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Bernie Sanders - Make America Socialist!
- Thread starter Tim Steelersfan
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You don't seem to understand a couple of things...one, your dad would have probably paid double or triple what he paid in taxes over his lifetime if he lived somewhere hat has universal healthcare. Maybe that seems like a good deal to you...having three premature babies I can tell you I have certainly wo the health insurance lottery. But please don't kid yourself that overall, your dad would have paid less than 30,000 in those places.
Two, part of the reason a private payer's costs are so high in this country is that so many people are on Medicare and Medicaid, which reimburse at an abysmal rate. Your dad did not just pay for his hospital stay, he paid for senior citizens and poor people to get their "free" healthcare. Just like people in other countries pay out the wazoo in taxes to get their "free" healthcare.
Three, your dad was more likely to survive a heart problem here than in one of those places, because he got immediate access to everything he needed, including a hospital bed, testing, specialists (spending on specialists is about 3-6 times higher in the US than in other countries), and state of the art treatments. How much is that worth you Red? Want to give that up to reduce America's per capita healthcare costs?
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Yeah getting COLA and paying US taxes it was great. Paying European taxes it would suck.
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Oh boy, a thread in my honor? Geez, you shouldn't have Tim, that's so sweet of you.
I will say this on Sanders, he better find a VP that's incredibly strong on foreign affairs and military issues, as clearly he's behind the curve there. Not enough to eliminate him from the race, but this is by far his weakest point. Ironic how everyone's enamored with and/or outraged by his social and economic policies. Yet half of the job description is 'commander-in-chief' and I'm not convinced Bernie is up for the task on that end. He can of course build a strong team of advisors and cabinet members, but he needs to provide more clarity on these fronts as we head into November.
Besides that, I love what Bernie's done in getting his message out there of income inequality, wall street overreaches, monopoly of big banks, campaign finance reform, et al. He's energized young people and non-political, independant types. The groundswell of support he's gotten these past few months is something to behold. He's put enormous pressure on Hillary and it blows my mind he's still in the conversation at this point.
As the debate showed last night, either Bernie or Hillary would provide 100x the quality over any candidate that we'd get from the other side. I'm willing to ride the Bernie wagon as long as it lasts, and will start believing it the moment he realizes how crucial foreign policy and military issues are to the office of the presidency.
I'll let you get back to all the over-the-top reactions of Bernie being a communist-socialist-leftist-deranged politician who's going to drive the country into ground. Just like you've done for the past seven years, lol. It's so much fun to see this board go apeshit over Obama, Hilllary, Bernie, whoever. Endless hours of pure entertainment.
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No. They "get away with it" because: 1 - they lose money treating 40% of their patients and the costs get shifted and 2 - we have invested a lot of money in merely delaying the inevitable and treating every last ailment. On average, 80% of a person's lifetime healthcare expenditure will occur in the last year of their life.
You think Medicare and Medicaid pay at an abysmal rate? What do you think the reimbursement rate would be of all those senior citizens with a myriad of health problems living on a $1200 a month social security check would be if they didn't have Medicare/Medicaid and were on the hook for the entire amount? No insurance company would touch them with a 50 ft. pole so basically they would have to figure out how to pay tens... many times hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills on an annual salary of 15K. I guess. What always amazes me in this country is the fact that terrorists could kill 20 people on a Monday and on Tuesday Congress will appropriate any amount necessary, create a new cabinet position, even encroach on Constitutional rights to ensure that it doesn't happen again. But at the same time, treatable, somethimes curable diseases and afflictions are killing Americans on a scope and scale that would humble the most ambitious terrorist and yet so many that think no amount is too much to stop a terrorist will suddenly become quite frugal and pragmatic when it's suggested perhaps we should fight disease and disability with the same gusto.... the reason being of course they see terrorism as a threat to them and their family so of course spare no expense. But when those same people hear about the millions of Americans that don't have the means to pay for adequate health care they say.."**** 'em... Sounds like a 'they' problem..." See they don't really care when the gov't. spends shitloads of money on different projects and programs, they only care when they spend it on stuff that doesn't benefit them directly. You'll never hear a righty complain that we're building tanks and fighter jets etc. at $100.. $200.. $500 million a pop that will never leave the warehouse they're kept in because it gives them peace of mind just knowing they are there... you know..just in case Mexico and Canada ever decide to tag team us.... or if China ever decides to attack us... the country that buys all their crap funneling billions into their economy every year. But those same people read about a teacher getting a 2 or 3 percent raise or some poor ******* that lost his job getting food stamps to feed his family and they become unhinged.
