Just another tricky day in America

[flintlock]

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090801/D99PT4UO1.html

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) - As a government shutdown loomed, residents of Alabama's most populous county lined up Friday to renew their car registrations and settle their tax bills.
By Monday, at least a quarter of the county's 3,600 employees will be on unpaid leave and many county offices will be closed or cutting back hours.
The county, with 640,000 residents, has been on the brink of filing the nation's largest municipal bankruptcy for the past year due to a sewer bond fiasco that remains unresolved. Then things got worse: A judge ruled the county's occupational tax is illegal and courts refused to let the county spend the revenue from it while officials appeal.

Just one more in a long line to come I'm afraid.

[GRG55]

Re: Just another tricky day in America

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090801/D99PT4UO1.html

Just one more in a long line to come I'm afraid.

Hmmm...

After 9/11 many turned to government to "protect" them.

After the credit crisis hit home the bankers turned to the government to bail them out.

After Chrysler and GM started to fail the workers turned to government to save them.

...etc.

So what happens when "the government" stops working...

[audrey_girl]

Re: Just another tricky day in America

Hmmm...

After 9/11 many turned to government to "protect" them.

After the credit crisis hit home the bankers turned to the government to bail them out.

After Chrysler and GM started to fail the workers turned to government to save them.

...etc.

So what happens when "the government" stops working...

the people of America get the biggest wake-up call/reality check in world history

[medved]

Re: Just another tricky day in America

the people of America get the biggest wake-up call/reality check in world history

They will recognize the evil socialist ideas America followed for the last 70 years and will demand more of the same.

[cjppjc]

Re: Just another tricky day in America

They will recognize the evil socialist ideas America followed for the last 70 years and will demand more of the same.

You got that right. :cool:

[Starving Steve]

Re: Just another tricky day in America

It isn't socialism that killed America, far from it.... It was endless wars, endless defence spending, endless prison construction, endless drug war, endless tax cuts, endless bail-outs for banks, and electing Ronald Reagan, and then the Bushes as presidents, particularly the latter Bush.

Isn't it funny how the rightwingers in America just don't see it? They still think that Reaganomics works: that they can spend forever, have a giant boom, and grow their way out of deficits. That was supply-side economics taught to them by Ronald Reagan's partner, Arthur Laffer.

And Ronald Reagan put Alan Greenspan into the Fed to drive-down interest rates to nothing. And Greenspan chose Ben Bernanke to continue his work. Bush Jr. recommended Ben Bernanke to Obama to continue on at the Fed.

We all go down the toilet in this depression, but at least let's keep the history right so that our children and the rest of the world might learn from our horrid experience.

[medved]

Re: Just another tricky day in America

It isn't socialism that killed America, far from it.... It was endless wars, endless defence spending, endless prison construction, endless drug war, endless tax cuts, endless bail-outs for banks, and electing Ronald Reagan, and then the Bushes as presidents, particularly the latter Bush.

Isn't it funny how the rightwingers in America just don't see it? They still think that Reaganomics works: that they can spend forever, have a giant boom, and grow their way out of deficits. That was supply-side economics taught to them by Ronald Reagan's partner, Arthur Laffer.

This is precisely what socialism is. First, left wing nuts create massive gov't machine and then they get really surprised it is abused by both sides. Just like Obama supporters are now pissed off because of his Wall Street support. When are you gonna get it? The real opposition to the left-wing socialism is not right-wing socialism. Whatever side abuses the gov't machine it is still based on socialist ideas, they just have different supporting constituencies and different rhetoric. None of the recent economic disasters could happen without massive gov't intervention.

The real opposition to socialism is the good old American idea of the limited government.

And Ronald Reagan put Alan Greenspan into the Fed to drive-down interest rates to nothing. And Greenspan chose Ben Bernanke to continue his work. Bush Jr. recommended Ben Bernanke to Obama to continue on at the Fed.

We all go down the toilet in this depression, but at least let's keep the history right so that our children and the rest of the world might learn from our horrid experience.

First, you need to understand it, if you don't want to live through it.

