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After Healthcare Defeat, Can The Trump Administration Fix America's H-1B Visa Program? (bloomberg.com)
Friday the Trump administration suffered a political setback when divisions in the president's party halted a move to repeal healthcare policies passed in 2010. But if Trump hopes to turn his attention to how America's H-1B visa program is affecting technology workers, "time is running out," writes Slashdot reader pteddy. Bloomberg reports:
[T]he application deadline for the most controversial visa program is the first week of April, which means new rules have to be in place for that batch of applicants or another year's worth of visas will be handed out under the existing guidelines... There probably isn't enough time to pass legislation on such a contentious issue. But Trump could sign an executive order with some changes.
The article points out that under the current system, one outsourcing firm was granted 6.5 times as many U.S. visas as Amazon. There's also an interesting map showing which countries' workers received the most H-1B visas in 2015 -- 69.4% went to workers in India, with another 10.5% going to China -- and a chart showing which positions are most in demand, indicating that two-thirds of the visa applications are for tech workers.
Is there any reason to suppose Trump gives a shit about this issue?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Trump already ordered H-1B premium processing canceled this year.
Personally, I think H-1B is fine. They just need to prevent the kind of abuses by Tata, CSC, Wipro, etc. In other words, the H-1B holders should be employed by where they work at normal rates, not by the mass outsourcers at low rates. Currently, bad for Americans, inhumane for Indians.
Source: Betteridge's Law
I'm tired of covering for my H1B visa friends.
They aren't skilled but they are cheap.
They send all their money back to their own country.
Please do the needful.
Trump was adamant that there should be a vote yesterday, presumably because it was the ACA's anniversary.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The republicans have set themselves up as the party of "no". When the Democrats were in their attitude was to block everything, no compromise, no middle ground. Well, it still seems they're using this tactic now, except it's between themselves, not aimed at the democrats.
Unless they can figure out how to compromise rather than merely impede then they will find themselves utterly unable to govern. Trump is the same. His bully style tactics work as a CEO because you can fire anyone who stands in his way. The president can't do that. I look forward to the fireworks.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I think it depends on what's said on Fox in the morning. I don't think H1B reform is a hot button issue for its own sake, or for the sake of employers or visa holders, but if it can be co-mingled with outrage over someone who can be an easy target for blame and looks like they're getting a better deal than they deserve regardless of the facts then it will rise to be the next big thing. I doubt he's walked away from healthcare, there's plenty of rage left to be mined there.
Nullius in verba
If I had a team of several million people, I could build a sustainable city on Mars.
As long as I could be totally devoted tot he task, and the willpower to follow through the billions of setbacks you'd hit on the way, especially including my own ignorance.
Trump fixing H1b? It's possible, but similarly absurd to expect.
The Trump coalition isn't the team to fix H1b. They're a wrecking crew, not a construction team. They can foist individuals to make plans, but they're philosophically aligned against, say, the kind of planning that would make a national constitution or something along those lines.
Even if theoretically Trump actually meant the half-dozen things he said on H1b, and DIDN'T mean the several things he said that contradicted that, he'd still need to coordinate with a team that implements it, and a political base to enable a political climate that will make disobeying the rule a bad idea.
Trump could GET folks on board to get all that done... but at this point, he'd really need to construct everything needed from whole cloth. I somehow doubt that enforcing and enlarging H1b rules on the nation's CEOs is going to be a high priority compared to everything else he wants done in the world. It's POSSIBLE, just very unlikely, unless somehow Trump is thwarted on literally every other big thing, and yet not impeached.
H1b is a horrible system. It's virtues are nice - getting qualified folks in to do needed jobs - but that does not justify a system of modern day quasi-indentured-servitude. The way it's used it horrible too, basically used to quash local workers wage increases. Trump speaks against it, but he's exactly the wrong person to choose as a person to crusade against it - he's basically the living avatar of the idea of shortchanging workers using sketchy legal tactics.
Don't expect too much from Trump on this.
Ryan Fenton
he doesn't even read the 'executive orders' that he signs. not that reading comprehension would help him any. once a moron, always a moron.
- Limit H1bs per company, preferably limit in proportion to company's US tax contribution (or total US tax contribution of company's employees if you prefer).
- Prioritize people with grad degrees from US universities. (taxpayers often partly subsidize the education of top students in state universities - it makes no sense to not try to keep them afterwards).
- Make H1bs more desirable by making switching company easier, giving dependents work status. Currently the restrictions don't help attracting truly highly-skilled (thus highly-paid) workers who would easily find opportunities (and be treated better) in other countries - rather they are only appealing to the average Indian outsourcing firm low-pay employee.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
And few people have noticed that Trump masterfully defeated Ryan
Only wishful thinkers among Trump supporters. Trump was calling all the shots during this past week; he was the one who insisted on a showdown vote yesterday, to put all the Freedom Caucus members' votes on record. Of course, it was cancelled when they saw they were going down in flames.
and is letting the fuse burn down to the Obamacare implosion.
More wishful thinkers, but this time including the President.
Let's see, Obamacare is a plague on the nation that must be killed right now. The GOP could do so much better. So they propose Obamacare-lite and can't manage to pass it even while controlling the House, the Senate, and the Oval Office. Let me guess, somewhere in Arkansas the county dog catcher is a Democrat and that gummed up everything.
Slow clap.
Trump can now say he did all he could to fulfill his campaign promise. Democrats and a few Republicans refused to reform Obamacare, so now when (not if) it collapses, he and Ryan have scapegoats. It remains to be seen what will happen to fix it then but it definitely will put Trump in a better negotiating position.
Sorry, dude 24 million people losing healthcare is bad and there is no way to spin it positively, because well.... there is no way to positively spin 24 million people losing healthcare.
It was a crappy bill. It was designed to be a crappy bill, because the purpose of the bill was not to reform healthcare, but to get $1 trillion for what the GOP really wanted: tax "reform" (i.e. making the middle class pay more in taxes than Donald Trump). The healthcare stuff was just a convenient vehicle to do it, so they threw in a some "health care-ey" stuff to make it look like it wasn't a tax bill. That's why it failed.
I'm fine with that, as long as those same Americans are denied health care at all times until they can pay, even at the ER. Until you do that, when they DO get sick (not if), I don't want to pay the astronomical price they can't afford (because they don't have insurance), when they have to take the far more expensive option at the ER (because they never thought they would need the insurance or didn't have it to go do basic preventative care).
