Is the radical right dumbing down the GOP?

[Dymanic]

This is actually your view, not mine. I'm not the one shreiking on internet forums about Ryan "killing Medicare".

Neither am I, but I don't expect you to pay much attention to those sorts of details.

I thought semantics weren't the issue with you?

You clearly have me confused with someone else -- but since you mention it: no, the semantics aren't the issue with me, either. The issue with me is that the Ryan plan sucks, and that it's being falsely represented as something it's not -- a minor tweak to an existing system -- even though it is in fact a completely different system, as you yourself have already acknowledged. There is a fundamental dishonesty in attempting to use semantics as a means of persuading the American public to accept something they would not otherwise accept, but the sematics are not the issue. It's the dishonesty.

The GOP made a plan, so far all we hear from the Dems are crickets.

"We had this real stupid idea, see, and we're getting nothing but flak for it, but what you gotta understand is that it's actually those other guys' fault, because they just sat back and let us go ahead and make fools of ourselves".

 

[WildCat]

Wildcat, stop regurgitating talking points and answer the question?

I'm talking about the assertion in the OP that the Ryan plan "kills Medicare".

As for how to "save" Medicare; The entire solution is to get the economy working. Once the unemployment drops and wages start to rise, Medicare will be in no immediate danger. And that is all you can do with ANY long term program; See to it that the next ten years or so are taken care of, and keep managing the situation.

Let me know when the economy shows signs of working again. Until then, we need a real-world solution, not wishes and hope.

A far better solution would be a national health system where you can see doctors who are public employees in hospitals that are owned by the people. Then you can "kill" Medicare.

Where has that ever worked? Certainly not in Cook County, unless you were one of Todd Stroger's friends or family.

 

[MattusMaximus]

Travis, I think Mitt will get the nod but he somehow needs to bolster his cred with the loony right. Bachmann as VP perfectly fills the bill. If she's VP, will you half leave the country? Maybe live on the Canadian border?

If the GOP is stupid enough to put together a Romney/Bachmann ticket, then they shouldn't be surprised when the results in 2012 are similar to 2008.

The best way to make Romney un-electable in the general election is to hook him up with a right-wing whackjob like Bachmann.

 

[BenBurch]

...

Where has that ever worked? Certainly not in Cook County, unless you were one of Todd Stroger's friends or family.

VA hospital system doesn't count, huh?

 

[WildCat]

VA hospital system doesn't count, huh?

I'll admit you have a point there.

But I note that VA doctors are immune from malpractice lawsuits, are you willing to go there with your proposed plan? All doctors will be immune from malpractice suits?

 

[BenBurch]

I'll admit you have a point there.

But I note that VA doctors are immune from malpractice lawsuits, are you willing to go there with your proposed plan? All doctors will be immune from malpractice suits?

Never. I also would make a finding of malpractice a reason for dismissal. You can go be a bad doctor in private practice; Maybe you can go do liposuction and butt-cheek implants and things the national system won't touch. We don't need to employ bad doctors.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I'll admit you have a point there.

But I note that VA doctors are immune from malpractice lawsuits, are you willing to go there with your proposed plan? All doctors will be immune from malpractice suits?

That's no more than a red herring.

 

[HoverBoarder]

If the GOP is stupid enough to put together a Romney/Bachmann ticket, then they shouldn't be surprised when the results in 2012 are similar to 2008.

The best way to make Romney un-electable in the general election is to hook him up with a right-wing whackjob like Bachmann.

So why does she have so much support?

 

[Roadtoad]

I'm trying to get some solid, balanced facts about Medicare, and the Health Care Program, and what I keep getting is more and more biased hate and rage. Not very helpful, folks.

There's a lot I agree with on both sides, and a lot I don't. I try to maintain a straight face while folks cry, "No Nationalized Medical Plan, And Don't Touch My Medicare!" knowing it's a losing battle. Greed and powerlust are the watchwords for the day, and doing what's right -- making health care affordable by getting to the root of what makes it expensive -- have fallen by the wayside. John Stossel can offer up video reports of why an expensive private health care program is a great thing, until you're in my shoes and you have to come up with $200 just to keep your job. (And your employer smirks about how much he's saving by not offering medical coverage.) Not good.

Like Wildcat, I'm not impressed with the Republican plan, either. A lot of the cost savings from what I can see are minimal. I'm waiting for my in-laws to show me Medicare being billed for a pedicure. (Yes, that's happened.) Crap will continue to be covered. At the same time, I'm pissed as hell that my diabetes went undiagnosed for nearly SIX MONTHS while I was a member of Kaiser, even though I was starting to show symptoms and kept asking about it. (No, you're not supposed to be able to sue a Kaiser doctor, but I sure as hell raised as big a stink as I could about what was genuine malpractice.)

So, if we can get past the hate for the Right, and get into something that resembles fact and substance, what are the proposals? I'm looking for Bachmann's when I get back from dinner, and we'll see what comes up. I'm willing to bet it's more partisan BS from both sides of the aisle, and little substance. (Though, if what I'm reading about Bachmann is so, perhaps that's the case with her. I'd like to see that situation change.)

