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May 04, 2019 06:57 AM UTC

Weekend Open Thread

  • 63 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

“Struggle is a never ending process. Freedom is never really won, you earn it and win it in every generation.”

–Coretta Scott King

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63 thoughts on “Weekend Open Thread”

  1. Hey Colorado Pols. Noticed the headlines; unemployment down to 3.6%, lowest in 49 years, wage average increased to $27.77 per hour, stock market rally continues, Trump approval over 50% according to CNN. Every demographic, race, gender and age is benefiting from the Trump economy. I bet you even smile when you look at your 401K statement. That’s what I call Progress Now.

    What must it be like to cheer against your country everyday? Everyday your website and the 12 loyal contributors work against freedom and liberty. Is it to feed your elite selfishness that your candidate didn’t win?

    Now that the real investigation is underway the American people will see who represents the 5th column of politics.

    Perhaps you may want to trot out your pathetic piece on Melisa and the great progress she has made on the State mandated increase in minimum wage. You never cared a second about Melisa, she was just a tool to manipulate and take advantage of for your own political purposes.

    Your thread for today… maybe you should have a talk with who came up with that. Nothing about Colorado Pols speaks for freedom and liberty, only the tyranny of Government.

    Powerful Pear

      1. Strictly speaking, Curmy, our fruity friend isn't editorializing.  He's blowing opinions out of his ass.

        Stay upwind of him, it's important.

         

      2. You do, of course, realize — those idiot Republican neighbors of yours? — even they had enough smarts not to listen to that pfool . . . 

          1. This was serendipity. I popped over to FB because another friend tagged me on an earlier post there, and there this was, just waiting to make the point.

            Thank you, Michael. I still haven’t learned how that works. Someone, please teach me!

            1. Cook – use the little square "picture" icon in the menu above^ to pop up a box. In the box, paste the url for your image.

              Getting to that url often requires right-clicking on the image to get the menu item "copy image location". That's what you want.

              For a facebook image, you often have to click on the image itself to get to that "copy image location" button.

              To recap:

              Find your image. Right click or whatever until you get the "copy image location" menu item. Copy it.

              Go back to your pols post (open in another tab, because you're cool like that). Click on the little picture icon. In the url box, paste the url you copied from the image.

              Click "OK".

              Post that sucker! Enjoy.

            2. Often you can right-click on a picture, capture the image address, then come back here, click the picture box (by the smiley face) and copy it in.  From there you can format the size of the picture.  I usually never exceed 500 on the width (it will autofill on the height). 

              If there is no image address option on a right click you can screen shot, open up the website: www. postimages.org, choose you screen shot, scroll down to 'direct link' – then go back to the Pols dialogue box and follow the same instructions as above. 

              Good luck! 

               

    2. unemployment down to 3.6%, lowest in 49 years,
       

      "The U.S. budget deficit widened to $310 billion in the first four months of the fiscal year, underscoring the revenue hit from Republican tax cuts and an increase in government spending.

      The budget gap widened 77 percent compared with the same October-January period a year earlier, according to the Treasury monthly budget report released on Tuesday, which was delayed by the government shutdown. Receipts fell by 2 percent to $1.1 trillion, while spending rose 9 percent to $1.4 trillion."

      https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-05/u-s-budget-deficit-widens-77-percent-as-revenue-declines

      We could have had this economy anytime Congress wanted to give up on the deficit.

      Nope- not during the black guy (1/2 black guy), only during Jr Bush for the credit card wars, not during Him (the guy who balanced the budget) , etc

      You and your's act like they are unconnected when it's convenient.
      It's mythical and unsustainable. Cheney was right but only in the political sense.

      Mr. "Believe me, I'm great with debt" President has no track record of anything but default. And that's going to hurt.

       

      1. Well said…

        Of all the things that kinda irritates me, it is the assumption on the part of people like PP that we are not smart enough to see through poorly constructed talking points.

        Not to mention the delayed costs of the profound rollback of pollution regulation about to impact his saviors' flock. But hey, how about that 401K? …oh, wait…I don't have one.

      2. As Ronald Reagan said, it's unfair to compare the debt-addicted Trump regime to drunken sailors on a spree, because:

         "At least, the drunken sailors were spending their own money!"

    4. Hey, Pear … yep, unemployment is down (continuing a trend), wages are going up slightly more than inflation, stock markets are up (continuing a trend).  Good news.

      My also be worth noting:  The following is a statement from Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget:

      How many more dire warnings will it take before our leaders address the nation’s dismal fiscal picture? Rather than addressing the rapid growth of health and retirement costs, the last Congress cut taxes and increased spending by a combined $2.4 trillion. Now we’re talking about $2 trillion more of spending, and as much as $2 trillion on top of that for infrastructure, with virtually no word of how we will pay for them. At some point, the fiscal recklessness has to stop.

