Where do you stand politically?

[Jon]

Is there some kind of stalemate between the Republicans and the Democrats regarding healthcare, because the Democrats run the House and the Republicans run policy?

 

[Steve R.]

Some of the Democratic "tax and spend" strategies are quite shameless, but then given some the ideas the Democrats support, they ARE shameless.

More precisely, what SHOULD be their shame is foisted off to others via "political correctness."

What is ironic, is that approximately 44% (2018) of Americans paid no income tax. Yet the Democrats shameless whine that the recent tax reductions only benefited the "rich". Obviously, those who don't pay income tax won't be affected by the tax cuts. A false narrative by Democrats. Also a narrative that, unfortunately, has tremendous popular appeal even though it is not valid.

There is another disturbing aspect to this. A large number of Americans receive governmental assistance. 21.3 Percent of U.S. Population Participates in Government Assistance Programs Each Month. Again, that points to the exceedingly deceitful assertions by Democrats that only the "rich" benefited from the recent round of tax cuts.

PS: The US needs to get back to real budgeting that balances revenues and expenditures. Unfortunately, that does not seem to be an issue.

 

[Jon]

44%??? That is shocking!

 

[pbaldy]

The 44% is shocking, and it hints at why liberals get away with promising the moon. The current crop of candidates seem to be competing to see who can promise to give away the most. If a person pays no income tax, what do you think their motivation is when it comes to deciding who to vote for? "Who's going to give me the most goodies? Who cares who pays the bill, it won't be me!"

 

[Steve R.]

Is there some kind of stalemate between the Republicans and the Democrats regarding healthcare, because the Democrats run the House and the Republicans run policy?

Not a stalemate. The Democrats, to the extent possible, are fanatically obstructing Republicans. Democratic obstruction is real, the Russian Collusion Delusion, the Mueller Witch-Hunt, finally the impeachment fiasco. Democrats would rather see the country fail than allow Republicans to get credit for any success.

PS: I don't know how serious the Republicans are about fixing health care. My statement requires clarification. From the perspective of providing national health care as a human right, the Republicans (in theory) are not interested. From the perspective that government should stay out of health care, the Republicans would welcome that approach, but of course that approach is politically unpopular since we have entered an era of a large number or people wanting a Nanny State (even if they deny it).

 

[Jon]

Over in the UK, the position is that everybody has a right to free health care. I like that position. Then again, we are taxed for it. I just wonder what someone does when they haven't taken out any insurance over in the States and they get ill. It sounds a bit harsh.

I have a friend who has moved to Thailand. He is terrible with money! I can see him blowing the lot and ending up out there on the breadline. What happens over there if he gets ill? Probably can only afford an aspirin!

 

[Steve R.]

Over in the UK, the position is that everybody has a right to free health care. I like that position. Then again, we are taxed for it. I just wonder what someone does when they haven't taken out any insurance over in the States and they get ill. It sounds a bit harsh.

Medical care, as with many things, used to be cheap in the US. I have no objection to a taxpayer funded medical system (NOT insurance),

As with many things in the US, health care has gotten to be very expensive over the last few years. I can remember when it was reasonably cheap. Why it is so expensive now, I can't fully answer. What I have observed, is that when the government becomes involved things become overly complicated, expensive, and also prone to fraud.

There is an old joke (paraphrased): What is an elephant? => A mouse designed to government specifications. Obamacare, as one example, was a "mouse" that metastasized into an "elephant".

I have a friend who has moved to Thailand. He is terrible with money! I can see him blowing the lot and ending up out there on the breadline. What happens over there if he gets ill? Probably can only afford an aspirin!

The concept of saving before buying something (a car, house, or college education) has gone out of style in the US. One could even say that saving is un-American!!!

 

[Jon]

Well, if you look at USA government debt, I see where you are coming from!!

 

[Pat Hartman]

free health care

That's an oxymoron since nothing is actually free and from what we hear about UK healthcare, you get what you pay for. To answer the question regarding people who are not covered. Anyone who shows up in an emergency room at a hospital gets treatment and probably never pays. You will get different treatment if you are not insured though. I had an accident and fell and injured my face. The first question as I'm being wheeled into the emergency room was "do you have insurance?". I did so they called a plastic surgeon to fix my face. Otherwise, the resident on duty would have sewed me up. The treatment bill for this little accident came to $35,000 including $5,000 each for two CT Scans (one for my neck and the other for my head). Plus another thousand each for a doctor to read them. $1500 for the ambulance. $8,000 for the plastic surgeon and the rest for miscellaneous and the emergency room itself. So, if I didn't have insurance, I would have been billed $35,000 and if I couldn't pay it all or any of it, the hospital would have written it off as a loss. At the time, I had medicaid (which is the government insurance for poor people - I'll explain why if anyone wants that story) and medicaid has the lowest reimbursement rate of any insurer, even medicare (old folks insurance) so the total that medicaid paid was around $4500. It came out to be a little more than 10% of what was billed. I'm going into detail here because this explains how the hospitals convinced Congress that they were losing tons of money treating the uninsured for free. Even though they knew that if they treated an insured person, insurance companies would actually pay between 10 and 40% of what was billed, they always wrote off the uninsured treatment at the inflated price. Even though I never had to pay a cent, when I got the bill I was so incensed by the charges, especially the CT scans that I called the billing office at the hospital and complained that I didn't want to buy the #### machine, I wanted to rent it . This accident happened during the ObamaCare debate and made it clear (to me at least) that Congress was being lied to by lobbyists to inflate the cost of treating the uncovered. Earlier, I mentioned that posting prices would help with reducing costs. No one would ever go to Bridgeport hospital for a CT scan if their posted price were $5,000 when other facilities did the same procedure for around $500.

