Democrats organize to fight back

[pbrower2a]

(11-16-2016, 02:55 PM)taramarie Wrote: "What do you think of turning the Tea Party rhetoric to use against the Trump Administration and its surrogates when they misbehave?"


I think it is childish. I also think going as low as the opposition is not the right way to go about it.
I also question how much of a positive impact it makes...meaning is it effective for the outcome you are going for. Are you wanting people on the opposite side to come over to the Dems or are you wanting equality? Are you wanting them to change their ways? What is the Democrats message? Are they wanting equality and if so why attack certain groups of people like whites as if they are all the enemy?Is that an effective strategy to get them to change their ways? Is it wise to think that all of them are the same and to label them as ignorant to (insert the plight of minorities). Tearing people down in order to build up in my opinion is unwise. I am not interested in tearing things down. But it seems some do not know when to stop tearing down.

I doubt that we could ever stoop to the irrationality and mean-spiritedness of the Tea Party, not that we would want to. Thus no equivalent of "The Zoo Has an African Lion" fits Democrats. Disrupting town halls? After what they did to Democrats in 2009 and 2010, Republicans would not risk exposing themselves to their own medicine.

White people are obviously not the problem. We liberals may need to bring back our usual coalition with working-class whites to defeat Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans. So when he pushes for a national right-to-work law and unions oppose such -- join that protest.

[Eric the Green]

Dear Avaazers everywhere,

In 67 days, President Trump could go to war with climate action. But governments are at their annual climate summit right now. If we act fast,​ we could get them to lock in progress before he can destroy everything we worked for.

Germany, China, India, Brazil, the climate vulnerable countries, and others are reasserting their commitment to the Paris climate deal. But if enough of us call for it we could get them to urgently lock in the way to zero climate pollution, demand the US keeps its Paris promise, and commit to advance faster towards climate solutions that Trump won't be able to stop.

Let's ask them to make an unequivocal statement for climate action, regardless of what Trump does. Avaaz has staff inside the summit -- let's make this the biggest public call ever to show we will fight like hell for everything we love -- it'll be delivered directly to governments.

Sign the Paris protection petition​,​ and​ forward this email to everyone!

Trump​ has called climate change a hoax, dismissed the Paris​ ​agreement, and just gave a climate denier with ties to Big Oil the job of determining his environmental policy in the next few months!

But over 100 countries have signed up and Paris is already in force. Now the world's most vulnerable countries are leading the charge for urgent climate action. Yesterday, Germany announced a bold new plan to radically cut carbon and, crucially, China is shutting down coal and breaking records on renewable energy. India too.

Trump could pull the US out of the UN climate convention when he comes to power -- and as the world’s largest per capita emitter, that will have huge impact not only on the people of the US, but on all of us. But such a withdrawal is a bureaucratic nightmare that could take years. If enough of us join together now with a roar of NO! we can find ways to stop it, and ensure the rest of the world speeds up if the US slows down.

We simply can't let this ignorant billionaire destroy the only path to save our planet. Let's go all out now to keep the world on track when Trump takes office.

Sign now to get our leaders to recommit to our planet and forward this on!

Together​,​ we helped make the landmark Paris climate agreement possible. We marched, donated, signed, and called. In the end, we helped push good leaders to be champions and made it difficult for anyone trying to block progress. Paris was always a starting point. We still have a long way to go to save everything we love from climate change. But if we lose it now, this shot at global cooperation is gone. This week we must act.

With hope,

Iain, Alice, Pascal, Risalat, Fatima, Ricken and the whole Avaaz team

MORE INFORMATION:

Paris climate deal thrown into uncertainty by US election result (The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/...e-deal-int...

