TomCADem
TomCADem's JournalVox - The health bill might pass because Trump has launched the era of Nothing Matters politics
The Senate and House "health care" bills are not about health care. They are tax cuts paid for by cuts in benefits to the American working class. However, this does not matter anymore because the right wing has managed to create an entire media environment of Fox, Rush Limbaugh and Brietbart that operates independent of reality. Thus, regardless of how harmful Republican legislation is to the Republican base, they can blissfully blame Democrats, women, gays, muslims, racial minorities, etc. for the problems, both real and imagined.
As a result, Trump and Republicans are able to ride a wave or working class populism with an agenda that is amazingly anti-working class.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/6/23/15854570/will-trumpcare-pass
The health care bill unveiled by Senate Republicans Thursday morning should, by the standards of the normal laws of politics, have approximately a snowball’s chance in hell of passing.
One well-known fact of American politics is that it is extremely hard, in general, to roll back substantial welfare state programs that are already in existence and already delivering concrete benefits to American citizens. A separate fact is that interest groups are influential in the congressional process, and can often shape legislation to suit their interests or block legislation that doesn’t fit their interests. A third fact is that public opinion matters — if you’re going to override the interest groups, you’re going to need the public on your side. And a fourth fact is that though they often fail to deliver, politicians generally make a good-faith effort to implement their campaign promises.
The Better Care Reconciliation Act that Mitch McConnell revealed to the public today fails on all those tests. It should be deader than dead. Not meaningless, by any means, but simply a vehicle that hardcore conservatives in safe districts can use to vent, while more pragmatic members of Congress try to think of a sensible plan B, like working with red-state Democrats on some kind of bipartisan health bill.
But it’s not dead. It might fail, but the chances of passage are very real — with most advocates on both sides now believing the GOP will succeed. Because ever since Donald Trump rode down the escalator at Trump Tower to say he was running for president to stop Mexico from flooding our country with rapists and murderers, nothing about the laws of political gravity have been operating the way they’re supposed to. A fairly transparent grifter got himself elected president of the United States with 2 million fewer votes than his opponent, so anything can happen.
Isn't Donald Trump/GOP The Easy Response to Bernie's Neoprogressive Attacks on Democrats?
We have often heard Bernie Sanders attack Democrats and their policies as an "absolute failure." We have continued to hear neoprogressives like Jill Stein and Susan Sarandon attack Democrats from the left, and suggest that there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans.
Of course, if Democratic losses were really just attributable to them being overly friendly to corporations, then we have nothing to worry about, because Republicans are going out of their way to cut taxes, weaken worker protections, and cut access to healthcare. Under the Neoprogressive/Alt-Left attacks on the Democratic party, Republicans should be wiped out from power in 2018. Put another way, if parties lose power because they are too friendly to corporate interests, then we have nothing to worry about, because Republicans have been unrelenting in selling out for corporations and the 1 percent.
However, what Neoprogressives often overlook is both the impact of foreign propaganda that amplifies distrust on both the left and the right regarding American institutions, and how racism and sexism is used by the right to not only oppress minorities and women, but also white men.
I have posted examples of how the Neoprogressive/Alt-Left often push the same anti-Democratic talking points and conspiracy theories as the right whether it is the "Deepstate" is attacking Donald Trump:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=9180242
Or, the Seth Rich conspiracy:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10029156057
This congruence in talking points is not a coincidence. It suggests a degree coordination by an opportunistic foreign actor who is trying to undermine Republicans and Democrats who are suspicious of such foreign influence.
Also, President Lyndon Johnson, who grew up in the South and understood the politics of racism from the inside, saw it in part as a ploy to divide and conquer. He once said, "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
However, rather than acknowledge how Trump and Republicans use racism and sexism to scapegoat women and minorities to build up resentment among white men in the ultimate form of identity politics, Neoprogressives themselves attack efforts by the left to address such issues as "identity politics" and argue that Democratic losses are because they are not "populist" enough to explain the loss of white working class voters.