"Free" treatment for emergencies doesn't solve the problem of people who develop a chronic illness. There are charities that help but not as many as there used to be. In the past, there were lots of charity hospitals in the US. Most were run by religious orders and the Catholic hospitals were staffed by nuns. When I was 7, I had an operation in a Catholic hospital. My parents were poor but they still paid something because we weren't destitute, just poor. Most of those hospitals are gone now. Mostly due to the drop in church goers who supported the hospitals. The move away from religion is pushed mostly by liberals and at least in the case of the Catholic church due to scandals.

Congress can't fix the healthcare system because the problem is too big to solve in one chunk. It has to be broken down into pieces and no one will give up their pet component so nothing ever happens. It's like stopping illegal immigration. How can you give amnesty to the people already here before you shut down the borders? You can't so nothing gets done. The Republicans had both houses for Trump's two years. They had been railing about killing ObamaCare for 8 years. Did they do anything when they had the opportunity? NO!! A pox on all their houses. The Republicans are just as bad as the Democrats. They're just bad about different things. Both parties are great at making empty promises but Trump actually tries to implement what he promised. That's why his popularity is rising. If you didn't succumb to the perpetual wall of hate directed at him over the past three years by media and the Democrats, you could see he was like the energizer bunny. The man just keeps trying.

I'll end with, I don't think a very basic universal healthcare for all is a bad idea. But Congress has to stop selling it as FREE because only stupid people believe it is actually free. People have to be willing to pay for it and the cost has to correspondingly reduce the cost and coverage of the existing insurance options. It also cannot be administered by the government. We don't need one more bloated, inefficient bureaucracy that just spends "other people's" money with abandon.

 

[NauticalGent]

A pox on all their houses. The Republicans are just as bad as the Democrats. They're just bad about different things. Both parties are great at making empty promises...

Amen, preach on sister!

 

[Pat Hartman]

Do you think I should run for president? I could change my voting registration back to Democrat if that helps. No Libertarian can ever win in this current two-party system. I can lie just as well as they do but I wouldn't ever implement any of the policies I proposed. I also wouldn't get into stupid twitter fights. I may have to change my registration anyway. CT is so blue that it makes no sense to register as a Republican or independent since the important primary will almost always be the Democrat primary. However, in 2015, the important primary was the Republican primary so I had to change my registration to allow me to vote against Trump. Yep, I voted for Cruz in the primary. I know he was second best but much as I loved Trump's complete lack of political correctness, I KNEW with certainty that he was never going to change his style and his term would be contentious at best. Trump just being in the race changed the way all the candidates had to act and although they didn't drop their political correctness completely (most of them were politicians so they couldn't go that far) but they did engage differently when Trump was present. Well I was right about Trump making heads spin (I think he does it deliberately . But of course I voted for him in the general election and he has actually succeeded in fulfilling more promises than I thought he would.. He has let the Dems get the best of him with the budget though. I thought he was going to win last year when he let the government shutdown go on as long as he did but he caved.

 

[Jon]

Is a libertarian like a halfway-house between Republican and Democrat?

Have I got these terms right?

Democrat = Liberal
Republican = Conservative
The confused = Libertarian

I feel like I got the last one wrong.

 

[Pat Hartman]

A libertarian is more aligned with the constitution as it was written. Individual rights are paramount. Small government, states rights - in our constitution any right not given to the federal government belongs to states. Individual rights do NOT come from the government. They come from God and so the government cannot take them away. So regulating schools for example would be the province of the states and this was the case until the 70's or 80's when the Department of Education was formed and started messing up education in the US as they tried to "standardize" it. No one has looked at the stats to see that our standing in the world is dropping because we are dumbing down the curriculum and we can no longer compete. Libertarians believe that people should be responsible for themselves. Welfare is a liberal construct. Well into the 20th century, communities had affinity organizations that were sometimes religious (Knights of Columbus) or related to places of origin. So depending on the size of a community, there might be a German social hall and an Irish social hall, etc. These organizations all helped new immigrants to integrate into society. Today, you're called foul names if you expect immigrants to actually integrate and learn English. "Diversity is our strength" is the rallying cry of the left. So, we now have the Balkanization of America. We are developing our own no-go zones in urban areas where Muslims have settled in large numbers.

