U.S. Senate
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(D) J. Hickenlooper*
(R) Somebody
80%
20%
Governor
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(D) Phil Weiser
(D) Joe Neguse
(D) Jena Griswold
60%
60%
40%↓
Att. General
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(D) M. Dougherty
(D) Alexis King
(D) Brian Mason
40%
40%
30%
Sec. of State
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(D) A. Gonzalez
(D) George Stern
(R) Sheri Davis
50%↑
40%
30%
State Treasurer
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(D) Brianna Titone
(R) Kevin Grantham
(D) Jerry DiTullio
60%
30%
20%
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
(R) Somebody
90%
2%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
(R) Somebody
90%
2%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(R) Jeff Hurd*
(D) Somebody
80%
40%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert*
(D) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Jeff Crank*
(D) Somebody
80%
20%
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
(R) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) B. Pettersen*
(R) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(R) Gabe Evans*
(D) Yadira Caraveo
(D) Joe Salazar
50%
40%
40%
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
April 25, 2009 04:17 PM UTC
96 Comments
I caught this hilarious Palin report while perusing newspapers this morning. From the Anchorage Daily News:
I’m still laughing! Sarah Palin wants you to give her money to help her defend herself against herself. Will someone, please, call Jon Stewart.
At first glance, what could be more bizarre than suing yourself? But I’m going to go out on a limb, and suggest, in general terms, what must have been going on. First of all, you can’t sue yourself: An entity (including an individual) doesn’t have legal standing to sue itself (this is actual jurisprudence: School districts, for instance, can’t sue the state, because they are an arm of the state, and as such, can’t sue itself). So if Sarah Palin sued herself, she had to have been something that the court recognized as too separate entities. It’s not usually the governor who is the named plaintiff or defendant in suits involving the state, but let’s suppose that, in this case, that’s what happened: As plaintiff, she was really a proxy for the people of Alaska. And, similarly, though vice presidential candidates very rarely are named as plaintiffs or defendants representing some other entity, let’s suppose that that was what happened here (as the courts say, assuming the facts that are most favorable for the appellant). She might not have been personally involved at all. Actually, if the article is correct (something I have my doubts about), it’s hard to imagine any other scenario in which it could have occurred.
She filed the complaint against herself as a purely defensive measure.
Okay. Well, it was worth a shot! As Emily Latella would say, “Never mind.”
She was being investigated by a subcommittee of the Legislature, which she doesn’t control.
She wanted the investigation moved to the State Personnel Board, which is dominated by members that she appointed.
She filed the ethics complaint against herself because the law says that the Governor can refer an ethics complaint to the Personnel Board.
She was forum shopping, plain and simple.
Story published by the Anchorage Daily News at the time is here
My bad.
Stop, Stop, Stop – Stop taxes, Stop spending (except for what helps me), Stop the Dems
I just wish I had a thicker skin when I make the mistake of pointing it out.
Stand by. Apparent cover up in progress. Republican 36, who claimed that Ritter’s internal polling showed him with 2:1 job approvals, has been strangely silent from this site since it was revealed that the Ritter campaign has not paid for any polling the past 6 months.
Who paid for the poll? Why wasn’t it reported? Is Bill Ritter getting an outside group to pay for his polling?
There are only 2 options here folks: (1) Republican 36 made up the numbers, or (2) Ritter is breaking the law.
(using his business email so no state owned electrons were used) and asked him to reply to this. I said that I would be happy to post his reply here.
No answer yet. I assume there is a valid explanation, but I would like to hear it.
But why would you out your email to Mr. Dryer like this? Communicating your exchanges on this blog (even though he hasn’t responded) with insiders will tend to drive a wedge in their responses to you.
