What evidence is there to suggest that any tax cut package–whether it’s an extension of the Bush/Obama tax cuts or some post-January ‘compromise’–will not include continued or additional breaks for the wealthy?

“A more progressive tax cut” is an incredibly low standard to meet.

Why does this matter? His returns will, at best, reveal him to be even higher up in the top of the top of the 1%. They may reveal some criminal misbehavior (or not). Otherwise they’re unlikely to be interesting with respect to whether he is fit to govern as President or not. I don’t need to see his tax returns, and neither does anybody else, to know that he’s not fit to govern the 99%.

This seems like a big distraction.

Oh, but we have to support them, because at least they’re democrats, and it’s too critical an election year to lose seats, and we need a big(ger) tent, etc.

The shifting goal posts are ridiculous.

I work for a health care provider, too. I’m not sure that IT will reduce costs. There is a big-time “brand-name recognition” based impetus when it comes to the purchasing of IT services. Exchanging the cost savings generated by improved efficiency for cost increases generated by using Microsoft/Oracle/Other-Closed-and-Licensed “solutions” isn’t ideal, in my opinion. I really wish PPACA had addressed the issue of electronic health care records and the like much more thoroughly.

His evidence is likely that Democrats passed it. The Heritage Foundation’s (and AHIP’s and Big PhRMA’s) health “reform” bill that passed, as anybody who cares to actually visit google or a library can find out, is structurally what the Republicans proposed as a counterweight to the health reform actions of the Clinton’s in the early 90s. I’d bet $10 right now that the Democrats of today who were around back then were in a vein-popping rage at how heinous and evil the plan was then (because Republicans were putting it out there).

The whole thing is a farce.

You do realize it’s possible to cast votes in any given election and still not cast a particular vote in a particular race, right?

What you’re doing here is attempting to conflate political participation, voting, with voting on a specific ballot line.

I guess you didn’t read the part of my comment about how the argument you’re peddling is irrelevant, with the supporting information below, yes?

Time to Move On, as it were, from over a decade ago and get with actual reality as it is now. Not that your version of the historical realty then is anything but fantasy, either…

The whole “would Gore have been better than Bush” is irrelevant, because the purpose of that argument is to distract by means of a factually incorrect assertion (namely, that petty, pouty, spiteful leftists who voted Nader instead of Gore cost Gore the election, so Bush’s presidency and all its consequences is their fault).

The fact is that more Democrats voted for Bush than Nader. And, in Florida, the percentage of Nader voters who would have voted for Bush had Nader not run was something like 25% (for Gore it was something like 40%). Nevertheless there is a persistent cadre of Democratic Party loyalists who insist on pushing this empirically false assertion, but the total number of Bush Voters Who Were Democrats absolutely dwarfs the Nader Voter count regardless of what they would have done had Nader not run. Gore lost because he ran an ineffectual campaign and distanced himself from Clinton. Period. It’s not Nader’s fault. It’s not Bush’s fault. It’s not even the reprehensible SCOTUS’S fault, because had Gore actually run a higher quality campaign SCOTUS would not have been in the picture anyway.

Why this cadre insists on doing what they do is anybody’s guess. My best guess is they are blinded by their loyalty to the Party and, like their counterparts in the Republican party, just aren’t bright enough to consider any argument that doesn’t fit within their Party Loyalty orthodoxy.

In fact, it’s this same orthodoxy that leads this group of people to insist that “Not a Republican!” is a good campaign slogan to have on a bumper sticker (for example), when in reality nobody outside the hardcore 20% supporters (in either party) would even give a damn about that weak message.

Even sadder still, there are people who misrepresent those who once supported Obama and now do not, or those (on the left) who never supported him by claiming their argument is “there’s no difference between the two” and arguing against that strawman rather than attacking the actual argument, which is almost always actually “on these issues which impact us most, the differences between the two are so slight as to be negligible.” But do carry on with your hysterical strawman.

Anything for Team D, eh?

If you’re looking for allies at NN, you’re going to have to squint and take a long time. NN was started by Daily Kos with good intentions, but now exists, in my view, to server two purposes: 1) provide or maintain access to the beltway for “important” people (like Markos or surrogate organizers); 2) provide an indirect boost to Markos’ profits.

Until NN divests itself of the cadre of fanatical Democratic Party loyalists that run the show, it’s just another puppet in the kabuki.

But the mandate isn’t forcing people to pay for health care. It’s forcing people to pay for health insurance, which doesn’t necessarily lead to health care. That’s a key point, and one mandate supporters like to ignore, because it renders their argument void.

Well that’s a trite statement–almost tautological in character–and hardly in dispute. The question at hand is how must we all contribute as we are able, not whether. I imagine in the minds of some the two are identical; in fact they are quite distinct questions. Proponents of ACA try to claim the mandate settled the latter question, but that’s not the case, since we already all do support the health care system (not just emergency care) one way or another. Citizens too impoverished to have an income tax bill still pay state and local sales and other taxes that support Medicaid, anybody who earns an income is taxed to support Medicare, and anybody in the 1% whose income is entirely capital gains is still taxed, and that tax money supports health programs.

The mandate isn’t the correct answer to the question of “how” because it’s a transfer of wealth from citizens to private corporations that do not provide health care, who then dole out the money they’ve received as they see fit rather than as the patient and doctor determine is the best course of medical action. We already have “death panels,” in other words–they’re called “health insurance companies.” The model is demonstrably deficient and should have been scrapped.