[Cr1] I worked for a competitor of Corizon for several years. Without going into details I can say that the way healthcare is delivered to people in prison is one of the nastiest aspects of mass incarceration that isn't discussed enough. Most facilities have outsourced their infirmiries to fly by night staffing agencies operating on tight margins. Allegedly there's a prison doctor overseeing care but that usually consists of someone who you can call but is rarely at the facility. Meanwhile care is provided by nurses who may or may not have any experience in these environments. Litigation is rampant.
[Cr4] So that's what Louis CK was doing??
[Fo5] Our reign as super power has ended.
[En3] Germany has hit most of the low hanging fruit with available technology. What they've done is laudable but this shows their decision to phase out nuclear power at the same time may have been premature.
I think the 'it shouldn't be the job of the feds to provide healthcare' crowd has never really understood how our system, or any modern system, for paying for care functions. The federal government has been involved in it since the 40s and very heavily so since the 60s. There's no real way to turn that back. Even Republican leaders I think tacitly admitted that when Medicare Part D was passed.
I do think you're right though that we may be living through a watershed moment on how the issue is looked at by the public at large.
And this is precisely why there's absolutely zero appetite for 'repeal and replace' even with the payors. They know very well they were never going to get away with some of the more egregious crap forever. Without Obamacare or something very much like it a day would come where political support for ending for profit health insurance as it exists reached critical mass. If the exchanges aren't stabilized that might still happen, it'll just take longer.
Agreed. There's a plausible scenario where no type of healthcare reform is passed or even attempted. Try to imagine politics over the last 7 years without Obamacare.
That's a really intriguing question that causes my brain to split into so many directions I don't know how to answer. I guess the smart money would be on her riding the backlash against Bush into office but who can say? Her vote to invade Iraq loomed a lot larger then (I think people forget how much Obama's early opposition helped him) and her close relationship with big finance would've been a general election issue instead of a squabble mostly confined to the broader left.
If she actually was POTUS for 8 years I think history would just be too different. My guess is that Obama's star would have long since faded but thats pure speculation. Who knows what would be going on in the GOP but my bet is their same general strategy and predicament would be similar. The trajectory into reactionary populism was already well under way.
This is fair (and apologies for the Trump diversion, it just seems so... topical). Maybe putting candidate selection in the hands of parties generally does a better job vetting but it seems like the risk in a two party system like ours is the parties becoming sclerotic/unresponsive to the people. Like aaron said above it could exacerbate the crisis of legitimacy going on all over the West. I guess your solution would be the abiliy of a hypothetical third party to displace the other(s) with a straightforward alternative agenda?
Someone like Corbyn makes me think that it isn't as much the selection process as it is the circumstances of the polity in question. He's both been vetted by a big party but also often cited as part of the populist revolt.
I think this works in a world where people are really evaluating performance based on policy implementation/legislative successes but I'm not sure thats happening even within our parties (I'd say it definitively isn't in the GOP).
Not to sound like a Marxist or something similarly crass but I think the disconnect between voters and politicians has more to do with economics and culture than the process thats granting power.
Bingo. This fool should've never been allowed to purchase a firearm and was prohibited from doing so under existing law. Its an enforcement/bureacratic failure. If fingers must be pointed the US Air Force and probably to a slightly lesser degree the FBI seem much more blameworthy than the NRA.
In Canada, for example, the Progressive Conservatives (PC) made one bad decision after another. A new party formed, became bigger than the old, and merged with (essentially absorbed) the PC. We don’t really have a mechanism for that here
In our parallel though the Trump-populists just completed their take over of the GOP and absorbed the rump Zombie Reagan (I love that description @marchmaine) establishment. It all just happened intra-party and I'm not sure we'd be in a particularly different place if there had been an official party split beforehand. I'm agnostic on whether or not our current electoral system is the best we can do but I also don't know that a different one would have prevented Trump. Even with multiple parties the vagaries of forming a government can still result in some weird/sub-optimal outcomes (see Berlusconi, Silvio).
@oscar-gordon This exchange you and @kazzy had interested me enough I called a relative of mine who is an FFL and asked if he had any idea why the 4473 is in paper only. He said that the ATF did in the last few years introduce an e form but for whatever reason has done a bad job of keeping the software and versioning correct. Wikipedia seems to confirm this. The result has been essentially zero adoption.