Actually the GOP defeated itself, Trump blames everyone else for his failures, and he is not masterful and not a dealmaker. It's all a lie.
He is a narcissistic racist piece of shit. How will this play in the 2018 elections? When the populace that voted for him wakes up from their opioid slumber and realizes that Trump lied his ass off during the primaries, election, and as president, they will kick the GOP's ass just for fun. Mid terms are brutal for those in the White House, and this will be doubly so.
A win for the Donkey party in Congress will probably land Trump an impeachment in the House, and the possibility of removal in the Senate.
Republicans voted 62 times in the House to repeal Obamacare when it didn't matter because President Obama would have never signed the bill, wasting taxpayer money and cynically understanding they could vote to repeal without being held accountable for the consequences, and suddenly when they are in a position of actually enacting a repeal and replacement bill into law they came up with nothing.
The Republican Party is a fractured mess that was great at being an opposition party using Obama and Clinton as boogeymen but is completely and utterly incapable of actually governing because they have no party-wide plans for doing anything other than saying "No" to Democrats which worked well with a Democrat in the White House but doesn't work when they have majorities in the House and Senate and one of their own in the White House.
Democrats would be wise to treat Trump the same way Republicans treated Obama while coming up with a plan to actually govern when they get their turn again. Unless Trump, Ryan and McConnell come to their senses and actually try to govern in a bipartisan manner.
Moderate Republicans and Democrats can deal but only when both parties agree not to give in to their far right and far left nut job activist bases.
Obamacare isn't imploding though, for the most part it's working much better than anything that can't before it. So many people are now invested in it, reliant on it.
Trump is losing hard. His two flagship policies are on the rocks. The Muslim ban he promised isn't a Muslim ban any more and even then gets stuck down again and again. And now Trumpcare, because he sucks at making deals and massively underestimated how complex healthcare is.
Don't forget that he promised to defeat Isis by now too. He's a used car salesman who promises to fix everything, tells you it's going to be the best wagon you every owned...
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
He actually put the blame on the Democrats for his own inability to close the deal with GOPs.
That was a real funny one. It's like he thinks the Democrats have magical powers.
Fox is wrong as much as the other guys. Sean Hannity was out telling everyone Ryan's healthcare was good. His saving grace is that he also pointed out some of the problems with how it was planned and rolled out. Trying to be in the middle should not be the goal, being right should be the goal. RINOs pushing the bill were not right, and the Democrats putting their heads in the sand and doing nothing except cheerleading after the bill could not get off the ground were not right. Working to fix a horrible bill would have been right.
The answer is something Trump said a couple weeks ago. The Federal Government should never have gotten involved in health insurance. The answer is quite simple really, but I doubt his advisers would begin to do the right thing. Answer: GTFO of healthcare and provide vouchers to people who can't afford it on their own. Let the market set the rates, not the Government.
The Democrats passed the ACA on a line of bullshit. People needing assistance is not a reason for the Government to take over a complete line of business as they did with ACA. The arguments were a false choice. One should notice key changes in rhetoric, like calling Government Assistance of all forms "entitlements" instead of what they are, and arguing that health insurance is a right. The latter is bullshit. People should be able to get healthcare when needed, but that is not the same thing as health insurance.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
http://money.cnn.com/2016/12/2...
http://thehill.com/homenews/ne...
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
The astronomical prices only exist because of the assumption that everyone has healthcare and it isn't coming out of their pocket. Have people pay for these things out of their own pocket and you'll see how quickly prices come down. Prices have escalated astronomically since the so call "affordable health care act". Also, you fail to mention in your "make everyone get it" speech that Obamacare specifically doesn't apply the mandate to Muslims. How exactly is that fair to all of the real Americans?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
The problem is that a majority of Americans want affordable healthcare, not an insurance scam. I noticed that was never even on the table.
Yep. And let their kids die too, because, you know, they made poor choices when chosing their parents.
Isn't it how you social-darwinists republicans think ? Survival of the fittest. Just like old times of barbarism and savagery. This civilization thing is way overrated anyway.
The people who "got" health insurance from the ACA, if they're not dirt poor, DID NOT GET HEALTH INSURANCE. They got miserably high premiums they can barely afford, and are left with so little cash each month that they can no longer afford to go see the doctor. And no, the insurance they're now paying a fortune for doesn't help with that, because a small family has a deductible pushing $20,000. So they are legally required to spend a couple thousand dollars a month on insurance they can't use, and have no cash left with which to buy the services of a doctor. Meanwhile, people who don't pay for anything "got insurance" and are being subsidized by the middle class people who effectively had their ability to see a doctor taken away.
The ACA is a terrible piece of law, and was meant by the Democrats to be just that from the beginning. And it's now imploding. I'm glad yesterday's vote got pulled. The current disaster remains under the ownership of Obama, Reid, and Pelosi.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
The ACA is a terrible piece of law, and was meant by the Democrats to be just that from the beginning. And it's now imploding.
And the reason it was intentionally terrible and set to implode was so that the next Democrat president (they were so arrogant to think that the Republicans would put up another McRomney loser and they would sail right in, which admittedly would have happened again without Trump's charisma) could declare it a failure and have it replaced with "single payer", aka the government takes total control of healthcare.
I'm really not sure how the insurance companies, in their lustful greed for Obmacare forcing people to buy insurance, couldn't see that they would have been next against the wall.
Trump has no idea how to do anything but show up to his rallies and do his greatest hits. Never a good business man his only real success was the TV show where he played a good business man. The visa program wouldn't be a heavy lift for a President whose party controlled the Congress if said President could concentrate on anything besides golf and what's on TV. Trump makes Ronald Reagan look as detail oriented as LBJ.
No one will notice that he drops the visa program as an issue, or blames Obama in passing. His cult will shriek FAKE NEWS at the television if Fox dares report another failure.
Most tech workers in American earn at least the median income for their local region, or at least they could do so easily if they wanted to.
Those workers shouldn't complain about being underpaid - they should either "vote with their feet" or admit that they like their current job even with their current pay and stop complaining.
--
Yes, I realize there really are some tech workers in American who are underpaid and, for whatever reason, don't have the freedom to look for work elsewhere. I'm talking about 90% who aren't in such situations.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Fortunately, he left office on January 20 this year...
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Obama still didn't do it. true, he should never have promised to do it, but the Guantanamo Bay detention facility was not created by congress, and therefore did not require congressional approval to close.
ObamaCare, by contrast, is a law passed by congress (albeit without a single Republican vote) and signed into law by the President. Repealing it will also require congressional approval.
