Displaying 0 To 0 Of 0 Comments Yup. Lakoff is rolling his eyes, too! » Posted By choicelady On March 29, 2012 @ 1:16 pm I am a huge Lakoff fan, and his advice is hardly EVER taken by liberal policy wonks. Someone noted that the RW talks in catchy slogans, and we submit 40-page studies with endless footnotes. And we wonder why no one hears us. I’ve done framing workshops where people cannot focus on values at ALL. Well – we HAVE them! We just think it’s “imposing our values” to SAY them! Either that or we use cliches, and that is almost as bad. The Right has another thing – they give mega-bucks to people to do their work without strings. The Left makes us fill out 40-page applications for $5000. I am NOT making that up – my organization gets huge paperwork for tiny grants. Almost use it up in employee time filling out the papers! The Right actually trust one another. The Left has ego problems and distrust of every penny you spend. I happen to be the ONLY advocate in Sacramento who can write a letter of support for a piece of legislation in one page. Everyone else writes endless wonky stuff nobody reads. I’m good with the values language, but secular allies get noses out of joint that I do that – even though NONE of it is “religious”. In 2008 Obama followed Lakoff, and he’s doing it again – Ryan’s “Route to Poverty” budget. The “Flat Earth Society” mindset. It’s helping. But yes – if we’d pressed harder on the MSM to call the ‘mandate’ an insistence on personal responsibility, we might be farther down the road of public awareness. The administration DID – the MSM would not listen. So I don’t blame the WH for NOT doing it. I blame the media for not hearing it and listening to only the GOP. Still and all – we need to work harder, all of us, to do our OWN framing in more values terms and with less reliance on footnoted “studies”. It matters. More often than you know, you will hit common ground with conservatives (not wing nuts) and can start talking about “how do we get there together” rather than not talking at all. And if those folks are wobbly middle independents, we CAN change their views by being firt on the same side with them. Case in point – one GOP legislator cited the “teach a man to fish, he east for a day. Teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime.” I told him I love that – isn’t independence what our goals are? – BUT that I supported programs that fed the man while he learned to fish. He got it. He’s being more thoughtful about social programs as supports for “teaching fishing”. We all need to find people who are “almost there” and then work with that. And values messages are the way into those discussions. Worth a shot! » Posted By choicelady On March 29, 2012 @ 1:10 pm No darlin’ -that’s more equivalent to Hindu mystics walking on beds of nails! OMG – what COURAGE!!!! Or something. LOL!!! » Posted By choicelady On March 29, 2012 @ 12:56 pm Yeah – but did you eat lutefisk? If so, I’m not sure I want to know you, love you though I do! » Posted By choicelady On March 29, 2012 @ 11:03 am bito – that is the crux of the argument in favor of the individual mandate. We all pay for uncompensated care in the ONLY service or “commodity” (yuck) that is itself mandated to be given to everyone, insured or not. So the gov’t argues that we need to have a requirement that everyone covers their care with private insurance, a public program, a tax. You nailed the issue. You are now ready to argue before the Supreme Court! » Posted By choicelady On March 29, 2012 @ 11:01 am The big divide here is the demand to have people buy insurance – a private item for sale – vs. being enrolled in a universal, absolutely equal public program that has already withstood Constitutional scrutiny. SS and Medicare have been challenged, and the finding is that public programs in which everyone can and must participate are different from requiring anyone to buy a commodity in the private market. However, ACA posits that the requirement to cover your own personal obligations rests on the singular issue that health care is a generalizable program that is the only service in the nation that is mandated to be provided. Payment for that mandated provision to any individual then is passed on to us all. Relief to us all from extremely high payments for uncompensated care given to the individual is at the heart of the argument. This is the “intolerable burden” referenced by Kennedy. If they were to find that requiring purchase of a private market insurance policy was NOT legal (and there are precedents albeit pretty small allowing federal regulation of private consumption) it would not be equivalent to challenging the requirement to participate in PUBLIC programs such as Medicare and Social Security. What we also have going for us, though it would be an immediate hardship, is that it gives massive weight to single payer as the next step. That would take YEARS to get passed, however, though it could potentially be done more quickly via the existing Public Option of the High Risk Pool expansion. KQ (I think it was KQ who said this) believes that