March links

A few quaint events of interest happened in March before the virus hit.

Before the primaries ended. A stroll down memory lane with the winners and losers from a debate.  Biden won the South Carolina primary, won most of Super Tuesday, and won again the following Tuesday. Everyone other than Sanders dropped out.

Russian interference charges dropped. I'm not sure if it's real or a pretext--good reasons to believe either way. It probably never would have gone to trial.

Watch him end his career. ...and on to a well-deserved retirement. Chris Matthews of MSNBC won't believe a woman candidate about sexual harassment. Dumb move. 'I just don't believe it' doesn't fly anymore because it's generally very believable.

Rift in the left. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez is actually trying to be more pragmatic than the garden variety far leftist.

Trolls can be controlled online. Not a March item, but something dear to me and my dislike of trolls. Reddit managed to greatly reduce trolling. A confession of someone who was addicted to trolling and wised up on  his own.

Everything else is covid-related.

Image; cbsnews.com

February links

NYT endorses Warren and Klobuchar. (Didn't do any good for Warren.)

Virginia gun rights rally. Virginia Beach after mass shooting. Gun rights view. WaPo coverage. White supremacists arrested before arriving. Capsule report: it was peaceful. Solid people taking the issue seriously.

Questions for witnesses in abuse of power.

Strategy for Dems. Clear list, but do I agree?

Child abuse? A terrifying case of investigative abuse against a family.

Analysis on national-wide injunctions as judicial activism.

Bernie loves campaigning and hates governing. Oy, another one.

Did socialism ruin Venezuela? The article hedges, but it seems like it did. Moderate depth.

Trump is trying to demoralize his opponents so they give up.

US federal budgets continue to be smoke and mirrors and red ink. WE'RE DOOMED.

Written by socialists, this article tells why Bernie is just the beginning. Probably a fair representation of socialists, including their intense dislike of capitalism. Are we doomed again?

Image: latimes.com

Bombshells at the DNC

I don't subscribe to the belief that Clinton rigged the Democratic primary. Unless you stuff ballot boxes, bribe party reps at state conventions, or manage to disqualify your opponent or his supporters, it's hard to rig a democratic selection process. (I suppose if you own all the media, that might work too, but that doesn't pertain either.)

I'm not changing my mind due to the revelations from Donna Brazile. She's a party hack who's had various roles, including interim party chair after Debbie Wasserman-Schultz was forced to resign in disgrace.

Brazile writes in overly dramatic prose about discovering the unsavory arrangement for sharing campaign and party money. Clinton gave money to the debt-ridden party in exchange for a high degree of control of the levers. This allowed her to tilt the debate schedule to her advantage, but I don't see any other major advantage that she had. I don't see evidence that this changed the eventual outcome of the primary.

It does show yet again Hillary's penchant for rigid control regardless of ethics, protocol, rules, transparency, or good judgment. Her basic drive is not for truth or honesty or the greater good, but for the maintenance of her own power as she conceives it. Again I'm relieved that she's not in the White House,.further tarnishing herself and other Dems by association.

I wish I had any hope for the Democrats to improve. Donna Brazile doesn't inspire confidence. I hated Wasserman-Schultz. I have no idea if there are any Dems I respect aside from Joe Biden, Howard Dean (maybe), and Deval Patrick. That's a pretty small number of people for a national party. But that's where I'm at with this excuse for a political party.

This country, which I've loved and respected, we may be on the skids to being a low-class country like Argentina. I hope it doesn't happen. I hope I see a turn-around before I die. I'm not hopeful though.

Image: thronesvideo.xyz

Short: Jamelle Bouie speaks truth to starry-eyed Dems

I'm cleaning up my browser and clearing out some interesting stories I read over the past few months. However, this is just from yesterday.

Jamelle Boiue, a black political columnist, tries to explain to all those starry-eyed idealist what is going to happen if a Democrat wins the presidency in 2016. The unwelcome news: Even their beloved Bernie can't change the dynamic enough.

Please read the whole thread. I almost feel like I could have written it.

The 16% Tax on Everything

You don't hear about Republican plans to roll this one back.

This is how much healthcare costs in the US, currently 16% of our GDP and on its way to becoming 20% by 2020. Compare this rate to Canada (perhaps our closest demographic match), which spends 10%, Ireland which spends 8%, and Switzerland, which is probably the Switzerland of health care, 12%.

In some ways, it's not fair to compare the US with other countries because our lifestyle is not as healthy. On the other hand, countries buying or competing with our exports don't care why we spend so much. The only thing that matters is that it makes us less competitive.

When will we start looking at trimming our healthcare costs? I can't believe it isn't time yet. The biggest impediment to reform isn't satisfaction with the current system, it's that healthcare is quite the political football.

The Republican Approach

The Republicans, who are bullish on cutting other taxes, are less sanguine on cutting medical expenditures. They have their private-sector solutions: stripping the corruption out of malpractice rewards (and taking fair higher compensation with it), letting people buy overpriced and/or fraudulent health care insurance over state lines, turning Medicaid into block grants to states, and voucherizing Medicare, so that our seniors can try to buy overpriced and/or fraudulent insurance too. Granny won't be thanking them.

The Democratic Approach

The Democrats have some plans too. One (ostrich) wing thinks Congress could  pass a single-payer system if ... er... Fox News didn't inflame the country with lies. Democratic policies have to be negotiated between near socialists like Bernie Sanders and blue-dogs like Ben Nelson. Not surprising then that the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is a mish-mash of what they could get through Congress before the Republicans took over the House. It's jimmied to get a good score from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), but it'll blow up later when we're subsidizing premiums on overly-mandated health insurance and long-term care.

The Super Committee

I fear that the super committee will be skittish about cutting healthcare spending, particularly Medicare. After all, crying foul on Medicare (or death panels!) has won more elections in the last two years than it's lost. That simply means that healthcare for federal workers and Medicaid will be cut more. Considering our Congress, their staff, judges, and the executive branch use federal employee healthcare, somehow I imagine that Medicaid will suffer the most. No, I don't mean Medicaid will suffer, just those on Medicaid, those annoying free-riding poor.

By the way, we don't pay 16% for healthcare on absolutely everything. Imports from other countries don't carry same healthcare burden. But that's not especially comforting.

Establish a global budget for total federal health care costs and 

limit the growth to GDP [growth] plus 1 percent.

--One of the Simpson-Bowles debt commission's recommendations 
to reduce healthcare expenditure