I'd love to know from the downvoters if they think Cuomo is not shitty, not a typical establishment shit-bag, or not someone the left will get shit for criticizing.
The ACA is imperfect, but there is no question it has improved healthcare in this country. If you disagree with that, I’m just going to assume what I already suspect,
Well, I do disagree, even at the risk of being put in the little box you made for me. Not that I don't think it improved a lot of things about healthcare in this country, because it certainly did that. However, we are talking about the biggest sector of the biggest economy in the history of the world, so I think people should be a little more open to the idea that the obvious impacts from the brochure don't exactly encompass the total impact.
The downstream impacts of pumping tons of federal funds to private insurance companies through the mandate and subsidies shouldn't be ignored. The value proposition for health insurance companies changed dramatically, as did the proposition for healthcare providers. All that cash caught Wall Street's attention. Health insurance and hospitals used to be mostly non-profit, now they are dominated by a handful of large corporations that keep consolidating. The profit motive has led to worse outcomes for patients who often dread the paperwork more than the illness. Cost controls in the ACA were weak to the point of being almost non-existent, Medical bankruptcies continued to grow after the ACA at about the same rate as before, and the gap between what Americans pay and what everyone else pays for healthcare continued to grow as well.
My biggest objection is about why a right wing think tank would be proposing healthcare reforms at all. It wasn't because they used to care about healthcare for working class Americans and then stopped. It was because there was a rising discontent over the state of healthcare. They saw some kind of healthcare reform as inevitable, and wanted to push a plan that would do the least possible for workers, but would kill momentum for anything better. No doubt the ACA did a lot more good than they would have ever wanted, but it succeeded brilliantly in killing the momentum for more reform. Ever since the ACA was passed, we have only gone backwards. It led the movement for a better healthcare system down a dead end, and establishment Democrats, including Obama, have done everything they can to prevent any momentum for a better approach.
Do not come at me with some “all politicians are the same
Oh fuck, this chestnut again. When did I come at you with that, or anything like it? I know full well that the average Republican is basically Hitler. I also know full well that weak as hell Democrats have been complete failures for over 50 years, allowing the Hitlerites in the Republican party to completely dominate the US government. That right there is the worst impact of the ACA. It's just one more example of Democrats failing to do anything that might have turned the tide of rising fascism.
US products don't dominate the information technology sector because they are inherently better than alternatives. They dominate because the US is the 800 pound gorilla and it's just easier to use the defaults the US churns out. Every time a government uses proprietary technology, especially for anything that citizens/residents have to interact with, they give up a bit of their sovereignty. People and businesses that interact with the government shouldn't be compelled to buy particular products from a foreign company just to interact with their government. I think Europe would be wise to move to open standards as much as possible, and start rolling a lot of their own technology. No, it's not the easiest choice for the next quarter, or next year, but it will serve them well in the long term. The US is just too volatile.
Canada is definitely ditching the US, why shouldn't Europe. As an American who will b negatively impacted, I can't help but still encourage it.
Democratic voters are addicted to electing shitty people, then whining about leftists who notice.
The death of his daughter, Peter told me, was God’s will. God created measles. God allowed the disease to take his daughter’s life. “Everybody has to die,” he said. Peter’s eyes closed, and he struggled to continue talking. “It’s very hard, very hard,” he said at last.
Absolutely disgusting. "Look at me and how much I'm suffering".
It only takes a simple majority to change the rules and eliminate the filibuster entirely. Not that I think it's a bad idea in general, but that would probably be the Republican response.
Not really. Criminal prosecutions are a very small subset of enforcement actions. That doesn't make this post reasonable, but your logic doesn't check out either.
It literally is. Biden's ego kept him in the race far longer than he should have been, and Harris was kept in the shadows through his presidency to prevent her comparative youth from highlighting his deterioration. Biden and those who supported his insane run are absolutely responsible for every bad thing Trump does.
Depends on how it is used. If the home automation is on a separate network from everything else with a secure gateway and no direct Internet access, security vulnerabilities are likely irrelevant.
Name one other statement from the Heritage Foundation that you believe.
As much as I see Obama as an over hyped neoliberal failure, I still take his word over the Heritage Foundation's.
Meanwhile we have a doctor shortage in the US. We're also making college more expensive, reducing doctor pay, removing doctor autonomy, and driving foreign doctors away. Yeah, this is gonna suck for decades, even if we got rid of Trump tomorrow.
The border
Both Biden and Obama before him deported far more undocumented aliens than Trump could manage. Biden completed more of Trump's wall than Trump did. Family separations started under Obama and continued through Biden - with the caveat that people who go through the effort to understand it know that it was much worse under Trump because it was vindictive and intentional instead of being done on a limited bases to streamline cases.
