2010 Election Results Are In

The election results are in, and there are one trillion web pages now up helping you find out what happened. The short story is that the Republicans cleaned up, although the Democrats maintain a one-seat majority in the Senate. The GOP now has 239 seats in the house, giving them a huge lead over the Dems' 183.

Comments

Should be good for the economy

[rwa2]

Historically, the economy has always done well with a Republican congress and a Democrat president...
http://beforeitsnews.com/story/245/982/Divided_we_make_money:_Why_the_stock_market_wants_a_Republican_victory.html

A more data-based representation:
http://cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/usdebt.htm

Re:Should be good for the economy

[Wonko the Sane]

Historically, the economy has always done well with a Republican congress and a Democrat president...

Of course it does - gridlock means that less laws get passed.

The primary purpose of laws is to either to expand the public sector or else to advantage one group in the private sector at the expense of another group so less laws is automatically better for the economy.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[ArcherB]

Historically, the economy has always done well with a Republican congress and a Democrat president...
http://beforeitsnews.com/story/245/982/Divided_we_make_money:_Why_the_stock_market_wants_a_Republican_victory.html

A more data-based representation:
http://cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/usdebt.htm

I halfway agree. The economy just seems to do pretty well with a Republican congress, but to be fair, it was slightly better under Clinton with a Repub congress than Bush with a Repub congress. I say that because the current Democratic congress has been a disaster, regardless of which party controls the WH.

My prediction: Expect the economy to improve and Obama take the credit. I believe we are about to see a repeat of the Clinton WH after Newt became Speaker of the House. Recent history has shown that the president has little effect on the economy. It's all congress.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[Pojut]

The real test will be what Boehner does now...will he obstruct, or will he work?

This can be applied to Obama as well.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[Anonymusing]

My prediction: Expect the economy to improve and Obama take the credit. I believe we are about to see a repeat of the Clinton WH after Newt became Speaker of the House. Recent history has shown that the president has little effect on the economy. It's all congress.

Even if it's "all congress" -- the Democrats can still claim responsibility for upswing. They already do: more jobs added in the last two years than during Bush's entire reign, most banks repaid their bailouts with interest, GM on firmer financial footing than it has been in many years, etc. Even much of the health care reform bill is considered a good idea by both sides: elimination of rescission, improved coverage for children, etc. They have much to crow about, and if the Republicans play it badly in the next two years, expect the Dems to make a comeback in 2012.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[Kryptonian Jor-El]

Boehner has been quoted that he is more than willing to work with President Obama, as long as what they're working on is what he and the Republicans want

Re:Should be good for the economy

[Wonko the Sane]

My prediction: Expect the economy to improve and Obama take the credit. I believe we are about to see a repeat of the Clinton WH after Newt became Speaker of the House. Recent history has shown that the president has little effect on the economy. It's all congress.

There's no recovery on the horizon. In fact, shortly after all these new members of Congress get seated the inflation from Ben Bernanke's recent dollar devaluation will work its way through the supply chain and start ravaging family budgets.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[Pojut]

That's the thing that pisses me off about Boehner...when he speaks in an "unofficial" capacity (i.e. not at a press conference), you can tell that the guy has a real solid head on his shoulders. I think he'll make a great Speaker, and I think he's a good person to have "leading" the Republicans.

The only problem is that any time he is talking in an "official" capacity, his entire vocabulary consists solely of talking points. I know this is part of his role, but still...he nearly literally speaks only in talking points when speaking to the press.

If he is true to his word and extends an olive branch to Obama, I think great things can happen. I'm just worried that he'll try to coat that branch in poison before trying to gift it.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[fishbowl]

>Of course it does - gridlock means that less laws get passed.

Gridlock means that less *federal* laws get passed. It also means that the states have more power.

Also in this case, the House controls plenty of things related to spending that don't have to go through both chambers.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[chris mazuc]

Sounds like the same old bullshit to me. Compromise to the Republicans is the Democrats doing what they tell them to do.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[Anonymous Coward]

If you look at it... have salaries increased much since the 1990s? I saw what college students are being offered when they graduate, and it isn't that much more than what they were being offered in the mid 1990s. All the while, prices of cars have nearly doubled, and housing prices have skyrocketed.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[nomadic]

It's a big challenge for Obama - he's more "ideologically pure" than Clinton was, so we'll see if he's willing to compromise at all to get anything done for his side. If he wants to be reelected, he'll have to run to the right.

Ideologically pure? The man has offered so many concessions while in office that it's become ridiculous. He really thinks he can win over the paranoid right with his charisma, but he's just not really that charismatic.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[Wonko the Sane]

The economy got fucked when Nancy Pelosi became Speaker of the House in 2006.

The economy was fucked when the banksters initiated the largest embezzlement scam in human history in the form of the housing bubble. They just managed to cover up the theft until about 2006.

The reason that there has been no recovery is because the Democrats were not willing to bite the hand that feeds them by allowing the insolvent institutions to fail and allowing criminal prosecutions of those responsible.

The Republicans will continue this policy, so the economy will continue to suck.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[ArcherB]

Even if it's "all congress" -- the Democrats can still claim responsibility for upswing. They already do: more jobs added in the last two years than during Bush's entire reign

Really? The unemployment rate in November of 2008 was 6.9%. Today, it's at 9.6%. So are you telling me that -2.7% is ADDING jobs? Were you a math major?

Oh, and like I've said... Bush had very little to do with the economy. Obama has little to do with the economy. It's congress. From 1995 to 2007, Republicans held the House. In that time, unemployment went from 5.6% to 4.6% with a low of 3.8% and a high of 6.3% (unemployment climbed form 9-11-2001 to June 2003 before dropping off again). The party that held the WH had little effect. It wasn't Bush's fault and it's not Obama's.

Numbers don't lie. Source:
http://www.miseryindex.us/urbymonth.asp

Re:Should be good for the economy

[nomadic]

Boehner? Are you kidding me? Boehner distributed campaign distributions from tobacco lobbyists to his fellow congresspeople. On the House floor. Right before a tobacco vote. I mean, there are a lot of people in Congress who are basically corporate shills, but Boehner is easily one of the worst. He's basically a lobbyist in congressional clothing.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[pixelpusher220]

You can claim credit for the economy growing like crazy under the GOP from 1995-2007 only if you also take the blame for the complete collapse of the economy in 2008-2009. You don't get the upside without also taking the downside.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[Wonko the Sane]

Ok genius, tell me how these price increases aren't going to work their way through the supply chain and make the basic necessities of life cost more.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[Notquitecajun]

Not from this side of the aisle.

While not giving the left everything they were after, he rapidly increased federal spending with little transparent oversight, pushed the federal government to buy stock in private entities, enacted "Obamacare" in a nearly completely partisan vote with little to no real input from the right, and has not compromised on any bill placed in front of him to sign.

From the perspective of a conservative, his is THE most left-leaning and partisan Presidency to date. GWB had a record of reaching across the aisle even with a majority (NCLB is the big one there, written by Ted Kennedy).

Re:Should be good for the economy

[CyprusBlue113]

You could at least try to be reasonable.

There was a LOT of seeking input, and a good bit of compromise offered, but the only input that was ever given was either "No", or "Lets make it even better for insurance companies wishing to cherry pick their clients".

Re:Should be good for the economy

[flosofl]

You mean the 2008-2009 where the Dems controlled Congress? That one? I'll be glad to blame the ones in charge at the time.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[Lumpy]

Historically the world and the country has done really well when the house, senate and president are all split and fighting against each other. Less crap get's passed as the other party vetos or stops the others garbage from getting passed. So the bleeding heart liberal socialisim wont get passed easily nor the Whiney conservative Corporate welfare and deep tax cuts for the rich will get passed. The government will be stalemated and nothing will get done.

This is a VERY GOOD THING! And is exactly how the founding fathers designed it.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[Lumpy]

Actually it's just that the Paranoid right is simply completely nuts.

I have met the man, you can not help but like him when you meet him and talk to him.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[TheGratefulNet]

mod parent up!

almost any law these days is an unnecessary law! bought and paid for by special interests.

modern (recent) laws have done nothign to 'help people live better or safer'. they are ENTIRELY 100% bought and paid for by PACs.

so yes, I'd agree! stalemate is good. it stops the bastards from lining their pockets with even more stupid corporate-backed laws.

(OT: anyone else think the idea of 'keep passing more and more laws' is not scalable? shouldn't we CONDENSE laws and make things more general and not more and more specific? ever look at a lawyers bookshelf? how on earth can anyone think this is manageable! its not. we need to repeal laws and 'age them out' instead of just adding TO the pile of shit we call laws. I propose a 'reference count' and if a law has not earned its keep (after review) it should be gone!)

Re:Should be good for the economy

[Notquitecajun]

Not really. The mandate was never on the table, and that was pretty much a deal killer for ANY conservative.

Most of the "seeking input" was done my Obama, true, but there was NEVER any done from the Dems in the Senate or House - remember all the "closed door" sessions after a particular promise from Pelosi to have everything on CSPAN and out in the open?

Didn't happen. There were a few bones thrown our way, but there was NO HSA expansion (actually contracted); VERY little in the way of high-deductible plans; NO ability to cross state lines to get a different health care service (which, admittedly, could be done at the state level). It was also comprehensive and ridiculously long, rather than dealing with one issue at a time.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[Attila Dimedici]

The Republicans offered a whole slew of health care reform proposals, all of which were either ignored by the Democrats or diluted and stuck in a bil that contained items that were complete non-starters for Republicans.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[pixelpusher220]

When the GOP steers the ship towards a waterfall, just because someone else grabs the wheel right before it goes over doesn't absolve the GOP for their primary role in sending it over.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[cgenman]

The primary purpose of laws is to either to expand the public sector or else to advantage one group in the private sector at the expense of another group so less laws is automatically better for the economy.

Really? The laws that enforce the terms of contracts are automatically bad for the economy? The ones that establish the fed's ability to monitor the monetary supply in an attempt to mitigate fluctuations in valuation are automatically bad for the economy? The ones which establish fire departments, roadways, and the international negotiations which provide protections for domestic businesses doing business with international companies are bad for the economy?

You know what you have without laws? Anarchy. By Definition you have anarchy. Anarchy is a terrible state within which to attempt to conduct business.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[oh_my_080980980]

Interesting so for the last 2 years Obama was an obstructionist?

Re:Should be good for the economy

[Viewsonic]

You realize that the health care that was enacted was totally different than what was originally on the tables BECAUSE it was a bipartisan attempt from Obama to reach across the aisle, right? People were 70% for it until it got demolished to basically something entirely different. Then everyone was 70% against it.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[Johnny5000]

enacted "Obamacare" in a nearly completely partisan vote with little to no real input from the right

That's not quite the way it happened.
"We considered 287 amendments. 161 of those...accepted were Republican amendments. You can vote against the bill if you want, but don't suggest to me that this process denied people a chance to be heard, to be involved, and to be engaged. " - Chris Dodd

The fact that Republicans got 161 amendments added to the health care bill and they still didn't vote for it doesn't indicate to me that they're interested in engaging with Democrats in any meaningful way.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[Wonko the Sane]

The laws that enforce the terms of contracts are automatically bad for the economy?

Those laws were passed decades and centuries ago. New laws are not needed for that.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[Lumpy]

You are trying to reason with a rabid Tea Party member... It's like reasoning with a 3 year old, be careful he does not try to stomp on your head.

MY wife explained all this to me from her economics classes.

The president does not do SHIT for the economy.

Congress cant do SHIT for the economy.

What "fixes" the economy is the people. if you tied up every single politician and held them captive in a prison for 5 years the economic recovery would be just fine.
What congress can do, make laws that put CEO's and board members of banks and businesses that pull the crap that caused an economic collapse. but we keep voting in idiots that are either rich guys that dont like putting rich guys in jail, or they are friends of these scumbags that cause the problems.

Want to fix the economy.. make sure that the government can not get anything done. split senate, repub house, dem president.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[truthsearch]

enacted "Obamacare" in a nearly completely partisan vote with little to no real input from the right

You are aware, of course, that "the right" was invited to many meetings. They didn't show up and then told the press "the left" was unwilling to compromise. If the Republicans weren't willing to even enter the room, they were the ones who left themselves out of the conversation.

and has not compromised on any bill placed in front of him to sign

I guess you haven't read any bills. The health care bill, for example, was a huge compromise. Without the compromised it wouldn't have passed at all.

From the perspective of a conservative, his is THE most left-leaning and partisan Presidency to date.

Only a misinformed conservative. There are Republican presidents in recent history who were more "left-leaning". Obama didn't pass anything as big or as influential to our society as Social Security, Medicare, or the interstate highway system.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[cgenman]

Unfortunately, I fear whatever data we've collected since the early 90's pretty much needs to be thrown out.

The mid 90's saw an explosive growth in technologies that fundamentally changed the human condition and drove the economy to dizzying heights. By 2000, the associated huge stock bubble burst. But everyone had a taste of prosperity, and looked to the dream of Home ownership, like Japan in the late 80's. A second prosperity bubble formed around real estate in the 2000's, which burst in 2008 or so.

Al Gore aside, none of these things had anything to do with which party was in power. I'm not saying that who controls what is irrelevant, just that most of the data collected since Bush #1 probably needs to be thrown out as being unfairly prejudicial. And since the parties today are very different than the parties from the 70's and 80's, the relevance of "Dems are better for the economy!" or "Republicans are better for the economy!" when looking at this one point of data seems like a form of rooting for Baseball teams.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[Colonel Korn]

From the perspective of a conservative, his is THE most left-leaning and partisan Presidency to date. GWB had a record of reaching across the aisle even with a majority (NCLB is the big one there, written by Ted Kennedy).

