and newcarguy and marymccurnin

:-)

Perhaps if the advocates of single-payer health care had found a way to be louder and had been allowed more space by the D.C. insiders to be louder, the public option would have looked more like the moderate compromise that it was. Instead, since progressive voices were muted, the public option began to look unacceptably progressive.

Boy, that’s rich given that the Administration co-opted MoveOn and union leaders, many of whose members initially supported single-payer, maneuvered those organizations into dropping single payer demands in favor of a public option, and finally got them to trade in their public option signs for the simple demand that the ACA be passed. If the groups flattered into impotence by the White House had instead joined forces with HealthcareNow (Physicians for a National Health Program, CA nurses unions), single payer advocates would have been a lot louder. Jones doesn’t get across the fact that the MoveOn et al crowd wasn’t so much timid as easily suckered.

Here’s an interview on Bill Moyers Journal. Yes, a neoliberal. His approach to getting HIV drugs to people in poor countries is to tell pharmaceutical companies:

Okay, so make as much money as you can on the HIV drugs in the first world. We will work with you to protect those markets and protect your intellectual property. On the other hand in those areas where you make no money anyway, work with us to make those drugs available.

How about a story headlined “9/11 Massacre Suspects Had Foreclosure Problems at Home”? Or “Taliban Insurgents Have Problems at Home.”

I don’t know about you, but I read what I could find about the socio-economic circumstances of these groups when they hit the news. Why wouldn’t I also want to read about contributing factors to Bales’ rampage? The point is to understand, not necessarily sympathize or diminish the victims.

These complications are pointless and unnecessary. Within the context of a badly designed system, I can understand the theoretical point of mandates. But in reality I know it will mean that my uninsured child will be forced to throw away money on an insurance policy that offers inadequate coverage.

This reminds me of net neutrality. What should have been an easy solution – the FCC could have reclassified the internet as a communications rather than an information service – has turned into a protracted and money-wasting battle in which the Administration is perceived to be fighting against recalcitrant Republicans.

My, what a confused family:

Bean was blacklisted by the Hollywood movie studios in the 1950s for attending two Communist Party meetings, but made numerous appearances on television and in the theater.[4] A conservative Christian, he came out in support of the Proposition 8 ballot initiative in California.[5][6] He was father-in-law to the late Andrew Breitbart and jokingly describes his own children, who are all married, as “little communists[7]“. He was once a proponent of Orgone therapy and published a book about it titled Me and the Orgone.

I think the CFPD is going to do a lot of good as long as Cordray is director.

If he’s permitted to act effectively. I don’t think commenters are skeptical of Cordray..

I can’t advocate that

So don’t help prepare the ground.

Do you know who the other people in the video were?

Thanks for the Rocky Anderson link. I sometimes forget what a presidential candidate with a heart sounds like.

And, the agency “wanted MI5 to find out where Chaplin was born and pursue suggestions that his real name was Israel Thornstein.”

Perhaps they meant Emmanuel Goldstein.

Education did well? Or Race to the Top did well? They seem to be mutually exclusive.

McClatchy’s story on the foreclosure settlement (which isn’t even the top story – that would be the contraception mandate) doesn’t give a sense of how inadequate it is. There are informative charts & graphs at the top but no real narrative about what they mean and the story is full of quotes like this:

Consumer advocacy groups applauded the settlement.

“Despite its limitations, the settlement requires real reforms in the mortgage servicing industry to stop sloppy business practices and out-and-out fraud. It also will help stabilize housing markets and property values by giving more homeowners a chance to restructure or refinance out of unaffordable loans that are underwater,” Michael Calhoun, the head of the Durham, N.C.-based Center for Responsible Lending, said in a statement.

I think on the perception management front, the Administration is probably doing okay.

Actual, not metaphorical, Potemkin villages.

Is that true? You’ve put an unpleasant image in my head. Never could stand that self-promoter Brown. The older he got, the less I liked him.