I haven’t given you one of these in a few days, so here goes:
- Obama: Allowing default would be ‘irresponsible’ (WashPost) — Golly, do ya think? The WSJ seized on a different angle, “Obama Backs Short-Term Increase in Debt Ceiling.”
- Columbia mayoral candidates clash at afternoon forum (thestate.com) — Moe says Steve is backing strong-mayor for his personal gain. Not sure how that works, but whatever. If you’ll recall, Moe was for strong-mayor before he was against it.
- IMF cuts global growth forecast (BBC) — Pretty ominous. And this is apparently without a U.S. default.
- White House Nears Yellen Nomination (WSJ) — Kind of anti-climactic at this point. Do you think they released this after 6 p.m. because they didn’t think the presser went that well, and they wanted to steal thunder from it?
- School-Bus Drivers Walk Off Job in Boston (NYT) — Why do I include this? Because privatizing school buses is popular among certain parties in our State House, and (last time I checked) every SC school district that has been privatized so far has subsequently been unionized. So this could be a preview of things to come.
- Gaps in Intelligence Cited in Failed Somalia Raid by U.S. (NYT) — Why didn’t the SEALs get their man in Somalia? Because there were too many noncombatants in the way. More than expected, hence the mention of intel failure. One nice thing about boots on the ground is that they are filled by people who can make decisions like this, while drones are less discriminate. Another is that you get more intelligence this way. It just didn’t work this time.
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#8 – Dead men walking. Drones now to return to Somalia; not sure why they ever left though. Doesn’t sound like this was the place for the SEALS.
#8 – Dead men walking. Drones now to return to Somalia; not sure
whyif they ever left though. Doesn’t sound like this was the place for the SEALS.@ Mark – fixed that for you.
What ever happened to all those bizarre incidents from earlier this summer? The black ops charge against the acting chief of police? the NAACP leader’s arrest at the dry cleaner? the Ted Vick “pebble in the shoe” DUI defense?
How is it that these cases take MONTHS to move forward? Have I just missed updates on these?
Doug – I think a lot of updates are on hold until after the election:
Major announcements about Bull Street “anchors” – good or bad deal so far for city taxpayers?
Results of the bidding on the Palmetto Compress Warehouse, good or bad deal for city retirees?
Federal kickbacks trial of Johnathan Pinson, former SC State trustee and former Benjamin business partner.
Release of further information about the CPD’s “Black Ops” and associated lawsuits, if there’s anything to this.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is your stewardess speaking… We’re regret any inconvenience the sudden cabin movement might have caused, this is due to periodic air pockets we encountered, there’s no reason to become alarmed, and we hope you enjoy the rest of your flight… By the way, is there anyone on board who knows how to fly a plane?
http://apne.ws/1aa44Qe
No different from flying US Air most weeks…
The life of everyone on board depends upon just one thing: finding someone back there who can not only fly this plane, but who didn’t have fish for dinner.
My orders came through. My squadron ships out tomorrow. We’re bombing the storage depots at Daiquiri at 1800 hours. We’re coming in from the north, below their radar.
When will you be back?
I can’t tell you that. It’s classified.
Shirley you’re joking.
I know someone who didn’t have fish for dinner and has a lot of experience flying Sopworth Camels.. But, he works in Washington, is a 40 year long member of a radical group – congress – and refuses to fly the plane unless all of his demands are met. Never mind, fasten your seat belts, grab your butt, make any calls you need to make, and hold on.
Don’t call me Shirley!!!
http://www.healthcare.gov is still broken. I attempted to login with my previously created username. After about 20 seconds of “Please wait”, I got to a screen that was blank in the middle and with a Get Insurance link at the top. Tried a couple times to click on the Get Insurance link and it logged me out with an Unexpected Error message. Third time, I got in and saw a screen where I could apply for insurance. Since I had previously attempted to enter profile information, I was presented with a screen that let me click on that previous application. It hung up for awhile and then returned me back to the same screen.
This may be the worst user experience for an application that I have ever seen.
Finally got into the user profile section and it forced me to go through every screen from the first time I entered my wife and two kids’ information, page by page. The values were already there but there was no way to skip over that step. Delays between screens were anywhere from 10 to 60 seconds or more. Brutal…
On the screen where it shows my son’s address, it presents five options – the first three are exactly the same as my home address (which do I choose?) and then Other and “No Home Address” choices. Whoever designed this system should be embarrassed.
Now that I’ve completed entry of all the information, it brings me to a form to verify my identity where I have to re-enter all my ssn, date of birth, address information that I have just entered previously. You can’t make up how awful this system is.
Doug – If only you had a Third Stage Healthcare Guild Navigator to assist you!
http://bit.ly/16RGs7I
I’m guessing that “all” those anecdotal people who can’t produce an id to vote will REALLY struggle with this system…
No worries, once Eric Holder finds out about all these requirements to verify who you are, he’ll file a suit against the ACA, alleging that it has a discriminatory effect.
Literally “tens” of people have successfully signed up Doug. Don’t give up hope. You are good enough, you are smart enough, and doggone-it, people like you.
