With 42% of the Iowa voters having made up their mind, Pete Buttigieg is now in second place in the Democratic field with 19% in the latest Washington Post poll. That’s not definitive but it is a very good position for Mayor Pete to be in at this point in the race, His ascension is due to Sanders and Biden falling back to third and fourth places.
Elizabeth Warren is now the leader in Iowa, which is basically important because it’s the first primary and will affect others, but she has come out with a healthcare plan that is being attacked viciously by the GOP and only a little less nastily by her fellow Democrats.
Steve Ratner, who I have always followed with a great deal of respect, has come out with an outline of Warren’s plan that is really an attack on it. I believe it is based on facts that are not completely accurate and in one instance that are deliberately deceptive.
As is to be expected from a normally moderate group looking at the work of a progressive, the folks on Morning Joe jumped aboard Ratner’s explanation. On close inspection Ratner’s work is just as confusing as Warren’s, especially when he claims that Warren will be taxing the rich at more than the total of their investment income. I don’t know where he got that statistic but it’s even more inaccurate than Trump’s was when he said that there was no quid pro quo.
The fact is that as much as Ratner claims Warren’s numbers don’t add up, Ratner’s don’t add up either.
He takes four areas over a ten-year period:
Spending outside Medicare for all $8 T Increased Utilization (the 30 million not currently covered) $7T Federal Spending $17T rivate & State spending $27T¨
Total potential spending over ten years. $59T
Then Ratner tells us that the last three items total $34T when they actually total $51T. But that’s not enough for Ratner. Next he tells us that Warren’s 2-cent wealth tax will take in $4.4 T when it will actually take in $27.5 T over that same 10 years.
When speaking about healthcare one must realize that it is already a huge piece of our budget. It now represents almost $4 trillion a year or 18% of GDP. That’s for a system that doesn’t cover everybody and costs more than twice as much per person as any other healthcare in the world.
I understand the concept of confuse and engage, but the process has to be a lot less easily exposed than Ratner’s to be effective. Any functional economist can make a better pitch than this one, whether it’s for or against Warren’s plan. I’m surprised. I thought Steve was better than this.
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With half the State Department lined up to testify against the Presidential position on extortion next week Trump was grasping for straws and when he asked Bill Barr to back him up, our sycophant Attorney General surprisingly slid off the wagon, refusing to acknowledge that Trump did not commit a crime in his phone call to the Ukrainian President.
With John Bolton, awaiting a summons that will take him off the party hook before he testifies that Trump, Giuliani and Pompeo put the American government into a “drug deal” and with Barr hiding in the weeds the Fat Liar in the White House must be pulling out what’s left of his hair under that grotesque wig. The cracks in the GOP are beginning to show. No one wants to have to lawyer up; not at what legal liars cost nowadays, but that’s the fate of anyone who has thrown in with Trump as evidenced by Mike Cohen, Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn and any number of others. Anyone who wants to hook up with Trump has to first decide on how they will look in an orange suit.
Meanwhile Trump’s most powerful ally seems to be ready to abandon the criminal in the Oval Office, even as his personal popularity tanks to 18% in his home state of Kentucky where the governorship flipped over to the Democrats in Tuesday’s election. Things looked even worse in Virginia where for the first time in twenty years the state government went all the way for the Democrats after Trump’s backing killed the GOP candidates.
And down in Louisiana, Senator John Kennedy, in the dumbest southern accent outside the cartoon universe, spoke about how dumb Nancy Pelosi was for impeaching the criminal Trump and trying to save the nation. His exact phrase was, “It must suck to be so dumb.” Who would know better than you, John? It’s really unfortunate that someone so incredibly stupid is allowed to disgrace the name John Kennedy. There should be a law against it and there may be if he ever says anything nasty about Trump.
Yesterday Lindsey Graham, who was once considered a semi-intelligent man with some sense of honesty, declared as head of the judiciary committee that he would not read the transcript of that infamous phone call by a would be dictator. This after he stated only a few weeks ago that he needed to see the transcript before he decided whether or not he would support an impeachment proceeding. Now when asked about Gordon Sondland, Trump claims he hardly knew him. Sondland is the Trump donor who was rewarded for his million-dollar contribution to the Trump campaign fund by being made the American Ambassador to the EU. Sondland has indicated that despite his earlier testimony, in which he cleared Trump, he is now ready to testify in public that there was a quid pro quo. Lindsey feels that this change of heart had to be brought about by someone from the Democrats offering Sondland a deal.
