Only Tulsi will get Medicare for all to pass

But it won't be this year. Tulsi is playing the long game. She is building name recognition and with that name recognition, she will be publicizing her political stances. Tulsi does agree that Trump is not ideal, but those opinions are relegated to a minor point during her campaign appearances. She is forward-looking, issue-oriented. You will not hear Tulsi mentioning Trump 76 times in one speech like Creepy, corrupt Joe Biden did last week in Iowa. Tulsi will tell you about ending these interventionist wars we are fighting.

Without cessation of interminable external wars of aggression, we will never be able to reduce our military budget. Without restriction of the current $780 B FY 2019-20 budget, and likely bloated military spending yet to come in future years, there will not be enough money available except by running up a tax raise. Without making any predictions on my part about the necessary yearly M4A expenditure, we simply can't pay for it.

Democrats have not hit on the key reason we're not getting M4A now or in the near future--and it has nothing to do with Nancy or Chuckles. The American public is getting the following pushback against M4A: it's socialism, puts government in control of your healthcare (which of course insurance companies would never do [s/]). Furthermore: "you won't have your choice of doctor" (false); bureaucrats will run your health care blah, blah and blah. But the most telling argument against M4A is cost.

M4A will NEVER be accepted by the public--despite what polling says--until the specter of drastically rising taxes is removed. Even though a progressive tax increase of up to 70+% on the 1%ers would pay for a lot of stuff, including part of M4A, it will be cast in a negative light. A tax on the rich will be conflated misleadingly as a tax on all. Indeed some of the cost will have to be balanced with some increase on lower tax brackets. But the Repugs and establishment Dems will NOT make the distinction that a tax on the elites is not the same as a tax on the rest of us.

The only way to really get M4A paid for in a budgetary friendly way is to massively reduce military spending. This will not happen unless foreign military entanglements plus the new arms race are eliminated. Who is presenting a coherent policy about this? No one except Tulsi.

Don't remind me about the pseudo-doves in the Dem party, now including Bernard Sanders, who either do not or will not take on the military industrial complex. The M4A train will not leave the station until the conjunction of reduced military spending plus the positive aspects of M4A are simultaneously emphasized by a believable candidate.

So who's going to push the real reset button? Won't be Biden. That creepy criminal will say anything to get elected, just like Obama, then do a 180 once in office. The rest of the twenty mule team of Dem Klowns won't do this either--except Tulsi.

M4A is maturing slowly in the minds of Americans, just as that which is leading to the continuing ratification of public opinion, which now overwhelmingly supports the liberalization of marijuana laws. Emphasis on the last sentence is the word "slowly". We don't like gradualism which equate, rightly, with stalling on a progressive agenda. But the reality is that the grass root level, the two ideas of M4A and military spending have not yet melded.

The bogeyman here in MIC reduction is not the elites even though they are the primary beneficiaries of such a policy. The bogeyman is the politically uneducated, which comprise the majority of American voters, do not see the connection. Furthermore, the uneducated see a strong military as an essential asset for the defense of USA. This is true. But the current bloated military / MIC budget will not be necessary after cessation of imperial extensions of American bullying. The thought of reducing military spending raises reflexive fears amongst the electorate, which as stated above is majority uneducated, that America is less safe. In actuality, reducing military spending will enhance our country. Lower deficit increases money available for productive changes to the economy besides the military.

In this essay, I am concentrating on the political aspects. The political aspects of M4A are going codetermine the passage or defeat of M4A. The multi-faceted range of benefits which actually occur through M4A will not sell this program to the public.

Money, folks, is the name of the game. Isn't it always? Whether spent or received, this is always the overwhelming motive. Until the public realizes they will be spending less overall and getting better care devolving from the combination of M4A plus reducing the military bloat, M4A will not occur.

Some of us former Berniecrats, which previously included me, believe the BS of BS--he hasn't got the cajones nor political support to cut military adventures. He is a creature of the elites, despite promoting good things such as free public college tuition, amelioration of student debt, improved basic wages (e.g., minimum wage raises and stronger labor unions).