Aw, I think you got that from the WSJ this morning:
Ariail’s cartoon is, fortunately, not representative of how most Americans view this impasse. As I’ve said many times here, if you keep moving the goalposts, then the 30-yard line becomes “midfield,” and eventually the GOP gets the ball starting at the opposition 10-yard line and demands 15 yards conceded as “compromise.”
We forget that the baseline numbers on the CR reflect sequestration cuts, cuts that already are likely far beyond (in many categories) what many or most Democrats would support in the abstract. As many have pointed out also, Obamacare itself is a compromise, incorporating many ideas that were first floated as GOP proposals and certainly miles and miles away from anything approaching single-payer health insurance. Compromise and negotiation, in other words, has already happened.
For Ariail and those like him who say “a pox on both your houses,” in a situation like this…too many people cave in to that lazy thinking, and all that does is benefit the extremists. If I have a junky old car I want to sell you and you say it’s worth $500 and I say it’s worth $60,000, the car is not worth $29,750 in reality.
Also, for those moderate Republicans too chicken to stand up to the radicals, they should understand that should this tactic succeed, this will happen again every time even when the roles are reversed and the White House is held by the GOP with one branch of Congress in Democratic hands. It will become standard procedure, and what was considered a period of discord and stalemate (late 90s and 00’s) will look like a Golden Age compared to the new level of 100% dysfunction of government at the Federal level.
Phillip – Speaking of moving the goalposts, America has been in pretty much a continuous lurch to the left since at least the 1930’s. Yes, the numbers for a “clean CR” incorporate the now-pretty-permanent-yet-harmless sequester cuts. I don’t see how it’s fair to call Obamacare a “compromise”, since it was (IIRC) approved along party lines and wasn’t even available for examination until after it was passed into law.
Now the difference between negotiations to fund a government and buy a used car ARE a bit different. If you don’t like the seller’s terms in the car deal, you can walk away. We can’t walk away from our homes, families, jobs and houses. There’s no option, at some point, but to come to some sort of agreement and run the government.
I certainly don’t blame the Tea Partiers in the GOP for doing what their constituents elected them to do, which is to reduce the size of government. Failure to raise the debt ceiling amounts to passing a balanced budget amendment….
Phillip – Speaking of moving the goalposts, America has been in pretty much a continuous lurch to the left since at least the 1930′s.
-Silence
Lurched to the left until about 1969 then flattened out until about 1980. But the leftward lurch probably started with things like child labor laws, the national park system and the income tax. All those things were enacted by that dastardly Marxist traitor Teddy Roosevelt in the 1900s.
Since the late 70sn we’ve been sailing into the lala land of the looney right. Heck Ronald Reagan must turning over in his grave at how radical the GOP has become. He would have never dreamed there would be folks in his party suggesting a default on Federal Treasury might actually be a good thing as some far, far righties are suggesting.
As for Richard Nixon, he would be branded a Communist for his wage and price control efforts, strong stance on pollution and overtures to our dreaded enemies the Russians and Chinese.
Democrats had the majority in the House of Representatives from 1955-1995. They had the majority in the Senate from 1955-1995 except 1981-1987. The only time that Republicans had both houses of Congress and the Presidency over the past six decades was during the first term plus two years of George Bush — 10% of the that period. That happened because the internet bubble crash combined with Bill Clinton’s reprehensible behavior in the White House led to a backlash against Democrats. The government we have today is a result of those majorities held by Democrats for the most part.
Try and use facts instead of making stuff up, bud.
Democrats also held both houses for the second half of Reagan’s second term and all of George Bush’s. Let’s just pretend they did everything Reagan and Bush wanted during those years.
The sequester is THE perfect example of bullies (those with the most extremism and intransigence in their positions, backed by the most powerful, moneyed interests) moving the goalposts. The GOP pushes so far in the current impasse that the fallback position even if their extreme goal is not met, is the continuation of the sequester. Ending the sequester cuts is not even remotely on the table.
This is a common conservative meme now, that the sequester cuts are “harmless.” But they’re perceived to be harmless only by (some of) those who are not personally affected by them. This is because Tea Partiers and their corporate sponsors not only could care less about the thousands affected by cuts in housing assistance or the thousands of children unable to benefit from Head Start programs, for example, but who don’t even really consider such people as Americans, somehow.
@Phillip – I think there could be a reasonable debate over whether the federal government should be involved at all in housing assistance or Head Start. That goes to one of the fundamental issues of the Tea Party – what exactly SHOULD the federal government be doing instead of the states? Anytime you move tax dollars from an individual to the federal government and then back to the states, there is inefficiency and waste in the process.
But poor states like ours need the spreaded national wealth. Sure there is friction, but still, the kids need help!
If we kept our tax dollars in state, we’d be able to spend more of them on our own people. If we prioritized our spending within the state, we could address specific basic needs instead of using it for non-essential things. We should be fixing South Carolina from the bottom up and not funneling money up to Washington and then back to us. Why skim off X% of every dollar for bureaucracy?
Sure there are lunatic Tea Partiers (just like there are lunatic Occupiers)… but the fundamental belief is that tax dollars should be spent on core functions of government at the closest level to the people who pay the taxes. Cut my federal taxes by 25% and shift it back to the state of South Carolina. I’m fine with that.