      Federal deficit up to $1 trillion this year. 

      Total Public Debt as Percent of Gross Domestic Product according to Federal Reserve of St. Louis: Q42018: 105.31487%   [ Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and U.S. Office of Management and Budget, Federal Debt: Total Public Debt as Percent of Gross Domestic Product [GFDEGDQ188S], retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEGDQ188S, May 4, 2019. ]

      And on personal finance, it may also be worth noting

      18% with medical debt in collection (as of 2017). 7 million people who qualified for car loans but are now 90 days or more delinquent. 13% of student loans delinquent.

      There may be a bit of room to do better.

    5. "Trump approval over 50% according to CNN."
      False.
      -9 per CNN http://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2019/images/04/30/rel6c.-.mueller.report.pdf

      "Noticed the headlines; unemployment…"
      April jobs report: great headlines, signs of fraying around the edges
      and https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-05-03/april-jobs-report-dark-linings

      "smile when you look at your 401K statement."
      BFD, for most people.
      "The median,  is just $24,800."
      https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-the-average-401k-savings-by-age-2019-01-31

      "the Trump economy"
      Don’t Be Shocked If Trump’s Economy Goes the Way of Bush’s

      1. I think Roger may have been talking about one poll that included the question of whether those polled approve of hoe Trump was handling the economy. I remember hearing of one such poll last week. But it was only on that one issue.

        But you got to take what you can get, don't you Pear?

         

    6. Fruit, I wasn't smiling when I did my taxes.  I owed more for 2018 than 2017, and that is factoring in the extra amount I kept in my monthly paychecks.  

      Also, if your going to editorialize how awesome your furher is, at least don't post statements that can be so easily debunked.  It's like you're not even trying.  

    7. Meanwhile in Pfarm Country…

      U.S. Farmer Income Drops Most Since 2016 as Trade War Losses Mount

      One-time subsidy payments from the Trump administration to compensate producers for some of their trade-war losses helped prop up farm income in the previous quarter, but earnings plunged by an annualized $11.8 billion in the January to March period, according to seasonally adjusted data. On Monday, Larry Kudlow, President Trump’s top economic adviser, said the White House is prepared to do more to help agriculture.

      1. There weren't many smiles on the Farm Report this AM. One of the analysts got pretty visibly irritated with the continual promises from the Whitest House.

        Soybean prices are in the tank and still sinking and the flooding has put farmers in the position of planting soybeans because of the shortened season. The last thing the soybean market needs is more supply.

        Trumps' lies, and the inept administration he has created, are decimating American agriculture.

        The farmers are growing impatient.

         

         

        1. Sorry, Duke, I couldn't hear you.

          my radio was too loud listening to a guy from the farm bureau explain why we need less big government.

        1. Which, of course, is part of the problem. For much of America, fresh food is either hard to come by or unaffordable to millions of people. Many/most(?) big American Ag companies produce supply stream items for processed food companies or restaurant chains. Subject to seasonal and regional variations, there has been a trend toward local food supplies. That is a great thing.

          But it has trapped most rural ag folk and their communities reliant on only a handful of crops. They specialize in mass production of corn, wheat, soybeans, sorghum, sunflowers, rice, millet, and others, but the first three dominate the industry. 

          Food production, as opposed to food ingredient production, is labor intensive and requires a different basis for including human hands as opposed to giant machines.

          Our farmers are trapped…you would think they would stop electing Republicans and   run off the preachers who keep telling them to.

    8. Everyday. I get up. And think. Freedom and Liberty. What can I do today?

      Their days are numbered, I too fear. So yes, cheer on we must.

      But I'm not sure the threat is what you think it is, Pickled Prune. 

  2. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances
     

    Except sometimes there aren't fine people on both sides and the right to peaceably assemble is ignored in favor of shooting those assembled.

    May 4

    Haymarket – at least 8 dead

    Most Americans have enjoyed the standard 8-hour work day.
    Sure- lots of us don't have it. But the economy overall – it's considered standard.

    Kent State –  at least four dead.

    FTR- they were not protesting Viet Nam, rather Nixon's invasion of Cambodia.

    1. ps
      It's a stretch to say that the May 5 Mexicon/French battle has become so popular because it guaranteed USA victory over the confederate traitors.

      May 5 celebrations are a tribute to American marketing ingenuity.

  4. Accountability for actions was alive and well yesterday in Louisville, as opposed to accountability in D.C. by Pear's god Trump and his supporters.