The liberals are all about social welfare and free stuff. This group also includes the Communists, Socialists, and Marxists. They want abortion on demand. Free speech ONLY if they approve of what you're saying, Government control over everything. No guns. A small army but they want to send it everywhere. They're all about Nation Building (unfortunately the Republicans have joined this group also so I guess it is the Progressive influence.) The liberals seem to think that three people in a room can have a vote for who's money to take. They think that if two people vote to take yours and give it to a fourth, more deserving person, that is charity. I call it theft as do all Libertarians. The Republicans have gone along for the ride regarding this and way too many other issues. Another new view is that an accused person is guilty until proven innocent. That's why they all think that because some people don't like Trump, he must be guilty of something. You probably didn't watch the Kavanaugh hearings a year ago last fall where Congress was trying to confirm him as a Supreme Court Judge and women kept coming out of the woodwork to accuse him of "crimes" that happened when he was in high school. How would you handle that? Someone who you might not even remember, says you raped her at a party the summer between junior and senior years. She doesn't know were the party was, who was there, how she got there, how she got home but she's absolutely sure she had only a single drink and it was YOU!!! The "crime" wasn't reported at the time. She never told her friends or family. Now, she remembers and has to tell us to save us. Oh, BTW, she pocked a million dollars from a go fund me page that some supporter set up. And the left still believe that Kavanaugh must be guilty because he was accused. Off with his head!!!

Who knows what the Conservatives stand for these days. They used to be for less business regulation and more fiscal responsibility for the government. They also wanted a huge army (because it benefited business) but they didn't want to send it anywhere. Things change though and they're in the bigger is better camp today. The Republicans are completely cowed by the left. They are hamstrung by political correctness because they are so afraid to speak their mind. That is why I was so happy when Trump joined the race. If a homosexual pointed to a blackboard and said it was blue they wouldn't argue with him for fear of being called a homophobe. The only people you are allowed to argue with in the PC era is white men. They are the root of all evil.

 

[Pat Hartman]

Rand Paul, Ron Paul, Ted Cruz are the most prominent figures who lean Libertarian even though they are "Republicans". I'm not as hard-nosed as they are since I'm willing to go along with things like universal health care as long as it is limited.

 

[Jon]

You probably didn't watch the Kavanaugh hearings a year ago last fall where Congress was trying to confirm him as a Supreme Court Judge and women kept coming out of the woodwork to accuse him of "crimes" that happened when he was in high school

I watched nearly all of it. You can see my comments about it in this post: https://www.access-programmers.co.u...-stand-politically.309243/page-5#post-1669619

Oh, BTW, she pocked a million dollars

Crime pays!

Their arguments had more holes in it than my string vest.

The only people you are allowed to argue with in the PC era is white men

Lets go one step further: old white men. For a party that dislikes discrimination, to me that seems ageist, racist and sexist.

I like Ted Cruz very much. He seems to me likeable, very smart and highly persuasive.

 

[Pat Hartman]

The Democrats have no self awareness. They hate Trump with such a purple passion that it is almost impossible to talk to them. Someone complained to me today about the people Trump pardoned a couple of days ago. They were upset because these people had been recommended by associates of Trump's. So I asked how Obama picked people to pardon? Did he review the criminal records and trials of every single person in prison or did people come to him with recommendations? Her eyes went blank and it was like watching a robot twitch because he couldn't resolve a logic contradiction. Then I pointed out that Trump may have commuted the sentence (He did not pardon the man) of a corrupt politician (the Democratic Governor of Illinois -Rod Blagojevich - who wanted to sell Obama's Senate seat when Obama was elected president) but Obama pardoned an actual terrorist who killed people!

Why Did Obama Free This Terrorist?

Oscar Lopez was one of the most violent extremists of his time. The fact that Obama commuted his sentence doesn’t speak well of U.S. politics.<br />

www.politico.com

The only reason that Blagojevich got such a long sentence - 14 years (he didn't actually commit a crime. He just tried to) was because Obama was pissed at him for trying to sell his vacated Senate seat. He's been in prison for 8 years. That's way too long for his actual crime. So, even though I think he's a piece of s***, he'd served enough time. Trying to commit a crime surely is NOT worse than bombing a restaurant and killing 3 people and injuring dozens more so where was her outrage in 2017?

 

[Jon]

Entrenched views lead to a ready made lexicon of hate. Thought is not required, just a regurgitation of an undigestable word salad.