Donald Trump Could Put Climate Change on Course for ‘Danger Zone’ (NYTimes)
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/11/us/pol...hange.html

U.S. Leadership and the Historic Paris Agreement to Combat Climate Change (White House)
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-off...ate-change

Avaaz is a 44-million-person global campaign network that works to ensure that the views and values of the world's people shape global decision-making. ("Avaaz" means "voice" or "song" in many languages.) Avaaz members live in every nation of the world; our team is spread across 18 countries on 6 continents and operates in 17 languages. Learn about some of Avaaz's biggest campaigns here, or follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

[pbrower2a]

(11-16-2016, 03:15 PM)taramarie Wrote:

(11-16-2016, 03:06 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(11-16-2016, 02:55 PM)taramarie Wrote: "What do you think of turning the Tea Party rhetoric to use against the Trump Administration and its surrogates when they misbehave?"


I think it is childish. I also think going as low as the opposition is not the right way to go about it.
I also question how much of a positive impact it makes...meaning is it effective for the outcome you are going for. Are you wanting people on the opposite side to come over to the Dems or are you wanting equality? Are you wanting them to change their ways? What is the Democrats message? Are they wanting equality and if so why attack certain groups of people like whites as if they are all the enemy?Is that an effective strategy to get them to change their ways? Is it wise to think that all of them are the same and to label them as ignorant to (insert the plight of minorities). Tearing people down in order to build up in my opinion is unwise. I am not interested in tearing things down. But it seems some do not know when to stop tearing down.

I doubt that we could ever stoop to the irrationality and mean-spiritedness of the Tea Party, not that we would want to. Thus no equivalent of "The Zoo Has an African Lion" fits Democrats. Disrupting town halls? After what they did to Democrats in 2009 and 2010, Republicans would not risk exposing themselves to their own medicine.

White people are obviously not the problem. We liberals may need to bring back our usual coalition with working-class whites to defeat Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans. So when he pushes for a national right-to-work law and unions oppose such -- join that protest.

Oooh I dunno about that. There are some extremely destructive folk that side with the Dems and they are doing a lot of damage.


"White people are obviously not the problem."
Obviously but then there is white shaming and a lot of that goes on within your party.

I wouldn't trust them. Those could well be the agents-provocateurs of the other side who tell someone to throw a brick and then tell the cops. (Sure, I would take a photo of someone doing a smash-and-grab larceny and supply it to the police as evidence of criminal wrong-doing irrelevant to my cause just as I would take a photo of counter-protester brutality). I more expect counter-protester brutality than police brutality.

We can protest all we want when applicable because such can itself be good citizenship, but we need to be good citizens in other aspects. We are as much against lawlessness  of the government as we are of petty crooks that we cannot defend. We must remain civil even if we be necessarily loud.

[Eric the Green]

(11-16-2016, 03:50 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: The Eastern Totalitarian Powers are experts at the use of scissors strategies and the dialectic.

Here we see it at work.

On the one hand, maximal convergence with the "Alt-Right" - in order to get many seats at many tables, cloaked in the legitimacy of being now inside the mainstream Right's big tents.

On the other hand, by having rather unpalatable people like Trump, and maybe soon, La Pen, not to mention, who in Germany, and other places, installed, much fury is sure to arise from the Left. However, the Left have a very diffuse focus. So many issues to defend - The Environment, human rights, economic fairness. That leaves very little time for the Left to focus on the big prize - world geopolitics.

The environment is a world issue, and so is poverty, economic fairness and human rights. That's the focus we need.

Quote:We see Eric here, railing about attacks on the green notions, attacks on the social safety net, etc. This divides the potential potent opposition to the rising Quisling regimes here in the West. Such regimes can eventually go all in with Vichy-like policies, since a divided opposition cannot stop them.

Whoever opposes Trump, will oppose him. We on the Left are opposing him because of "attacks on the green notions (aka, "realities"), attacks on the social safety net, etc." Many of us opposed him because he's a loose cannon on foreign policy and a Russian agent too. There can be common ground there. But we on the Left must stress the issues we believe in. And those ostensibly on the Right who oppose Trump must be our allies on these Left issues too.