NCLB's first generation is arriving in college and they're shockingly unprepared. Never in recent history have entering college students been so inept at writing papers and discussing ideas. They still seem skilled at filling in bubbles, at least. The kids from wealthier or better schools haven't suffered much because their programs exceed the minimum requirements and still cover all the same material. The rural and urban kids, however, are being taught in such a way to ensure funding that's contingent on standardized tests. When a college student has never heard of a bibliography or encountered the idea of writing a paper based on research, I die a little inside. Then I stop whining and try to fill in the gaps.

NCLB was indeed a broad bipartisan effort and it should be a reminder that when the idiots on the left and the idiots on the right agree on something, it might just be due to its overwhelming idiocy.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[viking099]

Don't forget that the right wing mouthpieces had their part in affecting the debates. The whole "death panel" debacle was completely distorted rhetoric on something very sensible and important: end of life planning and counseling. Which was proposed by a Republican and accepted until it became too much of an albatross to carry.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[Anonymous Coward]

The health care bill is obviously a huge compromise, seeing as we gave you the health care package that Bob Dole-- then Senate Majority Leader for the Republicans-- advocated in the 90s. Fast forward 12 years, and the same plan is now socialist. The US has taken a gigantic step to the right in the last decade.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[Mongoose Disciple]

Out of curiousity, why couldn't they agree with a bill that was mostly built on Republican ideas in the first place?

e.g., "Obamacare" looks an [i]awful[/i] lot like "Romneycare". Or, one might examine ideas John McCain had previously put forth on healthcare. Or, one might examine the ideas the Republicans put forth on healthcare during the Clinton administration. Etc.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[jemenake]

A more data-based representation: http://cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/usdebt.htm

What worries me about a lot of the graphs on that page is that they either use numbers which aren't even adjusted for inflation, or they adjust for inflation but don't compare them to GDP. He gets it right in a few places, but most of the graphs aren't useable. Looking at the un-adjusted debt principals, yes, the numbers will tend to climb.

What I'm much more concerned about is debt as it relates to GDP. After all, if you owe $10 in debt, that's a serious problem if you only make $1 per year, but it's inconsequential if you make $1,000 per year.

So, look at debt-as-a-percentage-of-GDP here: (http://zfacts.com/p/1195.html). You'll see that:

• The debt was once much higher than it is today.
• We were managing to pay it down... through Eisenhour, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter... and then Reagan started a precedent for Republican presidents to blow it sky-high.

I do agree with the webpage about trickle-down not working and that, for a steady economy, we need to get back to the higher taxes on the rich, like the 70%-90% on the highest tax brackets which were helping us pay down the WW-II debt consistently over 35 years until Reagan took office.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[localman]

It's a shame when people rewrite history so casually. The idea that you call the health care plan "Obamacare" when he didn't put it together and basically dropped the ball on it is completely absurd. Then, in an effort to work with Republicans the plan was whittled down to almost nothing, yet you still call it "Obamacare" and claim nobody talked to the Republicans.

Sorry, but I was paying attention, and I saw a perfectly reasonable and popular health care bill relentlessly torpedoed by the right, and that is the damaged bill we have now. Which, by the way, is still better than nothing and that will be obvious in 20 years as it is tweaked -- like every successful social policy of the past century. You know, the stuff that brought us to the top of the list of developed countries after WWII.

Your notion that this administration is the most partisan is merely a reflection of the fact that sometime since the early nineties when Newt shut down Congress, Republican leaders have simply decided "my way or the highway" on everything. Democrats under Bush were far more reasonable than the Republicans have been in decades now, which is why Bush was able to "work across the aisle".

It may be worth calling attention to the fact, which seems to slip your mind, that under Clinton's leadership we saw one of the greatest decades of growth this country has ever experienced. And under Bush we saw one of the worst. And under Obama we are slowly recovering. Doesn't any of those plain facts make you wonder about the Republican plan?

Re:Should be good for the economy

[GiveBenADollar]

IANACS but most of what was in the healthcare bill was suicidal for health insurance policies. Covering pre-existing conditions in children? Yeah it allowed you to insure little Timmy after he got Leukemia, but from an insurance company's perspective it let you get home insurance after your house is burning down or car insurance right after a wreck. Insurance only works when the costs of the ill are distributed among the well, if you have only sick people buying it then it gets very expensive very fast because the cost is slightly more than the average cost of treatment for policyholders. Covering children until they are 26 also drives cost up because it increases the number of people covered without increasing the number of policies held. We've already seen insurance companies refuse to accept child only policies because of the cost to them. You can argue all day long that the health care bill had the best intentions, but in reality it only drives the cost up for people who try to do the right thing and buy insurance before they get sick. It seems to me this whole thing was a plan to drive health care costs up even more so that the government would be in a better position to promote a single payer system.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[Danse]

Not really. The mandate was never on the table, and that was pretty much a deal killer for ANY conservative. Most of the "seeking input" was done my Obama, true, but there was NEVER any done from the Dems in the Senate or House - remember all the "closed door" sessions after a particular promise from Pelosi to have everything on CSPAN and out in the open? Didn't happen. There were a few bones thrown our way, but there was NO HSA expansion (actually contracted); VERY little in the way of high-deductible plans; NO ability to cross state lines to get a different health care service (which, admittedly, could be done at the state level). It was also comprehensive and ridiculously long, rather than dealing with one issue at a time.

And all we've heard from Republicans in recent weeks is how they're not going to compromise on their principles, yet Democrats are demonized for trying to stick to theirs. Nice.

Republican health care ideas might have lead to some savings in some areas, but they aren't going to fix the real problems.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[Wonko the Sane]

There's no denying that banks played a major role in the collapse, largely due to not properly ensuring that borrowers were capable of repaying the loans.

They didn't want the borrowers to repay the loans. The whole thing was a scam from day one.

The sold unpayable loans to generate more fees by forcing borrowers to refinance.

They sold the same mortgage more than once so that when it defaulted the investors would not realize that it had been pledged two, three or four times over and blame the default for their loss. (Think of the plot of The Producers)

The Republicans and Democrats both know this but neither one is willing to throw their benefactors in jail.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[GodfatherofSoul]

Classic example. The Dems had 60% of the Senate (counting the Indies). The stimulus bill included about 40% of the tax cuts that Republicans wanted. They wanted a 50/50 solution with 40% of the vote and still voted it down. A stronger Senate leader would have stripped all of their provisions out when they indicated they weren't voting for ti anyway.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[countertrolling]

Voting "no" when you know the deal is going to pass is purely for appearances for the folks back home. That mandate will bring in more money than a Saudi arms deal. I doubt a single politician was actually against this massive windfall.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[GiveBenADollar]

As is compromise to the Democrats. Also the Republicans can magically block all kinds of legislation while being the minority in the house and senate. Obama loves to blame the Republicans for not getting what he wanted, but in reality he could and did pass any bills the Democrats would approve. The fight he's had is not with the Republicans, but with his own party. The fight with the Republicans happens when the new congressmen get seated.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[GodfatherofSoul]

Does anyone remember history more than 3 months back anymore? The collapse started in 2007 and really blew up in 2008.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[Wonko the Sane]

Inflation due to rising incomes and margins is entirely different than inflation due to currency devaluation.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[countertrolling]

Republican "opposition" to the bill was as phony as a three dollar bill. Everybody in both houses was already counting the money months before it passed.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[Wonko the Sane]

Some inflation will help them by reducing their existing debt in comparison to their income because it will increase to match inflation.

How? What mechanism will make incomes go up? A larger percentage of the population is out of work than at any time in the last 20 years. Companies have no margin with which to raise wages and commodity inflation is going to make this worse, not better. Average income except for Wall Street hasn't risen for the last 10 years, so how is inflation helped you?

Re:Should be good for the economy

[GodfatherofSoul]

Enough with the subtle "it was because of poor people" arguments. The housing bubble was largely caused by *upper* class borrowers treating skyrocketing housing prices like another stock market. The Wall Street shysters knew what they were setting up. I'd say Alan Greenspan was one of them. You'll notice that interest rates drop sharply in the naughts, and rise at almost the same rate. I saw a graph (too lazy to find it) in I think the Washington Post where the rates over time looked like a shallow 'V'. Get people hooked on those volatile loans, then set up the collapse for your buddies.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[tverbeek]

We don't need government divided for it to get nothing done. Just look at the past two years.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[Thud457]

The Republicans has twelve years to pass some sort of healthcare reform.

They did shit .


All while insurance premiums continually increased, leading to either a) higher employee premiums, eating up any salary improvements, or b) more employers deciding not to provide health insurance. Any way you look at it, that's bad for the Public and bad for Business .

The Republicans were more interested in tax cuts for special interests and wasting time & money trying to impeach Billy boy for getting his wangdoodle slobbered on by an intern. They even prevented medicare/medicaid from acting as a group to negotiate drug prices with the pharmaceutical companies. (That's just not rational).
That's what the Republican priorities were.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[saider]

The health care mandate does not "bring in" money. It is simply a forced redistribution from the people to the insurance companies.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[brit74]

pushed the federal government to buy stock in private entities

You mean the bailout of the auto-industry which was actually under George Bush? Yeah, a lot of conservatives automatically assume that was Obama.

enacted "Obamacare" in a nearly completely partisan vote with little to no real input from the right

What nonsense. The Republicans wanted to drag their feet over everything, and then complain that Obama wouldn't compromise so that they could simultaneously stopping anything from happening and blame the president. Remember the "public option"? Oh right, Obama compromised on that, but FOX News has somehow painted the picture in all the sheeple's minds that Obama wouldn't compromise.

and has not compromised on any bill placed in front of him to sign.

WTF are you talking about? Get your news from a real news outlet rather than the mouthpiece of the Republican propaganda machine.

From the perspective of a conservative, his is THE most left-leaning and partisan Presidency to date.

*EVERY* Democratic President is automatically labeled the "most left-leaning and partisan president" by the right. Just pay attention to the attack ads during every presidential election and you'll realize that this is the perpetual refrain of the Right.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[gtbritishskull]

How can a condition be "pre-existing" if everyone has to have healthcare. Pre-existing what? Or are you just trying to say you want the Health Insurers to be able to drop people when they get sick? Good idea. If the insurance companies never have to pay for any healthcare, then premiums will be very low and the companies will still make an enormous profit!!!

Everyone wins, right?

Re:Should be good for the economy

[gtbritishskull]

Did you even look up the amendments? How many is "few"? Which ones were substantive? Saying "Sorry, no dice" is not an answer unless you present at least one fact to back it up.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[Low Ranked Craig]

How, exactly, could the right torpedo the plan when the Democrats had a huge majority in the house and a super majority in the Senate? Sorry, but I was paying attention too, and the democrats own that mess lock, stock and barrel.

I want the health care system improved in this country as well, but being forced to buy over-priced insurance or have the IRS fine me $2000 is not what I or most people had in mind.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[Hatta]

So why did they take those Republican amendments? This is why voter turn out from young progressives was so poor. They realized they couldn't count on Obama to fight for anything.

Obama should have brought the public option to the table, pushed it through, and lost. THEN started to make compromises.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[Wonko the Sane]

Comparatively, a 1% increase in the cost of consumables is spitting in the ocean.

It's not that relevant if your are in the upper middle class or above but for the families that are barely scraping by increasing food and energy prices will absolutely crush them, just like it did last time.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[Notquitecajun]

It wasn't necessarily about sticking to principles, it was doing it in such a high-and-mighty we-know-better-than-you manner that the Dems were doing it.

And, like it or not, Americans are center-right, and don't tend to like many pushes left.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[countertrolling]

Please, don't try to give Clinton so much credit. Other than being there when the computer/internet thing really took off, he did very little. In fact he tried to impede it with the clipper chip and DMCA and export restrictions. And most of that "growth" you saw was only on Wall Street paper. The only growth Main Street saw was in consumer debt.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[ScentCone]

Voting "no" when you know the deal is going to pass is purely for appearances for the folks back home.

So ... you're saying that every legislator should vote to support bills with which they disagree, just because it's going to pass anyway? Are you even listening to yourself? Those people voted No on that monstrosity of a bill because they knew that the "folks back home" were solidly opposed to it. The majority of the people in the US did not want the bill passed, and the people who passed it had to resort to parlimentary circus tricks to ram it through. Voting against it was the ethical thing to do, and the dems that voted for it despite the wishes of their constituents are now feeling the (appropriate) pain.

That mandate will bring in more money than a Saudi arms deal. I doubt a single politician was actually against this massive windfall.

Have you been that brainwashed, or are you just trolling? The bill is not a windfall. It adds enormously to the deficit, piling on ever more debt. The bill costs wildly more money than it takes from tax payers, even after it snuck in things like new sales taxes on your house, new IRS involvement in small business transactions, etc. That you would characterize the thing as a windfall indicates your complete mis-apprehension of the reality of what the last congress, with Obama, did when they forced that nonsense through.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[tophermeyer]

Republican health care ideas might have lead to some savings in some areas, but they aren't going to fix the real problems.

A perspective (that happens to be mine) is that the only real problem is the cost.

I don't care about providing universal coverage for all. I don't care about mandating coverage. I care about my own healthcare costs. From this perspective, I expect my elected officials to champion my interests. The idea being that if you get 100 senators and 435 representatives all looking out for the expressed interests of their constituents you will eventually get a compromised piece of functioning legislation.