I already did, you can consider me a man from your future.

[flintlock]

Re: Just another tricky day in America

First, you need to understand it, if you don't want to live through it.

I already did, you can consider me a man from your future.

Which is why I consider you a great asset to Itulip. You've seen it first hand.

[KGW]

Re: Just another tricky day in America

They will recognize the evil socialist ideas America followed for the last 70 years and will demand more of the same.

More likely, it's closer to this:


http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...6650122.column
From the Los Angeles Times


What's so great about private health insurance?
The bloody battle in Congress over a 'public option' ignores the insurers' role in creating the nation's

healthcare crisis and their efforts to throttle reform.
Michael Hiltzik

August 3, 2009

Throughout the heroic struggle in Congress to provide a "public option" in health insurance, one

question never seems to get answered: Why are we so intent on protecting the private option?

The "public option," as followers of the debate know, is a government-sponsored health plan that would

be available as an alternative to, and in competition with, the for-profit health insurance industry,

otherwise known as the private option.

On Friday, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce narrowly passed a reform bill incorporating a

public option resembling Medicare. It was a bloody fight among members of Congress, some of whom believe

that the public option will give the government unwarranted power over healthcare, and all of whom enjoy

government-provided healthcare that's a lot better than what most of us get.

But the battle is just beginning. After the committee vote, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi warned that the

health insurance industry will conduct a "shock and awe" campaign to kill the public option when

Congress returns from vacation in September and starts debating the measure. We can expect to be

overwhelmed with an industry ad campaign worth millions of dollars (remember Harry and Louise?)

exhorting us to write our lawmakers to preserve the American way of healthcare.

So it's proper to remind ourselves what that American way entails. For if the insurers have proved

anything over the last 15 years as the health crisis has gathered speed like an avalanche roaring

downhill, it's that they're part of the problem, not the solution.

The firms take billions of dollars out of the U.S. healthcare wallet as profits, while imposing enormous

administrative costs on doctors, hospitals, employers and patients. They've introduced complexity into

the system at every level. Your doctor has to fight them to get approval for the treatment he or she

thinks is best for you. Your hospital has to fight them for approval for every day you're laid up. Then

they have to fight them to get their bills paid, and you do too.

One Wendell Potter reminded a Senate committee in June that health insurance executives had assured

Congress in 1993 that they would work to secure universal medical coverage and end denials of coverage

to people with pre-existing conditions. Then they moved heaven and earth to kill reform.

They've made the same promises now, Potter observed. But they're in an even better position to throttle

reform. Mergers and acquisitions have turned the industry into a cartel of huge corporations.

"The industry is bigger, richer and stronger, and it has a much tighter grip on our healthcare system,"

he said. The last thing they want is a government program set up as their competition.

Potter knows the insurers' ways because he was a top executive in the industry for 20 years. But the

hard numbers bear him out. The two largest insurers, WellPoint and UnitedHealth Group, each acquired 11

other insurers between 2000 and 2007. They now control a total of 67 million "covered lives" (that's

customers in health insurance-speak).

This consolidation has produced functional monopolies in communities across America. The American

Medical Assn. (itself no great fan of reform) found in a 2007 survey that in 76% of the country, defined

as its major metropolitan statistical areas, one insurer had a share of 50% or more of the conventional

insurance market. This phenomenon gives the companies enormous power to drive up premiums and maximize

profits.

Why do we tolerate this? The industry loves to promote surveys indicating that most Americans are

"satisfied" with their current health insurance -- 37% are "very satisfied" and 17% "extremely

satisfied," according to one such study.

Yet these figures are misleading. Most people are satisfied with their current insurance because most

people never have a complex encounter with the health insurance bureaucracy. Medical care generally

follows the so-called 80-20 statistical pattern -- 20% of patients consume 80% of care. If your typical

encounter is an annual checkup or treatment of the kids' sniffles, or even a serious but routine

condition such as a heart attack, your experience is probably satisfactory.

But it's on the margins where the challenges exist. Anyone whose condition is even slightly out of the

ordinary knows the sinking feeling of entering health insurance hell -- pre-authorizations, denials,

appeals, and days, weeks, even months wasted waiting for resolution.

