Barack Obama calls Trumpcare ‘massive transfer of wealth’ from poor to rich by SIGNYM

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Barack Obama calls Trumpcare ‘massive transfer of wealth’ from poor to rich

POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Thursday, July 27, 2017 10:48
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Friday, June 30, 2017 3:31 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:

Do you see that trend under Obama (2008-2016) when wealth was redistributed back downwards?

Yeah, me neither.
What a hypocrite.
Here's another curious observation: Do you that that BIG transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich under Clinton, when most working people thought they were doing pretty well?
In reality, the trend does seem to stay pretty much the same, whether there's Dems or Repubs in the WH or Congress. - SIGNY

GDP per Capita (US$)
Country 1975 1980 1985 1990 1998
Russia 2,555 3,654 3,463 3,668 2,138
United States 19,364 21,529 23,200 25,363 29,683
=THUGR

THUGR .. first of all, as I said in my other post http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=60278&p=19 I munch data for a living. Please. don't insult me by providing such ridiculous numbers.

1) There is a serious flaw with using averages, which is what "per capita" (per person) means: they don't tell you what's happening to MOST people, just what would happen IF the money was evenly divided, which it isn't. By way of illustration, you have 11 football team members sitting on a bench. One player makes $10,000,000; the others make $10,000 each. The AVERAGE salary is about $918,000, but most players make only $10,000 each. So "per capita" figures are very misleading unless you know the distribution; you're better off quoting the median. http://www.purplemath.com/modules/meanmode.htm

2) Did you think I wouldn't notice that your "Russian" GDP values stop at 1998 - the year the USSR started falling apart?

-----------

"Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor"- William Blake
THUGR, JONESING FOR WWIII
All those guns 1kiki, are pointed towards your beloved Russia. All those cyber capabilities, pointed right at Russia. Thanks Putin, and get ready to duck.
I'll accept your apology any time, THUGR. But I know you're not man enough to give me one

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Friday, June 30, 2017 3:39 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
My editorial would be that the Federal Constitution and the California Constitution prevent problems from being solved. - SECOND

I see how the CA constitution might be a problem, but what is it in the Federal Constitution that prevents healthcare reform? If the Feds could implement Medicare and Medicaid, what's the problem?

OH BTW, I'm very much against tax rate caps or earmarking funds or mandated spending. There is no way to predict ten or more years into the future what budgetary needs will look like ... those kinds of provisions really should have "sunset clauses. If you can;t trust your state Legislature to realistically respond to the needs of the moment, then your governing process is broken. You need to fix THAT.

*****

Anyway, it's been fun and I appreciate you doing the research, but although I'm on vacation I still have real-life things to attend to. Will catch up later.

-----------

"Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor"- William Blake
THUGR, JONESING FOR WWIII
All those guns 1kiki, are pointed towards your beloved Russia. All those cyber capabilities, pointed right at Russia. Thanks Putin, and get ready to duck.
I'll accept your apology any time, THUGR. But I know you're not man enough to give me one

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Friday, June 30, 2017 4:03 PM

SECOND

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

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
My editorial would be that the Federal Constitution and the California Constitution prevent problems from being solved. - SECOND
I see how the CA constitution might be a problem, but what is it in the Federal Constitution that prevents healthcare reform? If the Feds could implement Medicare and Medicaid, what's the problem?

The problem is 41 Senators can stop any reform. (And voting "No" feels so much safer than voting "Yes" on complex/far-reaching legislation, so 41 "No"s is always easy to find.) Passing it is hopeless, but the Democrats actually got their paperwork together and their ducks in a row for anyone who wants to read it:

www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/6/30/15896934/most-important-stor
ies-june-30
In the course of an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren remarked that whatever happens with the Obamacare repeal fight, “Now it’s time for the next step. And the next step is single payer.”

What it means: Single-payer is jargon for a health insurance system like Medicare (or the Canadian health care system, conveniently also called Medicare) where the government forms a single risk pool that includes everyone. Except instead of being limited to senior citizens, it would apply to Americans of all ages.