In the same vein, Neoprogressives justify Trump's dominance among white working class males as being due to his "populist" appeals despite the fact that his policies are extremely anti-worker. He pushes a virulent anti-immigrant agenda and even his trade policy is tied more to xenophobia then to actual efforts to address unfair trade. In short, Neoprogressives ignore that Trump's populism is based on racial and gender resentment, rather than actual pro-worker policies.
In conclusion, if it were simply a matter of whose policies helped or hurt the working class, then Republicans are going to easily lose power in 2018. There is nothing to worry about. But, if Republicans were able to consolidate control by stoking racial and gender resentment, plus amplifying foreign propaganda designed to create distrust in American institutions, then it is going to be tough. Perhaps even more so, if Neoprogressives echo they same attacks the Right and Russians make on the Democratic party.
Neoprogressive "The Sane Progressive" Pumps The Seth Rich Conspiracy Theory
What is up with neoprogressives like Susan Sarandom cheering on the potential repeal of the ACA (because that opens the door for single payer) or Debby L., aka the Sane Progressive, spouting right wing talking points from the "left"? Like Susan Sarandon, here she is cheering Republican efforts to repeal the ACA.
Neoprogressives like Debby L. and Jill Stein have often acted as Russian apologists whether it is attacking the FBI investigation of the Trump administration as being a "deep state" witch hunt:
Or, defending Russia's actions in Syria:
http://prospect.org/article/strange-sympathy-far-left-putin
Still, Corbyn has his American counterparts—starting with Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Until a few days ago, Stein had a statement on her website saying that the United States should end any military role in Syria, impose an arms embargo, and work “with Syria, Russia, and Iran to restore all of Syria to control by the government.” The “anti-war” candidate's stance, in other words, was to let the war crimes continue until the Assad regime and its patrons massacre their way to victory.
As far as I know, it was journalist Patrick Strickland who first noticed and tweeted Stein's position. A brief social-media squall ensued. The statement vanished; a sentence appeared saying it hadn't reflected Stein's views; and a new, trimmed down one was posted, opposing “U.S. meddling in the Middle East.”
Stein, to her credit, seems to have realized that it didn't look good to talk about working with Putin and Syrian President Bashar Assad while non-stop, deliberate aerial targeting of civilians in the rebel-held sector of Aleppo grinds on. But color me extremely skeptical about the previous statement not expressing her views. For one thing, the new one still keeps its criticism focused only on America. For another, the first statement fits her website's report on what she said last December in Moscow, at a foreign policy forum convened by RT, the Russian government's television propaganda arm. There she called for “principled collaboration” with Russia in Syria. And she proudly quoted Putin as telling her and other foreign politicians at the conference that he agreed with them “on many issues.”
More recently, Debby L. has been repeating Sean Hannity's Seth Rich conspiracy theories:
The question is are Neoprogressives like Susan Sarandon, Debby L., Jill Stein, or Cornell West really members of the left given that they often seem to be on the same side as Trump and Republicans? Are Neoprogressives so left that they are right? Or, are they just sock puppets who have sold out and are really being paid to disrupt the left?
Will Trump and Republicans Set A New Hardright Baseline? The New Normal?
In another thread I posted, there is a debate on whether there is any good that might come from a Trump Presidency with Republican control. Susan Sarandon celebrated the increased activism from progressives who were outraged at Trump's assaults on reproductive and immigrant rights, as well as the roll back of environmental regulations. Susan Sarandon also cheered efforts to repeal the ACA arguing that such a repeal would set the stage for single payer.
I think the fundamental flaw of Sarandon's thinking, as well as similarly minded progressives, is that it supposes that if progressives manage to win control of Congress and the Presidency, that we will begin from baseline that was left when President Obama left office. This is incorrect. We will still have a Republican controlled Supreme Court, which many people forget weakened the ACA by making Medicaid expansion optional, and it is unlikely that we will have a filibuster proof majority in the Senate, let alone a solid progressive majority given that at least some Democrats will be from traditionally red states.
