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guyman
Trad climber
Moorpark, CA.
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Mar 22, 2010 - 03:49pm PT
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The right to disagree -- without all the rhetoric and fear mongering -- was something the Founding Fathers would endorse.
agree.
Those dads all went to a bar, had a few beers, and argued about stuff face to face.
I bet they could not have envisioned SuperTopo.
Well the dem's are all proud and happy with this "steaming turd" they just gave birth to.
Give it a few years and lets see how it matures.
I have a aunt, who still is riled up at FDR for "f-ing up our country".
it's good to see most on ST can sort of argue a point with out becoming overly hatefull.
time to go climbing, someplace.
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stevep
Boulder climber
Salt Lake, UT
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Mar 22, 2010 - 04:03pm PT
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Most of you free market capitalist right wingers would agree that economic mobility is a good thing right? That if I have a great idea for a startup, I should be able to run with it.
Unfortunately, I can't. And lots of people these days are tied to their existing jobs as they can't get individual or small-group insurance because of pre-existing conditions.
This bill fixes that. And quite a few other things.
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HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
Arid-zona
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Mar 22, 2010 - 04:10pm PT
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"I have a aunt, who still is riled up at FDR for "f-ing up our country"."
So is my grandmother. On the other hand she says it's the best country in the world. I always find it humorous that she will rail against many of the things that have helped make this country great while still insisting on it's greatness.
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guyman
Trad climber
Moorpark, CA.
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Mar 22, 2010 - 04:18pm PT
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So is my grandmother. On the other hand she says it's the best country in the world. I always find it humorous that she will rail against many of the things that have helped make this country great while still insisting on it's greatness.
It's the best country, imho.
but it could be better 4 sure.
your granny sounds very wise, just like my Aunt, it's the sort of "been there done that" wisdom I now listen to very carefully from "Old Folks" .....
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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Mar 22, 2010 - 05:26pm PT
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I have an uncle in his late 70's who would punch anybody in the nose that said FDR screwed up the country...FDR's programs kick-started a dead economy...My uncle was given a job created by FDR....Electricity was brought to rural American farms by FDR's programs...My uncle's brother in law was given a job....there were a lot of people starving that FDR helped bail out....I'll tell you where this FDR is a communist rumor started...Rush Limbaugh...F*#k you republican idiots and your destructive lies....! quit being parrots and try coming up with some original material for once...rj
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Fat Dad
Trad climber
Los Angeles, CA
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Mar 22, 2010 - 05:44pm PT
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Hey, the richest 1% already pay 40% of personal taxes. Another 2.5% (BTW, it's more than that) is no big deal.
No they don't. That's what the law provides, but that's not what they pay. Let me provide a single example: the McCourts, who own the Dodgers, made $104 million as a couple over the past five years. Amount of income tax paid: $0.
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jstan
climber
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Mar 22, 2010 - 05:45pm PT
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I don't know how old your grandmother is but there may be a confounding effect here. In the 30's and prior to the thirties the country was entirely different. A huge change associated with population and having mothing to do with the government took place. In the early 1900's the great majority ran thirty head of milk cows (or some such commodity) to finance the few things they could not grow or make for themselves. You butchered twice a year, when it was cool and not infrequently neighbors helped each other.
You went to the village once a week and got all your news bent over a little wooden battery powered radio. You got light from a kerosene lamp. The Depression put an end to all of that. WWI with its millions of casualties around 1919 had a huge impact and led to some poor economic behavior that probably contributed to the subsequent collapse.
She is probably reacting to all of that loss as much as anything else.
Actually beginning in 2008 she should have started feeling right at home.
We have not lost the knack for foolish economics.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Mar 22, 2010 - 05:57pm PT
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The Republican leadership, such as it is, seems to have seriously underestimated Obama's will and leadership.
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blahblah
Gym climber
Boulder
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Mar 22, 2010 - 06:05pm PT
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I have an uncle in his late 70's who would punch anybody in the nose that said FDR screwed up the country...FDR's programs kick-started a dead economy...My uncle was given a job created by FDR....Electricity was brought to rural American farms by FDR's programs...My uncle's brother in law was given a job....there were a lot of people starving that FDR helped bail out....I'll tell you where this FDR is a communist rumor started...Rush Limbaugh...F*#k you republican idiots and your destructive lies....! quit being parrots and try coming up with some original material for once...rj
If your uncle would punch someone for expressing a political view, he's a sick dude and should be in jail or an institution.