Not a real investigation but it sounds like the answer is government incompetence. The transaction and NICS system is ridiculously outdated and there's no good reason not to bring it into the 21st century.
It makes an outrageously cynical sense when you consider that the Democratic party has completely lost its bearings on the immigration issue. The primary forced national issues into the conversation and Northam wasn't ready. The fact that they let that LVF ad get on the air is baffling to me.
Honestly? Utter desperation by team blue activists and a weird ambivalence elsewhere. House money is probably right to favor Northam but you get the feeling even a rainy day or something could give Gillespie the upset. Northam had to see off a primary challenger to his left that resulted in him seeming a little... off to me. There was a widely circulated one where he said 'Donald Trump is a narcissistic maniac!' that maybe played well with the base but I think seemed patronizing to everyone else.
Caveat is I'm north of the Potomac and my contact with Virginians is primarily with the very blue DC suburbs. This will be decided a bit further out and probably in the Hampton Roads/Norfolk area.
Living in the media market where this is going on has been quite interesting. Most brutal and cynical advertisements I can recall seeing. The big one right now ties Northams votes on restoration of rights to felons to a guy who got caught with a huge amount of kiddie porn.
To give you a response that probably validates just about all of that comment (not least about the community here) I think it might depend on how broadly we define 'legitimate.'
Part of making liberal democracy work I think is learning how to be a good winner, even when the people you've defeated are still bitterly fighting a doomed and largely symbolic rearguard action.
It's what you get when you start with a flawed premise i.e. perfect safety is possible without seriously compromising the thing in question. Maybe there is something cost effective that could make a big dent in foul ball/broken bat injuries to spectators (or panoramic sun roof injuries) that doesnt or only marginally alters the experience but that's not the argument being made.
In retrospect my comment on [sp2] was way too harsh. I'm sure the experience for his wife was horrible and traumatic and it sucks she had to go through that. Still it comes from the 'something bad happened to me therefore the world should change' genre that drives me nuts. It's right up there with 'won't someone please think of the children' pieces. He even admits he doesn't really know the scope of the problem but Something Must Be Done!
[Sp2] maybe the author and his wife should just start wearing their own catchers masks to games.
[Sp3] definitely an interesting read but I wish they went a little more into detail about Moore's personal demons. I get the sense that the author was trying to make a point about the lows that follow the dizzying highs of a career as a pro athlete but didn't quite make the connection. Instead it came off as 'well he was a drunk and a wife beater, of course he committed suicide.'
[Sp4] its a nice thought and the point is dead on, but without constant propaganda how else will our government convince people to be killed in Niger for no reason?
[Sp9] it sucks but it seems like, absent a miracle, football will eventually go the way of professional boxing.
Somehow we seem to have lost our way on working out these issues with kids. I remember in elementary school I got into a fight with a kid a year older who was picking on me. The principal flipped out on us both and said we had to sit in a room together every recess until Christmas. I don't remember how early in the year this occurred, but I think it was about a 6 week sentence. Around the 4 week mark it became apparent we no longer hated each other and the principal said 'merry Christmas' and we were free to go. I'd be lying if I said we became the best of friends after that but we got on well enough that we never had another issue.
I mention this not because I think it's the right solution for every incident but because there was some discretion exercised by the administrator to address the actual problem. I get the impression now that there's sort of a bureacratic response designed to avoid litigation. It's where you get these stories of kids being punished for defending themselves and cops called to schools for disciplinary problems. The caveat to my personal experience is that it occurred in Catholic school. I noticed a lot more zero tolerance when I was in public school later in life.
I hate to make a prediction but I suspect you're right. The federal laws in question are broad enough that it probably won't be hard to get a conviction or force a plea (so far we are just at the 'indictment of ham sandwich' phase). Even if that happens though I doubt that it will uncover the conclusive evidence people keep promising. Those who want to see this as evidence of a conspiracy will, those who want plausible deniability will have it.
And now that I've said this in less than a fortnight tapes will surface of Trump promising to sell Alaska back in exchange for Putin's help, all over salat Olivier and shots of vodka.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Linky Friday: Crime & Sustenance”
[Cr1] I worked for a competitor of Corizon for several years. Without going into details I can say that the way healthcare is delivered to people in prison is one of the nastiest aspects of mass incarceration that isn't discussed enough. Most facilities have outsourced their infirmiries to fly by night staffing agencies operating on tight margins. Allegedly there's a prison doctor overseeing care but that usually consists of someone who you can call but is rarely at the facility. Meanwhile care is provided by nurses who may or may not have any experience in these environments. Litigation is rampant.
