Sound The TRUMPets! A Thread for Presidential Pondering 2016-2020(?)

[JBS]

I think 75 % of the costs developping new drugs are covered by tax payers. So why does Big Pharma get patents for drugs developped mostly with tax payer money? It should go like this: Big Pharma can have the patent since they paid 25 % of the cost developping the drugs, but there is a limit for the drug price. It makes no sense that tax payers pay for the research and then get price gouged for the same drug!

It's the oligarchy. Single payer healthcare means less oligarchy.

Single payer only means replacing insurance company bureaucrats with government bureaucrats.  It doesn't result in getting rid of elite control (what you call oligarchy). It simply results in a new elite with greater power.

[71 dB]

     That's not the experience in countries with good outcomes. National health care systems are the only way to get both. Universal coverage controls outcomes and costs. Our system is bad at both.

Debating with JBS about healthcare is like debating a flat earther. The US can keep it's brutal for profit system if it wants it that bad. The rest of the World has better systems so why non-Americans have it good.

It's curious why so many americans defend the status quo when it screws them so badly. A few members here may in fact be so rich to benefit the system, but it's statistically impossible to have most americans here to belong among the ~5 % of americans doing well. Power of the corporate media. Brainwashing works.

[JBS]

     That's not the experience in countries with good outcomes. National health care systems are the only way to get both. Universal coverage controls outcomes and costs. Our system is bad at both.

Throws a flag* on the tautology in the first sentence.

*I think the soccer equivalent is "hands out a card".

[JBS]

Debating with JBS about healthcare is like debating a flat earther. The US can keep it's brutal for profit system if it wants it that bad. The rest of the World has better systems so why non-Americans have it good.

It's curious why so many americans defend the status quo when it screws them so badly. A few members here may in fact be so rich to benefit the system, but it's statistically impossible to have most americans here to belong among the ~5 % of americans doing well. Power of the corporate media. Brainwashing works.

I guess it never occurred to you that the system actually works well? That we are not being screwed over? That we don't have a worse system?

By and large, the system works for people who have coverage. They don't need better coverage, and single payer plans would in general result in them having worse coverage. Which us why they don't want it.
The problem in the US  is finding a way to get coverage for all the people who don't have it.

[drogulus]

The facts are a bit complicated; but basically Medicare is barred from negotiating drug prices.

https://tarbell.org/2017/11/no-uncle-sam-cant-negotiate-lower-drug-prices/

     If we are going to inflate costs somewhere in the system, let Medicare negotiate drug prices and raise the reimbursement to hospitals. Put money where it does good, helping to keep rural hospitals open. I note that only a Congress that would support SomethingCare For All would have any interest in doing this. But that's what we are talking about, is it not?

     I want something possible to be done, keeping in mind that what is possible changes when you elect people who want to do something. All progress that is achieved comes from people who stretch the boundaries of the possible, none comes from passive acceptance of the status quo. I want the better kind of realist that fights for too much and gets something, not the realist who fights for too little and may not even get that.

Throws a flag* on the tautology in the first sentence.

*I think the soccer equivalent is "hands out a card".

     No matter what system you favor you need to see where better outcomes are produced and pay attention to how they happen. My view is that advanced countries with full coverage of the populace and measurably superior outcomes are doing more to get that result than covering everyone. Universal coverage is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the success they've had. What I think is true is that a country that sees the necessity of health care for all is also inclined towards good outcomes in other ways. The evidence is abundant that lower costs are intentional, too, and that our health care experts are correct that covering everyone is the only way to begin to get costs under control. Americans can't be the only people who can't learn by example.

     

[71 dB]

I guess it never occurred to you that the system actually works well?

I suppose this never occurred to Bernie Sanders either since he has been fighting for single payer healthcare for decades.

How do you define "working well"? What is the criteria?

Working well for the insurance companies? YES.
Working well for the Big Pharma? YES.
Working well for the Rich? YES.
Working well for the bottom 80% ? I don't think so.

Some things in society have to work well for everybody. The US healthcare system is not doing that.