And that's among people with affordable employer-paid insurance, an ever-shrinking cohort. The

percentage of small and medium-sized businesses offering health coverage to employees shriveled to 38%

from 67% between 1995 and 2008, according to the National Small Business Assn. Without reform, the

number will continue to plummet.

Meanwhile, people employed by big companies that offer a health plan are within a layoff notice of

losing coverage for themselves or their families, joining America's 46 million uninsured.

Their only alternative right now is the individual market, where insurers scrutinize applicants' medical

histories, looking for reasons to turn them down or charge them exorbitant premiums. Have hay fever,

asthma, a cholesterol pill prescription? Are you a woman of child-bearing age? You're virtually

uninsurable at an affordable cost.

Even if you're accepted, your carrier reserves the right to cancel your policy retroactively if it finds

that you left even a tiny condition from years back off your application.

The public option may be your lifeline -- if it's enacted.

Signs of the industry's mobilization against the public option are everywhere. I don't claim

clairvoyance for having predicted this development back in March; given the industry's record on reform,

a child could have done so.

You've heard of the Blue Dog Democrats, those mostly rural conservatives who blocked a summertime vote

on reform legislation on Capitol Hill? According to the Center for Public Integrity, the biggest backer

of the Blue Dogs’ political action committee is the healthcare industry, which is on the path to pumping

a total of $1.2 million into the PAC's maw in the current 2009-10 election cycle.

Then there's the advocacy group called the Campaign for an American Solution, which describes itself as

"a grass-roots effort . . . to build support for workable healthcare reform." The organization owns up

to being an "initiative" of America’s Health Insurance Plans, or AHIP, the industry's chief lobbying

arm. Unless I've missed a radical change in lawn and garden horticulture, you can't get much further

from the grass roots than to be a creation of the industry with the biggest stake in the debate.

Despite all this, America's health insurance plans, which helped create our dysfunctional world, are

deferred to as though they're a disinterested party. AHIP subtitled one of its policy papers "A Vision

for Reform." But are the insurers now, and have they ever been, anything other than a roadblock?

Michael Hiltzik's column appears Mondays and Thursdays. Reach him at michael.hiltzik@latimes.com, read

previous columns at www.latimes.com/hiltzik, and follow @latimeshiltzik on Twitter

[litfuse]

Re: Just another tricky day in America

"Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage."

Old politics was based on reasonable discussions around differencing opinions on controversial topics. Leaders would look to experts to come up with solutions and then make their case to the public.
Today’s politics are a modern day miracle. Marketing people research what people want to hear first. Business can return to normal after the masses are quelled by a dose of talking points.

You are no freer if you pay 0 or 100% taxes, have a small or large government, or supplied by social or private services. We’ve come to the point where those in power don’t have to listen to you.

Past 30 years in America were a debt fuelled frat party: baby boomers making tons of money with paper pushing jobs on the credit provided by their parent’s good name.
Bill is due, and major structural changes are required. No one party or program is responsible.

Socialist/freemarket/commie, it doesn’t matter which is used, the end result is the same:
Lower standard of living while the debt is worked off.

[Starving Steve]

Re: Just another tricky day in America

This is precisely what socialism is. First, left wing nuts create massive gov't machine and then they get really surprised it is abused by both sides. Just like Obama supporters are now pissed off because of his Wall Street support. When are you gonna get it? The real opposition to the left-wing socialism is not right-wing socialism. Whatever side abuses the gov't machine it is still based on socialist ideas, they just have different supporting constituencies and different rhetoric. None of the recent economic disasters could happen without massive gov't intervention.

The real opposition to socialism is the good old American idea of the limited government.


First, you need to understand it, if you don't want to live through it.

I already did, you can consider me a man from your future.