Instead, what we got was a self serving piece of garbage intended to leave a "Democratic Legacy" shrouded in some pseudo altruistic nonsense. We got a ridiculous amalgamation of pet projects and wishful thinking that commits American taxpayers to picking up the insurance and medical costs of the uninsured. I don't want that. And I want my elected officials to listen to me when I say that I don't want that.

This was my issue with the healthcare bill. Cost, and lack of consideration for the people that will be bearing the brunt of the increased costs.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[dkleinsc]

He's also on the record as being concerned that Newt Gingrich was too conciliatory back in the 1990's. Also, the Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is on the record as saying that the top priority of the Republican Senate delegation is to ensure that Obama doesn't get reelected. Something tells me the people's business isn't the top of their list.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[ScentCone]

People were 70% for it until it got demolished to basically something entirely different.

No. People were "for" it for as long it remained a nebulous "reform" that promised impossible things. This is why Pelosi characterized it as something that had to be passed first, so that people could find out what was in it, after the fact. She knew that being clear about the bill's contents up front would just hurry along the pace at which it lost support. As soon as people started to see where it was headed, support for it dropped through the floor. All the more so when people saw what the left was willing to do to ram it through, against the wishes of the majority ... and hence the spanking that the left just took in the polls.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[DavidTC]

It was laws such as the Community Reinvestment Act that encouraged banks to lend to low income consumers who were high credit risks to begin with.

You're a goddamn imbecile.

The CRA had nothing, period, at all to do with the collapse at all.

I love the idea that you can 'encourage' banks to make a bunch of failing loans, which were not made under the CRA, by forcing it to make other 'bad' loans. (Note: CRA loans generally outperform other loans, simply because banks pay more attention to who they give them out to.)

It's the same way that businesses are forced to collect sales tax, so they often collect even more money from customers and throw it out afterward. That's how businesses work, right?

The CRA 'covered' about 25% of all institutes making mortgages, and maybe 1-2% were actually 'required' under the CRA, a law which is essentially pointless at this point in history, because banks don't red-line anymore.

As has been pointed out repeated, the economy failure wasn't even caused by mortgages. It was caused by banksters suddenly realizing they'd built castles in the air on total nonsense and had no idea how to value any of it, so functionally had no money on their balance books.

That realization wasn't caused by mortgage failure, it was caused by failing home prices, which meant their assets went down. Even if the American people magically had enough money to keep paying the mortgage, the collapse still would have happened unless housing prices magically stayed absurdly high forever.

You have the bankers who were too short-sighted and optimistic about how those loans would play out in some cases, and openly deceitful in passing off packaged securities to investors while understating their risks in others.

By 'openly deceitful', of course,you mean 'committing fraud on a massive never-before-seen level'.

There is such a thing as personal responsibility. Americans shouldn't have tried so hard to get the best possible homes and realized when a something was simply more than they could afford. If there weren't any homes they could afford they should have stuck with renting.

Fuck. You.

Our real estate broker is legally our agent. It is criminal fraud for them to work against our best interest. They are not allowed to sell people property they can't afford, anymore than your investment banker could sell you an investment he knew was going to decrease in value.

It is also illegal for banks to make loans they know can't be paid off. It is illegal for them not to clearly explain the terms of any loans they are issuing.

But people were 'helped' through the process by people who, under law, were required to tell the truth, and under law were required not to give them loans they knew would fail, or even required to be on their side and instead told the people to lie or even just took blank applications, had the person sign it, and lied themselves.

Then there's all the people who made the situation worse by refusing to continue making mortgage payments they could easily afford simply because they owed more than the house was worth. I consider them every bit as greedy and immoral as most of the bankers we love to vilify.

Ah, the last Republican talking point. So, statically, the one out of ten thousand people who are doing this are important? Becuase no one's actually doing this.

And immoral? Corporations have no morality, I don't really see why anyone has any morality when dealing with them. Corporation kick people of their house all the time when moral people would not. When dealing with corporations, you do the terms of your agreement, nothing more.

Those people are agreeing with the terms of their loan agreement. Either they pay the money, or the bank gets the house. Those were the terms from the start. Perhaps I should quote you 'No matter how sleazy the salesman, you're at least partially to blame if you fall for a scam.'

Re:Should be good for the economy

[Bill_the_Engineer]

Oh, and like I've said... Bush had very little to do with the economy. Obama has little to do with the economy. It's congress. From 1995 to 2007, Republicans held the House. In that time, unemployment went from 5.6% to 4.6% with a low of 3.8% and a high of 6.3% (unemployment climbed form 9-11-2001 to June 2003 before dropping off again). The party that held the WH had little effect. It wasn't Bush's fault and it's not Obama's.

Since you are correctly blaming congress for the mess our economy is in, let's look at the exact cause. It was the passing of the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 that law repealed part of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, opening up the market among banking companies, securities companies and insurance companies. The Glass-Steagall Act prohibited any one institution from acting as any combination of an investment bank, a commercial bank, and an insurance company.

When that bill passed the Republicans had both the house and senate, however only 7 out of 45 Democratic senators and 51 out of 206 Democratic house representatives voted against the bill. Leaving me with only one conclusion that BOTH PARTIES ARE TO BLAME.

This partisan blame game is counter-productive and is used to manipulate the populous into voting against "the other party". We need to keep an eye on our own elected representatives and make sure that their vote represents the views of their constituents. Quit drinking the party politics kool-aid and think for yourself. The other senators and representatives represents their voters not you! So regardless of your political leanings you need to encourage your senator to work together and create legislation that represents the best interest of the country and quit sabotaging the country in hopes of placing blame on the other party.

For example look at health care reform. The overwhelming majority of the nation feels that something needs to be done to improve accessibility to quality health care. The house democrats decided to allow themselves to be extorted into giving ridiculous concessions to fellow Democrats in order to win enough votes to overcome an expected Republican filibuster. Thanks to Nancy Pelosi's hubris we have a health care reform bill that may overwhelmingly be good for the nation, but the Republicans have no vested interested in it and will always use it as some political football.

The Republicans are just as bad. They are willing to let this country go down the tubes in order to win the next election. They acted like a 5 year throwing a tantrum and obstructed every bill that came up for vote. Imagine what the health care bill would be like if the Democrats didn't need to overcome an expected filibuster. Too bad the Republicans will never vote for a bill that made the other party look good. Even bills that they themselves used to push when they had control of the house.

The only good thing that came from the election is that the Republicans control the House and the Democrats control the Senate, so now they have to actually make compromises in order to pass anything. Also Republicans are in the driver's seat in the House and can be held just as accountable as the Democrats for anything that happens from this point on.

I also won't be surprised that the economy will miraculously improve now that the Republicans have no reason to talk down the economy. Thanks to the corporations, we have a consumer based economy and as soon as people feel good about using their credit cards the faster the economy will "improve".

We need more national political parties. The picking the lessor of two evils is not working.

To recap: Both parties to blame. Two-party system sucks. The election ended yesterday so STFU and get back to tech news.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[nbauman]

Actually, Ralph Nader said that, apart from foreign policy, the Democratic part is farther right than Richard Nixon.

I think he's right. Nixon's Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare was Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who was non-partisan but promoted a lot of ideas that we would consider liberal.

One Nixon/Moynihan proposal was the guaranteed annual income. We would fold the welfare system into the income tax system. If you earned over a certain amount, you would pay taxes. If you earned under a certain amount, you would get "negative taxes." It was a good idea, but to avoid negative incentives, it would have been expensive.

If the guaranteed annual income had gone through, we would have eliminated poverty. We would have had the economic distribution of Finland.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[Danse]

You mean the 2008-2009 where the Dems controlled Congress? That one? I'll be glad to blame the ones in charge at the time.

Funny. Now maybe you can explain precisely what the Democrats managed to pass in those two years that caused a complete economic meltdown. Somehow I don't think you're going to find a real answer for that, because that's not what actually happened.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[zerocool^]

That's not true; the mandate PROTECTS insurance companies.

If insurance companies can't deny coverage based on pre-existing problems, AND there's no mandate to have insurance, what's to stop people from waiting until they're sick to have insurance?

The entire idea of insurance is that you continually pay into it, and the risk is shared over many people, sick and well. Without the shared risk, only the sick will pay into it, and it quickly goes bankrupt.

Put down the partisan talking points for a second and think about it.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[need4mospd]

Eh...biased source? I'm not denying it could have happened, but when the majority of sources for this are extreme left leaning websites, I don't take it too seriously.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[ConceptJunkie]

I honestly can't help but think destroying the health care insurance industry was a feature not a bug. It's the perfect excuse to come in and "rescue" us with a fully government-financed health care system.

It's the only explanation that makes sense, because despite constant assertions to the contrary (including from me), members of Congress are not _that_ stupid.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[Gizzmonic]

Insurance only works when the costs of the ill are distributed among the well, if you have only sick people buying it then it gets very expensive very fast because the cost is slightly more than the average cost of treatment for policyholders.

So then, wouldn't make sense to force all those healthy people who refuse to get insurance until they're very sick to buy it? Those are the vast majority of people entering the insurance pool...working-class people like waiters and cashiers who are young, healthy, but either don't make enough to buy insurance or choose not to.

It seems to me this whole thing was a plan to drive health care costs up even more so that the government would be in a better position to promote a single payer system.

Please. The reform is forcing healthy people to buy insurance, which will increase the pool of healthy clients, driving the overall costs down for insurance companies. Americans already pay the most for health insurance and get the least back out of any first world country, and this bill won't change that much. But it's tough to argue it's going to be a net loss for the insurance companies.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[ConceptJunkie]

No, it's the other way 'round. No one would bother to get health insurance until they got sick. Look what happened in Massachusetts. It was cheaper to pay the fine than pay for insurance. That's some real genius thinking there.

The whole "pre-existing condition" mandate only makes sense when you are already covered. They lamely patched that hole by going completely off the reservation and forcing citizens to purchase health care coverage which is so unconstitutional it makes my kidneys hurt. At least if you don't interpret the "welfare" clause and the "interstate commerce" clause to mean "Congress has the power to do any damn thing it wants", which is the current interpretation.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[Bemopolis]

It happened. All you need for proof is the fact that Boehner apologized for doing it, years after the fact Unless you think Bloomberg is too lefty a news site for you.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[cmiller173]

Except pre-existing condition clauses went away right away while mandated coverage is delayed a couple years. Additionally, the fine for not having insurance is ridiculously low so it is better financially (not morally) to wait for little Timmy to get Leukemia, then buy insurance and pay the tiny fine for not having it in the first place. Reality is the health care bill was written with the sole intent of driving health insurance companies out of business so that we would get to a defacto single payer without the Dems having to actually pass legislation that way.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[NatasRevol]

NCLB was the main reason I moved my family. Both of my elementary school children hated school because they were so bored. The teachers taught to the minimums. They got bonuses if more kids passed the end of year tests. Guess what happened the last few weeks of school. 1. First end of year test. 2. Reteaching those who failed the test. 3. Second end of year test for those who failed the first test. Do you know what the kids who passed the first test did during the reteaching & retaking of tests? Nothing. For 2+ weeks. I mean my older kid was watching 2 movies a day in third grade during this time. We couldn't see anything on the weekends because he had seen everything.

Now, I pay more in taxes and it's worth it. MUCH better school system - teachers & students trying for the top, not the bottom. NCLB is nowhere in sight.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[StopKoolaidPoliticsT]

Buying insurance over state lines, incidentally, would be 100% guaranteed to increase the size of the federal government significantly if implemented. I'm just saying.

Not really... going from "thou shall not" to "thou may" has pretty much the same amount of regulatory burden. Where it gets heavy is "thou may IF AND BUT..." There's no reason to assume that merely allowing people to buy across state lines would have to mean that the government would say that only these groups of people may do it and only if they buy these types of policies.

Instead, what we got, was a deeper lock-in to the existing problems. Now, we not only have to continue to buy insurance only from our in-state approved providers and whatever mandates the state say they have to cover, but we're FORCED to buy insurance policies we don't want or else we suffer a monetary penalty on top of it.

Over the last few years, I've opted for no insurance and saved about $30,000 while spending only $115 on medical bills. I really want to buy catastrophic only coverage, but my state won't let me, demanding I either buy a cadillac plan that I don't need or become a ward of the state. In fact, that's why they don't want me to be able to buy from another state, because it forces me to either spend $10k+ a year or become dependent upon the state. Just as mega-corps love lock-in, so do bureaucrats and they can abuse you just as easily, if not moreso.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[GiveBenADollar]

Forcing people to buy health insurance is a win/lose proposition. Some will buy it, others will pay the fine. If the issue is that some people truly can't afford health insurance then the problem is not with the insurance companies but with the cost of treatment. I'm all for lowering health care costs, but this reform doesn't do that. Nobody wants to lower health care costs because a huge burden of cost is litigation and lawyers run the government. Another huge cost is treating patients without health insurance which the government forced on hospitals but never funded. Fix these two things and health care comes back down to reasonable levels. I'd much rather the government fund ER visits by those that don't have insurance, then at least we would be able to see in writing the impact that has on the system.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[bhcompy]

This is essentially correct. There was a lot of talk about the Republican filibuster for various bills, but there was never actually any filibuster. If you don't take it to the floor to see if they can manage to filibuster you can't complain about the filibuster because it doesn't exist. The Dems couldn't muster enough internal support to bring some of these bills to the floor to begin with.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[ConceptJunkie]

NCLB was indeed a broad bipartisan effort and it should be a reminder that when the idiots on the left and the idiots on the right agree on something, it might just be due to its overwhelming idiocy.