I won’t post email I receive but I always give myself permission to post email I send 🙂
But here’s the real core of the issue: There is a hierarchy of public issues and concerns to be addressed, both real and imagined. Each person decides what they consider most important, or most pressing, according to their values, goals, and priorities. Is it conceivable that there is a real issue here? Yes. Is it probable? No. If there is a real issue, is it a political issue, or an issue of serious importance to people’s welfare? A political issue. As a political issue, how does it measure on the political richter scale? Very low. Would it be completely irrelevant if your overactive and highly motivated imagination turned out to be on target? No.
One can devote their interest in the public sphere by analyzing the challenges and problems we as a society face, and offering some well-conceived in-put into how better to address those challenges and problems. Or one can devote their interest to salivating every time there is the whiff of potential vulnerability in the enemy camp, regardless of its relative importance, and focus all of their energies on exploiting every possible opportunity to inflict damage on the opposition.
We each get to choose which we value more: Winning the game, or contributing to the collective enterprise of better ordering the arrangements by which we live.
If we had this question for Josh Penry there would be a ton of front page diaries on the issue.
He’d have had 25 flacks denying there even was a poll.
I’m surprised you bought into this, David.
an anonymous blog entry and Penry’s own words. Seems R36 got people chasing their tails. And he’s not the Kid’s buddy, we gather. Hell, an “internal poll” could be of his office staff for all anyone knows.
if not outright criticising my fellow Dems for hauling that wagon along. Look back in the archives, and you’ll see that I have done so on several occasions. I’ll admit that I’m slower to chide Dems for this than ‘Pubs (though I certainly have chided Dems for this). But I’ve never been a big fan of the “make much ado about nothing” strategy, even when it serves my partisan interests. And this one is particularly below the level worthy of more than a passing question mark. If it were Gov. Owens instead of Gov. Ritter, my response would be the same. This is both too trivial and too speculative to merit such attention.
Dems are, in the long run, as guilty as ‘Pubs of playing this “gotchya!” game. I participated quite a bit on the Economist website leading up to the election, and I found myself criticizing fellow Dems quite frequently for trying to find and create scandals to exploit. Right now, both at the state level and national, ‘Pubs are playing it more, because ‘Pubs are more desparate. They’re out of power, discredited, and facing a popular and brilliant (yes, brilliant) Democratic president who has given form and voice to a coherent progressive vision for the country, one which the vast majority are willing to accept (if not, in all cases, endorse). But that’s a situational difference rather than an essential one. Both parties, and their respective partisans, need to discipline themselves (ourselves) more to keep our eye on the ball, and focus on making good policies that best serve the public interest.
On a different subject, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson (Gen. Powell’s former Chief of Staff) described Dick Cheney in a manner all reasonable Americans can agree with on the Rachel Maddow show last night.
Good to see Darth Shooter on the other side of the verbal barrel for a change.
the Darth Vadar comparison is extraordinarily appropo. Darth’s path into darkness was determined by fear of harm to his loved ones, and Cheney’s was the same fear-turned-into-evil reaction to 9/11. While I doubt that Dick was ever as loveable as Anakin was, I don’t doubt that his commitment to our becoming an Evil Empire was in large measure motivated by his belief that that was necessary to our national security. It’s an old, and poignant literary theme. Too bad Dick was better informed by that literary tradition: It always turns out to be a self-defeating proposition (unless an epiphany and paradigm shift intervene in time).
I am not going to list any of that here as I think if done well it truly could provide a significant competitive advantage. (I am passing my thoughts on to 3 campaigns.)
It clearly lays out why existing newspapers are dead. If I worked at the Post, Camera, etc I’d be looking for a different job because those guys are gone. One interesting part was quoting a V.C. who said news via the web is already obsolete (I agree).
He also mentioned the founder of a very successful startup who dropped out of High School (not College, High School) to start his company. If you’re over 25 (I’m past double that) then your ability to see the truly innovative possibilities in this new world are severly limited.
The problem is that those of us used to the systems we have used for years have a hard time throwing all of that away and seeing this new world with all of its possibilities.
Read it.
