I stand by my proposed rule: nobody (especially in the media) is allowed to attack healthcare reform unless they say what they would do better. If they claim that the old system was just fine, so be it (although I will heartily laugh at them).
Otherwise, it isn’t about health care, they are just playing politics.
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18 Comments
Every single frame made my blood pressure go up. Ignorance, ignorance, ignorance.
I think at each abortion rally, someone should have a sign that says “I support doubling my taxes on every level so these unwanted children will have health care , lodging, social services, schooling, probably jail time.”
Just reading the series “call of the Midwife”. UK adopted universal social services in 1948. This country is so primitive with the gap between the poor and the rich. All this “who pays what” would be out the door if we just had Universal Health Care with the rich having taxes raised to pay for it.
THIS COUNTRY MEANING US
EBDOUG, I am still trying to understand democracy concept in general and specific in USA.
When Palestine voted for Hamas, they were suffocated to the point they lost control, not sure why they were considered wrong for democracy.
When Egypt voted for Muslim Brotherhood, and they won majority, liberals in America were against it, because they said it disregarded minorities and did not safeguard their fundamental rights etc.
When Romney was running for election, he said something about 47% of Americans will not vote for him because they are takers (dependents or something) of society. Liberals made fun of him saying that everyone votes for their interest, be it rich or poor, so why is he complaining, everyone votes for their interests.
So question is are all interests equal? So for example, majority of Americans may favor drone strikes of US citizens of muslim faith because of fear, hate or any other reason. It is in their interest of keeping their life, liberty secure by killing them. Many muslim Americans will vote against such strikes, because they are the ones being targeted, so it will be in their interest of life and liberty to vote against it. So both voting their interests, are those interest equal, and majority rules?
Similarly, when you say increase tax on rich, well, I am sure people who are not paying any taxes and are dependents on society, will favor it, they have nothing to lose. But some rich (if not all rich) may oppose raising taxes due to their interest of keeping their pursuit of happiness (wealth to some people) intact. So are both interests equal? Can people have same say on a matter when they are the ones losing nothing but in fact gaining to the people who are losing and gaining nothing?
There’s a lot of media talking point/buzz feed in this comic and that’s what it is. Where’s the report on the hypocrisy when a President states on camera some 30 times “if you like your insurance and doctor you can keep them” then oversees a dept that regulates all previous health plans out of existence. Where’s te hypocrisy when virtually all democrat leaders repeat exactly what the president says then support the same policies. Where’s they irony that the very people including the President said NO to delaying the individual mandate the other side asked for saying no it’s the law of the land and we won’t touch it, and now say they need to delay it. Where’s that side of the story. Oh I forgot, the President called all his media support in for pow-wow to get everyone one the same page and spin this into a republican issue.
Your right IK on people proposing ways to fix this system, but everyone knows it was designed to do exactly what it’s doing. Turn the system into a single payer healthcare system. But’ that’s not what the original agreement with the American people was, and if it had been proposed that way it never would have passed because the majority don’t want that. What happened to the majority rule. This government can’t even roll out a website and somehow we trust them to run a single payer healthcare system. Unbelievable. We cannot sustain a system where 1/2 the people pay the way for the other half, it will not work.
Then the hypocrisy of Reid invoking the nuclear option in the Senate, the same Reid that said under Bush that it would be a sad day for America if the senate voted to do that. Where’s the irony now. Of it’s on the horizon when the right gets back control of the Senate and Reid is the minority leader again he’ll be the 1st to call it a bad deal. American politics work exactly like it was designed and has worked since the beginning, ugly, messy and seemingly disorderly. But it’s worked when there is strong leadership and sound judgment. We have neither currently. Where’s the Hypocrisy and irony in then Senator Obama on the campaign trail saying Bush was ruling by executive order to circumvent the democrat lead congress and that he believes in the constitution and was a constitutional law professor and what not rule by executive order. Where’s that irony.
PATRIOTSGT, I was trying to figure out if not applying law (for which executive branch is for) is considered violating the law?
