Trump on Health Insurance, NATO, and the EU

The bitchslaps keep coming. Now John Brennan is getting slapped down. Trump continues to attack the deep state.

You do not own a car…

Why you should not read him… I don’t.

Because he says he is… which is good enough for American News Media.

And you should “and keeps the rest of the populace quiet enough not to revolt.” which will be around six years … again democracy it is not, more’s the pity.

( https://symbalitics.blogspot.com/2017/01/fon-dparikulur-06.html Fon d’parikulur – 06 the next chapter on my Haitian novella)

Those quoting poll numbers should stop it. They’re worthless.

The Rust Belt is where the action is. Trump needs the Rust Belt to keep his powerbase intact. So far he is delivering and it is paying dividends for the Rust Belt which is seeing jobs come back now that Trump has bitchslapped the manufacturers in line.

Che Pasa seems to have this right on healthcare. Many people seem to be getting sucked into the belief that Trump’s pronouncements represent some kind of coherent policy statement. The ambiguity and utter lack of policy detail gives people all over the map politically the license to think that he is going to do exactly what they want him to do. I’ve seen this with the intense confidence of those on the right that he’s going to fix immigration, deport 11 million people, etc. And I’ve seen it with comments about how Trump may just outflank everybody on healthcare by passing medicare for all.
The key, as always, is details. Whenever we have been given details by Trump or republicans, the intention is to scrap the ACA taxes, and bring back junk health insurance, combined with state-run high-risk pools for pre-ex conditions. It’s sensible to withhold judgment on what Trump is going to do until we see an actual, comprehensive plan.

The thing people fail to recognize on healthcare is that Obamacare, in its mandating of bad expensive health insurance for young healthy people without cost controls on insurers or service providers was bad — evil, even. A politics where a progressive or liberal or socialist has to abandon telling the truth to defend the lesser evil of “the best that could be done in the political circumstances” (or whatever weird counterfactual prison you put recognition of Obama’s betrayal in) is a left politics that might as well not exist.

Ditto for an anti war politics of Obama’s mideast perpetual war and permanent deep state. Or hoping Clinton, serial violator of campaign finance laws, is going to champion reform of anything.

As long as enough people are hearing/reading what they want to hear or read from him, little else matters to them, even if his actions or those of congress and his administration diverge from what he says or writes.

We’ve seen a similar phenomenon for the last eight years with regard to Mr. Obama. Lots of pretty words that obscure what’s really going on. And criticisms that were largely ineffective, in part because they were seen as sour grapes and partisan ranting, regardless of whether they were valid.

The question is whether Trump is convincing enough people.

His style is to alienate and isolate rather than align and unify. There are indications his support is shrinking not growing. His vendetta against the intelligence community may have a rational justification — as they have not necessarily served the US public well. But he doesn’t make rational arguments.

It’s clear there’s no love lost for the elites here and they deserve the brickbats coming their way. Of course, they’re gonna make out like bandits with the Trump-Goldman administration. My question here is – with the influx of billionaires / Wall St. in his administration, will the Steve Bannon faction be able to bend the jefe’s ear toward a nationalist agenda?

I just heard Larry Mantle introducing a discussion on NPR of Obama’s Administration: (paraphrasing slightly) “we want to go beyond ideology, what will emerge as a consensus evaluation? . . . ”

That “consensus thinking” that NPR does so well for tote-bag liberals is one flavor of political discourse that has been put in place of principled deliberative thinking and that substitution is what got us to Trump and his somewhat incoherent stream of consciousness. Most people do not have the time, education or inclination to think thru the implications of policy or the other arcana of politics. We rely on mediating pundits and journalists, politicians elected to representative office, issue-oriented organizations, and so on. The quality of elite thinking has deteriorated markedly over the last generation or two and a lot of rather obvious problems and issues have been put outside the box where critical evaluation is concerned.

The great majority of Americans do not participate effectively in politics or government anymore on any level. This is particularly true of self-identified Democrats as the Democratic Party has been whittled down into a pathetic Presidential party of virtue-signalling fools concentrated in urban centers.

