Is the United States Political System Broken Beyond Repair?

a reply to: loveguy

Yes or "under duress" or "with lack of a better candidate".

a reply to: AlienView

As far as I know, most governments are
created to codify and protect the monied
interests that started them and their crony
descendants.

I don't see that the founding fathers were
all that different. They rebelled against
paying their taxes and became rich on
the backs of slaves.

The rich still do both those tactics as
much as they can get away with
(tax cheats/3rd world child wage slaves).

I'd say the government is working precisely
as designed...

Kev

originally posted by: Gryphon66
a reply to: Logarock

It's not "an idea," it's a fact. The Republicans worked with the Democrats to draft the bill, and then bailed on it and opposed it "100 %" when it included one of the biggest features that Republicans had been proposing for decades, the individual mandate.

Do you deny that?

Do you deny that the Senate Finance Committee with both Dems and Reps drafted the legislation that was merged with the product from the House?

I don't have to "sell" the idea of Republican hypocrisy; it's obvious.

Do you deny that the Heritage Foundation put forth the idea of the individual mandate as opposed to single payer plans (so as not to "give anything away"?

Do you deny that every Republican sponsored healthcare plan from the 90s to the present included an individual mandate?

Do you deny that the plan known as Romneycare established in Massachusetts by Governor Romney which included the individual mandate was endorsed by Republicans up to and during the debates on PPACA?

If you do, you're either ignorant of the facts, or misrepresenting them.

Do you need the links and citations again?

Again all I am saying is the whatever working together there was ended at some point. Romney or any other republican would be drummed out. It was never a national platform plank. Only the rhino republicans messed with this.

You are misrepresenting by obfuscation.

Republicans are not bound by a dam thing the closet dem rhinos did in the past. This is Obamas baby. Obama Care. get it?


Lets Talk Gruber!

originally posted by: KellyPrettyBear
a reply to: AlienView

I'd say the government is working precisely
as designed...

Kev

I agree in a sense, if our politicians are in bed with corporations...who among us believes they aren't acting on the voting we make with our wallets? They are still as representative as ever just not in the way people imagine. Nothing exists without a niche to fill. How do we close the niche?

originally posted by: Logarock
Republicans are not bound by a dam thing the closet dem rhinos did in the past.

Come on, man. Don't you see that as a bit naive? It's a clear "No True Scotsman" fallacy. "Well, they aren't REAL Republicans, because the REAL Republicans wouldn't do that!" If you are having a problem with the members of the party, maybe it isn't the members of the party you have the problem with. (Maybe it's the party.)

a reply to: AgentShillington

How can you say its the party with zero yes votes in the house? We didn't here any republicans promising that you could keep your old plan or old Dr or that we could read the bill later.

This thing isn't going anywhere but right back to the door of the White House.

Lets Talk Gruber/Obama

originally posted by: Logarock

originally posted by: Gryphon66
a reply to: Logarock

It's not "an idea," it's a fact. The Republicans worked with the Democrats to draft the bill, and then bailed on it and opposed it "100 %" when it included one of the biggest features that Republicans had been proposing for decades, the individual mandate.

Do you deny that?

Do you deny that the Senate Finance Committee with both Dems and Reps drafted the legislation that was merged with the product from the House?

I don't have to "sell" the idea of Republican hypocrisy; it's obvious.

Do you deny that the Heritage Foundation put forth the idea of the individual mandate as opposed to single payer plans (so as not to "give anything away"?

Do you deny that every Republican sponsored healthcare plan from the 90s to the present included an individual mandate?

Do you deny that the plan known as Romneycare established in Massachusetts by Governor Romney which included the individual mandate was endorsed by Republicans up to and during the debates on PPACA?

If you do, you're either ignorant of the facts, or misrepresenting them.

Do you need the links and citations again?

Again all I am saying is the whatever working together there was ended at some point. Romney or any other republican would be drummed out. It was never a national platform plank. Only the rhino republicans messed with this.

You are misrepresenting by obfuscation.

Republicans are not bound by a dam thing the closet dem rhinos did in the past. This is Obamas baby. Obama Care. get it?