Doug – I completely agree that we need to have a discussion on what activities should be funded at the local, state and national level. That said, I believe Kathryn is correct, South Carolina is one of the net beneficiaries of federal largess.
The money isn’t here! We get back a whole lot more from the Feds than we send in.
This is true of most, if not all, red states, ironically.
She is correct. And how has that worked out on breaking the cycle of dependency on government?
It’s not really a ceiling if you keep on raising it, now is it?
How is a temporary increase going to happen? Is this like a short-term loan where it’s raised for six weeks then needs to be paid back (reduced back to $16.7 trillion)?
On brighter news, I heard Maryland signed up their 300th person for Obamacare on Monday.
oops my math was wrong in my example above. $30,250 is the halfway point between 500 and 60,000.
Boehner and Pelosi met today. And (you can’t make this stuff up) each side released statements claiming the other person had asked for the meeting… nevermind that the meeting accomplished nothing. Just want to make sure it was the other guy who “caved” first.
The sooner those two are gone, the better. Not that the next political hack will be any better.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/360813/boehner-pelosi-meeting-question-why-jonathan-strong
Now here’s a valid argument AGAINST raising the debt ceiling:
The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. Over the past 5 years, our federal debt has increased by $3.5 trillion to $8.6 trillion. That is ‘‘trillion’’ with a ‘‘T.’’ That is money that we have borrowed from the Social Security trust fund, borrowed from China and Japan, borrowed from American taxpayers. And over the next 5 years, between now and 2011, the President’s budget will increase the debt by almost another $3.5 trillion. Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘‘the buck stops here.’’ Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better. I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America’s debt limit.
—
These are the words of a brilliant statesman, Senator Barack Obama, in 2006.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/10/09/obama_s_2006_debt_ceiling_speech.html
Some day more people will wake up and realize the problem is in both parties. Democrats and Republicans. They are lemmings beholden to special interests. I hope the government defaults.
Doug has joined me on Team “Let it Burn”. Welcome aboard, Doug. We’ve had jackets made.
Lovely.
Sometimes you need a forest fire to get rid of the old trees and allow the new trees to grow.
The “Greatest Generation” was spawned by the “Great Depression”. We’re due for a reset.
and sometimes a forest fire kills firefighters and destroys homes and livelihoods
It’s going to happen sooner or later. They kept kicking the can down the road all these years.
KF –
Please, stop your libelous, one-liners that “Juan hates lawyers”, which is untrue.
As carefully explained on more than one occasion, I only find the number of “elected” lawyers in representative government objectionably disproportionate and detestable. Next time, please be more accurate.
Hey, Juan, relax. Here’s some good news for you. Cindi Scoppe says there are fewer lawyers in our state government than there used to be. Peace.
Juan, I believe the record reflects your numerous gratuitous disparaging references to lawyers.
Lawmakers ought to understand the law. Lawyers are especially well-suited in that regard.
Truth is an absolute defense to libel.
Michael, that’s probably because fewer USC Law School grads can pass the bar exam and end up going into politics instead.
“Leadership means that ‘‘the buck stops here.’’ Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better. I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America’s debt limit.” Barack Hussein Obama – 2006
Words written on a boomerang can and will come back and hit you square in the a$$.
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
Which is why you should never write on boomerangs.
Back then the problem we had was that President George Bush unnecessarily turned us from a path of prosperity to a descent into debt. Back then, Senator Obama’s vote was symbolic and inconsequential.
Now, President Obama has faced a severe recession, where extra government spending is necessary to keep the economy fueled. Now, voting against increasing the debt limit is extremely consequential, incomprehensibly disastrous.
Please don’t hope that our government declares itself to the world as an ungovernable, unreliable, and irresponsible deadbeat.
The “path to prosperity” was created by a phony internet bubble in the stock market. Irrational exuberance fueled rampant consumerism funded by second mortgages and credit cards. Then we went into a phony war (backed by both parties) that we didn’t pay for. Time to pay the piper.
“Please don’t hope that our government declares itself to the world as an ungovernable, unreliable, and irresponsible deadbeat.”
The money exists to pay all debts… just not all appropriations. We won’t be deadbeats. We’ll be forced into conservatism.
+1 – What Doug said.
Michael,
When will be able to spend less than we take in? Ever?
From the graph it looks like it will be soon.
Oh, the CBO says so? That’s adorable.
Yeah, I remember all those times the CBO was right about making projections several years out because nothing changes in the macroeconomy or global economy that might makes those projections obsolete somewhere around 5 nanoseconds after the ink is dry on the graph printout.
There’s also our deficits are falling at the fastest rate in 60 years.
And here’s another graph: spending has been falling and government tax revenue has been rising.
@Michael – you think sequestration has anything to do with that? Or that when you have programs like TARP that jack up the deficits to record levels, when they come back to “normal” it looks like the rate is changing faster?
“government tax revenue has been rising.”
That happens when you come out of a deep recession… and it was done without big tax increases on the rich, right?
The bottom line is that if things are going well with our dysfunctional government not doing anything, why would we want to mess that up?
” Back then, Senator Obama’s vote was symbolic and inconsequential.”
Hindsight is always 20/20.
