It's not "lies" but (to a first approximation) it is written by journalists (i.e. English or Journalism majors) the majority of which are Social Justice Warriors who...
1) want to change the world,
2) see the world thru a heavy filter,
3) only talk or associate with similar people,
4) don't understand most subjects well enough to ask critical questions,
5) don't understand their own biases,
6) are under heavy time pressure to put something out right now.
So everything Trump is, does, and says pushes their buttons. They asked people "are you going to be a racist and vote for Trump" and were shocked when they didn't get accurate polling. Most are looking for *the* story that leads to Trump's expected impeachment.
It is possible Trump's administration isn't any more dysfunctional than Obama's adjusted for time in office (Obama's was giving guns to drug dealers at this point), and the only real differences are Trump's mouth and the media's love for the Great One.
It is even possible Trump is doing a much better job. Within the margin of error and adjusted for media attitude I simply can't tell.
Case in point. Trump decided to share information with Russia about ISIS. Would the press even cover this if Obama had done so? It was (shock) presented as potentially *the* story which might lead to Trump's expected impeachment.
...and people wonder why the WaPo's credibility is questioned?
We lost a couple of football players last year when they pulled an armed robbery on someone who recognized them. Major U. Full ride scholarship. "Hey, let's go flush our lives!"
It won't come up. Someone will pay more than they should for something Trump does overseas, and that will be bribery.
And that's assuming Trump doesn't do something real, or that we don't want to take some wolf call seriously. Firing the FBI head, etc, dig into the kitchen sink and you'll find something better than jaywalking.
One assumes his job includes making judgements on what information to share with the Russians. If he made a judgement call, ideally with someone who knows what they're doing advising him, then that's fine.
On the other hand his public rep is that of someone who has no filter between his subconscious and his mouth.
On the other, other hand, supposedly he's very different in person.
...but it's remarkably easy to picture him making either an ego driven slip (bad) or just outright lying (good?).
Like we don’t have “death panels” currently. It’s just called something else, like DOB, or review boards or policy limitations, etc.
Do I sound like I'm arguing against panels? I'm bringing up the issue because the supporters of this sort of thing have to get real comfortable with supporting them.
...and the politics of it may make this impossible. The issue is less the facts and more the political optics.
1) Politicians who vote for (or to maintain) this are going to face ads *literally* showing them throwing little old grandmas off of cliffs, and the crying relatives talking about how their child could have been saved with more money.
2) There's a shockingly high number of people who think *everything* medical should be funded for *everyone* because the public "has the money". These types of programs are often politically sold with that sort of promise, and the politicians who do are may be serious rather than cynical.
It's the whole "tier 1" vs "tier 2" thing but on steroids. Our political system is not well equipped for this. If we can't convince the public it's a good idea then those political ads showing throwing grandma off a cliff sink the entire program.
Interesting... although I'm not sure this detracts from the whole "death panels" issue. We keep unhealthy people alive year after year.
This might make death panels more politically palatable because they're mostly not out there waiting for everyone. Or it may make the whole idea of rationing both more needed and less palatable because the people affected could be kept alive.
This is the point where it'd be useful to have a press that isn't insane with shock, hysteria, and constantly screams "wolf" every day. It's possible there really is something there... but it's also possible the press and dems just want it to be.
In a different universe where HRC won, she would have fired Conley for daring to investigate her and the Dems have admitted they'd solidly support him being fired.
So apparently it's only a problem if Trump does it.
Either Trump just blew up his Presidency or the media and dems have (once again) shown that they spin up every time Trump opens his mouth.
The first would be interesting, "President Pence" would has a nice ring to it... but the whole "it's only a problem if Trump does it" implies the 2nd.
the issue is whether 1-4 in my initial comment constitute a constitutional crisis.
Yes, on the face of it... but some of your assumptions are problematic.
Trump announces he's firing the head of the FBI because that head is daring to investigate him (which is basically your assumption absent telepathy). *That's* a problem.
Trump announces that he's firing the head of the FBI because he wants his own crew.