Eat it, Republicans and Conservadems.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…
Dems have every right to go ahead and do it (just like the Republicans had every right to install good, conservative judges on a majority vote — even though they didn’t take advantage of the opportunity), but how terrible for the country. We already have a largely government dictated health care system. A real solution to the problem would be to make consumers first-party buyers of health care. Instead, we are obviously heading toward an even more inefficient, government run system that will further saddle our country with massive debt and result in rationing of services. Politicians and bureaucrats will be deciding who can obtain what care, when, etc. People will die. I’m sure you big government types will accuse me of exaggeration, but that’s exactly what happens in single-payer systems. Why we would choose to imitate the mistakes of Western Europe and Canada is beyond belief.
I mean, I have no doubt that you can say it again, as you’ve said it before, regardless of its value.
No shit. It’s called life. Death is the end result of the journey, and everyone dies.
The current health care system (which is actually largely market-driven, by the way, contrary to your claim of it being largely government run) is broken. The insurance companies dictate care; in the respect to who is covered, who gets what procedures, and how much their care will cost.
Something tells me that if you had it your way there wouldn’t even be Medicare. We would just be (even more) at the whim of the insurance companies–who, by the way, are only beholden to their board of directors, who in turn are only beholden to the bottom line.
Like it or not, most people agree with us and President Obama on this issue. That’s a huge part of why they voted for him in November, and it would be a grandiose mistake not to try to change how we get sick/well/die in this country.
It is so refreshing, almost like cartoon butterflies fluttering around Uncle Remus’s frosted head as he sings “Zippity-Do-Dah, Zippity-ey, my-oh-my, what a wonderful day!” to hear folks like KK belching out the sulpheric-fumes that scent the wasteland of their libertarian paradise, and to watch those fumes dissipate into the clear blue sky of a momentarily sane and lucid country! Ah! Regale us once again, Ebenezer, with your December 24th wisdom, and then, you know, sleep on it.
Once upon a time 45 years ago, most health care in the US was delivered in a hospital and most hospitals were non-profits. Then, healthcare in the US changed.
And now most US healthcare is delivered not in a hospital and most hospitals are shareholder owned for profit entities.
Profit is a good thing generally speaking, but it creates motivations and incentives that may not be desirable. Yes- externalities.
But also other inefficiencies, in the case of healthcare, things like sales commissions and G&A expenses that drive up the gross cost of health insurance.
Think like a profit seeking, or profit maximizing health insurance company. The best clients for you would be those who can and will pay premiums but who will never make claims. Or will make the least expensive claims.
Employers can pay- so the former gives the insurance industry a huge motivation to keep insurance employer paid. And the latter motivates insurors to exclude pre-existing conditions and to exclude the less than healthy if they can.
But even in the free market loving America, we sometimes choose to have publicly funded assets (roads, bridges, schools, etc ) services (public safety, defense, security, licensing,water, patents, etc) and sometimes we choose to have private ownership but regulated profits (electricity, gas, water)
And even when we choose regulated profits or public provision, we are open to the market catching up in such a way that regulation can mostly go away and competition can drive the show- telecommunication.
I think I could on- but I also think it’s pointless because it’s like the old t-shirt about motorcycles (or certain bands) – if you don’t ride I can’t explain, if you ride you already understand.
The problem is 3rd party payer. Do we currently have a market? Sort of. But the people consuming health care aren’t the ones paying for it. It’s not like any other market. It’s totally distorted. Typically in America’s current system, either the employment based insurance company or the government picks up the tab for the consumers’ care.
The answer isn’t more 3rd party payment. It is to get everyone into the private market and make them cost conscious consumers.
The government doesn’t do many things well. It is inefficient, slow and bureaucratic. Witness Katrina or Medicaid or Medicare.
You don’t want politicians and bureaucrats deciding who does and doesn’t get care. They will ration care to people who don’t have political clout (e.g., people who don’t have long to live).
In spite of all its failings, America by far has the best health care in the world. We have far more MRI machines per capita than Canada or Western Europe, for instance. Many people in those countries have to wait weeks to get an MRI.