[SimonNZ]

REPORT ACCUSES TRUMP ALLIES OF CONSPIRING TO PROFIT OFF SAUDI NUCLEAR DEAL - Vanity Fair

"The Trump administration's coziness with Saudi Arabia—and willingness to kowtow to corporate interests—were thrown into sharper relief Monday, as a new House Oversight Committee report revealed the extent to which a private company and the Trump allies associated with it were able to use the administration to further their own financial interests in Riyadh. The new House report centers on how IP3, a private company described by one nuclear industry exec as "the Theranos of the nuclear industry," has been attempting to circumvent the obstacles stopping them from transferring U.S. nuclear technology to the Saudis—with the Trump team's help. "With regard to Saudi Arabia, the Trump Administration has virtually obliterated the lines normally separating government policymaking from corporate and foreign interests," the House report alleges. "The documents show the Administration's willingness to let private parties with close ties to the President wield outsized influence over U.S. policy towards Saudi Arabia."

The report, which is the second to be released on this topic and was based on a review of 60,000 documents, details how IP3 lobbied the Trump administration to relax their standards for any future nuclear agreement with Saudi Arabia. Typically, such an agreement would require the other country to agree to a "Gold Standard" that prevents the risk of nuclear proliferation, which the Saudis have already refused to comply with. IP3, which is assembled of companies wanting to build nuclear reactors in Saudi Arabia, is unhappy with this "total roadblock" to their plans to strike it rich in the Persian Gulf—and they have been making their case to the upper echelons of the Trump team. According to the report, IP3 officials were granted such "unprecedented access" to Trumpworld that they considered the administration an "extended team member," and officials met directly with "President [Donald] Trump, Jared Kushner, Gary Cohn, K.T. McFarland, and Cabinet Secretaries Rick Perry, Steven Mnuchin, Mike Pompeo, Rex Tillerson, James Mattis, and Wilbur Ross." This access, the report explains, "yielded promises from high-level government officials to support IP3's efforts with Saudi officials."

One particular figure who stands out in the House report is longtime Trump ally and former Trump inauguration chair Thomas Barrack, whom the report alleges was attempting to seek a position in the administration at the same time as he was "(1) promoting the interests of U.S. corporations seeking to profit from the transfer of nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia; (2) advocating on behalf of foreign interests seeking to obtain this U.S. nuclear technology; and (3) taking steps for his own company, Colony NorthStar, to profit from the same proposals he was advancing with the Administration." (The New York Times reported separately Monday that federal prosecutors are looking into Barrack's foreign entanglements in the Gulf region and their connection to the Trump campaign.) Also implicated in the report is former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who served as an adviser to IP3. In 2016, the report alleges, Flynn told business partners about upcoming interactions with key officials in Russia and the Persian Gulf—including Vladimir Putin—and "offered to use these contacts to further IP3's business interests."

In addition to lobbying the Trump team, IP3 and Barrack's efforts also directly involved Saudi officials, including Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. IP3 officials traveled to Saudi Arabia in December 2016 to ask then-deputy crown prince MBS to invest in the company, using IP3's Trump connections and the incoming administration's support of IP3 as the primary argument to solicit funds. Trump and Kushner then met directly with MBS in March 2017, and IP3 officials said afterwards that the meeting "established the framework for our unique opportunity to take the next steps with IP3 and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia." Barrack used his Saudi connections to directly influence Trump even before the president's 2016 victory, as Barrack sent a draft of Trump's May 2016 energy speech to Saudi and Emerati officials to "coordinate pro-Gulf language." (The speech's theme, ironically, was "America First.")"

[SimonNZ]

Lose Your Group Home License, Get A $4 Million Contract To Open A Baby Jail

"Now that the Trump administration got the billions in new funding it wanted for locking up undocumented immigrants, conditions in the baby jails are sure to get a lot better, right? Or not, at least as we learn in a new story by WRAL and Reveal, from the Center for Investigative Reporting. Seems there's this outfit in North Carolina, "New Horizon Group Home LLC," that opened a group home for kids with mental illnesses -- US American kids -- last year, but the place was so horribly run that the state shut it down within 45 days, because the conditions posed "an imminent danger to the health, safety and welfare" of the seven boys housed there.