would make the Pool more expensive, but I think the opposite would happen – the more people in that pool, the less costly it would be per capita since there are premiums that people would have to pay. If you could not mandate private insurance but did mandate public option insurance the Libertarians would be screaming! But it would be legal Constitutionally. So I think the court knows this and will – without the dim bulbs of Scalia, Alito, Thomas and maybe Roberts – find ACA is legal. I am anticipating a 5-4 in support, possibly a 6-3 and less likely a 7-2 with only Scalia and Thomas out on the latter. So no, finding ACA unconstitutional on the mandate (the only part that is risky) would not make Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security vulnerable. They are public programs, not private ones. » Posted By choicelady On March 29, 2012 @ 10:58 am I used to get press releases from the White House as the bill was working its way forward in Congress in 2010. I recall the discussions about this, using ‘personal responsibility’ as one of the themes. The MSM allowed the Right to set the terms and dialogue. The Dems caved, indeed, but it was not for a lack of trying. That has been a constant thorn in my side – the way the Right sets the stage. George Lakoff says we ARE too quick to adopt their lingo or let them steal the meme. Same with Ryan’s current Budget – “The Path to Poverty” is all we should say. I read it occasionally but do not hear it said on TV. We HAVE to take this back. Of course we have the pleasure of having the President define the folks as “flat earthers”. THAT is catching on! The regulation of EMTs, etc. opens a very interesting question about – how far do we go for the uninsured. From Ron Paul supporters – “let him die” – to those who would indeed see someone through whatever is wrong, we have not set the ‘limit’ but have kept the principle in law as well as medicine. You are indeed opening a major question, and with it the query about what is your individual responsibility? The sole issue that concerns me is making carrying insurance ALSO possible economically. In MA the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, once Romney’s largest support group, is now Mass Care’s biggest critic. The way it works there a $200 subsidy is given regardless of what YOUR premium costs are. To make that affordable, and keep the price down, the law appends a $5000 deductible you have to use BEFORE your insurance kicks in, and if you get sick, it’s another $10,000 out of pocket. If you have a chronic problem, it’s $15,000 per person per year. Suppose you have two very sick kids – YIKES! You can go to bankruptcy as fast on that as on 10 times that. So GBIO opposes forcing anyone at less than 500% of the Federal Poverty Level to HAVE to have insurance. ObamaCare – a proud term, IMHO – subsidizes the premium so between 133% (where Medicaid eligibility ends) up to 400% of the FPL you pay on a sliding scale of 1-9%. That includes FAMILY coverage. 400%FPL is 89,000 per year for a family of four meaning they would pay whatever 9% of that is (sorry – math challenged, no calculator to hand.) Rates are much, much lower at lower ends of the income spectrum, and it does NOT carry horrific deductibles and OOP. Vastly more affordable! And the more people are in the pool, the less it costs. More to the point – dozens and dozens of tests, preventive procedures, etc. can be accessed without having to touch the deductible. That is NOT true in MA. So not only is it not “RomneyCare” it’s tilted toward making the “mandate” – the bearing of personal responsibility – vastly easier than MA’s plan. Too many people in MA are getting minimum coverage and using when they get good and sick – and yes, that prevents the ‘free rider’ problem, but it does not produce HEALTH since preventive care goes undone. Think what would happen if you had a FREE colonoscopy, the potential cancerous polyps were removed, and you never GOT cancer vs. having the coverage to TREAT the cancer when you had it. The former is Obama’s plan, the latter is Romney’s plan. So mandates to provide care are always about that care in critical moments – when someone is very, very ill or injured and therefore most costly. Assuring that everyone has health insurance of some kind is seeking both personal responsibility in coverage that does not ding the taxpayers or medical system AND that provides real HEALTH care as opposed to SICKNESS and INJURY care – priceless. I do think Kennedy sees that – and some things Roberts said makes me hope he does, too and that he will put politics aside. There are good reasons for him to keep the system in place – he does not want “killing health care” to be his record on the high court – so I’m rooting for that. But Kennedy definitely seems to understand. Let’s hope good sense and policy prevail in the SCOTUS decision!! » Posted By choicelady On March 28, 2012 @ 7:22 pm Good evening, Cher, and thank you as always for this amazing collection of information! I have to agree with KT – Goldberg IS the faux intellectual who claims the Nazis