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You never ran into Ron Paul apparently.
Wait...can you let me know which of those things he's not?
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Bernie Sanders can beat Hillary Clinton, and Conservatives should take note
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...inton-and-Conservatives-should-take-note.html
American voters are tired of being asked to accept compromise by compromised politicians. Sanders taps into a real hunger for change
I am a philosophical conservative and I like Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. I said as much at a gathering of conservatives in Washington this week and elicited a few gasps of horror.
One said: “He’s so socialist he’s hardly even American.” But that can’t be right. How can someone so antiquatedly, exotically Left-wing enjoy such a huge poll lead in next week’s New Hampshire primary? It’s because while some of the answers he gives are crazy, the questions he raises about American capitalism are perfectly sane. Given a chance, he could be a very effective nominee.
On Thursday night, Bernie bossed the NBC debate against Hillary Clinton. Mrs Clinton gave the same performance she’s been giving since she ran for the Senate in 2000: “I know you hate me, but you know you need me.” The difference between her and Sanders goes to the heart of a historical disagreement on the Left about how to effect change.
Hillary believes that America is inherently conservative; that change is accomplished through patient coalition building and that the Left achieves nothing by promising too much, terrifying the voters and delivering very little. Sanders, by contrast, believes that you can only achieve reform if you honestly make the case for it. Democrats win office, he told the audience, when they generate a high turnout by exciting the people.
And he means all the people. Clinton divides the electorate up into special interest groups: she throws out policies to satisfy women, African-Americans or gay people. Sanders divides the electorate by class: his goal is to convince a majority of the population that they have more in common than they realise. Sanders is, sadly, very Left-wing on social issues – but he has the decency not to go on about it.
He’s made Wall Street his central issue instead. The Sanders argument goes like this. Why does liberal reform get beaten? Because businesses lobby against it. Ergo, cut big money out of politics and America will see more liberal reform. It’s a handy coincidence that Sanders’ opponent is one of the people most associated with the interplay of money and politics. In the 1990s, the Clintons advertised their cosiness with big business as a way of reassuring centrist voters that they knew something about economics. This translated into policies such as deregulating the housing market and signing free trade policies that gutted US industry. After the Clintons left office, they stayed in touch with their old friends. Mrs Clinton made $675,000 for giving three speeches to Goldman Sachs alone. She claimed during the debate that she used the speeches to tell Wall Street that it was hurting America. I doubt that’s true. If someone paid me $675,000 to give a speech they’d get 90 minutes of unqualified praise. Heck, for that kind of money I’d strip.
Sanders is reluctant to hit Clinton directly on this sort of thing – he prefers to play the gentleman and talk policy. By so doing, he’s cleverly turned the Democratic primaries away from a referendum on Clinton and towards a referendum on Clintonism.
This taps into a wider thirst for political change. The Republicans gave over half their votes in the Iowa caucus to two neophyte Hispanic conservatives and a black surgeon who has never even held office. Jeb Bush, another potent symbol of the Clinton/Bush era, is languishing in the New Hampshire polls and facing defeat at the hands of Donald Trump. The politics of that era is overfamiliar and tired. And younger voters resent constantly being told that ageing pragmatists know best – especially when the smart technocrats are the folks who gave us Iraq, the credit crunch and the mess that is Obamacare.
British readers will see parallels between Sanders v Clinton and Jeremy Corbyn v the Blairites. But there’s a crucial difference. Sanders is a very American socialist. On foreign policy he’s quite mainstream: crush Isil, finish the job in Afghanistan. His position on gun control has shifted as per the views of his rural constituents. And he does not call for nationalisation of the economy but a restoration of stakeholder capitalism. His obsession with the venality of the big banks harks back to Andrew Jackson’s Bank War or William Jennings Bryan’s campaign for free silver, while his puritanical opposition to the influence of money has hints of Jerry Brown, Ross Perot and even Father Coughlin (before he went crazy). When Sanders speaks, I don’t hear Stalin. I hear Huey Long and Woody Guthrie, with a dash of Norman Mailer.
Sandernomics embraces the state as a tool of change and the federal government as the ally of the worker, no doubt. But Sanders’ tastes are Jeffersonian: he sees an unholy alliance of capital and government as the enemy of individual autonomy. When it comes to civil liberties, he’s on the side of the citizen against the national security state. On foreign policy, he correctly sees the differences between the Clintons and the Bushes as very thin. Mrs Clinton is a neoconservative, too. Just a neoconservative without a plan.