If you think socialism has not been a resounding success, may I point to the following accomplishments, achieved by government or with government programmes, which benefit the people in Canada and America:

Shasta Dam, the California Water Project, Hoover Dam, Glenn Canyon Dam, Bonneville Dam, the Golden Gate Bridge, the SF Oakland Bay Bridge, the Empire State Building, the development of atomic power by the Oak Ridge Laboratory, the development of oil and gas in Alberta and Saskatchewan, the Diefenbaker Dam in Saskatchewan, the Nelson River Project in Manitoba, the St. Lawrence Seaway, the Tennessee Valley Authority and its projects, the Interstate-Highway System, the wind-breaks on the Great Plains, Federal Deposit Insurance, Canada Deposit Insurance, Medicare, Social Security both in Canada and the U.S, the Canadian Medicare Programme ( for everyone, regardless of age or pre-existing condition )and the Canada Pension Plan ( for everyone over 60 ), the development of the Mesabi Range in Minnesota, national parks, public universities, public schools, Pell Grants for kids to go to college, the on-going development of the Peace River Project in Canada, etc.

The big lie that democratic-socialism is a failure and that socialism can't work was started by the Republicans in the United States, especially by Ronald Reagan and George Bush Jr.

Three rightwing writers who were behind this big lie, the lie that socialism can't work, were Milton Friedman, Arthur Laffer, and Ariana Huffington.

[rjwjr]

Re: Just another tricky day in America

The real opposition to socialism is the good old American idea of the limited government.



First, you need to understand it, if you don't want to live through it.

I already did, you can consider me a man from your future.

The reincarnation of Ayn Rand. Thanks for your words of wisdom via experience.

[rjwjr]

Re: Just another tricky day in America

"Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage."

Old politics was based on reasonable discussions around differencing opinions on controversial topics. Leaders would look to experts to come up with solutions and then make their case to the public.
Today’s politics are a modern day miracle. Marketing people research what people want to hear first. Business can return to normal after the masses are quelled by a dose of talking points.

You are no freer if you pay 0 or 100% taxes, have a small or large government, or supplied by social or private services. We’ve come to the point where those in power don’t have to listen to you.

Past 30 years in America were a debt fuelled frat party: baby boomers making tons of money with paper pushing jobs on the credit provided by their parent’s good name.
Bill is due, and major structural changes are required. No one party or program is responsible.

Socialist/freemarket/commie, it doesn’t matter which is used, the end result is the same:
Lower standard of living while the debt is worked off.

Welcome to the site. It's hard to beat that effort for a first post. Well done. Too bad the message is so damn depressing.

You have your first paragraph in parentheses. Is this an actual quote or passage and do you have the source? I may be interested in reading more. Thanks and please remain active.

[rjwjr]

Re: Just another tricky day in America

The big lie that democratic-socialism is a failure and that socialism can't work was started by the Republicans in the United States, especially by Ronald Reagan and George Bush Jr.

If you care to measure success as the size of the overall economy then your argument is without merit.

It's fairly well documented that socialism is unsustainable (maybe all forms of government are unsustainable?) as are the socialist-type programs in the US, specifically Social Security.

It's also hard to argue that a socialist environment makes a people stronger and better. Free-market competition is a better motivator and driver of innovation and progress. Our primary problem in the US may be trying to have a "hybrid" system, with socialistic programs and tax structures slowly gaining ground to the point that they weaken the free-market system.

Lastly, I think your arguments would be taken more seriously if they weren't laced with such republican/conservative hatred/blame. Let's be a fan of true leadership, not a puppet to party loyalty. There are idiots/crooks and potential leaders on both sides of the mainstream political parties. It would be nice to see a "vote-em-all-out" campaign get started for 2010, wouldn't it?

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Just another tricky day in America

You have your first paragraph in parentheses. Is this an actual quote or passage and do you have the source? I may be interested in reading more. Thanks and please remain active.

It is a matter of some uncertainty who wrote that famous sentence. See for instance http://www.dondodd.com/campbell/041604.html or http://www.lorencollins.net/tytler1.html or http://www.commonsensegovernment.com...-03-14-09.html or ...

I found these words by extracting the more substantive words from the quote and doing a google search. The search was on the words "great people bondage courage liberty nations abundance spiritual dependence complacency selfishness".