[Cr4] So that's what Louis CK was doing??
[Fo5] Our reign as super power has ended.
[En3] Germany has hit most of the low hanging fruit with available technology. What they've done is laudable but this shows their decision to phase out nuclear power at the same time may have been premature.
On “Old Dominion”
Despite the tenor of national politics I think most local and state elections still revolve around these kinds of issues.
"
Danica Roem
On “Hashtag-BanPrimaries, But Not Yet”
I think the 'it shouldn't be the job of the feds to provide healthcare' crowd has never really understood how our system, or any modern system, for paying for care functions. The federal government has been involved in it since the 40s and very heavily so since the 60s. There's no real way to turn that back. Even Republican leaders I think tacitly admitted that when Medicare Part D was passed.
I do think you're right though that we may be living through a watershed moment on how the issue is looked at by the public at large.
"
And this is precisely why there's absolutely zero appetite for 'repeal and replace' even with the payors. They know very well they were never going to get away with some of the more egregious crap forever. Without Obamacare or something very much like it a day would come where political support for ending for profit health insurance as it exists reached critical mass. If the exchanges aren't stabilized that might still happen, it'll just take longer.
"
Agreed. There's a plausible scenario where no type of healthcare reform is passed or even attempted. Try to imagine politics over the last 7 years without Obamacare.
"
That's a really intriguing question that causes my brain to split into so many directions I don't know how to answer. I guess the smart money would be on her riding the backlash against Bush into office but who can say? Her vote to invade Iraq loomed a lot larger then (I think people forget how much Obama's early opposition helped him) and her close relationship with big finance would've been a general election issue instead of a squabble mostly confined to the broader left.
If she actually was POTUS for 8 years I think history would just be too different. My guess is that Obama's star would have long since faded but thats pure speculation. Who knows what would be going on in the GOP but my bet is their same general strategy and predicament would be similar. The trajectory into reactionary populism was already well under way.
"
I think there's a really strong argument the Dems benefitted from it in 2008.
"
This is fair (and apologies for the Trump diversion, it just seems so... topical). Maybe putting candidate selection in the hands of parties generally does a better job vetting but it seems like the risk in a two party system like ours is the parties becoming sclerotic/unresponsive to the people. Like aaron said above it could exacerbate the crisis of legitimacy going on all over the West. I guess your solution would be the abiliy of a hypothetical third party to displace the other(s) with a straightforward alternative agenda?
Someone like Corbyn makes me think that it isn't as much the selection process as it is the circumstances of the polity in question. He's both been vetted by a big party but also often cited as part of the populist revolt.
"
I think this works in a world where people are really evaluating performance based on policy implementation/legislative successes but I'm not sure thats happening even within our parties (I'd say it definitively isn't in the GOP).
Not to sound like a Marxist or something similarly crass but I think the disconnect between voters and politicians has more to do with economics and culture than the process thats granting power.
On “Morning Ed: Politics {2017.11.05.Su}”
Bingo. This fool should've never been allowed to purchase a firearm and was prohibited from doing so under existing law. Its an enforcement/bureacratic failure. If fingers must be pointed the US Air Force and probably to a slightly lesser degree the FBI seem much more blameworthy than the NRA.
On “Hashtag-BanPrimaries, But Not Yet”
In our parallel though the Trump-populists just completed their take over of the GOP and absorbed the rump Zombie Reagan (I love that description @marchmaine) establishment. It all just happened intra-party and I'm not sure we'd be in a particularly different place if there had been an official party split beforehand. I'm agnostic on whether or not our current electoral system is the best we can do but I also don't know that a different one would have prevented Trump. Even with multiple parties the vagaries of forming a government can still result in some weird/sub-optimal outcomes (see Berlusconi, Silvio).
On “Morning Ed: Politics {2017.11.05.Su}”
@oscar-gordon This exchange you and @kazzy had interested me enough I called a relative of mine who is an FFL and asked if he had any idea why the 4473 is in paper only. He said that the ATF did in the last few years introduce an e form but for whatever reason has done a bad job of keeping the software and versioning correct. Wikipedia seems to confirm this. The result has been essentially zero adoption.
