The Goat Pen

eCat wrote:

hedge wrote:Not shocking that you seem to think highly educated people shouldn't be considered a public benefit. Of course, I'm not sure I think a PhD from Bob Jones U. is particularly beneficial to the public, either, but neither would I consider it to connote its owner as highly educated...

funny because people keep telling me a bunch of damn uneducated mexicans are a public benefit too

The two facts are no mutually exclusive...

Speaking of smarts..

Donald Trump's Biggest Flaw: He's Not that Bright - Chicago Tribune

Donald Trump has many serious flaws, including incorrigible dishonesty, rampant narcissism, contempt for women and a fashion sense that makes him think that hairstyle of his is flattering. But nothing compares to his most prominent, crippling and incurable defect: He’s dimmer than a 5-watt bulb.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was reported to have called the president a “moron” — emphasizing that term with an adjective I can’t repeat here. Forced to hold a news conference to praise the president’s intelligence, Tillerson was too honest to deny what he had said.

The late William T. Kelley, who taught Trump at the University of Pennsylvania, said, “Donald Trump was the dumbest goddamn student I ever had.” Tony Schwartz, the ghostwriter of “The Art of the Deal,” says Trump had “a stunning level of superficial knowledge and plain ignorance.”

Trump’s feeble-mindedness is on daily view. When an Uzbek immigrant was arrested for allegedly driving a truck down a Manhattan bike path, killing eight people, the president responded in thunderously stupid ways. First, he tweeted that he had “just ordered Homeland Security to step up our already Extreme Vetting Program.” If you can step it up, why didn’t you do that before?

He fumed that the alleged killer wanted an Islamic State flag for his hospital room. Really? The guy reportedly killed eight people, and the flag is what steams you? Trump demanded the death penalty — opening the way for the suspect’s lawyers to argue that the president has made it impossible for him to get a fair trial.

Trump has learned nothing from his past blunders. As a candidate, he said Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl was a traitor who should be executed. Asked about the case as president, he doubled down: “I think people have heard my comments in the past.”

The military judge announced he would count Trump’s statement as mitigating evidence — which may be why he ended up giving Bergdahl no prison time. Not only was Trump’s remark unnecessary and inappropriate; it was self-defeating.

He’s just not bright enough to make connections between his conduct and its consequences. Trump’s travel ban has lost repeatedly in court because he has made clear he has an unconstitutional goal: shutting out Muslims because of their religion. If he had kept quiet, he might have gotten his way.

The evidence of his dimwittedness flows as continuously and voluminously as the Mississippi River. His tweets are studded with misspellings, random capitalizations and mystifying quotation marks. He taps out tweets that flagrantly contradict what he tweeted when Barack Obama was president, making himself look ridiculous. When he holds forth on policy issues, it’s excruciatingly apparent he has no idea what he’s talking about.

Trump relies on a vocabulary the size of a second-grader’s. To combat opioid abuse among teens, he favors “telling them, ‘No good, really bad for you in every way.’ ” Those paper towels he tossed to a crowd in Puerto Rico were “very good towels.” He wanted to call the tax reform bill “the Cut Cut Cut Act.”

He pretends to be a master negotiator, but he has failed to get the Republican Congress to repeal Obamacare, enact protections for immigrants brought here illegally as children, and fund his border wall.

Trump tries to conceal his intellectual deficiency by insisting how smart he is. “I went to an Ivy League college,” he said last month. “I’m a very intelligent person.” He has to make such affirmations because all the evidence indicates his cranium contains an airless void.

I don’t mean to suggest his supporters are dumb. There are plenty of intelligent people who voted for him and plenty of stupid ones who didn’t. But the smart Trump supporters don’t hold his intellect in awe.

After Tillerson’s “moron” comment was reported, Trump said, “I guess we’ll have to compare IQ tests. And I can tell you who is going to win.”

I’m sure plenty of readers are now saying I’m the stupid one, with a brain far inferior to Trump’s. They may be right. So I put a challenge to him: We both take an IQ test, administered by an independent body, with the results to be made public. This is a great chance to dazzle the world with his peerless mind. It’s a chance for him to humiliate someone in the “fake news media” with his towering intellect.

But I’m betting Trump will never submit to any process that would document his actual intelligence for the public to see. He’s dumb. But not that dumb.

Congrats. You virtue signaled your hatred of Trump today. You’ve fulfilled your main reason for living. Now you can take rest of the day off.

If a person wants to get a PhD in nuclear physics from MIT, they can easily find a way for somebody else to pay for it. The extraordinary “benefit to he public” of a person like that will be appropriately rewarded. The new tax law won't adversely affect them.