The two promises are quite different as they relate to the constitutional scope of presidential authority.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
I think we have a pretty good picture of what it will be like based on his health care proposal.
1) It will somehow involve a multi-hundred billion dollar tax cut for the top 1%.
2) It will somehow remove u.s. workers protection from being replaced by H1B workers.
And no.. I'm not joking or being sarcastic.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
In your fantasy world the Republicans united to destroy Obamacare. Versus what it looks like outwardly... that they discovered that universal healthcare has become what the public expects, and now it's really only about how it's funded. If what you mean is that Obamacare is now passed being a single President program and is now Federal healthcare infrastructure to maintain... perhaps you're right.
In your view, Trump has the most to gain from it not passing. Versus what it looks like outwardly, that Trump issued an an ultimatum that most of his own party shrugged off and they won't have lost anything in the process, effectively ending his days as a deal maker in Washington. I don't really see much alternative to this. Did you read the interview in Time? Trump was nearly incoherent.
Perhaps the most stunning bit of fantasy, that Paul Ryan is now taken out of power in the Senate. Versus in the real world where he is, perhaps was, the Speaker of the House having little to do with the Senate. I don't care for Ryan myself, but at this point the Republicans don't have a Speaker problem. If you run two off because they can't unite the party around essentially anything eventually you have to look in the mirror and say perhaps there isn't a party. Hard to see this any other way... this isn't growing pains at this point, these are long established party dynamics Trump was supposed to make irrelevant and move beyond.
And in terms of "undue fuss" ... there's been an overwhelming amount of due fuss. Perhaps when the party can stop giving itself lethal blows, it might be relevant to compare the relative strength of the other party. The way it looks on the outside, the Democrats just have to stand back while the Republicans tear themselves apart.
Seriously, just step outside and look back in. Half of the cabinet lied to Congress during confirmation, lots of resignations over connections to Russians that were hidden or lied about. It ain't going well, and the sooner you notice, the sooner Conservative principles can move forward.
It's Congress's job to set the Budget, not the Presidents. The President provides budget recommendations.
Your post attempts to move the goal post away from GP and my response. Have something relevant to say on topic?
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Trump can obviously not fix anything, his followers are just utterly deluded about that.
The right question is how many things he can make worse or break. In that light, every time he gets blocked is a good thing for the US.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
In your fantasy world the Republicans united to destroy Obamacare.
You are the one with the real fantasy, where there are Republicans and Democrats. If that were true, this bill would have passed.
In te real world, there are Democrats (increasingly irrelevant), Republicans, and Trump supporters. Trump is neither Democrat nor Republican.
So basically, any forward motion now on anything is a compromise between Republicans and Trump supporters. The bill they had arranged was never going to pass because it had the support really of only Republicans.
Half of the cabinet lied to Congress during confirmation
And you say *I'm* the one with the fantasy? Riiiiiight.
Enjoy your eight years of being utterly mystified why anything happens the way it does! I'll let you have the last word because Democrats will argue for days without saying anything of value or truth. You can learn rom the discussion, but I know you will not.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Projection much?
"After Healthcare Defeat, Can The Trump Administration Fix America's H-1B Visa Program?"
No, because they couldn't care less and Trump uses the H-1B program to hire cheap labor.
In other words....
"After Chicken Coop Massacre, Can The Fox Fix The Hen House Slaughter Program?"
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
The Republicans control all 3 houses of the US government. If he can't pass a law to remove the most (Republican) hated law in existence, then he can't do anything. This is like trying to ban abortions in the bible belt and failing (another Republican failure).
There are 4,100 pages in the US version of the childrens book series Harry Potter, so yeah, how could any one person possibly process 3,500
The Affordable Care Act has been around for 7 years and is currently one of the most contentious political issues in our country. The idea that "no one person understands" it is prepostorous. There are people in Washington whose literal job is to understand stuff like this.
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You're missing the point.
"No" can be used as answer (and it will be a correct answer) to any HEADLINE which ends with a question mark.
Because, if the answer were "Yes" - paper (or website) would NOT have used a question mark. Headline would have been an affirmative statement instead.
I.e. They are covering their ass, knowing that their headline is bullshit/clickbait.
Betterige's law is not about some underlining force of nature, or a mathematical rule which magically decides answers to headlines in the form of a question.
It's about sensationalism and CYA mentality of people who sensationalize crap.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Democrats didn't have a chance to say no in this case. Republicans also made zero effort to consult with Democrats on this, unlike how Obama handled his healthcare plan, which many thought he compromised too much on.
The issue serviscope_minor is describing is that the current Republican party is built on "no" and uncompromising opposition. Promoting this sort of mentality has backfired on them now that they have to power to pass what they want. There are groups within their party that are not willing to compromise and that's why this bill was finally pulled.
I predict Trump's next move will be to repeal Obama-care without replacing it, then a mad scramble to pass a replacement (that will fail).
The Trump administration could not take care of one soggy bottom with a 24 pack of Charmin tissues.
I am talking about compromise within their own party, not compromise with Democrats. They do not need the support of Democrats to pass this if most Republicans agree with it. As it is right now, there are groups within the Republican Party that want different conflicting things and are not willing to compromise.
Best wagon I every owned?
Don't forget that he promised to defeat Isis by now too.
ISIS? They're Junior Varsity, nothing to worry about.
Obamacare will need to be fixed before too long. Pelosi designed it to bankrupt the insurance companies and it's doing exactly that. What happens next is anyone's guess, but it can't go on the way it is.
The inept Republicans had six years to come up with a healthcare bill they can pass ...but they spent measly two weeks to glue together a craptastic bill that had failure written all over it from the get go. Even Trump didn't like it. Now the OP wonders if they can pass H1B reform? No way! The administration made up of billionaires also has no interest in changing anything.
Even if there are changes and the minimum wage is increased and number of visa given out is reduced, it will not make a difference as far as jobs go. Rather than move workers to the US the work will go to India.
Taxing outsourcing may help. The move to Indian workers is not that they are better or equal (although many of them are), but they work for much less money. Remove the financial benefit for corporations and the issue will resolve itself. Another measure is drastically increase the insanely low filing fee. Currently, it is around 2k per application. Make that 150k and non-refundable and the debate about H1B will end really fast.
Fortunately, he left office on January 20 this year...
You do know there is often differences between talking points and truth correct? Republicans always whine about the if you like your plan you can keep it line.
Technically he should have said, "If you like your plan you can keep it unless of course your plan fails to meet minimum standards."
