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No progress will be made in getting money out of politics until the left takes over the Democratic Party. The Party deliberately exacerbates the problem by forcing its candidates to be more dependent on and therefore sycophantic to big donors so all that donor money can be poured down a rathole of endless grift for themselves and their consultant friends.
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Feb 15, 2018 23:36
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Brony Car posted:I have a hard time looking at the pre-Citizens United and post-Citizens United expenditure levels and thinking that the case did not have a major impact. The levels of spending, especially by opaque non-party organizations, jumped crazily after 2006. That probably had more to do with presidential candidates (*cough*obama*cough*) rejecting public financing for the general elections for the first time in modern history, as well as Dems openly courting corporate donors, than CU did four years later after the money-grab by both parties was already in full bloom.
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Feb 15, 2018 23:49
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Fine. Dems bad. Kill all Dems. I just hope the heroes we need can all get elected in the face of all this money.
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Feb 15, 2018 23:51
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Ytlaya posted:It seems like you genuinely can't comprehend the idea of people disliking the Democratic Party from any perspective other than a right-wing/conservative one. If you have opinions like "oh you know, hillary's plan for a public option and expanded medicare isn't going as far as I want, and her support of gay rights is mostly correct now but was late coming and felt bare minimum and her views on abortion generally seem correct but she seems to be giving some amount of concessions that I prefer she not" or something then fine, go for it, you are with me. If you have opinions that get anywhere close to seeing the two parties as the same or trying to pretend that you can't distinguish the two I absolutely think you are either a fake posting concern troll stuff or a dupe that got your brain soaked in conservative narratives until you can't tell whats what.
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Feb 15, 2018 23:51
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At least in terms of foreign policy (which is the area of US politics that is most impactful, and effects the most vulnerable) the parties are more or less the same. In that area at least, Obama was probably worse than second term Bush.
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Feb 16, 2018 00:34
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:If you have opinions like "oh you know, hillary's plan for a public option and expanded medicare isn't going as far as I want, and her support of gay rights is mostly correct now but was late coming and felt bare minimum and her views on abortion generally seem correct but she seems to be giving some amount of concessions that I prefer she not" or something then fine, go for it, you are with me. Im not going to lick the boots of democrats because they happen to be less poo poo than the republicans.
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Feb 16, 2018 00:39
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:If you have opinions like "oh you know, hillary's plan for a public option and expanded medicare isn't going as far as I want, and her support of gay rights is mostly correct now but was late coming and felt bare minimum and her views on abortion generally seem correct but she seems to be giving some amount of concessions that I prefer she not" or something then fine, go for it, you are with me. To someone who is going to die or whose family member is going to die because they can't afford medicine under the ACA and/or will still die under Hillary's plan the parties may as well be the same. Either one is going to let them die for money. Now try to control the knee-jerk sociopathic retort "well we don't need their votes anyway  " and think: why not try to get their votes by offering not to murder them for money? Recent history has shown that sometimes we really need every last vote!
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Feb 16, 2018 00:40
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VitalSigns posted:To someone who is going to die or whose family member is going to die because they can't afford medicine under the ACA and/or will still die under Hillary's plan the parties may as well be the same. Either one is going to let them die for money. "For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia"
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Feb 16, 2018 00:51
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Brony Car posted:Fine. Dems bad. Kill all Dems. Frankly this is part of the problem, the heroes you need are you and fellow lefties canvasing against the right of the democratic party. You cnanot wait for a hero. You have to choose to be the hero.
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Feb 16, 2018 01:07
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VitalSigns posted:To someone who is going to die or whose family member is going to die because they can't afford medicine under the ACA and/or will still die under Hillary's plan the parties may as well be the same. Either one is going to let them die for money. So your standard of a politician you'd support is only one where literally no one dies? Because boy, I would really like all those people to have gotten expanded medicare instead of waiting.
