Comments by "Xyz Same" (@xyzsame4081) on "Thom Hartmann Program"
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The median income may be lower in Germany or Austria BUT you need to look at the full picture. Healthcare, childcare, care for the elderly, 5 weeks vaction, the 40 hour week is pretty much reality - as opposed to working 50 - 70 hours per week. Also people retire on average earlier than with 65 years, maternity leave.
Affordable public transportation (especially in Vienna where the net is excellent), free higher education, 150 USD per month child allowance (for everyone that's not welfare), subsidies for lower to medium income college students, extra subsidies for low income people (heating, rent assistance) etc. etc.
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No other country rewards actors for riling up voters, audiences and churchgoers. Nowhere are abortions or guns that controversial. These were the early symptoms of the disease. New Gingrich in the Bill Clinton era. That become worse when Obama got into office (not to forget that the Americans like to vote for stupid, uninformed but folksy presidents: Reagan, Bush2, Trump).
That has of course to do with polarization, the infotainement media, money in politics providing the budgets for attack ads. Going low and going dumb pays off.
The election of Donald Trump was long in the making - and the betrayal of Mr. Hope and Change paved the way for someone like Trump. Dems are lucky he is that crazen and idiotic. A slightly smarter incumbent would have won.
Some eonomic populism, a more reasonable handling of the pandemic, and Trump dragging Congress AND Senate for delaying the stimulus bills, and prefering big biz over smaller biz and citizens.
Obama sold out to the big donors in 2008 already, that is why he got a lot of friendly airtime on Corporate media, and plenty of Wallstreet and other big donor money.
Nothing of that is on Russia or Putin.
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They DO NOT CAUSE THE NEED FOR TRIAGE. and they do not LET THEIR COUNTRY DOWN during a PANDEMIC. Getting vaccinated is easy, and requires action once or twice, they do not have to overcome an addiction, or have to change their lifestyle which can be very hard - this is about a decision the anti vaxxers make.
Being obese, smoking, not exercising enough are unfortunate lifestyle choices / manifestations (it is not always so free - some people are set up to go in an unhealthy direction, and big biz is a big part of that) - but they do not HARM others.
Or addiction to junk food - the marketing for it is a billion dollar industry to exploit evolutionary weaknesses of homo sapiens ..... but these patients do not bring the medical system down for OTHERS.
And it is not a deliberate decison to desregard the wellbeing of others.
The anti vaxxers are only refusing to vaccinate because they think being unvaccinated will not harm THEM or their family (or if they get infected it will be harmless for THEM, they very willfully ignore that they are also better spreaders, and were the only spreaders that opted for that before DELTA spread).
It is not a principled (if mistaken) stance, as soon as they get severly ill, they "see the light". It is the Screw you, I got mine mentality. That is different than Jehova's Witnesses refusing to get blood transfusions for religious reasons, they KNOW they have higher risks. The anti vaxxers do not accept higher risks for themselves, they just assume there will not be any bad consequences for THEM.
A person that overeats does not gladly accept to cause harm to others, they even accept harm to themselves in many cases - deep down they know it can shorten their life span and reduce their quality of life, they just can't help themselves.
Overeating, working too much, too little - or too much - exercise. These are decisions / urges / addictions that can be revised. A smoker can quit next year, an obese person can try to eat differently and starting to exercise. They often have to fight their own demons - it is not that they do not care about others.
The normal "preventable" conditions that land in hospitals (but do not overwhelm them) normally do not include willful ignorance and stubbornly insisting on their freedom to do whatever they want - while reasonable people plead with them to think of all of society ! during a PANDEMIC.
They are not addicted - or maybe they are - to being contrarian no matter what. And to have their point of view confirmed by grifters in politics and online. Getting their bias confirmed (it aligns with "owning the libs" no matter what) is more important than anything else incl. caring for their family or avoiding excessive costs for the healthcare system (the party of family values and fiscal responsibility).