 

[leftysergeant]

So no, you can't link to the Dem plan.


And neither can Ben.

I guess we can conclude that the Dems plan is to not only end Medicare by 2024 but also to eliminate health care for seniors entirely by then through inaction?

No. Just make the Walton larvae and the Koch brothers pay for more of it.

 

[dropzone]

Travis lives way, way up in the Sierras. Winters there can be pretty brutal.

Cite: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donner_Party

Beat THAT, Scotland!

 

[TraneWreck]

I'll admit you have a point there.

But I note that VA doctors are immune from malpractice lawsuits, are you willing to go there with your proposed plan? All doctors will be immune from malpractice suits?

I've actually made some money suing doctors, and I will GLADLY agree to an elimination of malpractice suits in favor of universal coverage.

There are two primary factors that currently make malpractice a necessary evil in our system:

1) It's really the only way of holding doctors responsible for their errors in our society (not the only way POSSIBLE).

2) Because we don't have a universal system, if a doctor screws up in such a way the patient will incur hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of dollars of medical costs, who should pay?

Clearly we can come up with plenty of creative solutions to handle #1 in a universal system, and the reason those costs are so high in #2 has to do with our current idiotic system.

The most obvious example are cases where doctors screw up with pregnant women. The use drugs they weren't supposed to or otherwise cause serious birth defects in the child that aren't discovered until birth. Now the parents, due to the malpractice, will have to spend incredible sums of money caring for that child throughout its life. If it was the doctor's fault, they should have to pay the costs, but in our system, that cost might be $20 million from birth to 18 given our system.

If we agree that society as a whole will bear the costs of taking care of that child and properly sanctioning the doctor, then a malpractice suit isn't necessary. Rather than being the cause of problems with our medical system, malpractice suits are but one of the symptoms.

 

[Neally]

Why do they need to offer one now? Why not next year or after the election?

There's plenty of time to develop a good plan, there's no reason to adopt a plan that makes things worse.

Your Greekness is showing again!

No, the Democrats' plan is to let Republicans shoot themselves in the foot by backing idiotic proposals like Ryans so they all get booted out of office in 2012. Then, when all the lizard brains are gone, they can develop a rational plan that includes cost control measures to stabilize and even expand Medicare without a posse of Republicans trying as hard as they can to make the bill crap.

It's a good plan.

Bad plan because it won't work. Like the Greek politicians, the majority will back off if it means their job. Kicking the can is much safer.

 

[TraneWreck]

Your Greekness is showing again!

Bad plan because it won't work. Like the Greek politicians, the majority will back off if it means their job. Kicking the can is much safer.

As we've been over before, the analogy with Greece is absolutely awful. I would run down the salient differences once again, but as I said, this has all been explained to you, you just ignore it.

Greece is as irrelevant to America as a country could possible get. The only similarity is some inchoate notion of debt. The nature of the obligations and financial status of the two countries, however, are so different as to make the comparison ridiculous.

It's like comparing a deadbeat dad $10,000 behind on child support payments with no job and $20,000 of credit card debt with a lawyer making $250,000 who owes money on student loans and has leverage a couple mortgages to invest in real estate.

The deadbeat declaring bankruptcy does not mean the lawyer will. The more you bring up Greece, the sillier you look (and that's without dealing with currency issues).

ETA: I should additionally add that it wasn't merely lack of attention and procrastination that resulted in the Greek crisis. They took elaborate steps to hide their financial situation from the rest of Europe for much of the 00's. They hired consultants from Goldman Sachs to use their patented risk hiding accounting schemes to make the Greek debt appear risk-free. Once again, when we discuss "bailing out Greece," what we really mean is bailing out the people that leant them money. Just like our mortgage-securities crisis, those loans to Greece were based on the same shady credit default swaps and other smoke screens.

That's not to say the nation of Greece is blameless for their crisis, quite the opposite, obviously they consciously engaged in the shady financing, but to pretend like they were just chugging along and then all of a sudden their social system caused their economy to collapse is not accurate.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Some of our Seattle Skeptics went last night to hear Naomi Oreskes speak about her book, "Merchants of Doubt". From the FAQs:

The men in our story had dedicated their lives to science and technology in the cause of defending the U.S. against the Soviet threat. When the Cold War ended just a few years later, they just couldn't lay down their arms. So they found a new threat in environmentalism, which they worried would lead to excessive government regulation of the marketplace, and put us on the slippery slope to socialism.

Oreskes presents a clear historical account of how, when and why Repubs started equating everything that involved a need for government regulation with communism and socialism. Along with that Libertarian fundamentalism came the campaign to discredit valid science and equate environmental science with socialism.