Well, there was never any real "working together" ... the Republican pledge 2008-now was "Obama must fail."

Screw the economy, screw the People. Or am I obfuscating that too?

So the Heritage Foundation is a RINO op? Republican bill after Republican bill all through the 90s and even the bill that President Bush worked on ... these are all just imaginary, misrepresentations ... are you kidding me?

You're quite simply denying reality, and I'm certain at this point that you know it.

Republicans own the individual mandate, and any who deny that, are lying pure and simple.

OBAMAcare, really? So Obama created it, wrote it, voted for it, nothing and no one else was involved?

What a crock.

The people who really believe what you're saying are what is killing this country.

Partisanship be damned, these are not just lies, they're psychotic denials of obvious, blatant facts.

a reply to: AgentShillington

It's not a problem with a party, it's a problem with reality.

There are lies, damned lies, statistics ... and then this kind of thing.

originally posted by: Logarock
a reply to: AgentShillington

How can you say its the party with zero yes votes in the house? We didn't here any republicans promising that you could keep your old plan or old Dr or that we could read the bill later.

This thing isn't going anywhere but right back to the door of the White House.

Lets Talk Gruber/Obama

Dude, I am -not- about to distill the worth of a party to a single vote. Neither should you. That is stupid.

a reply to: SlickMcFavorite

In every culture which has ever existed there are
a few wolves who dominate the sheep. This is
human nature.

Human nature would have to change..

The wolves love being wolves...the sheep
want to go 'Bahhhhhhhhh!'.

Everything else is obfuscation. ..including
increasingly that there are two parties
and not just one.

Kev

originally posted by: AgentShillington

originally posted by: Logarock
a reply to: AgentShillington

How can you say its the party with zero yes votes in the house? We didn't here any republicans promising that you could keep your old plan or old Dr or that we could read the bill later.

This thing isn't going anywhere but right back to the door of the White House.

Lets Talk Gruber/Obama

Dude, I am -not- about to distill the worth of a party to a single vote. Neither should you. That is stupid.

Well I will do it on this one issue. The Dems ran this through and now they want to reach back and drag the republicans into it.....now that its no longer the product of the democratic supper Utopia. Nope. They were only concerned about using the republicans as a shield now that they are getting the hell beat out of them.

a reply to: KellyPrettyBear

There are examples of cultures that have existed without gross centralization of power, and they were arguably happier. In most cases I see the "wolf" emerging as a result of a perceived lack on the part of the "sheep". Lack of basic needs or lack of information causes humans to do stupid or destructive things. The internet is changing human nature I believe, and we can all agree that as far as we can guess, humans have never had something so informative and beneficial. So right there we can argue we're emerging into a new period of judgement in regards to human nature. I like to compare it to the fungal network in a forest. The more connections you can make on a local level the more efficient and robust the system is.

Human nature biologically is a clean slate for the most part, but I agree human nature needs to change if you mean human nature that dominates in the modern sense. Yes we need to change our nature to production instead of consumption, but (and I hope I'm understanding you correctly) I don't believe that human nature is intrinsically vulnerable to leader-of-the-pack thinking or broken at the base level.

originally posted by: Logarock
Well I will do it on this one issue. The Dems ran this through and now they want to reach back and drag the republicans into it.....now that its no longer the product of the democratic supper Utopia. Nope. They were only concerned about using the republicans as a shield now that they are getting the hell beat out of them.

Fine, to elucidate my point on the matter, I will also distill this down to a single vote on the ACA.

I think both parties want Obamacare. Obamacare, as a rule, creates a system of healthcare that greatly expands upon the framework that Nixon, Kennedy, and Kaiser set up in 1973. This is for profit healthcare. The GOP opposes Obamacare to give you, the voter, the idea that there are two sides to this issue in Washington. There aren't.

There is one side. The Corporatists. And let me tell you, The ACA is -good- for business. More "insured" people means more money spent on healthcare, regardless of who is spending that money.

a reply to: AgentShillington

Well and yes it still remains to be seen what the republican are going to do about it anyway. Maybe in the end they will simply get in there and rearrange it a bit but leave it at that. Good cop bad cop stuff.