Addiction :
the U.S. governments did their part to promote the spread of drugs (while puporting to have a "war on drugs) and the addicted and reckless drivers (or careless drivers, or overweight people, or smokers, ....) DO NOT CAUSE THE NEED FOR TRIAGE.
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Patients cannot have "skin in the game" when they NEED the service (life and death decisions) and when they do not have the expertise to evaluate whether a test, procedure, surgery, treatment, drug is necessary or not. Making people pay co-pays for expenditures they cannot control and evaluate does nothing for cost-efficiency or to avoid waste. It just punishes people that have the bad luck to get sick and who do not have money.
In single payer systems the doctors make the individual decisions - while a non-profit insurance agency provides the GENERAL framework. The agency does not micromanage the decisions of the doctors. The main job of the agency: collect contributions, negotiate the contracts, pay the bills.
Negotiate the contracts (what does the hospital get per day for intenisve care, regular care, etc. usually the rates include fixed and variable parts). Or the tariffs for airlifts, or the prices for drugs.
Solutions like ACA assume you can leave the profit motive in place and relevant for individual medical decisions - but that you can "regulate" it so that patients and the government that pays the high subsidies will not be exploited. Well, the regulators would need to micromanage every single case. It is like allowing a wild animal into your house (even a harmless one like a raccon, or a smaller piglet, or a bear cub or a fox) and assuming that could work out well if you THEN (after admitting it) make provisions to avoid damage.
So .... - if you monitor it ALL the time it will not rip your house apart. You just have to watch it ALL the time. What could possibly go wrong - and why would you admit it into the house in the first place.
(for healthcare: why let the for-profit insurers or for-profit hospital chains play a role. After WW2 most nations decided they would NOT let them play a role. Every nation did their own things, observing some general rules (leaning strongly towards non-profit is one of them, the more, the better). And they all have been beating the U.S. cost-wise for decades.
So for-profit is allowed for a service like healthcare. A service that is about life and death and where the consumers are so much weaker than all the other players). That can be a foolish uncritical adherence to "free market" ideology (never mind that a free market can only function if ALL actors have about the same power and information - so healthcare is a terrible fit for the "free market").
Or the lawmakers are bought by the special interests and prefer not to think too deeply about it.
Anyway:
If law makers implement general rules in the misguided attempt to regulate the profit motive (instead of eliminating it where it WILL create dysfunction and exploitation) - it will get complex.
Complexity just causes more admin and dysfunction and costs. The big players can deal with complexitiy, it is not their preference (they would rather be unregulated, but that is not realistic) - but they sure can make it work to their advantage and use it to game the system.
"Pretend regulations" also remove some political pressure - if there are no regulatons at all, there would be calls by the electorate to have some. Weak regulations that the profiteers can circumvent provide some cover. All the better if they are complex or have sneaky loopholes, the voters will not register the fine print. Colluding media and politicians can sell that as solution to the voters.
The extra costs to circumevent the regulations (more red tape) will be added to the costs. In the end the patients and tax payers pay for it.
In a single payer systems the agency sets up the framwork and the doctors then use the "tools" as they see fit. They will chose whatever they think can help their patients. On the other hand they have no reason to be wasteful with the resources. If they are not squeezed by the management of a for-profit company common sense, human decency and professional standards and ethics will prevail - IF the profit motive is not allowed to play any role and has been eliminated from the process.
They have NO profit incentive (hospitals are non-profits, and doctor practices are small companies and not allowed to become larger than that, no chains). So the doctors make the decisions based on medical criteria only. Every resident is covered and everyone has the right to the same treatments if the doctor thinks it is medically warranted.
The patients cannot prevent frivolous use of resources - the doctors can - and the agency must have an overall look at the costs. The system must be set up to deal with the players that would potentially cause dysfunction, waste and rigging - and who have the expertise to evaluate the decisions.
So NOT the patients.
