Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[cherdano]

So, continuing the invasion and subjugation of several sovereign nations, while supporting "moderate" factions for regime change in others (not to mention sanctions already used or currently in force etc) had nothing to do with anything? The US is the great Satan in those nations because their military presence in those regions is unnecessary and unproductive except for the benefit of the arms industry and associated corporations.

Can't you see how dumb your logic is?

I point out that some criticism of Obama's response to terrorism is truly ridiculous. You ask why I claim that all criticism of Obama's response to terrorism is wrong. I never claimed such a thing.

[y66]

I regard myself as open to workable ideas and they do not have to come from the left. My expectations for Trump are so low that he almost has to do better than that. At least I hope so.

Edit: re: Trump's nominations for HHS (Price) and Education (DeVos):

 

According to the NYT Editorial Board:

 

Mr. Price, a Republican from Georgia, is a fierce opponent of the Affordable Care Act, the 2010 health reform law, and beyond that, supports plans to slash Medicare and Medicaid, which cover tens of millions of elderly, disabled and low-income Americans. He is against a woman’s right to choose and has backed legislation to strip Planned Parenthood of federal funding.

 

Mr. Trump and many Republicans have talked vaguely about plans to repeal the health reform law but suggest they might keep some popular parts of the law. Mr. Price makes no such noises. The detailed legislation he introduced most recently in 2015 would destroy the reform law and is a good indication of his philosophy in managing the nation’s largest health programs: cut benefits and leave millions with no health care at all.

 

His bill would, among other things, roll back the federally financed expansion of Medicaid in 31 states and the District of Columbia, taking coverage away from 14 million poor people. It would severely cut federal subsidies that help individuals and families buy policies on government-run health exchanges. The reduced subsidies would make it hard, if not impossible, for millions to afford the coverage they have gotten since the Affordable Care Act went into effect. And the bill would no longer require insurers to cover addiction treatment, birth control, maternity care, prescription drugs and other essential medical services.

 

As for coverage of pre-existing medical conditions — a key element of the current law, requiring insurers to sell plans to those with health problems — Mr. Price’s bill has that protection only for those who maintained continuous health coverage with any insurer for the previous 18 months. This means that insurers would not be required to sell an affordable plan to anyone who did not have coverage for, say, a month while he or she was between jobs.

Katherine Stewart, who wrote "The Good News Club: The Christian Right’s Stealth Assault on America’s Children", has this to say about Ms. DeVos:

 

BOSTON — At the rightmost edge of the Christian conservative movement, there are those who dream of turning the United States into a Christian republic subject to “biblical laws.” In the unlikely figure of Donald J. Trump, they hope to have found their greatest champion yet. He wasn’t “our preferred candidate,” the Christian nationalist David Barton said in June, but he could be “God’s candidate.”

 

Consider the president-elect’s first move on public education. Jerry Falwell Jr., the president of Liberty University, the largest Christian university in the nation, says that he was Mr. Trump’s first pick for secretary of education. Liberty University teaches creationism alongside evolution.

 

When Mr. Falwell declined, President-elect Trump offered the cabinet position to Betsy DeVos. In most news coverage, Ms. DeVos is depicted as a member of the Republican donor class and a leading advocate of school vouchers programs.

 

That is true enough, but it doesn’t begin to describe the broader conservative agenda she’s been associated with.

 

Betsy DeVos stands at the intersection of two family fortunes that helped to build the Christian right. In 1983, her father, Edgar Prince, who made his money in the auto parts business, contributed to the creation of the Family Research Council, which the Southern Poverty Law Center identifies as extremist because of its anti-L.G.B.T. language.

 

Her father-in-law, Richard DeVos Sr., the co-founder of Amway, a company built on “multilevel marketing” or what critics call pyramid selling, has been funding groups and causes on the economic and religious right since the 1970s.

 

Ms. DeVos is a chip off the old block. At a 2001 gathering of conservative Christian philanthropists, she singled out education reform as a way to “advance God’s kingdom.” In an interview, she and her husband, Richard DeVos Jr., said that school choice would lead to “greater kingdom gain.”

