Why not let the unemployed stay home and just enjoy life?
I couldn't figure out if your post was meant to be satire. The obvious answer is "because it's not society's responsibility to carry the lazy on their back." The traditional liberal response to the Republican talking point that the poor are lazy is that they're not lazy, but lack the opportunity or means to lift themselves up. If you just let people be lazy and get away with it, you're pretty much just proving Republicans right. It's not uncommon for human beings to work only to a minimum level of effort needed to coast by. The lower you set the expectations, the more society will adapt to those lower standards over time. You think the lazy/corrupt Greek model happened overnight? It was generations of exactly that kind of "acceptance" of low work standards and corruption that built a system of graft and laziness that simply became the expectation of all those involved.
Let's take for example, Education. By your accounting, that should be left up to the individual states, as that's not something that should be administered by the Federal Government.
In your worldview, every state can have different education standards, which would create chaos later in life -- when those students move to another state to attend college, some from, say Texas, might encounter problems when they suddenly find out that Jesus did not ride Dinosaurs and the Earth is round and not flat.
And the other problem is of course that in the real world, there's only ONE set of textbooks for all states regardless of education standards, because states cannot afford custom textbooks just for them.
That explains why every time I travel to Europe, they think the earth is flat and Jesus rides dinosaurs. I guess what we really need is an international standard of education. Because however would education move forward without global agreement on teaching methods? Better hunker down and never leave your nation -- dogs and cats, living together, I tell you. Absolute chaos traveling from country to country these days./sarcasm
Sorry, but your "real world" is some hyperbolic fantasy (nightmare?) that individual states will go full dark age medieval if you personally don't have an iron national grip on them, whereas reality bears out something far different. Namely, states lean more conservative/liberal on certain niche issues and otherwise behave about the same as all the other states for 90+% of life's concerns.
The biggest beef against UBI is that people who have opportunities to succeed are passing (laziness), meaning UBI is a waste for those individuals. In Kenya, the vast number of people over there likely have far less opportunities to succeed. The needy-to-wasteful quotient is WAY higher there. You need a first-world country for a reasonable test.
Did we watch the same election?
They picked up seats in the House and the Senate
They were expected to pick up seats in the House and Senate. The RNC was defending far more seats this year in swing states. Frankly, the DNC was expected to pick up way more than they did. Their odds of having Democrat majority control of the Senate was at 60 or 70% prior to the election. So, yes, they lost badly. It's especially bad considering the fact that next election Republicans don't have many seats at risk in need of heavy defense, whereas the Democrats do. Gaining control of any branch of our government is probably about 4 years away at a minimum for Dems.
It's subtle but true that Politifiact is left-slanted. The easiest way to spot it is by viewing the "Our ruling" conclusions they come to, often when a "partial truth" is reveal. For instance, you'll note in this False conclusion, they recognize "While some research suggests a small uptick in the number of part-time jobs as a result of the Affordable Care Act, Trumpâ(TM)s claim goes too far." and give it a false. But in this Half True decision about Obamacare, they recognize "However, to call it the Republican plan, as though a majority of Republicans endorsed it, goes too far. The House Republicans took a different path, and there was opposition from more hard-line members of the Republican coalition. It is telling that the Chafee bill never became a full blown bill and never came up for a vote.", yet it does not get a similar "False" (or even "Mostly False") ruling. I could find other examples, but I imagine you get the point.
To be fair to them though, they're not extreme in their slant. They do a decent job of fact checking on both sides. But their subtle bias does show.
Easy answer: Because, due to a lack of regulation, we have the most expensive Health Care industry on the planet.
Umm, you do realize the US has one of the most heavily regulated healthcare industries in the entire world, right? Hell, our entire healthcare model (employer-provided healthcare + ACA) was pretty much designed by regulation (see below).
Following the second world war, President Harry Truman called for universal health care as a part of his Fair Deal in 1949 but strong opposition stopped that part of the Fair Deal.[14][15] However, in 1946 the National Mental Health Act was passed, as was the Hospital Survey and Construction Act, or Hill-Burton Act. In 1951 the IRS declared group premiums paid by employers as a tax-deductible business expense,[6] which solidified the third-party insurance companies' place as primary providers of access to health care in the United States.
Just because they're doing a pisspoor job regulating (for example, by focusing on giving people insurance instead of cost controls on healthcare) doesn't make the market unregulated. It just makes it regulated by morons.
Like most "originalists" you think your interpretation of the constitution is the only one.
The Constitution isn't meant to be interpreted. Where the Constitution is unclear, judges look to precedent (historical rulings). Never were they meant to insert their own "modern spin", feelings, or interpretations. The biggest issue with the modern judicial age is literally a case of Slippery Slope fallacy, whereby one judge takes liberties with what the government is allowed to do and then 10 years later the next person grabs a little more freedom away based on the last precedent and then 10 years later there's another loss, ad infinitum until the federal govt has so much case law on the books that they literally have unlimited power.