If your uncle was here, I would say that FDR screwed up the country just so he'd punch me and then I'd sue his ass.
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happiegrrrl
Trad climber
New York, NY
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Mar 22, 2010 - 06:08pm PT
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If for nothing more but this:
"If you keep your current plan: Within six months, the plans will have to stop some practices, like setting lifetime limits on coverage and canceling policy holders who get sick." the health care bill is a godsend.
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/03/21/us/health-care-reform.html
The people who are getting screwed by the current(until the new laws kick in) system is not the very poor, who can get Medicaid and reduced fees on health care, but the people who "follow the rules," but the ones who actually do feed the insurance machine by paying premiums. T
HEY are the ones who find themselves facing financial ruin when their insurer - previously happily accepting their premiums - decides they just won't pay the claims, or increases premiums at an absurd level, or cuts the policy off, leaving the person unable to manage health care bills they - in good faith - believed would be covered.
These people typically HAVE some assets - savings, real estate, investments of some sort - which then get scavenged like a car left overnight on the sidewalk in the wrong neighborhood. They also typically have some savings that were earmarked for quality-of-life improvements such as their children's educations, or retirement income. Savings that now go to pay the wolf at the door, Fat Insurance Company, Inc.
Insurance is a racket; a shell game, and nothing more.
I sincerely do hope the health care reform will have the effect of strangling the insurance companies with a slow, awkward, painful, painful death march. That they cannot cancel someone's plan is exquisite(I suppose this has "if's" like the person must keep up with payments, of course), I think.
Take them down, and take them down hard. But drag them through the mud on the way.
I saw upthread someone said the stocks for insurance co's are rising today. If I had stocks....I might play that for a short while, I suppose(I have no stocks). Just because it "is" a game(a game played at the cost of other people's lives, but what the hell! It's MONEY!). But I'm guessing people will start jumping ship fast at some point.
Do I hear a domino clicking another domino.....?
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Bob D'A
Trad climber
Boulder, CO
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Mar 22, 2010 - 06:11pm PT
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Anders wrote: The Republican leadership, such as it is, seems to have seriously underestimated Obama's will and leadership.
Bingo!!
Sixteen months into his first term, Obama has done what no other modern presidents have been able to achieve. Major health care reform and he did it with a powerful woman (Pelosi) and no help from the other side.
This changes the playing field.
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Ksolem
Trad climber
Monrovia, California
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Mar 22, 2010 - 06:22pm PT
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The Republican leadership, such as it is, seems to have seriously underestimated Obama's will and leadership.
Obama's will is obviously strong. I would not call the kind of politics which got this bill passed "leadership." More like lies and deceit.
It will be interesting to see how this develops. Item one: the house pulled money out of SS to reduce the deficit impact of the bill, but Senate reconcilation rules forbid using reconciliation to pass anything which takes money from SS.
Then of course the states will sue because they simply cannot afford the massive shift of costs this bill places on the states.
This turkey will end up in court, and Obama may live to regret humiliating the Judges at the State of The Union, when he whipped up his party colleagues into a frenzy, jeering the Judges while making untrue statments about their decision on McCain Feingold.
This one is going to ripen nicely...
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Mar 22, 2010 - 06:29pm PT
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Yes, it will ultimately end up in court, though as I mentioned far upthread, that's far from a sure win for anyone. My guess is that once it gets there, it will be on fairly narrow grounds that don't jeopardize the overall bill, and that by that time (two or three years or more) the public, including governments and lower courts, will have settled into the new system. Also, of course, that a great deal of the opposition was partisan hysteria based on 'values', which will probably now go away, especially if the Democrats do even reasonably well in November. The Supreme Court knows well that values are decided in elections, not by courts.
The senior judge on the Supreme Court is now 90, and apparently has indicated that he intends to retire within the next three years, i.e. while Obama is in office. Choosing a replacement may be the next test for Obama, given that there are three or perhaps four judges on the court who are not in sympathy with him and never will be, and two or three who are.
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Fat Dad
Trad climber
Los Angeles, CA
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Mar 22, 2010 - 06:32pm PT
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jeering the Judges while making untrue statments about their decision on McCain Feingold.
