Progressives (Liberals)

@Lash,

Quote:

It's not anti-semitism to speak the truth about Israel's actions against Palestinians.

Of course not. But even back in the early days of Abuzz, there was a group of extremists who argued that any criticism of Israeli government policies was axiomatically an instance of anti-Semitism. The content of those posts made it clear these were Likud supporters (or later, Kadima supporters).

Such notions became a major propaganda theme for Israel's right which continues today. The movement to boycott Israel for its treatment of Palestinians and for it's transparent theft of Palestinian lands was correctly seen as a threat to the Israeli right and thus it became a central target in this on-going propaganda operation.

Right wing governments in Britain and the US are complicit, overtly so:

Quote:

U.K. Plans to Pass Anti-B.D.S. Law
The new Conservative government plans to pass a law restricting local authorities from participating in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement

. See Here

Quote:

Trump Targets Anti-Semitism and Israeli Boycotts on College Campuses
The president’s order would allow the government to withhold money from campuses deemed to be biased, but critics see it as an attack on free speech.

Here

As Walt and Mearsheimer detailed in "The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy", the term "Israel Lobby" is more correctly understood as "the Likud lobby".

2 Replies

@snood,

It is impressive. Good for him.

0 Replies

@hightor,

I have found her to be somewhat all over the board, but in a way I like that she is different and I appreciate the anti war message which is her main thrust. Because she's different than most politicians that are in the game she seem off, but that just may be skewed expectations from seeing so many cookie-cutter politicians.

1 Reply

@blatham,

Quote:

Right wing governments in Britain and the US are complicit, overtly so:

U.K. Plans to Pass Anti-B.D.S. Law
The new Conservative government plans to pass a law restricting local authorities from participating in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement

American right wing led by the GOP, Pelosi and Schumer...
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/04/boycott-divestment-sanctions-democratic-party-netanyahu

Excerpt:
Before, the Democratic leadership and more hard-line pro-Israel Democrats might have been content to let S.R. 1 die a quiet death in the House, a failed Republican scheme to divide and shame the Democrats amidst the Trump-induced government shutdown. But after the flimsy allegations of antisemitism against BDS-supporting Rep. Ilhan Omar blew up, fifty-seven Democrats and fifty-two Republicans between the Senate and the House have found a way to resuscitate the effort by co-sponsoring the two new bills. Thanks to the eager participation of these key Democrats, the new anti-BDS bills have removed the poison pill boycott language, instead simply offering a broad condemnation of BDS and its supporters, which reads like a not-so-subtle smear of certain members of the Democratic caucus.

If Nancy Pelosi ends up letting the new House bill go up for a vote, she, and a significant chunk of the Democrats in Congress, will have successfully done the dirty work of the Republican Party and the Israeli government, for little political gain. As the Israeli military continues to shoot unarmed protesters in Gaza and the thrice-indicted Benjamin Netanyahu romances yet another ultranationalist world leader, the leadership of the Democratic Party has decided to focus their energy on making an example out of Ilhan Omar and the growing number of Americans disillusioned with US policy in Israel and Palestine.

Rather than acknowledge and engage with the emergent Democratic left wing, party leaders have aligned with their stated enemies. Ten years ago, these leaders might logically have feared the hammer of AIPAC retribution. But there’s an opening now that didn’t exist previously. As both the Israeli government and the American pro-Israel movement make plain their right-wing nature, Democrats are squandering an opportunity to go in precisely the opposite direction — to meaningfully change American policy, and to protect critics of the Israeli government and the Israel lobby.

In the weeks since Ilhan Omar first drew the attention of the Israel lobby and its fellow travelers, there has been nothing short of a sea change on how Israel and Palestine are discussed in Democratic politics, at least among the party’s base and its professional rank and file. The first sign of this shift was in the responses to the antisemitism accusations made against Omar; among the near dozen major 2020 contenders, not a single one lined up to condemn her, even though virtually all but Bernie Sanders have deep ties to pro-Israel donors and institutions. The Congressional Black Caucus, whose leadership has been close to the Israel lobby for a while now, privately told the Democratic Party to back off the freshman from Minnesota. Last week, a MoveOn.org survey found that 74 percent of the advocacy group’s supporters wanted Democratic presidential candidates to skip the AIPAC Policy Conference altogether, prompting an official call for Democrats to boycott the event — something no mainstream progressive group has ever done before. It is no wonder that candidates like Elizabeth Warren and Beto O’Rourke are feeling emboldened to call out Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption and his embrace of racists.