On the same page as Bernie Sanders: Warren is often seen as a natural successor to Bernie Sanders as a leader of the Democratic Party’s left wing. But Medicare-for-all is central to his ideological vision, and Warren — whose home state contains many health devise manufacturers who could be disadvantaged by a single-payer scheme — has not previously embraced it.

What’s next? A single-payer bill in the House, John Conyers’s H-646, has now been endorsed by a majority of House Democrats. Sanders has been hinting for a while that he will be releasing a Senate single-payer plan soon, one that presumably would differ from the Conyers bill in some respects.

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, July 1, 2017 7:18 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Alright then, back to health care.

As far as CA is concerned ... One of the concerns about the proposed single=payer plan is that it would require an approximately 15% wage tax to fund it, in addition to all of the Federal money (VA, Medicare, Medicaid, various grants) paid for healthcare. So, yes, CA would require a Federal waiver.

That 15% tax for healthcare premiums sounds terrible at first blush, but it's not as bad a you might think, since many workers already pay 15% or more of wages as insurance premiums.

The problem is that these employer=paid premiums aren't taxed as income; but instead are untaxed as benefits. So if you boosted the formal "income" of workers by re-labeling as a wage instead of a benefit, millions of people would immediately lose 10-40% of that income into Federal and State taxes.

Another problem is deciding who gets the benefits. Everyone? Citizens only? Residents of CA only? Once you open up universal healthcare in one state, you encourage pretty "marginal" people to immigrate.

****

As far as Congress is concerned, the requirement that you only need 51% to stop something. WHY the Dems are in such a sweat about Trumcare is beyond me, since and Dems and Indepedents have 46 votes. It's not a Constitutional requirement, simply a Senate rule.

Oh heck ,,,, more later

-----------

"Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor"- William Blake
THUGR, JONESING FOR WWIII
All those guns 1kiki, are pointed towards your beloved Russia. All those cyber capabilities, pointed right at Russia. Thanks Putin, and get ready to duck.
I'll accept your apology any time, THUGR. But I know you're not man enough to give me one

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Saturday, July 1, 2017 10:04 AM

SECOND

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

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

As far as Congress is concerned, the requirement that you only need 51% to stop something. WHY the Dems are in such a sweat about Trumcare is beyond me, since and Dems and Indepedents have 46 votes. It's not a Constitutional requirement, simply a Senate rule.

Congressmen love their dramas, but any substantial change at the Federal level, such as Obamacare, requires a super-majority to make the change permanent. Permanent is the key word. Sometimes a clever President can temporarily sneak around that requirement which is built into rules. I looked for the most extreme historical example to compare with Obamacare and I found one in the Civil War.

Freeing the slaves, for example, did not pass quickly in Congress. Lincoln cleverly got around his slow moving, indecisive Congress. When Lincoln signed his Emancipation Proclamation, it applied only to 3 million of the 4 million slaves at the time. It was a devious document because Lincoln did not have the votes in Congress. The Proclamation covered only slaves in Confederate-held lands; it did not apply to those in the four slave states that were not in rebellion (Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware, and Missouri). It also specifically excluded some regions of the Confederacy already controlled by the Union army. Lincoln used his war powers to sneak around the fact that his Congress would not approve what he did.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emancipation_Proclamation

To make Emancipation last beyond the term of a particular President and his Congress, the 13th Amendment had to be written to free the slaves. The Federal government installed puppet state governments, oops!, I mean Reconstruction governments in the states most affected by freeing the slaves. They had to ratify the Amendment to the Constitution because it was very obvious that the former Confederate States legislatures, once they were back under local control, would bring slavery back again as soon as they could. Emancipation was kind of like Obamacare, with a change of Presidents, it could get torn apart. If Emancipation was not written into the Constitution, the first President from a former slave-holding state (Andrew Johnson, who followed Lincoln) could have easily reinstated slavery with an executive order revoking the Emancipation Proclamation. Johnson couldn't stop Lincoln's 13th Amendment, but he did oppose the 14th, which gave citizenship to former slaves. Lucky us, the rules did not require President Johnson's signature on the 14th.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_State
s_Constitution#Political_and_economic_change_in_the_South

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, July 3, 2017 10:56 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Congressmen love their dramas, but any substantial change at the Federal level, such as Obamacare, requires a super-majority to make the change permanent

Which is why, IMHO, the drama about "repeal and replace Obamacare" is much ado about not much.