So OF COURSE the federal Administration for Children and Families, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, awarded a $3.9 million grant to New Horizons, to open a brand new, much bigger facility to house up to 72 undocumented migrant kids between the ages of seven and 17. Just to add another agency into the mix, the facility would operate under contract with the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) which oversees the nation's network of immigration baby jails.

New Horizons is still fighting to overturn its license revocation in the 2018 case. It's never operated a facility for migrant kids, and has never run anywhere near as large a facility as the new contract calls for. And here's the best part! If New Horizons loses its appeal of the 2018 group home closure, it won't be eligible to get a new license until 2023 -- a year after the end of the grant it was awarded in April. Hope nobody's cashed any checks yet.

This is one of those investigative reporting stories where each subsequent paragraph makes you open your eyes just a little wider in horrified amazement.[...]


the original reporting:

Unlicensed NC company with troubled history gets $4M to house migrant children

[JBS]

I suppose this never occurred to Bernie Sanders either since he has been fighting for single payer healthcare for decades.

How do you define "working well"? What is the criteria?

Working well for the insurance companies? YES.
Working well for the Big Pharma? YES.
Working well for the Rich? YES.
Working well for the bottom 80% ? I don't think so.

Some things in society have to work well for everybody. The US healthcare system is not doing that.

In fact it works rather well for about 85% of Americans.
27 million people in the US have no insurance. Another 23 million are covered only through Obamacare plans.  That's about 50 million people that would be better off with single payer.
110 million are covered either by Medicare or Medicaid, and thus already have government provided health insurance, and therefore are already on single payer.
Approximately 165 million have private health insurance, mostly through work.  Single payer would generally give them less benefits and less coverage, and at best about the same level.
So for every person with better coverage under single payer,  three would be worse off.
And if you were one of those 165 million why, short of insanity, would you support a program designed to give you less benefits?

Which is why the "corporatist" candidates are the ones with the rational proposal: focus on giving coverage to the 50 million, the 15% or so for whom the system does not work.

[JBS]

REPORT ACCUSES TRUMP ALLIES OF CONSPIRING TO PROFIT OFF SAUDI NUCLEAR DEAL - Vanity Fair

"The Trump administration's coziness with Saudi Arabia—and willingness to kowtow to corporate interests—were thrown into sharper relief Monday, as a new House Oversight Committee report revealed the extent to which a private company and the Trump allies associated with it were able to use the administration to further their own financial interests in Riyadh. The new House report centers on how IP3, a private company described by one nuclear industry exec as "the Theranos of the nuclear industry," has been attempting to circumvent the obstacles stopping them from transferring U.S. nuclear technology to the Saudis—with the Trump team's help. "With regard to Saudi Arabia, the Trump Administration has virtually obliterated the lines normally separating government policymaking from corporate and foreign interests," the House report alleges. "The documents show the Administration's willingness to let private parties with close ties to the President wield outsized influence over U.S. policy towards Saudi Arabia."

The report, which is the second to be released on this topic and was based on a review of 60,000 documents, details how IP3 lobbied the Trump administration to relax their standards for any future nuclear agreement with Saudi Arabia. Typically, such an agreement would require the other country to agree to a "Gold Standard" that prevents the risk of nuclear proliferation, which the Saudis have already refused to comply with. IP3, which is assembled of companies wanting to build nuclear reactors in Saudi Arabia, is unhappy with this "total roadblock" to their plans to strike it rich in the Persian Gulf—and they have been making their case to the upper echelons of the Trump team. According to the report, IP3 officials were granted such "unprecedented access" to Trumpworld that they considered the administration an "extended team member," and officials met directly with "President [Donald] Trump, Jared Kushner, Gary Cohn, K.T. McFarland, and Cabinet Secretaries Rick Perry, Steven Mnuchin, Mike Pompeo, Rex Tillerson, James Mattis, and Wilbur Ross." This access, the report explains, "yielded promises from high-level government officials to support IP3's efforts with Saudi officials."