Jumpin' Jesus.

as Romney said in a debate in Las Vegas last October, “we got the idea of an individual mandate…from [Newt Gingrich], and [Newt] got it from the Heritage Foundation.” Politically, it’s an important point, because Romney is inaccurately being portrayed as some kind of left-wing outlier, when in fact there were some major conservative institutions (like Heritage) and figures (like Gingrich) who supported the mandate.

And my god, everyone knows what a Democratic Liberal nutjob Newt Gingrich is!

in 1989, Stuart Butler of the Heritage Foundation proposed a plan he called “Assuring Affordable Health Care for All Americans.” Stuart’s plan included a provision to “mandate all households to obtain adequate insurance,” which he framed explicitly as a way to address the “free rider” problem and employer mandates (emphasis added)

"Affordable Health Care" ... does that sound familiar to anyone?

In 1991, Mark Pauly and others developed a proposal for George H.W. Bush that also included an individual mandate.

1991, you don't say. George HW Bush ... you don't say ...

In 1992 and 1993, some Republicans in Congress, seeking an alternative to Hillarycare, used these ideas as a foundation for their own health-reform proposals. One such bill, the Health Equity and Access Reform Today Act of 1993, or HEART, was introduced in the Senate by John Chafee (R., R.I.) and co-sponsored by 19 other Senate Republicans, including Christopher Bond, Bob Dole, Chuck Grassley, Orrin Hatch, Richard Lugar, Alan Simpson, and Arlen Specter. Given that there were 43 Republicans in the Senate of the 103rd Congress, these 20 comprised nearly half of the Republican Senate Caucus at that time. The HEART Act proposed health insurance vouchers for low-income individuals, along with an individual mandate.

The Tortuous Conservative History of the Individual Mandate

Because, yeah, Forbes is such a left-wingnut publication.

a reply to: Gryphon66


Well why do you think the Tea Party invaded? Why your better conservative voices have been criticizing these guys for years? the AHCA isn't the answer anyway.

originally posted by: Logarock
a reply to: AgentShillington

Well and yes it still remains to be seen what the republican are going to do about it anyway. Maybe in the end they will simply get in there and rearrange it a bit but leave it at that. Good cop bad cop stuff.

Yeah, of course that's what they're going to do. They have no intention of repealing it, even though they have voted in the House to repeal it how many times now? They will mess with it to give YOU the belief that it is going to change something, and from the sound of it, that is all it will take to keep you happy.

originally posted by: Logarock
a reply to: Gryphon66


Well why do you think the Tea Party invaded? Why your better conservative voices have been criticizing these guys for years? the AHCA isn't the answer anyway.

Well, isn't that completely different than what you said earlier????:

originally posted by: Logarock
He then explained how the progressives planed to run as democrats and over a much shorter period of time come to power by taking over the democratic party. Now 20 years later this is what we have, the new democrats.

This was never more obvious as it was than when they finally got ahold of congress and the oval office and crammed through their AFCA without any consideration to what the minority republican party thought about it or contributions to it. Why? Its in the word democrat. They rule by democracy and with contempt for the mechanics of a republic.

The Democrats were the only ones who had the idea of an individual mandate, they didn't work with the Republicans (who came with the idea), and why?

Because they're PROGRESSIVES! *shakes fist at sky*

Because they believe in democracy and the will of the People.

Are you saying that you're against the will of the people then? Is it to be only a few approved folks who get to vote, who get to have a voice, who get to participate in government? "Raw democracy" LOL.

"We the People of the United States in order to form a more perfect Union ..."

Yeah, who would write crazy stuff like that huh?

a reply to: SlickMcFavorite

Studies have been done showing that
'leaders' are very rare. .something like
1 in a thousand.

Everyone else is along for the ride.

Until that changes, nothing much will
change.

As for your point about some equitable
societies having existed? You are correct.
Crete for example..I think its final destruction
by patriarchy was around 500 BCE.

Kev

Broken beyond repair? Yes

Watch this vid from solongandgoodnight, from his thread HERE and disagree.



There is no hope.