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Feb 16, 2018 02:08
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:So your standard of a politician you'd support is only one where literally no one dies? Because boy, I would really like all those people to have gotten expanded medicare instead of waiting. That is quite a reach from what you're quoting. "We shouldn't let people die to save a few bucks" =/= "Anything less than full immortality now is a failure not worth supporting"
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Feb 16, 2018 02:18
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:So your standard of a politician you'd support is only one where literally no one dies? Because boy, I would really like all those people to have gotten expanded medicare instead of waiting. I said try to restrain yourself from kneejerking to the sociopath's retort. Like try? E: Even if I follow you down the rabbit-hole of amorality where it's okay to kill sick people for money as long as you kill fewer than the other guys, and you can use the ones you're saving as hostages to get elected forever this strategy is not actually effective at winning elections. It fails by its own standards. You can make all the game theory arguments you want, real human beings don't follow game-theory 'rationality' and there's a limit to how much poo poo they will take. You're just the guy playing the Ultimatum Game yelling "arrghh stop rejecting the dollar just because I'm taking the rest of the pot, now we're both broke and it's all your fault!" VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 02:36 on Feb 16, 2018 |
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Feb 16, 2018 02:28
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I mean, it's not like liberals are actually capable of using all their money as an advantage anymore; between their own massive personal incompetence and a level of graft that seems to suck up nearly all of the money, they can't actually put that money to good use anymore. I mean goddamn, we just came off a billion dollar vanity campaign that failed.
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Feb 16, 2018 02:44
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VitalSigns posted:
I'm sorry that you consider more people getting medicare to be "poo poo".
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Feb 16, 2018 03:27
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:I'm sorry that you consider more people getting medicare to be "poo poo". I don't, obviously. I consider people still going bankrupt and dying without healthcare to be "poo poo" and what's more important so do their friends and families. Even if you don't care what happens to those people as long as Democrats get elected, you should care whether they think it's worth it to vote Democrat because although "well we don't need their votes " was the hot take among sociopathic D&D wanna-be-political-wonks in 2016, it turned out that Dems needed those votes after all!
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Feb 16, 2018 03:36
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VitalSigns posted:I don't, obviously. The democratic candidate was offering that thing you apparently think isn’t poo poo.
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Feb 16, 2018 03:47
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It's kind of depressing that I can't actually count on liberals understanding that killing people for money is wrong to do, and in order to even have a chance at making them understand that it's bad I have to couch dying people in terms of threatened electoral votes.
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Feb 16, 2018 03:48
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VitalSigns posted:It's kind of depressing that I can't actually count on liberals understanding that killing people for money is wrong to do, and in order to even have a chance at making them understand that it's bad I have to couch dying people in terms of threatened electoral votes. It’s depressing that anyone would be fine killing people because they are fussy a candidate that didn’t run that they made up in their head would have been better
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Feb 16, 2018 03:53
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:So your standard of a politician you'd support is only one where literally no one dies? Because boy, I would really like all those people to have gotten expanded medicare instead of waiting. How about those people making slightly above the expanded-Medicaid cutoff--and those making slightly above the poverty-level cutoff in non-expansion states--who can only afford a lovely bronze plan with a $7,000/annual deductible (which comes out to anywhere from one-third to one-half of their net annual net incomes that they're expected to pay--in addition to their ever-increasing premiums) before one cent of insurance coverage kicks in. How about people making slightly above the subsidized-premium level, who are now expected to spend $20,000/year for family coverage that still comes with per-person, not per-family, deductibles? How about union workers whose wonderful health coverage--negotiated in lieu of salary increases--was branded as "cadillac coverage" and the ACA called for getting rid of it, because having comprehensive coverage is the exact same thing as cadillac-driving welfare moms? How about people insured who've been hospitalized at an "in-network" hospital who then faced surprise "balance billing" and collections because some randos walked into their room and didn't identify themselves as being out-of-network? How about parents who aren't able to cover the cost of prescription drugs for which their children's lives depend? Why don't you have a word with the fine Democratic senators who allowed drug and insurance lobbyists to literally write the bill that was ostensibly created to regulate them? And while you're at it, ask them why their focus-group-created talking point of the ACA being "the first step to single-payer" back in 2010 morphed into the trope that single-payer will never, ever happen. Expanded Medicaid--the single-payer portion of the ACA--was pretty drat good, and is the smashing success of the legislation, and it's even cheaper than government subsidies for private insurance. Shame about those couple dozen states that have rejected expansion for tens of millions of people, because the Dems (rather, the lobbyists who crafted the bill) chose the state-based program to expand rather than the federalized one (you know, the one you keep claiming was expanded). But keeping that balanced budget was more important that offloading the costs onto the states, so state-based it was. [eta: And here we are today, with GOP governors devising Medicaid lifetime limits & work requirements. Can you imagine the public outcry if the feds did the same with Medicare?] The ACA entirely encapsulates the problem with the current Democratic Party: Look at this magic trick of our providing a good thing for some people, but don't pay attention to the hundreds of millions of others we've actively harmed by our actions and inactions. Keep voting for us, though; someday we're bound to have those super-duper Congressional majorities that we claim we need to get the legislation that we promise--cross our hearts!--we really really want to give you. Willa Rogers fucked around with this message at 09:49 on Feb 16, 2018 |
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Feb 16, 2018 03:55
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The trolley problem except you can trigger the trolley brakes but you pull the lever anyways and complain when people call you a monster
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Feb 16, 2018 03:56
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But what about all the people Martin Shkrelli didn't kill for cash, what a hero
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Feb 16, 2018 04:05
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:The democratic candidate was offering that thing you apparently think isn’t poo poo. Anything less than universal healthcare regardless of income is poo poo
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Feb 16, 2018 04:08
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VitalSigns posted:It's kind of depressing that I can't actually count on liberals understanding that killing people for money is wrong to do, and in order to even have a chance at making them understand that it's bad I have to couch dying people in terms of threatened electoral votes. Why else do you think I have embrace Bolshevism at times? Because liberalism is the domain of the narcissists.