By that time, Trump and Republican Congress may have:
1. Withdraw from the Paris Agreement (done).
2. Withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal (pending).
3. Repeal the ACA resulting in the loss of healthcare by millions of people (pending).
4. Cut taxes to the rich and greatly increased spending, thus causing the deficit to explode (pending).
5. Rolled back financial regulations and abolished the Consumer Protection Agency (pending).
6. Cut back funding of Planned Parenthood resulting in the closure of clinics (ongoing).
7. Expelled millions of law-abiding immigrants and their families.
8. Etc.
Now, you can see the outrage that is being generated by Trump's actions and Trump's agenda has been slowed by the incredible activism of Democrats, environmentalists, immigrant activisits, and other progressives. However, after four years of Trump, a Republican congress, and a Republican Supreme Court, they will have achieved many of their aims, thus establishing a new right-wing baseline.
As a result, even if we are successful in electing a Democratically controlled Congress and President by 2020, the best we will likely achieve is a partial return to where things were under President Obama as was the case in his first term. In addition, if Democrats do not control both Congress and the Presidency, then in all likelihood, the new Trump status quo will remain the norm, though at least the bleeding might slow.
Finally, this ignores the possibility of a huge catastrophe under President Trump. Would he threaten to default on the U.S. debt by vetoing debt ceiling legislation if Democrats regain Congress in 2018? Would Trump start a war if he feels seriously threatened by impeachment? What if Trump decides to aggressively interfere with elections in 2018 and 2020?
Put another way, it will take great progress to merely erase the rollbacks under Republican rule, let alone to try to build upon the progress made under President Obama. Indeed, you can easily argue that President Obama was hampered in pursuing his agenda, because he was busy trying to prevent the U.S. from sinking into a Great Depression due to the damage cause by George W. Bush. Likewise, even a progressive Congress and President in 2020 might be preoccupied with damage control following four years of Republican control.
Daily Beast - How Putin Played the Far Left
I was at an anti-Trump rally in Los Angeles, which was awesome. However, I still saw some folks in the crowd pushing the Communist party and passing out flyers promoting the secession of California, which Russia heavily promotes along with Texit. The Russians are not for the left or the right. They are opportunists.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/how-putin-played-the-far-left
Moscow’s attempts to cultivate America’s far-left long predate the presidency of Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin, according to available evidence, donated more funds per capita to the U.S. Communist Party than any other communist claque during the Soviet period, when Moscow’s intelligence operations against the “main adversary” involved recruiting agents of influence and spies of a progressive background who were sympathetic to the Soviet cause. But the past 18 months have seen a noted spike in information warfare aimed at gulling the Bernie Bros and Occupy-besotted alternative-media set, which saw Clinton as more of a political danger than it did Trump.
Perhaps the starkest case in point is Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and her constituency. In December 2015, the Kremlin feted Stein by inviting her to the gala celebrating the 10-year anniversary of Kremlin-funded propaganda network RT. Over a year later, it remains unclear who paid for Stein’s trip to Moscow and her accommodations there. Her campaign ignored multiple questions on this score. We do know, however, that Stein sat at the same table as both Putin and Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, Trump’s soon-to-be national security adviser. She further spoke at an RT-sponsored panel, using her presence to criticize the U.S.’s “disastrous militarism.” Afterward, straddling Moscow’s Red Square, Stein described the panel as “inspiring,” going on to claim that Putin, whom she painted as a political novice, told her he “agree[d]” with her “on many issues.”
Stein presents herself as a champion of the underclass and the environment, and an opponent of the surveillance state and corporate media, and yet she seemed to take pleasure in her marriage of true minds with a kleptocratic intelligence officer who levels forests and arrests or kills critical journalists and invades foreign countries. Their true commonality, of course, is that both Putin and Stein are dogged opponents of U.S. foreign policy.
Indeed, her pro-Kremlin stance wasn’t limited to merely praising Putin’s amicability. Stein joined the Russian president and Kazakhstani dictator Nursultan Nazarbayev in describing Ukraine’s 2014 EuroMaidan revolution as a “coup,” and claimed, bizarrely, that NATO is currently “fighting… enemies we invent to give the weapons industry a reason to sell more stuff.” For good measure, she also asserted in September that “Russia used to own Ukraine,” by way of defending its colonization. She even selected a vice-presidential candidate who, when asked whether the downing of Flight MH17—a massacre almost certainly caused by Russian-supplied separatists in eastern Ukraine—was a false flag, responded, “[T]hat’s exactly what has happened.”