The problem is a lot of Americans are stupid and lazy. They elected the hawker of hate and his plan consisted of saying he makes the best plans, and then repeating believe me a bunch. Had Obama tried to explain things in that level of detail the plan may have gotten bogged down and never passed. That doesn't make Obama's lack of precision correct, but it is at least understandable.
All that being said, Obama was not a pathological liar. That would be Trump. Look at the actual numbers not the talking point. Hell he couldn't even be honest about the weather and the crowd size at his inauguration, and we have pictures of both. He called Obama the founder of ISIS. He called cruz's father part of the JFK assassination. He said that health care would be easy, that Mexico was paying for the wall, etc, etc, etc. If Obama's few inaccurate statements rated a 4/10, then Trump would be at 200.
they're thinking long term too. H1-Bs let them cut education funding without losing their trained workforce. It moves the training costs overseas. It also makes employees disposable. You don't care if they quit, there's another batch ready and waiting.
As an employee and a member of the working class you're only thinking in terms of wages. The ruling class have a much, much broader picture of the economy...
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Sigh. Where do the prisoners go? Not USA, because of Congress. To another Gitmo? Hardly an answer. Go free? That gets way complicated.
Congress blocked the obvious path to closing Gitmo. Remember, Congress can override a veto with enough votes, so the President can't just thwart the lawmakers. He only enforces the laws within the legal framework, and your objections are addressed here.
http://time.com/4178779/obama-...
I want it wrecked. It's destruction would benefit me, and after 30 years of taking it in the shorts on wages, benefits, education, healthcare and everything else that really matters I don't care anymore. Let it burn. Let it all burn.
And that, ladies and gents, is what elected Trump. Americans _want_ that wrecking ball.
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Pelosi? How long has she been working for Romney? The entire ACA was lifted wholecloth from "Romneycare", solely because it was the only way a healthcare bill was ever going to be enacted while the loony wing of the Republicans - Cruz, Ryan, etc - were in full control. That this pitiful faker couldn't get his version in place and is blaming the Democrats despite having a majority in both houses is hysterically funny, not that it even got as far as being voted against by the Democrats because this useless clown didn't have the backing of his own party. I've seen reports that it was Bannon's attempts at bullying the waverers that finally sunk it; that shit might work on some young idiot ideologues at Breitbart, but against fully grown adults that he has less than no power over? Get real. If he doesn't start playing the game soon he'll be out of there, by hook or by crook.
I've not seen any swamp-draining yet, either. When's that starting? Before, during or after he's installed crony donors and brown-nosers into every seat of power in the country? Face it: you were sold down the river. Yes, you were an idiot to believe that this fool would do anything to benefit anyone but himself and his cronies, but maybe use your brain next time the opportunity comes along to vote.
No she didnt as that doesnt even seem possible under current conditions. Health insurance rates going up, which the Republicans site as the end of ACA, is not happening because of some arbitrary reason. The rates are going up to offset ACA costs.
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Prior to massive regulations insurance was affordable. Competition ensured that it was. Blue Cross was the "primary" and best employer insurance, but not the only game in town. Pricing led to HAP and others gaining popularity as a cheaper alternative for people to get through their employers. I paid less than 500.00 a year for a policy during college since my employer didn't provide insurance. It wasn't great insurance, but I didn't need great insurance. I needed something to cover me if something bad happened. You know, the whole point of paying for this thing called insurance.
Once I finally got a job with insurance, my monthly contribution was triple what I paid for catastrophic, but still affordable. Until ACA, I was never employed at a place that didn't have at least 2 choices of provider. Today, even at the large companies you have 1 (except for CA where you can choose Kaiser).
Private insurance meant competition. you know, that thing that is totally lacking in the ACA where most areas have been reduced to 1 provider with no competition. Policies can't be formulated by providers now, the Government mandates everything in them. Catastrophic coverage does not exist.
If competition was allowed, people could simply receive vouchers for plans with competing agencies. Just like employers had. Choose the provider you like the best and the Government picks up the tab instead of the Government stifling competition for the whole market.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Unlike the ACA, guest worker fraud is something that is less controversial.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Well, one fix is if we stop worrying what the government wants, and start hitting H1B workers in the teeth with baseball bats.
I don't really care what our government wants, we aren't a country of politicians, we were the rebels who threw off all of that to live free.
It isn't ideal, but without any other help from anyone as we get poorer and poorer and continue to struggle, losing our homes, our cars, our families etc. I don't see why not, they are a threat to us, an enemy if ever there was one. We should do what we always do with our enemies, attack them.
After all, we blew up half of iraq because we THOUGHT they were an enemy, these people are an actual enemy and their walking around us in plain sight.
Then you admit that Trump is more truthful for lack of any substantial argument against him.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Yes, and I'm sure the Swiss and Cayman economies, etc., really appreciate that.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
If the Democrat's filibustering Gorsuch would prove they are unfit to govern then the Republican's already proved as such. Obama's pick was very uncontroversial as well and the Republicans refused to even hold session on the topic of his appointment. Just because what they did doesnt have a neat name like "filibuster" doesnt mean it doesnt boil down to the exact same thing.
Part of me wants the Dems to filibuster because "Fuck'em, if the Republicans are going to play that game then let the seat sit vacant. You reap what you sow assholes". However, the more rational side of me hopes they dont as I feel the filibuster mechanic is generally a healthy device in our government (for both parties) that prevents massive swings in government ideology and the Republicans might just get rid of it entirely to get their way.
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Obamacare isn't imploding though, for the most part it's working much better than anything that can't before it.
Damn, tell me more about this alternate reality where you live. Sounds like a great place!
Meanwhile, back here in actual reality, Obamacare is imploding badly. Arizona is seeing a 125% increase in exchange premiums this year (that's more than doubling in a single year for those of you who are bad with math, which would include anybody who thinks Obamacare is doing well). Here in TN, we have Humana pulling out of the exchange at the end of the year, leaving one single insurer. That's what's causing the death-spiral rate increases everywhere.
Do you have ESP?
I predict Trump's next move will be to repeal Obama-care without replacing it, then a mad scramble to pass a replacement (that will fail).
How is Trump going to repeal Obama-care? By writing his signature backwards on a copy of it? Maybe a big red X on each page?
Obama was actually trying to close Gitmo, because it's a travesty against liberty and justice. This was a constitutionally sound, well thought out, and highly principled stance.