Time for who to pay the piper? Who’s the piper? Last time I checked, the uber-super-rich are getting much much richer while the middle class is going nowhere or down. Meanwhile people are paying effectively negative interest rates to invest in USA.
There is no piper, and the people who could pay the piper, if there was one, refuse.
And exactly why are the uber-super-rich getting richer? Well, look no further than the Fed supporting an over-inflated stock market with inflated stock values that are traded between the very people who supported Obama in 2008 and for the most part, again in 2012; the very people he brought into his administration to “advise” him on financial matters. Now, that is a perfect example foxes guarding the henhouse with the permission of the farmer who recruited the foxes in the first place after spending months decrying the fact that the foxes he recruited are the main reason for the disparity in income and wealth.
Have you noticed that these people are not giving back any portion of the vast increases in their fortunes while everyone else is sacrificing because of a continuing downturn in the economy, employment stagnating, and no real movement in an economic recovery except in the minds of a few? Has Warren Buffett written a “big check” to atone for his sin of having a lower tax rate than his secretary? No, he is protesting a one billion dollar tax bill he owes to the IRS.
Heck, I think he was successful in obtaining a restraining order against the piper.
Eventually, you run out of other people’s money.
It’s less about the piper and more about Peter and Paul.
You want conservatism, win elections and pass laws. Don’t refuse to hold a vote in the people’s House.
Ted Cruz and Rand Paul won elections. So did more Republican House members than Democrats. They are doing what they were elected to do.
Yes, indeed, please Speaker Boehner, let the House Republicans do what they were elected to do, which is vote.
Courtesy of shameless gerrymandering
Not for Paul or Cruz. The people spoke loud and clear.
Bet those people want a revote now… But we don’t get them to do over; which is why votes matter in the first place.
Rand Paul has his father, and Ted Cruz has his failure, to fall back on. They will carry on blithely. The thing is, they aren’t the worst in the Capitol.
We all need to vote as if it matters – even when it doesn’t. We own our spawn.
Want to make a bet that both Paul and Cruz are re-elected if they run? Paul will win easily.
I’m guessing Paul’s medical degree may provide him some security so he doesn’t have to rely on his father any more. And Cruz’s magna cum laude law degree from Harvard will probably be enough to get him some middle management job at an insurance company.
Yep, they’re just two dumb schmucks without many skills.
And fyi, Cruz won his senate race by 16 points over the Democrat challenger. Paul won easily by 11 points. Get used to both of them… they’re going to be there as long as they want to be. More likely that Mitch McConnell will be replaced by another Tea Party candidate in Kentucky.
Did you see Cindi Scoppe’s column today?
Why do the Republicans want to pay all federal employees not to work?
On principle.
She lost me at the point where she claimed the furloughs at The State were because the industry had not come back from the recession. Newsflash: the newspaper industry is NEVER coming back.
She lost me @ ‘furcation’ … and the Glamour-shot ~someone~ insists that she use.
I thought, so now The State wants us to think it’s penny-wise? For furloughing employees? REALLY?!?
She lost me with all the “I acknowledge that my situation is different from people who cannot live well within their means/ don’t have a quarter’s advance notice/cannot schedule it to their convenience/aren’t in a dying industry…wait, she didn’t say that…..
I know I’ve harped on this before but it is unbelievable that in this day and age columnists like Cindi and Warren Bolton do not have columns in the paper every single day of the week. The volume of output is tiny compared to people like Andrew Sullivan – who seems to have the time to post multiple times per day on a blog, write books, write columns for magazines/websites, and appear on TV panel shows.
If I were running The State, I’d have an opinion column on the front page every day from either Warren or Cindi. It would also be great to see them do a point-counterpoint column once a week where they take opposite sides on an issue.
$634,320,919.00.
$634 Million.
That’s how much we paid for the 404Care website. Keep in mind, it doesn’t even work. I’ll take the over on $1.5 Billion after we pay to have it “fixed”.
It’s a stimulus package for the IT industry. Except a big chunk of it went to a Canadian company CGI Group. Too bad we don’t have any top notch IT companies in the U.S. to build websites.
Can you say kickbacks?
“CGI Federal is a subsidiary of Montreal-based CGI Group. With offices in Fairfax, Va., the subsidiary has been a darling of the Obama administration, which since 2009 has bestowed it with $1.4 billion in federal contracts, according to USAspending.gov.
Earlier this year the U.S. Government Accountability Office criticized the pace of development and testing for Healthcare.gov.’s IT system and noted that it was missing important milestone deadlines.
HHS is by far the single largest federal contractor of CGI, showering it with $645 million in contracts. The Defense Department pays the Canadian company $254 million, the EPA $58 million and the Justice Department $36 million.
In comparison, in 2008, under President George W. Bush, CGI contracts totaled only $16.5 million for all federal departments and agencies.”
By comparison, the Pentagon cost $83 million to build, which works out to $1.32 Billion in 2013 dollars). So, for the price of a little less than HALF what it cost to build the PENTAGON, we get a website.
Which doesn’t even work.
“Amidst continual technical difficulties, delays, and virtual “wait rooms,” a total of five Iowans have succeeded in purchasing health insurance on the government’s new online insurance exchange. According to the Des Moines Register, these five endured multiple delays over the course of a week, time and again being forced out of the system, until they were finally able to purchase an insurance plan from CoOportunity Health on the marketplace by Wednesday morning.”
