Trump has created strange bed fellows. I'm a lot more sympathetic to Chris' critique of this than my comments below probably let on. Among the many disasters has been the rehabilitation of people who are not only abjectly authoritarian but whose views and beliefs have been more thoroughly discredited than any other mainstream American faction I can think of in the post war era.
Where I part ways is that at the end of the day the point of politics is to win and move the ball, I think Harris will do that in ways I find far more preferable to the only actual alternative, and if there are votes to be had without any compromise of the agenda I see no reason not to take them.
I do not know. My sense from the media is that the neocon/neocon sympathetic wing of the GOP that has not left preferred Haley. If true it would seem to make sense that referencing the Cheney name, and the other Republicans who opposed or defected from Trump, could create a permission structure for them to vote Harris, which is what I think the campaign is trying to do. I believe only a third of those voters is bigger than the margin of victory in Pennsylvania in each of the last 2 elections.
Heh, I'm not sure many local governments have a mechanism for non binding referendums.
I do think this entire situation is an example of real political issues degenerating into contests between two incredibly silly camps. There are problems with immigrants, refugees, whatever from undeveloped countries bringing undeveloped habits with them. I know this because I used to see central American immigrants (no idea on status) going in significant numbers to wash their clothes in the Patuxent river. This was disgusting, bad for the environment, and bad for everyone involved, and there's a legitimate public interest in putting a stop to things like that. Given that experience, it wouldn't totally shock me if there have been instances of unlicensed harvesting of wild fowl in public parks, and based on Google, there may be some evidence that has gone on.
Personally doubt anyone outside of Springfield OH actually knows one way or the other. That sort of thing can't be permitted either, and it's completely legitimate to ask what the policy response is where it occurs, given that we have been resetting millions of people from the developing world over the last 10-15 years of both legal and illegal status.
But once again we'll lead off with the crazed crank off his rocker grandfather making outrageous claims about immigrants eating pets versus rejoinders about whether this constitutes a 'blood libel' (as oppose to mere ignorant idiocy), because as we all know every individual resettled is immediately and fully assimilated, sinless and free of corruption as the Virgin Mary.
I'm not sure how much say the local authorities have in this particular situation. I believe resettlement of refugees is handled by the US State Department.
I think Jaybird raises a good point. What should the goal be? Based on Chip's understanding of the initiative in CA, it sounds like it's get people into some type of permanent housing, which strikes me as good.
I'm open to investigating the issue. I started in house on the provider side and for the last oh 8ish years I've been in the provider-facing technology side. The thing I always get nervous about with it is that where we have reimbursement rates set with government programs there's this constant threat of providers simply no longer taking government program patients. And while I understand there are also solutions to that I worry about the heavy handedness of them taking us in a counter productive direction.
But I'm also not an economist, and always try to keep an open mind. So convince-able.
I can't speak for him but from past conversations I believe he thinks there should be a mandate for price transparency and (I assume) a prohibition on the ability to charge differently for the same procedure based on payor, which happens as a result of opaque negotiations between payor and health system, practice, network, whatever. And he isn't wrong that it's a problem.
What I will say is that there are a lot of state level transparency laws (Maryland has one) but they tend to be of limited utility given that healthcare doesn't lend itself to shopping around the way many other services might. I support transparency but I think what you're really trying to get to is economics of scale so that it all matters a lot less, and if the patient is (a) getting the service, and (b) not being put in an untenable financial situation for having gotten it, I dont really care what the payors and providers want to work out.
I saw the new Alien and gave it more of a B. I think it's main flaw is that it was produced by Ridley Scott meaning there was probably some pressure to treat the prequels with a modicum of respect when they should have both been ignored. I seem to be unusual in that I found them both shockingly bad, to the point that they significantly rehabilitated Alien 3 for me.
That said I really enjoyed the use of the fact that they were in space as a plot device far more than any of the others in the series, which is kind of funny given the setting. I think the movie would have benefitted from a little more time on the colony, and a little more build up to the decision to go investigate the ship, also the use of the dead actor was totally unnecessary, distracting, and shouldn't have been done. I'm ambivalent around the ethics of the decision but it added nothing to the film, and even kind of undermines one of the cooler ideas in the series, that being that you never really know who might be an android.
But all that aside it was totally worth the price of admission and seeing a pulse rifle fire on the big screen again for the first time in forever was glorious.