So, yes, people will die unnecessarily early under a single payer system. It’s as certain as the sun rising tomorrow morning.
Why, we have such a great health care system that America is the only major industrialized nation where major illness can completely ruin you!
Eat shit, KK. You might be happy with such a system. Reasonable Americans are not.
I didn’t say we had a great health care “system,” Aristotle. But we undoubtedly have the best health care. Two very different things. But if you nationalize health care totally, we’ll be plagued by the same rationing you see in single-payer systems across the world.
then we have to change the system. I’ve often wondered why the medical provider community doesn’t see that their business would actually increase if more people could afford basic and preventative care. What we need is a system – however it’s structured – in which everyone can access basic care, everyone can access preventative care and everyone is incentivized in some very effective way to improve their own health through lifestyle changes.
We would be rationing indiscrimately a limited but (literally) vital resource according to the principle that it is a fundamental right (while still allowing those with sufficient disposable wealth to purchase it on the market if they wish to), rather than allowing the inequitable distribution of wealth to ration it for us under the principle that you’re screwed if you happen to have been born into poverty, often as the result of the legacy of historically having been screwed in other more blatant ways. I’m all for that.
to be screwed over. There is no shortage of stories of individuals whose debilitating illnesses have bankrupted them. They weren’t wealthy but neither were they poor. Insurance companies have ways of denying coverage and government programs don’t kick in until you’ve liquidated most if not all your assets. Goodbye home, so long savings, ta ta everything you’ve spent your life working for.
But hey, as long as we have those MRI machines and short waits (because uninsured and underinsured people aren’t clogging up the lines for them) then that’s just jim dandy with the KK’s of the world. Less competition for those health care resources, right?
KK, if you’re too dense or selfish to understand that having the best health care in the world doesn’t mean shit when millions of your fellow citizens don’t have access to it, then I don’t know what to say. Do you even understand that you end up paying for these people anyway?
And KK’s wish to cease reliance on third party payers and rely on the unmediated market eliminates even what limited protection insurance currently provides, such that anyone suffering a serious illness would be financially ruined and unable to continue treatments at some point as the illness runs its course, financially ruining his/her family before dying. A large number of people need access at some point in their life to health care that, even only covering costs, would be financially ruinous to all but the extremely wealthy (and even, sometimes, to most of them). As a society, we can say “tough luck, you can always have another child,” or we can figure out how to devise our institutions to deal with that very real need in the most fair and efficient manner we are capable of devising.
The debate over how health care is obtained is very different than who gets subsidies. You are trying to suggest that I’m against helping people in order to challenge my central premise.
You don’t seem to understand health care policy in the least. We could subsidize everyone with tax credits, payments or vouchers. That’s not inconsistent with my central point at all.
Many liberal and conservative economists and health care policy experts agree with my premise — the 3rd party payment system is the central problem with our health care system.
then recommend one. That’s not what you chose to do. We are critiquing your criticism, not some imaginary alternative that you have given no voice to.
I have no a priori commitment to third payer health care, nor do I have any a priori commitment against it. I do have a commitment to ensuring that basic health care is available to everyone, and that we pursue policies that maximize a balance of efficiency, fairness, and sustainability. You have offered no insight, no analysis, no suggestion of how to pursue that goal. No one cares what you’re against. Some might care what you are for, if it is backed by reason and evidence and a commitment to values we can empathize with. If you want to contribute something meaningful to that discussion, then I will read your contribution with an open mind.
I knew many very mediocre scholars who made their careers by tearing apart the ideas of people hundreds of times smarter than them, and they truly believed that that was what it meant to engage in “critical thought.” Idiots! It’s incredibly easy to critique ideas, and so much more difficult to create them.