Trump fires people really easily, most CEOs want their own crew, the head of the FBI is on the "can fire" list, the FBI is *always* investigating people.
With this, we don't have a problem just yet. Trump is fully operating within the scope of his authority and even has cause because this head has been directly involved in several messy public problems.
But don’t shoot us all in the foot by putting us back into the condition where the millions who will no longer have health insurance return to the emergency room where it will cost hundreds of dollars to deal with something that could have been dealt with for tens of dollars.
We have had attempt after attempt to make policy based on this idea.
It makes intuitive sense, however apparently it's cheaper to not treat large groups of people (even if that on rare occasion results in an EM room stay) than to treat them. Our bodies either heal on their own or we die. The "it's cheaper to treat them" concept appears to not be true.
The issue then is, Did Trump just pull another Saturday Massacre? (I.e. Watergate's firing of the guys investigating Nixon)
The answer so far is "no", because as far as we know Conley wasn't personally doing the investigation.
If we're staring at media hysteria and Conley actively being on the "hit list" for a while, and (more importantly) if his replacement doesn't halt the investigation, then we're fine.
If the replacement halts the investigation, then we have a serious problem that could really quickly (and I hope would really quickly) rise to a Constitutional Crisis
I think he’s worried that his ties to Russian dark money and various potentially criminal scams he’s engaged in will be exposed, not to mention the threat of blackmail that such scams entail.
That is the Russian MO for someone like Trump... except as far as I can tell, he's not accused of that. Further afaict, he doesn't own anything in Russian, although interestingly he's tried several times.
Real estate developer operating in NY in the 70's and 80's? He had to be doing something with the mob if just paying them off. That nothing more ever was tied to him after many decades of a media microscope suggests he actually has lines he doesn't cross and never let it go any further (which would be great training for modern Russia).
Or it could be that the media has simply been incompetent for decades.
The failure of the Senate to act constructively on Garland’s SCOTUS nomination is more of a Constitutional crisis than any reaction or lack thereof to Comey’s firing.
This is what, the 7th time the Senate has blocked a SCOTUS this way? Would the Senate voting him down have made a difference in your opinion?
It's not a "constitutional crisis" because the gov isn't conflicted with itself and doesn't threaten to be so.
Further it's hard to "Suppose" those 4 things when I can't tell the difference between that and the Dems+Media still being in shock and making stuff up because they lost the election to Trump of all people.
For one thing, almost all wage theft is done to *poor* people, who are *exceptionally* unable to pursue civil remedies.
It happened to me. Company with held money for benefits and 401k (and taxes), and didn't deposit it. Some combination of being evil and incompetent. I didn't pursue it because life is too short and I thought they wouldn't have any money after the IRS took theirs.
A group of others did and eventually got like 15%(ish) back on the dollar, so I left money on the table but whatever.
They managed to destroy their business, several ended up in jail, they would have gotten thrown off the worksite if all of their employees hadn't quit first (Fortune 500's don't like it when their Contracting Companies pull this kind of nonsense).
Massively ugly shitshow but I'm not sure how, or even why, we increase the level of punishment on things which already ended so badly for the scum in charge.
But that level of drama is both a problem and an opportunity. I coldly ignored the drama and used the situation to get a really large raise with a different contracting company.
The difference between the ACA website and Iraq is that when Obama realized things weren’t going well, he…instantly changed things up, switching contractors, putting in more money, making it a priority, and fixing it.
1) You're trying to claim that he's a better manager than Bush. Problem is that even if true, that sets the bar so low that "really bad" is still a possibility.
On a side note I'm not sure how much Katrina was a "Bush" thing. After you subtract massive media hype (cannibalism), local (the mayor hiding in the bathroom), and state (refusal to let the feds in) screw ups, how much is left?
Iraq on the other hand showcased his flaws in all their glory. All trails led to his office, it wasn't just "on his watch", it was "the people he put in place were supposed to be getting the job done and if they wouldn't or couldn't, it was his job to replace them".
