#democrats wish to expand medicare

[tomorrowusa]

Republicans are talking out of both sides of their trunks. 

Republicans Have Long Called for the Social Security and Medicare Cuts They Are Now Outraged By

In reality, though, it’s actually quite easy to find examples of Republicans calling for cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

[ ... ]

Senator Rick Scott, who, as chairman of the GOP’s Senate campaign committee last cycle, unveiled a plan to sunset all federal legislation, which includes Social Security and Medicare, in five years, opening the door for lapses or cuts. 

[ ... ]

[C]utting Social Security and Medicare seemed very much top of mind for Republicans last year: Lindsey Graham declared entitlement reform a “must,” and the House’s largest Republican caucus, the conservative Republican Study Committee, released a proposal that urged raising the eligibility age for both Medicare and Social Security, called for increased means testing in Medicare, and suggested a move toward privatization for Social Security.

Of course, these ideas go back much further. Marco Rubio said he was open to raising the retirement age in 2010 in his first Senate campaign. There’s a video circulating the web of a 2010 Lee saying he wanted to “phase out” Social Security. And George W. Bush had a self-inflicted entitlement blunder too: Early in his second term, he pushed heavily for, among other reforms, partially privatizing Social Security—only to realize that the strategy had failed after his approval rating took a pounding.

It’s rather strange that Florida, a notorious retirement destination for many Social Security recipients, is represented by two senators (Rubio and Scott) who wish to strangle Social Security and Medicare.

So why the sudden Republican outrage at the notion that they want these cuts? Well, they have good reason to be cagey: 84% of Republicans and 86% of Democrats want Social Security benefits to increase, not decrease, according to a 2022 survey from Data for Progress. Additionally, roughly half of all elderly Americans “live in households that receive at least 50% of total family income from Social Security,” per the Social Security Administration, meaning that any cuts would eventually impact a huge swath of the voting public.

Republicans want to rile Florida geezers up about drag queens and other culture war issues so they can figuratively pick the pockets of those pensioners during the distraction.

[whatbigotspost]

Given that SCOTUS has anointed the office of the presidency as a monarch role beyond all reproach (so that when 45 wins in Nov as they are intending), and we’ll never have another presidential election, I wish that Biden would assume lame duck status IMMEDIATELY, call their bluff, and start issuing executive orders like crazy now through January 2025.

He could do shit like defund the military and pour the funds into social services, repeal all nationwide laws/restrictions on abortion, make all healthcare including all reproductive services and gender affirming care accessible, instate UBI and Medicare for all, write a 100% tax rate on billionaires, push sweeping environmental protections, break up monopolistic megacorps, close federal prisons, expand and pack the court, cancel all student/personal/medical/non corporate debts, open our boarders, decriminalize all drugs, etc. etc. etc.

Maybe then the 6 block justice set of 45 worshippers would see what they’ve done.

Maybe then, if Biden immediately, decisively even did 10% of that, he might not lose the election.

Of course, he’d actually have to give a shit about any of those things in order to do this.

And that’s the whole fucking point, right? He won’t. And it’s why we’re here.

Democrats hold themselves to “the rules” only to the extent they’re spineless liberals who are in the same big money pockets as republicans. The key difference being, they let republicans be the ones to more overtly, proudly kill us all and act powerless to stopping them.

When our structures demand they are the ONLY ones who could stop them. I can’t take it anymore.

[probablyasocialecologist]

Harris stretched her coalition into incoherence. Inhumanly—as well as fruitlessly—she attempted to score points from the right on immigration, accusing Trump of insufficient dedication to building the wall. Her cack-handed performances of sympathy with Palestinians accompanied an evident commitment to follow Benjamin Netanyahu into a regional war. The Harris campaign featured a grab bag of policies, some good, some bad, but sharing no clear thematic unity or vision. She almost always offered evasive answers to challenging questions. And she adopted a generally aristocratic rather than demotic manner, which placed the candidate and her elite friends and allies at the center rather than the people they sought to represent. In these ways, Harris repeated not only Hillary Clinton’s errors but many of the same ones that she herself had made in her ill-starred 2019 presidential campaign, which opportunistically tacked left rather than right, but with equal insincerity and incoherence. Who remembers that campaign’s biggest moment, when she attacked Biden for his opposition to busing and what it would have implied for a younger version of herself, only to reveal when questioned that she also opposed busing? Or when she endorsed Medicare for All, raising her hand in a debate for the idea of private insurance abolition, only to later claim she hadn’t understood the question? Voters, then as now, found her vacuous and unintelligible, a politician of pure artifice seemingly without ideological depths she could draw from and externalize. She often gave the sense of a student caught without having done her homework, trying to work out what she was supposed to say rather than expressing any underlying, decided position. Even abortion rights, her strongest issue, felt at times like a rhetorical prop, given her own and her party’s inaction in the years prior to Dobbs. How many times before had Democrats promised to institutionalize and expand the protections of Roe, only to drop the matter after November?

[...]

The Democrats, in other words, comprehensively failed to set the terms of ideological debate in any respect. Their defensiveness and hypocrisy served only to give encouragement to Trump while demobilizing their own voters, whom they will no doubt now blame—as though millions of disaggregated, disorganized individuals can constitute a culpable agent in the same way a political party’s leadership can. But the party’s leaders are to blame, not that many in the center have cared or even seemed willing to reflect on a decade of catastrophe. Has anyone who complained that the 2020 George Floyd rebellion would cost Democrats votes due to the extremism of its associated demands reckoned with the empirical finding that the opposite proved true? That the narrow victory of Biden in 2020 was likely attributable to noisy protests that liberals wished would be quieter and calmer? Has anyone acknowledged the unique popularity of Sanders with Latinx voters, a once-core constituency that the Democrats are now on the verge of losing outright? The pathologies of the Democrats, though, are in a sense not the result of errors. It is the structural role and composition of the party that produces its duplicitous and incoherent orientation. It is the mainstream party of globalized neoliberal capitalism, and at the same time, by tradition anyway, the party of the working class. As the organized power of the latter has been washed away, the commitment has become somewhat more aspirational: Harris notably cleaned up with the richest income bracket of voters. The only issues on which Harris hinted of a break with Biden concerned more favorable treatment of the billionaires who surrounded her, and her closest advisers included figures like David Plouffe, former senior vice president of Uber, and Harris’s brother-in-law Tony West, formerly the chief legal officer of Uber, who successfully urged her to drop Biden-era populism and cultivate relations with corporate allies.

8 November 2024

[simply-ivanka]

Who’s Afraid of Project 2025?

Democrats run against a think-tank paper that Trump disavows. Why?

Wall Street Journal

July 29, 2024

By The Editorial Board

Americans are learning more about Kamala Harris, as Democrats rush to anoint the Vice President’s candidacy after throwing President Biden overboard. Ms. Harris wasted no time saying she’s going to run hard against a policy paper that Donald Trump has disavowed—the supposedly nefarious agenda known as Project 2025. But who’s afraid of a think-tank white paper?