Trump was not actually trying to give us good healthcare, because either he has no idea what he's doing, or he is specifically trying to benefit monied interests rather than actually see that good healthcare is made broadly available to the citizens. This is the stance of (take your pick) an idiot or an evil person.
Yes, both were stymied by congress. But:
Obama's Gitmo effort is fairly described as "good intent, stymied by congress, AKA failure."
Trump's ACHA is effort fairly described as "bad intent, stymied by congress, AKA failure."
Based on the ACHA failure, certainly. It was just terrible legislation that made him look like an idiot. Being an idiot isn't cause for impeachment. Otherwise we'd have been rid of Bush II early on. :/
However, based on Trump's continuing spewage of falsehoods, his campaign's complicity with Russian manipulation of the election, based on his utilizing the presidency to take financial advantage... I wouldn't be too sure that us saying "President Pence", and fairly soon, is all that unlikely.
Trump is obviously incompetent at the job. Between that, and his continual coloring outside the ethical and legal lines, and that of the campaign that resulted in his election, his future as president is by no means certain to extend a full four years.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I was listening to Ryan on the radio talking about not rejecting the good because it was not perfect and accepting compromise etc. If the voice had been slightly different and the timing a year ago I could easily have believed it was Obama saying those things.
For that matter, if the opportunity had been better to run against Hillary in the primary I could easily see us looking at president Trump the Democrat.
What I want to see more than anything else is a healthy working opposition, not just everyone switching hats between a "Party of no" and the party of "cmon, let's just work together to get it done", but rather two parties promoting, contrasting, and building support for their ideas, but as it is, the opposition are not rewarded for co-operation or punished for blatant obstructionism it seems.
Nullius in verba
Do you think the lawyers reading the ACA legislation and the children reading Harry Potter are equal?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Trump massively underestimates how hard everything is, because he had a "build without costly permits and without paying taxes" card in New York, and now that he's playing on an even playing field, he finds it hard.
Haha how can it not be a Trump and Ryan defeat? I didn't see Trump opposing it. It was his bill!
Sorry if I sound like an ass? Nothing personal on you, but as a Democrat I got sick and tired of hearing both sides say NO and don't work. This is all 100% on the GOP. I want voters to get angry and vote Democratic so we can start passing bills again and not just say NO
http://saveie6.com/
Obamacare isn't imploding though, for the most part it's working much better than anything that can't before it. So many people are now invested in it, reliant on it.
Aren't you from the UK? What do you know about Obamacare? Obamacare is imploding, hard. Premiums are way up. Wait times at hospitals are up. Number of medical providers are down. Obamacare has made it more expensive to get care at the same time as it's made it harder to get care. This isn't a surprise: Romneycare did the same thing in Massachusetts.
Don't forget that he promised to defeat Isis by now too.
Wow you anti-Trump people are unhinged. He never promised that. He said he has a 30-day plan. He hasn't had a chance to start implementing it yet because there are other, more important priorities like pulling our economy out of its current tailspin and repealing the disaster that is Obamacare.
more important priorities
Like shutting down the EPA? Or playing golf? Those more important priorities?
Melania came over on an H2B visa
Unlike many guest workers that are here solely for duressed knowledge transfer (a la Disney), she ended up with naturalized citizenship.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Shutting down the EPA is a hugely important part of fixing our economic tailspin. And the whole "playing golf" thing is hugely overblown. He plays far less golf than any other President and mostly uses it to make deals to help make America great.
Health care costs money. You have an aging population and increasingly expensive treatments. Every single payer healthcare system in the world is having to deal with this - and the US has the additional problem of insurance companies skimming their cut. First step is to, as Shakespeare wrote, is to kill all the lawyers (of the insurance companies). Get rid of the insurance company lobbyists, and go to full public single-payer healthcare. The money that's currently going into insurance company profits could save your life.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
If he has a 30-day plan to defeat isis and hasn't released it he should be charged with treason. His failure to implement it is giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
He can't do it until after Congress puts his budget through. Why do you think he needs to improve our woefully inadequate spending on defense? So he can implement his plan to defeat ISIS. Once his budget is approved, then he can defeat ISIS. Not before.
None of this is that complicated. Why do the Make America Last crowd have so much difficulty understanding it?
Whoever moderated your comment as "insightful" obviously did it based on agreeing with you, not on the basis of your fake evidence. In contrast to those "insightful" moderators, you got me to follow your link and it does NOT support your claims.
Actually, the so-called Republicans have institutionalized party discipline that would make Lenin blush. His Bolsheviks were supposed to have been the experts, but now they look like amateurs.
Not that I can really defend the Democratic Party. Insofar as I have supported them, it has always been a kind of allergic reaction to the gawdawful candidates the GOP has run, especially at the top of the ticket.
In my youth, I actually did research on the top races and almost always concluded the Democratic candidate was better (or at least less bad), while on the down-ticket races I tended to vote for whoever seemed less represented, such as women or candidates with minority-sounding names. When I got older, I discovered that the down-ticket races were more important than I had realized, but by that time the down-ticket winners had gerrymandered my vote to meaninglessness. They almost managed to disenfranchise me completely last time, though it didn't make any difference (of course).
The demographics actually prove the GOP is no more, notwithstanding their successful conversion therapy of the old Dixiecrat racists into Reagan Republicans. So they've adopted a new strategy: If you can't beat 'em, break the game.
Evidently time to brush up on my Russian.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
What you just witnessed what not a Republican defeat. It was the true death of Obamacare. The bill proposed just patched up a few things about Obamacare, not what people were asking for and not enough to save it.
Enter the Spin Zone! Trumpcare was indeed not what people were asking for, it was doomed to failure, if not in the House, in the Senate, or the world, as it destroyed any pretense of effectiveness on Trump's part.
Frankly, a quick death exposing Trump's failures as a leader is more than enough, and he knows it, hence your marching orders to portray I otherwise.
People are acting like it's a problem for Trump or anyone when in fact Trump was the one with the most to gain by the bills defeat - because it essentially thrusts Paul Ryan out of power in the senate.
That's funny, Paul Ryan is Speaker of the House, so he has no power in the Senate. Now Rand Paul is in the Senate, but he is hardly harmed by this, it failed to even get to a vote in the House, despite Trump's demands. Paul Ryan, if harmed, will have to give up the Speaker's chair, which is bad for Trump since the next guy will have to reject Trump. He overplayed his hand on that. He didn't realize that Congress does not answer to him. He will likely fumble that again.
Later on this summer you'll see an actual repeal of Obamacare, and that will pass nicely...