Like in current case of insurance companies cancelled policies. The policies were cancelled because they do not meet the requirement of the law. Now Obama has asked insurance companies that if they want, they can continue these policies and wont be punished (for a year, not permanently either, so promise is still being broken, just after the midterm elections). So can a government just not apply the law without any legal challenge? Same is the case with employment based insurance mandate I think, where he delayed it for a year without involving any congress.
Hassan, I agree with you completely. And too bad for the rich (from whence I come). We have to support all our country. Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood were elected governments. They should not be overthrown except at the voting booth. I thought the Muslim Brotherhood was overthrown internally. Hamas was US. We put Saddam in power in Iraq. He was a tyrant and kept everything under control. The Sunnis could have their mosques. Maybe the Shiites were oppressed, but Saddam kept the borders patrolled and kept Al-Qaeda out. Iraq was secular, and it worked.
The UK and US have been playing God in the middle east for eons and needs to stop. We create irreparable damage like hiring missionaries from the Arab Princes to defeat the Russians in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Then they stayed to create the Taliban.
The taxes of the rich was reduced by Baby Bush as he was piling up debt with his war. They need to go back to where they were before The Actor Reagan played the part of President
> Where’s the report on the hypocrisy when a President states on camera some 30 times “if you like your insurance and doctor you can keep them” then oversees a dept that regulates all previous health plans out of existence.
PatriotSGT, you totally crack me up sometimes. Where’s the report? Are you freaking kidding me? I don’t see anything else about Obamacare on the news day in and day out. This has to win the award as the most overblown story of the century. I even reported on it. Not only is it all over the news constantly, Obama has already apologized for it and fixed it.
> But’ that’s not what the original agreement with the American people was, and if it had been proposed that way it never would have passed because the majority don’t want that.
What planet are you getting your facts from? There were plenty of polls that showed that the American people *did* want single-payer health insurance. See http://www.medicareforall.org/pages/Chart_of_Americans_Support
And finally, when Reid rolled back the filibuster he agreed with his earlier assessment that it was indeed a sad day for America. But the sad thing is how the overwhelming majority (91%) of Americans disapprove of the amount of gridlock in Congress. And he does something to fix that and you attack him? “What happened to majority rule”?
You really do need to stop watching so much anti-Obama corporate media.
EBDOUG, you did not answer my larger question (whether all voting for self interests are equal)
IRON KNEE, what did Obama fix? The promise to keep insurance? How did he fix that? The promise is still broken.
Voting self interest: My mother was married twice. She would not talk politics, but she did let on that she cancelled her husbands’ votes in the voting booth. She was a very closet flaming liberal. I’m more open about being not self interest when I vote but for the good of my country. And the good for our country is “spread the wealth”. If the wealth is spread then people will spend the money given to them which will create more jobs, which pay more taxes which helps more people.
Richard Scaife has a fortune from the Mellon family. He is ultra conservative. His sister with the same fortune gave it away to the needy so the answer is that there are those like my father who lived his life for himself and others who want to help others. Does that answer your question?
EBDOUG, partially, but question is, should poor would have right to vote to take money from rich? Now I do understand if you get 10 rich people together, they may agree (in majority) to spend money on poor, but all have something at stake. While poor has nothing to lose if he/she vote for raising taxes on rich.
Yes, the poor have the right to vote to raise taxes on the rich because the poor are often poor because jobs are not available. After world war II, Taxes were raised on the rich to 90% of the amount above 1 million. Don’t know how much that would be today. The rich are responsible for the poor. Many poor can’t work. The taxes were lowered on the rich until they are at a ridiculous level today. Yes, the poor should vote to help the other poor who can’t work.
Ebdoug, I partially agree. Yes the poor absolutely have the right to vote as do the wealthy and the majority who are in between. I disagre that they should have the right to vote because jobs are not available, I don’t think that should have anything to do with it. They should vote because it is their right as guaranteed by the constitution. I don’t necessarily think it the job creators fault that the economy is slow, thats more a government issue. I do think that our policies, regulations and laws in government have more to do with decreased job availablility then the wealthy. As to the 90% on income over a million, thats not completely true. Yes that was the rate, but I can pretty much guarantee nobody paid it or they would have driven all the job creators out. There were tax breaks built in just like today that lowered that final amount due.