Or that the only way to compromise is that make sure the legislation doesn't actually do anything.

Without casting aspersions (even if deserved) and without speaking from my own point of view, the real problem is not so much that the parties are putting politics ahead of policy (they do), or that they will do anything to sabotage each other including sabotage the bills they write (they do), but that so many of the principles of the left and right are incompatible with each other.

You can't compromise on mutually exclusive ideas and too many of the principles guiding the right and the left have become mutually exclusive.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[Rasperin]

"NO ability to cross state lines to get a different health care service (which, admittedly, could be done at the state level)"

So wait, you are saying you want federal rights to supersede state rights? That's very democrat of you, I thought republicans were for smaller government.

HSA and High Deductible plans do not help anyone.

What about public health care, you guys thoroughly kicked that out of congress, it was a strong contender.

Increased budget, all he's really passed that would increase budget is the SECOND set of bailouts (after your great and powerful leader GWB passed the first), and Obamacare which the one passed is kinda shit on a stick because he was trying to appease your caucus. If you ask me he should have reigned control over the democrats and forced a vote through with a real bill instead of trying all of this bi-partisanship crap. Shit would have actually happened in the last two years.

Almost everything he has tried to do has been fought tooth and nail by the republicans even when they said "We will support this". This whole election has been like nails on chalk to me, the republicans blaming Obama for the fact that it's raining outside even though they said that raining would be good for the economy. I'm so sick of this, how can you really fall for it? I would also like to point out, because of GWB's action and continued action by Obama (supported by the republicans, remember STIMULUS fucking championed by the republican party till it didn't do so hot, then it was all democrats) that our unemployment numbers have leveled out and employment is on the rise. I'm just ready for something new and the republicans are still giving the new GOP cut taxes, up spending, increase debt; or well in this case they are saying pay down debt but cut taxes that is a logical fallacy since they aren't going to touch HHS or the military which makes up for 60% of our national projections, and interest makes up another 15%. That's 75% and the other 25% is fairly needed to, so you tell me how are we going to pay off our debt? (BTW, HHS + Medicaid is ~850billion while DoD is ~600billion, it's been awhile since I've looked at the numbers but memory seems to be serving me that those two are right, I do know HHS and Medicaid is much bigger then DoD)

I honestly don't give a fuck if I'm modded troll for this, I'm your a-typical conservative but I can't stand the incredible level of bullshit spewed by the republicans and the fucking pussy ass pandering the democrats did. I'm so tired of this, give me something real.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[IndustrialComplex]

You are talking about the value of your home DOUBLING and at the same time you are saying that housing prices are NOT skyrocketing?

$250,000 profit in five years... and THAT is supposed to support your arguement that housing isn't astronomical compared to incomes which have remained stagnant? Your five year profit is about the TOTAL income for an average wage earner over 5 years.

I don't even know where to argue with you, because you are providing the exact evidence needed to contradict yourself.

The problem is that the bubble didn't pop. It's still being artificially held up. If anything, it has sprung a leak so the insane increases that we say 5-10 years ago might have a slightly smaller but still positive slope.

Rent houses being in demand do not indicate a healthy economy with respect to Salary vs cost of living.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[LordKronos]

How, exactly, could the right torpedo the plan when the Democrats had a huge majority in the house and a super majority in the Senate?

Supermajority? What supermajority would that be? You mean the 60 votes to required to overcome a filibuster and force cloture? Yeah, they had those 60 votes if you include 2 independents. They had them all the way from July 7,2009 when Al Franken was sworn in, up until August 25, 2009, when Ted Kennedy died. Yep, damn those democrats for not predicting Kennedy's death and rushing a health reform bill through in the 50 days during which they had complete, unobstructed control.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[LordKronos]

The Dems had 60% of the Senate (counting the Indies).

Only from July 7,2009 when Al Franken was sworn in, up until August 25, 2009, when Ted Kennedy died. And the month long senate recess began on August 7.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[alta]

Wow, balanced stories from mediamatters? Here, let me go get a counter argument from Glenn Becks website...

Re:Should be good for the economy

[mooingyak]

Why don't you guys just ban filibustering?

That'd be a terrible idea. It's one of our key tools in introducing gridlock. Remove it and they'll get more done, which is extremely bad.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[GaryOlson]

... and 5 steps backward.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[Totenglocke]

Wrong. Bush did a small temporary bailout to keep the car companies from going under. Then after they pissed away that money, Obama flat out used government money to BUY the damn companies.

As for Republicans dragging their feet? That's because, unlike many of the Democrats who got booted yesterday for voting for Obamacare, the Republicans were listening to their constituents. A large group of Americans (not just Republicans, but also plenty of Democrats) looked at their plan which would achieve two things for sure - higher taxes and more government control over your life - and said DO NOT WANT!!

Re:Should be good for the economy

[Bigjeff5]

The Democrats had like fifty four, and one of those was an Independent who was Democrat in name only (he even caucused with the Republicans, for goodness sakes).

Uh, that's complete bullshit. Up until Kennedy died there were 58 Democrats in the senate and two Independants who caucused with the Democrats. There were only 40 Republicans, which is not enough to avoid cloture (you need 41). Democrats basically had a supermajority for two years, and still the Republicans somehow managed to stymie their efforts. Could it possibly be because it was the Democratic position that was unreasonable, and not the Republican? I mean, the Independants should have been a breeze to win over if the Democrats were, in fact, being fair and bi-partisan.

The truth is the Democrat leadership couldn't even count on all the Democrats to vote to end these filibusters. The healthcare in particular was unpopular within the more conservative segments of the democratic party. They eventually resorted to shenanigans to get around the filibuster and pass it with a simple majority.

The opposition to the bill and others at the time was by no means pure Republican. It was in fact far more bipartisan opposition than the support for the bill was.

Again, they couldn't even get everyone in their own party to support the bill. Why is it the Republican's fault that it wouldn't pass without trickery?

So what happens? The Republicans refuse to allow anything to come to a vote - there's nearly fifty of them in the Senate, and I believe they can all filibuster for several hours each if they want to.

Again, there were 40 Republicans until Scott Brown was elected at the beginning of 2010, which is not enough to maintain a filibuster. The Democrats were struggling for support for the bill well before that; if it were only the Republicans being obstructionists it would have been a piece of cake to break the filibuster. The Democrats had more than enough support for cloture in such a case. The fact is, the bill sucks, and the Democrats couldn't even get full partisan support for it, let alone bi-partisan.

I have to admit though that I don't like the way a filibuster works these days. In the old days, when you filibustered it was basically a senator demanding their right to be heard. As such they would stand up and speak, and the rest of the Senate had to listen. It was an active process - if you quit talking, the filibuster was over. Now they've changed the Senate rules and all you have to say is "filibuster" and you can stall the Senate for as long as you want. You can thank the Democratic senate majority (majority sets procedural rules, like filibusters) in 1964 for changing the procedural rules for filibuster, which allowed the current state of affairs (prior to this the Senate averaged 1 filibuster a year, after it was closer to 20). No longer did you need to stand up and speak, instead you needed 34 supporters to enact filibuster, stalling the debate. The Dems did reduce the cloture vote to 60 from 67 in 1975, which was a slight correction to the "Tyranny of the Minority" caused by the rules change.

The nuclear option to get around this is especially dirty, though, and it was pretty bi-partisan (initially interpreted as a possibility by VP Nixon in '57, made official by Democrat majority in '75).

Re:Should be good for the economy

[Mongoose Disciple]

Any conservative voices are modded as trolls.

Generally it's because they're actually trolling, or moderation ultimately sorts it out.

If you put up a reasoned post here and try to back up your arguments with fact, no matter your viewpoint, it probably won't end up modded down.

If you post one sentence that regurgitates someone else's logical fallacy of a talking point, yeah, that tends to get modded down.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[ffreeloader]

I'll agree, with some qualifiers.

No President has ever decided they should be able to hold a US citizen without due process other than Abraham Lincoln and his situation was far, far different than Obama's. Lincoln was in the middle of an armed insurrection. Furthermore, no President has ever given himself the power to assassinate a US citizen. Let alone without any due process or without anything other than an accusation.

I haven't agreed with much the Republicans have done for years. They have become just as progressive as the Democrats with respect to tax and spend. They've grown government way too much. However, in with respect to Republican failings the Democrats have been Republicans on steroids.

We are at a point in our history where we must make a 180 degree turn and go back to what worked, or we will end up bankrupt and all our freedoms will be gone. We can't afford to keep on creating debt for our grandchildren and their children. Debt is slavery, and that's exactly what we've been doing to ourselves and our posterity. We're enslaving ourselves in the vain hope of getting something for nothing. It's unsustainable.

Our founding fathers did things right. Under their system we became a country in which even our poorest citizens were better off than a very large percentage of the world, and our country was fiscally sound. Now we are bankrupt, morally and financially.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[Ed Bugg]

How can a condition be "pre-existing" if everyone has to have healthcare.

What doesn't seem to be really discussed much passed finger pointing stage, is how everyone is to have insurance. The bill states that either you purchase an insurance policy with the minimum coverage, such as OB/GYN visits for a male single policy holder, or you pay a fine/added tax.

What has people concerned is if the fine is less then the insurance policy, then why not just cancel my insurance policy (or not buy it at all) and pay the fine. Then when I need it, such as you contract a disease or some other issue that you have no way of paying for the care, the insurance company can't make you pay more or deny any of your claims.

So we end up with; you pocketing the difference between the fine and the policy until you needed it, Uncle Sam getting your money while you pay the fine, and the insurance company has a bunch of sick people they're paying millions of dollars in claims for while only recouping a few hundred thousand in premiums.

I can't see what the problems with that is

On a side note, be warned. There is a straw man in people's arguments today about pre-existing conditions. The rhetoric that's spewed makes it sound like insurance companies don't support pre-existing conditions, and if you switched jobs, and thus switch policies, the insurance companies will deny your claims. Too lazy to lookup the law but at some point of time it was actually made illegal for an insurance company to deny a claim on a pre-existing condition, if that person had insurance that covered the condition before. There's some added leway with switching jobs and Cobra that makes it even more difficult for them to deny.

So basically the only way a pre-existing condition will be denied is if you don't have insurance, get digosed with something, THEN go get insurance and have them eat the costs. That and the children that are born with conditions that the insurance companies will see as being a drain (as in, I'll forever be paying more in medical costs then I'll ever see them paying back in premiums).

Re:Should be good for the economy

[ffreeloader]

If you post one sentence that regurgitates someone else's logical fallacy of a talking point, yeah, that tends to get modded down.

Here's where you're 100% wrong. Completely logical people who start from opposing basic premises end up at completely opposite ideas as to what is right, or wrong, on many different specific issues. Thus to mod someone as troll just because in your eyes their point of view is illogical means you often want to shut down those who have started from an opposing basic premise but are completely logical and have a valid point of view.

Here's a very good example. Obama has made it legal for him to assassinate US citizens with nothing more than an accusation and the citizen is given no opportunity for due process. It's a fact. It was first reported by a couple of liberal reporters. This is a serious breach of the constitution as it basically deprives US citizens of the right to life. It means that any president from now on can order the assassination of his political enemies by doing nothing more than making the accusation that they're a terrorist. That should have every US citizen up in arms, and the media putting intense pressure on both Congress and the President. Yet, very little was said about it, and it's accepted here on /. without any reaction other than to mod any mention of it as trolling. Why is that? Is that party politics over reality? Is that party politics over freedom? Is that party politics over the constitution? That's exactly how I see it.

It's this type of thing, as well as tax and spend, that gave rise to the Tea Party. What did they get from the entire left? Mocking, name calling, insults, false accusations, etc.... However, they showed that they are going to make a difference, and they acted with far more restraint and civility than their opponents. They were faced with hatred and responded with civility. That showed me a lot about the character of both sides.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[nomadic]

Health care reform in general was a "deal killer" for many republicans. I am disgusted with both parties right now but when it comes to at least trying to compromise the democrats at least make an attempt. The republicans (or, more accurately, the right wingers who came into power in the 90's) decided they were entitled to a permanent majority for the rest of American history. Whenever they lose power their main goal is to get it back, whatever the cost. It seeps into every single thing they do. If you look back on American political history, this is actually a new thing, it used to be that both parties realized they wouldn't always be in power, and acted accordingly.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[Shakrai]

And to be fair, Lincoln suspended habeas corpus just as the constitution allows him to "...when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it."

Actually that section comes under Article I, which describes the powers and limits of the Congress, not the Executive. POTUS has zero authority to suspend or otherwise ignore habeas corpus.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[mdarksbane]

So that means we can blame the democrats completely for everything we didn't like about the Bush administration, right? Because he passed everything that democrats hate without a filibuster proof majority. By your argument they were completely able to stop it and didn't

Re:Should be good for the economy

[GiveBenADollar]

There is no government subsidy of ER visits. The unfunded ones get paid for by the funded, hence the cost. When you see your doctor you get billed pretty reasonably, I think the 10x cost difference you stated is pretty close.

My problem is with the assumption that government health care will both cover more people and bring costs down, it can't unless the actual expenses of health care decrease. An actual doctor visit is pretty inexpensive, your co-pay in fact is a sizable ammount of the expense. Such as a $10 co-pay on a $50 visit. When you start seeing specialists or need treatment that's where it gets expensive. My son broke his arm and the cost of setting the bone and putting it in a cast was $2000. Now why is it so expensive. We pay for a building plus utilities, then for an hour of the Doctors time, for the other staff, then for the use of the tools and supplies used, but that's not the expense. We then pay for the malpractice insurance of the doctors, and then the cost of litigation for anyone who supplied anything for the procedure. In the end something that should cost a few hundred dollars costs a couple thousand. Now we want to start giving this same broken coverage to everyone?! Drugs are cheap to make, research is expensive, but the real cost is the threat of a class action lawsuit 20 years down the road. Drug companies don't want to go bankrupt, so the charge high prices both to limit the demand and to make up for any subsequent lawsuits. If you take this out of the equation then you have much cheaper drugs.