We're at sixty plus repeals, the thing America wants is the next ten words, which clearly Trump can't deliver, and he can't admit it, so he has to blame Democrats.
The GOP has the same problem. They ran on pointing fingers for six years, but now what? Oh yeah, blame Democrats for not awarding the 1% a bonus and not stripping millions from healthcare.
Let's count the reasons that is dumb.
even more nicely after the Democrats short-sightedly force the Senate to drop the bits of filibuster still remaining. If they'll filibuster someone like Gorsuch, the Demcrats proof to the public they are utterly unreliable to govern at all, and can simply be bypassed without undue fuss.
Yes, yes, blame the Democrats as the Republicans in the Senate failed in their duty to properly decide on a President's nominee, and now he's tainted with allegations of foreign involvement, a hysterical executive order, a failure to deliver on healthcare reform after spending six years running on that train, and dozens of lying tweets.
Democrats gain nothing on Gorsuch except by forcing the GOP to play all their cards on him. Then after Trump is impeached, they can remove his stooge from the Supreme Court. And it'll all end up with the death of the GOP, who sold themselves out for a troll.
Who sold himself out to the Kremlin.
He said he had a plan to defeat them within 30 days. No conditionals such as budgets included. And be honest, new spending takes time to work its way through the system - any weapons systems approved in the next budget won't see the light of day for years - and take even longer before they're actually deployable. Stupidity like this - a naval gun ship that can't actually fire shells because they would cost too much. A 22.5 billion dollar weapons system with no bullets. Oops.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
The two situations aren't even remotely comparable. Health care in the US is a huge morass of path-dependence bad decisions and vested interests, centered about one of the main areas where spending will always increase as free income increases. It's a very hard problem with no good solutions that will take a large amount of political capital to address in any meaningful fashion.
H1-B is a visa program that, in spirit, is a good idea - let people with useful and hard to find talents from other countries work in the US. This spirit has been twisted into "provide cheap IT and programming labor". There's already a proposed solution that would solve the problem; visa slots are assigned by salary, from highest down, rather than by lottery. Wouldn't even take much political capital, since the big companies losing out (by having to pay higher wages) have to donate to both major political parties anyway, just in case, reform already has bipartisan support, and no-one else is against it. May not get done by April, but unlike health care reform it is quite likely to get done by next year.
Giving 65,000 visas for foreigners?
That scare the shit out of you?
In a land of 350 Million who has better things to worry about?
Go fuck yourself!
I'm glad yesterday's vote got pulled.
Yes, you would be, because that way Trumpcare isn't explicitly rejected by half of the GOP and all of the Democratic Party.
It is obvious, however, from the excuses Trump made that he doesn't have an alternative, or any idea how to get advice from others.
Here's a hint, when all you have to hope for is a cataclysm, you are not winning the game.
Explain how raping the environment and destroying the planet is essential to economic recovery. How does it benefit America to be a toxic wasteland?
Inadequate defense spending? We spend more than any other country in the entire world, we have the most advanced technology and the best intelligence, and we can't beat a bunch of smelly camel fuckers who have nothing. How is throwing more money at the problem going to help?
But he's the greatest deal-maker in history!
The plan hasn't started yet. If ISIS knew when the plan was going to start, it wouldn't work.
Don't worry, ISIS will be defeated. When ready. Which, thanks to the mess left by you-know-who, will take time.
Funny how you leftists avoid pinning blame when it suits your interests. The Republicans have tried for 7 years to repeal Obamacare and when they can finally do it we see that RINOs don't want it cancelled. Hell, I don't believe anyone things that Trump is leading the Republican party. Except the Democrats when it gets their tiny weenies hard.
I estimate he's about $1.2 billion in NEGATIVE equity. I found one group of companies where he has a debt (e.g. a lease) which he borrows 120% against based on an exaggerared valuation, that company is held by a parent company on which he holds debt of 30% against the ownership of the subsidiary company (i.e. debt against company with negative equity), which in turn is held by a parent company which I couldn't get hold of the financials for, but it's not difficult to imagine he holds debt on that too. Stacked debt is a classic sign of bogus books. It reminds me of Robert Maxwells numbers, the billionaire that jumped off his yacht and drowned when the BBC dug into the finances.
His 2005 accounts was probably the last time the numbers looks realish, which is why he leaked them.
ISIS? They're Junior Varsity, nothing to worry about.
Irrelevant, even if true. Trump claimed to have a "foolproof" and "absolute" plan to defeat ISIS "quickly". He has so far failed to put his plan into action, unless, of course, his "plan" was to tell his top generals to come up with a plan.
But even if ISIS is nothing to worry about, that makes his ongoing failure to defeat them "quickly" all the more pathetic.
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
No, 500+ *SHELL* companies (most of them shells who do business with the other Trump companies) tells me it's ALL fraud. Not just the bits I can verify as fraud.
It's not difficult to see for yourself on the few items that can be verified. e.g. his Scottish golf course, he has a claim in his election filing for it, and you can read the REAL accounts, because under Scottish law they need to be filed at government house. You can see at once the numbers are VERY different.
Trump's claims income of £15.5million from the golf resort. The reality of the accounts is a £3.6million loss.
This is just one of many examples, there are almost zero company accounts that match Trump's claim, the ones that do, he is a minority investor and the accounts come from another property developer.
He's just a conman.
You can even estimate his REVPAR numbers and quickly realize that the claimed income from his hotels is out by an order of 3x to 10x. His borrowing keeps increasing against existing assets that are already over-leveraged beyond 100%. This is a sinking empire here. Even at 3x, it means its twice as much bluster and fraud as real accounting.
It needs to end. Some of the consulting firms are using it to kill the salaries for consultants. I remember when consultants use to make good money. Not now. Consultants don't make squat since the consultant firms are flooding the market with H1-B visa holders who are severely under paid.
Trump is losing hard. His two flagship policies are on the rocks.
Four.
The Wall is never being going to be built to completion, and the parts that are built, if they bother continuing with such a harebrained scheme, will be paid for by the American taxpayer.
And draining the swap turned into filling the swamp with even uglier toads. A complete and utter failure that everyone saw coming.
You obviously want to make it a partisan issue, but this is Republican vs Republican here.
If the best compromise the Republicans can do AMONG THEMSELVES is Obamacare, then they really need to clean house of the lunatic fringe.
But hey, Obama blah blah blah... it's Obama's fault the Republicans tried a massive tax hike on 98% of Americans while promising a tax reduction.