2) "making it a priority"? Meaning he hadn't made his own #1 priority a priority before this? If true, why is this an excuse?
3) "when Obama realized things weren’t going well..." Translation: He had no clue before it hit the news that there was a problem, even though this had been going on for years. That's kind of my point.
the screwup of the ACA website launch actually *showed Obama’s leadership skills*. A perfectly reasonable screwup happened, and he got it fixed pretty quickly and competently.
You're making the assumption that it was Obama who stepped in and made things work and handled the reorg. Given how many people wanted the site to work (i.e. every Dem), and given how high a priority it was, that seems like a big assumption. This falls under the whole "it's tough to evaluate the President or separate his work from his minions".
Obama showed leadership when he refused to enforce his own red line and take military action against Syria. There were strong forces arguing for action, he refused. Similarly he showed leadership in making the ACA... both good and bad. Good in that he eventually got it passed, bad in that it took forever to get it done and cost him his supermajority.
While we're making Bush v Obama comparisons, both of them managed to bungle a winning hand in Iraq, basically from some combination of inept leadership and bad management.
Probably more than half of being President is management... which is why I wanted Romney in there. Just for fun he does things like taking on impossible management challenges like making the Olympics Profitable. Give that job to either Bush or Obama and I'm sure after the blow up people would be whining about how *hard* it is and how there are embedded institutional problems.
(The biggest weakness of the ACA, I think, is that it tied outcomes to reimbursement in a way that makes one of the worst problems in our health care system even, like, more bad.)
IMHO the biggest weakness is it doubles down on the parts of the system which make it expensive. It was insurance reform, we need medical reform.
Infection rates for hospitals and doctors are hidden. Costs are hidden. Success rates. Etc, etc.
Force the publishing of all of them and we'd at least have potential solutions that involve markets, at the moment we don't and can't.
Without markets we have rationing and/or money cannons.
Let me expand on this whole "bad management" thing with a different example.
The 2nd Gulf War's big problem was bad management. Lack of planning, making lots of "In Iraq" decisions based on our own local politics, and leaving Rummy in charge *long* after it was clear he was the source of a lot of this.
Are we really supposed to believe that Bush had nothing to do with this?
Here is [your] very first mention of Obama supposedly doing badly at math:
Yes, I do claim that Obama said he was bad at math, even to the point of middle school math. I've also quoted and sourced him directly.
You've been claiming I said he was dumb, presumably in general.
You’re basically asserting that a taxi company owner doesn’t know what he’s doing because one of his drivers rear-ended someone. That, uh, happens all the time for people who drive that amount. It’s not even particularly *weird* auto accident.
I'm saying that we had a maximum priority project that suffered from multiple management failures. Obama had zero management experience. It shouldn't be hard to draw a line there.
It seems odd you don't want to list this as a weakness of his.
After Medicare-for-All, the costs for refusing to take Medicare will be much higher, and the ability to offset those costs by accepting private insurance will be much lower, if not strictly non-existent.
Only if you take all comers.
If we go down this path I expect a boom in Concierge Medicine.
You underestimate the waste in private insurance. Medicare’s admin overhead is a few percent. private insurers are 15-20%.
Even assuming that's true, the big costs of the system are driven by a small percentage of sick people. If you're going to be increasing that by a lot, then 15% more doesn't come close to balancing out.
That's over and above the problem that firing two administration types working for an insurance company won't create one doctor.
The monopoly of force the government holds is illusionary.
If a member of my family is killed, I have an alternative other than extract justice myself. If I kill, the likelihood of my being arrested by the gov is high.
In theory it may be an illusion, in practice, if I test it I'll end up in jail.
I can’t understand why there’s so much resistance–from the progressive Democrats, in fact!–to the idea [of medicare-for-all]
Medicare-for-all may mean "worse than what we currently have for the seniors".
You're not adding more doctors to the system, you're probably not adding more money, you're just adding more people.
Scarce resources will need to be shared with the new people, i.e. uninsured or under-insured sick people that you're bringing into the system. It is reasonable to wonder if the new people will crowd out the current ones, or at a minimum if unintended side effects will negatively affect the current winners.