Omar’s remarks alone did not create these fissures. Netanyahu pissed off the Congressional Black Caucus, for example, back in 2015 when he accepted an unusual invitation from the Republicans to condemn sitting President Barack Obama from the floor of Congress. This came just a few years after Netanyahu scolded Obama during an Oval Office press conference, saying that a peace process “is not gonna happen,” and just a few years before Obama signed off on a $38 billion military aid package to Israel. These incidents created valuable political currency for Netanyahu: on Thursday, Netanyahu shared a video of the eight-year-old White House exchange on Twitter with critical narration from PBS still in the audio, as if wide-eyed liberal horror at Israel wagging the dog of American power was a badge of honor.
_____________________________________________

Things like this point to the division in the D party. Little light between Ds and Rs.

2 Replies

@Brand X,

I agree. I think we will see a new batch of politicians who stake out their own policies rather than march lockstep with policy dictated from some 80 year old power-broker down the hall.

And, I do love that.

I respect more than a few of Tulsi's positions, but overall, I distrust her, primarily because of her [allegiance, relationship, support?] of Modi.

A believable clarification of that might sway me. Not sure.

0 Replies

@Lash,

Quote:

Little light between Ds and Rs.

That is a stupid, uneducated claim of equivalence or near equivalence. This bill and any similar to it have originated in right wing circles. You need to read Walt and Mearsheimer's work London Review of Books carried a much shortened version of the book here to get a better grasp of how well funded, how pervasive and how effective this long-running campaign has been.

You also need to read American Jewish writers like Peter Beinart on how American Jews (particularly younger Jews) have been increasingly disaffected from Israeli politics by the policies and actions of Israel's right wing governments and the actions of the lobby.

If you want to make an argument that this lobby has also managed to capture too many in the Dem party, that's entirely fine and it's fleshed out in W & M's work. But to suggest anything close to equivalence is counter-factual.

1 Reply

@georgeob1,

georgeob1 wrote:

Your statistical analysis - or at least the inference you drew from it - here is here is entirely incorrect.

I'm willing to concede your superiority when it comes to statistics, but there's something I don't understand here. Maybe there's a lurking teachable moment!

The ACA was put into place to provide affordable coverage for people who weren't covered by their employers or had substandard policies.

Quote:

It's a fairly safe assumption that those who paid the penalty had no other insurance coverage.

Agreed.

Quote:

The total population includes the disjoint sets of (1) those who paid the penalty. (2) those who chose OBAMACARE coverage, and (3) those with other qualifying insurance, whether employment-based or simply privately paid.

Okay.

Quote:

On the face of it, the universe of OBAMACARE eligible people is the total of Groups #1 and #2. That means that roughly 25% of those subject to the OBAMACARE requirement rejected the coverage entirely.

Okay, so here's what I'm trying to understand. Not everyone who lacked coverage actually wanted coverage. I know a bunch of those guys. They all work in the shadows, claiming to work as independent contractors so their boss can write them off as subcontractors. They're not particularly health conscious and if they have children their kids are covered by a state program. They make good money and were not eligible for ACA subsidies. There was no way they were going to sign up to pay $12,000 a year for an insurance policy they didn't want (or think they needed) and paying the $470 penalty was a bargain. So I'm not sure the (dropping) rejection rate really tells us that much about the success of the program. What we know for sure is that millions of people who wanted health coverage got it. It's almost like there should be another category, group #4 — people who don't want to pay for any insurance coverage. And I think those people need to be included in any assessment of the ACA's success rate and compared to the entire potential market for health coverage.

1 Reply

@Lash,

Trolling: Time to Realize what Smearing Palestinian Rights Activists as “anti-Semitic” Really is

4 Replies

Axios
‏
Verified account

@axios
5h5 hours ago
More
Andrew Yang's 2020 presidential campaign said that it raised $16.5 million during 2019's fourth quarter — with a $1.3 million haul on New Year's Eve alone.

0 Replies

@revelette3,

Thank you! I used to real Cole regularly but he kind of fell off my radar. It's a great piece.

1 Reply

@hightor,

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I generally agree with your comments, including the suggestion that at least a very large fraction of those who paid the penalty didn't want any insurance at all and would likely have not have been insured at all- even in the absence of Obamacare. The designers of Obamacare logically wanted maximum participation in the program to spread the insurance risk over the largest possible field of premium payers, just as do commercial insurance policies. However, because this was a political process and not simply one of selected applicable coverage, appropriate for the buyer (as in those tiresome Liberty Mutual commercials - "only pay for what you need") the mandated coverage was larded up with politically motivated mandatory coverage, including routine medical screening and treatment, and women's reproductive health coverage in all policies.) The immediate result was that many healthy young men were even more inclined not to participate. This raises some interesting questions about just who needs what in terms of medical insurance. The best insurance bet for the young and healthy (and some people of limited means) is high deductible catastrophic care coverage.