An "originalist" is nothing more than someone who believes in law rather than gut feeling and sentiment.
The original authorities involved in crafting the constitution are no longer around. Instead, we have constitutional scholars and supreme court justices. They know a lot more than some angry internet dude yelling for less government until he loses something.
Sadly, that's very debatable. Obama was a freakin constitutional law professor and he routinely exceeds his allotted powers, the most egregious example being this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Additionally, there are Supreme Court justices that base some of their decisions on nothing related to the Constitution whatsoever. For instance, take the statement by Roberts here regarding a recent ACA case: The statutory scheme compels us to reject petitioners interpretation because it would
destabilize the individual insurance market in any state with a federal exchange, and likely create the very death spirals that Congress designed the act to avoid, Roberts wrote.
He's literally stating, "This badly written law will fall apart if we revoke this unconstitutional part of it, therefore I will rule in its favor"
Here's another one (http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/27/politics/supreme-court-abortion-texas/):
"When a State severely limits access to safe and legal procedures, women in desperate circumstances may resort to unlicensed rogue practitioners, faute de mieux, at great risk to their health and safety," she wrote.
That has nothing to do with whether or not something is legal/constitutional, so why is it even coming out of the mouth of a judge?
Want another one? Try Roe v Wade, where the Court literally invented a new fundamental right by quoting a right to privacy...that's right...your right of privacy is what gives you a Constitutional right to an abortion. That Court also pretty much choose to define life on their own, which is why we have the "third trimester" caveat.
In reality, what happens with court justices now is that prevailing public sentiment drives their actions moreso than the law. That's why Brown v. Buhman failed, yet Obergefell v. Hodges succeeded. Unless you can explain to me how we have a fundamental right to marry, but that right ends at exactly one person. Or say laws that prevent parent-child and brother-sister marriages -- again, if marriage is a fundamental right that shall not be infringed, why does the 14th Amendment only protect some cases (interracial, same-gender) whereas prohibiting others? It's clearly being determined via cultural fiat (namely, the "eww factor") rather than by law.
Btw, I should add that nowhere else in our free market does such a convoluted system exist. Mechanics, maids, plumbers, electricians...you name the service. Their prices are either advertised upfront, or you can get a quote prior to receiving services. If said prices are too high, you can shop other companies. Healthcare is the only industry where you have no F'in clue what you're going to pay until you get the bill and you're locked into a very specific network because your employer AND your insurance company control your market access.
The insurance market is selling insurance to individuals.
The healthcare market is selling healthcare to patients.
Except it's not. The patients receive the healthcare, but they don't pay for it, nor do they choose 100% of it...the insurance companies do. Imagine you're buying a car where your choice of car was limited to "SUV, compact, or limo". You pick the category and then your employer chooses who will provide your car insurance and that insurance company selects your exact car brand. The car manufacturer then determines what options you will have on your vehicle. If you don't want that brand car or those car options, find another job. Should your employer pick a shitty or expensive insurance option, you're fuck-all out of luck. Should the manufacturer pick car options that are ludicrously expensive, both you and the insurance company are fuck-all out of luck. That's roughly analogous to the situation to healthcare.
The patients are paying healthcare providers to act as effective negotiators for them, and backing them with their patronage.
They are in fact not doing this. Patients with insurance pay next to nothing to healthcare providers. The bulk of the money always comes from insurance. Additionally, people don't choose their patronage to healthcare providers based on negotiating ability. They choose it based on doctor familiarity and history (or specialists by reference or reputation), often set from an early age (my primary doctor hasn't changed in decades, nor would I want him to). And again the consumer is rarely even choosing their insurance -- their employer is. And what they pay is completely hidden from the consumer as well...it's just another cost to the company. So they could just as easily offer you a salary 10k lower than you would normally have to account for your additional healthcare expense and not spend any time whatsoever shopping for a better deal, thereby leaving you with the option of shopping for a new job to get affordable healthcare (if you even manage to realize you're being underpaid)
Remember the lie "if you like your insurance/doctor, you can keep it"? ACA forced a change in my insurance, which my current doctor was NOT an "in-network" member of. It's a perfect example of the lack of consumer choice in this market. I wanted my doctor. I could not have him, namely because I am not the one in control of my healthcare choices.
Do you believe it's a sane healthcare system for me to basically have to find a new job to be able to keep my doctor? In the current system, true costs of healthcare are hidden from insurance companies since rates are negotiated. Then true costs of insurance are hidden from the consumer, since employers bundle the cost into your salary. Wanna see what's stagnated middle class salaries for the past decade? Look no farther than healthcare.