“I will do everything in my power to unite the Democratic Party—and unite our nation—to defeat Donald Trump and his extreme Project 2025 agenda,” Ms. Harris tweeted shortly after President Biden dropped out. She’s picking up this ball from Mr. Biden, and her campaign website claims that Project 2025 would “strip away our freedoms” and “abolish checks and balances.”

***

Sounds terrible, but is it? The 922-page document doesn’t lack for modesty, as a wish list of policy reforms that would touch every part of government from the Justice Department to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The project is led by the Heritage Foundation and melds the work of some 400 scholars and analysts from an eclectic mix of center-right groups. The project is also assembling a Rolodex of those who might work in a Trump Administration.

Most of the Democratic panic-mongering has focused on the project’s aim to rein in the administrative state. That includes civil service reform that would make it easier to remove some government workers, and potentially revisiting the independent status of agencies like the Federal Trade Commission.

The latter isn’t going to happen, but getting firmer presidential control over the bureaucracy would improve accountability. The federal government has become so vast that Presidents have difficulty even knowing what is going on in the executive branch. Americans don’t want to be ruled by a permanent governing class that doesn’t answer to voters.

Some items on this menu are also standard conservative fare. The document calls for an 18% corporate tax rate (now 21%), describing that levy as “the most damaging tax” in the U.S. system that falls heavily on workers. A mountain of economic literature backs that up. The blueprint suggests tying more welfare programs with work; de-regulating health insurance markets; expanding Medicare Advantage plans that seniors like; ending sugar subsidies; revving up U.S. energy production. That all sounds good to us.

Democrats are suggesting the project would gut Social Security, though in fact it bows to Mr. Trump’s preference not to touch the retirement program, which is headed for bankruptcy without reform. No project can profess to care about the rising national debt, as Heritage does, without fixing a program that was 22% of the federal budget in 2023.

At times the paper takes no position. For example: The blueprint features competing essays on trade policy. This is a tacit admission that for all the GOP’s ideological confusion on economics, many conservatives still understand that Mr. Trump’s 10% tariff is a terrible idea.

As for the politics, Mr. Trump recently said online that he knew “nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it.” That may be true. The chance that Mr. Trump has read any of it is remote to nil, and he doesn’t want to be tied to anyone’s ideas since he prizes maximum ideological flexibility.

The document mentions abortion nearly 200 times, but Mr. Trump wants to neutralize that issue. The project’s chief sponsor, Heritage president Kevin Roberts, also gave opponents a sword when he boasted of “a second American revolution” that would be peaceful “if the left allows it to be.” This won’t help Mr. Trump with the swing voters he needs to win re-election.

By our lights the project’s cultural overtones are also too dark and the agenda gives too little spotlight to the economic freedom and strong national defense that defined the think tank’s influence on Ronald Reagan in 1980.

***

But the left’s campaign against Project 2025 is reaching absurd decibels. You’d think Mr. Trump is a political mastermind hiding the secret plans he’ll implement with an army of shock troops marching in lockstep. If his first term is any guide, and it is the best we have, Mr. Trump will govern as a make-it-up-as-he-goes tactician rather than a strategist with a coherent policy guide. He’ll dodge and weave based on the news cycle and often based on whoever talks to him last.

Not much of the Project 2025 agenda is likely to happen, even if Republicans take the House and Senate. Democrats will block legislation with a filibuster. The bureaucracy will leak with abandon and oppose even the most minor reforms to the civil service. The press will revert to full resistance mode, and Mr. Trump’s staff will trip over their own ambitions.

Democrats know this, which is why they fear Trump II less than they claim. They’re targeting Project 2025 to distract from their own failed and unpopular policies.

[dhaaruni]

However, the theory has several serious defects. It exaggerates the progressivism of the old Democratic Party, which, even at the height of the New Deal, carefully balanced business interests against labor and vigorously expanded free trade. A fact anti-neoliberalism has even more difficulty accounting for is that the two parties moved farther apart, not closer together, during the so-called neoliberal era. The Keynesian consensus eroded because the Republicans abandoned it. The premise that they have been joined in a neoliberal consensus can’t explain why Republicans and Democrats have fought in increasingly vicious terms over everything, especially the role of government. A model that envisions a political divide pitting Elizabeth Warren and Sanders on one side and Obama and Paul Ryan on the opposing side can explain very little of what has happened in modern American politics. Yet anti-neoliberalism had some key advantages that made it irresistible to its progressive audience. It supplied an explanation for Trump’s victory that did not require progressives to compromise on their political values in order to allow Democrats to regain power. To the contrary, this theory allowed — nay, demanded — the fulfillment of every progressive wish. A Green New Deal, a jobs guarantee, higher minimum wage, Medicare for All — these proposals were not only possible but politically necessary to defeat Trump.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

June 15, 2023

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JUN 15, 2023

Yesterday, the Republican Study Committee, a 175-member group of far-right House members, released their 2024 “Blueprint to Save America” budget plan. It calls for slashing the federal budget by raising the age at which retirees can start claiming Social Security benefits from 67 to 69, privatizing Medicare, and enacting dramatic tax cuts that will starve the federal government.  

I’m actually not going to rehash the 122-page plan. Let’s take a look at the larger picture.

This budget dismisses the plans of “President Joe Biden and the left” as a “march toward socialism.” It says that “[t]he left’s calls to increase taxes to close the deficit would be…catastrophic for our nation.” Asserting that “the path to prosperity does not come from the Democrats’ approach of expanding government,” it claims that “[o]ver the past year and a half, the American people have seen that experiment fail firsthand.”

Instead, it says, “the key to growth, innovation, and flourishing communities” is “[i]ndividuals, free from the burdens of a burdensome government.” 

It is?

Our history actually tells us how these two contrasting visions of the government play out.

Grover Norquist, one of the key architects of the Republican argument that the solution to societal ills is tax cuts, in 2010 described to Rebecca Elliott of the Harvard Crimson how he sees the role of government. “Government should enforce [the] rule of law,” he said. “It should enforce contracts, it should protect people bodily from being attacked by criminals. And when the government does those things, it is facilitating liberty. When it goes beyond those things, it becomes destructive to both human happiness and human liberty.”

Norquist vehemently opposed taxation, saying that “it’s not any of the government’s business who earns what, as long as they earn it legitimately,” and proposed cutting government spending down to 8% of gross national product, or GDP, the value of the final goods and services produced in the United States. 

The last time the level of government spending was at that 8% of GDP was 1933, before the New Deal. In that year, after years of extraordinary corporate profits, the banking system had collapsed, the unemployment rate was nearly 25%, prices and productivity were plummeting, wages were cratering, factories had shut down, farmers were losing their land to foreclosure. Children worked in the fields and factories, elderly and disabled people ate from garbage cans, unregulated banks gambled away people’s money, business owners treated their workers as they wished. Within a year the Great Plains would be blowing away as extensive deep plowing had damaged the land, making it vulnerable to drought. Republican leaders insisted the primary solution to the crisis was individual enterprise and private charity. 

When he accepted the Democratic nomination for president in July 1932, New York governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt vowed to steer between the radical extremes of fascism and communism to deliver a “New Deal” to the American people. 

