Current or modern politics in the United States

[LadyLuck]

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017...candidate.html

"I never thought she was a great candidate. I thought I was a great candidate."

Gotta love Uncle Joe.

[diamelsx]

Originally Posted by LadyLuck

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017...candidate.html

"I never thought she was a great candidate. I thought I was a great candidate."

Gotta love Uncle Joe.

Yeah, Joe acts like he would not have the same turnout problems Hillary had. Both parties are not willing to be honest with themselves, or the people.

[tsunamiSD]

Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz To Leave Office At The End Of June

Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz says he will resign his congressional seat effective June 30. He first made the announcement in a statement on his website, ending weeks of speculation about his plans.

[tsunamiSD]

Supreme Court finds the GOP packed black voters into two North Carolina districts to help win more House seats

The Supreme Court rebuked North Carolina’s Republican leaders Monday for shifting tens of thousands of black voters into two congressional districts that had steadily elected black Democrats, striking down the move as racial gerrymandering.

The main effect of Monday’s ruling will be in the South. Under the Voting Rights Act, Southern states were pressed in the 1990s to create voting districts that would elect African American candidates to Congress or the state legislature.

Monday’s decision won’t settle the broader national debate over gerrymandering. Many Democrats and political scientists say Republicans have used partisan line-drawing — which is allowed under the law — to maintain a grip on the House of Representatives. They point to states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio, where Republicans have used party affiliation to give themselves control of most of the congressional seats.

*****

Gorsuch dissents as Supreme Court upholds ban on big-money gifts to parties

New Justice Neil M. Gorsuch joined Clarence Thomas in dissent Monday when the Supreme Court rejected an appeal from a Republican Party lawyer seeking to strike down limits on big-money contributions to political parties.

The dissent by Gorsuch is his first and most significant decision since joining the court last month, and it puts him squarely on the side of conservatives and Republican lawyers who believe that limits on political money are unconstitutional.

[SanteeFats]

Originally Posted by tsunamiSD

Supreme Court finds the GOP packed black voters into two North Carolina districts to help win more House seats

Are you sure you got that right??? BLACK voters????

[hound dog]

Originally Posted by SanteeFats

Are you sure you got that right??? BLACK voters????

Pack most of a single demographic, in this case black voters, in a couple districts and their votes can't change the outcomes in any of the other districts where your white conservative base holds a slim majority.

added:
All that is needed to carry a district is 50% of the vote plus 1. In fact, any votes received above that number are unnecessary for a deciding outcome. If black voters who lived on the borders with other districts had been incorporated into those other districts instead of packed into the original black districts, the impact in the loss of their votes in those original black districts would be of no consequence to the way the districts have historically voted. But if those same traditional black votes were added to the rolls among bordering districts, their votes might change the historical trends in those district's election outcomes, in this case, district's with a conservative white majority.

Gerrymandering is a way to severely limit the impact of opposition voters by concentrating them into a few districts where they can never achieve an outright majority of seats in a governing body or hold a block large enough to swing a vote one way or another in any other district, and at least achieve some political bargaining power in those other districts.

[diamelsx]

WASHINGTON — The Republican health care plan that passed the House earlier this month would leave 23 million more Americans without health insurance over the next decade than the current law and would reduce the deficit by $119 billion, according to an analysis released by the Congressional Budget Office on Wednesday.

The findings are similar to a CBO score of an earlier version of the bill spiked by Republican leaders earlier this year due to lack of support.
source

[Arturo2nd]

Originally Posted by diamelsx

WASHINGTON — The Republican health care plan that passed the House earlier this month would leave 23 million more Americans without health insurance over the next decade than the current law and would reduce the deficit by $119 billion, according to an analysis released by the Congressional Budget Office on Wednesday.

The findings are similar to a CBO score of an earlier version of the bill spiked by Republican leaders earlier this year due to lack of support.
source

IMO, healthcare is not a right. It is a societal obligation. I have advocated single payer systems because all the major industrial nations have them. It is an unfair to our employers to have to provide health insurance, particularly when the insurance industry extracts a 25% average markup. Small businesses often do not generate enough cash flow to provide health insurance, placing the businesses and employees at a disadvantage.