But nobody wants to tackle the costs. Everyone wants to be the hero that gives free health care away and anyone opposed wants kids to die. As it's been brought up before, both sides have pushed different health care reforms to this end, but nobody wants to make it so that individuals can afford to pay for treatments themselves, or so that insurance can be cheaper by making medicine cheaper. Instead they all want to magically make the money appear to pay for a system that is unsustainable.

What I'm asking for is actual health care reform that both brings down cost and also provides cost transparency. I have no problem with hospitals providing ER coverage to the uninsured, but since the federal government mandated it they should pay for it! Yes that means you and I paying for it, but it also means that it's part of the budget that we can see instead of a hidden part of the cost. Get the trial lawyers under control. If a drug company or a doctor is negligent or otherwise malicious then they should be charged with crimes not litigated so that the cost is dropped on us. And on another note, if there are two treatments, one costs $1000 and the other $10,000 I should get to chose which I have and have some cost upon me even if I'm insured, because most doctors are going to go with the better of two treatments even if it's only 5% better because they are fearful of litigation if something goes wrong.

Sorry for the rant, but the way this issue gets tossed around like a tennis ball without addressing the fundamentals really burns me.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[rochberg]

There was a lot of talk about the Republican filibuster for various bills, but there was never actually any filibuster.

In the strict classical sense, you are correct. However, that's not how the Senate works anymore. If the minority party threatens to filibuster, the majority simply does not bring the vote to the floor, unless they know they have 60 votes. Basically, both sides have become so damn lazy that they won't even fight for their bills and call the other side's bluff. Yet more evidence that the two-party system sucks.

Re:Should be good for the economy

[klui]

where in that article does it say he apologized?

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wirestory?id=12040758&page=4 is one of the many pages that reference his 1996 apology. Just google "boehner 1996 apology tobacco" and pick your website.

The real winners

[antifoidulus]

This was the most expensive midterm election cycle ever, even adjusting for inflation. And you can bet grandma wasn't the one forking over the dough. The corporate paymasters are going to be expecting(and almost certainly will get) a huge ROI for their investments.

Fear & Ignorance

[nahdude812]

According to many polls, the number one concern this election was the economy. Somehow in the minds of many, the economy is the fault of the Democrats, in spite of the fact that the 2008 candidates left the campaign trail to focus on the rapidly failing economy.

The Republicans couldn't have timed it better. Pillage the economy, let it fail just before the Democrats take office, and two years later when the Dems have halted and begun reversal of the worst economic disaster of all time, the Republicans come in, blaming the Democrats.

Somehow people buy that rhetoric. I guess angry shouting will beat out reasonable discourse nearly every time.

Re:Fear & Ignorance

[Wonko the Sane]

The Republicans couldn't have timed it better. Pillage the economy, let it fail just before the Democrats take office, and two years later when the Dems have halted and begun reversal of the worst economic disaster of all time, the Republicans come in, blaming the Democrats.

That's just it - they haven't done anything to reverse the disaster.

The voters collectively know that, despite any propaganda you get out of the media. If the economy was actually improving the voters would not have voted as they did.

Now the Republicans will not do anything different - they are just as beholden to the white collar gangsters in New York as the Democrats were.

Re:Fear & Ignorance

[antifoidulus]

Well the problem is complexity and people's refusal to take the time to try to understand it. The modern economy is a complex beast due to both natural forces and manipulation. Trying to understand and grapple with our problems are going to require nuance and understanding, but the American electorate seems to reject this outright. They want the person with vague overly-simplistic answers(and it's not just republican voters and candidates who offer this, Obama did it in 2008 with the whole hope thing).

While Obama was a wide eye idealist on the campaign trail he actually tried to grapple with complex issues in a very sophisticated and relatively practical way. He didn't always do the right thing IMO, but he at least was on the right path and realized that empiricism ultimately trumps ideology and he paid dearly for it. The Tea Party found that selling platitudes about government without actually offering any sort of specifics was the best way to win. Why not offer specifics? Because the Republic leaders realize that the US is a country of McWatts.

For those of you who have never read the book "Catch-22":
a) why the hell not?
b) McWatt was a character whose philosophy on government spending came down to this, "All government spending that does not benefit me is bad"
c) why the hell haven't you read it yet?

If the Republicans/Tea partiers actually outlined a plan to actually reduce government spending in any meaningful way there would have been revolt because the two biggest pigs are entitlement programs which the largely elderly base just absolutely loves, and the military which Republicans just cannot get enough of. Instead if they offer any specifics at all they go after safe, but relatively low value targets like the dept. of Education or the National Endowment for the arts, who, combined, make up only about 1% or so of the current deficit.
d) why not?

Re:Fear & Ignorance

[antifoidulus]

Um, you do realize that this fiasco was YEARS in the making and the recession started in 2007, only months after the democrats actually took office. It's not like the democrats could just pass bills at will(as Bush had essentially done from 2002-2007). This whole "giving people houses they cannot afford" was actually the cornerstone of Bush's claims of economic progress in the 2004 election. He droned on and on about the "ownership society" and boasted about how under his presidency more people owned their own homes than ever before*. The republicans were also the ones that were really big on deregulation and repealing depression-era laws that were designed specificially to stop this kind of crash from happening. The democrats aren't angels, but they have a much better record than the Republicans do.

*for certain values of "own", namely you put your name down on a piece of paper and a loan, didn't matter if you could actually pay back that loan.

Re:Fear & Ignorance

[Andraax]

The Republicans couldn't have timed it better. Pillage the economy, let it fail just before the Democrats take office, and two years later when the Dems have halted and begun reversal of the worst economic disaster of all time, the Republicans come in, blaming the Democrats.

Err, the Democrats took over *4* years ago, not 2. They had complete control of the legislature (and hence the budget process) in 2006, only adding the executive in 2008.

Re:Fear & Ignorance

[captainpanic]

You can't turn the economy around in 2 years.
Changing the economy involves creating new companies, and re-employing massive amounts of people in new sectors.

If you expect your government to do a magic trick which will make it all better, then I suggest drugs or alcohol. In the real world, however, we stopped measuring the economy just by the stock market which can make or break the economy in the course of a single day. We slowly start looking at the real economy. And fact is, that the American real economy mostly takes place in China nowadays.

Blame Obama for it all you like... it will take more than 2 years to fix this.

Re:Fear & Ignorance

[MozeeToby]

Imagine you run a business and the shit hits the fan; revenue is down 50%, your customers aren't buying because they don't have any money, and you can't afford to pay the bills, let alone the payroll. What are you going to do if you want to keep your business running? Fire a lot of staff? Negotiate a short term loan with the bank? Negotiate a payment plan with the people you owe money to?

Now imagine it's 3 years later and revenues are back up, not to what they were before but they're getting close and trending upward. So now what are you going to do? You'll hire some staff back, doubtless, but during the past three years you've been forced to find ways to make your business works with less staff so it won't be as many as you needed before the bad years. Not to mention you're still paying off all those high interest debts and payment plans, even with revenue up you can't afford to take the risk of hiring someone you don't 100% need.

This is pretty much exactly the position my wife's work found themselves in; revenues are up, workload is up but what should be discretionary cash is going toward paying off their old debts. Meanwhile they can't hire those two new staff persons (increasing from 4) they really need to support that revenue because the money isn't there. It'll be a at least 6 months, maybe a year before the debt is paid down and they can start hiring again, despite that fact that they have more customers than ever.

Re:Fear & Ignorance

[Anonymous Coward]

The weirder thing is in response they vote in the party that has historically run up the deficit more often.

Yeah. I can always understand people hating Democrats and trying to vote them out of office. But to do it by voting Republican?! The solution to large and intrusive government is larger and more intensely intrusive government?! The solution to debt is higher debt? The solution to us losing our freedoms, is to eliminate more freedom?

Tea Party guys, I really am halfway with you. I like the beginnings of a lot of your speeches. But somehow it always goes psycho. I'll believe you guys are sincere when you tell the Republicans to fuck off. Until then, you're the enemy that you're preaching against.

Re:Fear & Ignorance

[Wonko the Sane]

The only they could do was keep it from getting even worse with the stimulus money.

That's absolute bullshit. They could have closed the bankrupt TBTF institutions and prosecuted every single responsible individual under RICO, releasing non-violent pot heads to make room in the prisons for all the white collar thugs.

Instead the rest of the economy is being bled dry to prop them up and cover for their theft.

Re:Fear & Ignorance

[chrb]

they haven't done anything to reverse the disaster... If the economy was actually improving the voters would not have voted as they did.

U.S. GDP growth 2006-current. Obama assumed office in January 2009. At the time growth was around -7%. Since then it rose to 5% and dropping back to 2%. Whether you believe Obama may or may not be wholly or partly responsible for this is debatable, but the turnaround in the figures after his election in early 2009 is clear.

If the economy was actually improving the voters would not have voted as they did.

Voters never vote against the incumbent party when the economy is growing?

Re:Fear & Ignorance

[bouldin]

What the Dems did accomplish was to prevent a panic, which may be the best anybody can really expect of government in this kind of crisis. Republicans probably would have focused on lowering taxes, so big business could take that money and use it for overseas jobs.

Maybe we all need to consider that American politicians just are not able to fix this problem.

Re:Fear & Ignorance

[antifoidulus]

And of course being an idiot I get the characters name wrong, it's Milo Minderbinder, not McWatt.

Re:Fear & Ignorance

[jemenake]

According to many polls, the number one concern this election was the economy. Somehow in the minds of many, the economy is the fault of the Democrats

What disheartens me is the number of people who seem to think that the largest economy in the world should handle like a sports car and not like a super-tanker. According to what you hear from countless economists, we narrowly avoided another great depression, and the last one took a decade to recover from. And now we've got voter revolt happening over: 1) shock over the price tag of the stimulus (ie, Dems are spending too much trying to revive the economy) and 2) the slow recovery (ie, the Dems aren't doing enough to try to revive the economy). Well, which is it?

During the 2008 campaign, I was actually a little worried that Obama wasn't making clear that it was going to take years to recover from this mess. It seems that every economist I was reading at the time was saying it. Granted, Obama wasn't saying that we'd recover quickly, but he also wasn't doing anything to disabuse the public of this notion that the recovery was going to be speedy. It struck me, at the time, that he could be setting himself up for this very kind of thing that we saw on Tuesday. Alas... perhaps his analysts, during the campaign, concluded that to utter things like "multi-year recovery" would lose him the election. It probably would have, but he should have, at least, started getting that message out very early on after his win.

As someone who stands to make out like a bandit from 0% tax on an inheritance (that I did nothing to earn) and on capital gains (that I make even while I'm sleeping or golfing), I'm getting pretty tired of voting against my personal financial self-interest for the benefit of other, less-fortunate folk who can't be persuaded to vote for their own interest.

Re:Fear & Ignorance

[nahdude812]

You wholly fail to address GP's point. Really huge job loss is much worse than job growth, even if job growth can't (yet) keep up with job demand.

This is just as true whether you look at ratio of new jobs to employment demand (as you suggest) as it is if you just look at raw numbers (as GP does).

Failure to completely recover in 2 years from the Republicans screwing the hell out of the economy doesn't mean they were doing nothing to help the economy. If they hadn't worked so hard, the 9.2% unemployment rate we have now would look more like 20%.

In July of 2008, the US national unemployment rate was 6%. By January, it had reached 8.5% (a 41% increase). The job loss momentum was incredible - 0.42% increase per month. The next 6 months, the Democrats had managed to slow this to less than half that rate of change - 0.2% increase per month.

The following 1.5 years has been relatively stable. It's not where we want to be, but on the whole, the rate of unemployment has managed to stay relatively stable. Economies don't turn on a dime. Even if they could, very rapid change in any direction is extremely unhealthy in the long run. It takes time to slow then stop job loss, then start job gains.

I'd much rather have a party in charge who keeps a level unemployment rate than one which has a dramatically increasing unemployment rate. Somehow though, "You didn't clean up after us quickly enough" is a reason to vote back in the people who made a mess in the first place. Surely THIS time around they won't make a mess!

Re:Fear & Ignorance

[Hatta]

As a day trader you know shit about the real economy. The economy will be improving when people start making money doing real work, instead of just shuffling money around.

Re:Fear & Ignorance

[Wonko the Sane]

The following 1.5 years has been relatively stable.

The federal government is borrowing and spending 12% of GDP and all they can manage to do is barely keep things stable? Do you realize how insane this is?

Despite this massive amount of deficit spending the economic fundamentals are deteriorating.

What could possibly go wrong?

Re:Fear & Ignorance

[nahdude812]

So the solution is to vote in the people who created the mess in the first place?

What could possibly go wrong?

Re:Fear & Ignorance

[nahdude812]

Actually so far, TARP has profited 8.2 percent netting taxpayers $25.2 billion.

Re:Fear & Ignorance

[Wonko the Sane]

There is no solution to be found in either major political party, unfortunately.

The answer is to restore the rule of law and prosecute the banksters.

Re:Fear & Ignorance

[chrb]

GDP numbers can be manipulated.

Do you have any evidence that the United States Bureau of Economic Analysis is producing fraudulent GDP figures?

