I would much rather see punishment (which in the case of 2008 was nonexistent) of those who were guilty of breaking existing laws as an alternative to adding new laws which increase cost and legal exposure for everyone, the guilty and innocent alike.
Still worse is when the new laws not only don’t solve the problem, they exacerbate it. The Dodd-Frank law bakes in bailouts for the TBTF players, so they don’t even have to go begging to Congress like they did in 2008.
And the result, which should be to exactly no one’s surprise…
You say bold, people like my family say batshit insane. Well… look at the GOP, Batshit insane seems to work really fucking well, so… ALL ABOAAAARD THE CRAZY TRAIN!
Here on BB, the consensus seems to be that the lunatic fringe is anyone to the right of John Kasich.
I’ve gotten used to it, not least because I like to test my opinions against the opposition, rather than marinate them in a broth of comforting groupthink.
I’ve had a couple of dozen posts deleted on BB, and I’ve had a couple of dozen posts deleted on Free Republic, too.
That was more a matter of partisan calculation with an election on the horizon and a nation under severe economic duress than it was a statement of principal on most Congresspeople’s parts. Taking the approach of your section of the Libertarian world (doing nothing at all) would have meant a repeat of Herbert Hoover’s mistakes in 1929-1930.
The blank-cheque bailout was extremely problematic in that there weren’t enough conditions attached to how the TARP funds could be applied (although as I recall, some of the Republicans voted against it because they felt there were too many conditions) and because they didn’t break up the banks, but letting all of them go down the drain at once would have been even worse (GM, in contrast, deserved to be left to die).
Throwing some high-profile banksters in the slammer as an example would have been nice, but adding new laws would have made a difference. For instance, in regard to what you discuss, re-instating a modern version of Glass-Steagall (which in essence would have also broken up the TBTF banks) and converting the bond-rating agencies into not-for-profits paid by buyers alone would have greatly reduced the possibility of a new housing bubble based on risky lending to speculators.
I’d allow that except for the fact that your arguments are generally as fallacious and specious as those of overgrown HS debate club members who legitmately score a 0 or 1 (e.g Gingrich and Cruz), and that you regularly portray anyone here who argues for things like single-payer universal healthcare as scoring an 8 or 9. That’s why you’re regarded here as being closer to the lunatic fringe than you might be in reality.
My only real problems with single payer are with those who advocate for it without running the numbers (the numbers were run in Vermont, Colorado, and California) and those who oppose allowing supplemental private plans (which are allowed in most but not all single payer nations).
Show me a single payer plan that provides the access to care that Americans with good employer paid plans are used to, and which reimburses providers at a level which encourages adequate supply, and which makes actuarial sense over the coming decades, and there is a good chance I would get on board.
What I don’t want to see is something like Medicare, or like Obamacare, where income=outgo at the beginning, but is financially not sustainable in the long run.
To spell it out: health insurance with a deductible of more than a few hundred dollars is essentially null and void for most Americans. It provides zero benefit outside of extraordinary circumstances.
Forcing people to pay for functionally non-existent healthcare does not help them. It hurts them.
The pre-ACA situation was diabolical. The post-ACA situation is still diabolical.
If you’re going to socialise healthcare, as you should, you need to do it properly.
Best comment on a crummy article labeling Bernie Saunders as “far left” for his healthcare ideas:
Someone needs to explain to Lawrence that the first national health insurance system was established in 1883 in Germany. But I don’t recall many describing Bismarck as “far left”.
Yes, poor people won’t vote Democrat because the GOP in Texas refused the Medicaid expansion and the high deductibles screwed over the lower middle class GOP voting households in Texas. Clearly, the Democrats should have instead opted to do absolutely nothing about healthcare instead, because the mass media that caused the Democrats to lose congress over healthcare clearly would have not had the same effect as passing Obamacare.
There is absolutely zero logic or reason applied to this twitter rant.