Create an affirmative idea, one that is not merely the little sniping opposition to another idea but rather is a well-conceived recommendation for an alternative course of action. Or, at the very least, present one created by someone else that you can explain and defend, and then you can get up on that high horse of yours without looking like a total jackass.
recommending the elimination of a third-party payers without recommending any substitute system is, implicitly, the recommendation of zero insurance. The government, after all, is a third party as well, and it would have to pay the subsidies you say are not incompatible with your recommendation. Well, until you specify which third-parties are excluded from your definition of third-party, I will assume you meant what you wrote.
I do know what is meant by “third-party payers.” What I’m saying is: Be explicit, be precise, and say something substantial. Otherwise, no one has any reason to take you seriously.
This is what makes me want to rip you a new one. You know what, I’m not an expert on health care policy at all, and have never held myself out as one. I am fairly adept at social analysis, though, and know how to apply that skill to issues I am not an expert in. You, on the other hand, pronouncing on what works and doesn’t work (without ever supporting these arbitrary declarations with any form of logical argumentation or reference to empirical evidence), pose as some kind of expert, when all evidence points only to absolute and plenary ignorance on your part. In not one single post you have ever made, have you given any indication of any knowledge or expertise in any field or sub-field of any branch of human endeavor. Nor have you shown any talent for faking it.
There ought to be some sort of repellant you can spray on to keep brainless little maggots like that from buzzing in your ear.
And I’ll show you a system that’s worth a shit from my point of view.
As the new strain of swine flu begins to spread, perhaps rapidly, around the country and the world, we shouldn’t forget that ensuring that everyone has access to treatment is not just a noble thing to do, but is in our own interest – unless you live in a bubble and can never catch a communicable disease from someone else.
arguments for why John Donne was exactly correct that “No man is an island, entire of itself….” World War II taught America that the world no longer tolerates isolationism, neither on the small scale (every man for himself) nor on the large (every country for itself). A serious and robust problem suffered anywhere is a problem that will eventually be suffered everywhere, whether spawning either deadly viruses, Islamic jihadists, or Somalian pirates. If only the KKs of this blog and this world would finally get the message, and get a clue.
Then instead of nationalizing health care, give them vouchers or a refundable tax credit and let them choose the plan best for them. The important thing is that we let people decide what is best for them and keep the politicians and the bureaucrats out of the business.
Give me an economic analysis that defends your position. And, again, taking you at your word rather than what you decide to interject as the modification of your word later, you seem to be suggesting zero regulation of health care providers (because, of course, regulation is putting politicians and bureacrats in the business, not keeping them out of it). You believe that transaction costs are zero, and that information costs are zero, and that the market will instantly inform everyone of bad practices? Do an analysis. Defend your position. Make an argument. You’ve managed to convince yourself that you know what you’re talking about. That’s easy. The challenge is convincing others.
All you do is make blanket ideological claims, and then pretend that that makes you an expert.
You drop these proclamations of yours about what works and what doesn’t, what we have to do and why the country is going to hell in a handbasket, how those who disagree with you obviously don’t know anything at all about the topic (and, by implication, how you do).
It’s time to put up or shut up.
You’ve made some bold economic claims about where comparative advantage lies, now defend those claims. And I mean in clear and precise terms. Give us a nuts-and-bolts analysis. Prove that you have a f***ing clue what you’re talking about!!!
You haven’t once posted anything that the three year old child of some talkative dogmatic Libertarian wouldn’t have been able to say just by parroting his daddy. Show us that you’re not, as you appear to be, simply mouthing empty platitudes, referring vaguely to what “many economists” do and don’t believe, and then disappearing until the next opportunity to throw a molatov cocktail of Coeur de Leon Wisdom our way.
Prove that you’re not the 2-dimensional phoney you appear to be. Write a nice long post regaling us with your analytical prowess. Do a cost-benefit analysis of various competing alternative health care regimes, identifying the variables, how they interact, what the consequence of each matrix of variables would be, taking into account all relevant information. Do the analysis, and then make the claim. That’s the usual order for such things. What are the potential unintended consequences of what you are recommending?