The so-called alphabet soup of the New Deal gave us the regulation of banks and businesses, protections for workers, an end to child labor in factories, repair of the damage to the Great Plains, new municipal buildings and roads and airports, rural electrification, investment in painters and writers, and Social Security for workers who were injured or unemployed. Government outlays as a percentage of GDP began to rise. World War II shot them off the charts, to more than 40% of GDP, as the United States helped the world fight fascism. 

That number dropped again after the war, and in 1975, federal expenditures settled in at about 20% of GDP. Except for short-term spikes after financial crises (spending shot up to 24% after the 2008 crash, for example, and to 31% during the 2020 pandemic, a high from which it is still coming down), the spending-to-GDP ratio has remained at about that set point.

So why is there a growing debt?

Because tax revenues have plummeted. Tax cuts under the George W. Bush and Trump administrations are responsible for 57% of the increase in the ratio of the debt to the economy, 90% if you exclude the emergency expenditures of the pandemic. The United States is nowhere close to the average tax burden of the 38 other nations in the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), all of which are market-oriented democracies. And those cuts have gone primarily to the wealthy and corporations. 

Republicans who backed those tax cuts now insist that the only way to deal with the growing debt is to get rid of the government that regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, promoted infrastructure, and eventually promoted civil rights, all elements that stabilized the nation after the older system gave us the Depression. Indeed, the Republican Study Committee calls for making the Trump tax cuts, scheduled to expire in 2025, permanent. 

“There are two ways of viewing the government's duty in matters affecting economic and social life,” FDR said in his acceptance speech. “The first sees to it that a favored few are helped and hopes that some of their prosperity will leak through, sift through, to labor, to the farmer, to the small businessman.” The other “is based upon the simple moral principle: the welfare and the soundness of a nation depend first upon what the great mass of the people wish and need; and second, whether or not they are getting it.”

When the Republican Study Committee calls Biden’s policies—which have led to record employment, a booming economy, and a narrowing gap between rich and poor— “leftist,” they have lost the thread of our history. The system that restored the nation after 1933 and held the nation stable until 1981 is not socialism or radicalism; it is one of the strongest parts of our American tradition.

—

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[owlbloop]

She is the vice president of Biden.

The memes are just how absurdist gen z and millennials are responding to the situation, her campaign is encouraging it to advertise to a younger voter base

She wants to tax the rich, secure reproductive rights, secure Lgbtq rights, expand medicare, and a bunch of other stuff. She has an unusually good track record on human rights FOR a politician.

She is a black woman who is a former prosecutor and served as like the district attorney or something similar in California(most populous state.). She is objectively very accomplished.

Kamala is snarky, charismatic, and very well spoken. She's famous for having lots of lines like "this is not a food fight" during a debate, like i said, snarky.

Biden, who has just stepped down, was very unpopular and was mostly elected so trump wouldn't be elected. He's kinda senile. A lot of people rag on his stutter but that isn't really fair, most of the jabs are

The Democratic party REALLY wasn't happy about him being their candidate. Like one of the worst ever approval ratings. Very importantly he's pro isreal. Kamala has a less explicit, more protect Palestine view, which is a major plus for younger voter groups.

A lot of people are now energized by the fact they feel like the left finally has a chance at making some real progress and pushing out a lot of the far right(and some basically Nazis. I wish that was an exaggeration)

So pro human rights "young" black female prosecutor vs bigoted white guy facist who tried to overthrow the government looks really good to the people who are exhausted after decades of fighting tooth and nail to make progress in this country, and looks like even more of a relief against the current far right resurgence and hate crime resurgence

Make sense?

(As far as I'm aware she hasn't mentioned sudan or the congo. So no idea there. Just know things like she was forced to change a speech that was critical of isreal and some other stuff)

yo can americans explain kamala harris to me?? like, why do people want her? is it because she’s a meme? what’s her stance on congo/sudan/palestine? is she gonna tax the rich? what’s going on?

[odinsblog]

“Who do you get the chance to vote for? I mean, who decides before you get to vote in a primary, or in a general election? So, you get whoever it is they cough up, and then you get to choose among those people, after the one percent have decided who you’re going to have the option to vote for. So that’s it.

And with the Electoral College, you can have the situation we had in 2016 where the person who gets fewer votes gets to be president. So that’s just not true. That’s a lot of platitudes to keep people happy, or to keep them from complaining too much. I wish the will of the voters is what counted in this country, but it is not.

People want all kinds of things that we’re told we can’t have. We can’t have Medicare for All. We can’t raise the minimum wage. Although I thought it was funny, Trump won Florida, but with a voter referendum they raised the minimum wage. We see some of these contradictory impulses, but most of the things that people need, we’re always told by Republicans and by Democrats that we cannot have them. So when it comes to what we want - this is something we can observe and there have been studies that show even when the person we vote for wins - we still don’t get what we want.

So the system is made to cater to the will of powerful interest groups mostly, and we get the left overs. We’re told that all they can do is nibble around the edges and we should be happy with that.

That’s especially pronounced with Trump being in office.

There’s this mania to just get rid of Trump, just get him out. And once they chose Biden, if you pointed out that he has a cognitive issue, people would get angry. If you raised Kamala Harris’ history as a prosecutor and a jailer, people got mad at you because it was all about getting Trump out. And that’s the saddest thing to me. Now they have buy in from people who ought to know better.

Things have been turned on their head in this country. The voters get blamed if a party loses. Especially the Democrats. They’re not accountable for anything. Four years after Hillary Clinton raised a billion dollars, but then couldn’t manage to get 10,000 more votes in Michigan, it’s Bernie Sanders’ fault, it’s the Green Party’s fault, it’s everybody’s fault except theirs. And the fact that that narrative has been accepted means that it’s still happening now in 2020. So what are we told: we can’t make any demands. So rather than say, “I’m going to withhold my support from you, Joe Biden, unless you can agree to support the following things, or some of these things, so that there can be a point of discussion and perhaps compromise...” but we are told that we can’t do that.

And it’s especially dangerous now, because I think there’s going to be a collective sigh of relief that Trump is gone and the joke now is we’re going to go back to brunch, saying: “Everything’s fine. Crazy orange faced man isn��t here, so there’s nothing for me to pay attention to.” Biden will be able to get away with a lot. He has the potential of being a very dangerous president. Foreign policy is a particular worry of mine. It’s something that doesn’t get attention and most people don’t think about. So I think he can get away with everything, up to and perhaps including, starting World War Three. And anything else.

What are we already being told? “Well, you can’t go too far left.”

Because the race is so close in Georgia, there are going to be runoffs for the Senate seats. Already, Nancy Pelosi says, “You know, you can’t start talking about Medicare For All or anything because we gotta save those seats.” So with the biggest voter turnout in American history, instead of building on that, and talking about how to expand it, they’re already contracting it. They already are saying that we have to minimize what we can possibly discuss. And that puts us all in very grave danger.”

—MARGARET KIMBERLY, answering the question: Is it true that it is the will of the voters and not anything else that chooses the president?