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npr Nov. 2016, but after the election. We followed a fake news creator into the suburbs (It was a LA Democrat with a degree in political science) Started out doing this as social experiment, and it looks like it is (or was) highly lucrative. He had a team of anoymous contributors (he does not know their clear names or at least he says that) and every once in while someone invented a story that really was a hit. (like the one that got npr investigating, they tried to find out who had paid with a credit card for the domains. They had an investigator, and no doubt it was not perfectly legal ;) but he got a name and an adress, the fake news creator made a mistake.
They created the sites (not hard to do, and the right wingers do not fact check), and did a little seeding on other platforms to get the stories going, some took off, others not.
That stood out to me: how easy it is to fool rightwingers, that there were facts given that were obviously wrong (city does not exist, a murder case is invented, the sheriff of a town has a different name). They tried the same with liberals or lefties, but invariably someone would fact check and protest in the comment section, so those stories never took off.
The Congressional hearings to "Russians" on social media had following results: 50,000 USD spent by Russians (that must not mean any ties to the government) on Facebook for ads before the election and the same amount after the election.
Google ads: under 5,000 USD.
That's not even small change.
Of course one could include for sites run by Serbs or other nations that are friendly with the Russian Federation.
That does not sound like the Russian government did it, the sums are not large enough.
The Russian government has of course their online trolls, but that is costly (if we talk about trolls that engage with others in comment sections).
Would they rile up the U.S. voters ? since Nixon Republicans, Evangelicals, gun fetishists have done a pretty good job in riling up the voters, that is on the U.S. and not on the Russians.
the npr team found out a name and adress behind the fake local news sites, he initially sent them away when they knocked on his door, but was willing to give them an interview a few hours later (they had left a card). I guess he might have reconsidered this stream of income (they give his name in the piece).
What he noticed years before 2016, was the eagerness of the right wingers to get "red meat". They have been primed by grifters for decades: Preachers, rabid radio hosts, FOX, Republican politicians. Think tanks that defend the fossil fuel industry and rile up people against all actions on climate change. Highly biased people that like their outrage porn, fear to not be part of the dominant group anymore (white), and very EAGERLY fall for ANY lie as long as it aligns with their bias.
That is human nature, but they are super & eagrly gullible.
(On the other hand talk to someone adoring Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. No point in bothering them with facts, or their record ...)
I recommend to visit The Victory Channel (they mean it, see the video after Jan 6h, 2021) and Religious Koolaid (satire) - to see what the religious arsonists and grifters are up to.
The Soiets had disinformation tactics and a lot of these people may be out of a job or have passed on their skills, times are hard, one has to make a living, ....
There is money to be made with advertising in the U.S., (probably more than in some poor fmr Soviet Republic) and they will
pander to whatever the audience demands, in order to get the clicks and the ad revenue.
The U.S. has a prepper scene that has non-traditional manufacturers that will also (and gladly) advertise on obscure sites. The man from CA said if he is banned for the ads of the larger businesses on social media - he has lots of offers from other manufacturers to make money from ads and clicks.
Now, the lefties and liberals (neoliberals) can also be a highly tribal lot, but fooling them takes a little more sophistication.
at least that Democrat made a point that the stories could be fact checked. Suicide / murder story related to a Hillary Clinton investigation. The name, the city the sheriff it was all invented. That story went viral and npr decided to dig into it. The sites were imitating the looks and feel of legit local news (weather, obituaries). They also tried to have names that sounded plausibe. One was denvernews com - or something like that.
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As for the main character of "Brainwashed". The father of the film maker likely was a "nice" guy within his TRIBE (friends and family). That does not make you a good person. Every Homo Sapiens that is not a complete sociopath behaves in a decent manner towards "tribe members", evolution made us that way.
Of course old age (dementia) can turn lovely people into very unpleasant fellows.