According to the election returns though, many supposed opponents on the Right were likely traitors to #neverTrump and voted for him. Opponents to Trump on the right are a 1% minority. It's the Left that will make the difference, IF there is one.

[pbrower2a]

[Eric the Green]

Donald Trump now parroting Paul Ryan, which could mean the end of Medicare—and Trump’s popularity

By Joan McCarter
Wednesday Nov 16, 2016 · 9:11 AM PST
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/11/...popularity

Throughout the campaign, Donald Trump maintained that he wasn't going to touch Social Security or Medicare. Now that he's president-elect and has done absolutely nothing to prepare for that eventuality, he—or his transition team—is apparently latching onto whatever is already out there. Thanks to the sharp eye of Huffington Post's Jonathon Cohn, we know Trump's evolution. He's now embracing privatizing Medicare. Oh, and decimating Medicaid.

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has championed these ideas for years. Trump has not. In fact, in a 2015 interview his campaign website highlighted, he vowed that "I'm not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid." But the health care agenda on Trump's transition website, which went live Thursday, vows to "modernize Medicare" and allow more "flexibility" for Medicaid.

In Washington, those are euphemisms for precisely the kind of Medicare and Medicaid plans Ryan has long envisioned. And while it's never clear what Trump really thinks or how he'll act, it sure looks like both he and congressional Republicans are out to undo Lyndon Johnson's health care legacy, not just Barack Obama's. […]

It's difficult to be precise about the real-world effects, because the Republican plans for replacing existing government insurance programs remain so undefined. Ryan's "A Better Way" proposal is a broad, 37-page outline without dollar figures, and Senate Republican leaders have never produced an actual Obamacare "replacement" plan.

However, Ryan has consistently been very clear and detailed on a couple of things: Medicare privatization—turning it into a voucher program, and turning Medicaid into a block-grant where states get to choose what to do with a chunk of money that will, over time, diminish. And it sure looks like Trump has decided to embrace that. Which is kind of crazy, because Trump above all else wants to be popular. This isn't going to be popular.

Therein lies Democrats' first real opportunity to fight and win. Even Trump recognizes that ending Medicare is a dumb idea. Here's the chance to splinter the Republicans and jam the wedge that already exists between the two in even deeper. Democrats can mobilize their constituents—the white working class folks who rely on Medicare!—and work with advocacy groups to pressure Trump to fight Ryan, and likely win.

[Warren Dew]

(11-16-2016, 04:51 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Donald Trump now parroting Paul Ryan, which could mean the end of Medicare—and Trump’s popularity

By Joan McCarter  
Wednesday Nov 16, 2016 · 9:11 AM PST
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/11/...popularity

Throughout the campaign, Donald Trump maintained that he wasn't going to touch Social Security or Medicare. Now that he's president-elect and has done absolutely nothing to prepare for that eventuality, he—or his transition team—is apparently latching onto whatever is already out there. Thanks to the sharp eye of Huffington Post's Jonathon Cohn, we know Trump's evolution. He's now embracing privatizing Medicare. Oh, and decimating Medicaid.

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has championed these ideas for years. Trump has not. In fact, in a 2015 interview his campaign website highlighted, he vowed that "I'm not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid." But the health care agenda on Trump's transition website, which went live Thursday, vows to "modernize Medicare" and allow more "flexibility" for Medicaid.

In Washington, those are euphemisms for precisely the kind of Medicare and Medicaid plans Ryan has long envisioned. And while it's never clear what Trump really thinks or how he'll act, it sure looks like both he and congressional Republicans are out to undo Lyndon Johnson's health care legacy, not just Barack Obama's. […]

It's difficult to be precise about the real-world effects, because the Republican plans for replacing existing government insurance programs remain so undefined. Ryan's "A Better Way" proposal is a broad, 37-page outline without dollar figures, and Senate Republican leaders have never produced an actual Obamacare "replacement" plan.