Better yet, start off by answering an even more fundamental question: What are you recommending? You said that government subsidies aren’t incompatable with your recommendation: Is that a part of your recommendation? What is your recommendation? What problems does it solve? What problems does it create? Why is it superior to the alternatives? How does it resolve the dilemmas we face?
Since you’re the expert on this subject, why don’t you make a useful contribution to this blog, and share with us the substance of your expertise? I’m sure we will all be very grateful.
that Republicans fucked up Katrina all on their own, and have used it since as evidence that government can’t work.
Actually it’s evidence that Republican government can’t work. Which is how all reasonable people saw it.
As for Medicare and Medicaid, they work. I understand you want poor and old people to die, but most of us want them to live. It must suck to hate people that much.
brutal social injustice okay” is not thoughtful conversation.
Look, I love the market. I think the market is one of the most marvelous of all social institutions, the way in which it organically aligns individual and collective interests for a whole, enormous swathe of purposes is absolute poetry. But only a fool fails to recognize its limitations and defects, and only a fool speaks in absolutes in a reality characterized by subtle nuances.
Your mantra that all recourse to government is bad is undermined by even casual observation of that reality. Even you, when pressed, acknowledge a limited role for government, which means that the question is not whether to rely on government for some purposes or not, but rather to carefully and analytically determine which precise purposes it best suited for. You’re not doing that. Instead, you have drawn an arbitrary and unreflective line, beyond which you have arbitrarily defined government as inherently less competent than markets.
Markets are robust: They produce wealth very robustly, and they produce externalities very robustly. Government is the only tool we have to address those large-scale externalities (local externalities can often be addressed by diffusely and informally enforced norms). Furthermore, markets do not address issue of fairness, because they do not address issues of historically produced differentials in the distribution of resources and opportunities at birth. If we value the fairness of how wealth is distributed, even insisting that it only be distributed to those who work hard enough to have earned the distribution, then we cannot just leave that to markets. Finally, even in terms of how robustly markets produce wealth, they do so more efficiently (and do a better job of doing so more fairly) in a context of reduced transaction costs. Government plays a vital role in reducing those transaction costs
Of course, the analysis must include attention to government’s defects as well as to the defects of markets: goal displacement, agency problems, and so on, of which you make a fetish rather than relevant pieces in an analytical policy puzzle.
These issues are nuts-and-bolts issues, not ideological cookie-cutter issues.
So please, don’t accuse anyone who dismisses you out of hand as not being interested in thoughtful conversation. Thoughtful conversation is exactly what we’re interested in. And we’d all be delighted to have you join us in it.
You mean the bean counters at the HMO? I’ve had tests prescribed by in network doctors that United declined becuase their accountants don’t like it. As a small business owner I buy my own healthcare, $200/month high deductible/HSA. Never have used it (my previous employer covered the United, now I have switched) but every year my premium goes up and my coverage is questionable. The American healthcare system is broken–we pay more per capita and have lower life expectancy than other western nations. Pay more, get less=Kiddie’s ideal healthcare.
The only way to eliminate bureacratic problems is to eliminate corporations, which, like governments, are hierarchical organizations that are corporate actors in the economy. But eliminating corporations comes at some pretty high costs: Loss of economies of scale, loss of vasly reduced transaction costs by utilizing a single physical plant and energy source (end of production lines, back to individual artisans, a romantic but economically inefficient innovation). It’s an issue of trade-offs, and sometimes bureacratic solutions win on a straight-forward cost-benefit analysis.
But aren’t corporations disciplined by the market, whereas governments aren’t. BZZZ. No. Both are more or less equally disciplined (and not disciplined) by market dynamics, both competing with other similarly situated corporate entities, but both laden with goal displacement issues. As Alan Greenspan, a person who tended to have a relatively (though not ideologically absurd) preference for free-market solutions, said regarding his culpability vis-a-vis the financial crisis (paraphrasing): “I relied too much on corporate executives acting in their shareholders’ interests.”