People know with certainty if they have a job or not and how much it pays.

Yes, but what they don't know is why they can't find a job. If the economy declines and jobs are lost, then so is consumer and market confidence. In that environment, employers may be less likely to invest in new staff, even though they are seeing business pick up. The growth needs to be sustained for some time before business leaders will feel confident enough to begin taking on new employees.

Something like 86% of voters listed the economy as their first concern.

This means nothing - the economy is always the main concern of voters except in extreme situations (e.g. war). Remember the Democrats call of "It's the economy, stupid"

Re:Fear & Ignorance

[cowscows]

It's all a depressing look at the short-sightedness of America's current culture. We've got a huge set of financial problems that have resulted from a decade of bad decisions compounding and turning into a huge global mess, and then we pitch a fit when a couple hundred people can't turn it all around in a year and a half.

And then to show our displeasure, we give power back to the same bunch of idiots that caused many of the problems in the first place, even though they have offered no real plan to fix things any better than these other guys managed to.

Re:Fear & Ignorance

[CrimsonAvenger]

and the military which Republicans just cannot get enough of.

Note, for the record, that if the Military Budget were reduced to ZERO tomorrow, the Deficit would still be nearly $1 trillion per year.

Fact is, we're barely taking in enough in taxes to pay Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, and interest on the debt.

With current tax revenues, we'd have to shut down basically the ENTIRE Federal Government (other than Congress, the President, and the Offices that manage SS/Medicare/Medicaid in order to balance the budget.

Note that in order to increase tax revenues to erase the deficit, we'd have to increase ALL tax rates by about 60%. Yes, your taxes, mine, everyone's. Not just the "rich".

Note also that if we raised taxes to 100% on the "rich", we'd not have enough to zero the deficit.

Face it, we've been living beyond our means for almost 60 years (the last time the National Debt decreased was in 1951, when my father was still a boy).

And there are NO simple solutions. Cut the Military budget? Sure. Cut ALL Federal spending but SS/Medicare/Medicaid? Sure. Raise ALL taxes? Sure. Collectively, that might erase our deficit (without letting us actually reduce our debt).

Alas, our economy couldn't handle the tax increases required, and the country wouldn't tolerate the spending cuts.

Your turn - how would YOU fix the problem?

Re:Fear & Ignorance

[TheEyes]

Tea Party guys, I really am halfway with you. I like the beginnings of a lot of your speeches. But somehow it always goes psycho. I'll believe you guys are sincere when you tell the Republicans to fuck off. Until then, you're the enemy that you're preaching against.

The Tea party is just the Republican party's bait-and-switch tactics all over again. Look, they tried this after Nixon ruined the party too: they pretended to care about a whole host of things that real Americans care about (less government intrusion, more fiscal responsibility, economic stability, following the Constitution), but somehow when they get elected all those promises take a back seat to increased debt, lower taxes for the very rich, and big business-friendly/small business unfriendly laws.

I eagerly wait the exception, but I again have little faith that, this time, maybe the Republicans really mean to follow up on what they say they want.

Re:Fear & Ignorance

[microbox]

Well the problem is complexity and people's refusal to take the time to try to understand it.

People have always been adverse to complexity. We just want simple explanations. Even intelligent people fall prey to this without realising it.

The real problem is a fundamental break-down in campaigning. It has gone to a new low, and corruption is rife. Conservatives in Canada and Australia are following the GOP model of lying ruthlessly, emotively, and staying "on-message", with the help of big media. There is a systematic effort to create cognitive distortions, so that middle-thinking is repainted as extreme thinking.

Democracy's chief assest is checks and balances that ameliorate unbridled lust for power. Democracy is failing in light of modern marketing technology, and the GOP is leading the way.

Re:Fear & Ignorance

[jandrese]

They could have. That was pretty much the approach used in 1929 and it worked great, except for the whole Great Depression thing. Say what you will about the administration, at least they know when big business has the country by the balls.

Re:Fear & Ignorance

[Arccot]

The only they could do was keep it from getting even worse with the stimulus money.

That's absolute bullshit. They could have closed the bankrupt TBTF institutions and prosecuted every single responsible individual under RICO, releasing non-violent pot heads to make room in the prisons for all the white collar thugs.

Instead the rest of the economy is being bled dry to prop them up and cover for their theft.

I've heard this a few times now, and I'm curious what you think would have happened if the US decided to shut down, or allow to fail, some of the largest banks in the world.

Do you honestly believe everything would have turned up roses, or are you just venting? We have examples both in the US and worldwide of what happens when a government allows it's major banks to fail, and its not pretty.

Re:Fear & Ignorance

[BobMcD]

Your turn - how would YOU fix the problem?

You fix it in government the same way you do at home. You cut back what you can and pay down one credit card at a time until they're all gone. You do NOT go out and spend on gigantic splurgey things like entire car companies and free health insurance for everybody.

It's not a competition!

[Lord Byron II]

Theoretically, it shouldn't matter what party is in power. Each representative should vote in a manner that is consistent with the best interests of their constituents. Right? Right?

Re:It's not a competition!

[Wrath0fb0b]

Each representative should vote in a manner that is consistent with the best interests of their constituents.

And I voted for the representative whose conception of what is best for my district matches mine. For instance, one of the candidates believes that gun control was best in the best interests of our district, the other one believes that gun rights are best for the district. Neither of them came out and said "I have a policy on guns that is wrong for you!".

Meanwhile, there is another problem: both candidates believe that economic growth is best for our district (gasps from the audience) but one believes the best way to achieve that is by cutting taxes and the other believes the best way to achieve it is to fund a second round of stimulus spending. Neither of them came out and said "I have a policy on the economy that is going to wreck it!".

If we all agreed on (a) what constitutes the best interests of the district and (b) which policies are most likely to achieve those interests, then there wouldn't be much point in a political process at all. As it happens, we are pretty divided as a nation both on (b) but more fundamentally on (a) -- on what outcomes are normatively preferable. That can't be resolved by a "best interests of the constituents" test because the constituents themselves don't agree.

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[account_deleted]

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Politics sucks, but

[QuantumBeep]

A divided congress is probably a good thing for people who don't like random horseshit one-sided laws.

Gridlock FTW

[brian0918]

As a pro-choice, pro-gay rights atheist, I voted almost entirely GOP, knowing that gridlock is the only thing preventing either party from further spending away our long-term future on futile attempts to reinflate economic bubbles (e.g. housing) and prop up Ponzi schemes (e.g. Social Security). We can only hope that they do not attempt compromise and bipartisanship.

Re:Gridlock FTW

[bgarcia]

As a pro-choice, pro-gay rights atheist, I voted almost entirely GOP, knowing that gridlock is the only thing preventing either party from further spending away our long-term future on futile attempts to reinflate economic bubbles (e.g. housing) and prop up Ponzi schemes (e.g. Social Security). We can only hope that they do not attempt compromise and bipartisanship.

Sure, go ahead and moderate this post as funny, but... he's right.

The best years that this country had recently was when Clinton was in the whitehouse, Gingrich was controlling the House, and they failed to come to a budget agreement. We actually managed to reduce the federal deficit for a short while!

As a pro-life, christian libertarian, I too voted for stalemate & gridlock!

Re:Gridlock FTW

[kd5zex]

As a pro-Idon'tgiveafuckwhatyoudoorbelivein, I voted entirely against the two-party system remembering that Einstein said "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results".

Now that the show is over, they will all go to their lavish back rooms, have drinks and laugh at what fools we are for buying their bullshit. On us...

Re:Gridlock FTW

[RightSaidFred99]

The Republicans are fiscally more responsible than the Democrats, just like Ted Kazinski was less insane than Jeffrey Dahmer.

Re:Gridlock FTW

[ScientiaPotentiaEst]

"Worst case scenario - foreign treasury holders start dumping large amounts of US debt into the open market, and possibly severely devalue the dollar."

Putting politics aside, I don't see how this is avoidable. Federal debt is around $13x10^12. Depending upon what you include in your arithmetic, unfunded liabilities (such as SS) are between $50x10^12 and $10^13. Meanwhile, the US GDP is around $14x10^12. Yet deficit spending is not contracting, but accelerating.

On the subject of SS, the earliest baby boomers are drawing now on SS. There is no "lock box" holding SS funds - they were rolled into the general pool and spent a long time ago. The inflows were supposed to have exceeded outflows up to around 2017. They didn't - break-even was hit this year.

Short of a miracle invention tripling or quadrupling productivity (not impossible, but definitely in the class of "hail Mary"), there is no way I see around the problem short of dollar devaluation. How fast and how deep I don't think anyone can say. But it will be painful, both to those who have saved for their retirement and to those who live on the SS payments indexed to the obviously unrealistic CPI.

Obama should just call for elections

[SmallFurryCreature]

If the democrats had some guts, they would just quit. Hand the country over the tea-party. Then when it has all collapsed come back and demand the first son/daugher (according to sexual preference) of every republican family.

The tea baggers will cause one hell of a mess. Normal republicans are merely inept and corrupt. Most are not completly batshit insane.

But this is the ultimate failure of democracy. When people think they punish the PRESIDENT by voting for some nutters.... yeah, because Obama is NOW going to take the hint and FIX the economy after all that was ruined by the republicans because without a majority that makes that job a lot easier...

When voters start basing their vote to punish a leader for not doing fast enough what they want and then vote for people that are totally against what they want... just call it quits and get me a benign dictator (translation, any dictator whose deathlist I am not on).

Punish Obama for not pushing heathcare reform by voting for a tea bagger... maybe voting should require an IQ test. If you eat the piece of paper, you fail it.

Re:Obama should just call for elections

[Wonko the Sane]

Punish Obama for not pushing heathcare reform

Maybe you missed the memo - the majority of the country opposes the healthcare reform that got passed. Many of them are the people who just did they annual enrollment and discovered how much more their premiums went up because of it.

Re:Obama should just call for elections

[Mongoose Disciple]

Many of them are the people who just did they annual enrollment and discovered how much more their premiums went up because of it.

It's a good thing that premiums haven't gone up a similar amount every other year, or that statement would seem suspect.

Re:Obama should just call for elections

[Duradin]

*Reform in name only. Does not contain any actual reform. Void where prohibited.

Re:Obama should just call for elections

[Wonko the Sane]

It's a good thing that premiums haven't gone up a similar amount every other year, or that statement would seem suspect.

Not much of a reform if costs just keep going up as much as they always have, is it?

Especially when the opposite was promised repeatedly.

Re:Obama should just call for elections

[Enry]

Punish Obama for not pushing heathcare reform

Maybe you missed the memo - the majority of the country opposes the healthcare reform that got passed. Many of them are the people who just did they annual enrollment and discovered how much more their premiums went up because of it.

You should re-read the memo a bit more closely.

1) When looking at individual parts of HCR, most people approved of them.
2) Many who oppose the current version of HCR wanted single payer. Do I oppose it? Yes, but not because it went too far.

My premiums went up, but actually at a smaller rate than previously.

Re:Obama should just call for elections

[SoupGuru]

Actually, the public likes the healthcare reform.

They like each part of it. But for some reason when you group them together and call it Obamacare, talk about death panels, scream "socialism" every chance you get, and mention big govt waste over and over and over, people didn't end up liking it.

Re:Obama should just call for elections

[ca111a]

Three questions:

1. Did the premiums not go up last year (or the year before last)?
2. If "Yes" on the previous - did the premiums go up faster this year then before?
3. Do you really expect a reform of such proportion to have an immediate effect?

Re:Obama should just call for elections

[kd5zex]

I am all for helping others and what not but I just can not grasp this whole health care as a right position.

Forcing another to perform labor and / or commit resources is a direct violation of your actual rights.

Laser Precision

[SuperKendall]

in spite of the fact that the 2008 candidates left the campaign trail to focus on the rapidly failing economy

Focusing by sending a ton of money to banks? Or was it the focus later where they decided the best way to "improve" the economy was to scare businesses with massive changes to health care and insure business spending would pucker faster than a North Dakotan chewing on a raw lemon?

They had a laser like focus on the economy for sure. It shows in that the economy is now blind, staggering and badly burnt.

Doing what you wanted to do anyway and claiming it was to help the economy, is not ACTUALLY helping the economy. And it turns out the average voter is smart enough to see that (well, anywhere except for California).

One result that affects Slashdot...

[GPLDAN]

Kiss Net Neutrality goodbye. The champion of it in the Senate is Al Franken, and he's a one term Senator for sure.

Re:New for nerds. Stuff that matters

[Pojut]

This DOES matter. It will directly impact laws and regulations that matter to nerds.

Something most people don't realize.

[BStroms]

I think many people are putting too much emphasis on the Republican takeover of the House. Yes it will mean that it will be difficult for Obama to get his agenda through for the next two years, but it's not like Republicans will be able to do much either. The democrats still have control of the Senate and veto power. However, since every House member goes up for election every two years, it could easily sweep back the other way then.

As much as people like to focus on national elections, it's the governor and state legislature elections that I think are the bigger deal. Republicans had very strong showings there as well. The reason this is critical is that we just had the once every ten years census. That means states are going to be up for redistricting. With the large gains republicans made, they'll have a huge advantage in gerrymandering. This could make a very significant difference in the 2012 election and for that matter every election for the next decade. It will be much harder to undo that than it will be for Democrats to recapture the House.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Balance

[SuperKendall]

Yes, finally we have some balance where people have to work together instead of claiming to work with the other guy and then doing what you wanted to anyway.

That goes for both Democrats and Republicans...

This is actually really a great benefit for Obama as he will now seem much more moderate merely from him not being able to get many things passed that he would like.