One particular figure who stands out in the House report is longtime Trump ally and former Trump inauguration chair Thomas Barrack, whom the report alleges was attempting to seek a position in the administration at the same time as he was "(1) promoting the interests of U.S. corporations seeking to profit from the transfer of nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia; (2) advocating on behalf of foreign interests seeking to obtain this U.S. nuclear technology; and (3) taking steps for his own company, Colony NorthStar, to profit from the same proposals he was advancing with the Administration." (The New York Times reported separately Monday that federal prosecutors are looking into Barrack's foreign entanglements in the Gulf region and their connection to the Trump campaign.) Also implicated in the report is former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who served as an adviser to IP3. In 2016, the report alleges, Flynn told business partners about upcoming interactions with key officials in Russia and the Persian Gulf—including Vladimir Putin—and "offered to use these contacts to further IP3's business interests."

In addition to lobbying the Trump team, IP3 and Barrack's efforts also directly involved Saudi officials, including Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. IP3 officials traveled to Saudi Arabia in December 2016 to ask then-deputy crown prince MBS to invest in the company, using IP3's Trump connections and the incoming administration's support of IP3 as the primary argument to solicit funds. Trump and Kushner then met directly with MBS in March 2017, and IP3 officials said afterwards that the meeting "established the framework for our unique opportunity to take the next steps with IP3 and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia." Barrack used his Saudi connections to directly influence Trump even before the president's 2016 victory, as Barrack sent a draft of Trump's May 2016 energy speech to Saudi and Emerati officials to "coordinate pro-Gulf language." (The speech's theme, ironically, was "America First.")"

That screaming you are hearing at the back is a bunch of Trumpniks yelling "Uranium One!"

[71 dB]

In fact it works rather well for about 85% of Americans.
27 million people in the US have no insurance. Another 23 million are covered only through Obamacare plans.  That's about 50 million people that would be better off with single payer.
110 million are covered either by Medicare or Medicaid, and thus already have government provided health insurance, and therefore are already on single payer.
Approximately 165 million have private health insurance, mostly through work.  Single payer would generally give them less benefits and less coverage, and at best about the same level.
So for every person with better coverage under single payer,  three would be worse off.
And if you were one of those 165 million why, short of insanity, would you support a program designed to give you less benefits?

Which is why the "corporatist" candidates are the ones with the rational proposal: focus on giving coverage to the 50 million, the 15% or so for whom the system does not work.

This is not going anywhere. You are totally brainwashed by the corporate media.

[drogulus]

     People with traditional private health care like having health care. That's not the same as liking their insurance. They like being insured, which is something different.

     My private Medicare has advantages and disadvantages. I'm considering de-privatizing, an option I have. Medicare doesn't do networks, my plan does.

     If I'm one of the 165 million would I believe that single payer would leave me worse off? I'm not a beliefy type, I'd have to examine the proposals. Which one would be passed, how would it be tailored to keep 165 million people from being worse off? I reckon that would be an important imperative for a single payer plan to attract support. The opening salvo for single payer would include a solution for that problem. I doubt any such proposal would conform to the "165 million worse off" plan.

     Some things worth pondering: Do higher incomes (like a government payer health plan) mean we pay more tax? Gosh, I hope so. Nominally that's true. In the world though the tax burden rises for lower incomes. The question that interests me is how much nominal tax back covers the program cost v. actual rate hikes somewhere in the system. Sanders joins the libraservatives in his rates rates rates focus. As I have thought all along, Kelton had no chance of getting him to understand economics, that you tax excess inflation away, the dollar maker doesn't go on a dollar hunt.

     The need to raise taxes is high inflation. Is single payer inflationary enough to cause a justified tax hike in excess of the higher tax back from higher income? It would pay, literally, to wait and see. The default assumption from long experience is that the fiscal balance doesn't stay pinned to high inflation from a big demand side push, especially given the demand shortfall conditions that normally obtain. It shouldn't matter whether higher incomes come through health care, GND/infrastructure or any other big add. They all take up slack the same way, and there's more slack than most libraservatives think, or thunk. Even Powell figured that one out!