A solid economic analysis, which takes the underlying principle which often tends to favor markets (that individuals tend to act in their own individual self-interest), and applies it indiscriminately, avoids such assumptions, and avoids the errors that follow from them.
The discipline of institutional economics examines, through the indiscriminate application of economic analysis, what balances and articulations of markets and hierarchies are most efficient solutions to the problems and challenges being addressed.
You have to do the analysis. If you start with a priori assumptions and ideologically derived preferences, your going to end up with more rather than less dysfunctional policies.
Garbage in, garbage out, as programmers are wont to say.
paraphrasing only slightly, that OMG we’re all gonna die if more people have health care!!1!!eleven!!
So, um, try a little harder if you actually want a serious conversation.
in a broth of economic illiteracy, and season it with intentional ignorance of all the salient facts that are inconvenient to your ideological assumptions, you get really, really bad policy ideas that really, really clueless people will ladel out into their bowls and enjoy together in a shared meal of what, to them, is emotionally gratifying, though in reality is just utter nonsense.
So, enjoy your soup, but please, try not to slurp so much while you’re eating it. Some of us are trying to think about how to address the problems and challenges we collectively face.
Western Europe and Canada were democracies. They love their health care. If they didn’t, they could change it. Sure, you can find isolated examples of bad health care anywhere. Just look at the U.S. system now.
It’s hell, I mean HELL in those places! What, with their universal health care, and healthy work-leisure balance, and authentic family values, and appreciation of aesthetic pleasures, and decent public education, and moderate affluence, and ample public transportation, and high levels of self-reported happiness, and low crime rates…. Thank god almighty we’re nothing like them!
But that’s as much the result of a flaw in our system as in theirs. In a comparison of the relative virtues of the two models, the impact of a global financial crisis that we largely catalyzed does not tip the scales in our favor.
The European banking system never really came into the 20th century, until the 21st. By which time our financial service sector created some wacky instruments (counterparty insurance on credit defaults that required no counterparty, for example).
But because the EU banks were never fully engaged in the 20th century, they were over eager to get into the 21st.
It’s partly why I find it so comical that US bankers are threatening to defect if their compensation and bonus structure is altered in any meaningful way, even temporarily. Where will you go?
But they allowed their banks to get more …”weird” than ours. And though the argument will be made that’s because our bankers were smarter and better, that seems unlikely. More likely is we had better economic fundamentals.
But still not exactly a scathing indictment of the Western European social system in comparison to ours, and a rather marginal one relative to the major set of institutional accomplishments by which the Western Europeans can reasonably be said to have soundly surpassed us in terms of producing and preserving human welfare.
And may I add one other dastardly attribute those low-life countries possess. Societal homogeny. It is what irritates me most about these right wing xenophobes and bigots here. In my time living in Europe, I was with a working group of Turk and Armenian, Franco and Democratic Spaniards, Christian and Muslim Lebanese and German and Jew. And we all got along just fine. Not once in my three years there did I hear anything remotely like what can be heard at any Republican caucus meeting here.
All is not sweetness and light there. (Well they do get light from the cars they torch.)
and not new to the cultural clashes emerging in Europe. Paradise does not exist on Earth, though better and worse conditions do. I’ll still take Western Europe’s problems over ours any day of the week.
I’m beginning to understand that health insurance is only for the healthy.
If you need it, you can’t get it.
Myself, Kid, I think it’s great for the Country that we’re actually about to solve that problem.
“No problem, KK. The country returns the favor.”
And the changes they are proposing for healthcare clearly meet the requirements for reconciliation. On the flips side, the Republicans forced the Bush tax cuts through using reconciliation and as those increased the deficit, they very clearly did not meet the standard.
So the ones that mis-used reconciliation were the Republicans, not us Dems.
I thought you were against the use of reconciliation.
I am all in favor of using it when it’s use meets the criteria for it. My main point on this is we should be a nation of laws.