were ‘liberal socialists’. Uh-huh – absolutely true. As for the handwringing over the mandate: the central issue, one Kennedy referred to at the very end of his questioning, is that health care is already a mandate. Someone in bad shape MUST be treated in an ER and beyond. This ropes in the hospital, doctors, staff, and then rate payers on insurance AND taxpayers. Here in CA we take a bite as taxpayers from doling out tax dollars to hospitals et al. for “uncompensated care”. When you go without any form of coverage and enter the medical system in ways that require us to treat you, you become a cost to us. It’s not like any other “commodity” – your right is guaranteed, and we pay for you. Mandates to have “personal responsibility” so that taxpayers and rate payers do NOT suffer because of your experience is absolutely reasonable. There is no other situation that delivers DIRECT costs to all of us because of the one of you. All the other ‘commodity’ arguments are bogus – nothing else is guaranteed. Only health care. Cars, broccoli, blue jeans – we are not mandated to provide them. Health care? We are. Now we heard Ron Paul say “let ’em die”. Well isn’t that special? They already do that in the great state of Texas. Neo-nates in crisis whose parents have no insurance are NOT treated and do die. Thank you, former Gov. George W. Bush. I guess that race to the bottom, that move to be no better than Calcutta, is now the new standard for American Exceptionalism? Wow. Not sure the rest of America wishes to follow THAT standard. I don’t know about Roberts who is as political as they come, but Kennedy did make VERY clear in his closing remarks that uninsured people result in an “intolerable burden” to the society. For various reasons legally, and for very good reasons politically, I think Kennedy WILL be vote 5 in upholding the government’s right to require insurance in this one area where care is not optional. A very good liberal AND conservative point: we take care of you, but you do not put your burdens on us without doing all you can to avoid them. Health care is a DIRECT burden on each of us when people take advantage of the system or cannot participate in it. Ending that is well within the right of the government on behalf of the people. So that’s my take on all your wonderful articles about yesterday’s SCOTUS discussion. Thank you! We will look forward to the stories about what happened today. See you tomorrow! Thank you for keeping us all apprised of what’s swirling around us! » Posted By choicelady On March 28, 2012 @ 6:21 pm What If? The Affordable Care Act and the Supreme Court I think the common good issue enters none of the minds of the 4 conservatives, but the issue of forcing taxpayers to provide tax coverage for uncompensated care – that’s heavily on them all. » Posted By choicelady On March 28, 2012 @ 11:05 am I agree, KT. Since this, a noted above, is a unique “consumption” issue, and since we all of us are on the hook at both state and federal levels for uncompensated care, there is reason to think the Commerce Clause holds sway. I was VERY heartened by Kennedy’s summation. And wouldn’t ya know – hardly ANY of the media reports mentioned it. Sigh. » Posted By choicelady On March 28, 2012 @ 11:04 am Only your neighbor WITH the broccoli is a threat to your soup! The underlying principle is you put in what you have, and everyone gets what they need – soup. No accounting for your neighbor! » Posted By choicelady On March 28, 2012 @ 11:02 am You have nailed the essential point! » Posted By choicelady On March 28, 2012 @ 10:58 am Go for it, Es-cat! » Posted By choicelady On March 27, 2012 @ 6:18 pm I agree, Cher. Es-cat – I think you’re OK. Really. » Posted By choicelady On March 27, 2012 @ 6:16 pm The key issue is that in ONLY health care are doctors and hospitals themselves mandated to serve, and we, the taxpayers, mandated to PAY. That is why Kennedy’s last comment that it may put an intolerable burden on all of the above is striking. He understands that no one is mandated to feed anyone (OK – except as we take moral imperatives. Not Sarah Palin or her Dominionist ilk.) No one is mandated to provide you with transportation. No one is mandated to have blue jeans. This is not about a commodity – this IS about sharing the burden and accepting your responsibility. I INTENSELY dislike forcing people to buy private insurance which is why the High Risk Pool is critical – it IS a public option. That opening wedge is important Constitutionally as well. It give you an option that is not forcing you to purchase a commodity, but the mandate of Medicare is exactly equal. I have a major “thing” about helmet laws for motorcycles. It’s not that you are required to wear them in CA. It’s that people think it’s OK not to wear them and damn the consequences. Unless and until we DO have “death panels” that say – you screwed up, no insurance? Too bad. Until we are allowed to let people die by the side of the road, and oh, well… Then you are forcing all of us to care for little old you. That is GOOD – we cannot become a nation that lets people