People hearing and reading what they want to isn’t the issue; convincing people isn’t the issue either. Most people do not have reliable guides to what is said, either from their own education and preparation or among the available pundits. And, even if they did, it doesn’t matter, because they are not organized and cannot make their will felt. What ordinary people think, if they manage to think at all and not just respond to propaganda like Pavlov’s dogs to the ringing of the dinner bell, will be ignored or transformed into nonsense or amplified and distorted into noise by the Media and politicians in office.

We are left hoping that Trump does some good, while he does a lot that will be bad, and maybe . . . hope against hope . . . what he does bad will break some of the structures that prevent a better more adaptive politics and somehow that break will redound to the good in the long run. Not likely, but . . . no ordinary people in whatever numbers have any choice in the matter as things stand.

The thing people fail to recognize on healthcare is that Obamacare, in its mandating of bad expensive health insurance for young healthy people without cost controls on insurers or service providers was bad — evil, even.

ACA was 2,000 pages of technocratic cludge that tried to make an evil system a bit less evil. But I’m not prepared to say that it was nothing. In fact, there are now some interesting signs that ACA has in fact changed the shape of public expectations w/r/t health care. Pew just released a poll a few days ago in which the number of Americans who now think ‘the government has an obligation to ensure health care for all citizens’ is 60%
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/01/13/more-americans-say-government-should-ensure-health-care-coverage/

No argument from me that the only rational health care system is single payer. But there is a lot of woolly thinking on the question of how we get there. It is going to be a long, painful slog. People need to get over their fever dreams of Trump’s secret medicare for all plan. If that’s where we want to be eventually, then the ACA’s creation of expectations of a robust, govt. role are part of the momentum that might get us there.

dude: ” I think the Republican Party wants to rule, not govern, and they picked the guy who best represents that inherent trait of all post-WW2 Republicans.”

Well put, sir!

There are two important tactics that Obama used throughout his Presidency. The first was to cynically throw a sop to progressives, if he felt he needed to, that he would subsequently walk back and ultimately completely renege on. The second was to keep resubmitting a plan no matter how many times it was rejected.

His cat food commission and his support for the TPP and TTIP are examples of the second of these. Holding telecoms responsible for aiding illegal spying on citizens by the government, the public option, but also renegotiating NAFTA and closing Guantanamo were examples of the first.

What is interesting about Obama’s stance on NAFTA was that all this came out nearly a year before his Inauguration long before he had the nomination locked up. Again from my old scandals list:

On February 24, 2008, campaigning in Lorain, Ohio, Obama said,

“One million jobs have been lost because of NAFTA, including nearly 50,000 jobs here in Ohio. And yet, 10 years after NAFTA passed, Sen. Clinton said it was good for America. Well, I don’t think NAFTA has been good for America — and I never have”

This quote was then used in an anti-Clinton campaign mailer. On February 26, 2008, in his debate with Hillary Clinton in Cleveland, Ohio, Obama said,

“In her campaign for Senate, she said that NAFTA, on balance, had been good for New York and good for America. I disagree with that. I think that it did not have the labor standards and environmental standards that were required in order to not just be good for Wall Street but also be good for Main Street. And if you travel through Youngstown and you travel through communities in my home state of Illinois, you will see entire cities that have been devastated as a consequence of trade agreements that were not adequately structured to make sure that U.S. workers had a fair deal.”

and later

“I will make sure that we renegotiate, in the same way that Senator Clinton talked about. And I think actually Senator Clinton’s answer on this one is right. I think we should use the hammer of a potential opt-out as leverage to ensure that we actually get labor and environmental standards that are enforced. And that is not what has been happening so far.”

and finally

“And as president, what I want to be is an advocate on behalf of workers.”

