Obama '08?

@realjohnboy,

I hope you're right RJB. I really do.

I work for the banking industry, and I paid very close attention to the credit CARD act that was passed last year and went into effect in February (my whole company did). I remember many of the politicans saying how this would make credit cheaper for people. We know now what the banking industry did based on this legislation....we know that prices didn't go down (overall, for some people, credit did become cheaper, but overall it went up).

I see the insurance companies doing the same thing.

I would have been much much happier with something like expanded Medicare coverage.

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THIS IS WHAT LIES AHEAD OF AMERICANS IF WE DO NOT STOP VOTING OURSELVES MONEY FROM THE THE PUBLIC TREASURE!

1778: Alexander Fraser Tytler, better known as Lord Woodhouselee in 1778, wrote:

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average of the world's greatest civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, and from dependency back to bondage.

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ican, the master of the totally inaccurate cut-and-paste strikes again, having posted the same completely mistaken quote already twenty or thirty times.

First, Tytler never said that, nor did he ever write the book from which that quote is supposed to have come. As far as can be dteermined, it was originally used by a business executive who recycled his various speeches and first used that passage in his speeches around 1946., apparently to lend an air of spurious antiquity to his words. No one has ever been able to find it in Tytler's writings.
http://www.lorencollins.net/tytler.html

Second, if he is supposed to have said it in 1787 he used a test case of just one: Athens. We have many more to draw from today, and we know that the supposed conclusions and supposed inevitable stages are just flatly not true. He didn't even use the obvious counterexample, Switzerland, which has been a form of republic for over 700 years, a direct democracy since the 1840's, and is today one of the richest, most stable countries, in the world, somehow managing not to spend itself into the quote's supposed inevitable oblivion for more than seven centuries. The supposed Woodhouselee statement completely fails, even on the evidence available in 1787, let alone today.

If ican were really interested in the actual causes of economic problems in democracies, he would look at the greed and gaming of the system by the financial institutions he so adores, which came close to bringing thw world down, until those governments re-stabilized things with measures like Obama's stimulus plans. It is those dangers inherent in the boom-and-bust cycles that the free marketeer's hubris seems to inevitably bring on that can prove to be our downfall, rather than ican's and whoever-it-was who actually wrote his quote's MYTHICAL attempt to pin it on citizens' endless feeding from public funds.

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@MontereyJack,

well said, thanx.

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@ican711nm,

ican711nm wrote:

THIS IS WHAT LIES AHEAD OF AMERICANS IF WE DO NOT STOP VOTING OURSELVES MONEY FROM THE THE PUBLIC TREASURE!

1778: Alexander Fraser Tytler, better known as Lord Woodhouselee in 1778, wrote:
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average of the world's greatest civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, and from dependency back to bondage.

No, no, no, no, no. Fillibustering on a public web-forum has no impact on legislation. No A2K posts are forwarded to Congress.

Someone should have told you that.

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While wandering around Rasmussen this evening wondering if there were any new polls on Senate races (which there were and I have duly reported on), I ran into a new Rasmussen feature introduced yesterday: The Media Meter! Every day you can view a pie-chart showing how many "articles" deemed favorable to President Obama had been published vs how many were considered unfavorable.
For Monday it was 60%-40% favorable. Okay, I have an issue with who decides what is favorable or unfavorable. And then I saw the raw numbers: 7,000 favorable vs 4,600 unfavorable. 11,600 articles?
I dug into the methodology of this thing. An article is defined as not only something coming from what little main stream media still survives but also anything found in the blogosphere. So the unemployed political science grad living in his mom's basement and sitting in his underwear all day, typing away pretending to be an expert on something, counts.
But, wait, there is more! The Presidential pie chart is free. But for a fee, you can also get the Media Meter! on "...(O)ther political figures, celebrities, sports teams..." How much would you be willing to pay for that?
Sorry for the rant.
Actually, I am not.

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Will someone be so good as to promise to post the rise( or fall) of insurance premiums in October 2010? I would bet that they rise. The prospect of new enrollees making insurance companies richer is simplistic. If, as the legislation provides, there is to be no bar for people with pre-existing conditions, it is quite clear that those people will be very very costly. It would appear that the insurance companies will not be able to charge them high premiums.

Anyone who knows anything about automobile insurance knows that people who have piled up a few DUI's or have totalled several autos due to speeding, knows that those people cannot obtain automobile insurance. Insurance companies have judged that they will cost them too much even though they may have to pay higher premiums.

Now, Obamacare tells us that the people with pre-existing conditions will not have higher premiums and must be accepted by insurance companies.