All of this has the potential to strike a chord with the public – if they can look past the word “socialist”, with its overtones of Russian hats and French strikes. It’s odd that when a far-Right politician like Trump talks about economic populism, everyone assumes that it’ll be a vote winner. But when Sanders also discusses wages, prices and the damaging effects of inequality – it’s dismissed as hippie talk. Yet thoughtful conservatives ought to look long and hard at Sanders, consider the points of commonality and wonder if they point to an agenda that we can all build a consensus around.
For instance, he’s been critical of uncontrolled immigration. As a Left-winger, he doubtless acknowledges that it leads to depressed wages; conservatives see it as undermining social cohesion. The old-fashioned Left and the old-fashioned Right are united by a belief that healthy communities are more important than high profits.
More importantly, they share an almost spiritual understanding of the “promise” of America. The Puritans sought to build a city on a hill that shone not because it was paved with gold but because its people were virtuous. Clintonism, by contrast, is defined by moral compromise – while Trumpism is a deal with the devil of our nature. Neither is the stuff of American dreams.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...inton-and-Conservatives-should-take-note.html
American voters are tired of being asked to accept compromise by compromised politicians. Sanders taps into a real hunger for change
I am a philosophical conservative and I like Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. I said as much at a gathering of conservatives in Washington this week and elicited a few gasps of horror.
One said: “He’s so socialist he’s hardly even American.” But that can’t be right. How can someone so antiquatedly, exotically Left-wing enjoy such a huge poll lead in next week’s New Hampshire primary? It’s because while some of the answers he gives are crazy, the questions he raises about American capitalism are perfectly sane. Given a chance, he could be a very effective nominee.
On Thursday night, Bernie bossed the NBC debate against Hillary Clinton. Mrs Clinton gave the same performance she’s been giving since she ran for the Senate in 2000: “I know you hate me, but you know you need me.” The difference between her and Sanders goes to the heart of a historical disagreement on the Left about how to effect change.
Hillary believes that America is inherently conservative; that change is accomplished through patient coalition building and that the Left achieves nothing by promising too much, terrifying the voters and delivering very little. Sanders, by contrast, believes that you can only achieve reform if you honestly make the case for it. Democrats win office, he told the audience, when they generate a high turnout by exciting the people.
And he means all the people. Clinton divides the electorate up into special interest groups: she throws out policies to satisfy women, African-Americans or gay people. Sanders divides the electorate by class: his goal is to convince a majority of the population that they have more in common than they realise. Sanders is, sadly, very Left-wing on social issues – but he has the decency not to go on about it.
He’s made Wall Street his central issue instead. The Sanders argument goes like this. Why does liberal reform get beaten? Because businesses lobby against it. Ergo, cut big money out of politics and America will see more liberal reform. It’s a handy coincidence that Sanders’ opponent is one of the people most associated with the interplay of money and politics. In the 1990s, the Clintons advertised their cosiness with big business as a way of reassuring centrist voters that they knew something about economics. This translated into policies such as deregulating the housing market and signing free trade policies that gutted US industry. After the Clintons left office, they stayed in touch with their old friends. Mrs Clinton made $675,000 for giving three speeches to Goldman Sachs alone. She claimed during the debate that she used the speeches to tell Wall Street that it was hurting America. I doubt that’s true. If someone paid me $675,000 to give a speech they’d get 90 minutes of unqualified praise. Heck, for that kind of money I’d strip.
Sanders is reluctant to hit Clinton directly on this sort of thing – he prefers to play the gentleman and talk policy. By so doing, he’s cleverly turned the Democratic primaries away from a referendum on Clinton and towards a referendum on Clintonism.
This taps into a wider thirst for political change. The Republicans gave over half their votes in the Iowa caucus to two neophyte Hispanic conservatives and a black surgeon who has never even held office. Jeb Bush, another potent symbol of the Clinton/Bush era, is languishing in the New Hampshire polls and facing defeat at the hands of Donald Trump. The politics of that era is overfamiliar and tired. And younger voters resent constantly being told that ageing pragmatists know best – especially when the smart technocrats are the folks who gave us Iraq, the credit crunch and the mess that is Obamacare.