If a person wants to get a PhD in Gender Studies from Appalachian State, they will never find a way for somebody else to pay for it. The microscopic “benefit to the public” of a person like that will be appropriately rewarded. The new tax law wioul absolutely adversely affect them, as well it should.

I'm pretty confident that you have no actual idea how these phd programs work.

bluetick wrote:Speaking of smarts..

Donald Trump's Biggest Flaw: He's Not that Bright - Chicago Tribune

This might be his biggest strength. It makes him relatable to people like Prof in a way that actual successful smart people can never be.

Professor Tiger wrote:Congrats. You virtue signaled your hatred of Trump today. You’ve fulfilled your main reason for living. Now you can take rest of the day off.

I'd ease up if he'll do away with the time change. That would actually MAGA. Until then..

Dumbass said last week that he had the world's greatest memory. This week he says he can't remember the meeting where his get-together with Putin was discussed. Ta-DA!

"This is further evidence that there is no such thing as “affordable” in the “Affordable Care Act.”"

I wonder why nobody has dubbed it the Unaffordable Care Act?

eCat wrote:

Tree wrote:

the government isn't providing us with health care, the government is forcing us to participate in a pyramid scheme

Not as if insurance in general isn't a scam and just a way for billionaires to take your money without providing any actual goods or services. Twice the per capita spending on average as other developed countries yet substantially worse care provided to Joe Blow. Do you think maybe this is a scandalous indication of how some things shouldn't be privatized, particularly our ability to stay healthy and alive?

completely opposite.

a big reason health care costs are exorbitant is because the government keeps writing blank checks and mandating coverage. When you say our ability to stay healthy and alive you have to decide if you want free market forces at work in the marketplace to keep costs down which means there will be some people that will not participate just as in every other free market activity or do you want the government throwing money at everyone and mandating coverage escalating costs. Health care by definition is inelastic. If you are in pain or face a life threatening situation, you aren't going to negotiate or shop around, and then add that the government is mandating everyone have it and pay for those who can't afford it and its the worst possible situation to support free market principles.

The only elasticity in the marketplace at the moment it to decide that you don't want insurance and are willing to take the penalty, However since the penalty isn't real and it doesn't offset costs into the larger pool of participants, then that also results in higher health care costs.

The problem with your approach is you attempt to have a compassionate response to a market condition. And not to put too fine a spin on it but another part of insurance cost increases before Obamacare was the mandate that hospitals couldn't turn away the uninsured. Now do I want a hurting child turned away from a hospital because his family can't pay? Of course not, but there is no free ride and we all pay for it.

If I'm a baker and for whatever reason the town determines that everyone must buy bread every day then supply and demand would dictate that prices go up. I'm going to price my bread at what the market will bear, and in this case, the market has been told they have to buy bread no matter what. And not only has the market said they have to buy my bread, but they have to buy my most expensive bread - the 9 grain with sesame seeds as opposed to the basic white loaf.

Now..the market place says for the people that can't afford the increased price of bread, we'll pay for it. What am I going to do as a baker? I'm going to raise prices even more because no matter what I charge, people are going to be coming thru that door to buy bread. Now I realize there is a host of rules with health insurance, ratios and the like but the point remains the same. In this analogy, the baker can't provide the cheapest bread even if he wanted to, and the consumer can't choose to forego having bread. The baker has no incentive to lower prices, nor do the people who supply the baker with flour and the like (hospitals and drug companies). Its a cash bonanza for everyone who is involved in the bread business.


Privatization in the health insurance marketplace isn't going to help everyone, it isn't going to include everyone. But just as we understand the government can't go into the marketplace and decide everyone must own a car and the car will be all electric with a range of 400 miles and a 5 star safety rating, and for those of you that can't afford it we'll pay for it, it can't do it for health care either. Its easy to understand why that car wouldn't be right for everyone, nor would be an effective way to sell cars in the marketplace, the same rules apply to health care.

Its unfortunate but the market without government involvement would address it - such as the wealth of urgent care clinics that provide lower cost alternatives to emergency room visits and "mini"-clinics that are add-on to a CVS or Krogers that can address head colds, flu-shots, ear aches, etc.,

"Let's just let the market sort everything out!" is the rallying cry of the neoliberal corporatists that have taken over both parties. We've been doing this at a frenzied pace since 1980 and all it ultimately does is create increasingly absurd wealth disparities. I get it. It sounds good on paper. Just like NAFTA, CAFTA, and all the other globalist economic policies/trade agreements. There are long winded detailed papers written by economists that tell us these things are ultimately for the good of everyone. In some ideal universe maybe they would all come to fruition too. But if you take a look around it's not working out so well in the real world. It's all failing miserably. You say "free market" but that really just means subordination to a tiny group of corporate elites. History shows very clearly that this type of power structure ends well 0% of the time.