Since Democrat Senators have enough votes to filibuster any significant repeal/replace basically forever ... unless they lose an awful lot of Senate seats in 2018 ... the Dems can become "the party of no".

Now, there ARE some ways to get around the filibuster, one of them is to make changes to the bill such that they can be considered merely "budgetary" changes, which can be "resolved" between the House GOP and the Senate GOP, and the other is if the Senate gets rid of the filibuster. But both parties, having been on the losing side, are extremely reluctant to let go of the filibuster, so except that the filibuster was eliminated when considering nominations, it's highly unlikely that either party will eliminate it.

So, EVEN IF the GOP were to be able to resolve its own internal contradictions (ideological considerations versus the need to get votes in the next election) Democrats could still block any GOP-proposed healthcare bill indefinitely. There's no need for the Dems to be so mesmerized by the GOP bill that they can't afford to be thinking about other options.

This also leaves the Dems stymied from advancing any legislation, but that isn't my suggestion at all.

They should be focusing on reaching out to the public. One of the problems with the Dems is that they've become associated with empty promises to their constituents - the former middle class of America (including whites, men, and Republicans). I EXPECT the GOP to pander to the wealthy ... it's part of their ideology. But the party of FDR used to represent the non-wealthy, so it's particularly rankling when they promise and promise and promise and fail to deliver.

This time, the Dems need to promise something that can actually succeed, and that they can market to the public.

-----------

"Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor"- William Blake
THUGR, JONESING FOR WWIII
All those guns 1kiki, are pointed towards your beloved Russia. All those cyber capabilities, pointed right at Russia. Thanks Putin, and get ready to duck.
I'll accept your apology any time, THUGR. But I know you're not man enough to give me one

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Wednesday, July 5, 2017 1:02 AM

OONJERAH

Wow! This article is wonderfully scathing. :)
Something along the lines of Only those who are Financially
fittest & superior should have any rights and power.
I recall this philosophy from some years back when my
Sis was spouting the philosophies of Ayn Rand.

Social Darwinism Is What Truly Guides Trump

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/06/social-darwinism-is-what-
truly-guides-trump.html

... oooOO}{OOooo ...

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Wednesday, July 5, 2017 9:08 AM

REAVERFAN

The gullibility of Trumpanzees is endless.

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Wednesday, July 5, 2017 9:56 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

OONJ

What the article said:

Quote:
The best explanation for this grand act of self-sabotage (beyond his simply not understanding the policies he endorses) is that Trump, like much of the Republican Party, is an instinctive social Darwinist.

What I said ...

Quote:
I EXPECT the GOP to pander to the wealthy ... it's part of their ideology. But the party of FDR used to represent the non-wealthy, so it's particularly rankling when they promise and promise and promise and fail to deliver.

It's naive to think of this President - or indeed ANY recent President or major-party candidate - as representing "the people".

Hillary and Bill managed to siphon off millions of dollars from aid to Haiti (SECOND, there is a paragraph in this story about how "foreign aid" simply boomerangs back into big corporations:) http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/09/the_t
ruth_about_the_clintons_and_haiti.html and from the Saudis (to the Clinton foundation), and were endless pushers of "free trade". They represented nothing so much as the petrodollar and the big banks; software firms, big pharma, bio-engineering companies, and other "intellectual property"-based businesses, the neocon deep-staters and their MIC, and other transnational corporations.

Obama made not a dent in the xfer of wealth to the wealthy. While less openly corrupt than the Clintons, he still managed to please the banks and health insurances and big pharma. He too, was an endless pusher of "free trade" and followed the neocon line.

