Politics: Where we struggle to kneel in the muck.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by bilmore
So, after it was reported that those were available for two weeks (yesterday's news), you're going to base this on one guy saying "it wasn't us", and start in with "dirty tricks"? Seems awful quick.

(It may have been a dirty trick. It seems like far too stoopid of a poster for anyone to seriously print. I'm just saying, this is a bit thin.)

(P.S. What was the homophibic thingie referring to?)

I recognize that you are using words from the English language, but I cannot discern what they are supposed to signify in the pattern in which you have arranged them. Perhaps you think that the facts reported by Clemons are at odds with what you read somewhere else yesterday? Your tinfoil hat is blocking my ESP, though, so I'm not sure what you read yesterday.

[Not Me]

What is going on on the FB that the FB'ers have migrated over here? Can't someone post something about double anal over there to lure them back? Or is the place just not the same without PP and Slave acting out their love affair online?

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by Not Me
What is going on on the FB that the FB'ers have migrated over here? Can't someone post something about double anal over there to lure them back? Or is the place just not the same without PP and Slave acting out their love affair online?

Why did W make the joke about paigow during the debates? I didn't get it.

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Shape Shifter
Those are not facts, those are conclusions. I don't know whether the report's "author" was a careerist at Justice or not, but I do know who his boss was. And I do know that whoever was there at that time had to join in Ashcroft's prayer meetings or be frozen out. And I believe it is no secret that Ashcroft has been remaking Justice in his (or is it His) image. Sorry, but I wouldn't trust any public official who has himself annointed in oil before assuming office.

Well I think we've reached the end of this thread. Let me summarize:

SS: There is voter intimidation because I heard there was.

Club: Claims of voter intimidation were thoroughly investigated by the DOJ, which concluded that they were meritless.

[bilmore]

Have to be quick here, so . . .

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
No serious economist thought Bush's tax cuts were a good way to boost employment.

I'm guessing that you mean that, if an economist did say such a thing, well, obviously, they couldn't be serious. Nice spin. Now go read what the new Nobel-winning econ said this week about the tax cuts.

Here is another, lengthier description of what Kerry proposes:

Lordy. Read it. How many times does it say "federal dollars"? And, how few times does it actually describe any sort of cost savings tools? It's all cost-shift, and a whole lot more than the Emory guy says.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by sgtclub
Well I think we've reached the end of this thread. Let me summarize:

SS: There is voter intimidation because I heard there was.

Club: Claims of voter intimidation were thoroughly investigated by the DOJ, which concluded that they were meritless.

Yeah, but anyone who knows someting about it, or investigated it, but didn't come to the right conclusions, can't be, you know, "serious".

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by sgtclub
Well I think we've reached the end of this thread. Let me summarize:

SS: There is voter intimidation because I heard there was.

Club: Claims of voter intimidation were thoroughly investigated by the DOJ, which concluded that they were meritless.

Fine, if you will stipulate that "DOJ" is defined as "Ashcroft, who was appointed by the brother of the man who's election apparatus he was investigating."

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Shape Shifter
Fine, if you will stipulate that "DOJ" is defined as "Ashcroft, who was appointed by the brother of the man who's election apparatus he was investigating."

I don't know much about the internal workings of the DOJ, and any one that does is free to chime in, but I suspect that top level influence is limited to policy questions and does not make its way into factual investigations.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by bilmore
Have to be quick here, so . . .

I'm guessing that you mean that, if an economist did say such a thing, well, obviously, they couldn't be serious. Nice spin. Now go read what the new Nobel-winning econ said this week about the tax cuts.

I'm not reading it unless you link to it.

Lordy. Read it. How many times does it say "federal dollars"? And, how few times does it actually describe any sort of cost savings tools? It's all cost-shift, and a whole lot more than the Emory guy says.

I apologize for posting something that didn't pretend that Kerry's plan would help everyone and cost nothing. I'm sure you expect some piece of hackery similar to what you originally posted. Yes, he proposes spending federal money to cover people who aren't covered now. But that's not "all" he does, as you would know if you'd read what I posted. As Starr says, he's also trying to improve incentives for coverage and treatment.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
But that's not "all" he does, as you would know if you'd read what I posted.

I read everything you posted, and linked to. I read Kerry's website. I've read several policy papers from both sides on the issue. I can post without drooling. (Well, usually.)

(Okay, some times.)

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally posted by sgtclub
I don't know much about the internal workings of the DOJ, and any one that does is free to chime in, but I suspect that top level influence is limited to policy questions and does not make its way into factual investigations.