 

And so the family tradition continues, funding the religious right through a network of family foundations — among others, the couple’s own, as well as the Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation, on whose board Ms. DeVos has served along with her brother, Erik Prince, founder of the military contractor Blackwater. According to Conservative Transparency, a liberal watchdog that tracks donor funding through tax filings, these organizations have funded conservative groups including: the Alliance Defending Freedom, the legal juggernaut of the religious right; the Colorado-based Christian ministry Focus on the Family; and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

I have low expectations too but these guys don't come close to meeting them. It's a mess ain't it?

[Al_U_Card]

Can't you see how dumb your logic is?

I point out that some criticism of Obama's response to terrorism is truly ridiculous. You ask why I claim that all criticism of Obama's response to terrorism is wrong. I never claimed such a thing.

Logical progression used as counterpoint. Standard.

[Al_U_Card]

You might want to examine that list and see whether you can detect some common factors, lol.

 

jogs can't string together two consecutive thoughts without his lack of intellectual ability coming through. Note how he never responds to attacks on his arguments...he simply and falsely claims that a criticism of his argument is an ad hominem attack.

 

Thanks for clarifying that. I thought that he might be j(on) o(ttawa) g(one) s(tealth). phew! ;)

[Al_U_Card]

It seems unlikely that draining the swamp by adding more mud will help. Not since the days of Matewan and Haymarket has corporate influence been stronger in government. No longer a revolving door of influence and execution, the appointment of so many corporate mavens appears to herald a near-future of more corporatism and less hardy individualism.

Subverting human rights in favor of the exercise of corporate influence harks back to the establishment of state and municipal police forces to replace the hired para-military of the robber-barons (until National Guard or Federal troops were called in) of the previous century. I cannot see the entrenched establishment elite seeing their way to improve the lot of the poor, working (wo)man, especially at the expense of corporate profits, if at all.

[MrAce]

Can't you see how dumb your logic is?

I point out that some criticism of Obama's response to terrorism is truly ridiculous. You ask why I claim that all criticism of Obama's response to terrorism is wrong. I never claimed such a thing.

 

No he can not see. Neither Jogs. I think you give them way too much credit by assuming that they can but still choose to not see. I do not think this is the case.

What I do not understand is, why you, Mike and Richard are having hard time to understand this and keep on trying to talk sense to them? Because they are either troll or someone who are not gifted with the average human logic.

 

I do not know what does this make other people who relentlessly try to talk sense to either of these for a long time now?

[Al_U_Card]

No he can not see. Neither Jogs. I think you give them way too much credit by assuming that they can but still choose to not see. I do not think this is the case.

What I do not understand is, why you, Mike and Richard are having hard time to understand this and keep on trying to talk sense to them? Because they are either troll or someone who are not gifted with the average human logic.

 

I do not know what does this make other people who relentlessly try to talk sense to either of these for a long time now?

Well, be it haughty arrogance or insipid invective, what happens if some people look into the points raised? Will their hair fall out? Will they spontaneously combust? Or perhaps it may just raise their awareness that the espoused "correct" interpretation of the facts is wrong not only in those areas but in others as well.

Don't engage, be my guest. Your posts on Turkey appear well-meant and despite being one-sided, are sincere. Madman or genius? Terrorist or freedom-fighter? Sometimes it depends on your perspective, sometimes not. Being open to either possibility is what helps you find your way. Refusing to investigate or contemplate, not so much.

[rmnka447]

A brouhaha that had escaped my notice. I will let them all fight it out without me. And, in a way, that's my point. Or one of my points. We do not yet know a lot of details about Trump's plans but we can look at some questions.

 

There have been a number of stories about people who are currently enrolled in the ACA and who are wondering where this election leaves them. Many of them voted for Trump, apparently trusting that he did not really mean what he said. Saying that he will repeal it and replace it by something really terrific made, I guess, a good campaign bite but we are now reaching a point where more details than "really terrific" are needed. What are they?