[tachyon-at-rest]

Environmental protection

Dismantling the Clean Air Act: A rule made final Wednesday exempts a large number of stationary sources of air pollution (that is, sources other than vehicles) from clean air regulations. The rule designates as “significant” polluters only those in categories deemed to contribute more than 3% of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. But the sheer magnitude of the onslaught creates a problem in itself. Most of the new rules are subject to repeal under the Congressional Review Act, which allows for the reversal by both houses of Congress of regulations implemented in the waning months of a departing administration. But that will require a lot of votes.

Dismantling the Clean Air Act: A rule made final Wednesday exempts a large number of stationary sources of air pollution (that is, sources other than vehicles) from clean air regulations. The rule designates as “significant” polluters only those in categories deemed to contribute more than 3% of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Experts say that this arbitrary threshold would chiefly cover only power plants, leaving oil and gas producers exempt from clean air oversight. Indeed, the Environmental Protection Agency acknowledges that the rule is designed to immunize the “development of domestic energy resources” from environmental oversight. “This is a lights-are-shutting-off, last-ditch, heading-out-the-door attempt to trip up climate action by the incoming administration,” says Julie McNamara of the Union of Concerned Scientists. McNamara calls the 3% threshold an “invented metric” with no basis in science. The rule, she says, “violates so many rule-making requirements; but it does delay action by wasting time and resources, and that comes at a cost.” The provision may be especially vulnerable to legal challenge because it was bootstrapped to a different regulatory proposal. The EPA never solicited public comment on the 3% standard, a baseline administrative requirement of any regulatory change of this magnitude.

False scientific “transparency”: On Jan. 3 the EPA made final a rule ostensibly designed to improve the “transparency” of the science underlying regulatory initiatives. BUSINESS Column: In the name of scientific ‘transparency,’ Pruitt’s EPA hobbles its own ability to regulate polluters. As we’ve reported before, however, this rule is a wolf in sheep’s clothing — it actually would hobble the work of regulators. That’s why it has long been on the wish list of right-wing climate change deniers in Congress and the executive branch.

Softening fuel efficiency penalties: For the third time, the Trump administration is issuing a rule to undermine the penalties levied on automakers that fall short of government fleet fuel efficiency standards

Medicaid and healthcare

Work rules and block grants: Medicaid, the pubic health program for indigent households, is second to none among government programs in the hostility it has attracted from the Trump administration. Virtually since Trump’s inauguration, he has taken steps aimed at throwing tens of thousands of Americans off the Medicaid rolls. In the last few months, those efforts have intensified. The administration in October approved work requirements for Medicaid enrollees in two states, Georgia and Nebraska, despite a long record of such requirements being rejected by federal courts. Ample evidence exists, moreover, that work requirements don’t achieve either of the goals their proponents hold dear: They don’t reduce joblessness and they don’t improve people’s health. On the contrary, they reduce enrollment, in part because they typically come with administrative requirements that low-income households can’t meet and that state bureaucracies can’t manage. Why the Trump administration would continue drinking from this poisoned well in the face of legal and social disaster is a mystery. But its love for work rules remains robust; Seema Verma, administrator of the government’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and a prime promoter of this deplorable policy, seldom avoids a chance to be on hand for announcements of her agency’s approval of the rules. Curiously, the Supreme Court decided last month to consider Medicaid work rules. The decision has healthcare advocates “scratching their heads,” says Sara Rosenbaum, a public health expert at George Washington University, because lower courts have been unanimous in overturning those rules. Moreover, the court set a deadline for the federal government’s brief in the case of Jan. 19 — the day before the Trump administration becomes the Biden administration — which is certain to stifle the work-requirement craze for good. On Jan. 8, Verma’s agency also approved a Medicaid block grant for Tennessee. As we’ve reported, block grants merely set state Medicaid programs up for budget cuts. The Trump administration crows that block grants would provide states more “flexibility” in designing their Medicaid programs, but the truth is exactly the opposite.

Hamstringing Biden health reform: In another initiative, Verma’s agency has been trying to get states with Medicaid demonstration projects — including work rules — to sign documents limiting the federal government’s right to end those projects if they’re shown not to work. Under those documents’ terms, Rosenbaum says, the administration would not be able to unilaterally terminate the demonstrations. “They’d have to go through a lengthy procedural process to do so,” she says. “That’s wholly unjustified under the department’s own rules. They gave nobody any chance to comment. This is a piece of policy-making, and they should have given the public a chance to see it and comment on it.”

Anti-discrimination

LGBTQ protections: The Department of Health and Human Services bulled ahead Wednesday with a final rule weakening anti-discrimination protection for LGBTQ people in federal health and social services programs. The rule allows agencies to give religious concerns greater weight in deciding whether or how to serve those enrollees. As congressional Democrats noted, expanding religious exemptions “will eviscerate uniform nondiscrimination protections that apply to all HHS programs.... with potentially dangerous consequences for the Americans we represent.” This administration initiative has been kicking around for more than a year. Anti-discrimination advocates have been warning about its potential effect all along. There’s no logical reason for Health and Human Services to make it final now, in the week before the Trump administration ends, since it’s more than likely that the Biden administration will be expanding LGBTQ protections, not shrinking them. But now there’s just one more obstacle they’ll have to climb over to do so.That just brings the Trump scorched-earth program up to the last week of the Trump presidential era. As we write, there are several more days to go. To paraphrase Bette Davis’ Margo Channing in the movie “All About Eve”: “Fasten your seat belts. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.”

[tomorrowusa]

The basic outline of the 2022 election campaign is already quite clear.

The Democrats will campaign on the real benefits they’ve delivered to the American public, more particularly the American working class (assuming, of course, that Sens. Manchin, Sinema, and their ilk don’t deep-six the entire Democratic program). Those benefits will include their largely successful effort to diminish the pandemic, their funding for infrastructure, the establishment of an expanded Child Tax Credit and affordable child care, universal pre-K, tuition-free community college, paid family and medical leave; the expansion of Medicare to include dental, vision, and hearing care; more affordable housing; and numerous advances in clean energy.

[ ... ]

Republicans will run on culture war issues, attacking critical race theory, defunding the police, the influx of immigrants, the threat posed by minorities voting (which will be dog-whistled under the heading of voter fraud)—in short, the threat that Democrats presumably pose to white people. Which, they have to hope, will persuade a sufficient number of those white people to disregard the Medicare expansions, Child Tax Credit, and other actual benefits with which Democrats, and Democrats alone, have provided them.

So Democrats will run against Republicans because they opposed all those benefits. And Republicans will run against Democrats for supporting all those culture war threats, a number of which, like defunding the police, the vast majority of Democrats don’t actually support.

This summary presumes no major surprises. Of course 12 months before Election Day 2020 almost nobody had heard of COVID-19.

But without any game-changing events, it basically looks like accomplishment (Democrats) vs. paranoia & fear-mongering (Republicans). And if we don’t wish to see Kevin McCarthy as House Speaker, we need to robustly remind voters of the positive changes since 20 January 2021. The most recent of those is the federal Child Tax Credit which started being paid out last week. Not one Republican on Capitol Hill voted for the Child Tax Credit.