The first domino to fall in the train wreck known as Obamacare was the poorly designed web application. The second domino will be when not enough people sign up. The third domino will be when we reach mid-December and people realize they need to buy insurance to be covered on January 1. That’s when the next big technical “glitch” will happen. The final domino will be next year when rates increase dramatically because not enough healthy people signed up to pay for the sick ones who did.
B-B-B-B-B-But Doug, didn’t you know that “…….the enormously effective ACA…” as one has described it is the greatest and most popular piece of legislation ever and that the glitches are to be expected and overlooked by one and all? Why even you brought up the fact that the firm designing the website has been doing business since the Bush administration the failure cannot be blamed on Obama, it is Bush’s fault because Obama inherited the contracts issued to the firm during the Bush years. Yeah, that’s the ticket, its Bush’s fault. See how easy the problem with who to blame was solved?
Everyone send your complaints to Bush, I wash my hands of the situation. Any failures associated with ACA belong to GWB. Executive Order #1,000,000 and counting – Barack Obama.
When the Kool_Aid gets spiked with salt, it seems to cause a lot of people’s mouths to go silent. Once the whole “Obamacare is failing because there is so much demand” talking point fell apart, it has gotten really quiet on all the left-leaning websites.
I hadn’t noticed it going quiet on left-leaning sites that I read — Slate has had an article, and the Washington Post has done an ongoing story about who the contractors are and the ongoing problems with the site. The New York Times just did a story as well.
I totally agree that the site is a disaster right now – my experience with it has been terrible, even today (and expect it will still be for awhile), even though I am generally pro-Obamacare. Just because one likes a certain policy doesn’t mean one can’t admit there are problems with it, even pretty big problems.
Thanks, Susan. I was thinking more along the Daily Kos, Huffington Post, Salon edge of the leftwing blogosphere. They either ignore the issues or still hang on to the “it’s broken because it’s popular” meme.
The Arial cartoon was lazy journalism at it’s worst. This is totally a problem brought on by the sore loser GOP, in particular the dangerous Tea Party wing of the party. Arial’s cartoon only plays into the false narrative that both parties are to blame.
Let’s not forget how all this started, angst over the ACA. There is growing evidence that Obamacare will ultimately be a huge success by insuring millions who otherwise would be lost to the discredited free-market based healthcare mess. This ongoing chatter about the failed website is just another in a long list of discredited tactics used by the deniers to brand something a failure that really is just the opposite.
Sure it’s expensive and yes there have been glitches. But any gigantic project will have bugs. The Apollo mission suffered the disaster of Apollo 1. Many people died during the construction of the Panama Canal. Sadly many Americans died in WW 2 as the result of friendly fire. But did NASA cancel the moon mission because of the tragedy? No, they rolled up their sleeves, addressed the problems and moved forward. Did Teddy Roosevelt cancel the canal because of malaria and accidents? No, we persevered against adversity. Did FDR surrender to the Nazis because of the tragedies and depravations endured by our solders? No, we fought on while addressing the errors.
And so it is with Obamacare. We can all agree that the ACA has it’s problems. That much I will concede. In return I ask my conservative friends to be intellectually honest about the need for reform from the calamity that existed before. No other nation would dream of allowing 17% of its GDP to be sucked up by a wasteful system that benefited a handful of pharmicutical and healthcare providers while delivering a shockingly poor set of outcomes. Our healthcare system was the laughing stock among the wealthy nations of the world. America can do better than that broken monstrocity. I for one never believed the ACA approach was or is ideal. The problems were predictable. But the improvement in the lives of millions of Americans is undeniable. Millions are already benefiting even while the overall growth in healthcare spending has actually slowed. Let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater by repealing Obamacare. Worse, lets not throw out the baby and keep the bathwater by adopting nonsensical proposals that the GOP wants and will accomplish little. It’s time to embrace the ACA, no matter where we stood on this issue in 2009. Otherwise millions will be saddled with financial burdens and poor healthcare. The ACA is the only sensible way forward.
“The Apollo mission suffered the disaster of Apollo 1.” The cabin fire that claimed the lives of the astronauts happened during a “test”, not an actual mission. Wikipedia: “Although the ignition source was never conclusively identified, the astronauts’ deaths were attributed to a wide range of lethal design and construction flaws in the early Apollo Command Module. The manned phase of the project was delayed for 20 months while these problems were corrected.”
Reflect on the last sentence and the key word, “delayed” while the problems were corrected. Consider the fact that the problems were exposed in a tragic manner; the program was delayed until the problems were corrected. Problems with ACA have been exposed and recognized. Yet, as you pointed out, the administration is “rolling up its sleeves and moving forward”. Hell no, they are not. They are steadfastly ignoring the problems with a failed launch and are lurching back and forth in confusion and constant delays. Apollo 1 is a prime example of a program that was “delayed” until the problems were recognized and solutions worked out. Was a delay warranted? Absolutely.