 

PISA recently released another report and guess what, US students scored abominably. Trump has made it clear that he regards Common Core as an instrument of the devil, and he will get rid of it immediately. Ok, he will get rid of it. Is that the whole plan?

 

 

And so on. Verbally attacking Trump's wife as she travels with her children is bad manners and bad tactics. I consider the "bad manners" the worse of these, but bad tactics would also be bad. Same for booing Pence as he goes to see a play. But it is also a sideshow. Our future is at stake here. We have to do better than booing Pence at Hamilton or berating Ivanka on a plane.

 

Health care is tricky. I am at an age when I see often and up close just how tricky. For finances, for longevity, for quality of life. I am open to possibilities, but "really terrific", without details, doesn't work for me as a plan. Educational issues are very important to me. At the personal level, I am a Ph.D whose father finished eighth grade and whose mother had a little high school. I want kids to have the opportunity I had. At the national level, I think doing a better job of education is a matter of national survival. Demonizing Common Core, again without any details of what comes next after dumping it, strikes me as simplistic beyond tolerance.

 

I regard myself as open to workable ideas and they do not have to come from the left. My expectations for Trump are so low that he almost has to do better than that. At least I hope so.

 

BTW, Ivanka isn't Donald's wife, it's his daughter. She was travelling with her young children and apparently handled the situation with great aplomb. The strongest reaction seems to have been from women. They were very concerned about the traumatic effect that such a confrontation would have on the toddlers.

 

Think of it this way, how would you react if you heard, say 2-4 years down the road, that Chelsea Clinton was travelling with her child on a commercial flight and was confronted by a right wing zealot ranting about what a crook, liar, and despicable person her mother was. It would be as entirely out of bounds as this incident was.

 

The airline handled it exactly right as there was no guarantee they'd be able to handle the situation if it flared up again during the flight, so they took the protesters off the plane. So the only real penalty the perpetrators of this instance paid was the time and inconvenience of taking a later flight.

 

As for Trump's policies, let's be realistic --

 

Repealing and replacing ACA has to include some viable means for most, if not all, people covered by ACA to have healthcare insurance. It would be political suicide to do anything different. So the contention of 25 million without any healthcare is just progressive propaganda. Clearly, ACA is in a death spiral now. People with family coverage for $1000 a month and a $12,000 deductible know that's not any real insurance just high cost catastrophic coverage. Certainly, it's not affordable care. Trump has already endorsed retaining "stay on family insurance til 26" and "no pre-existing conditions" and these are things a majority of Republicans have always been for. Any repeal would also include a several year transition period to whatever the replacement would be according to Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. Let's see what Trump and the Republicans come up with.

 

On education, apparently you missed President-elect Trump's emphasis about wanting school choice for all. This would include a voucher system where student funding followed the student. The student could attend any school that had space for them. Apparently, some pilot programs have shown success with this approach, not only for students changing schools, but also for the schools students were leaving. These "underperformers" were forced to compete and therefore had to make changes that improved learning for all the students that remained. A Democrat, an ex-DC Councilman, who is a strong advocate for better education touted these results. Betty Devos, Trump's choice for Education Secretary, has long been interested in education and an activist in trying to improve our education system and strong advocate for educational choice. He thought she'd be a good choice to help implement this program.

 

Certainly, something has to change in our educational system to get better results. The US spends the most per capita for education of any country and we were something like 137th in the world. Just tossing more money at the problem isn't a real solution.

[Winstonm]

For a little clarity, this is what I referred to concerning the Jet Blue incident: (emphasis added)

Attorney Daniel Goldstein, of Brooklyn, New York accosted Ivanka, saying, “Your father is ruining the country,” before declaring that “She should be flying private,” Breitbart previously reported.

 

Matthew Lasner, who is Goldstein’s husband and was on the plane at the time the incident happened, said Goldstein simply “expressed his displeasure in a calm tone,” but was asked to leave the aircraft anyway.