In the other corner ... Trump represents national capitalists: Businesses headquartered in the USA and which make much of their money or declare their profits here: coal companies, (some) oil companies, real estate ventures etc.

All you're seeing now is a money squabble- conscious or not- between the internationalists and the nationalists. Now, I can tell you WHY I think the squabble is playing out right now, but that's another story.

The last competent President who gave a damn about "the people" was Kennedy - and look what happened to him! But hon, that was over 50 years ago. Does it really take THAT long for people to catch up to reality?

So the article is nothing new, at least, not for me.

The only reason to vote for Trump was to remove ourselves from the (internationalist) "free-trade" agreements, stop illegal immigration, and end our pointless foreign "interventions" including our pointless military provocation of Russia (and more recently China).

That's it: restoring economic sovereignty to the USA and beating back the MIC/neocons, so that it's the USA government (and not a group of transnational consortia) creating economic policy.

It will be up to SOMEBODY ELSE, somebody NOT TRUMP - the Democrats, if they can turn themselves around and grasp this golden opportunity - to craft a life-affirming economic policy for the USA. But the longer the Dems persist in this "Russia" nonsense, the further and further the oppty moves away from them.

-----------

"Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor"- William Blake
THUGR, JONESING FOR WWIII
All those guns 1kiki, are pointed towards your beloved Russia. All those cyber capabilities, pointed right at Russia. Thanks Putin, and get ready to duck.
I'll accept your apology any time, THUGR. But I know you're not man enough to give me one

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Wednesday, July 5, 2017 10:02 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

By the way ... GSTRING and the rest of the liberaloid gang ... if you think "trumpanzees" are naive believers in bullcrap, you should look to your own "russia" paranoia for a parallel. I have never seen such a group of ostensibly intelligent, well-educated people who were so entranced by such an endless torrent of bullshit.

I exempt SECOND. Although he tends to focus on extremely partisan (and at times trivial) responses to the Trump Presidency, at least he's not as mesmerized as the rest of you on this single pointless point.

I have repeatedly attempted to get you to think about and discuss America's interests. Apparently, reality is just too difficult for you to deal with.

-----------

"Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor"- William Blake
THUGR, JONESING FOR WWIII
All those guns 1kiki, are pointed towards your beloved Russia. All those cyber capabilities, pointed right at Russia. Thanks Putin, and get ready to duck.
I'll accept your apology any time, THUGR. But I know you're not man enough to give me one

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Monday, July 10, 2017 8:10 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN

I was wondering how many here have read up on the healthcare exchanges as exemplified by Dr. Umbehr:

https://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2013-fall/dr-josh-umbehr-o
n-concierge-medicine-revolution/

There should be a bunch more links to find, but I'm not seeing them now.

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Friday, July 14, 2017 4:34 AM

SHINYGOODGUY

Quote:
By the way ... GSTRING and the rest of the liberaloid gang ... if you think "trumpanzees" are naive believers in bullcrap, you should look to your own "russia" paranoia for a parallel. I have never seen such a group of ostensibly intelligent, well-educated people who were so entranced by such an endless torrent of bullshit.

Seriously, what's with the Russia love? Oh and if you truly believe in your position, whatever it may be, I would think you would have no qualms in repeating yourself as many times that it takes to make your point. That's just me. As far as name-calling goes - yes, in anger, I have responded. I know that detracts from getting my point across, but there are times that I feel the need to defend myself and I respond strongly, overly so, and don't think about the end result.

I am better than that. I normally do my best to utilize reason and logic, but I am, above all, a human. A fallible, feeling, breathing human.

SGG

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Friday, July 14, 2017 8:09 PM

OONJERAH

It's true that Trump has a lot of class.
It's just that it's LOW class.

Hasn't Trump complained that the Presidency is too hard?
Of course, if he doesn't understand or care much about
the Laws of the Land, it would be.