However, Ryan has consistently been very clear and detailed on a couple of things: Medicare privatization—turning it into a voucher program, and turning Medicaid into a block-grant where states get to choose what to do with a chunk of money that will, over time, diminish. And it sure looks like Trump has decided to embrace that. Which is kind of crazy, because Trump above all else wants to be popular. This isn't going to be popular.

Therein lies Democrats' first real opportunity to fight and win. Even Trump recognizes that ending Medicare is a dumb idea. Here's the chance to splinter the Republicans and jam the wedge that already exists between the two in even deeper. Democrats can mobilize their constituents—the white working class folks who rely on Medicare!—and work with advocacy groups to pressure Trump to fight Ryan, and likely win.

Except Ryan isn't trying to end medicare; he's trying to make it sustainable so it will still be there beyond the boomers it currently serves.  Obama tried to do that by cutting the reimbursement rates so that only the worst doctors would be willing to take medicare payments; Ryan just wants to do the cost controls differently.

[Eric the Green]

How are vouchers going to work in medicare? Also, isn't it easy just to cut them, so that we who paid for it don't get much coverage?

[Eric the Green]

Progressives don't agree with you, Warren. Are you so sure you are right?

Republicans want to charge seniors a lot more for inferior health coverage.
https://thinkprogress.org/the-republican....rdnoflk2s

Again, it’s impossible to know exactly how much more seniors will pay for inferior health coverage under the Republican Medicare plan, because Paul Ryan hasn’t exactly been forthcoming with figures like how much the vouchers will be worth or how much he expects his proposal to cost. In 2011, however, Ryan did provide enough information to allow researchers at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities to calculate how much costs would increase for seniors. Their conclusion was grim.

There are two reasons why moving more seniors into private health plans will jack up the overall cost of care. One is that private insurers simply have far more administrative costs than a government plan. The other is that traditional Medicare has far more power to bargain down health costs than private insurers.

One of the most important mechanisms for keeping down health care costs is a bargaining process that takes place between insurers and health providers.

When a large health insurer is confronted with a six figure bill for a lung transplant, or even a three figure bill for a patient’s anti-fungal drugs, they are typically able to bargain these prices down because they speak on behalf of thousands, tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of patients. If a particular hospital refuses to bargain, an insurance company can threaten to cut that hospital out of their network, so the hospital will come to the negotiating table out of fear that it will lose a large chunk of its patients.

An insurer’s power in this negotiation, however, is directly related to the number of patients it represents. A hospital may be able to afford to lose business from a small insurer, and thus is more likely to drive a harder bargain with such an insurer than it would with a larger insurer that can speaks on behalf of many more patients. And the biggest insurer of them all, at least in the United States, is Medicare.

In 2010, seniors accounted 34 percent of health care costs in the United States, despite making up only 13 percent of the population. Mortality being what it is, people will unavoidably spend more on medical care as they age, so a health plan that covers the bulk of America’s seniors will command significant bargaining power against hospitals. Few health providers can afford to simply give up payments from Medicare patients, so they need to agree to the prices that Medicare is willing to pay.

What Paul Ryan wants to do is divide up the powerful bargaining unit of seniors currently covered by traditional Medicare into dozens of smaller private health plans. That leaves each of these health plans with far less power to drive a hard bargain. The result is more money for hospitals and higher out-of-pocket costs for seniors.

Republicans, in other words, want to charge seniors a lot more for inferior health coverage.

Phasing out Medicare

An open question is whether Ryan intends to simply charge seniors more for inferior coverage, or if he will actually phase out Medicare itself — leaving seniors with an increasingly worthless voucher in lieu of the robust health coverage they currently enjoy.

During the debate over Obamacare, the phrase “bending the cost curve” was frequently tossed around. This refers to the biggest long-term problem facing health policy makers: for most of the last four decades, health care costs have grown faster than wages. Indeed, the numbers here are quite stark. Between 1960 and 2012, health costs grew from 5.2 percent of GDP to 17.9 percent. One of the primary reasons why so many Americans haven’t felt any real wage growth for decades is that their raises are being eaten up by higher insurance premiums and doctors’ bills.