 

Since then, Lasner’s book titled “High Life: Condo Living in the Suburban Century” has been flooded with negative reviews on Amazon.

 

Lasner, who is an urban studies professor at Hunter College and very vocal about his dislike for President-elect Donald Trump on Twitter, wrote the book in 2012.

 

Only one of the 106 reviews left on the page was written by someone who made a verified purchase back in 2013.

 

The rest of the reviews were all from Dec. 22 and 23 following the incident, with some reviewers making personal attacks on Lasner.

One reviewer under the name “Amazon Customer” called Lasner a “liberal idiot that harasses a young mother and her three children aboard a Jet Blue airline…”

 

Other reviewers made subtle jabs at the flight incident with their reviews.

 

“This book goes nowhere, like missing a flight. Book left me feeling like I was stuck at an airport. Story didn’t have any altitude. Hopefully it’s not made into an in flight movie,” user “fmp4369” commented.

 

One Amazon reviewer supported Lasner, writing, “Not recommended for white supremacists.”

 

To me, this banding together in a defensive mode and counterattack in this fashion is troubling.

[awm]

On education, apparently you missed President-elect Trump's emphasis about wanting school choice for all. This would include a voucher system where student funding followed the student. The student could attend any school that had space for them. Apparently, some pilot programs have shown success with this approach, not only for students changing schools, but also for the schools students were leaving. These "underperformers" were forced to compete and therefore had to make changes that improved learning for all the students that remained. A Democrat, an ex-DC Councilman, who is a strong advocate for better education touted these results. Betty Devos, Trump's choice for Education Secretary, has long been interested in education and an activist in trying to improve our education system and strong advocate for educational choice. He thought she'd be a good choice to help implement this program.

 

"School choice" is essentially code for a way to give government money away to private religious schools which have no accountability in terms of teacher qualifications or curriculum taught (also arguably a violation of separation of church and state). It also gives wealthy families who choose to send their children to private school anyway a nice discount on their tuition, while reducing the funding for public schools (and thereby making it easier to argue that public schools are "failing" and redirect even more money). The voucher is not realistically enough for a poor family to send their child to a high quality (non-religious) private school.

 

Charter schools are something of an in-between case, where public money is given to a school run by an organization with reduced (but not completely eliminated) accountability. There are definitely cases where charter schools have succeeded in reaching some targeted population of students. However, there are also a great many cases where charter schools are a cover for private companies to make a profit while providing even worse education than the "failing" public schools in the same district. The degree to which charters work depends a lot on the state running the program, in particular the restriction of the profit motive and the degree of accountability required to obtain and retain a charter. Of course, the state where Betty Devos has most significantly "been an activist in trying to improve our education system" (Michigan) has one of the most disastrous failed charter school systems in the country, so I'm not optimistic.

[jogs]

http://money.cnn.com/2016/12/26/investing/boeing-iran-price-tag/

 

Boeing charges Iran half price for aircraft. While Boeing with cost overruns charges the US govt more than full price.

[jogs]

There are roughly 200 countries in the world.

There look to be 44 represented here...

 

Big whoop.

 

Among the world leaders, only Obama claims to be leader of the free world.

[hrothgar]

Among the world leaders, only Obama claims to be leader of the free world.

 

When did Obama make such a statement?

[hrothgar]

No he can not see. Neither Jogs. I think you give them way too much credit by assuming that they can but still choose to not see. I do not think this is the case.

What I do not understand is, why you, Mike and Richard are having hard time to understand this and keep on trying to talk sense to them? Because they are either troll or someone who are not gifted with the average human logic.

 

I do not know what does this make other people who relentlessly try to talk sense to either of these for a long time now?

 

My family is German

 

My father taught East West German relations as well as the rise of the Nazi party.

 

I was taught from an early age that the greatest failure of the German people was normalizing the National Socialists and that one has an active duty to confront this sort of idiocy.