British readers will see parallels between Sanders v Clinton and Jeremy Corbyn v the Blairites. But there’s a crucial difference. Sanders is a very American socialist. On foreign policy he’s quite mainstream: crush Isil, finish the job in Afghanistan. His position on gun control has shifted as per the views of his rural constituents. And he does not call for nationalisation of the economy but a restoration of stakeholder capitalism. His obsession with the venality of the big banks harks back to Andrew Jackson’s Bank War or William Jennings Bryan’s campaign for free silver, while his puritanical opposition to the influence of money has hints of Jerry Brown, Ross Perot and even Father Coughlin (before he went crazy). When Sanders speaks, I don’t hear Stalin. I hear Huey Long and Woody Guthrie, with a dash of Norman Mailer.
Sandernomics embraces the state as a tool of change and the federal government as the ally of the worker, no doubt. But Sanders’ tastes are Jeffersonian: he sees an unholy alliance of capital and government as the enemy of individual autonomy. When it comes to civil liberties, he’s on the side of the citizen against the national security state. On foreign policy, he correctly sees the differences between the Clintons and the Bushes as very thin. Mrs Clinton is a neoconservative, too. Just a neoconservative without a plan.
All of this has the potential to strike a chord with the public – if they can look past the word “socialist”, with its overtones of Russian hats and French strikes. It’s odd that when a far-Right politician like Trump talks about economic populism, everyone assumes that it’ll be a vote winner. But when Sanders also discusses wages, prices and the damaging effects of inequality – it’s dismissed as hippie talk. Yet thoughtful conservatives ought to look long and hard at Sanders, consider the points of commonality and wonder if they point to an agenda that we can all build a consensus around.
For instance, he’s been critical of uncontrolled immigration. As a Left-winger, he doubtless acknowledges that it leads to depressed wages; conservatives see it as undermining social cohesion. The old-fashioned Left and the old-fashioned Right are united by a belief that healthy communities are more important than high profits.
More importantly, they share an almost spiritual understanding of the “promise” of America. The Puritans sought to build a city on a hill that shone not because it was paved with gold but because its people were virtuous. Clintonism, by contrast, is defined by moral compromise – while Trumpism is a deal with the devil of our nature. Neither is the stuff of American dreams.
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Several, correct.
My water comes out of the ground. Part of the results of many earlier in life decisions I made to be able to live in a manner I desire. Rural, lower taxes, relatively distant neighbors, etc. Yep, I'm one of the lottery winners I guess....but back to the main point which is I see you left off the costs of personnel required 24/7 to treat your father, as well as the costs of maintaining the buildings and grounds of the hospital and the exorbitant malpractice insurance costs as well as the costs of the staff of attorneys hospitals keep on retainer to keep the wolves away from the door.
Umm, speaking of becoming "unhinged."
Where?
so do you have an economic cut-off point for when you're making enough on your businesses that you begin to pay everyone you employ enough to offset the income inequality that you will (hopefully) have once your businesses are supremely profitable?
I call bullshit. I'm a business owner. There's no ******* way a business owner has your ****** up views.
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None of this is relevant to the discussion we are having.
Yes, Medicare/Medicaid reimbursement rates are abysmal...that's not "what I think", that's a fact, It's driving doctors to refuse to accept Medicare/Medicaid patients, it's driving up costs for private insurance and private payers. Single payer would mean we all are on that plan...the federal government decides what drugs your dad can be given, how many bags of blood are allowed, how many days he can stay in the hospital, whether, at his age, based on actuarial tables, it's worth spending x amount of dollars to save him. Is that really what you want?
Any stats that "curable diseases and afflictions are killing Americans on a scope and scale that would humble most terrorists"? Curable diseases and afflictions such as what?
Preventable afflictions yes...the top causes of death from disease in this country are all strongly related to smoking and obesity. You can throw trillions of dollars at healthcare but it's not going to change that.
Modifiable risk factors are largely responsible for each of the leading causes of death:
http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2014/p0501-preventable-deaths.html
Heart disease risks include tobacco use, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, type 2 diabetes, poor diet, overweight, and lack of physical activity.
Cancer risks include tobacco use, poor diet, lack of physical activity, overweight, sun exposure, certain hormones, alcohol, some viruses and bacteria, ionizing radiation, and certain chemicals and other substances.
Chronic respiratory disease risks include tobacco smoke, second-hand smoke exposure, other indoor air pollutants, outdoor air pollutants, allergens, and exposure to occupational agents.
Stroke risks include high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart disease, diabetes, overweight, previous stroke, tobacco use, alcohol use, and lack of physical activity.
Unintentional injury risks include lack of seatbelt use, lack of motorcycle helmet use, unsafe consumer products, drug and alcohol use (including prescription drug misuse), exposure to occupational hazards, and unsafe home and community environments.