So what? Nearly half of all providers are out of my care network. They're excluded from my healthcare options because they cost me three to ten times as much. If the hospitals, doctors, psychiatrists, and pharmacies wanted my business, they should have signed on with CareFirst's BlueChoice PPO network and CVS Caremark's Pharmacy Benefits Manager
You're acting like the "in-network" concept is some kind of insta-win. My new insurance is costing me WAY more than I ever paid in the past with my old insurance (on the order of double or triple). So I challenge that assertion. And I had BlueChoice insurance. It's what I was forced to drop because they didn't cover my doctor. Now I'm on my wife's insurance with UnitedHealthcare, another shitshow. Apparently all their bloodwork has to be done at in-network Labcorp and there's no coordination between healthcare providers and health insurance providers to make this happen. So last time when I went to the doctor for bloodwork, despite the fact the nurse dr
You mean the competition among insurers for customers, and the competition among health care providers for access to large insurer provider networks? The things that can make or break your business
Again, you're focused on insurance market competition and not on healthcare competition. And health insurers have little reason to push lower the cost of healthcare itself. ACA has guaranteed their profit to be capped to a percentage of premiums. So they have a vested interest to keep premiums high. They also have very little reason to worry about competition since health markets tend to be very regional, they don't have to worry about competition across state lines, and lock-in among big business is fairly high (you only see a great deal of turnover in insurance policy in smaller business since the search & implementation process for new insurance carries a great deal of cost itself).
So despite businesses having substantial motivation to achieve lower premiums, they don't have the carrot or the stick to force that change in the actual healthcare market.
The rest of that $80,000 hospital bill... $75k of it was cost. You paid $5k of it into business profits...
Now tell me what in the hell causes all those costs
It's easy to find that answer. Find out why the hospital down the street can do it for 50% the cost. I couldn't tell you what the actual reason is, since these numbers aren't even remotely transparent to consumers. And if I had to wager a guess, I'd say it could be anything from creative bookkeeping (to be able to make use of those additional dollars while not reporting it as a profit) to inefficiency (extra/extraneous tests, too long hospital stays, brand drugs over generic, etc, etc), salary differences among nurses/doctors, etc. Honestly, it could be just about anything. And you'll never know exactly what is causing it until you shine the spotlight on healthcare instead of insurance. Expecting insurance companies to take aggressive steps towards solving this mystery and finding cost savings is a major mistake. They don't have the motivation to do so.
Maximized competition and whatever else can't push prices down below those actual costs, else the hospitals and medical companies go out of business.
You don't know that. There are many companies that operate on a tight profit margin that have managed to make their operations more efficient when forced to (just look at all the energy companies out there that have managed to make leaps and bounds in well efficiency after oil & natural gas prices tanked, something that wasn't even on their radar when they were making a profit). Companies need a motivation driver to encourage that change. So long as hospitals aren't losing money, they also have no motivation to find cost-savings. They aren't competing with surrounding hospitals...they already have a captive consumer market (namely, everyone in their favored provider's insurance networks).
I'm surprised you just assume these guys are running a trim operation. I've come to expect waste and bloat where there isn't any compelling reason to make it otherwise. These hospitals could have double the ambulances they need, excess nurse staff sitting around twiddling their fingers, zero effort to negotiate lower salaries with their doctors, zero effort to comparison shop for better equipment/drug deals. There could be tons of fat to trim. Who knows until you actually put some pressure on them?
Actual medical service is often cheap elsewhere. This I don't understand
This is because you're focused on insurance and "negotiated rates" instead of actuals
such as with doctors's offices charging $300, charging insurers a negotiated $30, and charging uninsured patients $10; but also with million-dollar surgeries turning into an $80,000 bill by some magic.
Here you see the problem. The numbers at their origin are completely wonky, almost equivalent to throwing darts at a dartboard. No one is shining the spotlight at the costs of healthcare itself because they're too focused on the insurance side of things. Insurance hides true cost pictures, because through an insurer, things are negotiated in a completely unpredictable way (see your ~$2 blood-work example, your $300 -> $30 doctor example, and your million dollars -> 80k example)...it's not "magic" that causes this complete crapshoot of prices...it's the lack of a competitive market. There is no "invisible hand" in the healthcare industry where supply/demand/cost balances itself...nobody is making a cost-risk or cost-reward analysis -- instead healthcare providers and insurance companies come up with fairly arbitrary numbers. Consumers rarely if ever see true prices and have little no ability to find more affordable healthcare deals since insurance locks us into a very limited network of providers. You're literally at the mercy of your insurance company. And if they decide they're not willing to cover your needed drug, well you're SOL, because the non-negotiated rate is a billion dollars.
Competition is precisely what we have.
No, a bunch of "car salesmen" negotiating behind my back my healthcare costs with god-knows-who is not competition. "Competition" means true costs are exposed (not "negotiated rates") and consumers have the freedom and mobility of choice to pick one doctor or hospital over another based on known rates. It's the kind of transparency and competition that would prevent a bunch of people from trying to sell an EpiPen for 10 billion dollars when another company can do the same exact thing for 10 dollars.
Solve the market problem and you solve healthcare costs. But as long as you have a bunch of middle men working behind the scenes to hide costs from you (and a govt focused on ignoring cost and merely spreading the higher cost burden onto the rich and healthy), you'll never solve the problem.