Some thread drift here, but Obama was absolutely correct in his criticism of that opinion. It was a terrible decision, completey unsupported by any precedent. To use the right's jargon, it was a perfect example of judicial activism.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Mar 22, 2010 - 06:37pm PT
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jstan,
I feel a little odd making this comment on this thread, rather than the "Republican" one. Since I already made my health care bill comment there, though, I'll indulge my need to be a little picky here.
I think the first commercial radio station in the U.S. was in Pittsburgh, and began broadcasting in 1920 or thereabouts. My father, who was born in 1901, grew up before commercial radio was a common thing. In fact, when he opened his own store (in 1930, of all years) he got one of the relatively rare telephones in the Armenian community in Fresno. News was by print and word of mouth for a lot longer than we realize.
That said, the depressions that periodically hit the U.S. economy before World War I usually had their origins in the long-term decline of farm prices. Farm price supports still usually peg the supported price to a level that prevailed around the end of World War I. As farming began to require less and less labor, its ability to support large numbers of people periodically declined.
The Great Depression differed because, by that time, most Americans were not farmers or farm hands. Industrial policy mistakes (in this case, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff), which heretofore affected a smaller part of the economy, now affected a very large part of the economy. Unfortunately, FDR and the New Deal was groping for the right policy. While they did many good things (the CCC and WPA come immediately to mind), they also did some very silly and harmful ones (such as the NRA, that tried to "reflate" the economy by encouraging collusion and price fixing). We were, quite simply, still learning.
In a great, if costly, triumph of Keynesian stimulus, we ended the Depression with lots of help from Tojo and Hitler. While, as a conservative, I disagree with a lot of New Deal policy and philosophy, I also have a great deal of respect for FDR and the New Deal. I don't think any American president since Lincoln faced such extreme threats to the existence and soul of the United States. Our survival, stronger and better, is an overwhelming testament to his greatness.
John
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Mar 22, 2010 - 06:43pm PT
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Sorry to disagree, Fat Dad, since I was enjoying your agreement responding to some other, rather bizarrely self-centered threads, but Ksolem is absolutely right about the President's comments about the court.
Since there's already two other threads about this, I won't repeat the argument, though in a way I'm glad that Obama stirred up such a storm. It inspired a Ralph Nader co-authored WSJ op-ed piece against the decision. That, in turn, inspired me to write my first letter to the editor in the Journal which, mirabile dictu, they published!
John
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Fat Dad
Trad climber
Los Angeles, CA
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Mar 22, 2010 - 06:45pm PT
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An interesting link on the history of efforts to pass healthcare legislation, starting with Teddy Roosevelt thru FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Johnson, Nixon, Clinton, etc.:
http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-na-healthcare-timeline_980-html,0,6152718.htmlstory
If anything, the history of legislation such as this shows that efforts to rebuff it are not so much a tied in the wool Republican policy but rather the partisan politics of the current crop of industry-controlled Republicans.
Edit:
John, I'm unclear: are you agreeing that 1) Obama's comment was inappropriate, 2) that the decision was right, or 3) both. For the record, I think it's worth remembering that Obama taught Constitutional Law. I think his opinion on the subject should be accorded some weight.
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Ksolem
Trad climber
Monrovia, California
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Mar 22, 2010 - 06:51pm PT
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Two points and that’s all.
The Supreme Court does not have to take the case. It will be decided in a lower court first and then challenged. I think President Obama increased the Supreme Court’s “interest” in all things “Obama” when he committed his huge, yet still underestimated gaffe at the State of The Union. We’ll see.
The other about leadership. They have passed (unless technicalities about reconciliation hold it up) a bill which no one can argue is flawed. This bill was born of politics, not of leadership. A great president would have stepped into the process with his (her) boots on and said “there are some things here we can work with, but a lot has to go.” Instead, from Obama we have seen the same “paint yourself into a corner” kind of decision making which George Bush engaged in leading to the Iraq war. Both Presidents, in different but very consequential situations, committed themselves to succeeding at their agenda in such a way that there was little room to look back and make the smart decisions later.
As an edit to FatDad while I was writing, the point is not whether Obama was right or wrong (although he did "misstate" facts,) but rather that he took the unprecedented step of cornering and attacking the Judges at a function where they could not respond and are not even required to attend but do so out of courtesy. I'll bet they sit his next one out.
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Jefe'
Boulder climber
Bishop
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Mar 22, 2010 - 06:52pm PT
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I'M WITH QUAKEN CUZ IT LOOKS LIKE A FUN RIDE
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