I don't think you're entirely correct about that. The big lesson is that the more people who have insurance the more market opportunities you create which are then filled by enterprising providers, which leads to an increase in service access and fewer people falling through the cracks. The ACA did not solve the core transparency problem which is still an issue. However it did do the following:
-fixed the most glaring holes in the private insurance system that screw people over (no, not all, but the biggest are gone)
-halted the ever increasing leak of people falling out of the insurance system altogether, which creates its own source of massive costs
-provided for the technical investments and incentives that have spurred the increasing retailization of healthcare services
Without the ACA you would not have the rapid expansion of urgent care and minute clinic type operations that are now providing basic care and coverage, and you can see how good it is by the fact that our infrastructure kicked the European infrastructure's ass when it came to an actual crisis, i.e. vaccine distribution during covid. Our main problem is that for reasons I will never understand one of our two political parties has completely checked out of the issue in any constructive way.
Anyway, what's clear to me is that whether the government or the private sector pays is a lot less important than whether the system as a whole is coherent, which ours still isn't in a whole bunch of ways (the employer sponsorship issue remains a significant complication). That's the only actual advantage 'single payor' countries have, and of course 'single payor' means something completely different depending on which of those countries you're in, plenty of which also involve private health insurance.
All that aside though the ACA has been an unambiguously good thing and massive improvement on the situation that preceded it. We should be spurring ahead with improvements to it, but alas, the political right ranges from 'what if we just kicked people off insurance so we can justify a tax cut' to 'Bill Gates is working with the government to put microchips in my brain.'
Yea. Granted I went to a law school that's probably best known for being the butt of several jokes on the Wire, if it's known for anything at all. Needless to say we were discouraged from thinking too highly of ourselves.
It's not so implausible. Law school attracts a lot of people with ideas they are dying to tell you about. I can't ever decide if I think the dynamic is good for the profession or the institutions that produce it.
That is the challenge with such a massive error that spanned 4 administrations. It's hard to really know who is responsible for what.
That said I think Jaybird is right on principle, heads could have and should have rolled. But I am also so grateful and impressed that Biden actually extricated the US that I struggle to muster annoyance about it. There was every incentive and plenty of pressure to stay but he did the big picture right thing and got out. I will take the Ws where I can get them.
My take on it from the sort of inside legal perspective is that it's a Rube Goldberg machine that functions at the level it does by virtue of having lots and lots of money put into it.
I think the ACA is one of those weird situations where it wasn't really what the winners wanted so the losers wrote the history. I also think Harris provided a pretty solid albeit brief articulation of why no one seriously wants to go back when the subject came up last night.
In 2008 I was still in a state of total outrage about the Iraq War and felt betrayed by a lot of the Clintonite establishment for giving Bush some bipartisan cover. My jets have long since cooled and over time my opinion of her has become a bit more nuanced.
I also think Biden has been quite succesful especially under the constraints, and it's a shame his career had to end the way it did. But hey, whatever happens next I think we can feel good today. And I think you're right that Harris' handlers should feel free to give her a longer leash and some additional exposure. The more people see her acting just like a normal, generally appealing person the better.
This is one where I will disagree with you and pillsy, and where I think the counter intuitive takes on Obama have gone too far. And I get why. He bequeathed a very rough ride.
But the hope and change stuff delivered a trifecta and super majority. That capital was spent on the ACA, which is and remains, even in it's somewhat trimmed, and never implemented to the full extent it should have been form, a very important achievement. I don't think HRC could have delivered it.
I'll also say that while Biden, who was definitely a better operator with legislation, did some good stuff, much of which needed to be done, none of that compares to the actual positive impact of the wellbeing of the citizenry, which to me is the whole point of all of this.
I graded her a very solid B. She isn't Obama, and she isn't even Biden in 2012. However she looked completely plausible in the role and other than sounding a little nervous at the very beginning came off quite well. She also looked better and better as Trump went further off into space as the night went on. Overall a good performance that her supporters can feel happy about.
If I really had to nitpick as a political junkie I'd have liked to see her weave less and directly address her pain points more but the show wasn't for me, it was for the low info voters who somehow are still up for grabs. In terms of the victor she took it, no contest.
Even from the debate last night I think it was pretty clear that he does not think the (alleged) cat and dog (and duck?) eating resettled refugees of Springfield, OH are elite. He thinks the people that put them there are. If they actually exist. Which...uh..we will generously call an open question.