Also: Outrage, contempt, and anger are emotions of power. Some people may prefer them very much to feeling taken advantage of or to feeling helpless. So they do not develop the anger against those on the top (against whom they feel pretty powerless), they did not kick those on the top, they kick sideways or down. Against the scapegoat du jour, Jewish people, Black people, another ethnicities immigrants, women - suffragettes of feminists, homosexuals, other religions - it is a phenomen we can witness throughout reported human history.
Especially when folks were brainwashed to accept the narrative of U.S. exceptionalism and are not into crtitical thinking and reading.
People sense something is not wrong (it never was O.K. but in the past it ONLY hit poor brown people in far away countries, like in Latin America, Vietnam, Korea). So the U.S. citizens could easily resign themselves to the misery of other nations who were under U.S. military or economic attack (and the citizens of other wealthy nations, like Canada, or in Europe were not better). The citizens especially in the U.S. were spoon fed with "patriotism", "exceptionalism", selfishness and tales how they had made it all on their own (pleasing their vanity).
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@TheRobertibiris The last presidential election was not legitimate you say ? And what about the election of the national assembly (the parliament ?) in 2015 - is that also rigged (since it happened to give the opposition a majority for the first time in 15 years or so). How about the legitimacy of the Saudi elections - or the brutally crushed protests in Bahrain (the latter is a reality).
btw war mongering CNN is NOT a good source.
People do not "happen" to vote. the election system in Venezuela works - and much better than in the U.S. You may think that the people are stupid to have voted for Maduro. i assume if there was one halfway reasonable moderate politician that the population trusts to NOT SELL them out he or she would already be the president.
Given that the opposition called to boycott the last presidential election AND that the economy was already in bad shape Maduro did pretty well, voter participation was not that much lower than in the last U.S. presidential election (with 2 controversial candidates - such races should trigger 80 % - but in the U.S. only 55 %).
I am sure that Maduro gets a lot of flak even from the poor people, which shows you HOW bad the opposition is viewed among low(er) income people - even if the Western regime-change-loving media, the U.S. government and the ruling class of Venezuela does not like it - they are the majority. The same set of people ruled Venezuela before Chavez that is now the opposition, there is a reason they could not get a majority in the parliament for so long - the population knows what they can expect (see Haiti, see Honduras, see Mexico - or Brazil)
Btw: one opposition policician broke ranks and did join the presidential race, so there was an alternative to vote for if voters just wanted to slap Maduro - they did have the candidate to vote for in protest.
My educated guess. The opposition did not get their act together, they could not agree on who would get the spoils if they won - and the Trump admin already then promised them that the election would be dismissed. So "not playing" when you know you you are not going to win (even with that economy !) is just as well. It would also have robbed the U.S. of the narrative of the not legitimate election. They knew they could make the problems of Venezuela worse if they had more time - so then they might get more support for the U.S. approved candidate or at least less support for Maduro.
As for making the economy worse: recently they had introduced a crypto currency that was tied to the oil price - needless to say the U.S. threatens everyone that would use it (in the U.S. and abroad). Now with that currency they could have imported food, fertilizer, spare parts .... but then the economy might function somewhat ... can't have that, can't we.
Until the economic crisis there is not doubt that the elections were democratic and were confirmed as such from independent international monitors (so your claim is There was unusual activities going on senseless violence against poor people even lynchings. The crime rate is high, the motive is clear when there are robberies - but roadblocks dragging a dark men on his way to work and lynching him or setting food storage on fire (the military hands out supplied to poor people) or attacking maternity clinics and public transprotation does not make sense - for normal crime. They would steal the food to try to burn the place down. Unless you want to target poor people which are the folks that are the most dedicated supporters of the party. (That is the rational behind lynching arbitrarily a black man who did nothing to the people blocking the street - if he is not a Chavista than some of his relatives or friends).
The opposition may have found out that that worked agaist them, because it was too transparent.
The constitutional assembly election may or may not have been legitimate/ a genuine grassroots effor. Morevover I heard also opinions that the parliament with the majority is not passing any laws and refuses to do its job. No indepth information on that - nor do you dwell on it.
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