There's a fact about Trump that's growing ever more apparent: his mouth is nearly useless. Only his actions matter (and they've yet to unfold).
This is true of all politicians. Or did you actually believe Obama when he told you he wanted to eliminate the Patriot Act? (after voting to extend it as a senator)
Yeah, they can't reverse shit without getting a few Democrats in the Senate to go along. Please look up 'cloture'.
You know, that thing that Democrats were crying about from 2010 until 2016? It's now their best friend.
I think you'll be surprised to find out how much stuff Obama passed by Executive Orders (43 changes to ACA alone). That stuff can be undone with a snap of the fingers. And there are many other games to be played within our strange legal system as well. Look up reconciliation...that's the only way ACA got passed in the first place. It bypasses cloture, and can be used to repeal major parts of ACA.
That's the problem - the F-35 was supposed to do *everything* - air superiority, close air support, attack, amphibious assault - and it wound up doing nothing particularly well
You are confusing income and net worth. The $250k household income target level does show the government feels the same way I do about who is considered "wealthy". That would probably come to about $300k of income before deductions, which would require around $7-$10 million, depending on how much of your wealth is tied in your house or other non-liquid assets.
I hate to break it to you, but a 300k household isn't living high on the hog. They're the neighbor next door. A couple of doctors, or lawyers, computer engineers, or even any married couple in a skilled trade in a high cost-of-living area like NYC is going to hit that target. And for the majority of their lives, they're living a "middle class lifestyle w/ excess" (1-2 extra vacations per year and a luxury car), not a "billionaire lifestyle" (yachts, helicopters, limos, etc). If they hit 7-10 million in net worth (and that's a major if, because I don't even seeing it happen at 300k/year), it won't be until late, late in life, very close to retirement. 300k household income is top 3% of the nation. The kind of money you're talking about is far closer to 500k++ household income, which is generally reserved for business owners/CEOs.
No one is thinking of a regular middle class person who amassed $1.5 million in their retirement account by the age of 65.
You're wrong. That's exactly who they are thinking about. Why do you think all the tax breaks cut off (and tax hikes begin at) significantly lower income levels than 10 million (250k joint was the most recent target income level for hiking costs on). Govt policy never targets those making 10+ million (probably because there simply aren't enough people making that, are therefore not enough money to extract). Media/people may rail against the Enron CEOs of the world, but the actual policy that goes into effect punishes primarily the middle classes millionaires.
I can virtually guarantee this isn't what the AC was thinking of when he mentioned them.
Perhaps that's the problem. In their eager, vindictive zeal to crucify the billionaires of the world, they support legislation that puts the coals to the lesser wealthy, while the billionaires hide their wealth in Ireland.
Those were also the same sites fawning over pieces of shit like Dragon Age 2, and threw a hissyfit calling consumers "entitled" over the complete shitshow that was the Mass Effect 3 ending.
You must not have waited long enough. Dragon Age 2 has an 82 metascore (anything around 80 is thoroughly average on that site) and a 4.4 User Score (abyssmal). Mass Effect 3 has a fair metascore of 89, given the fact everything other than the ending was awesome about that game.
Seeing as how my general rule is to ignore anything under 80 on Metacritic and to filter out everything in the 80-85 range based on User Scores, I'd say the system works.
Even the US has a lower percentage coal use (currently around 33%). And the US has been trending downward, whereas Germany has been trending sideways.
And Germany imports about two-thirds of its energy, which comes primarily from fossil fuel sources (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany#Energy_Consumption). It's just passing on "externality costs" to other countries.
Can't have voter ID laws, because the DNC says Black people can't figure out how to get a free voter ID. But that isn't racist.
Literally nobody has argued that in the history of Voter Suppression Laws.
No, I'm pretty sure if minorities weren't involved, voter suppression or enabling would be perfectly fine (see gerrymandering). At any rate, there's plenty of examples of new laws disproportionately affecting one party over another (see allowing felons to vote, or lowering/raising the voting age) and they're seen as legal. They're clearly painting this issue as a racial one. Stupidly, I might add. The two political parties attempt to get every advantage they can all the time...either all of it is discriminatory or none of it is. The selective BS is just that...BS. The courts won't freakin touch gerrymandering...but this they won't shut up about. That doesn't make one lick of sense.
"Reducing use of fossil fuels" != "halting all progress"
You use the phrase "slow this progress" but the remainder of your comment implies almost halting progress.
I'm looking at the OP's numbers, and it implies no such thing. In fact, it almost exactly implies a ~50% tech reduction. That's far from "halting all progress".
More importantly, you're completely dodging the point being made by trying to claim exaggeration. In simple form: all things have a cost (Perhaps not zero sum, but a cost nonetheless). And every hour of our time or dollar of our money that we throw at accelerating green adoption is an hour/dollar that could have went towards any number of things, like curing cancer or reducing poverty. Is the relationship one-to-one? No. Is it more relevant/substantial than you're trying to claim? Yes.