You may notice the similarity in the persuasion tactics with the Creationists, claim "there is doubt in the science" and argue "both sides should be heard"

What role does the media play in the story? A key tactic used by the Merchants of Doubt was to invoke the ideals of fairness and balance to persuade the media to give equal time to their views. Even the great Edward R. Murrow fell prey to this tactic, giving the tobacco industry equal time to argue that the facts regarding the harms of tobacco were not established. Murrow’s death from lung cancer a few years later was both tragic and ironic, for during World War II Murrow had been an articulate opponent of meretricious balance in reporting. Murrow was not ashamed to take the side of democracy, and felt no need to try to get the Nazi perspective.

The authors are science historians, and the book is the result of extensive research and the conclusions well documented.

Oreskes’s research highlighted the disconnect between the state of scientific debate and the way it was being presented in the mass media and perceived by the American people. Teaming up with Erik Conway, her further research soon suggested that the reason we are all confused is that people have been trying to confuse us.

They set out to answer the question, why after the science of global warming was accepted by Republicans as settled science, did they reverse that position in the mid-eighties when the science was actually stronger, not weaker?

List of key documents


I'm just now beginning the book, The Republican War on Science so I can't give my own opinions yet. But here are some comments from the web site:

Introduction to the Paperback Edition:
The attacks on science, and their sponsorship by Republican politicians, continue apace, with the Bush administration leading the way but key members of Congress following close behind. These politicians, in turn, appear driven by a continual need to appease key sectors of the Republican base that have inconvenient slices of scientific information constantly in their sights....

Excerpt:
"Certainly, the proliferation of think tanks has not had as a corollary that conservatives now take scientific expertise more seriously. On the contrary, the Right has a strong track record of deliberately attempting to undermine scientific work that might threaten the economic interests of private industry. Perhaps more alarmingly still, similar tactics have also been brought to bear by the Right in the service of a religiously conservative cultural and moral agenda.

The next three chapters demonstrate how cultural conservatives have disregarded, distorted, and abused science on the issues of evolution, embryonic stem cell research, the relation of abortion to health risks for women, and sex education. In the process, we will encounter more ideologically driven think tanks, more questionable science, and more conservative politicians willing to embrace it."

For the record, Oreskes includes a number of prominent Democrats in her book including Bill Clinton. Both books link the start of the serious attacks on science by the Right with the Reagan Presidency. Oreskes believes there was a synergistic effect of bad coincidental timing when a group of cold war scientists began seeing everything that the government should regulate based on scientific findings (called "negative externalities") with Reagan's, "the government is the problem" philosophy. This political ideology is the root of the "dumbed down GOP".

 

[Jack Astor]

So why does she have so much support?

The crazies are passionate and organized, and they represent about 30% of the Republican party - a figure based on the percentage who continue to support Palin, regardless of the treasure trove of delusion and stupidity she's displayed over the last four years. Bachmann has a built in base of nutjobs who think like her. Other zealots like Robertson did well in Iowa, too.

I'm guessing she's running for a position on Fox News, and not for President. Half the field is out there to sell books.

The key for the serious Republicans in the primaries, is to placate the crazy base without actually acquiescing to what they want. Appease them enough to strip away enough delegates to win the nomination. Otherwise, they'll lock into positions that won't appeal to people in the general election who are less deluded.

 

[leftysergeant]

The dumbing-down process starts in the schools. The right wing needs to destroy public education so that only the children of the rich and well-placed get a decent education. That's why they want school vouchers. The private schools are doing better than public because they can cherry-pick.
If you have no special-needs children, your school is going to perform astronomicly better than the schools that do try to educate the difficult kids.

Naturally, if you are teaching to a test, it is not feasible to spend a lot of recources on the arts and humanities and the courses that cause people to think.

That's the last bloody thing that creeps like Bachmann want.

 

[HoverBoarder]

The crazies are passionate and organized, and they represent about 30% of the Republican party - a figure based on the percentage who continue to support Palin, regardless of the treasure trove of delusion and stupidity she's displayed over the last four years. Bachmann has a built in base of nutjobs who think like her. Other zealots like Robertson did well in Iowa, too.

I'm guessing she's running for a position on Fox News, and not for President. Half the field is out there to sell books.

The key for the serious Republicans in the primaries, is to placate the crazy base without actually acquiescing to what they want. Appease them enough to strip away enough delegates to win the nomination. Otherwise, they'll lock into positions that won't appeal to people in the general election who are less deluded.

She doesn't have any actual solutions to any problems though; she just gives ways that people can blame them on other things so they don't have to think about the hard task of actually dealing with them.

I just don't get why such a head-in-the-sand mentality would be so popular when we have serious problems to deal with.

 

[bikerdruid]

The radical right and left should get a clue. Nothing is black and white.

america has no left in their two party system.
they have 'far right' and 'abysmally far right'

 

[leftysergeant]

I guess we can conclude that the Dems plan is to not only end Medicare by 2024 but also to eliminate health care for seniors entirely by then through inaction?

Total BS. The idea was also floated of just expanding it into Medicare for All. Damned whiney baby-insurance-company-owned-Republicon drongos were having none of that.

That would actually be the perfect solution. You weould have a lot of young and healthy people putting money into the pool at great savings to themselves over what the for-profit insurance comapny leaches suck out of the ecconomy.