[Winstonm]

http://money.cnn.com/2016/12/26/investing/boeing-iran-price-tag/

 

Boeing charges Iran half price for aircraft. While Boeing with cost overruns charges the US govt more than full price.

 

Irrelevant to anything. Comparing the price of already designed and manufactured passenger aircraft to the costs of designing. building, and delivering a new warplane is simply a ludicrous exercise in self-masturbation.

[cherdano]

Repealing and replacing ACA has to include some viable means for most, if not all, people covered by ACA to have healthcare insurance. It would be political suicide to do anything different. So the contention of 25 million without any healthcare is just progressive propaganda. Clearly, ACA is in a death spiral now. People with family coverage for $1000 a month and a $12,000 deductible know that's not any real insurance just high cost catastrophic coverage. Certainly, it's not affordable care. Trump has already endorsed retaining "stay on family insurance til 26" and "no pre-existing conditions" and these are things a majority of Republicans have always been for. Any repeal would also include a several year transition period to whatever the replacement would be according to Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. Let's see what Trump and the Republicans come up with.

I am genuinely curious to what you think Republicans will do. The only ways I can see that one could fight the rising premiums in the ACA exchanges (while keeping the "no pre-existing conditions" promise) are:

• Strengthen the individual mandate (higher penalty, stricter enforcement)
  
• Getting some of the most expensive/sickest patients off the exchanges and into Medicare/Medicaid (that's what Clinton proposed with her Medicare buy-in plan for anyone 55-65 years old)
  

Somehow, neither of them sound like things a Republican Congress would do. Other than that, I only see minor tweaks:

• Less expansive coverage mandates
  
• Being stricter about enrollment rules (fewer "life-changing events" qualifying allowing sign-up outside open enrollment windows, stricter enforcement).
  
• Higher deductibles
  

These are things that Republicans might be willing to pass, and would help a little. I am not sure all of these are good ideas, but I don't have strong objections to them either. But they don't move the needle much either way.

 

I have read a lot about healthcare policy in the last few years, and I really have no idea what Republicans could do that helps and is in line with their stated principles. What I do know is that their publicly announced plans (or legislations they have voted for) would either cause 25 millions to lose health insurance, or just kick the can down the road. (That's the delayed repeal plans that set a timeline for ACA to expire, with no replacement in line.)

 

So I'd quibble with your assertion "So the contention of 25 million without any healthcare is just progressive propaganda." To me, that's just taking Republicans by their word. Meanwhile, I think there is a reason that in the past 6 years, Republicans in Congress have repeatedly voted on (dead-end) repeal legislation, but have never put forward a plan to replace it.

 

But now that the election is over, that's all minor quibbling about posturing. The questions that matter are:

• What will Republicans actually do to replace ACA with - after they haven't told us for the last 6 years?
  
• Why on earth are Republicans set on replacing Medicare with premium support for ACA-style insurance exchanges - just after we have seen those work badly? They'd be more expensive than Medicare by a big factor.
  

[cherdano]

On a more serious notes, Al and Jon are are two of the the most obvious anti-Semites and racists on the site.

 

You really might want want to consider who you are choosing as your fellow travelers...

I'd put it slightly differently.

 

The actions that Jon took that got him banned were

• very surprising/shocking to Kaitlyn, but
  
• pretty much in character for most of us who has seen him post here over the years.
  

 

If event X happens that is completely surprising/shocking to me, but not totally unexpected to everyone else, then maybe I should reconsider some of my underlying assumptions.

[cherdano]

Certainly, something has to change in our educational system to get better results. The US spends the most per capita for education of any country and we were something like 137th in the world. Just tossing more money at the problem isn't a real solution.

I'd be curious where you are getting these numbers from, and more important that they mean exactly. I'd be surprised if the US spends more per capita on education than any other country unless you include higher education in those figures.

[hrothgar]

I'd be curious where you are getting these numbers from, and more important that they mean exactly. I'd be surprised if the US spends more per capita on education than any other country unless you include higher education in those figures.

