I Hate Explaining the ACA

Richard Mayhew is, or at least claims to be, the pseudonym of an insurance-industry middle manager at Balloon Juice. He has provided much useful advice and commentary for people in the lower tranches of the US health care system. However, he also has a habit of defending the systems and saying it is the best possible. A few weeks ago, this led me to write the following comments on one of his posts (remarks slightly edited):

Man, do you have any idea how awful the ACA system is? Better than what we had before, but that’s like saying having a tent and a place to pitch it is better than sleeping on the streets. It is, but that is no comfort to families that have to care for sick children. Most people would rather have a home with walls. And it’s only going to get worse, as the insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry, and the hospitals learn how to work the system. Until the power of the right-wing coalition is broken and Citizens United is overturned there will be no improvement, so we’re talking years.

I do not believe that this was the best compromise possible. As with the banks, the Obama administration just rolled over. I do not know what hold the financial services industry [which includes the insurance industry] has on this administration, but it is profound.

Hey folks, couldn't you have given us a good system? One which places the expenses of the system on the people who can afford to pay, rather than creating a system which puts the biggest expenses on the working poor and moderately well off people in their 50s and early 60s? Couldn't you have regulated the big price-gougers in the system: the insurance companies, hospitals, and pharmaceutical manufacturers?

I have gotten to hate explaining to people on the right that this is the system they asked for, and debunking right-wing lies. I have gotten to hate explaining to people on the left that, yes, this is a rotten system and it is nonetheless an improvement. And I have gotten to hate explaining to my friends and family the reasons to sign up, even though it’s a crappy system and an extra expense.

The statistics of officer-involved shootings in the USA

No-one actually knows the statistics:
  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/09/08/how-many-police-shootings-a-year-no-one-knows/

The only official source is voluntary reporting by police departments:
   http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-many-americans-the-police-kill-each-year/

But US police kill more in days than other high-income countries police kill in years:
   http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/09/the-counted-police-killings-us-vs-other-countries

There is active opposition to compiling the data:
   http://gawker.com/what-ive-learned-from-two-years-collecting-data-on-poli-1625472836

Lacking reliable data from official sources, there are various independent attempts to compile statistics:
   http://www.fatalencounters.org/
   http://regressing.deadspin.com/were-compiling-every-police-involved-shooting-in-americ-1624180387
   http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/01/the-counted-police-killings-us-database#

The Guardian, Why We Must Keep Counting

Notes on the Occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge

The Bundy group seems to have hoped to spark an uprising of the radical right, but even the radical right thinks they're crazy. On the other hand, #BlackLivesMatter and Islamics are angry. They  see this lot of heavily armed cranks being treated with patience and wonder why people of color and/or Muslims are being beaten and shot for minor, or even no, infractions.

And could we please stop calling it "a federal building?" It's the headquarters of a remote bird sanctuary, not an FBI office. All the buildings on the site put together might be the size of a few houses.

Dementia: the Reagan Administration and Right-wing Policies

President Reagan had Alzhemier's disease (a form of senile dementia) during his second term (1984-1988.) Some people reported symptoms earlier.

Let's look at this for a minute: for at least half of Reagan's term, the chief executive was incompetent to be President, though perhaps only at times. The country was rudderless. And there were plenty of people in the government who liked it just fine. They could do whatever they wanted and know that they would never be called to account for it.

When the histories are written, perhaps Reagan will be the mad president. I am put in mind of the history of mad kings and emperors. A quick consult with my wife, something of an expert, gives me the names of Henry VIII and George III. And, yes, the people around them were quick to take advantage, implementing self-serving, often disastrous policies.

On Reagan's dementia:

• Jane Mayer in the New Yorker, "Worrying About Reagan," http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/worrying-about-reagan
• David Corn at Mother Jones, "How Close Did Lesley Stahl Come to Reporting Reagan Had Alzheimer's While in Office? Very Close," http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/01/reagan-alzheimers-family-feud-lesley-stahl
• Blogger Avedon Carol, it may have been for all his Presidency, http://sideshow.me.uk/sjun02.htm#12at1524

Conservatives, when you say there's no difference between the parties…

…what I hear is that your side f—d up real bad, and you don't want to admit it.

"And it's one, two, three, …

… what are we fighting for?"

So in that speech which, as usual, no-one seems to have listened to, Obama asked for an expansion of Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) to Da'esh. He also asked for an expansion of surveillance and to add firearms ownership to the secret terrorist watch list (the "no-fly" list), thereby expanding secret extra-judicial federal authority.

This is the leader of the good guys?

Juan Cole, slightly more optimistic than this cranky old bird, nonetheless comments:

What Obama did not say is that these various measures aren’t all that effective and will only have an impact over several years. Bombing a territory from the air with no ground force to take advantage of it is about as close to useless and a military tactic can get. US training programs have not been effective. Daesh’s kind of terrorism is hard to disrupt, since they attempt to appeal to lone wolves rather than running direct agents. As for peace in Syria, I wouldn’t hold my breath. Whether this message of patience and steadfastness will be enough to assuage anxieties is not clear. And more important than anxieties are the war lobbies, fueled by campaign cash to hawks in Congress, which demand really big wars that are good for their business.

Me, I've got that 1914 feeling. There is so much desire for a war, or rather there are so many factions that each their own little wars. Da'esh, of course. Assad. We have our own home-grown warmongers. China wants oil and the South China Sea. Putin wants more. The fascists are rising in the USA and Western Europe. Now, all these factions want different "little" wars, but take all those "little" wars and put them together, and maybe we get one big war.

"And it's five, six, seven, open up the pearly gates, …" — Joe McDonald, "I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag"

General Clinton

(A cranky comment I made over at Crooked Timber.)

It occurs to me that, if we could get Hillary Clinton on our side, even a bit, she might just be tough enough to take on the people who are destroying the USA. I love Sanders’ vision, and he is a skillful politician, but the wheels are coming off US democracy. Perhaps, after all, we need General Clinton.

Could Hillary Clinton’s feminism be brought into conflict with her corporatism?