Ooh look, Flynn did deals even with Turkey to help Trump get power, and his campaign manager Manafort had a $10 million contract with Putin to get puppet leaders elected around the world. Obama must be behind it somehow. And Trump sneaked the Russian ambasador into Trump tower when he wasn't President and not allowed to do private diplomacy.... Obama must be spying on Trump tower, otherwise how would the FBI know about the secret meeting?!
Obama must secretly have spies in government that ensure Trump fails....
Damn you Obama! I bet Obama is plotting to force Trump to do some mindblowing Tweet right as we speak!
Sigh. Where do the prisoners go? Not USA, because of Congress. To another Gitmo? Hardly an answer. Go free? That gets way complicated.
Nobody forced him to make the claim that he was going to close Gitmo. If he wasn't prepared to set any prisoners free that couldn't be charged with a real crime and incarcerated elsewhere, then he shouldn't have said that he was going to close the place. Just as soon as you can show that someone put a gun to his head and forced him to claim he was going to do it, you can use that argument.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You are expecting Trump to fix anything?
If you are in that category I pity you, four years of bitter disappointment is coming.
It took three years to get rid of Nixon over Watergate and Trump is less likely to go quietly no matter what, so he's in for the long haul.
They might regret that in 4 years.
Table-ized A.I.
Yes, I know, that's the point I was making. I'm sorry if that was unclear.
The GOP unraveled it just fine (Trump doesn't even read his executive orders... the very idea that he had anything to do with the ACHA other than as an idiot mouthpiece is mildly hilarious.) The GOP rewrote it to do what they wanted it to do, which was adhere to the usual ethically bankrupt Republican agenda of disadvantaging the poor and further enriching the rich.
It's just that the poor, huge numbers of whom benefit from the ACA, actually got wind of the GOP's intent, and unfortunately for the Republicans, their base consists of considerable numbers of the poor.
It wasn't that they couldn't unravel it. It's that they got caught unraveling it.
The reason why is simply this: If you never give a baby a lollipop, it will just sit there and gurgle. But if you give a baby a lollipop and then attempt to take it away and it catches you at it, it will scream bloody murder until you give it back. That's exactly what happened here. The ACA handed out the lollipop that was healthcare to people who had never had it. The ACHA attempted to take it away. The people caught them at it. Everything from then on was entirely predictable.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I 100% expect the Republicans (congress in general, really, but the Republicans are presently driving the bus) to do exactly the same thing to tax law that the Republicans attempted to do to the healthcare law. Which is to say, rewrite it to further benefit the wealthy and further disadvantage the poor and middle class.
What congress thinks is broken about tax law and what the poor and middle class thinks is broken about tax law are two entirely different things.
It's not that congress can't figure it out. It's that what they want has absolutely nothing to do with benefitting the voters who elected them. They serve those who write them checks, hand out lucrative speaking engagements, "think tank" positions, lobbyist jobs, property and stock tips/deals, etc. They care very little for our votes. They know full well that when disapproval of congress is high (86% in a recent election), re-election rates remain high (94% in that same election.) So until disapproval numbers for a bill hit really dangerous looking extremes (83% for the ACHA, basically everyone that doesn't drool all their waking hours), they pretty much do whatever they want, and what that is, as always, is fluff the wealthy.
The key to stopping them is exactly what happened with the ACHA: The media and the Internet need to repeatedly and in a way that cannot be ignored, put the information about what the the proposed revisions to tax law is trying to do to most everyone out under bright lights. If that can be done, it'll kill their tax agenda, which is absolutely guaranteed to be harmful to most of us. Just like the ACHA.
The problem with actual reasonable tax reform is that you're asking the foxes to voluntarily reduce their access to the henhouse. No matter what they say about it, they are thinking "LOL, as if." That's not just the GOP, either; the Democrats trade on tax leverage too.
A truly fair and simple federal taxation system is literally no more than a few pages of clear and simple law away. The same is true for any state or town. Likewise decent healthcare mechanisms. But we can't get there from here. The monied interests don't want that; and that means we're not going to get it. What we are most likely to get, if we're not vigilant, is something a good bit worse. Just like the ACHA.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Business negotiations often involve motivated parties with shared goals (sell/buy land, widgets, etc). They differ on the terms of the transaction, not the transaction itself.
In politics, you have to compromise on the transaction and its terms and there is often no agreement on the goal in question.
With healthcare, the Republicans couldn't agree on a goal so negotiating terms was much more difficult.
This is a reflection of America. When George Bush Senior admitted that he failed his "no new taxes" promise it sealed him as a 1-term president. He had a democratic-controlled congress so he compromised. Americans didn't want compromise and they didn't want an honest man who admitted mistakes.
I'm really not sure how the insurance companies, in their lustful greed for Obmacare forcing people to buy insurance, couldn't see that they would have been next against the wall.
I feel like they have the idea that they'll be the ones administering "single-payer".
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
I'm sure that the "meet our price or suffer and/or die" factor will never distort prices once everyone is paying out of their own pocket.
The folks in silicon valley are smart, organized and wealthy. They've purchased the requisite members of congress who have shown quite plainly that their interests diverge significantly from those of the White House and its current, er... "administration."
There will be no change at all, or at best, cosmetic changes.
Of course, the best course of action would be to give any foreign national who moves here for more than five years a green card, a handshake and expedited citizenship if they start a business that employs Americans in a technical capacity at standard wages for their position of expertise for more than five years.
That's a 10 year commitment. Their kids will have grown up here. Nobody is moving back to China or India at that point. We get a new generation of smart, entrepreneurial Americans.
Being a rational course of action that takes advantage of foreign expertise and money for the USA's benefit, it will never happen.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Once again slurs against certain groups are OK if you are some kind of superior leftist and part of a culture they celebrate.
I actually don't have anything against you, your gender, your actions or choices in those respects. Use whatever bathroom or other service you want.
But perhaps you could stop posting for a while and reflect on your own hateful attitude towards the mentally ill, mentally handicapped, and others in far worse situations than yourself.
... No.
Tech companies have pumped way too much money into D.C. to ever allow for H-1B reform. If anything, I expect Republicans to offer to increase the H-1B visa allotments.
The question is, given the xenophobia that Trump has championed, will foreign workers be willing to come to the U.S.? U.S. colleges are already reporting significantly lower application rates for this year from foreign students, so it seems likely that the desire to work here is likely falling off, too.
So, we may have finally reach the tipping point where U.S. companies finally give up on trying to maintain headquarter in the U.S. and just ship them overseas to India or China.