Bending the cost curve meant reducing the rate of health inflation so that it no longer consumed a larger share of Americans out-of-pocket costs every year. And there are early signs that this cost curve did begin to bend downward under President Obama.

Ryancare, by contrast, risks shifting this curve upward for the reasons explained above — it diminishes Medicare’s ability to bargain prices down.

Ryan has taken conflicting positions on whether his new voucher program will account for the cost curve. In 2011, Ryan’s original health plan provided that the new Medicare vouchers would gain value each year at a rate that was slower than the rate of health inflation — effectively causing them to lose value with each passing year. According to the Congressional Budget Office, “by 2080, Medicare would be cut 76 percent below its projected size under current policies” if Ryan’s 2011 plan had become law. A child born in 2015 would receive less than a quarter of the resources provided to today’s seniors when that child became eligible for a voucher.

By contrast, the most recent version of Ryan’s Medicare plan provides that the value of the voucher should be determined “based on the average bid of participating plans.” So the voucher would be indexed to something that is likely to rise at close to the rate of health inflation. The latest version of Ryancare would charge seniors a lot more for inferior health coverage, but it doesn’t appear to phase out Medicare in the same way that the 2011 version did.

Nevertheless, given the increasing vagueness of Ryan’s plans, the speaker’s oft-demonstrated innumeracy, and the fact that he can’t seem to settle on the details for how he plans to voucherize Medicare, it remains an open question whether the vouchers would lose value over time.

[Eric the Green]

[Warren Dew]

(11-16-2016, 06:04 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: How are vouchers going to work in medicare? Also, isn't it easy just to cut them, so that we who paid for it don't get much coverage?

They're likely to work similarly to existing Medicare Advantage and Medicare Part D plans.

Medicare is going to get cut any way you slice it - or rather, is going to grow at the normal rate of inflation instead of the rate of medical inflation - it's just that vouchers give you more of a choice in how it works.

As for what you paid for, ever since Bush added prescription drug coverage, Medicare has cost about three times as much as what gets paid into it.

(11-16-2016, 06:12 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Progressives don't agree with you, Warren. Are you so sure you are right?

I'm much more sure now that I know progressives don't agree with me, since they're almost always wrong.

[Eric the Green]

(11-16-2016, 08:43 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(11-16-2016, 06:04 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: How are vouchers going to work in medicare? Also, isn't it easy just to cut them, so that we who paid for it don't get much coverage?

They're likely to work similarly to existing Medicare Advantage and Medicare Part D plans.

We'll have to pay the premiums for Advantage/Part D, including Part B, and also Part A. Which will all be more expensive. And you trust Ryan to raise the amount of these vouchers to cover all this, and to cover the steeply-rising costs of all these parts? If so, I've got some ocean front property in Miami Beach to sell you.

Quote:Medicare is going to get cut any way you slice it - or rather, is going to grow at the normal rate of inflation instead of the rate of medical inflation - it's just that vouchers give you more of a choice in how it works.

It takes away bargaining power for prices, and leaves you to the mercies of small insurers, who will raise your premiums and deductibles (or should I say mine). Small insurance companies are inefficient and eat up our steeply-rising payments to pay their rising profits.

Quote:As for what you paid for, ever since Bush added prescription drug coverage, Medicare has cost about three times as much as what gets paid into it.

Because the advice of progressives has not been followed, and the monopoly of American drug companies has been maintained.

Quote:

(11-16-2016, 06:12 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Progressives don't agree with you, Warren. Are you so sure you are right?

I'm much more sure now that I know progressives don't agree with me, since they're almost always wrong.

The article posted was right. Your ideology is not.

[Eric the Green]

(11-16-2016, 05:42 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: Yesterday, I picked, of all years, 2001. Yep, I'm now actually nostalgic about 2001, warts and all.