Fair enough. To me the counter argument to that, and one that's easy to forget, is that Trump is a structurally unpopular and unappealing person. We now know that he can actually be winged with a bullet by a would be assassin and not even experience a sympathy bump. IMO his popularity is artificially inflated by the nature of the first past the post, two party system, plus the total intellectual disintegration of the political right. His singular victory (so far) was an ultra lucky inside straight on top of natural thermostatic trends in American politics, a uniquely ill suited opponent, and catching a bunch of incredible breaks down the stretch. I also harbor the unprovable belief that his election was a publicity stunt that got out of control and his current bid is mainly about trying to stay out of prison.
All is to say that he is a bad politician with no actual vision, just an a-hole who got lucky.
I see a lot of the crazed stuff as his crutch. Which doesn't mean he doesn't believe it or isn't authoritarian, or that many of his followers don't harbor some pretty ugly beliefs and sentiments. But to me none of it happens without the core conditions in place 2012-2016, and that it's viability is already on the wane as those conditions have changed. Nevertheless I acknowledge that at this point we are firmly into reasonable people can disagree territroy.
Of course I can remember how it all started. Back when this was coming together it meant Wall Street, high finance, and the revolving door of federal elected and appointed officials who enabled them to blow up the economy on a virtual craps table. And the officials involved in NAFTA and giving China most favored trade status and the wealthy business owners and/or shareholders that closed shop here and moved there or wherever else. It was the people in economics who thought mass illegal immigration was good (for business!) actually. On the left it was the 1% and on the right it was the federal trade and finance bureaucracies.
Now, in the ridiculous context of American culture war has that word transmogrified into something much more nebulous? Maybe. Probably. But I don't know why people are so quick to treat failing to assess well documented facts and developments about our political trajectory as a virtue.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Open Mic for the week of 9/9/2024”
If the Harris campaign isn't doing the math correctly on something so clear cut even us midwits see the hazards we're probably f*cked regardless.
"
Trump has created strange bed fellows. I'm a lot more sympathetic to Chris' critique of this than my comments below probably let on. Among the many disasters has been the rehabilitation of people who are not only abjectly authoritarian but whose views and beliefs have been more thoroughly discredited than any other mainstream American faction I can think of in the post war era.
Where I part ways is that at the end of the day the point of politics is to win and move the ball, I think Harris will do that in ways I find far more preferable to the only actual alternative, and if there are votes to be had without any compromise of the agenda I see no reason not to take them.
"
I do not know. My sense from the media is that the neocon/neocon sympathetic wing of the GOP that has not left preferred Haley. If true it would seem to make sense that referencing the Cheney name, and the other Republicans who opposed or defected from Trump, could create a permission structure for them to vote Harris, which is what I think the campaign is trying to do. I believe only a third of those voters is bigger than the margin of victory in Pennsylvania in each of the last 2 elections.
"
According to google there were 155,000 people in PA who voted for Nikki Haley in the GOP primary. I think the math speaks for itself.
"
Heh, I'm not sure many local governments have a mechanism for non binding referendums.
I do think this entire situation is an example of real political issues degenerating into contests between two incredibly silly camps. There are problems with immigrants, refugees, whatever from undeveloped countries bringing undeveloped habits with them. I know this because I used to see central American immigrants (no idea on status) going in significant numbers to wash their clothes in the Patuxent river. This was disgusting, bad for the environment, and bad for everyone involved, and there's a legitimate public interest in putting a stop to things like that. Given that experience, it wouldn't totally shock me if there have been instances of unlicensed harvesting of wild fowl in public parks, and based on Google, there may be some evidence that has gone on.
Personally doubt anyone outside of Springfield OH actually knows one way or the other. That sort of thing can't be permitted either, and it's completely legitimate to ask what the policy response is where it occurs, given that we have been resetting millions of people from the developing world over the last 10-15 years of both legal and illegal status.
But once again we'll lead off with the crazed crank off his rocker grandfather making outrageous claims about immigrants eating pets versus rejoinders about whether this constitutes a 'blood libel' (as oppose to mere ignorant idiocy), because as we all know every individual resettled is immediately and fully assimilated, sinless and free of corruption as the Virgin Mary.
"
I'm not sure how much say the local authorities have in this particular situation. I believe resettlement of refugees is handled by the US State Department.
"
I've always loved that scene. There is so much about modern life that it perfectly encapsulates.
"
But what is the goal? Is it getting people in housing?
Or is it enabling encampments and similar rough living situations indefinitely?