And yes we do owe it to our less fortunate to provide opportunities to live the dream. And there are many such opportunities that exist today. So much so that we need to import foreign workers into high tech, engineering and health care jobs because we don’t have enough talent. There are lots of job openings, 1000’s and good paying jobs at that. I also know that there are people content to not have a job and who look for ways to not do what they need to improve there lot in life. In other words there are alot of poor that choose not to take the hard road and improve their position.
PATRIOTSGT and EBDOUG, I think you are misunderstanding my question. Of course poor has right to vote, question is do they have right to vote on matters (taxes) when they will not be ones paying it.
Of course as PATRIOTSGT mentioned, many rich may agree to raise taxes on themselves to good of community and less fortunate. But they are all voting knowing that they are going to be paying for it. So even if few rich disagree, those who disagree cannot say the ones that voted for favor have nothing to lose.
Every time the poor go to the store to buy something, the poor pay taxes so if the rich pay more taxes in income taxes, hopefully sales taxes come down for the poor. I believe it is Alabama where Income Tax is very, very low. And everything else is taxed. Same with Delaware. So the poor pay disproportionately more taxes.
Remember one of the regulations in this country that drastically slows the economy is Health Insurance in the work place. That makes the price of each and every good go up. Take it out of the work place where it never should have been and health insurance will go up on the rich; a sneaky form of raising the taxes on the rich. Government gives or subsidizes Health Insurance to all but the rich, the rich will have to pay more. Happens in the UK and happens in France.
EBDOUG, there are many states including my state of Texas where there is no income tax, but sales tax of about 8.2%. But the sales tax is not applicable to basic necessities of life, so I am not sure why you are saying that poor may more tax (in fact they can survive without paying any tax). Also Texas has healthy property tax, which mostly rich are paying.
Again I do not disagree with you, as a person whom God has blessed with wealth, I will be more than happy to share with less fortunate to seek the pleasure of God (not the government). My question is still about democracy in general, should people be allowed to vote on things that they do not have to contribute in?
Everyone should be able to vote on everything provided they are eligible to vote. End of story. As soon as you suggest that only those paying into the system should be able to vote, you head back in the direction of previous democracies, in which only landowners (usually white male landowners) could vote. Limiting your pool of voters is a bad idea.
Assume you say that only people paying into taxes (which is basically everyone, as EBDOUG noted, but lets say we’re only talking income tax, not payroll, sales, gas, etc), what would be good about that? People who currently have little economic freedom, and therefore pretty little political freedom, would end up with less of both. There’s already the argument from childless folks that they shouldn’t have to pay for schools they aren’t using, then the other end of the spectrum where in some places you need to specifically pay for coverage by the local fire department. Both ideas are ridiculously shortsighted.
Apply this to something else, perhaps something you disagree with. Should people who can’t get abortions be allowed to vote on whether or not we, as a society, allow abortions? Should people not participating in gay marriage be able to vote on whether or not homosexuals can get married? Should people without kids in a school system get to vote on whether or not that school system’s teachers get a raise? I think you get into this insane Russian doll situation where the parsing of voting rights get so intricate that elections are even sillier than they are now.
You also have to consider that if a society supports its poor and gets at least some of them out of poverty, it has created a larger tax base (EBDOUG said this also) and, more importantly, a more stable base for that person’s family as it moves forward.
TLDR: Conditional democracy really isn’t democracy. If you’re a citizen and state/town resident, you can vote on anything on any given ballot. Pay-to-vote = Plutocracy
THATGUY, you gave good examples, and in fact you somewhat proved my point. Any ban on homosexual marriage (via vote) is going to be thrown out of court because it infringes personal liberty of those people. You already have Roe vs Wade, as law of the land, hence any law banning abortion will be contested in courts.
The point is that those things are decided by an entire society, not just those taking part in those activities.