     

[SimonNZ]

Ratcliffe withdraws from consideration for intelligence chief

"The lawmaker was facing intense questions about padding his résumé and a lack of experience, which led to a lukewarm reception on Capitol Hill."


'How the hell is this not inciting violence?' Gun store erects billboard with minority lawmakers' faces

"The sign warns of the "4 Horsemen" — typically a reference to biblical imagery symbolizing the end of the earth: conquest, war, famine and death.

But the North Carolina billboard that went up over the weekend does not depict horsemen. It shows photos of the freshman congresswomen also known as "the Squad": Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts. The billboard calls the progressive Democratic members of Congress "idiots" and is signed by "the Deplorables."

Cherokee Guns, a Murphy, N.C., gun shop about a mile away from the sign, took responsibility for the billboard. An image shared to the shop's Facebook page Sunday went viral this week and drew a sharp rebuke from the women pictured, as well as anti-gun-violence advocates. The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence on Monday called the billboard "violent rhetoric."

"Threats against members of Congress, particularly minority members are [trending upward] and it is driven by the president's racial rhetoric," the group wrote. "This is dangerous!!!"

For the congresswomen, the menacing billboard is just another high-profile threat — one of many they say they have faced since they took office in 2018.

"How the hell is this not inciting violence?" Tlaib asked in a Wednesday evening tweet.

In her own tweet, Pressley called out Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), whose district, she noted, houses the shop. She implored Meadows to "do the right thing."

[JBS]

This is not going anywhere. You are totally brainwashed by the corporate media.

Not at all. You are the one who mistakes propaganda for objective narrative confined to the facts. Your favored sources of information sre advocates. Recognize that,  recognize that they don't give you the whole truth (even if they claim they do), recognize that they are trying to persuade people to support their ideas and not trying to give an impartial account. Trust them no more than you trust the corporate media.

Remember this: you learn the most from the person you disagree with,  and learn the least from the person you agree with.

[JBS]

This is the ad Simon's post refers to

I will state flat out that I see nothing that qualifies as inciting violence.
[The name of the store is Cherokee Guns.]
If calling a politician "idiot" is inciting violence, then how many thousands of people (including myself and most of the people who post here) have incited violence against Trump by calling him an idiot?

[71 dB]

Remember this: you learn the most from the person you disagree with,  and learn the least from the person you agree with.

We have learned nothing from each other.

[SimonNZ]

This is the ad Simon's post refers to

I will state flat out that I see nothing that qualifies as inciting violence.
[The name of the store is Cherokee Guns.]
If calling a politician "idiot" is inciting violence, then how many thousands of people (including myself and most of the people who post here) have incited violence against Trump by calling him an idiot?

It isn't the word idiot that's the problem. It's the suggested use for your gun purchase. It's not even hidden enough to be called subtext.

A  "second amendment  solution" as Trump once put it.

[JBS]

It isn't the word idiot that's the problem. It's the suggested use for your gun purchase. It's not even hidden enough to be called subtext.

A  "second amendment  solution" as Trump once put it.

Apparently I am blind, because there is no suggestion at all. The owner of the gun store is expressing his opinion that the four congresswomen are idiots.  He is not suggesting anyone do anything.

[SimonNZ]

I guess I'm not familiar with gunstore advertising in America because to me that seems really odd and the message right up front.

Not even a flicker of thinking it at least innapropriate and potentially misinterpreted?

[JBS]

I guess I'm not familiar with gunstore advertising in America because to me that seems really odd and he message right up front.

Not even a flicker of thinking it at least innapropriate and potentially misinterpreted?

Delete the name of the business and where can you find any suggestion of violence?

I have to sharply disagree with you on this. To me, this is one of those instances where partisanship has manufactured an outrage that does not exist.

As I said, if calling someone an idiot is inciting violence, almost every one here is guilty of inciting violencd against Trump.