Take over at state level is more important

[Shivetya]

The House take over, while expected, is not the big news. The major push Republicans made at the state level shows the strength of the move. Actually by not winning the Senate the Republicans may have preserved the ability to take the White House in 2012. Given that there are more Democratic Senators up for election in 12 than Republicans they have a near majority on many issues.

God, Gays, and Subpoena's, are about the best way for Republicans to knock themselves out of the House control in 12, as in, lean into any of those areas too far and the voters will show them the door.

Do I expect budget miracles, nope. I expect a whole lot of gridlock, preventing new large government programs from being implemented. That will do us nicely. The government has been on a binge of spending in the last four years and needs to be reigned in. Too much of the government spending is untouchable but if the line can be held, by gridlock or vote, to where spending does not go up by more than 2% per year the economy can grow us out of the deficit spending.

However, like I read elsewhere, the good news is the Democrats lost the House, the bad news is the Republicans won it. Like Rove and a few others mention, Washington doesn't care what the country thinks and the Senate is the worst of the lot. As in, Tea Party candidates, candidates of "change", or whatnot, are in for one rude surprise. The nice thing about the Senate however is that regardless of seniority or committee assignment anyone can submit new legislation

Was is a slap in the face of Democrats. Sure it was, just like 08 was us telling Republicans, no more of this crap; let alone don't expect us to vote for rights killers like McCain. Obama and Pelosi got told, there are no Kings and Queens in America, so quit acting like one.

Re:Take over at state level is more important

[gad_zuki!]

I think your comment is the accepted convention wisdom, which will get play in every office and news outlet in America, but its pretty wrong.

First off, the appeal to the wisdom of crowds is faulty. If this was just a warning to Democrats then why was someone like Russ Feingold, a well-loved non-partisan who has been fighting the good fight for Wisconsin for a long time, ousted by a high-school drop-out who married into money and had no platform other than "Lets fix things with Tea Party principles." No plan to cut entitlement programs, no plan to cut military, and really no concrete plan at all. He's the epitome of the empty suit millionaire who will vote in anything to help his other millionaire friends.

The message you won't be hearing is about the Citizens United ruling which led to unrestrained campaign spending this year. The Dems were outspent 7 to 1. That's right, 7 to 1. This election was shamelessly bought. Oh, and Feingold was a big supporter of campaign finance reform which the CU ruling nullified and suddenly he's gone. Seems to me that he's gone because Wall Street wanted him gone. The negative ads that ran in Wisconsin were of a scale never seen before by groups like "Moms for American Business" and other groups that never have to reveal who they are or where their money comes from. Funny that.

Yes, jobs and economies are important, but Americans also know that when Obama took office the jobs we were losing were around 800k a month. Now we are gaining at least 60k in jobs a month. Americans know that Bush and his cronies brought us to this level, but they voted in R and Tea Party regardless - because they get their views and opinions from TV commercials and media outlets legitimizing the Tea Party. Suddenly they were told that economy isn't good for them, and death panels are coming, and Obama isn't a citizen, and Reid/Pelosi are liberals and fat cat Wall Street gangsters who want to give your home to a random Mexican family, etc.

In short, this was the first election with unrestricted spending in a long time - the results - corporatists with no concrete positions who are selling out their constituents as we speak. Turns out campaign finance reforms are important. The conservative majority in SCOTUS gave the GOP this election with its CU ruling. Any other analysis really takes backseat to how the CU ruling sold out this election.

People want fear, not facts

[erroneus]

What little of the campaigns and activity I saw, there was a lot of FUD and a lot of astro-turfing. For the masses, it's about hype and fear. Substance and reason are worthless. We truly live in an idiocracy. I blame the gradual deterioration of our minds on pop culture and TV advertisers... and advertisers in general.

Re:People want fear, not facts

[dragonhunter21]

You make a good point. We shouldn't allow ourselves to be swayed by fear tactics. We should think through the issues, and make careful, reasoned deci-

OHMIGOD NET NEUTRALITY AAAAAGH

Re:first?

[Anonymusing]

At least you didn't say "the people have spoken" or "the American people made their voices heard" or some such bullshit. Many of last night's races were incredibly close, like Toomey/Sestak in Pennsylvania, where the Republican got 51% of the vote and the Democract got 49%. But to hear Boehner and others, votes like than are "the voice of the people" supporting Republicans. Hardly. It's just democracy in action: winner takes all, for a time.

Re:Not surprising

[Shadow Wrought]

Blackwater, Haliburton, and other defense contractors did pretty well under GWBush with a Republican controlled congress.

FTFY

Did anyone notice..

[MooMooFarm]

That /. gets its United States election results from CBC/Radio Canada?

Re:Did anyone notice..

[Minwee]

Where else would you go to find fair and balanced reporting?

Re:Did anyone notice..

[MachDelta]

Yeah I noticed that little oddity too.

Then it occurred to me that a foreign national news source is likely to contain less bias/spin than an american one, but I have yet to read the article and confirm that.

Still, as a Canadian it gave me a chuckle. :)

Cut spending on Vietghanistan

[tepples]

Boehner ... is more than willing to work with President Obama ... on ... what he and the Republicans want

The Republicans, especially the Tea Party wing, want the United States government to spend less money. President Obama wants to end what some analysts have called an unwinnable war in Afghanistan. But are Speaker-elect Boehner and his Republicans willing to cut defense spending?

Re:Cut spending on Vietghanistan

[Anonymous Coward]

Woah, woah, woah. Boehner, and the Republicans in general, want to cut taxes. When have they ever cared about cutting spending? What's that even got to do with it?

Re:Cut spending on Vietghanistan

[erroneus]

No. They want to make more people in our local economies unemployed They want defense spending higher because it helps them and their friends the most. And let's not forget that it is largely a needless support of Israel that massive amounts of money is being wasted on. There are certain things they just won't talk about of course.

We do need our defense spending -- not saying we don't. We need to gear up for the [hopefully] cold war with China and conserve our resources so that we are not so spread out. This crap in the middle east needs to end. There has been nothing good come from making enemies of those people.

Re:Cut spending on Vietghanistan

[tverbeek]

"But are Speaker-elect Boehner and his Republicans willing to cut defense spending?"

Not as long as their are military-industrial jobs programs in their districts. Which is why the Democrats aren't willing to do it either.

Re:Cut spending on Vietghanistan

[NeverVotedBush]

And the sad thing is that while this country drowns in debt, taxes are at their lowest in decades. Somehow the right has convinced everyone that low taxes are actually high and need to be cut even more - in an era of multi-million dollar salaries for execs. Sure can't burden those poor folk with any taxes. How could they afford that next Gulfstream jet or vacation home?

But will the working class get a break? Nope. As the Fed cuts various programs, states will be forced to raise taxes and guess who will pay them.

Re:Cut spending on Vietghanistan

[Duradin]

The working class works, that's what they're there for, someone needs to produce something of value for the rich, err sorry, the "middle class" to exploit.

The rich get richer and the poor get children. It's not just a line from a book but a way of life that must be maintained (whether the poor like it or not).

Re:Cut spending on Vietghanistan

[jackbird]

Israel got $3 billion in total aid last year, and there is an agreement in place dating from 2007 to reduce that figure over 10 years. (In fact, the $3 billion is an uptick due to a pecial request for funds to help move military bases OUT of Gaza). NASA's budget, at 6 times that amount, is commonly cited here as a very low-cost line item, and I have to question your reasoning.

Unless you're suggesting that Israel ordered the US to invade Iraq and subsequently bolster of Iran in the region, and are attributing the cost of Iraq to Israel, in which case you might want to check your lips for crack pipe burns.

Re:Cut spending on Vietghanistan

[NatasRevol]

Gear up? You think we need to gear up?

Our military spending is larger than the next 10 militaries ... combined.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures

We don't need anywhere NEAR that level of defense spending. It's like we're trying to protect the entire world. In spite of the fact that most of the world doesn't want our protection.

If we cut the entire defense budget by 80%, we would still be the largest military in the world.

Re:Cut spending on Vietghanistan

[Totenglocke]

Yea, those rich pay so little in taxes - that's why the bottom 50% of the country pays 3% of taxes and the top 50% pays 97%. It only gets more unbalanced as you go up. The top 25% of the country pays 86% of taxes, the top 10% pays 70% of taxes, the top 5% pays 59% of taxes, the top 1% pays 38% of all taxes.

The "working class" already got their break in paying a whopping 3% of taxes spread over half the working population.

http://www.ntu.org/tax-basics/who-pays-income-taxes.html

Oh great...

[scourfish]

We're simply swapping from ineffective democrats that want to take my guns away and give all my money to the lobbyist interests to ineffective republicans that want to take my aborted fetuses away and give all my money to the lobbyist interests. Progress is zero sum.

OK Republicans,

[sootman]

you've got two years to fix everything starting... now.

Re:OK Republicans,

[GodfatherofSoul]

They might get a "Guiliani pass." When he was elected mayor, crime rates had been dropping rapidly for about 2 years under the Dinkins? administration which had completely halted and reversed skyrocketing crime rates. You can find the stats out there on the internet and graph them yourself. This drop continued for a few more years and leveled out.

Right now, the bleeding has been stopped and the economy is slowly improving. I imagine the progress will continue unless the Republicans do something catastrophically stupid.

Re:OK Republicans,

[Quiet_Desperation]

I mean, the Democrats didn't get two years.

You are correct, sir.

They got four.

Fuck, am I the only one who remembers the 2006 elections? You know, the ones where the Democrats swept into control in reaction to Bush's epic fail? What the hell is wrong with you people? Are you not taking your ginkgo biloba? Have I slipped in from a parallel Earth? What? What?

Re:OK Republicans,

[poliscipirate]

Republican gerrymandering happened quite flagrantly ten years ago, prompting Rove and others to talk about a permanent conservative majority. It didn't happen. Gerrymandering is good at protecting incumbents from real opposition but it's bad at assigning districts to any particular party. Don't worry so much about gerrymandering, worry about certain SC decisions.

Re:OK Republicans,

[khallow]

you've got two years to fix everything starting... now.

They still have a Democrat dominated Senate and a Democrat president. They're not going to be able to undo what's been done without some Democrat cooperation.

Re:first?

[OakDragon]

A couple of relevant quotes from last night's losers, of either party:

"The voters have spoken, and if that's what they want - the hell with them." - Ted Baxter

"The people have spoken, the bastards." - Dick Tuck

Re:New for nerds. Stuff that matters

[Zocalo]

This. Rick Boucher lost his seat in Congress. It seems like whenever I saw an article where a US politician really seemed to understand the issues that seem to matter to Slashdot readers like technology, telecoms and copyrights, Rick was in there somewhere. Even some prominent pro-Republican commentators have been saying that this is a loss.

Bets on any of the newcomers taking up the fight?

Revkin sees threat to science

[mdsolar]

Andy Revkin, former NYT science reporter, sees a threat to science in the election results. http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/03/the-real-threat-to-science-in-the-new-political-climate/

Re:Revkin sees threat to science

[Attila Dimedici]

Andy Revkin, Democratic Party shill on science, sees a threat to science in the election results. http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/03/the-real-threat-to-science-in-the-new-political-climate/

There fixed that for ya.

The real losers

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course the real losers in all of this are us: the idiots who keep voting for Democrats and Republicans while believing the platitudes pounded into our heads: This is democracy! The people have spoken! Let freedom ring! And other rubbish.

It isn't even a secret that the politicians work for the lobbyists and not for us: the "campaign contributions" are made one day, and the very next day the vote just so happens to go the way of the contributor. What a shock!

Reform from the inside seems hopeless, because the people charged with making that reform are the very people benefitting from keeping it the way it is. The few honest politicians who get into office get twisted and corrupted so quickly that they become indistinguishable from the most self-serving of the bunch.

If we want to ever break out of this complete rape of our selves by our lords and masters, there is only one option. No it is not revolution. That too is unrealistic both motivationally and militarily. Our only hope is to create an alternative, open-source-style government and make the current system obsolete.

It is a long shot, and you can find a lot of problems with it. But do you have a better idea?

Re:The real losers

[GaryOlson]

Yes. Return the members of the House of Representatives to their home districts. The current mode of shipping Representatives to a central physical location is based on technology limitations which no longer exist. Although many would bemoan the limitations of teleconferenced debates, a geographically dispersed Congress would benefit the people.

The current concentration of government in one location -- executive, legislative, and judicial -- provides too much ease of access with minimal expense/friction for the private sector to influence government. The current atmosphere in Washington DC is too concentrated and too caustic for real representative government to survive. If the private cost of influencing government was increased with a geographically dispersed House of Representatives, the people might actually have a chance to be heard.

Leave the technical details of securing the legislative process to the NSA -- give them some real work for a change.

Re:HUGE mandate!

[halivar]

Yeah, turns out people liked it and voted more of them in.

Re:Here's Hoping for Some Gridlock

[Wonko the Sane]

It's just a shell game.

ObamaCare

[Elwar123]

A lot of people were voting against ObamaCare this time around. But considering it took 60 votes in the Senate to get it passed, you would need 60 votes in the Senate to end it, plus getting past an Obama veto. Any propaganda you read about Republicans working to repeal ObamaCare is all hype. It can't be done unless they gain 12 seats in the Senate and take over the presidency in 2012. Until then, enjoy your premium increases.

Re:ObamaCare

[ShavedOrangutan]

Any propaganda you read about Republicans working to repeal ObamaCare is all hype. It can't be done unless they gain 12 seats in the Senate and take over the presidency in 2012. Until then, enjoy your premium increases.