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Feb 16, 2018 04:10
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:It’s depressing that anyone would be fine killing people because they are fussy a candidate that didn’t run that they made up in their head would have been better Idk how many other ways I can explain this to you, but to a person dying because Democrats sold them out to corporations in the ACA it is poo poo even if the overall number of dying people goes down. To their friends and family it is poo poo. If appealing to human empathy doesn't work, how about this: in our political system whoever gets more votes wins. Killing people means they can't vote for you and making their families hate you makes them less likely to vote for you. E: I know I know "it's not their rational perfect subgame strategy!" Human beings don't reason that way, sorry. Also, game theory rationality changes when the game is repeated, which politics is. Mashing the defect button over and over is a poor strategy even in game theory in a repetitive Prisoner's Dilemma or Ultimatum Game, let alone in real politics with real human beings who don't apply game theory rationality to the question "should I vote for someone who stabs me in the back every round" Also dead poor people can't vote and which party wins the poor people demographic overwhelmingly? VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 04:27 on Feb 16, 2018 |
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Feb 16, 2018 04:14
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A Typical Goon posted:Anything less than universal healthcare regardless of income is poo poo Actually expanding medicare is good and reducing medicare is bad and you are a bad person if you think otherwise just because other potential things are even more good
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Feb 16, 2018 04:22
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I wonder if we could get liberals on board with M4A if we just started referring to people as "potential raw voting material", perhaps always in context with say the 2016 vote margin in Michigan. "This year, another 45000 units of American potential raw voting material died today from lack of access to health care, about 4.5 times the benchmark unit known as the Trump-Michigan. Another 4.5 Trump-Michigan's worth are expected to die next year for the same reason, although a recent CBO report has said the repeal of the mandate could increase that by as much as 2.3 Trump-Michigans."
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Feb 16, 2018 04:31
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Actually expanding medicare is good and reducing medicare is bad and you are a bad person if you think otherwise just because other potential things are even more good Ok. So why should we support the option that leaves poor people to die when we can support the one that doesn’t kill people and you admit is better? If you support the option that kills poor people because of party politics/insurance company profits it’s you that is a poo poo person
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Feb 16, 2018 04:32
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A Typical Goon posted:Ok. So why should we support the option that leaves poor people to die when we can support the one that doesn’t kill people and you admit is better? You know who has presented medicare for all plans universal healthcare? Literally politicians who are democrats.
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Feb 16, 2018 04:37
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:You know who has presented medicare for all plans universal healthcare? Literally politicians who are democrats. Maybe it would be smart to run one of them for president instead of someone who opposes that next time? Maybe we should run people who agree with that for all offices?
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Feb 16, 2018 04:38
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VitalSigns posted:Maybe it would be smart to run one of them for president instead of someone who opposes that next time?  What's a primary? "People should vote for the candidate I like not the candidate they like!" "When Clinton loses she should have been better, when Sanders loses it's because Clinton is bad." Just to save ya'll the effort of going over it again. Harold Fjord fucked around with this message at 04:42 on Feb 16, 2018 |
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Feb 16, 2018 04:39
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VitalSigns posted:Maybe it would be smart to run one of them for president instead of someone who opposes that next time? Maybe it would be smart know or care or learn anything about democrats beyond hillary clinton before trying to mouth off on what "democrats" collectively do or think or say.