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Mostly, I was just being an *******.
However, I fully agree that, if the city wanted they could charge you thousands for the water. Want to know why they don't?
Because, even though it is life and death, you do not HAVE to buy their water or their house. you can go to the grocery store and buy bottled water, you can move to another city or whatever. You do know some houses do cost millions, right? Some don't. From what I have already said, you should be able to guess why, but I feel the need to spell it out for you. You don't have to buy the million dollar houses. You can rent a house, you can rent an apartment, you can buy a cheaper house, etc.
Neither, while necessary for life, is, logically, the same as a life and death procedure at a hospital where they didn't just happen to have a multi-year, multi-talented professional standing around with nothing to do other than save your father's life. Nor did they just happen to have people around to give your father 24/7 care along with carrying all of the liability insurance and following reams of regulations and procedures to make sure the infection from the guy down the hall didn't get to your father or something they did causing his death.
Would it have mattered to you if the blood your father got was tainted? What about the sterile salt water? Did that just get sterile and stay that way all by itself? What about the tubes and needles the blood went through to get it into your father's body?
What about all of the security requirements the hospital has to maintain to make sure your father's records stay confidential? You know, except from the awesome government which may or may not have to follow HIPPA disclosure rules.
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You've got your head so far up your *** nothing you post here is worth responding to. But I'll respond nonetheless. Just because you're a raging ******* with far-right views who happens to own a business doesn't mean all business owners are as pathetic as you are. Thankfully so, or the economy would have collapsed a long time ago...
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Bernie has been given a pass so far...not no more
Sanders under fire from Senate Democrats
Bernie Sanders' Democratic Senate colleagues have pretty much left him alone throughout his presidential run. Most of them saw his campaign as quirky and idealistic, certainly no threat to the candidate they overwhelmingly back, Hillary Clinton.
They're criticizing his platform as naive, taking exception to his criticism of Clinton as a fake progressive, and imploring the media to put the Vermont independent and self-described democratic socialist under the microscope.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/...rnie-sanders-senate-democrats-218751?lo=ap_c2
Sanders under fire from Senate Democrats
Bernie Sanders' Democratic Senate colleagues have pretty much left him alone throughout his presidential run. Most of them saw his campaign as quirky and idealistic, certainly no threat to the candidate they overwhelmingly back, Hillary Clinton.
They're criticizing his platform as naive, taking exception to his criticism of Clinton as a fake progressive, and imploring the media to put the Vermont independent and self-described democratic socialist under the microscope.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/...rnie-sanders-senate-democrats-218751?lo=ap_c2
I would LOVE to know what business you are in. I just cannot fathom that it would be remotely successful with your socialist stance.
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It's actually a pretty good environment right now for abortionist and solar panels.
And useless programs and studies funded by tax dollars.
Don't forget the immoral industries (sex toys, BDSM equipment, pornography) or educational books (everything has to be re-written due to Common Core) or technology (I was making a killing for a couple years selling computer/sw systems to healthcare/Blues who HAD to put in an ObamaCare exchange).
The Green industries are still good places to work. What a great gig. Get billion dollar grants, build ****, deliver nothing, go out of business, but make personal wealth.
Or you could be like infamous Democrat Martin Shkreli. Oh, this guy is a gem. In fact, every time one of you is hit with the bullshit about the Right supporting greedy capitalists, I want you to point to Martin Shkreli - a Democrat. Apparently you can still make good money in pharmaceuticals...
If you don't know the story, he's a former hedge fund investor, turned Pharma CEO. There was this old drug lying around that was introduced in the 1950s that had run it's course. He bought the drug for his company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, for pennies on the dollar. They found out it could successfully be used to treat AIDS and the drug was revived. At the time, it sold for $15 a pill. He hiked the cost to $750 a pill (5000%) for no reason save greed. He laughs about how he should be charging $5,000 a pill and could because these patients/victims have no choice but to buy his drug.
Go Google this monster (for that's what he is).
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money...maceuticals-valeant-fda-drug-prices/79808004/
He was summoned to Congress, where he pled the fifth....
After the hearings, he Tweeted what imbeciles Congressmen/women are. Talk about a greedy, money-hungry, worried-about-no-one-other-than-himself monster, here you have him.
He has a face that you just want to punch to a bloody pulp.
True but at the same time it's strangely satisfying to watch a private citizen tell several Congressmen to **** off since he's working the system that they approved.
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