"
I think Jaybird raises a good point. What should the goal be? Based on Chip's understanding of the initiative in CA, it sounds like it's get people into some type of permanent housing, which strikes me as good.
Is that not what they should be doing?
On “Watch And React Live: The Harris Trump Debate”
I'm open to investigating the issue. I started in house on the provider side and for the last oh 8ish years I've been in the provider-facing technology side. The thing I always get nervous about with it is that where we have reimbursement rates set with government programs there's this constant threat of providers simply no longer taking government program patients. And while I understand there are also solutions to that I worry about the heavy handedness of them taking us in a counter productive direction.
But I'm also not an economist, and always try to keep an open mind. So convince-able.
"
I can't speak for him but from past conversations I believe he thinks there should be a mandate for price transparency and (I assume) a prohibition on the ability to charge differently for the same procedure based on payor, which happens as a result of opaque negotiations between payor and health system, practice, network, whatever. And he isn't wrong that it's a problem.
What I will say is that there are a lot of state level transparency laws (Maryland has one) but they tend to be of limited utility given that healthcare doesn't lend itself to shopping around the way many other services might. I support transparency but I think what you're really trying to get to is economics of scale so that it all matters a lot less, and if the patient is (a) getting the service, and (b) not being put in an untenable financial situation for having gotten it, I dont really care what the payors and providers want to work out.
On “The Month in Theaters August 2024”
I saw the new Alien and gave it more of a B. I think it's main flaw is that it was produced by Ridley Scott meaning there was probably some pressure to treat the prequels with a modicum of respect when they should have both been ignored. I seem to be unusual in that I found them both shockingly bad, to the point that they significantly rehabilitated Alien 3 for me.
That said I really enjoyed the use of the fact that they were in space as a plot device far more than any of the others in the series, which is kind of funny given the setting. I think the movie would have benefitted from a little more time on the colony, and a little more build up to the decision to go investigate the ship, also the use of the dead actor was totally unnecessary, distracting, and shouldn't have been done. I'm ambivalent around the ethics of the decision but it added nothing to the film, and even kind of undermines one of the cooler ideas in the series, that being that you never really know who might be an android.
But all that aside it was totally worth the price of admission and seeing a pulse rifle fire on the big screen again for the first time in forever was glorious.
On “Watch And React Live: The Harris Trump Debate”
I don't think you're entirely correct about that. The big lesson is that the more people who have insurance the more market opportunities you create which are then filled by enterprising providers, which leads to an increase in service access and fewer people falling through the cracks. The ACA did not solve the core transparency problem which is still an issue. However it did do the following:
-fixed the most glaring holes in the private insurance system that screw people over (no, not all, but the biggest are gone)
-halted the ever increasing leak of people falling out of the insurance system altogether, which creates its own source of massive costs
-provided for the technical investments and incentives that have spurred the increasing retailization of healthcare services
Without the ACA you would not have the rapid expansion of urgent care and minute clinic type operations that are now providing basic care and coverage, and you can see how good it is by the fact that our infrastructure kicked the European infrastructure's ass when it came to an actual crisis, i.e. vaccine distribution during covid. Our main problem is that for reasons I will never understand one of our two political parties has completely checked out of the issue in any constructive way.
Anyway, what's clear to me is that whether the government or the private sector pays is a lot less important than whether the system as a whole is coherent, which ours still isn't in a whole bunch of ways (the employer sponsorship issue remains a significant complication). That's the only actual advantage 'single payor' countries have, and of course 'single payor' means something completely different depending on which of those countries you're in, plenty of which also involve private health insurance.
All that aside though the ACA has been an unambiguously good thing and massive improvement on the situation that preceded it. We should be spurring ahead with improvements to it, but alas, the political right ranges from 'what if we just kicked people off insurance so we can justify a tax cut' to 'Bill Gates is working with the government to put microchips in my brain.'
On “Debate Recap: Harris Played the Tune and Trump Danced To It”
I don't know that it's why he lost but if I could ask a non-online, non-political junkie anything it would be what they made of those remarks.
On “Watch And React Live: The Harris Trump Debate”
Yea. Granted I went to a law school that's probably best known for being the butt of several jokes on the Wire, if it's known for anything at all. Needless to say we were discouraged from thinking too highly of ourselves.
"
It's not so implausible. Law school attracts a lot of people with ideas they are dying to tell you about. I can't ever decide if I think the dynamic is good for the profession or the institutions that produce it.