The gutsiest people in government are two. One of whom is Tulsi Gabbard. I would donate to the limit for her if she goes third party. Otherwise donation to any Dem candidate goes to the DNC and most likely to the Clintons.

So now I'm living on Tulsi Time

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXOZecj_oyI]

Play it LOUD

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@UntimelyRippd It depends on the defense spending. If the spending is to save the sovereign as Lincoln did with his greenbacks it is not inflationary. Hard to understand and perhaps not intuitive but paradigm shifts produce unexpected results sometimes. Most defense spending is inflationary because all wars are bankers wars and banks don't give a shit if the little people get hurt with inflation.

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@davidgmillsatty
Weirdly and measurably wrong.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

@UntimelyRippd Here is a thought experiment. Suppose in 1913 we went to a monetary system based not on money as debt but based on money as credit, and the US had zero debt instead of twenty plus trillion. How much do you think the dollar would have devalued over 100 plus years?

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@davidgmillsatty
are the same thing. if you did, a lot of things that are opaque to you would suddenly become clear.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

@UntimelyRippd I don't think you understand they are not the same, not in any legal sense, or in any common definition of the two terms.

So let me explain the difference as they pertain to money.

A debt is an obligation that some party has to fulfill and fulfillment usually requires the payment in money of principal and interest (although interest is not always required).

A credit is a means of payment, perhaps best exemplified by Lincoln's greenbacks as follows: This bill is good for the payment of all debts both public and private. So a credit can be used to pay off or pay down a debt or cancel a debt.

These two terms are not at all alike in a legal sense, or in any common definition of the terms.

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@davidgmillsatty
You are wrong.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

@UntimelyRippd

On what basis do you say I am wrong? I clearly stated the difference between the two. They are pretty close to opposites if not exactly opposites. You telling me the two are the same is like saying the sun and the moon are the same.

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@UntimelyRippd That experience only applies to a system that is predicated on the assumption that money must be a debt of some kind. Because that is the system we have. There is no evidence whatsoever that this would happen in a monetary system where money is not a debt or an obligation to the government or anyone else.

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@davidgmillsatty
a system in which "money" was just whatever song happened to be buzzing around in anybody's head at any given time, but then in such a system, money wouldn't be money at all. You are talking nonsense.

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0 users have voted.

The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

mimi's picture

sigh. great discussion, if I could follow them, would be even greater.

Still don't understand why a prescription drug (chemotherapeutic drugs for example) have three times higher prices in the US than in Europe or Canada (I remember that US elderly organized trips across the border between the US and Canada to buy their medication over in Canada).

Don't understand why folks in the US get medical bills for their treatment that forces them to sell their homes in order to pay them. They sure will live a much healthier life under the bridges of highways or in the nooks of entrance doors of stores in the city's downtown areas.

I don't know why my sister, whose daughter had since teenage years Hodgkin disease and went several times through chemo- and radiation therapy, first in Germany, then in the US (as daughter studied and worked in CA and NY state and Pennsylvania), instinctively never cut off her daughters German health care insurance. Her daughter had both and somehow the high costs of her treatments were covered, where ever she was. (didn't save her life either, died in NY at age 38).

I kept my own German health insurance for years, though I was also covered through a health insurance provided to my then husband at the IMF. I never used it. When I had a dental bill over 3000 dollars, the American insurance paid 400 dollars for it back, the German insurance paid 2200 dollars back. Why is that?

Why can't the US look at what other countries do, copy their ways and enforce implementation of them over in the US? I guess that's against their sweet idea of freedom drugs or something.

My son as a combat Veteran from the Iraq war's disgusting invasion, is covered by VA hospitals if an emergency would occur that made treatment necessary. But I am not sure it would cover all the costs and I still fear he would get huge bills to pay out of pocket. So, I try to think about how to get him back into a German health insurance. Can't have if, if he doesn't reside for a couple of months in Germany and works there for a while. Which means coming over to Germany, he would lose his low paying job over in the US. What a world is that?

Pfft ... some freedoms stink. (edited spelling mistakes)

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