The fact is that, no matter what the Democrats do or say, Republicans will always be seen as "tougher" on the border. They will always be willing to use more racist language and false narratives than Democrats. Trying to out-xenophobe Republicans is a losing fight for Democrats. What Democrats need is fewer xenophobes, and they don't get that by running to the middle, or trying to ignore the issue. They get it by telling the truth boldly and consistently, and mocking ridiculous Republican talking points instead of playing into them.
Republicans don't shape their policy to what polls tell them voters want, they shape what voters want through effective rhetoric, Democrats seem to think that voter opinions are immutable and that they need to find a well tuned platform to please more voters than they piss off until they get to 51% in each district. Republicans destroy them by constantly shifting the poles under Democrat's feet.
Prices at the grocery store. It’s ridiculous but it is what it is.
This is part of the anti-incumbency global tidal wave narrative that Democrats have been using to explain away their loss. I don't argue that it wasn't a factor, but I think they owe us a better explanation. The guy they lost to was Trump. The race should never have been close enough for that to tip it over. The one glaring exception to that global phenomena was Mexico that had a very similar election with an aging left wing male president attempting to hand power to a much younger female protege, in opposition to a far right candidate. In their case the left candidate won, and they did it with a social-Democrat platform, not by running to the middle. This is in a country that is far more conservative than even the US, with a much more firmly established cultural patriarchy.
Yes, border control is a problem. We needed a leader and got nothing.
Oh, I agree wholeheartedly. What we needed was immigration reform and a whole lot more judges to clear the backlog. The Democrats proposed a viable plan (far too right for me, but an understandable compromise to get Republicans on-board) and the Republicans rejected it to keep the issue alive for Trump. Then the Democrats assumed voters would see that and, what, stop being concerned about the border? All that did is send the message that electing Trump would get legislation passed because Biden couldn't do it. The Democrats didn't even try to convince anyone that the Republican plan was wrong-headed and would do far more harm than good. It was a disaster, and the kind of disaster that Democrats create for themselves on a regular basis.
LGBTQ rights. I’m sorry to have to say this, but that’s not going to win you an election.
The whole reason that the anti-woke movement gained so much traction is that Democrats have abandoned the issue or made compromises for years. I agree that standing for LGBTQ rights is not going to win elections, but giving up the high ground can certainly lose elections. Democratic (and corporate) tokenism also played a huge role in driving the anti-DEI narrative. Standing boldly and consistently for minority rights is politically a defensive strategy for Democrats. Democrats can't win elections if they lose the culture wars. That just lets Republicans control the narrative.
You need a sales pitch for purple and red districts that speaks on their issues.
You spoke earlier on how Democrats are seen as "intolerable over educated snobs" and I agree, but I see this as a perfect example as to why. Democrats act like policy preferences are some kind of unalterable genetic feature of "some people" and those people must be pandered to. People in red districts are first and foremost people. Look at how Bernie talks to right wing audiences. He doesn't cater even slightly to right wing ideology, but he does speak directly to their issues with an integrity that they are not used to seeing. And, it works. Bernie is consistently the most popular Democrat in red districts, not the centrists who pander.
Centrist is not evil, it's necessary to win elections
Oh really? Who is president again? Who won the popular vote? Between Harris and Trump, which was more "centrist"?
Your logic is sound, but the model your working from is completely out of touch with how voters and elections work.
First of all, the left to right spectrum is just one dimension of voter preference. Another, and currently more dominant, dimension is populist to establishment. What Democrats call "centrist" is really "establishment", and American voters hate the establishment.
Voters also like leaders with conviction. Centrist Democrats cave on everything. After four years of attacking Trump's boarder policy, Democrats flipped almost entirely. After four years attacking Trump on LGBT rights, Democrats abandoned the issue entirely. Not only does that signal weakness to disengaged voters, it also destroys trust between the party and it's base. The base might show up on election day, but they aren't going to want to canvass or do all the other volunteer work that Democratic campaigns depend on.
If you compare the US to Europe as a whole, there isn't a whole lot of difference. Europe also has many different countries with far more autonomy than US states, yet somehow they are all connected with a far better rail system than the US.
American here. We know exactly why we can't have this.
But he kind of is. I guarantee that most of the politically ignorant folks in the country think he's a Democrat, and he did run for the Democratic nomination, and he does caucus with the Democrats.
I don't agree that it's locked in, but we are certainly at the presupace. You and I are still talking about this without significant fear of the secret police knocking down our doors, so we aren't there yet.
The Director of the United States Marshals Service answers to the president. They protect the judiciary, but they aren't it's police force.