die. But it’s bad because like ‘right to work’ laws – free riders abound. Shove it off on someone else to pay! Let me get mine but without MY accepting any responsibility here. I think Kennedy’s last comments will lead him to vote with the administration. He, at least, thinks no you cannot let people die, and yes there has to be some direct involvement of individuals in the maintenance of the system that protects them. Could be wrong. Been wrong before! But I think that message of relieving the burden of individual needs from the whole of society – of the “stone soup” principle of everyone putting what they have into the communal pot of soup we then all can use – that may well prevail. But – we shall see. » Posted By choicelady On March 27, 2012 @ 6:15 pm One site, The People’s View, assesses the likely outcome at 7-2 in support of ACA. It’s worth taking a look http://www.thepeoplesview.net/2012/03/why-individual-mandate-is-probably-safe.html The other fallback is expansion of the existing “public option”, the High Risk Pool. It is unarguable that the government can mandate enrollment in a public plan. We did it with Medicare. By making that broader and more comprehensive – eliminating the waiting time without insurance and expanding the base – it would serve everyone well as a non-private commodity requirement. Purchasing something in the private market by mandate is the crux of the “if they can insist we buy insurance they can force us to buy broccoli” anger. That would go. Already the large numbers of people taking up the High Risk Pool has reduced premiums in CA from $500 per month in San Francisco down to $400. With millions more, it might well drop further and make a flat assessment percentage possible as we have done with Medicare. In other words – all is not lost, IMHO even if the justices provide a political rather than legal ruling. And they might – think of who they are and what they did on Citizens United and Gore v Bush. And the latter was not even THIS court. But there are reasons to believe they won’t, that since the mandate originated with the (ugh) Heritage Foundation, that they won’t overturn it even for their best buds. Scalia and Thomas – oh sure. The others? Not so likely since killing the private market mandate could very readily push us into a form of single payer. Conservatives would like that not at all. So we will have to see what they say, but there are reasons to understand that with the public option already in place, all might not be so bad. » Posted By choicelady On March 27, 2012 @ 7:28 am Well I know YOU are not polytheistic. What simply amazes me are the large numbers of RRW who act as if there are many gods not just different ideas about god. You’d think they’d notice they are no longer monotheists. They honestly think there is more than one. Wow. Back to cave paintings…or Baal. » Posted By choicelady On April 5, 2012 @ 1:08 pm Oh sure – those whose vision of “God” and power thrives on violence would NOT be happy with a world of peace. They need to be the biggest bullies on the block and prove their God is the BEST. Which leads me to ask – at what point did the Western world descend into polytheism? Just curious… » Posted By choicelady On April 5, 2012 @ 12:28 pm This is the stuff of death for religion. When it goes, and it WILL go, no one will miss it. » Posted By choicelady On March 29, 2012 @ 10:44 pm KT – just one, very funny, note about what we try NOT to be. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the debate between Kelly and Woody on “Cheers” over their “mixed marriage” – she’s Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (liberal) and he’s Lutheran Missouri Synod (conservative) and this is the GREATEST send up of text proofing and rule-bound covenant EVER:** Enjoy! **Not to mention a great send-up on two perfectly dim people being THAT well informed about anything! » Posted By choicelady On March 28, 2012 @ 7:03 pm I am very moved by your story, KT. It’s similar to that of someone I love deeply who found the same help via an immersion in that pre-Charlegmagne version of Christianity. The similarities between you as you take the different roads is profound. The Right decries the “Christislam” or anything interfaith or, frankly, Protestants (oooooo) who are following the same journey, different paths, as you walk with Tao. Rules, rites, rigidity have no capacity to move one forward to enlightenment. Drawing from the Tao, from Buddhism, from any path that helps one find spiritual growth is the right quest for that growth. Hence my fave slogan: Dear One – please bring me into the company of those searching for the truth. And deliver me from those who have found it! If you read thrillers there’s a pretty good one, “The Breath of God” by Jeffrey Small about the Issa story. It’s sort of hokey as a novel, but the theme that Jesus spent those missing years in India, China, Tibet, Nepal has some credibility especially as one looks at HIS radical message of perfect love and the one human family. It was what set the historical Jesus so much at odds with his society’s power