538: Who Is In The Top 5 of Anti-Trump Senators? Yes, Corey Booker.
538 keeps a running tally of how often every member of the House and the Senate votes with or against the president. Looking on this board, you are starting to see a series of threads claiming that Corey Booker is a Trump ally who is supportive of his agenda. Yet, Booker's record is clear. He is among the five most anti-Trump Senators in the Senate based on 538's Trump Score. Of course, Booker has also consistently voted against most of Trump's nominees. Most actual liberals and progressives who actually review a Democrats record would see this.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/congress-trump-score/
However, we need to be aware of posts that simply repeat or recite talking point attacks. The trolls are not going to wait until the eve of the 2018 or 2020 elections to attack. If you see posters who spend most of their posts attacking Democrats from the "left," while giving Trump and his Republican co-conspirators a free pass, then you need to be vigilant.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/russian-propaganda-effort-helped-spread-fake-news-during-election-experts-say/2016/11/24/793903b6-8a40-4ca9-b712-716af66098fe_story.html?utm_term=.b9b0c045f574
The flood of “fake news” this election season got support from a sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign that created and spread misleading articles online with the goal of punishing Democrat Hillary Clinton, helping Republican Donald Trump and undermining faith in American democracy, say independent researchers who tracked the operation.
Russia’s increasingly sophisticated propaganda machinery — including thousands of botnets, teams of paid human “trolls,” and networks of websites and social-media accounts — echoed and amplified right-wing sites across the Internet as they portrayed Clinton as a criminal hiding potentially fatal health problems and preparing to hand control of the nation to a shadowy cabal of global financiers. The effort also sought to heighten the appearance of international tensions and promote fear of looming hostilities with nuclear-armed Russia.
Two teams of independent researchers found that the Russians exploited American-made technology platforms to attack U.S. democracy at a particularly vulnerable moment, as an insurgent candidate harnessed a wide range of grievances to claim the White House. The sophistication of the Russian tactics may complicate efforts by Facebook and Google to crack down on “fake news,” as they have vowed to do after widespread complaints about the problem.
There is no way to know whether the Russian campaign proved decisive in electing Trump, but researchers portray it as part of a broadly effective strategy of sowing distrust in U.S. democracy and its leaders. The tactics included penetrating the computers of election officials in several states and releasing troves of hacked emails that embarrassed Clinton in the final months of her campaign.
Paul Krugman - Who Pays The Cost of Being Racist? Poor White People?
President Lyndon B. Johnson once said, "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." Paul Krugman's article puts this into numbers.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/it%E2%80%99s-all-about-trump%E2%80%99s-contempt/ar-BBBxUpU
The bigger question is whether someone who ran as a populist, who promised not to cut Social Security or Medicaid, who assured voters that everyone would have health insurance, can keep his working-class support while pursuing an agenda so anti-populist it takes your breath away.
To make this concrete, let’s talk about West Virginia, which went Trump by more than 40 percentage points, topped only by Wyoming. What did West Virginians think they were voting for?
They are, after all, residents of a poor state that benefits immensely from federal programs: 29 percent of the population is on Medicaid, almost 19 percent on food stamps. The expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare is the main reason the percentage of West Virginians without health insurance has halved since 2013.
Beyond that, more than 4 percent of the population, the highest share in the nation, receives Social Security disability payments, partly because of the legacy of unhealthy working conditions, partly because a high fraction of the population consists of people who suffer from chronic diseases, like diabetics — whom Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s budget director, thinks we shouldn’t take care of because it’s their own fault for eating poorly. And just to be clear, we’re talking about white people here: At 93 percent white, West Virginia is one of the most minority- and immigrant-free states in America.
Trump's FBI comments to Russians were aimed at cooperation -McMaster
Source: MSN/Reuters
U.S. President Donald Trump raised the firing of his FBI director in a meeting with Russia's foreign minister to explain why he had been unable to find areas of cooperation with Moscow, the White House national security adviser said on Sunday.