Get rid of the insurance company lobbyists, and go to full public single-payer healthcare. The money that's currently going into insurance company profits could save your life.
If you look a close and careful look at the existing US version of "single-payer" - Medicare - you'll be appalled. You'll find lots of hidden costs, lots of bureaucratic incompetence, lots of stress added to senior's lives as a result of the need to fight the seemingly endless mistakes the system keeps making - it's basically been a disaster since the program was created.
It seems unlikely that the US is capable of running a single-payer system.
Something along the lines of the Swiss system might work. As a fraction of GDP, they were spending (health expenditure, total, world bank) 11.7% in 2015. That is about on par with France (11.5%), and a lot less than the USA (17.1%) - and the Swiss have better health care results is most categories than either France or the USA.
The Swiss system is not a single-payer system - but it costs a lot less because the doctors, lawyers, and health insurance companies aren't allowed to take a big piece of the pie. Also, as I understand matters, the Swiss public, not the politicians, gets to decide (by vote) on any significant changes.
Another system that is not single-payer is that of the Netherlands (10.9% of GDP).
By the way - it's not just the health care companies that are creating high costs for the USA. Problems with US law also create significant overhead, both in terms of litigation insurance, and doctors massively over-prescribing expensive tests to protect themselves from unethical lawyers and tort abuse. Yet another problem is the US patent system, which also raises the costs of medication significantly. The doctors themselves are part of the problem: they have too much control over prescriptions, and also make 30% more than their Swiss counter-parts (and since Switzerland has very high costs of living, that saying something!).
Yes, the US badly needs health care reform - and ObamaCare is not the answer - but single payer isn't necessarily the answer.
I feel that the Republicans chose to deal with the short-term humiliation of being perceived as being unable to repeal Obamacare for strategic reasons.
The folks who hate Obamacare are a loud minority in their party. They can safely be ignored for a while.
The folks who would have lost coverage and been worse of with Obamacare repealed would have fucked them in the next election. As it is, these guys will still vote Republican in 2018.
So they let Obamacare stay. Big deal. They will dismantle regulations, start teaching religion in schools, pack the Supreme Court with Corporate-owned mouthpieces with no pushback.
How exactly do you bankrupt insurance companies when they're warts that grow out the asses of major financial services companies?
I would love the health insurance industry to die so we could have single payer but buhhaha yeah right.
Pelosi designed it to bankrupt the insurance companies
Source? Genuinely interested.
Why is it that when any party fails at something, someone pops out of the woodwork to suggest, "well you know, it was inappropriate to expect success from party X, they aren't a monolithic voting block!"
And I'm not talking about interpretations or assessments of success. Like Obamacare, which can be evaluated as either a success or a failure, depending upon your political leanings, your policy preferences, and all the rest. Although, Obamacare got passed, so at some basic level it was a success.
Trump and the Repubs have claimed, loudly, vigorously, and incessantly for, what, 7-8 years, that Obamacare was "toast". Repeal and Replace (or was it Repeal and Reform? Repeal and Repair? Repeal or Replace??). We all know it.
Yet they failed, and now Trump is walking away like it doesn't matter or it was someone else's fault. And I'm calling bullshit. This was a core promise to the American people!
So why did they fail? IMO:
1). The Repubs never did the hard work of building an alternative policy. "Repeal and Replace" became an easy slogan and the Repubs got lazy because their easy slogan sounded good. All it was, was a talking point to beat the Dems over the head with. It was superficial;
2). "Not one monolithic voting bloc"? What do you think a party is? Parties are never monolithic! Their job is, to overcome internal policy divisions and build internal support and agreement around specific policy proposals. They can take their time doing it, but the Repubs had 8 years! What do they have to show for those 8 years? Nothing!
3). The Repubs are showing laziness again, having failed. "Oh well, Repeal and Replace was never a core platform issue." Or is it, "the Dems are responsible!" Perhaps instead, it is "darn those Repub party groups who weren't onside, it's all their fault!" Yeah, we know an excuse train when we see one;
4). The Repubs never had a Plan B. Spicer said almost exactly that, it was either this proposal or nothing. Since when is this a good idea?? You know who made this mistake too? Swarzenegger in California. The story was that Swarzenegger went to the state capital with one and only one budget proposal, and no negotiating position or skills. Oops.
5). Trump likes to trumpet his negotiating skills but he's also one to quickly change course when he's failing. And claim he never really wanted the original thing he failed to get. Except, you can't walk away from this issue. He's not the corporate CEO anymore, telling people what to think, what happened, and what is important. A CEO might be able to get away with this stuff but a President cannot.
This was a failure and a big failure. Make all the excuses you want but Trump comes off looking less than stellar in this situation. He is the man behind "The Art of The Deal", remember? At the very least he could acknowledge the failure and spin it as growing pains, to be followed by a better attempt next time. Yet Trump's ego won't permit that.
Trump's ego internalizes and owns successes and externalizes and rejects failure. He cannot do otherwise. Which will be his undoing.
As funny as H-1B jokes can be when read on Dilbert, they're significantly less funny when you're introduced to a new H-1B visa holder from India and told "show him around, tell him how you do your job" with no other explanation by management given. Disney was simply a public example of something happening all over the country. To say abuse/fraud is rampant in H-1B visas is to say the ocean is wet.
Expel Indian-Americans https://www.petition2congress....
Why http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
And https://qz.com/889524
Casteism
Some analysts over here think this forced showdown was purely a way to be able to make a "shitlist" of Republicans that can't be trusted to stick to 45's side.
Nobody forced him to make the claim that he was going to close Gitmo.
So everything would have been right as rain if he had pledged to 'sincerely try' instead of 'do' ? Seriously?
If he wasn't prepared to set any prisoners free that couldn't be charged with a real crime and incarcerated elsewhere, then he shouldn't have said that he was going to close the place.
Lets say he was prepared to do that. Still wouldn't have made a difference... congress wasn't going to let him do that. Not in a million years.
If you think the insurance companies skimming their cut is bad, you'll find that's nothing compared to DMV-style "management".
Do you have ESP?
Your assessment of Republican control is correct as far as it goes, but it needs to go even farther. The current count (AFAIK) is that the Republicans control 44 of 50 Governorships! If the Republicans can't pass AHCA with that much power... what do they need? The power of Life and Death? The ability to transmute lead into gold? The ability to shoot laser beams from their eyes?
Seriously, what more could the Republicans actually ask for in terms of total control? So why are they acting like the Keystone Cops?