    I had Tacitus in the pool at the Derby party I attended. Thanks to the disqualification, Tacitus moved up into 3rd; the Show position; and I picked up a little coin. 

    1. Several people pointed out it was a weird country that had more oversight & clearer consequences of a Derby race than a Presidential race.

    2. Good for you, CHB. I thought about that when I heard what happened. All those people who thought their horse was edged out, moved up one. Glad you were one of them

  5. OK…

    I think I have this figured out

    T***p has been pestering his Justice Department to attack his enemies. That hasn't been working, so Friday he asked Putin to do it.

  6. A little story with a moral for y'all…

    So yesterday, my daughter had her baby shower. Mom and baby are doing well. She has good health care, courtesy of being low income and on Medicaid. (FREE STUFF ALERT for R&R, the Pear, Vger, and CHB…..OH NOoooes)

    She has a good man for a partner, a solar installer whose business is booming. He injured his eye in a freak accident yesterday – not vision or life-threatening, as it turns out, but he'll have a gruesome, swollen red eyeball for a couple of weeks due to burst capillaries. He may need to cover it for a few days and use some irrigating ointment.

    He's doing his best to support the little family, but he has no insurance through his employer's small business…being a healthy young male, he had that delusion of being immortal. Anyway, he just applied for it, but it hasn't kicked in yet.

    So, in spite of grandma's bestest counsel that it was just burst capillaries and would look gruesome for a couple of weeks but no biggie, they worried about his vision and the family's livelihood, and took off for the nearest ER to get his eye checked out.

    They were charged $2500. Which obviously, they can't afford. They’ll pay it eventually, although the baby’s needs will be a higher priority, but guess what…you get to pay for higher emergency room fees, anyway, through taxes for public hospitals. So pay for a reasonable public health option now, or pay much more through the back channels later.

    Moral: This is why we need FREE STUFF!!!! accessible insurance for everyone. Like every other freaking industrialized country in the world. He should have been able to see a doctor, even on a weekend, got reassured that he had a bruised eyeball but no biggie, and gone on about his business of preparing to be a young daddy. 

    So y'all can take your FREE STUFF!!!! moralizing and stuff it where the sun don't shine. At most, he should have had to pay a modest fee to get the eyeball checked out. That “I’m not paying for it if it doesn’t directly help me or mine,” thinking keeps our country stupid and backward and in debt and cruel.

     

    1. Hope he talks soon with the hospital's personnel — if the billing office & social workers understand the entire circumstances, there are some payment options (and an occasional "get out of the ER free" card) they can draw on.

      Because whatever medical plan may be coming, it won’t be soon and won’t include “backsies.”

    3. Yes, ma'am.

      Your family's situation is where the "rubber meets the road" on the subject of the moral vacuum that is conservative thought in general and specifically the Trumplican© party.

      A tipping point is approaching….

       

       

    4. Glad it all worked out, MJ.  I will leave it to CHB to explain how a young man's business may be booming but his family is still "low-income."

      Ohh, one of those trendy “out of wedlock”
      pregnancies? Surely, there is a trendier term for them now. But they still correlate overwhelmingly with poverty.

       You see, I'm one of those monsters who actually married his partner, and then waited seven years before having their first child.  Worse yet, I supported them for more than 50 years.

      and while I usually drove old vehicles — my truck is a 1987 — I always had health insurance.  We had our own red eye experience.  If I recall, it cost us a $20 co-pay at Kaiser.

      So, I'm not the best example if you're look ing for somebody to explain how free stuff at taxpayer expense is better than personal responsibility.

      Sometimes , bad decisions or bad luck mean we have to have public charity for kids, the disabled or others who can't or won't take care of themselves.

      But where I'm from, when we need that kind of help, we take it.   But we don't brag about it.

    5. Once again, you miss the point….

      I am only opposed to giving free stuff to people who can and should pay for it themselves. I was a big fan of raising the eligibility level and expanding Medicaid to cover people who worked at low paying/less than full time jobs because it provides them with coverage and allows them to stay working. 

      At any rate, congratulations on the new grandchild!

    6. It's funny how the people who squeal the loudest about "personal responsibility" and howl about other people possibly getting "FREE STUFF!" can't seem to muster enough personal responsibility to mind their own business about what they think other people don't deserve? 

    7. Obviously MJ feels a need to take out her frustrations about the family situation on others of us.

      Of course, if Bernie gets his way with Medicare for All, I lose my Medicare advantage plan because it comes from a private insurer. What is Bernie's replacement going to be? Forget about the cost for a moment. What does the set-up look? 

      Maybe you libs get smart and fix the Affordable Care Act first instead of screwing other people royally. 

      1. Wait a gol-darned minute…You have Medicare? 

        You mean I'm paying for your freeloading? 

