Imaginary postulations on the subject are as useful as imaginary money.
If you check the footnote, I elaborate on that point to say that there is still discrimination when it comes to politics. Some forms of discrimination have just become less acceptable in public. I'm not postulating as to how large the racist base of America's electorate, I'm postulating that there are simply more than admit it based upon mediocre evidence. :wink:
(I'm willing to admit when my analysis is flimsy!)
You're kidding, right? I guess the Code Pink / Moveon.org / Bush=hitler crowd don't count on your list of memorably disgruntled activist mobs. How about the minutemen demonstrations and La Raza during the immigration debate? Reagan's before my time, but Clinton had got stung by this same hornet's nest when he tried passing universal healthcare. Healthcare reform has always been an extremely hot button issue.
Code Pink and Moveon in particular I believe are indignant organizations that by and large have a fairly clear focus. While they certainly lash out in uncouth ways, I believe it would be difficult to say that they're hatred is grounded in something as visceral as racism. They find clear issues to be opposed to. TEA Parties, on the other hand, are without a clear, consistent, coherent complaint. They're a hodgepodge of deficit hawks, pro-business/anti-regulation, curmudgeons whose only real complaint seems to be levied on spending that just isn't happening and tax increases that don't exist. In other words, because of the lack of an objective issue they rally against, it seems as though they're the 'one-size-fits-all' anti-Obama advocacy group. And while most really are concerned about the deficit, I am willing to wager that some (even if only a few) have joined the TEA Party express because they're unwilling to accept President Obama's proposals because of a subconscious racism.
(Again, a postulation on flimsy evidence, but to say that there are none who have is just as weak of a postulation as none of us can really get in the minds of all the protesters.)
As far as the Bush=Hitler crowd and the Obama=Hitler crowds, I think both are inexcusable but neither really are doing so out of racism. I think it's fear mongering to dissuade people from a political position they oppose. It's tacky, tasteless, and without base. I'm not going to try to defend either crowd.
I will say, though, that La Rouche is a douche. (I won't qualify that further.)
You do realize that GM and Chrysler did end up going into chapter 11 bankruptcy. The auto Bail outs were not designed to prevent that, and ironically allowing GM and Chrysler to go into chapter 11 was the party of labor unions throwing the UAW under the bus (pun intended). As far as the successes of his economic policies its a huge wait and see. The mortgage crisis has a political life of its own. Whether BO or JM was POTUS we were going to see a series of tax based stimulus packages and a continuation of GW's TARP under Geitner's supervision.
It is a huge wait and see, and you're right in what's happened since the government take over of GM. (Chrysler was purchased by Fiat, so they're not really the beneficiaries(or victims, depending on ideology) of the government take over.)
Second TARP givebacks were being discussed in the last days of GW. The idea behind TARP was to give a huge injection of cash in all the banks to increase liquidity in the loan market, not to save the banks that took the cash. Bank and assurance failure prevention was done through direct equity buyouts vis a vis AIG and Goldman Sachs. With many of these TARP banks Geitner, quite wisely IMO, essentially cajoled everyone into taking the money to prevent a credit and loan freeze that would be problematic to other sectors of the economy. In short many banks received money they didn't necessarily need (they weren't in crisis) and accepted it on the basis that they were being cooperative with FED leadership.
You're right, but I don't see how that conflicts necessarily with what I said. Without the added liquidity of TARP funds, some of the banks really were in danger of collapse. But it's true that Geithner was rather forceful in his demand that all banks take TARP funds, even to the chagrin of some banks like Wells Fargo. Either way, my point is that the TARP funds by and large are going to be deficit neutral
because they're to be paid back.
Yes but public option healthcare is NOT a one time cost, and that is at the crux of the problem now as it was when Hill and Bill were pushing it in the nineties. Public option healthcare at this time is deficit spending with diminishing returns. What's worse is the lefty's like Barney Frank tied the public option to the idea of it being the first step to universal socialized healthcare in their own advocacy for it. If the public option dies like it appears might happen I'd blame good ol' Barney for prodding the hornet's nest in the first place.
I'm not sure how my statement transferred the discussion to public option health-care, but I'm game. :biggrin:
You'd be right on the public option, if it were to be solely subsidized by tax payers. While there will be an initial start-up cost associated with it, the public option is required to be self-sustaining. It's paid for by people paying premiums to it as they would any other insurance organization. Ergo in the long run, the Public Option is hardly a cost. The public option is not where the real cost of health care reform comes from, it's the subsidies to be given to low income individuals and small businesses to make health insurance affordable. (That and a number of one-time costs like digitalization of medical records, infrastructure improvements, etc.)
But the biggest problem with your health care analysis is that you're outright assuming that any new spending that occurs means it will add to the deficit, and that's not true. It is true that health care reform is new spending, but it's to be paid for by the waste cuts, and indeed, acquiring new revenue.(Taxes or fees on the upper echelons of society) It is to be paid for, meaning that it's not going to add to the deficit. And in the long term, if we can decrease the rise of health care costs below GDP growth (the real need for reform), it should theoretically bring down the deficit in the long term due to savings.
I will give you the number one reason that Healthcare debate has been so fractious and stalled on action. Timing. This issue has always been highly controversial and its a long term spending bill being pushed during not just an economic recession but the worst one since arguably the great depression. To make matters worse democrat majorities were established from sniped republican strongholds. These freshman democrats are conservative and they have vulnerable seats. Support for a public healthcare bill would be political suicide. Many of them after all ran as being a more conservative brand of democrat far removed from Pelosi's party. Finally the recession is now starting to hurt the Democrats as much as it hurt the republicans when it started, and if it continues into the 2010 midterm it will be seen as Obama's recession rightfully or wrongfully. If the Dem's pass a controversial public option and the economy's numbers are still abysmal in 2010 they are yielding potentially huge gains to the Republicans. Not only has this been bad policy in my opinion but it has been bad politics for the Democrats as well.
I agree with everything here except that freshman conservative democratic congressman supporting a public-option included bill will be a death sentence for the politically. I believe this for three reasons, one is that a victory is a victory and people like winners. The second, and more important, is that the greatest traction against the public option is that it is a big unknown. People are afraid of it because they don't know what the ramifications of it will be. But it, like medicare and social security which also received a lot of traction before passage, could very well become embraced by society. The third reason and
most important is that when people know what the public option means,
the majority of people support it. (I reference Quinnipiac because their poll methods were, by and large, the most kosher.) It is just a (very) vocal minority that has brought the public-option to its knees.
But you're absolutely right that Democrats suck at cohesion and timing. :grin:
Personally I think that the Baucus Plan is the only one that stands a chance of passing and ironically it resembles McCain care more than it does Obama care. Frankly I find that the CEO of whole foods penned the best argument that stands against Universal Systems.
The Baucus Plan is a joke, in my humble opinion, because it seems to really just be a complete hand out to insurance companies. It mandates universal coverage without a public option, meaning that it's just millions more dollars to health insurance companies without any sort of adequate check back against abuses from the companies. (Co-Ops suck as a mechanism of check.) Unfortunately, you're right that it's the best shot of passing. My only hope is that once Congress is in Committee of the whole they'd tack on the public option. (Even if as a trigger.)