“Did Teddy Roosevelt cancel the canal because of malaria and accidents?”…. The Panama Canal was the brainchild of the French. The canal was started in 1881; the failed effort lasted until 1894 when the French, bankrupt and failed, abandoned the project. The US took over in 1904 and completed the project in 1914 after a redesign, implementation of better protection from malaria and disease, and did not use the old French structures, equipment, and design. In other words, for 10 years the project was “delayed” until it was redesigned and successfully built. Another example of a delayed project until the problems could be addressed, corrected, implemented, and the final step, building the canal. Was a delay warranted? Absolutely.
Friendly fire and hardship in a world war when the world was threatened by Germany and Japan? I won’t even bother to discuss this one. Not a valid comparison.
There was never any transparency from the so-called open administration of Barack Obama about ACA, never. The American public was told by Pelosi that the bill needed to be passed in order to find out what was in it. Over 2,000 pages of disconnected ideas that were for the most part, incomprehensible or understandable but yet, it was passed as the signature or legacy legislation for the president. The same president who is famous for giving the “finger” to opponents or critics of ACA by using a seemingly innocuous gesture when giving one of his teleprompter speeches is giving the American people the “finger” but without trying to hide it this time. From day one, the attitude of this administration to Republicans, conservatives, and any organization he does not agree with, “we won, you lost, shut up, and sit down”.
I know of no conservative or Tea Party supporter who wishes denial of necessary and essential health care for anyone who needs it. The problem is not in the need but in the way it was handled from day one. I will always maintain that the US has and offers the very best health care in the world. The problem is not in the health care itself, it is in the access to it that needs to be changed for the better. There are some good aspects of the ACA and I don’t think anyone who is intellectually honest will deny that. Elimination of pre-existing conditions, no denial of coverage, and some other changes in ACA are welcome. But when confusion reigns supreme, resistance is the normal and expected reaction.
I have some exclusive video footage of Bart and Doug trying to explain the problems with the ACA to bud.
O.K. Bryan,
You have officially allowed me to start the weekend with a broad smile. Thanks for demonstrating the futility of explaining a simple problem to a ideologically resistant partisan on a level anyone can understand.
I miss the last true president this country ever had, Ronald Reagan.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=455716171115608&set=vb.100000316869898&type=2&theater
Here’s my question about the Healthcare.gov site:
It’s obviously a failure. Did Obama know it was going to be this bad? Was he accurately informed about the absolute disaster the website’s was going to be? Did he know that there would be massive failure, and simply go with the “glitch” line even though he knew it really wasn’t true, just to keep up appearances?
OR:
Was he so insulated from the actual development problems that he didn’t know? Did the people who were dealing with the problems not get through to him, not being able to penetrate through the upper levels of White House Senior Advisors? Did he think that everything was perfectly fine because he cocooned himself in layers of people who didn’t let him hear bad news?
This is a story. If only we had a group of people who’s job it was to get to the bottom of stories like this.
As someone who has worked in the IT industry for 30+ years, Bryan, the answer is B. He was not in the loop. Bad news does not flow uphill. They likely knew months ago that it was going to be a disaster but nobody wants to be the one who passes the bad news up the chain. Too many millions of dollars depended on it going “live”. Max Baucus knew. He quit the Senate to avoid the embarrassment as one of the key authors of Obamacare. That should have been the first sign to delay.
I have to laugh at bud’s attempt to put a positive spin on Obamacare. Just because something has to be done doesn’t mean Obamacare was what should have done. I would have bought into single payer much more easily than this mess. And we haven’t even reached the tough part yet. MILLIONS of people have to sign up in the next eight weeks in order for it to be viable. Even if the massive software issues are resolved, there’s no guarantee that the people who need to buy insurance will do so. The real date of concern is December 15. If they don’t buy in by then there will be no coverage on January 1. That first payment will be due right around Christmas time.
Obamacare could have been written on the back of a napkin using existing systems. Simple, incremental fixes would have been the right approach. Instead they went for the home run and will end up walking back to the dugout after striking out sometime in the next six months being booed by everyone, including the home town fans.
Enough with the fake-crisis inducing, government-destroying vitriol. Enough with the irresponsible and totally inappropriate calls to let it burn. Enough with the smug, incensed, and premature declarations of failure. This is our government and it’s supposed to keep buggering on.
Budgets must be passed every year. The House passed a budget, the Senate passed a budget, then they’re supposed get together in conference to hammer out their differences. Republicans refuse conference.
Without a budget, we have to have a CR or the unthinkable happens and government gets shut down. The House passed a CR with extra junk, the Senate stripped the junk and sent it back to the House. If the House would vote it would pass. Republicans refuse a vote.
The debt ceiling is a warning signal. When you get the warning, you ask, “Why is it signalling? Is the deficit increasing? No, it’s decreasing at the fastest rate in 60 years. Is spending increasing? No. Are revenues going down? No. Are interest rates high? No, they’re pressed right up against the zero lower bound.” After this, raising the debt ceiling is an easy yes, yes, yes.
The Republicans refuse to let the House vote on a clean raising of the debt ceiling. If the House voted, it would pass. Instead, Republicans are unconstitutionally inventing out of thin air the idea that President Obama has not only line-item veto after the fact, but blue-pen veto whenever he wants it.
Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Lew says that Treasury has for some time been taking extraordinary measures to pay all the bills, and that he has been doing so in order to provide more time to Congress to raise the debt ceiling.