        Or is it just undeserved "Free Stuff" when other people have it?  

        1. More "pearls of wisdom" from "GOL" (grumpy old lefty). Yes, I have Medicare and paid for it through payroll tax. I also pay premiums to Medicare, Kaiser, and pay co-pays. And I have a commitment to the personal responsibility that you and others deride, in trying to live a healthy lifestyle.

          1. Now, was this the same payroll tax that every working stiff pays, or did it go into a special "just for CHB" account, so that it was only your hard-earned, bootstrappy taxes paying for your care, and not just one big account, where everyone paying into it is paying for everyone benefitting from it?   I don't deride personal responsibility.  I just like to laugh at hypocrisy. 

      2. Elizabeth Warren seems to agree with you, CHB. Rather than promoting Sanders' version of Medicare for All (which she still cosponsors), she is promoting a set of ACA reforms:

        • Limit insurance premiums to no more than 8.5 percent of income
        • Cap out-of-pocket prescription drug costs for those on private plans at $250 a month, or $500 per family
        • Require insurers who sell Medicare Advantage or Medicaid managed care plans to offer coverage on ACA exchanges that have limited competition
        • Require private insurance plans to spend 85 percent of the premiums they receive on paying out claims, up from 80 percent under the ACA currently
        • Set limits on insurance company profits to match what those private insurers can earn from Medicare and Medicaid
        • Provide more money for ACA outreach and enrollment efforts.

        Under the Sanders MFA plan, your Medicare advantage would transition over 4 years, absorbing into an all-inclusive MFA plan which would cover dental, prescriptions, and whatever else you're needing the Advantage coverage for now.

        So yes, your Advantage plan would go away after 4 years; on the other hand, you wouldn’t need it any more. Presumably, those of us who want to pay for unusual health needs can do so. If I want some kind of alternative medicine plan that pays for psychic healing, I could do that….and pay for it out of pocket.

        The Sanders MFA  has never been scored by the CBO, and won't in a Republican administration. It relies on an employer 7.5%, employee 4% tax, much like what was floated in Colorado.

        So basically, working people would still be subsidizing your healthcare, much as we are now. As my Principal likes to say, "Nothing is free. Somebody somewhere is paying for it." So when my daughter, her partner, me, every working stiff pay a medicare tax on our paychecks, that goes to you, to V, to everyone else collecting Medicare.

        You're welcome.

          1. I answered your questions:

            I lose my Medicare advantage plan because it comes from a private insurer. What is Bernie's replacement going to be? Forget about the cost for a moment. What does the set-up look? 

            Not only about that, but I explained a bit about Warren's "ACA 2.0 " plan, which you said you wanted "the libs" to focus on. And what is the thanks I get? Lumped in with  Curmudgeon as a "grumpy old lefty. Hmph.

            I've never personally derided anyone who chooses to live a healthier lifestyle, (I strive for that myself) and I do like the Kaiser preventative care approach.

            Unfortunately, what they offer here in the sticks isn't Kaiser – it's Humana and other good-for-profit not-for-people plans. As an example, when I broke a toe, I paid for the X-rays out of pocket. A healthier lifestyle wouldn't have prevented the break.

            Do you know how many millenials resent paying Medicare and Social Security taxes out of their meager paychecks because they're convinced those resources won't be there for them when they need them?  It's in your self-interest to ensure those funds are sustainable, so that the young working stiffs can continue to fund our retirements and health care. 

             

            1. Actually, I was not lumping you in with "GOL." Like the spoken lead-in into the great sci-fi TV series; Highlander; "at the end there can be only one."

              I have a number of friends in the millenial age group. Have not heard any of them complain about SS and Medicare not being there for them. But I do know it is a prevalent feeling.

              There is a real simple solution to solving the SS and Medicare impending insolvency problem: raise the cap. Currently, I think one pays SS and Medicare only on their first $132,000, or so, of earnings. Raise it to $500,000 and see what the actuaries will say.

              1. I've heard that raising the cap would make SS and Medicare  sustainable. If we're talking entitlement reform,  I'd like to see the "Windfall Elimination Provision Act" (WEP) repealed, as it seems to be basically a Reagan-era attack on public service workers who get pensions.

                I worked and put in to Social Security for 25 years – many at high-paying jobs. Then I worked in a unionized, pension-eligible field for 19 years. Reagan et al basically stole half my SS contributions, and said that if I got a pension, I'd be "double dipping". It's all my money that I paid in, but I only get half the SS $$ back. Until I'm 72, anyway.

                I haven't tried writing my congresscritters about it – it would be interesting to see what the Republican ones say. They're all for government refunding taxes, right?

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