"
That is the challenge with such a massive error that spanned 4 administrations. It's hard to really know who is responsible for what.
That said I think Jaybird is right on principle, heads could have and should have rolled. But I am also so grateful and impressed that Biden actually extricated the US that I struggle to muster annoyance about it. There was every incentive and plenty of pressure to stay but he did the big picture right thing and got out. I will take the Ws where I can get them.
"
My take on it from the sort of inside legal perspective is that it's a Rube Goldberg machine that functions at the level it does by virtue of having lots and lots of money put into it.
"
I think the ACA is one of those weird situations where it wasn't really what the winners wanted so the losers wrote the history. I also think Harris provided a pretty solid albeit brief articulation of why no one seriously wants to go back when the subject came up last night.
"
In 2008 I was still in a state of total outrage about the Iraq War and felt betrayed by a lot of the Clintonite establishment for giving Bush some bipartisan cover. My jets have long since cooled and over time my opinion of her has become a bit more nuanced.
I also think Biden has been quite succesful especially under the constraints, and it's a shame his career had to end the way it did. But hey, whatever happens next I think we can feel good today. And I think you're right that Harris' handlers should feel free to give her a longer leash and some additional exposure. The more people see her acting just like a normal, generally appealing person the better.
"
This is one where I will disagree with you and pillsy, and where I think the counter intuitive takes on Obama have gone too far. And I get why. He bequeathed a very rough ride.
But the hope and change stuff delivered a trifecta and super majority. That capital was spent on the ACA, which is and remains, even in it's somewhat trimmed, and never implemented to the full extent it should have been form, a very important achievement. I don't think HRC could have delivered it.
I'll also say that while Biden, who was definitely a better operator with legislation, did some good stuff, much of which needed to be done, none of that compares to the actual positive impact of the wellbeing of the citizenry, which to me is the whole point of all of this.
"
I graded her a very solid B. She isn't Obama, and she isn't even Biden in 2012. However she looked completely plausible in the role and other than sounding a little nervous at the very beginning came off quite well. She also looked better and better as Trump went further off into space as the night went on. Overall a good performance that her supporters can feel happy about.
If I really had to nitpick as a political junkie I'd have liked to see her weave less and directly address her pain points more but the show wasn't for me, it was for the low info voters who somehow are still up for grabs. In terms of the victor she took it, no contest.
On “The Party of the Middle”
Even from the debate last night I think it was pretty clear that he does not think the (alleged) cat and dog (and duck?) eating resettled refugees of Springfield, OH are elite. He thinks the people that put them there are. If they actually exist. Which...uh..we will generously call an open question.
"
Fair enough. To me the counter argument to that, and one that's easy to forget, is that Trump is a structurally unpopular and unappealing person. We now know that he can actually be winged with a bullet by a would be assassin and not even experience a sympathy bump. IMO his popularity is artificially inflated by the nature of the first past the post, two party system, plus the total intellectual disintegration of the political right. His singular victory (so far) was an ultra lucky inside straight on top of natural thermostatic trends in American politics, a uniquely ill suited opponent, and catching a bunch of incredible breaks down the stretch. I also harbor the unprovable belief that his election was a publicity stunt that got out of control and his current bid is mainly about trying to stay out of prison.
All is to say that he is a bad politician with no actual vision, just an a-hole who got lucky.
I see a lot of the crazed stuff as his crutch. Which doesn't mean he doesn't believe it or isn't authoritarian, or that many of his followers don't harbor some pretty ugly beliefs and sentiments. But to me none of it happens without the core conditions in place 2012-2016, and that it's viability is already on the wane as those conditions have changed. Nevertheless I acknowledge that at this point we are firmly into reasonable people can disagree territroy.
"
Of course I can remember how it all started. Back when this was coming together it meant Wall Street, high finance, and the revolving door of federal elected and appointed officials who enabled them to blow up the economy on a virtual craps table. And the officials involved in NAFTA and giving China most favored trade status and the wealthy business owners and/or shareholders that closed shop here and moved there or wherever else. It was the people in economics who thought mass illegal immigration was good (for business!) actually. On the left it was the 1% and on the right it was the federal trade and finance bureaucracies.
Now, in the ridiculous context of American culture war has that word transmogrified into something much more nebulous? Maybe. Probably. But I don't know why people are so quick to treat failing to assess well documented facts and developments about our political trajectory as a virtue.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.