For example Medicare-for-all may mean Medicare can no longer underpay for things, or that doctors will focus on treating "healthy" medicare patients rather than sick ones.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Morning Ed: Law & Order {2017.05.16.Tu}”
I think it's only at a professional level that they look the other way. Or maybe it's a State thing. Local Coach kicked them off the team instantly.
But as often as this happens, maybe it means an athletic scholarship isn't enough and the U should be giving out spending money?
On “Linky Friday: Here, There, Everywhere”
@stillwater
@pinky
It's not "lies" but (to a first approximation) it is written by journalists (i.e. English or Journalism majors) the majority of which are Social Justice Warriors who...
1) want to change the world,
2) see the world thru a heavy filter,
3) only talk or associate with similar people,
4) don't understand most subjects well enough to ask critical questions,
5) don't understand their own biases,
6) are under heavy time pressure to put something out right now.
So everything Trump is, does, and says pushes their buttons. They asked people "are you going to be a racist and vote for Trump" and were shocked when they didn't get accurate polling. Most are looking for *the* story that leads to Trump's expected impeachment.
It is possible Trump's administration isn't any more dysfunctional than Obama's adjusted for time in office (Obama's was giving guns to drug dealers at this point), and the only real differences are Trump's mouth and the media's love for the Great One.
It is even possible Trump is doing a much better job. Within the margin of error and adjusted for media attitude I simply can't tell.
Case in point. Trump decided to share information with Russia about ISIS. Would the press even cover this if Obama had done so? It was (shock) presented as potentially *the* story which might lead to Trump's expected impeachment.
...and people wonder why the WaPo's credibility is questioned?
On “Morning Ed: Law & Order {2017.05.16.Tu}”
[13 more football players]
We lost a couple of football players last year when they pulled an armed robbery on someone who recognized them. Major U. Full ride scholarship. "Hey, let's go flush our lives!"
On “Linky Friday: Here, There, Everywhere”
It won't come up. Someone will pay more than they should for something Trump does overseas, and that will be bribery.
And that's assuming Trump doesn't do something real, or that we don't want to take some wolf call seriously. Firing the FBI head, etc, dig into the kitchen sink and you'll find something better than jaywalking.
"
One assumes his job includes making judgements on what information to share with the Russians. If he made a judgement call, ideally with someone who knows what they're doing advising him, then that's fine.
On the other hand his public rep is that of someone who has no filter between his subconscious and his mouth.
On the other, other hand, supposedly he's very different in person.
...but it's remarkably easy to picture him making either an ego driven slip (bad) or just outright lying (good?).
On “Mugged By Reality: A Conservative for Universal Health Care”
Do I sound like I'm arguing against panels? I'm bringing up the issue because the supporters of this sort of thing have to get real comfortable with supporting them.
...and the politics of it may make this impossible. The issue is less the facts and more the political optics.
1) Politicians who vote for (or to maintain) this are going to face ads *literally* showing them throwing little old grandmas off of cliffs, and the crying relatives talking about how their child could have been saved with more money.
2) There's a shockingly high number of people who think *everything* medical should be funded for *everyone* because the public "has the money". These types of programs are often politically sold with that sort of promise, and the politicians who do are may be serious rather than cynical.
It's the whole "tier 1" vs "tier 2" thing but on steroids. Our political system is not well equipped for this. If we can't convince the public it's a good idea then those political ads showing throwing grandma off a cliff sink the entire program.
"
Interesting... although I'm not sure this detracts from the whole "death panels" issue. We keep unhealthy people alive year after year.
This might make death panels more politically palatable because they're mostly not out there waiting for everyone. Or it may make the whole idea of rationing both more needed and less palatable because the people affected could be kept alive.
On “Linky Friday: Here, There, Everywhere”
This is the point where it'd be useful to have a press that isn't insane with shock, hysteria, and constantly screams "wolf" every day. It's possible there really is something there... but it's also possible the press and dems just want it to be.