Hilary is a compromise between our right wing and our progressives. That's kinda the point of progressivism: Progress. Hilary is progress.
No, it really isn't. Kasich would have been the compromise between the right wing and the progressives. Hillary isn't even remotely close to the middle. On defense spending, she's a hawk. On anything else, she's effectively Obama #2. When she comes up with any feasible plan to reign in Mandatory spending without "just tax the rich people more", I'll begin to see her as a compromise. But otherwise her plan is the same as Obama's before her: "spend more, tax the rich more, enlarge Mandatory spending." I see no deviation from that agenda.
Voting for a third party will almost always mean a vote taken away from a major candidate that is closer to what you want, thus supporting someone you less want to win.
Short-term thinking that ensures long-term corruption. Who cares if "your guy" doesn't win this particular election? It's exactly that train of thought that cements the "spoiler effect" into existence. What's more important to you? The next 4 years, or the next 40? For me, it's the latter. So my vote is third party. Early and often. You think a Republican or Democrat will ever push to change our voting system from "first past the post"? A 3rd party would. It would only take one win to make that happen. And then our politics are changed forever. Dream bigger, my friend.
More importantly, winning the election isn't the only relevance of the vote. It also sends messages to the establishment about their constituents. The rise of the Tea Party and the fiscal republicans was largely due to the success of Ron Paul, despite losing in the primaries. I guarantee you Bernie Sanders' success/popularity will have a similar effect on the Democrat establishment. One thing is for sure: the victory of Trump is going to cause huge ripples in the Republican establishment. Their usual tactics won't work anymore, and they know it.
Slashdot Mirror
I couldn't figure out if your post was meant to be satire. The obvious answer is "because it's not society's responsibility to carry the lazy on their back." The traditional liberal response to the Republican talking point that the poor are lazy is that they're not lazy, but lack the opportunity or means to lift themselves up. If you just let people be lazy and get away with it, you're pretty much just proving Republicans right. It's not uncommon for human beings to work only to a minimum level of effort needed to coast by. The lower you set the expectations, the more society will adapt to those lower standards over time. You think the lazy/corrupt Greek model happened overnight? It was generations of exactly that kind of "acceptance" of low work standards and corruption that built a system of graft and laziness that simply became the expectation of all those involved.
That explains why every time I travel to Europe, they think the earth is flat and Jesus rides dinosaurs. I guess what we really need is an international standard of education. Because however would education move forward without global agreement on teaching methods? Better hunker down and never leave your nation -- dogs and cats, living together, I tell you. Absolute chaos traveling from country to country these days. /sarcasm
Sorry, but your "real world" is some hyperbolic fantasy (nightmare?) that individual states will go full dark age medieval if you personally don't have an iron national grip on them, whereas reality bears out something far different. Namely, states lean more conservative/liberal on certain niche issues and otherwise behave about the same as all the other states for 90+% of life's concerns.
How bout you tax the politicians that voted to pass the minimum wage law that made your job too costly?
The biggest beef against UBI is that people who have opportunities to succeed are passing (laziness), meaning UBI is a waste for those individuals. In Kenya, the vast number of people over there likely have far less opportunities to succeed. The needy-to-wasteful quotient is WAY higher there. You need a first-world country for a reasonable test.
They were expected to pick up seats in the House and Senate. The RNC was defending far more seats this year in swing states. Frankly, the DNC was expected to pick up way more than they did. Their odds of having Democrat majority control of the Senate was at 60 or 70% prior to the election. So, yes, they lost badly. It's especially bad considering the fact that next election Republicans don't have many seats at risk in need of heavy defense, whereas the Democrats do. Gaining control of any branch of our government is probably about 4 years away at a minimum for Dems.
It's subtle but true that Politifiact is left-slanted. The easiest way to spot it is by viewing the "Our ruling" conclusions they come to, often when a "partial truth" is reveal. For instance, you'll note in this False conclusion, they recognize "While some research suggests a small uptick in the number of part-time jobs as a result of the Affordable Care Act, Trumpâ(TM)s claim goes too far." and give it a false. But in this Half True decision about Obamacare, they recognize "However, to call it the Republican plan, as though a majority of Republicans endorsed it, goes too far. The House Republicans took a different path, and there was opposition from more hard-line members of the Republican coalition. It is telling that the Chafee bill never became a full blown bill and never came up for a vote.", yet it does not get a similar "False" (or even "Mostly False") ruling. I could find other examples, but I imagine you get the point. To be fair to them though, they're not extreme in their slant. They do a decent job of fact checking on both sides. But their subtle bias does show.
Umm, you do realize the US has one of the most heavily regulated healthcare industries in the entire world, right? Hell, our entire healthcare model (employer-provided healthcare + ACA) was pretty much designed by regulation (see below).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Following the second world war, President Harry Truman called for universal health care as a part of his Fair Deal in 1949 but strong opposition stopped that part of the Fair Deal.[14][15] However, in 1946 the National Mental Health Act was passed, as was the Hospital Survey and Construction Act, or Hill-Burton Act. In 1951 the IRS declared group premiums paid by employers as a tax-deductible business expense,[6] which solidified the third-party insurance companies' place as primary providers of access to health care in the United States.