I'm sure Archibald Cox would agree.

[bilmore]

A. Have a nice weekend.

B. I'm wondering if, as we get into the final weeks, it's not all too stressful and personal for people to handle a poly board without it all degenerating into more insult than usual (which is a fairly high threshhold to start with). I think I'm going to resolve to post fairly lightly and insubstantively, if at all, for a few weeks. As it is, I doubt if the two halves of the country are going to be able to have a civil conversation post-election.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by bilmore
I read everything you posted, and linked to. I read Kerry's website. I've read several policy papers from both sides on the issue. I can post without drooling. (Well, usually.)

(Okay, some times.)

C'mon.

Here is some of the article I posted earlier:

• While the Bush approach puts more of the onus of cost on the individual, John Kerry’s proposals aim to reduce and spread the costs of health insurance. Some provisions would make private plans more affordable, while other elements would expand public programs for low-income people. Kerry’s plan, unlike Clinton’s in 1993, calls for little institutional change and does not include any mandates. It uses new financing to stabilize and extend existing forms of coverage and to create incentives for greater efficiency. In this sense, his program is incrementalist -- “ambitious incrementalism” is the term that some have used to describe it. According to estimates by Kenneth Thorpe of Emory University, Kerry’s proposals would cost $653 billion over 10 years and result in coverage of 27 million of the nation’s 45 million uninsured, raising the proportion of Americans with health insurance to about 95 percent. Unlike Bush, Kerry indicates how he would pay for his plan: The required revenue would come from rolling back the Bush tax cuts for the top 2 percent in income.
  
  To cut private insurance premiums, Kerry proposes that the government provide “stop-loss” protection to private plans, picking up 75 percent of the cost of catastrophic care. The threshold for this protection would be set so as to relieve private plans of 10 percent of their costs. In 2006, that level would be $30,000 in annual expenses for an individual, rising to $50,000 in 2013. Employers that wanted to get the stop-loss protection would need to have a certified disease-management program (aimed at controlling expenses and preventing recurrences for specific high-cost conditions such as heart disease). They would also have to offer health coverage to all their employees on a nondiscriminatory basis -- that is, if they pay 75 percent of premiums for some employees, they would have to extend the same offer to all.
  
  The stop-loss protection would have benefits to the public beyond the immediate savings of 10 percent. Reducing the risk of high-cost cases would make it less risky, and therefore cheaper, to insure small firms. All employers would have less incentive to discriminate against job seekers who are older or disabled or who have family members suffering from costly medical conditions. In the past, Blue Cross plans used to offer a single “community rate” to all firms, large and small. Competition did away with that practice. Under Kerry’s proposal, the government would, in effect, restore “community rating” for catastrophic medical care.
  
  In another measure aimed to increase the pooling of risk, Kerry would use the framework of the Federal Employees Health Benefit Program to create a national pool open to all employers to buy insurance. The federal program today offers government employees, including members of Congress, an array of private health-insurance plans (indeed, it has long been cited as a model of “managed competition”). Under Kerry’s proposal, private employers could also purchase health coverage through a parallel, albeit separate, pool.

Will this cost money? Yes. If there were a way to improve incentives meaningfully for free, I am willing to wager that even this President and Congress might have considered it. But the point of the 'stop-loss' protection is to improve the way that private insurance functions for the costs still covered, not to shift burdens to taxpayers. (Thus, the sentence I bolded.) The latter is a necessary evil, not the end served.

[Not Me]

Originally posted by bilmore
I read everything you posted, and linked to. I read Kerry's website. I've read several policy papers from both sides on the issue.

And they claim I'm the unemployed one.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by bilmore
A. Have a nice weekend.

B. I'm wondering if, as we get into the final weeks, it's not all too stressful and personal for people to handle a poly board without it all degenerating into more insult than usual (which is a fairly high threshhold to start with). I think I'm going to resolve to post fairly lightly and insubstantively, if at all, for a few weeks. As it is, I doubt if the two halves of the country are going to be able to have a civil conversation post-election.

A. You too.

B. I encourage my fellow Americans to use the "edit" function liberally (heh) to make their posts more civil. I frequently post something, look at it, say to myself, 'do I really want to say that about bilmore's mother?,' and then use the edit function to revise and extend my remarks. If we all did this, we could spend more time talking about the nuts and bolts of health-care policy, and less time on bilmore's mother.

Hmm. On second thought....