Premium increase... LOL...

Just drop your coverage, take the token fine, and pay out of pocket for general doctor visits. This will save thousands of dollars per year. If you actually need the insurance, just sign up when you get really sick. The insurance companies will have to take you!!

And don't worry that enough people will eventually figure this out to bankrupt the entire industry, forcing President Pelosi in 2016 to socialize the entire healthcare industry. Couldn't happen...

Re:HUGE mandate!

[CyprusBlue113]

Which is what got them elected... (amusingly enough, because the people thought congress wasn't doing anything to fix the economy)

Diebold machine improvements

[funkify]

I was glad to see this time around that the Diebold machines did a great job of allowing me to quadruple-check my vote, AND created a paper trail right before my eyes.

Looks like they finally got it right, at least in my precinct.

Re:Some things that I can get behind that may happ

[sarhjinian]

3. Extension of tax cuts, namely on estates and dividends.

You have a multi-trillion dollar deficit. You have huge unemployment numbers, especially among the lower-middle class. You have a falling median wage. In short, you have no revenue. And yet the Tea Party and, by extension, the Republicans don't want to cut the three big programs (Social Security, Defense, Medicare) because that's what the old folks consider sacred.

You are going to have to raise taxes, especially on the "rich". Cutting anything else is peanuts, so unless you're planning to back-stab the old white folks that voted in this congress you are going to have to raise taxes.

You're right, let's lower taxes and start wars!

[Brannon]

That'll fix that deficit spending, just like the last time the GOP ran the government.

Re:You're right, let's lower taxes and start wars!

[Wonko the Sane]

Don't misunderstand me - the GOP will fix absolutely nothing, just like the Democrats fixed absolutely nothing.

Re:HUGE mandate!

[penguin_dance]

HUGE mandate.... of course knowing some Repubs, they're probably actually hoping for a "man date".

No...that would be Barney Frank....

An extra does of ignorance on this one.

[HeckRuler]

Oh sure, wipe out everyone's bank accounts. That'll fix the problem. That is what you wanted right? Closing the banks? You can't get your money out of a closed bank, and they sure as hell didn't have enough assets to pay everyone. Yessiree, once everyone is dead broke, that'll avert the oncoming econopocalypse and will magically transform people's housing investments back into premium material and not usher in the next great depression.

Brilliant really.

And you're plus +4 insightful. Fantastic. Nothing like completely ignoring the consequences of your actions just to stoke the fire a little, eh?
So I guess the ancestor poster needs to append his list. It's fear, ignorance, and hate.

Re:An extra does of ignorance on this one.

[HeckRuler]

That's the slashdot server telling you to stuff it already, we've had enough.

Yes, and instead of the $30 Billion that the whole fiasco is going to cost us, the FDIC would have to pay out EVERYONE'S BANK ACCOUNTS. I honestly don't know how much that is, but I imagine that it's more then $30B.

Re:New for nerds. Stuff that matters

[dkleinsc]

Rush D Holt, from New Jersey, is a former rocket scientist and generally a friend of geeks on issues like electronic voting.

Re:Some things that I can get behind that may happ

[Notquitecajun]

1. Which is the inherent problem in Keynesian thinking - that the government needs to be spending money (which is either printed or comes from taxpayers). The model there is broken.

2. It's NOT about appointments, it's about the regular staffing-type jobs that have been going on as of late. Public employees make a significantly higher amount than private. Let them retire/quit and don't replace them.

3. How did the massive expansion of business in the 1980s happen then? How did companies afford to hire more employees and bring us from 10%+ unemployment on down? Look at the marginal tax rates during the era - 70%+ cut down into the 30s. More private industry kept more of their own money, and we had more millionaires created at that time than ever before - and inflation was LOW. Tax cuts were a HUGE part of that, and the tax rate has stayed at about the same level since.

4. GWB was wrong to do so, but to his and the Republican's credit, there was a push for reform of Fannie and Freddie at the time. Those two agencies are bleeding cash at astronomical levels, and have no business in what they're doing.

6. I'll go with you there - far too corporatist a bill. Doesn't mean that the mandate is Constitutional - or even right. Of course, seeing as there really wasn't a free market for health insurance either before or after...

Re:Some things that I can get behind that may happ

[Maxo-Texas]

Firstly... I can't moderate for some reason ( I have points but there is no "moderate" button right now).

Secondly.. I'm with you up to point 6.

6. The insurance mandate in the HEALTH CARE REFORM ACT was put there by the HEALTH INSURANCE INDUSTRY. The HEALTH INSURANCE INDUSTRY complained to Obama that they could not insure sick people, it would cost them too much money, so they needed to have healthy people be forced to buy health insurance to offset their cost of insuring sick people.

---

You understand the concept of "insurance" right?

100 people pay $1, the cost of a problem is $100, 1 person gets sick out of the 100 and is taken care of. If 2 people get sick then next year the premium is going to have to be $2.

Insurance is particularly susceptible to "adverse selection". Only sick people choose to pay for insurance.

If 100 sick people pay for insurance and 100 people get sick, then premiums have to be $100 to cover the cost (and probably $101 since the insurance plan becomes pure overhead at that point).

---

Where this went wrong is using insurance at all. The government should have just flat out taken away the first $5,000 worth of health care and made it free for everyone and paid for it out of income tax and property tax.

That would include basic shots, basic broken limbs, basic physical exams. "Basic".

Then if we want to handle more serious stuff (cancer can run $1 million-- for me it was $132,000 back in 1993), then we need to first decide

a) HOW MUCH ARE WE WILLING TO PAY IN. 10%? 12%? Whatever the amount is- that results in a fixed amount of money. Then we have to use the Kansas system. Once we are out of money, people start dying. next year do we increase the premium or are do we feel the death rate is fair? Because clearly we are not going to spend $1 trillion dollars to save one person. There must be a life time limit, a triage level where we say, "sorry but it's not going to happen.".

It should not go through insurance companies. And costs should be balanced against mean income and compared to other countries ( which by the way have MUCH lower costs for better coverage so having the government do things can be much more efficient than private companies).

The biggest problem we have is that we have huge corporations which have gotten undue influence and captured the government. This is where we are basically screwed. I don't think we can fix that problem. I have a very dark view of the future around that problem.

Re:"Obamacare"

[MerlynEmrys67]

Very true. Hard to know what not to love in a 1500 page bill that is a bunch of densely written diffs to the current laws. I would much prefer to read the thousands of pages of what the law actually says with the diffs applied.
Now on to answer your questions:
What not to love, The requirement to give 1099 forms to any business a company does 600 dollars worth of business with in a year. Imagine you are an independent truck owner - you drive around the country delivering goods. You fill up on diesel at various stops along the way buying 2-300 dollars worth of diesel at a stop. You are responsible for figuring out which companies (realize the gas stations are usually private small companies owned by local franchises) you bought 600 dollars worth of gas from, what their business location is (No - it isn't cheveron, and probably isn't on the receipt) and delivering the documents to them annually. How much will this paperwork cost you, what happens when you make a mistake (really, did you know that some guy owns a gas station in florida and north dakota for some unknown reason?) - what does this have to do with the delivery of health care anyway?

What not to love, The requirement to pay for a product merely for being alive in the country. As an older American, insurance is a great deal - I will spend more than 10-15K in healthcare costs a year. As a young single male, well - lets just say if I see a doctor this year, it is unusual, I am wasting all of my premium. I am forced to pay for this just for being alive in the country now

What not to love, All of the mandates on what coverage has to include. Let me guess, you add required services to a bid, you expect the price to go up. Seems normal to me

What not to love, All of the wheeling and dealing that went into getting all 60 democrats in the senate to vote yes, if you want "good" insurance that covers a lot of things, so it costs 10K a year - you have to pay extra (unless you are in a union). If you happen to live in a few states with smart senators that hold out, your state gets a break by not having to implement things that are required of the rest of the country (so we are all paying for Nebraska now - wish I lived there, or better wish my senator wasn't such a tow the party line guy that they didn't have to pay him off to get a yes vote out of him)

I could go on for a while... next time someone wants to vote on a 1500 page bill, lets give people enough time to read 1500 pages (3-4 days? I mean it would be your full time job) so we can actually know what is in the bill before it is voted on.

Re:"Obamacare"

[jmac_the_man]

How about the individual mandate? In a free society such as ours, it is a violation of liberty for the government to require an individual to purchase something from a private company as a cost of living.

Bullshit on 7:1 claim

[SuperKendall]

Links to prove the 7:1 claim? In any given race for which I saw figures, Democrats outspent Republicans 4 to 1.

An overall figure shows the Democrats spending $856 million total, while Republicans spent $677 million.

Democrats get money from a lot more sources, including plenty of companies, hollywood moguls, and overseas people with an interest in seeing the US take a certain slant.

Re:Bullshit on 7:1 claim

[gad_zuki!]

7 to 1 in September, then later in the year it almost evened up to 40% spent was for democrats.

Then the totals for ALL races in House it was 2:1 and total for ALL senate races 4:1 - So yes A HUGE SPENDING SPREE BY GOP PACS. Just not 7-1 outside of September:

In all House races, Republican-leaning outside groups spent $38 million on television, compared with $13 million by Democratic-oriented groups. But Democratic candidates outspent Republican ones, $97 million to $49 million. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee also outspent the national Republican Congressional Committee, $30 million to $26 million.

In the Senate, television spending by the candidates has been roughly equal, with both sides spending more than $80 million, while Republican-leaning third-party groups have swamped their Democratic counterparts, $58 million to $21 million. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has outspent its Republican counterpart, but the difference comes nowhere close to eliminating the gap among independent groups.

An interesting observation on civilizations

[kimvette]

Last week when I was traveling an acquaintance who owns and runs a farm handed me this quote from the book "Somebody's Gotta Say It" (page 92) and I have to say that it is interesting.

I am not going to say whether or not I agree with it, nor what stage I think America is in right now, because I just want you to ponder it. What I will say is when I vote, I follow JFK's lead and vote where my conscience leads, with this principle: "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." I didn't vote for how I could possibly line my pocket, or from a sense of entitlement, but based on what the government is chartered to do as our founding fathers intended.

Here is the quote:

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasury. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependency; from dependency back to bondage.

Right or wrong, it's a great quote to ponder.

Re:An interesting observation on civilizations

[O('_')O_Bush]

Maybe for some people. Personally, I get hung up on the claims that the quote makes. First, that the average age of great civilizations was 200 years. This seems to be a carefully chosen date to correlate with the democratic revolutions that took place in France, the U.S., Mexico, and many other countries at the end of the last major colonial/imperial age. That is, chosen to be particularly relevant right about when the quotation is published. Any of my attempts at verifying that figure independently have used that quote as a primary source (that is, it cannot be verified independently and is likely bunk).

I say "is" because this quotation has been re-used several times in history (from 1951 to 2000) particularly around election times and other politically important events.

Also, the quote treats this pattern as a proven and established pattern, even though democracy in it's modern form and the way we have it (with a constitution and checks of power) is relatively recent.

That is, the author makes an unsupported argument and uses careful weasel-wording and timing to appeal to his audience.

If you've read Frank Herbert's Dune, it's very similar to the Missionary Protectiva concept: slight of hand with careful timing to spur action.

It is a great quote for sure, but one to be skeptical of and to carefully examine, not to take at face value.

Re:An interesting observation on civilizations

[O('_')O_Bush]

It also appears that wikipedia and snopes disagrees with you:

"The following unverified quotation has been attributed to Tytler, most notably as part of a longer piece which began circulating on the Internet shortly after the 2000 U.S. Presidential Election[9]:

[quotation follows]
There is no reliable record of Alexander Tytler's having made the statement.[9] "

Re:How to lie with statistics

[gad_zuki!]

Again, 3rd party PAC spending for the GOP outspent the dems 4 to 1 or 2 to 1 DEPENDING ON THE RACE. Again, these are massive amounts of money unlocked by the CU ruling because companies feel more free to spend when they don't have to reveal who they are.

Again, Meg Whieman spent 145 million dollars. Linda McMahon 46 million and Johnson 8 million of their personal cash.

And your reply is "hollywood moguls and foreigners" bullshit? You're the one in the fantasy land.

Wisconsin, I am disappoint.

[aztektum]

As a former resident who grew up in WI and has voted for Feingold in the past, I seriously have no clue WTF was going on there.

He has given back millions in tax payer money given to him to run his office and thousands in salary he didn't need/want. He was the ONLY Senator to vote against the PATRIOT Act and tried a few times to introduce legislation that neutered it (since there's no way it will really go away). He visited every county in the State of Wisconsin each year to hear what people had to say. He refused to run attack ads even though the (R) challenger Ron Johnson, a high school dropout (granted he is a college grad), CEO with rich buddies and millions he got from his rich wife. The guy even admitted he didn't think he was smart enough to run.

Feingold was incorruptible. I once heard him decline an offer to buy him a beer. He didn't want people to think they could buy him off. HE TURNED DOWN BEER TO REMAIN IMPARTIAL. I could never... (/s for the nitwits.).

It truly shows that the masses of this country are brain dead.

Knowing how to write and vet sources

[zooblethorpe]

To be fair, research papers and bibliographies are totally fucking useless for 99% of careers. I really don't understand the purpose of requiring them for anything other than a purely academic career.

I dunno, but knowing how to write and knowing how to vet sources both seem like important all-around skills to me... (Though, admittedly, simply writing research papers with bibliographies alone is not enough, as it requires decent teachers willing and able to go through the whole process and explain the importance of each step.)

Cheers,