Just because they're doing a pisspoor job regulating (for example, by focusing on giving people insurance instead of cost controls on healthcare) doesn't make the market unregulated. It just makes it regulated by morons.
The Constitution isn't meant to be interpreted. Where the Constitution is unclear, judges look to precedent (historical rulings). Never were they meant to insert their own "modern spin", feelings, or interpretations. The biggest issue with the modern judicial age is literally a case of Slippery Slope fallacy, whereby one judge takes liberties with what the government is allowed to do and then 10 years later the next person grabs a little more freedom away based on the last precedent and then 10 years later there's another loss, ad infinitum until the federal govt has so much case law on the books that they literally have unlimited power.
An "originalist" is nothing more than someone who believes in law rather than gut feeling and sentiment.
Sadly, that's very debatable. Obama was a freakin constitutional law professor and he routinely exceeds his allotted powers, the most egregious example being this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Additionally, there are Supreme Court justices that base some of their decisions on nothing related to the Constitution whatsoever. For instance, take the statement by Roberts here regarding a recent ACA case: The statutory scheme compels us to reject petitioners interpretation because it would destabilize the individual insurance market in any state with a federal exchange, and likely create the very death spirals that Congress designed the act to avoid, Roberts wrote.
He's literally stating, "This badly written law will fall apart if we revoke this unconstitutional part of it, therefore I will rule in its favor"
Here's another one (http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/27/politics/supreme-court-abortion-texas/): "When a State severely limits access to safe and legal procedures, women in desperate circumstances may resort to unlicensed rogue practitioners, faute de mieux, at great risk to their health and safety," she wrote.
That has nothing to do with whether or not something is legal/constitutional, so why is it even coming out of the mouth of a judge?
Want another one? Try Roe v Wade, where the Court literally invented a new fundamental right by quoting a right to privacy...that's right...your right of privacy is what gives you a Constitutional right to an abortion. That Court also pretty much choose to define life on their own, which is why we have the "third trimester" caveat.
In reality, what happens with court justices now is that prevailing public sentiment drives their actions moreso than the law. That's why Brown v. Buhman failed, yet Obergefell v. Hodges succeeded. Unless you can explain to me how we have a fundamental right to marry, but that right ends at exactly one person. Or say laws that prevent parent-child and brother-sister marriages -- again, if marriage is a fundamental right that shall not be infringed, why does the 14th Amendment only protect some cases (interracial, same-gender) whereas prohibiting others? It's clearly being determined via cultural fiat (namely, the "eww factor") rather than by law.
Btw, I should add that nowhere else in our free market does such a convoluted system exist. Mechanics, maids, plumbers, electricians...you name the service. Their prices are either advertised upfront, or you can get a quote prior to receiving services. If said prices are too high, you can shop other companies. Healthcare is the only industry where you have no F'in clue what you're going to pay until you get the bill and you're locked into a very specific network because your employer AND your insurance company control your market access.
Except it's not. The patients receive the healthcare, but they don't pay for it, nor do they choose 100% of it...the insurance companies do. Imagine you're buying a car where your choice of car was limited to "SUV, compact, or limo". You pick the category and then your employer chooses who will provide your car insurance and that insurance company selects your exact car brand. The car manufacturer then determines what options you will have on your vehicle. If you don't want that brand car or those car options, find another job. Should your employer pick a shitty or expensive insurance option, you're fuck-all out of luck. Should the manufacturer pick car options that are ludicrously expensive, both you and the insurance company are fuck-all out of luck. That's roughly analogous to the situation to healthcare.
They are in fact not doing this. Patients with insurance pay next to nothing to healthcare providers. The bulk of the money always comes from insurance. Additionally, people don't choose their patronage to healthcare providers based on negotiating ability. They choose it based on doctor familiarity and history (or specialists by reference or reputation), often set from an early age (my primary doctor hasn't changed in decades, nor would I want him to). And again the consumer is rarely even choosing their insurance -- their employer is. And what they pay is completely hidden from the consumer as well...it's just another cost to the company. So they could just as easily offer you a salary 10k lower than you would normally have to account for your additional healthcare expense and not spend any time whatsoever shopping for a better deal, thereby leaving you with the option of shopping for a new job to get affordable healthcare (if you even manage to realize you're being underpaid)
Remember the lie "if you like your insurance/doctor, you can keep it"? ACA forced a change in my insurance, which my current doctor was NOT an "in-network" member of. It's a perfect example of the lack of consumer choice in this market. I wanted my doctor. I could not have him, namely because I am not the one in control of my healthcare choices.