As far as the ACA, I agree it's a faulty product. Forcing Americans to buy defective insurance basically functions as a bailout for big pharma and insurance companies. You probably already know that Obamacare = Romneycare from a few years earlier. The irony of course is that Obama is clearly a right winger yet the lunatics far out on the radical right were calling him a socialist. That should be the first sign something is seriously wrong with our political landscape.

You can call it a compassionate response but the reality is that it's in the Constitution. Not just to promote the general welfare, as it says in the preamble, but to provide for it, which is written later in the main body. As well as the fact the none of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" are possible if you're not in good health (or dead, obviously). Single payer is the only sane answer. We have the resources and the money to provide high quality, comprehensive life-long healthcare to every American. The only caveat is that you would be cutting out the ability of a small handful of billionaires to make a killing, which is something neither political party is able to support right now since both are owned, operated, bought and paid for by the billionaire class.

https://www.axios.com/profits-are-boomi ... 94773.html

Yeah, you really have to feel bad for the health insurers right? Ever since the gubmint took over healthcare they just withered away. If only we could let market forces do their work. Sad.

Just like NAFTA, CAFTA, and all the other globalist economic policies/trade agreements.

hmmm...and who put these into place? oh yea, the government.

the government, taking advantage of the system we have in place now can't take care of veterans - ideally the people they are most obligated to support and yet you believe our government can successfully implement single payer.

your faith in government as the answer to anything is badly misplaced and isn't based on history. as long as politicians are elected based on the desires of voters, then government is nothing more than a welfare provider to those casting the votes.

and health care is not demanded as constitution - promoting the general welfare doesn't mean you take on obligations you can't afford or administer to a select few in the masses at the expense of many. In the sense as written its about the government doing what a federal government can best do that individuals can't. There is absolutely no basis to believe the federal government can from a financial standpoint or an execution standpoint run a single payer health care system better than the health care we have today.

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy.

Obamacare forced everybody to buy health insurance. With a mandate like that, how could the big insurance companies NOT make huge profits?

bluetick wrote:https://www.axios.com/profits-are-boomi ... 94773.html

Yeah, you really have to feel bad for the health insurers right? Ever since the gubmint took over healthcare they just withered away. If only we could let market forces do their work. Sad.

posting that health insurance profits are booming in an era of mandated insurance coverage by the federal government and then taking a shot at market forces?

The government is the biggest market force...

eCat wrote:

bluetick wrote:https://www.axios.com/profits-are-boomi ... 94773.html

Yeah, you really have to feel bad for the health insurers right? Ever since the gubmint took over healthcare they just withered away. If only we could let market forces do their work. Sad.

posting that health insurance profits are booming in an era of mandated insurance coverage by the federal government and then taking a shot at market forces?

I'd be curious to hear about your coverage. eCat. I doubt you went through the Marketplace for it - I'm thinking you have group coverage through your employer.

My agency has written a ton of group policies and I've yet to compete with federal government on any of them. My biggest complaint is Blue Cross doesn't pay commissions like they used to and they don't cruise me and the wife all over the Caribbean like the old days. But we still have to compete with the John Deeres and the Humanas and the Aetnas. Maybe things work differently where you live.

bluetick wrote:

eCat wrote:

bluetick wrote:https://www.axios.com/profits-are-boomi ... 94773.html

Yeah, you really have to feel bad for the health insurers right? Ever since the gubmint took over healthcare they just withered away. If only we could let market forces do their work. Sad.

posting that health insurance profits are booming in an era of mandated insurance coverage by the federal government and then taking a shot at market forces?

I'd be curious to hear about your coverage. eCat. I doubt you went through the Marketplace for it - I'm thinking you have group coverage through your employer.

My agency has written a ton of group policies and I've yet to compete with federal government on any of them. My biggest complaint is Blue Cross doesn't pay commissions like they used to and they don't cruise me and the wife all over the Caribbean like the old days. But we still have to compete with the John Deeres and the Humanas and the Aetnas. Maybe things work differently where you live.

not sure what that has to do with what I posted.

bluetick wrote:https://www.axios.com/profits-are-boomi ... 94773.html

Yeah, you really have to feel bad for the health insurers right? Ever since the gubmint took over healthcare they just withered away. If only we could let market forces do their work. Sad.

If the insurance companies are making so much money then why are liberals upset the Don cut the subsidies to them?

sardis wrote:

bluetick wrote:https://www.axios.com/profits-are-boomi ... 94773.html

Yeah, you really have to feel bad for the health insurers right? Ever since the gubmint took over healthcare they just withered away. If only we could let market forces do their work. Sad.

If the insurance companies are making so much money then why are liberals upset the Don cut the subsidies to them?