Anyone who thinks that Insurance Companies, no matter how well funded, will .not go out of business under such conditions, is not rational.

All of this, of course, awaits the disposition of the court cases filed by ten or more Attorney Generals of various states which hold that the Federal Government does not have the power to compel people by fining them to buy health insurance. This is a compulsion, that under the Constitution, the Federal Government does not have. "Powers not expressly given to the Federal Government are reserved to the states". The varied Attorney Generals are stating that the so called "commerce clause" does not work in these circumstances since there is really no "commerce" involved. Stay Tuned!!!

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@MASSAGAT,

Quote:

All of this, of course, awaits the disposition of the court cases filed by ten or more Attorney Generals of various states which hold that the Federal Government does not have the power to compel people by fining them to buy health insurance.

It won't see the light of an appeal once it gets tossed. Medicare currently fines people that don't buy into Medicare B. Do the Republicans really want to mess with Teapartiers medicare?

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@MASSAGAT,

Quote:

Anyone who thinks that Insurance Companies, no matter how well funded, will .not go out of business under such conditions, is not rational.

An insurance company will go out of business if it raises premiums to pay for the coverage it's offering?

I don't think I'm the one that needs to worry about being rational.

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@realjohnboy,

John, you one slick salesman, but I guess I'll pass on the Media Meter.

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@ican711nm,

ican711nm wrote:

THIS IS WHAT LIES AHEAD OF AMERICANS IF WE DO NOT STOP VOTING OURSELVES MONEY FROM THE THE PUBLIC TREASURE!

1778: Alexander Fraser Tytler, better known as Lord Woodhouselee in 1778, wrote:
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure.

This does not follow. If the quote is truth, and you claim the point of discovery is reached, then it is far too late.

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@parados,

Under Obamacare, insurance premiums will be carefully scrutinized? You evidently missed the President's excoriation of insurance company premiums.
When people who have pre-existing conditions are mandated to be covered by insurance companies, only people who know nothing about medicine will not understand that costs to insurance companies will skyrocket for everyone.

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@parados,

Medicare does not fine people who do not pay into Medicare B. Those people just do not get the service. We will see if the court case does not get into Appeals. At the same time, thirty or more states are arranging to pass laws which will exempt their citizens from being fined for not purchasing insurance under the Obamahealth plan. We shall see what the result is.

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@parados,

Vital information:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/03/24/a_generous_dose_of_caution_on_health_reform_104898.html

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Well, no, thirty or more states are not"arranging to pass laws which will exempt their citizens from the law". Bills have been filed in 30 some states, a very different matter All kinds of wacko bills are filed everyday. All kinds of .interest groups get some legislator to file a bill. Most of them never get acted on, and of those that do, only a small number get passed. There's no read on how many, or even any, of those bills will pass.

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@MontereyJack,

Well stay tuned. THIRTEEN Attorney Generals have signed on to the lawsuit against the government.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. " Attorneys general from 13 states are suing the federal government to stop the massive health care overhaul, claiming it's unconstitutional.

The lawsuit was filed seven minutes after President Barack Obama signed the overhaul bill Tuesday. It names the U.S. departments of Health and Human Services, Treasury and Labor.

Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum is taking the lead in the lawsuit. Attorneys general from South Carolina, Nebraska, Texas, Michigan, Utah, Pennsylvania, Alabama, South Dakota, Louisiana, Idaho, Washington and Colorado are joining in. Other GOP attorneys general may join the lawsuit later or sue separately.

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Yep, all of 'em Republicans (except one who did it because his Republican governor asked him to). Wonder why that is. Sore losers, without much of a constitutional leg to stand on.

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@MontereyJack,

Note source for above:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iPveCNnU4JMQcLZ9tNU8My_kPylwD9EKEL4O2

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sure, it's the same AP story everyone's using, all Republicans but one, just as I said.

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@MontereyJack,

Note:

Idaho first to sign law aimed at health care plan
By JOHN MILLER (AP) " 6 days ago

BOISE, Idaho " Idaho took the lead in a growing, nationwide fight against health care overhaul Wednesday when its governor became the first to sign a measure requiring the state attorney general to sue the federal government if residents are forced to buy health insurance.

Similar legislation is pending in 37 other states.

______________________________________________________Of course, if these states are disregarded for some reason, the people of these states will become even more angry at the Obama Administration.

Those who think this anger is not palpable have only to review the polls. At this time, there are only two or three Democratic Senators who lead in the polls in thier states and two of those have challengers who only lag behind them by 3 or 4 percentage points. The rest, like Lincoln and Reid are far behind.

Only 224 days until Nov. 2, 2010!

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