[theculturedmarxist]

For those that might not know, Grover Norquist is Washington’s anti-tax poster boy since the Reagan administration. Calling him an anti-tax lobbyist is missing the vast majority of other shit he’s responsible for or has had a hand in. He’s basically been integral in creating the immensely shitty situation in regards to a failed government and overpowered business lobby that we’re in today.

Anyway, I wanted to share the absolutely delusional bullshit these people say to each other, because it’s absolutely illuminating.

Grover Norquist On Taxes, Socialism And The Demonization Of The Rich

Grover Norquist is President of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), a taxpayer organization that opposes all tax increases as a matter of principle and has been leading campaigns for tax reductions since 1986. ATR was founded at the request of President Reagan and asks all candidates for office in the United States to sign the Taxpayer Protection Pledge, a written commitment to vote against any tax hikes while they are in office. Rainer Zitelmann spoke with him:

Rainer Zitelmann: In Europe, governments are already looking beyond the coronavirus crisis and planning massive tax increases. In particular, there have been increasing calls for a wealth tax on the richest within society to pay for coronavirus measures and guard against future crises. Supporters of free market economics, on the other hand, are calling for tax cuts to get the economy back on track once the current crisis has abated. What do you think will happen in the United States? If Trump is re-elected, will he cut taxes again? And what will happen if Biden wins?

Grover Norquist: Once we’re looking back on coronavirus in our rearview mirror rather than having it flying at the windshield—then what? Little will happen before the November 2020 American presidential election. Democrats will demand higher taxes and massive spending, Republicans will propose tax cuts. But the Democrat-controlled house will block any tax reductions and the Republican-dominated senate and the Trump veto will block any tax increases or spending explosion. Should Trump win re-election, Republicans will move to enact their stated goal of reducing the corporate income tax to 15% from today’s 21%. They will push to index capital gains for inflation—so capital gain taxes would only be due on real gains, not inflationary gains. Should Biden win the presidency, and the Democrats capture the senate, Biden has promised $3.4 trillion of new taxes. That is three times what Hillary Clinton threatened/promised in 2016—and she lost for being too left wing. Spending will explode. Income tax will be increased, an energy tax will be imposed and eventually a Value Added Tax will be levied. Of course, this fork in the road would be exactly the same if there was no coronavirus. Republicans are the party of tax reduction and (modest) spending restraint. Democrats remain the party of endless tax hikes and endless spending sprees.

Zitelmann: In the United States, socialism used to be a dirty word—and it still is for many older Americans. In contrast, large numbers of younger Americans are committed to “socialism.” So why has anticapitalism become so popular in the United States, especially among younger people?

Norquist: The sad answer is that younger Americans do not know what socialism means. Millennials do not remember the Soviet Union. Or Stalin’s Gulags or the Warsaw Pact. They only know Russia. They could not even tell you what the initials U.S.S.R. stood for, or that Nazi is the abbreviation of National Socialist. Somehow, Bernie Sanders, who is well versed in Soviet history and Cuba’s tradeoff of “literacy” against political prisoners, has explained to younger Americans that “socialism” means Sweden and Denmark.

‘Sanders Had Already Won The Policy Debate’

Zitelmann: Sanders is now out of the race. However, you believe that his ideas have nevertheless prevailed. Why is that?

Norquist: You might think that Bernie Sanders’ withdrawal from the 2020 campaign and the likely victory of Vice President Joe Biden represents a move to the center by the Democrats. Sadly, no. I would argue that Bernie Sanders left the race not because he failed to get enough delegates to win but because he had already won the policy debate. Biden’s threatened tax hikes total $3.4 trillion dollars over a decade. That is three times more than Hillary Clinton threatened. Biden promises to ban fracking, plastic bags (he said plastic, let’s generously assume he meant only plastic bags), expand Medicare with a “public option,” meaning a door through which all Americans could be pushed into a one-size-fits-all, government-controlled health care system, and an energy/carbon tax. What is the difference between Biden and Bernie? They have the same Rolodexes. The same likely White House staffers. The same rhetoric.

Why The Rich Are Being Demonized

Zitelmann: In the Democratic primaries, all of the candidates seemed to be competing to outdo each in terms of their “rich-bashing” rhetoric. Even Michael Bloomberg, himself one of the richest men in the world, was forced to demand higher taxes on the rich before he was forced to withdraw from the race. Where does this hatred of the rich come from?

Norquist: The Democrats need trillions of dollars to buy votes to win the 2020 election. To do that they will require a great deal more money than the $3.8 trillion raised in taxes under the 2019 budget. And they can’t afford to admit that regular voters are the likely target of their new and additional taxes—an energy tax, a Value Added Tax and higher payroll taxes. So Democrat candidates, continuing the strategies adopted by Clinton and Obama, started by demonizing the rich and then promising to tax them—not you, the typical voter. Now, both Clinton and Obama did raise taxes on the middle class—but they talked so much about taxing the rich that even a well-educated voter could be forgiven for thinking that the new taxes were all on the rich. Every new tax voters heard about were announced as targeting the rich (or corporations which, of course, pass on their increased tax burdens to consumers in the form of higher prices and workers in lower wages). The left needs to demonize the rich. It is, after all, their justification for taxing them. Americans do not like the idea of taking money away from someone who earned it.

Zitelmann: A great deal of energy is expended on arguing that the “rich” did not earn their money.

Norquist: Yes, the logic is this: If the rich are only rich because they got lucky, then they never truly earned or deserve their fortunes. This is why Barack Obama told small businessmen in the 2009 campaign, “You did not build that,” when referring to their own small businesses. If you didn’t build it—it isn’t really yours. And, once Democrat logic is accepted, taking it away is not really theft. Nor wrong. Nor immoral. But demonizing the rich has a second advantage for the left. In addition to making it easier to tax the rich and trick voters/taxpayers into thinking they are not the true target of higher taxes, the war on the rich covers up the 50-year failure of the Great Society. The Great Society was launched in 1965 with the promise that the government knew how to help the poor become middle class and self-reliant. Government spending on housing, healthcare and education would instill the poor with middle-class values such as hard work, self-reliance and a willingness to work and save today for a better tomorrow, maintaining a long-term perspective. But the Great Society spent some $14 trillion in giving money to the poor, or more often paying well-paid government employees to “provide services” to the poor, and has little or nothing to show for it in terms of improvements in savings, income, education or work. So rather than admit that they wasted trillions of dollars and concede that they should shut down government job programs that only benefit the Democrat party’s base, the left pivoted to a new problem. Not that the poor are poor, but that there is a large gap between the rich and poor.

This new problem—inequality—can be solved without helping to lift a single poor person out of poverty and into the middle class. One only needs to reduce the wealth and income of the rich. That way we will be more equal. All worse off. But more equal. It is possible for modern Democrats to reduce inequality without doing anything to help poor people or communities. The middle class can suffer while we “reduce inequality.” That they can do. To tax the rich; first undermine their right to keep what they create. Demonize them. To avoid embarrassing questions about the failure of the left’s “war on poverty” you just need to shift the focus to inequality.