Basically, because of Republican vitriol, intransigence, un-seriousness, irresponsibility, government-hatred, and selfish temper-tantrums, our government has been operating at emergency mode for too long, when there is no emergency.
What’s the emergency? Um, we have to pass an annual budget. Um, we have to recognize that under current conditions the debt ceiling warning signal is a false alarm. These are not emergencies.
What they are, in the mind of certain Republicans, is leverage. Leverage that they will refuse to let go of until what? And ughh, what undignified leverage it is. It’s a fake emergency.
It’s even more fake when you realize the solution is simply this. Let the House vote. Let them vote. A clean CR would pass. A clean raising of the debt ceiling would pass.
And then President Obama would continue to do what he’s done his whole presidency, which is to accept the Republican’s framework of the issues facing our country and to meet the Republicans more than halfway on achieving their shared objectives.
Responsible lefties wanted a much larger stimulus and single-payer health insurance. President Obama went with a much smaller stimulus and RomneyCare. And from the beginning and before and still today, President Obama continues to talk a lot about and take many steps towards reducing the deficit and paying down the debt.
The Republican’s irresponsible behavior must end. Our government must reopen. Our government must pay its bills. The House must vote on a clean CR and a clean raising of the debt ceiling.
Speaker Boehner, Vote on These Bills.
Didn’t we hear all this same “world is going to end” furor when the sequestration was allowed to go into effect? And then what happened? Not much…
The world won’t end next week or next month if the debt ceiling isn’t raised.
It is Congress’ responsibility to pass a Federal budget. If the accumulation of past (or passed) budgets exceeds an artificial “debt ceiling” then there is only one choice: Raise the debt “limit”.
You real issue is reducing the budget. That’s totally separate.
The House of Representatives is not, and has not been, fulfilling its Constitutional mandate. That’s a very serious problem. The House Republicans need to come to grips with that and do what they are obligated to do – negotiate annual budgets. No CR’s and no Sequestration. No whining and no projecting.
Has the House refused to deliver a budget or has the White House signaled that Obama will not sign a budget that has any delay of Obamacare in it? Big difference. It’s not just that the House isn’t doing its duty. The House and Senate are each doing what they are supposed to do and because we have a split Congress, they can’t agree on anything. It’s as much Harry Reid’s fault as it is Boehner’s. It’s just politics.
No, the nut jobs who fancied themselves as having taken over the Republican Party do not understand political persuasion and negotiation. That’s the problem.
They squandered the Party’s relative success out messaging the Democrats from 1981-2008. Now, almost 30 years of work has been nullified by three years of complete insanity. Put the blame where it belongs; on the foreheads of the transgressors.
But really, this isn’t about parties; it’s about the splintering of society between the accommodative and the blindly belligerent. It is time we said no to boorish, ill considered rants from those short on nuance and long on social apathy.
Based on all the reports about the serious deficiencies in Obamacare (not just the technical ones), Republicans will have a strong case for using a delay of the individual mandate as leverage and will eventually be seen as being on the right side of that issue.
Obama said “you could keep your insurance if you like it” – that was a lie.
Obama said “you can keep your doctors” – that was a lie.
Massachusetts found that it worked quite well as RomneyCare.
Maybe the problem is really more about some people’s angst over change? The old system was broke. This may not be close to final yet, but the principal of transformative, structural change in health insurance delivery is fundamentally sound. And needed.
Change doesn’t come easily, even for the bold.
“Change doesn’t come easily, even for the bold.”
Especially when the President lied when he said you could keep you insurance if you wanted to. That has proven to be patently false. Forcing change down people’s throats, especially when it relates to their insurance isn’t going to be an easy or welcome task.
Here’s the AP fact check on Obamacare “misstatements”:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/fact-check-slippery-claims-health-law-budget-120756800.html
OBAMA: “Our deficits are now coming down so quickly that by the end of this year, we will have cut them in more than half since I took office.” — Sept. 20 speech at Ford plant near Kansas City, Mo.
THE FACTS: Yes, but.
When Obama took office in January 2009, the deficit he inherited was $1.4 trillion. The Congressional Budget Office recently estimated it will be $642 billion for the budget year ending Monday, down by roughly half since Obama became president.
An estimated $78 billion of that deficit reduction comes from automatic across-the-board spending cuts, called sequestration, that began taking effect in March — over Obama’s protests. As well, tax increases early this year have brought in more revenue. The economic recovery also has resulted in higher tax payments.
Deficits, though, don’t tell much about the country’s total indebtedness because they only represent a one-year comparison of revenues and spending.
While annual deficits are declining, the national debt — the accumulation of deficits going back to the days of George Washington — is still rising. It stood at $10.6 trillion the day Obama took office. It’s now $16.7 trillion, according to the Treasury Department’s Bureau of the Public Debt.
The deficit is down. Where’s the “but”? Of course the national debt is growing whenever any deficit, no matter how small, is run. Duh. That’s what’s known as a truism, a meaningless point that serves only to mislead.
Facts are facts. The annual deficit that Obama inherited was approaching 1.5 trillion and it is now about 2/3 trillion. As the economy grows the debt to GDP ratio will decline and it will be easier to service. Given the historically low interest rates, probably too low, the financial markets don’t seem worried.