"The gist of the conversation was that the president feels as if he is hamstrung in his ability to work with Russia to find areas of cooperation because this has been obviously so much in the news," H.R. McMaster said in an interview on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos."
Reports that Trump boasted to Russian officials of firing former FBI director James Comey to relieve "great pressure" from a law-enforcement probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election engulfed his administration in turmoil just as Trump left for his first foreign trip as president on Friday.
"I just fired the head of the FBI. He was crazy, a real nut job," Trump said during a May 10 meeting with Russian officials, according to a report by The New York Times that cited a document summarizing the meeting and an unnamed U.S. official.
Read more: http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trumps-fbi-comments-to-russians-were-aimed-at-cooperation-mcmaster/ar-BBBlUiy
They are all over the map. First, they deny the comments were made. Then, when it becomes clear that there was a transcript, they claim Trump was making the comments to build "cooperation."
Trumps On The Verge Of Exploding The Health Insurance Market
Source: Huffington Post
President Donald Trump has had his finger on the detonator of the bomb to blow up Obamacare for months. Now he may be about to press it.
Trump told advisers earlier this week that he wants to cut off billions of dollars in payments to health insurance companies that serve the poorest enrollees in the Affordable Care Act exchanges, Politico reported Friday.
If Trump follows through on this threat, he could wreak havoc on the health insurance system. Insurance companies are likely to hike premiums or to stop selling to people who buy coverage via the exchanges, like HealthCare.gov and Covered California, or directly (rather than obtaining coverage through their employers or government programs like Medicare and Medicaid).
The results would be higher prices and fewer, if any, choices for consumers, and the effects could be felt quickly because many states would allow insurers to drop their customers right away in the absence of these payments. In short, this part of the health insurance market could fall apart under Trump’s watch if he doesn’t pay the money the federal government owes.
Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-blow-up-health-insurance-market_us_591f541be4b034684b0c6212?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009
Trump is betting that if enough people are deprived of their healthcare, the American people will blame Democrats for not supporting the Republican health plan.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/us/politics/trump-death-spiral-affordable-care-act.html
Trump, Shouting ‘Death Spiral,’ Has Nudged Affordable Care Act Downward
WASHINGTON — When Aetna, the health insurance giant, announced this month that it was pulling out of the Affordable Care Act’s insurance exchange in Virginia in 2018, President Trump responded on Twitter: “Death spiral!”
When Humana announced plans to leave all the health law’s marketplaces next year, the president chimed in, “Obamacare continues to fail.”
Left unremarked on was a big reason for the instability: The Trump administration and Congress are rattling the markets.
The administration’s refusal to guarantee payment of subsidies to health insurance companies, the murky outlook for the Affordable Care Act in Congress and doubts about enforcement of the mandate for most people to have insurance are driving up insurance prices for 2018, insurers say in rate requests filed with state officials.
BBC - Is Mike Pence distancing himself from Trump?
The interesting question is whether Pence was merely complicit in Trump's cover-up or was Pence was actively trying to egg-on Trump to push him over the edge so that he could grab the Presidency.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39979279
In the White House game of thrones, where senior administration officials fend off adversaries at every turn while vying for power and prominence, Mike Pence has been a relatively quiet player.
The vice-president is always in the background, often looking over Donald Trump's shoulder with an approving nod as the president delivers a speech or signs yet another executive order. When it comes to engaging in the bare-knuckle brawling that has played itself out through anonymous sources and well-timed insider leaks, however, the vice-president and his associates have largely stayed out of the fray.
Thursday night, then, was quite unusual. Two major US media outlets - CNN and NBC News - ran articles, complete with quotes from anonymous White House sources, distancing the vice-president from the current chaos in the administration and the running controversy over possible Trump campaign ties to the Russian government during the 2016 US presidential election.
"We certainly knew we needed to be prepared for the unconventional," an unnamed Pence aide told CNN's Elizabeth Landers, but "not to this extent". The proximate cause for the concern among the vice-president's camp was a New York Times article earlier this week reporting that Michael Flynn, Mr Trump's prominent campaign surrogate and short-lived national security adviser, had in early January informed the presidential transition team - then headed by Mr Pence - that he was under investigation for his ties to the Turkish government.
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