In a different universe where HRC won, she would have fired Conley for daring to investigate her and the Dems have admitted they'd solidly support him being fired.
So apparently it's only a problem if Trump does it.
Either Trump just blew up his Presidency or the media and dems have (once again) shown that they spin up every time Trump opens his mouth.
The first would be interesting, "President Pence" would has a nice ring to it... but the whole "it's only a problem if Trump does it" implies the 2nd.
On “Mugged By Reality: A Conservative for Universal Health Care”
Half your *lifetime* use of medicine happens in the last year or two of life. Write someone a blank check during that time and it's a problem.
Death panels are necessary to make the system work. If you can't stare those facts in the face and live with them, then math breaks the system.
On “Linky Friday: Here, There, Everywhere”
Yes, on the face of it... but some of your assumptions are problematic.
Trump announces he's firing the head of the FBI because that head is daring to investigate him (which is basically your assumption absent telepathy). *That's* a problem.
Trump announces that he's firing the head of the FBI because he wants his own crew.
Trump fires people really easily, most CEOs want their own crew, the head of the FBI is on the "can fire" list, the FBI is *always* investigating people.
With this, we don't have a problem just yet. Trump is fully operating within the scope of his authority and even has cause because this head has been directly involved in several messy public problems.
On “Mugged By Reality: A Conservative for Universal Health Care”
We have had attempt after attempt to make policy based on this idea.
It makes intuitive sense, however apparently it's cheaper to not treat large groups of people (even if that on rare occasion results in an EM room stay) than to treat them. Our bodies either heal on their own or we die. The "it's cheaper to treat them" concept appears to not be true.
On “Linky Friday: Here, There, Everywhere”
The issue then is, Did Trump just pull another Saturday Massacre? (I.e. Watergate's firing of the guys investigating Nixon)
The answer so far is "no", because as far as we know Conley wasn't personally doing the investigation.
If we're staring at media hysteria and Conley actively being on the "hit list" for a while, and (more importantly) if his replacement doesn't halt the investigation, then we're fine.
If the replacement halts the investigation, then we have a serious problem that could really quickly (and I hope would really quickly) rise to a Constitutional Crisis
"
That is the Russian MO for someone like Trump... except as far as I can tell, he's not accused of that. Further afaict, he doesn't own anything in Russian, although interestingly he's tried several times.
Real estate developer operating in NY in the 70's and 80's? He had to be doing something with the mob if just paying them off. That nothing more ever was tied to him after many decades of a media microscope suggests he actually has lines he doesn't cross and never let it go any further (which would be great training for modern Russia).
Or it could be that the media has simply been incompetent for decades.
"
That's a good date for saying it went off the rails then.
"
This is what, the 7th time the Senate has blocked a SCOTUS this way? Would the Senate voting him down have made a difference in your opinion?
"
It's not a "constitutional crisis" because the gov isn't conflicted with itself and doesn't threaten to be so.
Further it's hard to "Suppose" those 4 things when I can't tell the difference between that and the Dems+Media still being in shock and making stuff up because they lost the election to Trump of all people.
"
It happened to me. Company with held money for benefits and 401k (and taxes), and didn't deposit it. Some combination of being evil and incompetent. I didn't pursue it because life is too short and I thought they wouldn't have any money after the IRS took theirs.
A group of others did and eventually got like 15%(ish) back on the dollar, so I left money on the table but whatever.
They managed to destroy their business, several ended up in jail, they would have gotten thrown off the worksite if all of their employees hadn't quit first (Fortune 500's don't like it when their Contracting Companies pull this kind of nonsense).
Massively ugly shitshow but I'm not sure how, or even why, we increase the level of punishment on things which already ended so badly for the scum in charge.
But that level of drama is both a problem and an opportunity. I coldly ignored the drama and used the situation to get a really large raise with a different contracting company.
On “Niccoló and the Bully”
1) You're trying to claim that he's a better manager than Bush. Problem is that even if true, that sets the bar so low that "really bad" is still a possibility.