Do you believe it's a sane healthcare system for me to basically have to find a new job to be able to keep my doctor? In the current system, true costs of healthcare are hidden from insurance companies since rates are negotiated. Then true costs of insurance are hidden from the consumer, since employers bundle the cost into your salary. Wanna see what's stagnated middle class salaries for the past decade? Look no farther than healthcare.
You're acting like the "in-network" concept is some kind of insta-win. My new insurance is costing me WAY more than I ever paid in the past with my old insurance (on the order of double or triple). So I challenge that assertion. And I had BlueChoice insurance. It's what I was forced to drop because they didn't cover my doctor. Now I'm on my wife's insurance with UnitedHealthcare, another shitshow. Apparently all their bloodwork has to be done at in-network Labcorp and there's no coordination between healthcare providers and health insurance providers to make this happen. So last time when I went to the doctor for bloodwork, despite the fact the nurse dr
Again, you're focused on insurance market competition and not on healthcare competition. And health insurers have little reason to push lower the cost of healthcare itself. ACA has guaranteed their profit to be capped to a percentage of premiums. So they have a vested interest to keep premiums high. They also have very little reason to worry about competition since health markets tend to be very regional, they don't have to worry about competition across state lines, and lock-in among big business is fairly high (you only see a great deal of turnover in insurance policy in smaller business since the search & implementation process for new insurance carries a great deal of cost itself).
So despite businesses having substantial motivation to achieve lower premiums, they don't have the carrot or the stick to force that change in the actual healthcare market.
It's easy to find that answer. Find out why the hospital down the street can do it for 50% the cost. I couldn't tell you what the actual reason is, since these numbers aren't even remotely transparent to consumers. And if I had to wager a guess, I'd say it could be anything from creative bookkeeping (to be able to make use of those additional dollars while not reporting it as a profit) to inefficiency (extra/extraneous tests, too long hospital stays, brand drugs over generic, etc, etc), salary differences among nurses/doctors, etc. Honestly, it could be just about anything. And you'll never know exactly what is causing it until you shine the spotlight on healthcare instead of insurance. Expecting insurance companies to take aggressive steps towards solving this mystery and finding cost savings is a major mistake. They don't have the motivation to do so.
You don't know that. There are many companies that operate on a tight profit margin that have managed to make their operations more efficient when forced to (just look at all the energy companies out there that have managed to make leaps and bounds in well efficiency after oil & natural gas prices tanked, something that wasn't even on their radar when they were making a profit). Companies need a motivation driver to encourage that change. So long as hospitals aren't losing money, they also have no motivation to find cost-savings. They aren't competing with surrounding hospitals...they already have a captive consumer market (namely, everyone in their favored provider's insurance networks). I'm surprised you just assume these guys are running a trim operation. I've come to expect waste and bloat where there isn't any compelling reason to make it otherwise. These hospitals could have double the ambulances they need, excess nurse staff sitting around twiddling their fingers, zero effort to negotiate lower salaries with their doctors, zero effort to comparison shop for better equipment/drug deals. There could be tons of fat to trim. Who knows until you actually put some pressure on them?
This is because you're focused on insurance and "negotiated rates" instead of actuals
Here you see the problem. The numbers at their origin are completely wonky, almost equivalent to throwing darts at a dartboard. No one is shining the spotlight at the costs of healthcare itself because they're too focused on the insurance side of things. Insurance hides true cost pictures, because through an insurer, things are negotiated in a completely unpredictable way (see your ~$2 blood-work example, your $300 -> $30 doctor example, and your million dollars -> 80k example)...it's not "magic" that causes this complete crapshoot of prices...it's the lack of a competitive market. There is no "invisible hand" in the healthcare industry where supply/demand/cost balances itself...nobody is making a cost-risk or cost-reward analysis -- instead healthcare providers and insurance companies come up with fairly arbitrary numbers. Consumers rarely if ever see true prices and have little no ability to find more affordable healthcare deals since insurance locks us into a very limited network of providers. You're literally at the mercy of your insurance company. And if they decide they're not willing to cover your needed drug, well you're SOL, because the non-negotiated rate is a billion dollars.
No, a bunch of "car salesmen" negotiating behind my back my healthcare costs with god-knows-who is not competition. "Competition" means true costs are exposed (not "negotiated rates") and consumers have the freedom and mobility of choice to pick one doctor or hospital over another based on known rates. It's the kind of transparency and competition that would prevent a bunch of people from trying to sell an EpiPen for 10 billion dollars when another company can do the same exact thing for 10 dollars.
Solve the market problem and you solve healthcare costs. But as long as you have a bunch of middle men working behind the scenes to hide costs from you (and a govt focused on ignoring cost and merely spreading the higher cost burden onto the rich and healthy), you'll never solve the problem.
This is true of all politicians. Or did you actually believe Obama when he told you he wanted to eliminate the Patriot Act? (after voting to extend it as a senator)
Incendiary, certainly. But that doesn't automatically make thing inaccurate.