‘Immigration Is Our Strongest Competitive Advantage’

Zitelmann: Donald Trump has certainly done some positive things in terms of tax policy and deregulation. At the same time, however, he has increased what was already an extremely high level of national debt and is pursuing protectionist trade policies. I have the impression that Trump has no clear market economy compass. How capitalist is Trump?

Norquist: It’s not clear whether Donald Trump has ever read Hayek. But his tax cuts are straight out of the Ronald Reagan/Art Laffer/Milton Friedman playbook. His de-regulation goes further than all previous presidents combined. His judges will strengthen and repair America’s commitment to the rule of law for a generation. And his unwillingness to be dragged into every stupid idea some European intellectual thought up—windmills, solar to replace real energy that really powers a national economy—has been a godsend. Those who wish to embroil America in every war in every quadrant of the globe have no ally in Trump. Trump knows that war is the enemy of liberty and fiscal prudence. Free trade and immigration are issues where Trump departs from President Reagan and Adam Smith. But as President Trump said before the coronavirus crisis—we are running out of workers in the United States. And the higher wages and jobs growth he delivered reduced the grumpiness of American voters who no longer lash out at immigrants and foreign competitors suspected of stealing their jobs. Trump’s tax cuts, de-regulation, sound legal system and respect for property rights delivered growth to America before the virus and will return when the virus is behind us. Trump’s growth silenced the concerns that drive protectionism and tariffs and stoke fears of immigration. Yes, the wall will be built. America will gain control of its borders, but it will maintain large and open doors. Immigration is our strongest competitive advantage over China, Japan, Russia and most of the world. And yes, our trade agreements need to ensure that our intellectual property is not stolen and reduce the ability of governments anywhere to subsidize trade and disadvantage foreign competition.

Zitelmann: What are your thoughts on the Fed’s low interest rate policy? What does this mean for our market economy system?

Norquist: The danger of near-zero federal interest rates is that borrowing money is seen as “almost” free. The deficit is not the problem. Overspending is the problem. The deadweight cost of government is total spending. The deficit is one element of the problem—like the visible part of an iceberg. But it is the larger, hidden mass of the iceberg below the water line that ripped the Titanic apart. If deficit spending is held down, and taxes are not raised, then there is a limit on spending. That is good. But if deficit spending is “free” or “inexpensive” because interest rates (today) are low, then public opposition to more and more government spending is reduced and government spending will be allowed to increase and weaken the economy.

[bustedbernie]

Hey, I was wondering if you could give me some reasons to be excited for Biden? I dunno, I'm not big on any candidate except for Warren, but she hasn't been doing well... So I'm trying to prep myself for Biden, even though he's not the best in debate, and there was that whole eye filling with blood thing, and the "creepy uncle joe" type stuff flying around still make me nervous. I dunno, I just want to at least be content with whoever the democratic nominee is, and I was hoping for some help!

Well, as i don’t know you and I can’t even see your blog, I’m not sure how you might compare to me politically and what appeals to you most in a candidate, so I’ll just tell a little bit about my own experiences, having been a very disappointed Kamala supporter into the Biden camp...

The first thing that made it easier for me was just the way Joe spoke about Kamala, her supporters and all that. He is genuinely empathetic and also understands how powerful and important it is when he gains a voter from another candidate, or the support of that candidate. Knowing that I had a place on his campaign, EVEN when there were things I disagreed with him and his group on, was helpful. Your input was important and valued. 

Second, I think after the initial sting of sadness/anger started to dissipate, Biden really shifted into a green new deal and also proposed a very ambitious transit and amtrak proposal. 

I think too, doing more research, I found that he had a pretty robust criminal justice reform plan, marijuana decriminalization plan, and many of his plans were actually quite robust. So on policy, although it still wasn’t Kamala’s plans, it was still really damn good. So I didn’t feel like I was jumping ship onto some shitty life raft. I felt it was still a really good platform that touched on many of the issues I care the most about. 

Eye filling with blood... Idk what to tell you on that, other than my eye has done that and I’m [age redacted but between 28-32] lol. Sometimes these things just happen. I’ve never been convinced that the “creepy uncle joe” stuff would get any more traction than any of the other remaining candidates weak spots, if anything, It has always come off to me as a gigantic stretch. And that seems to be the response by a lot of the key demographics we need to target to win. Of course these things can change, but that’s true for most candidates. 

As a Warren supporter, I’d assume you’re into banking & labor reform and the like. Well, Biden’s plans on that is also more robust than I had previously imagined. Just a bit of it here:

$15 minimum wage

Massively expanding unionization and the right to unionize

closing loopholes that allow employers to avoid paying overtime to employees by classifying them falsely as “managers”

Increasing taxes on the wealthy and taxing capital gains

Similar to Warren, using trade as a way to advocate for both labor and higher standards across the board, domestically and globally

Like Warren, has a Rural America plan to bring investment and jobs back to small communities. Young people should not have to leave their communities for opportunities if they don’t wish to. 

Providing rental assistance to low-income Americans, ending redlining and addressing its disastrous impacts, increasing housing supply, working to ensure no American pays more than 30% for housing, increasing neighborhood stability to avoid displacement, protecting tenants from eviction, massively expand Section 8 housing benefits, the creation of a renter’s tax benefit, plan smarter growth and expand and repair transit, retrofit old properties for environmental sustainability through a new tax-credit system

Hold CEOs personally accountable toward labor abuses, including for anti-union activities

Incentivizing collective bargaining and new unions to form to empower workers while fighting “Right-to-Work” legislation

Create a cabinet-level working group focussed on unionization

Ensure the right to protest and boycott, including secondary protests

Empower the National Labor Relations Board

Extend rights to both farmworkers and domestic workers as well as “independent contractors (like UBER)”

End mandatory arbitration agreements 

Protect undocumented workers who report issues, safety problems, or labor violations

I’m sure you’re also interested in his plan for medical coverage, since that is another cornerstone of the Warren campaign. As a Kamala supporter, I also supported a Medicare-based solution. That said, Biden is proposing a Public Option as well that would help radically expand access to medical care and drive down costs, as well as directly negotiating prices federally for drugs. You prolly know that all already, but he also is proposing free contraception and STI prevention services, protecting abortion rights through federal legislation, will lift restrictions on US aid to help global communities combat HIV/AIDS and Malaria, expanding access to specialized care for minority groups including the black community and LGBT+ community. He also aims to achieve mental health parity, bring mental health resources into the governmental framework so folks can afford the care they deserve, and work to help end the stigma attached to mental health. Similar to Warren’s plans, his plans here largely are funded through additional taxes on the wealthy and taxing capital gains :) 

Education is another area that is important to Warren and many of her supporters. Here are some of his ideas in another bullet format lol: 

Increase teachers pay to be competitive 

Provide teachers with additional professional and educational development

Ensure the federal loan forgiveness program is both preserved and enhanced so that our educators can focus on teaching and their personal lives, and not on paying off onerous loans

Double the number of psychologists, guidance counselors, nurses, social workers, and other health professionals in our schools so our kids get the mental health care they need

Bring needed support for students and parents into our public schools

Invest in our schools to eliminate the funding gap between white and non-white districts, and rich and poor districts.