Like Shiny said, there need to be minimum requirements
for the presidency.

The Republican party nominated him, & I still have no clue
Why they would do something so nuts!
Unless he's a really good puppet.

... oooOO}{OOooo ...

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Tuesday, July 18, 2017 8:54 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN

Quote:
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
I was wondering how many here have read up on the healthcare exchanges as exemplified by Dr. Umbehr:

https://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2013-fall/dr-josh-umbehr-o
n-concierge-medicine-revolution/

There should be a bunch more links to find, but I'm not seeing them now.

I guess it is called AtlasMD Direct Care, and it is a template for any Doctor or group to duplicate.

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Tuesday, July 18, 2017 10:46 PM

6STRINGJOKER

Quote:
Originally posted by Oonjerah:
Like Shiny said, there need to be minimum requirements
for the presidency.

What would you suggest those be?

It's a question to ask now because eventually the Democrats will be back in power and that is the time to do something about it.

Every single time a Democrat loses an election we have to hear all the whining about the Electoral College. 8 years of Obama and nobody even talked about changing it.

See where I'm going here? ;)

Quote:
The Republican party nominated him, & I still have no clue
Why they would do something so nuts!
Unless he's a really good puppet.

Unlike the DNC, the electorate actually put Trump in the running against the Democratic candidate. I didn't vote for Trump in the primaries and I wasn't paying much attention back then so I can't really say how he won that.

When it was a race between anyone and Hillary Clinton though, I would have voted for Satan himself.

There's a good chance I would have voted for Bernie. At least it would have been a tough choice for me if he got the nomination.

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Thursday, July 27, 2017 4:24 AM

JEWELSTAITEFAN

Quote:
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
Quote:
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
I was wondering how many here have read up on the healthcare exchanges as exemplified by Dr. Umbehr:

https://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2013-fall/dr-josh-umbehr-o
n-concierge-medicine-revolution/

There should be a bunch more links to find, but I'm not seeing them now.
I guess it is called AtlasMD Direct Care, and it is a template for any Doctor or group to duplicate.

$10 per month doesn't seem so bad.
Do you disagree?

https://atlas.md/

https://atlas.md/wichita/

https://twitter.com/atlasmd

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Thursday, July 27, 2017 5:06 AM

SECOND

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

It's not over yet. But what the GOP's senators might end up agreeing on instead is far from clear. They are plunging ahead with debate toward their unknown goal, pressured by an impatient president.

The day's proceedings began with prodding from Trump, who's proven impatient and inconsistent throughout the health care debate and yet can claim some credit for resuscitating Senate talks after McConnell essentially declared them dead last week.

The president singled out GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who'd voted the day before against opening long-awaited debate on the legislation, and also opposed a wide-ranging McConnell amendment Tuesday that offered a replacement for Obamacare and went down to defeat.

"Senator @lisamurkowski of the Great State of Alaska really let the Republicans, and our country, down yesterday. Too bad!" Trump tweeted.

"I don't really follow Twitter that much," Murkowski remarked to reporters later with a shrug.

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Thursday, July 27, 2017 10:48 AM

SECOND

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

Alaska’s two Republican senators got surprising phone calls from Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke insinuating that the Trump administration would punish the state should Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) continue to oppose Obamacare repeal efforts.

Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) told the Alaska Dispatch News about the discussion:
"I'm not going to go into the details, but I fear that the strong economic growth, pro-energy, pro-mining, pro-jobs and personnel from Alaska who are part of those policies are going to stop," Sullivan said.

"I tried to push back on behalf of all Alaskans. … We're facing some difficult times and there's a lot of enthusiasm for the policies that Secretary Zinke and the president have been talking about with regard to our economy. But the message was pretty clear," Sullivan said.

www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/report-trump-admin-threatens-retaliati
on-against-alaska-for-obamacare-repeal-opposition/ar-AAoUDU0

The politically astute response would be for both Alaskan GOP Senators to sign a statement that they will vote for impeachment if Trump carries out his threat to harm Alaska.

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