Wow, that's some big warts on that one you like.

[Eric the Green]

Robert Reich discusses how to resist:

[Odin]

(11-16-2016, 06:21 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

That "new leadership" included the Dems, not just the Reaganite GOP.

[Warren Dew]

(11-17-2016, 01:58 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

Quote:Medicare is going to get cut any way you slice it - or rather, is going to grow at the normal rate of inflation instead of the rate of medical inflation - it's just that vouchers give you more of a choice in how it works.

It takes away bargaining power for prices, and leaves you to the mercies of small insurers, who will raise your premiums and deductibles (or should I say mine). Small insurance companies are inefficient and eat up our steeply-rising payments to pay their rising profits.

To the contrary, private insurance is far more able to negotiate for lower prices.  As you point out, government is subject to lobbying from the suppliers, keeping prices high; private insurance doesn't have that problem.

[Warren Dew]

(11-17-2016, 08:00 AM)Odin Wrote:

(11-16-2016, 06:21 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

That "new leadership" included the Dems, not just the Reaganite GOP.

Indeed, that 30 years includes 16 years of Democratic administrations and only 2 years of Reagan - notably the last two years when the Bushies were starting to get their way.

[Eric the Green]

It is 36 years now, with the next 4 to be added on. Enough Republican and Democratic-lite power to stop or reverse every progressive proposal and institute regressive proposals instead. No progressive administration and congress in all that time; even since 1966. A sane nation would not tolerate a leadership such as we have had for 54 years and counting.

And we have paid for it with ballooning inequality, increasing poverty, and becoming an immobile class society in a banana republic, which imposes mounting climate change on the rest of the world, not to mention creepy, deadly wars and invasions, and a skyrocketing national debt whose sole and deliberate purpose was to shrink government to fit into a bathtub, as one of our leaders put it.

No progressive presidents, and only two Democratic-lite administrations in all that time, and even the two Democratic-lite administrations had their proposals blocked in congress virtually their entire time in office. All in obedience to the Reagan false and deadly ideology of free-market trickle-down economics, and resentment of "top down" government policies which might "use my taxes for freebies for lazy people; you know, those weird folks in the cities who got all that civil rights help, and all those illegals; you know those folks I mean....."

[Eric the Green]

(11-17-2016, 12:01 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(11-17-2016, 01:58 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

Quote:Medicare is going to get cut any way you slice it - or rather, is going to grow at the normal rate of inflation instead of the rate of medical inflation - it's just that vouchers give you more of a choice in how it works.

It takes away bargaining power for prices, and leaves you to the mercies of small insurers, who will raise your premiums and deductibles (or should I say mine). Small insurance companies are inefficient and eat up our steeply-rising payments to pay their rising profits.

To the contrary, private insurance is far more able to negotiate for lower prices.  As you point out, government is subject to lobbying from the suppliers, keeping prices high; private insurance doesn't have that problem.

No, they have no problem just jacking up prices to give themselves as much profit as they want. The largest health insurance company is Medicare, and it alone has the power to negotiate for lower prices.

[Eric the Green]

(11-17-2016, 08:00 AM)Odin Wrote:

(11-16-2016, 06:21 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

That "new leadership" included the Dems, not just the Reaganite GOP.

No disagreement there; the New Democrat-lites may have been better than the GOP, but they did not stray too far from the Reagan Ranch, even when they were allowed to do anything worthwhile, which was seldom. Instead they often went along with the program.

And the voters who wanted "change" last Tuesday, and before, seem unable to grasp that there are 3 branches of government. Imagine that, allegedly voting for Trump because he promised change, better trade deals that would bring jobs back, so what do they do? Vote for Pat Toomey and Ron Johnson, the most typical GOP Republican stooges imaginable who don't care a thing even about better trade deals? Anyone in the right mind call THAT "voting for change?" How many GOP congress-critters were thrown out? Just 6; is that "voting for change??" NO, it isn't!