On February 27, 2008, Canadian CTV reports a leak from the conservative government of Stephen Harper that a senior member of Obama’s team met with Canadian officials and told them not to take Obama’s criticisms on NAFTA seriously. On February 29, 2008, CTV identifies the Obama camaign member as Austan Goolsbee, a free trade economist at the University of Chicago and at the time Obama’s senior economics adviser. Both the Canadian government and the Obama campaign issue denials. On March 3, 2008, the AP reports on a memo written by Joseph DeMora of the Canadian consulate in Chicago describing a meeting on February 8, 2008 between Georges Rioux the consul general and Goolsbee. Among the topics discussed was NAFTA. Per DeMora’s notes:

“[Goolsbee] was frank in saying that the primary campaign has been necessarily domestically focused, particularly in the Midwest, and that much of the rhetoric that may be perceived to be protectionist is more reflective of political maneuvering than policy. On NAFTA, Goolsbee suggested that Obama is less about fundamentally changing the agreement and more in favour of strengthening/clarifying language on labour mobility and environment and trying to establish these as more ‘core’ principles of the agreement.”

Fast forward to February 17, 2009. In Obama’s first trip to Canada as President, he continued to dance around the NAFTA issue, decrying protectionism and taking a legalistic approach to his NAFTA position.

“[Q.] …even though you’ve given assurances international trade agreements will be respected — how concerned should they [Canadians] be?

THE PRESIDENT: I don’t think they should be too concerned. You know, I think that if you look at history one of the most important things during a worldwide recession of the sort that we’re seeing now is that each country does not resort to “beggar thy neighbor” policies, protectionist policies, they can end up further contracting world trade

and

As I’ve said before, NAFTA, the basic framework of the agreement has environmental and labor protections as side agreements — my argument has always been that we might as well incorporate them into the full agreement so that they’re fully enforceable.”

Obama, however, never made any efforts to do so. This is a far cry from his campaign threat to opt out of NAFTA if there were no new negotiations. This was confirmed on April 20, 2009, when Obama’s Trade Representative Ronald Kirk declared that there were no plans to reopen NAFTA to include labor and environmental standards in the main agreement.

So just three months into his Administration his promise to renegotiate NAFTA was declared officially dead.

what is the Donald talking about when it comes to BMW? BMW has one its biggest factories in Spartanburg, SC. That’s South Carolina, the red state, a “right-to-work” state.

@ejf

Trump’s warning to BMW is very simple, if they are going to build a new plant in Mexico to produce cars for the US market they will be taxed. If they change that plan and build the plant in the US they will be praised and can expect even lower taxes.

Carla: Let’s zero in on the nub of the disagreement here. No argt. from me that the ACA is crappy. No argt. that single payer is superior. However, you and others appear to be of the opinion that White Americans’ objections to the ACA are largely or exclusively about its crappiness, and not at all about the fact that it taxes the wealthy to make insurance more accessible to the middle class & poor . And this view, that the opposition to the ACA is largely about its crappiness, is no doubt what underlies the fantasies here that wily Emperor Trump may just declare a pox on both houses and give us our heart’s desire of medicare for all.
I’m going to call that what it is: delusional. And I rest that case on what I take to be self-evident when you look at the reasoning. White Americans’ main objection to the ACA was NOT that it was crappy, it was that it made insurance more accessible for people who don’t deserve it. There seems to be a lack of willingness to acknowledge that, if these people hated the ACA, they are going to resist single payer with far greater force. And, of course, the result of that is continual delusions that single payer would be wildly popular if only someone would explain it properly to the uneducated.
I’m afraid I can’t buy that. Resistance to single payer, like resistance to the ACA, will come from deeply held beliefs related to the preservation of the American racial caste system. If you want single payer, you will have to find a way to defuse or dismantle that workings of that caste system. I see no evidence here that people are prepared for that fight.

Bruce Stain, people whatever their color don’t oppose the ACA because they think somebody is getting something for nothing. They oppose it because they have seen their premiums and deductibles shoot up even as the quality of their policies has cratered.

Also we react often to how a concept is pitched to us. Single payer does not resonate with a lot of people whereas talking about Medicare for All does. In our kleptocracy, we have all been indoctrinated with the absurd notion that it is unfair to tax the rich, but talk instead of moving resources around within society and they are much more receptive. In both cases, we are talking about the same things, but the difference is throwing words out there instead of actually trying to get one’s point across.