Not a real investigation but it sounds like the answer is government incompetence. The transaction and NICS system is ridiculously outdated and there's no good reason not to bring it into the 21st century.
"
It makes an outrageously cynical sense when you consider that the Democratic party has completely lost its bearings on the immigration issue. The primary forced national issues into the conversation and Northam wasn't ready. The fact that they let that LVF ad get on the air is baffling to me.
"
Honestly? Utter desperation by team blue activists and a weird ambivalence elsewhere. House money is probably right to favor Northam but you get the feeling even a rainy day or something could give Gillespie the upset. Northam had to see off a primary challenger to his left that resulted in him seeming a little... off to me. There was a widely circulated one where he said 'Donald Trump is a narcissistic maniac!' that maybe played well with the base but I think seemed patronizing to everyone else.
Caveat is I'm north of the Potomac and my contact with Virginians is primarily with the very blue DC suburbs. This will be decided a bit further out and probably in the Hampton Roads/Norfolk area.
"
Living in the media market where this is going on has been quite interesting. Most brutal and cynical advertisements I can recall seeing. The big one right now ties Northams votes on restoration of rights to felons to a guy who got caught with a huge amount of kiddie porn.
"
To give you a response that probably validates just about all of that comment (not least about the community here) I think it might depend on how broadly we define 'legitimate.'
"
Part of making liberal democracy work I think is learning how to be a good winner, even when the people you've defeated are still bitterly fighting a doomed and largely symbolic rearguard action.
On “Morning Ed: Sports {2017.11.01.W}”
What it sounds like he's asking for is netting covering the entire lower deck of the stadium.
"
It's what you get when you start with a flawed premise i.e. perfect safety is possible without seriously compromising the thing in question. Maybe there is something cost effective that could make a big dent in foul ball/broken bat injuries to spectators (or panoramic sun roof injuries) that doesnt or only marginally alters the experience but that's not the argument being made.
"
In retrospect my comment on [sp2] was way too harsh. I'm sure the experience for his wife was horrible and traumatic and it sucks she had to go through that. Still it comes from the 'something bad happened to me therefore the world should change' genre that drives me nuts. It's right up there with 'won't someone please think of the children' pieces. He even admits he doesn't really know the scope of the problem but Something Must Be Done!
"
[Sp2] maybe the author and his wife should just start wearing their own catchers masks to games.
[Sp3] definitely an interesting read but I wish they went a little more into detail about Moore's personal demons. I get the sense that the author was trying to make a point about the lows that follow the dizzying highs of a career as a pro athlete but didn't quite make the connection. Instead it came off as 'well he was a drunk and a wife beater, of course he committed suicide.'
[Sp4] its a nice thought and the point is dead on, but without constant propaganda how else will our government convince people to be killed in Niger for no reason?
[Sp9] it sucks but it seems like, absent a miracle, football will eventually go the way of professional boxing.
On “Morning Ed: Society {2017.10.31.Tu}”
Sounds about right.
"
Somehow we seem to have lost our way on working out these issues with kids. I remember in elementary school I got into a fight with a kid a year older who was picking on me. The principal flipped out on us both and said we had to sit in a room together every recess until Christmas. I don't remember how early in the year this occurred, but I think it was about a 6 week sentence. Around the 4 week mark it became apparent we no longer hated each other and the principal said 'merry Christmas' and we were free to go. I'd be lying if I said we became the best of friends after that but we got on well enough that we never had another issue.
I mention this not because I think it's the right solution for every incident but because there was some discretion exercised by the administrator to address the actual problem. I get the impression now that there's sort of a bureacratic response designed to avoid litigation. It's where you get these stories of kids being punished for defending themselves and cops called to schools for disciplinary problems. The caveat to my personal experience is that it occurred in Catholic school. I noticed a lot more zero tolerance when I was in public school later in life.
On “It Has Begun”
I hate to make a prediction but I suspect you're right. The federal laws in question are broad enough that it probably won't be hard to get a conviction or force a plea (so far we are just at the 'indictment of ham sandwich' phase). Even if that happens though I doubt that it will uncover the conclusive evidence people keep promising. Those who want to see this as evidence of a conspiracy will, those who want plausible deniability will have it.
And now that I've said this in less than a fortnight tapes will surface of Trump promising to sell Alaska back in exchange for Putin's help, all over salat Olivier and shots of vodka.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.