Improve teacher diversity

Make sure children with disabilities have the support to succeed.

Allow folks to discharge student loan debt through bankruptsy 

Free community college and additional support for State Universities

Biden would create a new program that offers $10,000 of undergraduate or graduate student loan debt relief for each year of national or community service, up to five years. If you work in a school, for the government or for a non-profit, you would be automatically enrolled in this student loan forgiveness program. Under the proposed program, you could apply up to five years of prior national or community service.

Student Loan Forgiveness and Repayment: 

If you make less than $25,000 per year: you would owe no payment on your undergraduate student loans and also no interest would accrue. 

If you make more than $25,000 per year: you would pay only 5% of your discretionary income over $25,000 toward federal student loan payments. After 20 years of student loan repayment, you would receive student loan forgiveness for your federal student loans. The amount of student loans forgiven also would not be subject to income tax. Borrowers also would be automatically enrolled in income-based repayment, with an option to opt out.

I hope that these few things help you feel a little more comfortable!!! He ain’t Kamala, and you may not ever see him as Liz, either. But, he still is pretty progressive and would help us build the framework for more progress later on! I tried to focus on policy stuff since I know Elizabeth Supporters tend to, unlike the Berniecrats, like policy lol. Anyway, this kind of stuff helped me get on board with him. 

[evilelitest2]

Is there a plan to expand the age people can remain on another's insurance from 26 to I dunno 30? Mostly the adults who can't afford to live on their own and their work doesn't include health insurance

There is talk of that among democrats but I wouldn’t get your hopes up sadly. There is plans for medicare/obamacare expansion so you might get lucky but the Dems seem to be going the “Slow and steady” approach on healthcare.  I fucking wish honestly.  

[wallpaperpaintings]

The Worst Advices We’ve Heard For Medicare For All | medicare for all

The Expanded and Improved Medicare For All Act or U.S. National Health Insurance Act is a proposed bill first introduced by U.S. Representative John Conyers, D-MI in 2020 with a dozen sponsors in Congress. In 2020 it was introduced as H.R.3, which is the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act. This bill would provide single-payer Medicare coverage to every American citizen.

Although there are different types of single-payer plans already in operation in other countries, only one type of health plan can currently provide universal coverage. Currently, there are two basic types of private health insurance: group insurance plans and individual insurance plans. The main difference between a group plan and an individual plan is that a group plan is designed to cover an entire group whereas an individual plan is designed to cover an individual member of the group.

Group plans have been in existence for many years, while individual plans have only recently become available to many insurance companies. One of the advantages of group insurance plans is the fact that they are more affordable than individual plans. Many people do not want to have to spend hundreds of dollars on individual health insurance premiums every month, even if the premiums are subsidized by the government. For these people, group plans can be their best option.

The expanded Medicare for All bill, passed in 2020, was designed to make Medicare even more affordable. It also included a number of benefits such as eliminating annual deductible or co-payment for preventive care and expanding coverage for prescription drugs. The bill also required that each American citizen over the age of eighteen be offered the choice of either a private insurance plan or a government plan. Currently, the government only offers group insurance plans. When the government decides to expand its coverage, it has to apply to a special waiver process, which takes several years to process.

When the expanded Medicare for All bill first came up, the Obama Administration did not support it. Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA), who is a leading Democratic Presidential candidate in 2020 suggested that there should be a waiting period for the program to become implemented. The administration then claimed that the waiting period would be too costly. and did not support the bill. Now however, it seems that President Obama has changed his position and supports the legislation.

The primary difference between a group plan and individual health insurance plans is that the government provides the basic infrastructure and pays all the health care costs of the members of the plan. This includes the hospital room, doctors, and all prescriptions. The private insurance plans usually cover only a portion of the cost.

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[womanistgrrrl]

If this advertisement isn’t one of the biggest Told You So moments of 2020, I don’t know what is. For over a decade, republicans, capitalists, wealthy white people, multi-billion dollar corporations, and other regressives, have been fighting to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA). In the same decade, womanists, feminists, abolitionists, socialists, leftists, revolutionaries, and other progressives have been fighting for affordable, high-quality, public owned healthcare for all people. We’ve been saying privatized, for-profit healthcare has no place in a true democratic, egalitarian society for the people. republicans have not listened. 

Instead, republicans have tried over 50 times to repeal ACA,  republicans have refused to expand Medicaid eligibility based on the ACA, republicans have shut down the U.S government over the ACA, and number 45 has signed an executive order eliminating the healthcare mandate thereby weakening the ACA. And don’t get me started on what capitalist corporations have been doing to undermine the ACA.

But in all honesty, republicans and corporations are not the only villains of this story. centrist/capitalist/moderate democrats are also villains. Throughout 2019 and into 2020, they have constantly defended privatized healthcare. They touted myths of people “loving” their privatized healthcare, and said that Medicare-For-All will abruptly force people off private health insurance plans they “love.” Now we are seeing how out-of-touch with reality centrist democrats are. Millions of people are losing their private health insurance anyway, even though Medicare-For-All has not been implemented.

The truth is, every year (or every other year), hundreds and thousands of people lose their private insurance when they are forced to quit their jobs due to toxic work environments or are fired. Also, even with the best private insurance and the best job, the out-of-pocket cost of healthcare is fucking ridiculous and no one (except the incredibly well-off) truly loves their private health care insurance as it is now.

People who defend privatized health care or employment based healthcare, and who fight to destroy the ACA, Medicaid, Medicare or Medicare-For-All, are greedy, anti-life, sociopaths. A for-profit health care system in any form is greedy, anti-life, and sociopathic. Period.

One of the biggest things I wish for 2020 is that there will be even more public revelations of how cognitively dissonant, anti-life, and out-of-touch with reality a pro “for-profit healthcare system” political ideology really is. 

Healthcare is a human right. A true democratic and egalitarian society is a society that invests in the health and well being of all community members, regardless of physical ability, income level, immigration status, gender identity, race, sexuality, incarceration status etc

Thank you for reading my essay. 

[thiswaycomessomethingwicked]

Your post on Bernie has me a little confused. Do you consider yourself a strict democrat, leftist, socialist or anything else? To me at least, it seems odd that you dislike Bernie for not being an “actual democrate” when Clinton is pretty right wing.

So I dislike boxes. They’re restrictive. I vote for who I like in terms of policy and who I think will perform best once in office. I’m a democrat, sure. I have leftist ideals but a realistic/pragmatic approach to things. I understand that we all wish to burn things down but that’s not how things work sadly. So let’s be realistic about getting shit done. Guillotine memes don’t feed the starving and they don’t end white supremacy. I’m a uh, let’s call it a north american socialist (no one running is an actual, by the books, definition of socialist, but that’s neither here nor there). 