On a side note I'm not sure how much Katrina was a "Bush" thing. After you subtract massive media hype (cannibalism), local (the mayor hiding in the bathroom), and state (refusal to let the feds in) screw ups, how much is left?
Iraq on the other hand showcased his flaws in all their glory. All trails led to his office, it wasn't just "on his watch", it was "the people he put in place were supposed to be getting the job done and if they wouldn't or couldn't, it was his job to replace them".
2) "making it a priority"? Meaning he hadn't made his own #1 priority a priority before this? If true, why is this an excuse?
3) "when Obama realized things weren’t going well..." Translation: He had no clue before it hit the news that there was a problem, even though this had been going on for years. That's kind of my point.
You're making the assumption that it was Obama who stepped in and made things work and handled the reorg. Given how many people wanted the site to work (i.e. every Dem), and given how high a priority it was, that seems like a big assumption. This falls under the whole "it's tough to evaluate the President or separate his work from his minions".
Obama showed leadership when he refused to enforce his own red line and take military action against Syria. There were strong forces arguing for action, he refused. Similarly he showed leadership in making the ACA... both good and bad. Good in that he eventually got it passed, bad in that it took forever to get it done and cost him his supermajority.
While we're making Bush v Obama comparisons, both of them managed to bungle a winning hand in Iraq, basically from some combination of inept leadership and bad management.
Probably more than half of being President is management... which is why I wanted Romney in there. Just for fun he does things like taking on impossible management challenges like making the Olympics Profitable. Give that job to either Bush or Obama and I'm sure after the blow up people would be whining about how *hard* it is and how there are embedded institutional problems.
On “Mugged By Reality: A Conservative for Universal Health Care”
IMHO the biggest weakness is it doubles down on the parts of the system which make it expensive. It was insurance reform, we need medical reform.
Infection rates for hospitals and doctors are hidden. Costs are hidden. Success rates. Etc, etc.
Force the publishing of all of them and we'd at least have potential solutions that involve markets, at the moment we don't and can't.
Without markets we have rationing and/or money cannons.
On “Niccoló and the Bully”
Let me expand on this whole "bad management" thing with a different example.
The 2nd Gulf War's big problem was bad management. Lack of planning, making lots of "In Iraq" decisions based on our own local politics, and leaving Rummy in charge *long* after it was clear he was the source of a lot of this.
Are we really supposed to believe that Bush had nothing to do with this?
"
Yes, I do claim that Obama said he was bad at math, even to the point of middle school math. I've also quoted and sourced him directly.
You've been claiming I said he was dumb, presumably in general.
I'm saying that we had a maximum priority project that suffered from multiple management failures. Obama had zero management experience. It shouldn't be hard to draw a line there.
It seems odd you don't want to list this as a weakness of his.
On “Mugged By Reality: A Conservative for Universal Health Care”
Only if you take all comers.
If we go down this path I expect a boom in Concierge Medicine.
"
Even assuming that's true, the big costs of the system are driven by a small percentage of sick people. If you're going to be increasing that by a lot, then 15% more doesn't come close to balancing out.
That's over and above the problem that firing two administration types working for an insurance company won't create one doctor.
On “An Unfortunate Turn of Events”
If a member of my family is killed, I have an alternative other than extract justice myself. If I kill, the likelihood of my being arrested by the gov is high.
In theory it may be an illusion, in practice, if I test it I'll end up in jail.
On “Mugged By Reality: A Conservative for Universal Health Care”
Medicare-for-all may mean "worse than what we currently have for the seniors".
You're not adding more doctors to the system, you're probably not adding more money, you're just adding more people.
Scarce resources will need to be shared with the new people, i.e. uninsured or under-insured sick people that you're bringing into the system. It is reasonable to wonder if the new people will crowd out the current ones, or at a minimum if unintended side effects will negatively affect the current winners.
For example Medicare-for-all may mean Medicare can no longer underpay for things, or that doctors will focus on treating "healthy" medicare patients rather than sick ones.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.