Yeah, there was a deal all right. It went something like this: ”You want to stay out of jail, tell the truth.”
“Telling the truth.” That’s a novel idea for the GOP. It might even be something they could consider on a regular basis, maybe in another universe. And speaking of truth, or the lack thereof, our thoughts go directly to Mike Pence who once avidly defended whistleblowers and now, because one of them has attacked his master, wants them all boiled in oil, probably the oil Trump wants to steal from Syria.
Holy Mike is in something of a dilemma. Even though he can’t wait for Trump to get impeached and thrown out of office so he can slither into his dream job, he is forced to defend Trump because the degenerate gangster in the Oval Office might make him the guy he shoots on 5th Avenue.
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And to get back to the big argument of the day, I must agree with Senator Tim Kane (D) VA, when he says that despite all the noise about the differences that exist among the Democrats, the really big difference exists between the GOP and the Democrats. The GOP wants to get rid of healthcare completely, but is terrified about what will happen to them if they do, while the Democrats want to cover everybody no matter what and walk off with the election the way they did in 2018.
Sure some want Medicare for All and some want Medicare for All That Want It, but either way the Dems are trying to help everyone in the country and the Republicans want to screw all those who aren’t independently rich. The goal is to cover everyone. How it’s done is secondary. I have defended Warren’s approach because I think it’s the best one in the long term and the one that we will end up with eventually. I say this even though Warren isn’t my choice for the Presidency. On the other hand, I understand that an extension of the ACA will be easiest to attain and with all the other stuff that must be done, maybe that one will be the best to start with, as long as everyone is covered.
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Every day more and more people testify in private and this coming week they will testify in public about Trump’s disregard of our foreign policies and personal greed in trying to extort the Ukrainian president to help his personal political goals. Now to add to that we have what is basically a conviction by a NYS court in which they have fined Trump $2 million and ordered his children who ostensibly ran his charities to report for Charity sensitivity training, because Trump incomprehensively stole money from his own charity.
What kind of reptilian slime steals from a charity? The Trump kind! The same kind that creates a completely false college, which does not educate but steals money meant for tuition, which is a complete scam.
Add to the above; Trump Airlines, that flew nowhere and Trump’s immigration policy that tore infants from their mothers, or Trump tax policy, which feeds the rich and starves everyone else. And then there’s Trump the pedophile, the Miss Teenage America Pageant’s peeping Tom, or Trump the racist in almost everything he says. I could and have gone on for page after page of these observations of the President’s criminal or just plain immoral behavior, but the point is that there are still a significant number of American’s who think this degenerate is suitable to be sitting in the White House.
The question is why? It’s understandable if you are a billionaire or in the fossil fuel or private prison business that you would still back Trump. That also goes for white supremacists, bigots and those who directly make money from the criminal acts of the President. For everyone else – why? There may be some, 2 or 3% tops, of the people in the country that are really better off with Trump as President. For the rest of us, why?
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As a final note I am going to point out that the GOP base really deserves every bad thing that comes their way. As an example, Sean Spicer, the lying Press Secretary of a lying President and now the worst dancer in the history of Dancing With the Stars. This is the only guy who has ever been insulted by the judges on that show, who go out of their ways to say something nice even about the halt and the blind.
But more than halfway through the season, Sean is still there crapping up the dance floor, as far better dancers disappear. This is because the greedy producers of the show, much like the greedy Republican brass, have given up all sense of honesty and integrity. The audience, most of whom know nothing about dance, is given an opportunity to judge and vote on the contestants. So the GOP base, much as they did with Trump, are supporting this stumblebum loser as far better dancers are cut, while Spicer, in the same vein as he exhibited during his despicable run as Press Secretary, accepts the phony adulation of his idiot supporters and carries on as much better dancers disappear.