The rub here is how do you preserve individual freedom and, at the same time maximize coverage for all? The German system (which as Walter Hindler invariably reminds us) goes back to the Bismarck era in the 19th century. It is based on mandatory insurance for all. The government mandates insurance coverage for all, and at the same time provides (for a fixed fee) a default minimum policy available to all who decline regular commercial policies meeting the specified minimum requirements. I'm not familiar with all the details of this minimal coverage, however that is basically how their system works. I think it makes a lot more sense than either government run national health services or government managed insurance programs for all.

I believe our insurance industry is reasonably effective and that the most effective thing we could do to maximize competition and bring about affordable quality coverage would be to remove the state barriers for insurance providers, enabling each to compete nationally. Government bureaucrats generally can't resist controlling things directly, and invariably move and adjust more slowly than do commercial activities accountable to their clients (who can fire them at will).

1 Reply

@blatham,

Me too. I think, with me, it has become all things Trump. I think as a nation, we've got to wean ourselves away from that, as hard as he makes it to ignore him.

2 Replies

The following is a thought provoking piece.

Why Pete Buttigieg Enrages the Young Left

(a selected part of it)

Quote:

The resentment he inspires runs much deeper than that earned by the Amy Klobuchars and Michael Bennets of the world—both of whom have more politically moderate tendencies than Buttigieg, who has, among other positions, argued for raising the minimum wage to $15, introducing a public health care option, expanding the size of the Supreme Court and abolishing the Electoral College. (Asked for comment for this article, a representative from the Buttigieg campaign told Politico that staffers are occasionally vexed by the cold reception to a platform that’s well to the left of any recent Democratic presidential nominee.)

The unspoken truth about the furor Buttigieg arouses is that his success threatens a core belief of young progressives: that their ideology owns the future, and that the rise of millennials into Democratic politics is going to bring an inevitable demographic triumph for the party’s far left wing.

The left believes the youth are on its side—and as shown by Bernie Sanders’ popularity among the under-30 set, as shown in a recent Quinnipiac poll, they’re apparently right. In a primary debate with the incumbent former Rep. Joe Crowley, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said, “I represent not just my campaign, but a movement.” Mobilized young Democratic Socialists of America members have raved to the New York Times about how the DSA is “what the Democratic Party should be.” Waleed Shahid, spokesman for the Ocasio-Cortez-aligned Justice Democrats, has dramatized the generational struggle by interpolating a famous Gramsci quote with his pinned tweet: “The old America is dying. A new America is struggling to be born. Now is a time of monsters.”

So it’s especially galling that the first millennial to take a serious run at the presidency is nothing like the left’s imagined savior. Buttigieg is a veteran, an outspoken Christian, a former McKinsey consultant, and, frankly, closer to Mitt Romney than Sanders or generational peer AOC in his aw shucks personal affect. In the eyes of radicalized young leftists, Buttigieg isn’t just an ideological foe, he’s worse than that: He’s a square.

1 Reply

@georgeob1,

[url="georgeob1"]The German system (which as Walter Hindler invariably reminds us) goes back to the Bismarck era in the 19th century. It is based on mandatory insurance for all. The government mandates insurance coverage for all, and at the same time provides (for a fixed fee) a default minimum policy available to all who decline regular commercial policies meeting the specified minimum requirements. I'm not familiar with all the details of this minimal coverage, however that is basically how their system works.[/url]
Risking that George calls me again a nitpicker:

The compulsory health insurance was introduced with the establishment of the statutory health insurance in 1883.
In the guilds of the late Middle Ages, guild members provided social and financial security in case of illness, especially within their professional groups - this is to what the German health insurance system goes back.

(Since 1287, our family name was written sometimes different to what it is since more than 450 years now, but "Hindler" no-one of my ancestors has been called ever. Wink

)

1 Reply

@revelette3,

Even if he loses next election the media will follow his tweets every minute, I fear we will never be rid of him in a daily way until he dies.

1 Reply

@Brand X,

God, say it ain't so. There is whole world and all it's troubles and triumphs we have been ignoring.

1 Reply

@revelette3,

Quote:

God, say it ain't so.

Trump is a result of the Obama administrations piss poor job. Take some responsibility for that.

1 Reply

@coldjoint,

Setting aside your comment's credence, do I sense a crack in Trump love?

1 Reply

Democrats' 2020 split risks handing Trump a big advantage

Quote:

Analysis: Even without a consensus standard-bearer, Democrats could make the case for their party if they could agree on a direction — other than away from the president.

Quote:

"As difficult as it is to hear, Trump is and will be a formidable 2020 opponent," said Chris Kofinis, a veteran strategist who has worked on Democratic presidential campaigns. "Regardless of the nominee, he's going to be tough to beat, arguably tougher than in 2016, because his base is rock solid and independents remain more split than we realize."

0 Replies

@revelette3,

Of course, after the appointment of Jared, we all thought middle east issues would be quickly resolved so our attention went elsewhere.

1 Reply

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