Because the difference would have been paid by the low income people in need of the subsidies, duh. What, did you think the insurance companies were going to re-file for lower rates in every state to make up the difference?

The best answer to our patchwork system of healthcare has always been medicare for all. It's a testament to the power of the lobby money machine money that we still remain the only country in the free world that operates an employer-based healthcare scheme.

your faith in government as the answer to anything is badly misplaced and isn't based on history. as long as politicians are elected based on the desires of voters, then government is nothing more than a welfare provider to those casting the votes.

Not as misplaced as your faith in markets and billionaires. At least government is still responsive to the people to some extent, as you yourself indicate with the quote later in the post. The US is a welfare state full stop. The problem is the corporate elites get everything they want. Every tax cut, every law designed to transfer wealth from the middle class, every SCOTUS decision that let's them buy any judge seat and political office up to and including the POTUS, every needless war that fills their coffers with treasure on the blood and backs of the poor, etc. And this on top of an economic system that by its very nature kicks most of everything up the ladder to the few at the top. But when the little guy gets a few stigmatized scraps to put food on the table and stay alive, Hannity and co. point a finger and shout "socialism!" It's an absurdity.

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy.

Righties like to trot that out as if they don't understand our gov't was designed to have limited democracy. Since 1980 almost every bit of new wealth created has gone to the 1%. We're pushing 2/3 of the country that's at or near the poverty line. The number of Americans living paycheck to paycheck with no retirement or healthcare to speak of is staggering. And all the right has to offer is "should have had more personal responsibility", as if a few hundred million folks are lazy. In what way are markets going to fix any of this? We're basically in the middle of a second robber baron era. How about let's get Americans back on their feet before we worry about a tyranny of the masses situation, something that's never happened or come close to happening in this country.

But when the little guy gets a few stigmatized scraps to put food on the table and stay alive

"In 2013, according to the Census Bureau, there were 105,862,000 full-time year-round workers in the United States -- including 16,685,000 full-time government workers. These full-time workers were outnumbered by the 109,631,000 whom the Census Bureau says were getting benefits from means-tested federal programs -- e.g. welfare -- as of the fourth quarter of 2012.

"Every American family that pays its own way -- and takes care of its own children whether with one or two incomes -- must subsidize the 109,631,000 on welfare."

Now those numbers include the elderly and children but those numbers are not trivial. This idea that our government turns a blind eye to the needy and focuses on benefiting those with their own lobbyists is absurd.

Your vision of a benevolent federal government already exists and its unsustainable.

now I'm sure with the rebounding economy those numbers have changed back in favor of the workers, but when you talk about the 1% or the 5% or whatever % you determine is the fortunate few, you forget that the progressive tax system is also setup to where those people pay far more than their share in government taxes. That top 1% is responsible for paying almost 40% of the taxes, and the top 50% of earners in this country paid a staggering 97% of the taxes. Half the voters in this country are in a position to vote for a candidate or policy that benefits them without any concern as to what their contribution back should be.

Your benevolent government now says you owe $154,000 to continue to support the economy, our foreign policy and our current income stability programs and you believe its in the best interest for them to take on the role of administering a single payer system where health care is a "breadcrumb" for the impoverished while looking to one half of the country to foot the bill.

So my faith in the market is irrelevant to the extent that I cannot support an unsustainable federal fiscal policy, nor the reality that a country where 100% of the people vote on how 1% of the population should foot the bill is going to end well in the long run , especially when "promoting the general welfare" is deemed a responsibility for government to provide health care and god knows what else as it in the future. Hence the $154K that everyone who reads this currently owes the federal government. That number will not decrease. So I have no choice but to support a market base approach, and had we addressed immigration, free trade, foreign policy and education in a responsible manner for the last 40 or so years - and not at the hands of lobbyists and pay for play politicians, the market would have addressed this long ago. Had the federal government not bailed out the auto and housing markets, the market would have self corrected to the extent that auto and housing would be affordable. Had the federal government not seen fit to write a blank check for their contribution to health care, we'd see many more market solutions to affordable care.

The problem isn't that crooked businessmen wanted to have their say, its that crooked politicians listened -and you continue to believe that "your" politicians aren't the ones to blame for this. That you have the ability to elect responsible and foresighted politicians that will solve our problems and create a worldview where everyone prospers. Your Elizabeth Warrens fighting for the needy, decrying the excesses of Wall Street and income inequality living in a $2 million dollar home and is the 34th richest Senator.

The country is full of people like you who feel their vision of what the country should do for the less fortunate should be forced upon those who can afford it so you can feel good about it.

It's a shame we don't have more guns in this country, Texas especially. We do have a lot of thoughts and prayers, though, which really seem to be working.