The many instances of price gouging, e.g., drug companies, in our current system make it hard to determine the actual costs of providing care or what level of care can be provided. We also know that Medicare pays a significant number of fraudulent billings. An analysis of a recently proposed single payer system in California placed the annual cost at $400 billion for our state alone. A previous study commissioned by Sheila Kuehl when she was in the legislature said that the state and businesses would save money. It would cost less than the current system to cover everybody. I don't know the answer, but I do know we can do better.

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/m...care/index.htm

http://www.pgpf.org/chart-archive/0006_health-care-oecd

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/...ve-healthcare/

http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publ...al-perspective

The Republican plan preserves the status quo and protects the interests of the companies making great profits from the current system. IMO making money by causing increased suffering to sick people and the premature death of thousands of people is truly disgusting. If I were king, very bad things would be done to such people.

[tsunamiSD]

Why Republicans can't fix health insurance

There is a fundamental three-way tradeoff here between the amount of money that you spend, the number of people that you cover, and the extent to which you rely on market mechanisms. What conservative ideologues want to do is choose minimal government spending and maximum reliance on free markets, letting coverage wither in the wind. That’s why Michael Cannon of the libertarian Cato Institute launched his “Anti-Universal Coverage Club” 10 years ago to try to rally the faithful behind the cause of letting tens of millions of Americans go uninsured. Practical Republican politicians don’t want to go there, however, because it’s morally hideous. Nobody who has to face the voters wants to own up to favoring a free market system in which huge swathes of the population can’t get care when they are sick. On the contrary, when GOP politicians need to make the case against Obamacare, what they normally do is complain that premiums are too high and coverage isn’t generous enough. But there are only two ways to address those issues: lean less on government solutions, or spend more money backed up by higher taxes.
Neither option is acceptable to Republicans, so they’re left with the AHCA solution — massive rollbacks in coverage that they try to paper over with a lot of handwaving.

Here’s Paul Ryan’s Biggest Health-Care Lie

If Ryan was honest, he would admit he thinks that’s fine. He doesn’t like taxes, spending, or regulation, and he thinks going back to the pre-Obamacare system would be better for that reason. Instead he smarmily insists his plan would do that while also making health care affordable to everybody. Whatever design he decides to use for the health-care system, cutting a trillion dollars from health-care subsidies in order to reduce taxes is going to deprive a lot of people of their coverage. This is the core effect of his plan, and he won’t fess up to it at all. Ryan is a Social Darwinist without the courage of his convictions.

[Arturo2nd]

I just read an article in Time magazine about Russia's use of social media to influence public opinion and elections in the United States.

http://time.com/4783932/inside-russi.../?iid=sr-link1

It occurs to me that much of the problem is traced back to vulnerabilities we ourselves create in the United States. For one thing we either mindlessly vote for incumbents or we look for "the man on the white horse," the new face that will fix our problems. I am as guilty of incumbent bias as anybody, having mindlessly voted for Diane Feinstein until a recent exchange with her office led me to do some research and discover her arrogance, corruption and use of office for personal enrichment (despite being already wealthy), and support for clandestine espionage on U.S. citizens. The preference for unfamiliar faces has driven presidential elections throughout my lifetime. Eisenhower, Kennedy, Carter, Reagan, Clinton, G.W. Bush, Obama, and Donald Trump were all newcomers to national politics when elected president. It is common for kids to hate school and parents to condone minimal effort. We have a mythology in this country that street smart amateurs have superior wisdom to "eggheads" and intellectuals.

It is interesting to read the debates of the 1787 Constitutional Convention. The framers of that document never intended that voting rights be extended to the present extent. They believed that the poorly educated mass of voters could easily be led astray by demagogues, but that the size and diversity of the country would keep damage to local levels. None the less, the original intent of having state legislatures elect senators and the electoral college elect the president and vice president was to prevent unqualified and corrupt individuals from worming their way into power. They also never intended that politics would become a full time occupation. They ignored the lessons of history in that respect. They failed to anticipate that the size and complexity of the empire would require experience and specialized education to properly manage.The founders did not anticipate television and the persuasive methods of the modern advertising industry, much less the Internet. Our current electoral environment would have given Hamilton, Madison, George Washington, and company nightmares.

The national aversion to serious intellectual effort (and the stultifying traditional methods of teaching math) is placing our economy and future at great risk. Hundreds of thousands of jobs go unfilled due to the lack of qualified candidates. Meanwhile, more and more jobs high school grads can do are being automated out of existence. We have created a nation of credulous and fearful people. No wonder Russian propaganda efforts can disrupt us.