Tax and spending levels appropriately fit under reconciliation. Major policy changes, such as a one-size-fits-all health care system, have never fit under reconciliation. This would be a first.
It’s easier to use reconciliation when you have no agenda whatsoever aside from giving rich people more money.
I guess eventually people will again stop caring about a functioning government, and then you’ll have your chance to use reconciliation however you want.
One is using “reconciliation,” which is an accepted, legitimate, and commonly used parliamentary tactic. The other would have been the “nuclear option,” which would have destroyed the filibuster and minority rights in the Senate completely.
The Republicans had the right to pass tax cuts using reconciliation, and they did. You’re overstating the case because you have no understanding of history or sense of perspective. Which is sad.
Time to treat the repubs like the squealing brats they are.
The President won by almost 10 million votes. He was hired to make things happen. If the party of no can’t pitch in and help solve the problems that they themselves caused, time to kick them to the side of the road.
Reconcilliation got Bush his tax cuts for the rich.
Turnabout is definately fair play.
I’m all for bold, aggressive and progressive action. After 100 days, it’s a positive mixed bag. Others have commented quite well on this blog about Obama, so I won’t repeat. The future is still ahead of us.
RIP Bea Arthur
Bea could play anywhere in the galaxy. But I always imagined her giving what-for to Darth Vader and reducing him to tears.
By Statistical data, such as women who die in childbirth, babies born with birth defects, percentage of people obese, percentage of people with preventable diseases, our health care system is indeed NOT GREAT, and in fact way down the list.
http://www.photius.com/ranking…
US ranks 37th.
from Denver Channel 7 News
Come on Repub36, be like John Kerry and report for duty
if this one doesn’t pan out for you, you could always look into that toilet paper scandal I told you about.
No matter how much you stuff your shorts the boys/girls you seek will giggle when you dig out that lil pecker.
Ok, on to the urban dict., today’s entry: Twatted
Meridith Vieira: “Oh, do you Twitter? Tweet?”
Stephen Colbert: “I have twatted.”
Meridith Vieira: “Actually, so have I.”
You see, my toilet paper remark was about the triviality and speculativeness of the imagined and inflated scandal you are trying to concoct. It has some relevance to a discussion of Colorado politics, because it addresses the desparate muckraking of one embittered member of the discredited opposition. And what, exactly, is the subtle significance of your pre-school attempt at humor?
Swine Flu….let’s see how the “Pubs” handle the confirmation of Kathleen Sibelius as the Director for the Department of Health and Human Services this week. Obstructionists or pragmatists? We have an Acting Director of the Center for Disease Control (a Bush appointee…..give you confidence?)and need resolution on this. BTW, the secessionist governor of Texas requested swine flu vaccine from the federal government just recently.
Wonder how long that will take to negotiate – perhaps a little too long to deal with a flu pandemic.
Ennaresting developments in Iraq, and more evidence (more yet to come) that this situation is and will continue to be a major foreign policy disaster. Way to go “Gang of Four” (Bush/Cheney/Rumsfield/Rice).
The Bush Administration negotiated an Agreement (SOFA) which includes Iraqi control over crimes in their own country….you know, a key part of sovereignty. Now, we’re facing a situation where American crimes in Iraq may well have to be tried in Iraqi courts. Oy Vey! But we have to ask ourselves, if we don’t want Americans tried in the sovereign courts of Iraq, then should Americans should be in Iraq? -At the very least, Americans definitely should not commit crimes in Iraq.
I don’t have a link, sorry. Story developing. I’ll try to bring a link later.
Obama sure was handed a pile of shit to deal with!
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters…
a diary on Colorado governments competing priorities. I quoted Steve Harvey in the diary. Check it out. No links, but, interesting topic for us political and policy nerds on Pols.
If everyone agrees, it may not be perfect, but governments and elected officials regardless of party or jurisdictions have a responsibility to work together to serve citizens. We shouldn’t govern with blinders on.