Since people on this site apparently need to dissect my political beliefs, here you go: 

I believe we should have free healthcare; I believe that university education should be heavily subsidized (free would be great, but let’s start with at least making it subsidized and work from there); I think we should have universal basic income; I believe we should spend more on public infrastructure because our roads and bridges are falling apart; I believe we should have accessible, reliable public transit and an improved public transit network that works at municipal, state and national levels; I believe election days should be national holidays so everyone can vote; I believe gerrymandering is a curse upon our democratic system; I believe that we should spend more on public education at a K-12 level; I believe in subsidized and/or free after school care especially for the economically struggling; I believe we should have stronger anti-hate crime laws; I believe dental and mental health care should be covered anytime we talk about health care coverage; I believe in reparations; I believe we should start our own Truth and Reconciliation process for both slavery and the genocide against the Native Americans; I believe that we should try and address class and wealth disparity but that won’t solve racism, sexism, homophobia etc.; I believe we need electoral reform; I believe we need to do more for climate change but that the Green New Deal is empty in terms of actual things to implement in terms of policy - anyway those who wrote it admitted it was more of an economic plan than a climate one; I believe we need to tax the wealthy including all those pesky millionaires with three houses and wives who were investigated for tax fraud as well as the billionaires — 

I can go on. 

Of those running I currently like Castro, Harris, Warren. I really wish Stacy Abrams was running but she’s not. I think she’d be the best. I’m not a fan of Biden, Sanders, Gabbard (I mean, can we really call her a democrat?), Steyer, Yang. I’m neutral on Mayor Pete, Klobuchar, and Booker. I don’t know if that clarifies anything for you. Also, this is liable to change as we move forward through the primaries. 

And Clinton isn’t right wing. Calling her that continues the lie that she and the GOP are two sides/same coin which isn’t true. It’s a harmful position to perpetuate. There’s been a ton of stuff written on that so I’m not going to put it all in here. But I recommend starting with an analysis of her voting record - it’s on point with Sanders, if that’s your bar, on almost everything with some differences, the notable ones being Iraq (she was for, he was against) and gun control (she is for, he is generally against - his record is really dodgy on that).

I believe all politicians are up for grabs when it comes to legitimate critiques. But there’s a difference in saying “I disagree with her arguments for why she voted for Iraq” and calling her right wing. One is a legitimate critique, the other is hyperbolic and untrue. I also believe in understanding the context of the time in which many policy decisions were made. She, and Sanders, have been in politics for over 20 years. There are going to be decisions made in 1992 that we can look back on and go: Oh boy that was Yikes. But at the time, that wouldn’t have been so clear cut. No one has all the answers. No one is perfect. Purity politics isn’t the solution to our social ills. 

Anyway, some things HRC has supported, or accomplished, includes but is not limited to: 

The ACA - which was huge at the time. I cannot emphasize this enough. It was Ground Breaking. I think younger folk either don’t remember, or aren’t aware, of what a game changer this was. Indeed, it’s because of the ACA that the many Americans are even open to the conversation around medicare for all/any sort of more socialist health coverage. 

On a personal note, as a child of a single, poor working mom in the 90s this is the reason I had any sort of healthcare. Without it, we’d have been fucked. 

This is also one of the things that sent the GOP into a fucking TIZZY about HRC and why they started their 30 year long smear campaign against her which has influenced a lot of the more recent leftist rhetoric on her. 

Indeed, she was an early leader in expanding healthcare coverage in the early 90s and continued to be throughout her career. 

Leadership with SCHIP which which expanded health coverage to millions of lower-income children. 

I know we all wish we could have Instant Health Care For All but small steps is how you get these things. It’s incredibly complicated and difficult to set up health care systems and programs. They’re large, they become unwieldly, they’re expensive to fund, and they’re difficult to pass through congress. It’s useful to be able to point to precedents. 

She founded the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families

Supported and championed the Violence Against Women Act

Adoption and Safe Families Act (she was a supporter of it and helped champion it through) 

One of the leaders of the development of the Lilly Ledbetter Pay Equity Act 

Supported the Pediatric Research Equity Act - improving health and pharmaceutical access for children 

START treaty - an attempt to begin regulating the amount of nukes Russia and the US have which, even if one wishes we could snap fingers and get rid of them all, one must admit isn’t a bad thing. 

Negotiated ceasefire between Hamas and Israel in 2012 - again, regardless of views on Israel, Hamas and Palestine - having people stop fighting for a time isn’t a bad thing. The hope was it would lead to more productive, long term peace talks etc. but that sadly didn’t pan out. 

Copenhagen Climate Change Accord - one of the chief negotiators 

Etc. etc. she has 25 years of things to list but none of these things are right wing. One can disagree with her foreign policy approach, or think she didn’t push hard enough on health care, or that she came late to the table on LGBTQ issues, but that doesn’t make her right wing. I have right winger-s in the family and they’d all love to see Clinton dead. I know what the right wing looks like and it’s not her. 

Things she supports that make actual, real right wing people (like my great grandfather and my uncle’s sister) hate her: 

She supports and advocates for two weeks of paid family and medical leave at a minimum of 2/3s wage replacement rate 

She supports expanding social security 

You know, she believes in climate change and has worked to reduce carbon emissions, pushed for climate change accords, encouraged renewable energy, and ending tax subsidies for oil companies

clearly things a right wing person would do /sorry sarcasm I just can’t take it too seriously when people call her right wing

She supports immigration reform with full path to citizenship 

She supports the naturalization of around 9 million lawful permanent residents in the United States who are eligible to become U.S. citizens

She’s pro-choice and believes abortion is basic health care

Sorry how do people think she’s right wing again? 

She supports making it illegal for pharmacists to refuse to provide access to emergency contraception

When she was Sec. of State she wanted the US to join the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

She supports the Disability Integration Act, which requires states and insurance companies to provide people with disabilities who need long term care the choice to receive care at home instead of solely in institutions and nursing facilities

She’s obviously pro-gun control and was the first candidate in 2016 to produce an extensive position paper on guns and gun violence

She supports voting rights and advocates for changes in national voter access laws, including automatically registering American citizens to vote at age 18 and mandating 20 days of early voting in all states

She has criticized laws passed by Republican-controlled state legislatures that do not permit student IDs at polling places, place limits on early voting, and eliminate same-day voter registration

She had one of the most thorough mental health care plans that I have ever seen in a presidential nominee. 

It goes on. I again - I don’t get how people can look at this and think her right wing. I sure don’t agree with everything she’s done and every position she’s taken, but she’s not right wing. Good lord my people. 

There’s a lot many people have to thank her for and they’re unaware of it. Tumblr and twitter aren’t ideal places to form and consume political points. 

As a note, I work in the civil service in Canada (am a dual citizen), I’m very familiar with how large socialized programs work and how difficult it is to implement them. There are never any quick and clean solutions. 

And on that note - I’m done for the time being. I hope this answers your question. 

Required civic duty reminder: Everyone vote in the primaries and vote in 2020. Also - no politician is perfect, no politician is going to align 100% with your views and nor should they because you know, we live in a democracy. Do your homework, get off of tumblr and twitter, and make sure you vote!