes, never bribed hookers, never bankrupt, never been sued then forced to pay millions in compensation. Vote for Vice President Pence because if Trump dies America will need someone who is the complete opposite of the President.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Or they could just do nothing. Because if Trump dies then America gets President Pence.

Are you huffing glue on Saturday or something?

Do Right, Be Right. :)

6ix, you can get all the same Trump policy from President Pence, but without the mental instability. Pence won't nuke N Korea or Iran, but Trump might in his second term, out of frustration that he can't get either to shutdown their nuclear weapons program.

There Is No Check on Trump's Rage Going Nuclear - His aggressive boorishness, entitlement, and belief that he can do whatever he wants, Trump has absolute authority to launch nuclear weapons—without anyone's permission.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/05/22/theres-no-check-on-trumps-rage-go
ing-nuclear/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, February 2, 2020 6:59 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Your Piece of the American Pie

If a pie represented the estimated $98 trillion of household wealth in the United States, nine pieces, or 90% of the pie, would go to the wealthiest 20% in the country, according to a National Bureau Of Economic Research study of household wealth trends in the United States from 1962 to 2016. Out of those nine slices, four would go to just the top 1%.

The upper middle class and the middle class would share one piece, or about 10%, and the lower middle class would get .3% of the pie. The poorest Americans, people in the bottom 20%, wouldn't get any. On average, they are more than $6,000 in debt.

www.cbsnews.com/news/income-inequality-in-america-how-98-trillion-of-h
ousehold-wealth-is-distributed/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, February 2, 2020 12:20 PM