brokers. Issa (Isa) is the Muslim and Hindu names for Jesus. The central character is a historian of religion (whom I mostly wanted to slap the majority of the book) who wants to find the Issa documents without actually caring about their meaning. He finally understands the power of the journey. He notes, simply, that when animals want to find the lake for water, the deer travels the dirt path, the squirrel scampers through the trees, the bird flies – they all get there but via different routes particular to them and their needs. One is not “better” than the other. We lost that. Fundamentalists (ALL fundies) insist on their own path regardless of who others are. You are following your own path – and while there probably is no “end”, no ultimate “truth”, the journey is “sacred” and must be what your heart, mind, and spirit lead you to do. And you offer us the gift of seeing the journey in new ways. Thank you. That gives us so much more for our own travels to the water. » Posted By choicelady On March 26, 2012 @ 12:31 pm The Higher Power can be anything at all – even just your group. Any 12-step requiring you to surrender to a Western Male Anthropomorphic God is violating its OWN best principles. Get another group! » Posted By choicelady On March 25, 2012 @ 8:48 pm KT – that’s amazing! What a gift your daughter gave you, and what a gift for you to have the openness to begin the quest. And you write this beautifully! Christianity USED to be like that. In the first 800 or so years, there were multiple paths of Christianity, one of which crytalized as the Church, but others were far more in tune with Tao principles of always questioning, always searching, knowing you will never find the “Truth”. It was meant to bring paradise on earth, NOT focus on narrow rules and rites that were to transport you to the afterlife. Far more in harmony with Tao, and pantheism, and all manner of spirituality rather than institutionalized hierarchies of obedience. We lost a lot of that, and contemporary inquries are reincorporating that wisdom of being open, finding god (small g intentional) within, rebuilding harmony with all people and nature. That’s why there is the fury among the rule givers and demanders of obedience toward those who belive truth is a process, never a destination. Why theocrats cannot abide those who are not. You open up the mysteries, the questions, the complexities that now science is finally also admitting exist. Positing there are 10 dimensions, how can we be so object/subject defined? How can we ignore the spiritual when we cannot even prove what science knows to be true? How can order and chaos co-exist in the universe at exactly the same time and place? Tao and Buddhism and Hinduism and early Jewish and Muslim and Christian minds actually ALL asked these questions openly, together and differently, until the lure of hierarchy, control, and power over-ruled too much of the Abrahamic faiths, especially Christianity. Several churches I know are turning to the Tao to have people approach the complexities of Jesus’ teachings – his positing of unanswerable questions – that may well have been so influenced by the Tao. But 1200 years ago, we turned away from the fluidity of that mystery and quest to impose definite answers, absolutes, certainty, and that was a huge loss for us while it was a huge win for those in power. The reason Christians in hierarchy sent out missionaries and brutalized non-christians was not because they feared non-Christians were wrong but because they feared they were right. That these others were closer to god/God/truth than any western prince of the Church could be with the trappings of bricks and mortar, rules and rites, was a scary thing for it made such a lie of those structures and imposed order. Thank you for sharing this with all of us. It reminds us to breathe and to turn within, not always questing without. Lovely to read, and wonderful to read it from you. » Posted By choicelady On March 25, 2012 @ 8:46 pm Patent it, friend, and clean up! » Posted By choicelady On March 23, 2012 @ 9:58 am AdLib – wouldn’t that be “if Destructo was a RESPONSIBLE Republican robot…” and that, clearly, is an oxymoron. » Posted By choicelady On March 23, 2012 @ 9:55 am Years ago my brother and his friends made up a mock “commercial” that has come back to mind. It’s the perfect description of unleashing the GOPTEA party… “Get Little Destructo! First thing he does outta the box is eat the box he came in! Be the first kid to be the last kid on your block! Get Little Destructo today!” » Posted By choicelady On March 23, 2012 @ 8:42 am You need a better class of friends, KT! » Posted By choicelady On March 21, 2012 @ 8:34 pm Oh Sue – where DID you find that????? That is hilarious! » Posted By choicelady On March 21, 2012 @ 8:31 pm I’m a Dem. My game? Whack-a-Mole! Substituting ANY of the GOP candidates for the mole. » Posted By choicelady On March 21, 2012 @ 8:28 pm Oh bravo, sir! Bravo! » Posted By choicelady On March 21, 2012 @ 8:26 pmComments Posted By choicelady
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