We should actually be borrowing more right now to improve our infrastructure needs while interest rates remain low. That would boost employment and in the long run allow the nations deficits to decline and even become surpluses. We can easily afford a $trillion annual deficit.
The point of this is to enable coverage for the uninsured and to provide an avenue to decouple it from one’s place of employment.
Why is is so hard to grasp that 10’s of millions of Americans are realistically unable to obtain individual insurance in today’s bifurcated world of 20th century big labor/big business employment insurance and government subsidized programs? There isn’t a crack or even a chasm in between – there’s more like a tidal estuary.
All this hand wringing about how imperfect the change is belies the cold hard fact that even greater changes are coming – and that these will open up new levels of family security and economic activity.
I really don’t understand why people insist on clinging to a broken system that after over 100 years of existence proved itself to be an inadequate solution that only becomes an ever greater drag on the economy. Why not embrace the structural change? Work to make it better for all – great. All the better… But to cower in fear and cry for the past? I just don’t get that.
From the London Daily Mail:
Obamacare’s main signup engine attracted just 6,200 new customers on its launch day and 51,000 after the first week. At the same rate, the 6-month open enrollment period would sign up just 2 million Americans, including 14 states and D.C., which have their own insurance exchanges. The Congressional Budget Office says Obamacare needs at least 7 million customers to stay afloat financially
I’m interested to see the breakdown of the 51,000 people who signed up. Are they low-income and qualifying for subsidies? Are they young or old? Are they sick or healthy?
Remember, the key to getting 404Care to work is getting young, healthy people to sign up. People like me. How many people under 35 are in that group of 51,000? My guess is not many.
Sometimes one needs to do the research required to determine the genesis of a problem. Once identified, it can be addressed for deficiencies and solutions to solve the problem. After doing some research, I found a blog run by J.P. Farley, a third party administrator of group employee benefit plans.
The following is the one of the best explanations and is clear and easy to understand even for the most ardent supporter or harshest critic of ACA. If one reads it with an open mind and stops relating to ACA in political or ideological terms but in recognition of how it was actually put together, maybe some of the rhetoric from both sides can tone down a little. The myth that ACA is modeled after the plan implemented by Romney in Mass. is debunked. After reading the article, it did refresh my memory of the process and the ensuing battle because of the way ACA was initially developed.
From J.P. Farley, written by Jim Farley, July 26, 2013.
Remembering Recent History
The real answer to this question is that no one involved with the drafting of the legislation expected the law to go into effect the law as written. If you recall, Health Care Reform was being slowly considered for several months. It was expected that per the normal legislative process the Senate would pass a bill, the House would pass a bill, the two bills would be reconciled and then be sent to the President. Most bills that pass have a lot of ‘dumb’ things in the each version of the bill. These may be ‘pets’ of particular legislators or ‘dreams’ for their districts. For instance, you may recall particular provisions being included for specific states such as Louisiana, Nebraska, and South Dakota to obtain the votes of their wavering legislators. During the House/Senate reconciliation process more responsible, adult thinking takes over and most of those ‘dumb’ things determined to be unworkable are jettisoned. A lot of ‘real world’ input from regulators and affected parties is considered at this point in the legislative process. Legislators depend on this taking place. However, that did not happen in the case of ACA.
When Scott Brown, a Republican, won the late Ted Kennedy’s Massachussetts senate seat, panic struck the Democratic leadership. Health Care Reform, their lifetime dream and chance to make history, was threatened even though the Democrats held majorities in both houses and the presidency. They then overrode the normal process and passed legislation the via “the budget reconciliation process”. Use of that process meant that the normal legislative reconciliation procedures were suspended. Both the entire Senate version and House version of health reform became law.
Pages of Ideas Became Law
Those involved with the writing of the law are saying that every idea that has been proposed to improve the health care system in the past 30 years was included in this law. The fact that the law itself exceed 2,000 pages is testimony to that fact. Reality is now setting in and people are realizing that every idea was not a workable idea, some ideas were only workable in limited settings, and some ideas included in the law conflicted with other ideas included in the law. The volume, complexity and implications of all these reform ideas are what is creating the mess. Now we are seeing selective enforcement, delays, and some very creative interpretations of many of the law’s provisions. Over the next several years this will result in a wave of court cases seeking clearer or more favorable (to specific parties) outcomes.”
The article is not a condemnation but a recap of facts and events supporting the reason there are so many misconceptions and confusion that are the main contributors to the resistance to ACA by the majority of Americans. It was and still is unworkable in its present state. It should be delayed for at least one year and the president should convene a bipartisan panel to review and implement the changes needed to make it a workable and successful bill. Gordian’s Knot cannot be untied and the ACA as it stands without comprehensive reviews and sensible changes will remain a Gorian Knot piece of legislation.
Mark and Bart summarize this whole mess pretty succinctly. The enormous extent of the problems associated with the old system cried out for major reform. The reform we ended up with was far from perfect and that made it an easy target for those who oppose change. That’s too bad because a constructive dialogue could address the problems while at the same time retaining aspects of the law that really are working. My biggest fear is that we will go back to a time that was clearly failing the American people.