Bruce Wilder

You feign misunderstanding of my argument with its ‘elaborate counterfactuals and insults’, but this only demonstrates you’re responding to what you think a liberal might say about health care, not to what I actually wrote. I’m not a liberal, btw. Here is my argt. so you don’t miss it this time:
The reason we don’t have medicare for all/single payer in the U.S. is not primarily because liberals are feckless, it is because the majority of white Americans are opposed to it

Everything else you say is basically, i) ACA is shitty, to which I have already said I agree, and ii) Obama was useless and not a fighter, to which I also agree.

The one point of contention, the one point on which I disagree, is I think it is delusional to think that, whereas the ACA generated enormous white bourgeois opposition on account of its redistributive intentions, single payer would be greeted with happy shrieks of joy with people finally free of the ravages of private insurance.
Sorry Bruce, but I’m calling bs on that. Single payer is inevitably going to generate violent opposition from the white majority who are invested in the current racial caste structure.
You know, it’s pretty amazing that I’m drawing insulting ‘liberals are clueless'(!) comments for presenting a version of what is a pretty standard trope of left-marxist thinking in the U.S. You can find the idea in Mike Davis’s ‘Prisoners of the American Dream’, for instance. Namely, the idea that ‘the ballast of capital’s hegemony in American history has been the repeated, autonomous mobilizations of the mass middle strata in defense of petty accumulation and entrepreneurial opportunity’.
I suggest you do some hard reflection on that phrase, and think about how that middle strata to which Davis referred is going to react to the collapse of racial distinctions in health care provision. A better answer is needed to the question of why sensible health care does not exist in the U.S. than ‘liberals did it’.

Insurance is not the best way to deliver health care or any other service. Why? Because the insurance company is the customer not the patient, and their interests can and do diverge. A better way is means-tested grants – see https://jepoynton.com/2015/02/25/funding-the-nhs-and-other-public-services.

“In Two-Faced Racism: Whites in the Backstage and Frontstage, Leslie Houts Picca and Joe Feagin adroitly mine data taken from the diaries and journals of white college students that show that while overt racism may have diminished in public and multiracial discourse in recent decades, it survives with disturbing tenacity in private exchanges among small groups of white friends and acquaintances.

Much of the overt expressions of blatantly racist thought, emotions, interpretations, and inclinations have gone backstage – that is, into private settings where whites find themselves among other whites, especially friends and relatives.” Backstage areas offer refuge from frontstage expectations about interpersonal politeness.

Picca and Feagin demonstrate how whites bond through racial performances to protect physical and social spaces perceived to be theirs alone while publicly asserting their racial innocence. They interact under a tacit agreement not to police each other.”

“Feagin and Leslie Picca of the University of Dayton compiled their research in a book called “Two-Faced Racism” published in 2007. They surveyed 626 white students at 28 colleges and universities across the country. They asked the students to keep diaries and record any racial events they came across during the course of a day.

The students recorded 9,000 accounts, of which 7,500 were “blatantly racist” events ranging from private jokes and conversations to violent incidents.”

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/US/01/12/reid.race.lessons/
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/315291

“As a Canadian working and studying in Los Angeles for ten years, I began to wonder why progressive young hipsters of various races were so eager to privately share their disturbing ideas about black people. The fact that these probing admissions came from a large number of my “coolest” friends, rather than the usual suspects, made it seem like a disturbing new cultural phenomenon.

Seemingly nice young people, once they knew and trusted each other, were trying to take their friendship “to the next level” with these revelations of their racist beliefs. It was like they felt they could finally talk openly and drop the façade they maintained in public. They did this joyfully, as if it were a postmodern bonding ritual to confirm that they were members of the same cool social “tribe,” one that didn’t include blacks.”

http://thegrio.com/2015/02/15/white-liberal-racists/

https://ltc.highline.edu/CCE/Backstage%20Racism%20by%20Nice%20Whites%20-%20Picca.pdf

” Good relations with the other massively nuclear armed state in the world are good, and America has zero interests of importance in the Ukraine.”

The Ukraine had nuclear weapons. We asked for them to give them up, if we guaranteed their borders. They agreed, the weapons were shipped to Russia, where they were dismantled, [we paid for and checked the dismantling,] We have not lived up to our agreement to guarantee their borders.

We have zero interests of importance in the Ukraine? Well, if we want to be able to make agreements….