 

Using per capita spending to compare education spending is a meaningless statistic. The US certainly ranks very high on this statistic, however, the figure in the US is heavily biased because it includes a large amount of spending on National Defense which is funded through the college system. In contrast, other countries don't spend nearly as much money on defense. In addition, there are a large number of welfare programs that get funded through the department of Education in the US that get funded through other parts of the budget in the rest of the world.

 

Moreover, if you look at spending levels versus educational attainment here in the US, our real issues are the inequities in spending.

 

There are many school districts that receive lots of money where the students do very well.

There are other districts that don't received much money at all, where the students do very poorly.

 

There are also outliers. And there are certainly examples where significant amounts of money are spend on a per capita basis where student outcomes are poor.

However, in most cases these are examples of districts where one would expect that even more money would need to be spent in order to have a significant impact on outcomes.

 

For better or worse, it costs significantly more to education students whose families have been packed into failing communities.

(And oh, BTW, it was US government policy that deliberately created these districts)

[hrothgar]

Logical progression used as counterpoint. Standard.

 

Not able to recognize that there is a difference between "some" and "all"

 

very standard for Al

[nige1]

I'd put it slightly differently.

 

The actions that Jon took that got him banned were

• very surprising/shocking to Kaitlyn, but
• pretty much in character for most of us who has seen him post here over the years.

If event X happens that is completely surprising/shocking to me, but not totally unexpected to everyone else, then maybe I should reconsider some of my underlying assumptions.

It's unclear why moderators were persuaded to ban jonottowa but I feel that continuing personal attacks on him are in doubtful taste, now that he can no longer defend himself.

[Cyberyeti]

It's unclear why moderators were persuaded to ban jonottowa but I feel that continuing personal attacks on him are in doubtful taste, now that he can no longer defend himself.

 

It was VERY obvious what he did to get banned although I haven't checked if the posts have been removed now. Going away from these boards and making allegations to somebody's IRL contacts is a pretty big no-no.

[hrothgar]

It's unclear why moderators were persuaded to ban jonottowa but I feel that continuing personal attacks on him are in doubtful taste, now that he can no longer defend himself.

 

Nigel, if this was unclear to you, then you are far more stupid than I thought. (and that's saying something)

 

Please recall, the specific incident that caused Jon to be banned was selectively forwarding comments that MikeH had made on these forums to members of his law firm and asking them to take steps to have MikeH disbarred.

 

This was coupled with the fact that Jon didn't post any bridge related content for a several years. His only reason for participating on the forums was posting a bunch of racist clap trap, forwarding this to his Alt Right followers on Twitter and the like, and use this do try to generate credibility with a bunch of neo-Nazis.

 

Jon had been warned by the moderators about making racist posts.

He responded by trying to have a forum member fired from their job.

 

is that simple enough for you?

[billw55]

But now that the election is over, that's all minor quibbling about posturing. The questions that matter are:

• What will Republicans actually do to replace ACA with - after they haven't told us for the last 6 years? They don't actually care. They will take whatever profit engine that industry gives them, pass it through and uniformly praise it as the final glorious proof of how bad Obama was.
• Why on earth are Republicans set on replacing Medicare with premium support for ACA-style insurance exchanges - just after we have seen those work badly? They'd be more expensive than Medicare by a big factor. They don't actually care about that either. Rs are only against big government, spending, and debt when Ds do it.

[y66]

It's unclear why moderators were persuaded to ban jonottowa but I feel that continuing personal attacks on him are in doubtful taste, now that he can no longer defend himself.

Personal attacks are not in doubtful taste. They are in poor taste. Period. Let's not equivocate about this or pretend any of us are saints.

 

Let's also not equivocate about the grounds for banning jonottowa. He was unsubtle, ungracious, repetitive, intentionally annoying and an incredible boor which is grounds enough for me. For everyone else, except you it seems, his lack of judgement in using comments intended for the sole consumption of members of this forum to attack a fellow forum member at his place of work was unforgivably mean spirited, a betrayal of the sanctity of the water cooler and clear grounds for banishment.