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Feb 16, 2018 04:46
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Maybe it would be smart know or care or learn anything about democrats beyond hillary clinton before trying to mouth off on what "democrats" collectively do or think or say. lolwhat Are you taking "hey Democrats should help more people not less" as some kind of personal insult to a sports team rather than as a recommendation for what Democratic politicians ought to do if they want to win elections?
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Feb 16, 2018 04:50
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VitalSigns posted:Are you taking "hey Democrats should help more people not less" as some kind of personal insult to a sports team rather than as a recommendation for what Democratic politicians ought to do if they want to win elections? Universal healthcare is already literally part of the democratic party platform. You can claim that you think it's a trick and they just put that in to fool everyone and your giant brain saw through the ruse or whatever and that any work they do towards it that isn't writing "universal health care exists now" and having a party is just their evil plot to murder. Expanding medicare, public options, that is literally how you get universal healthcare. It's not the actual literal best version, but subsidized public option insurance is literally how a bunch of countries do universal healthcare and it's infinity better than what the US has.
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Feb 16, 2018 05:08
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The current Democratic Party will not give us a public option unless they're willing to go nuclear on the filibuster. If they're not willing to commit to doing that, it won't happen because a 60-vote supermajority is a 5-times-in-a-century deal and even when one comes around there will always be a convenient Lieberman to vote with Republicans. You think that's good enough, and that saying "oh it was all that dastardly Lieberman, not our fault *sounds of glasses clinking with Aetna lobbyists*" will be enough to win the next election. It won't. And then once again Republicans will get in and you'll be squealing "why did those stupid voters stay home game theory says they should Cooperate even if we Defect!". Now you're going to misunderstand this post and accuse me of trying to keep the Democrats from winning, when I'm explaining to you what they must do if they want to get reelected after Republicans inevitably gently caress up and horrify enough Americans to let the Dems win by default. But honestly just the fact that you have to say "OK the Democratic Party doesn't support the literal best health care system for Americans, in defiance of all reason, logic, and human empathy, because they're too beholden to donors to ever do it" should be a clue that as long as they hold sway the donors are not going to let a public option happen because that's almost as deadly to private industry profits as the NHS.
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Feb 16, 2018 05:23
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Expanding medicare, public options, that is literally how you get universal healthcare. Sorry, what public option?
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Feb 16, 2018 05:32
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VitalSigns posted:But honestly just the fact that you have to say "OK the Democratic Party doesn't support the literal best health care system for Americans, in defiance of all reason, logic, and human empathy, because they're too beholden to donors to ever do it" should be a clue that as long as they hold sway the donors are not going to let a public option happen because that's almost as deadly to private industry profits as the NHS. Who told you any of this? They literally have universal healthcare as a central plank of their national political list of positions. Its only your imagination they tells you they have some sneaky second plan they aren’t showing that says “step one: not have universal healthcare”
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Feb 16, 2018 05:35
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WampaLord posted:Sorry, what public option? The one that she devil, mother of all sins hellery Democrat Clinton ran on providing.
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Feb 16, 2018 05:39
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Uh you told me, when you offhand mentioned that the Democratic Party doesn't support the literal best version of universal health care for Americans, an illogical, evil, and insane position for them to have? How do you not see that as the biggest red flag ever?
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Feb 16, 2018 05:40
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VitalSigns posted:Uh you told me, when you offhand mentioned that the Democratic Party doesn't support the literal best version of universal health care for Americans, an illogical, evil, and insane position for them to have? No country that exists has implemented Truely flawless universal healthcare that could not be improved in any way. If we get mandatory insurance with a strong public option like Luxembourg instead of some actually perfect fantasy version I don’t think anyone would be that sad.
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Feb 16, 2018 06:00
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:The one that she devil, mother of all sins hellery Democrat Clinton ran on providing.  I VOTED FOR HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON I honestly don't know why you think yelling at me will change anything. Seriously, are you operating in some alternate universe where she won, pushed out a public option, and then I was still bitching about it not being enough? Because WE DON'T LIVE IN THAT WORLD!
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Feb 16, 2018 06:05
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