I think you'll be surprised to find out how much stuff Obama passed by Executive Orders (43 changes to ACA alone). That stuff can be undone with a snap of the fingers. And there are many other games to be played within our strange legal system as well. Look up reconciliation...that's the only way ACA got passed in the first place. It bypasses cloture, and can be used to repeal major parts of ACA.
What's this remind me of? Oh yeah: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Avoiding spoilers + being able to talk about the movie with friends while it's still relevant are pretty big draws.
I hate to break it to you, but a 300k household isn't living high on the hog. They're the neighbor next door. A couple of doctors, or lawyers, computer engineers, or even any married couple in a skilled trade in a high cost-of-living area like NYC is going to hit that target. And for the majority of their lives, they're living a "middle class lifestyle w/ excess" (1-2 extra vacations per year and a luxury car), not a "billionaire lifestyle" (yachts, helicopters, limos, etc). If they hit 7-10 million in net worth (and that's a major if, because I don't even seeing it happen at 300k/year), it won't be until late, late in life, very close to retirement. 300k household income is top 3% of the nation. The kind of money you're talking about is far closer to 500k++ household income, which is generally reserved for business owners/CEOs.
You're wrong. That's exactly who they are thinking about. Why do you think all the tax breaks cut off (and tax hikes begin at) significantly lower income levels than 10 million (250k joint was the most recent target income level for hiking costs on). Govt policy never targets those making 10+ million (probably because there simply aren't enough people making that, are therefore not enough money to extract). Media/people may rail against the Enron CEOs of the world, but the actual policy that goes into effect punishes primarily the middle classes millionaires.
Perhaps that's the problem. In their eager, vindictive zeal to crucify the billionaires of the world, they support legislation that puts the coals to the lesser wealthy, while the billionaires hide their wealth in Ireland.
You must not have waited long enough. Dragon Age 2 has an 82 metascore (anything around 80 is thoroughly average on that site) and a 4.4 User Score (abyssmal). Mass Effect 3 has a fair metascore of 89, given the fact everything other than the ending was awesome about that game.
Seeing as how my general rule is to ignore anything under 80 on Metacritic and to filter out everything in the 80-85 range based on User Scores, I'd say the system works.
Not really.
One for, most of the gains in renewables in Germany came from nuclear losses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
In 2015, 44% of German power came from coal: http://www.eia.gov/todayinener...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Even the US has a lower percentage coal use (currently around 33%). And the US has been trending downward, whereas Germany has been trending sideways.
And Germany imports about two-thirds of its energy, which comes primarily from fossil fuel sources (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany#Energy_Consumption). It's just passing on "externality costs" to other countries.
No, I'm pretty sure if minorities weren't involved, voter suppression or enabling would be perfectly fine (see gerrymandering). At any rate, there's plenty of examples of new laws disproportionately affecting one party over another (see allowing felons to vote, or lowering/raising the voting age) and they're seen as legal. They're clearly painting this issue as a racial one. Stupidly, I might add. The two political parties attempt to get every advantage they can all the time...either all of it is discriminatory or none of it is. The selective BS is just that...BS. The courts won't freakin touch gerrymandering...but this they won't shut up about. That doesn't make one lick of sense.
I'm looking at the OP's numbers, and it implies no such thing. In fact, it almost exactly implies a ~50% tech reduction. That's far from "halting all progress".
More importantly, you're completely dodging the point being made by trying to claim exaggeration. In simple form: all things have a cost (Perhaps not zero sum, but a cost nonetheless). And every hour of our time or dollar of our money that we throw at accelerating green adoption is an hour/dollar that could have went towards any number of things, like curing cancer or reducing poverty. Is the relationship one-to-one? No. Is it more relevant/substantial than you're trying to claim? Yes.
No, it really isn't. Kasich would have been the compromise between the right wing and the progressives. Hillary isn't even remotely close to the middle. On defense spending, she's a hawk. On anything else, she's effectively Obama #2. When she comes up with any feasible plan to reign in Mandatory spending without "just tax the rich people more", I'll begin to see her as a compromise. But otherwise her plan is the same as Obama's before her: "spend more, tax the rich more, enlarge Mandatory spending." I see no deviation from that agenda.
Short-term thinking that ensures long-term corruption. Who cares if "your guy" doesn't win this particular election? It's exactly that train of thought that cements the "spoiler effect" into existence. What's more important to you? The next 4 years, or the next 40? For me, it's the latter. So my vote is third party. Early and often. You think a Republican or Democrat will ever push to change our voting system from "first past the post"? A 3rd party would. It would only take one win to make that happen. And then our politics are changed forever. Dream bigger, my friend.
More importantly, winning the election isn't the only relevance of the vote. It also sends messages to the establishment about their constituents. The rise of the Tea Party and the fiscal republicans was largely due to the success of Ron Paul, despite losing in the primaries. I guarantee you Bernie Sanders' success/popularity will have a similar effect on the Democrat establishment. One thing is for sure: the victory of Trump is going to cause huge ripples in the Republican establishment. Their usual tactics won't work anymore, and they know it.