FROM 2012 INTO 2013 POLITICS THREAD

In your case it's merit-based.

 

Yes, of course, the minority party tries to do all it can from being steamrolled. But something else is at work here.

In the past, negotiations were made based on the idea of whether it would hurt you in a general election. The result of very successful (for Republicans) redistricting in 2010 and recent election results is that GOP members are asking themselves if what they do will hurt them in the primary. So the incentive is for Republicans to NEVER compromise, because then there comes Koch-funded ads showing them giving a tongue-kiss to the Kenyan Usurper Communist Mooslim Dictator. Without compromise in a democratic system, things are doomed to fail.

That's why it cracks me up when people, especially Republicans, criticize Obama for "not being enough of a leader." Whatever his leadership successes or failures, Republicans' immediate electoral futures are pinned to being as big a dick as possible to Obama, so there's NOTHING he can do for them other than exactly what they want when they want it, which would be unthinkable in any political environment.

The other thing is this: given demographic and electoral trends, the Republicans are well aware their future as a national party (not a local one) is in doubt. When that happens, you can do one of two things. You can adapt your party and your positions to attract a new demographic to expand your base. Or you can fight to the bitter end like Custer, before you're wiped out. The Republicans are paying lip service to the first strategy (hello, Marco Rubio!), but their actions belie the second, because they (especially on the state level) are pushing as much crazy shit as they can get through before they're shown the door.

It reminds me of Richard Longworth's book "Caught in the Middle," about the world industrial economy's effect on the Midwest, especially in small towns. There were towns that embraced new immigrants and ideas, and they survived, and even thrived. And then there were towns who were just going to keep doing the same things because any changes meant it wasn't "their" town anymore, and those towns just kept slowly dying away, assured of their purity.

 

There's no rate of return on health care? Seriously? The reason for the inefficiency is not because health care is necessarily inefficient. It's about how we deliver it in this country.

 

No rate of return on the inefficiency.

And, also, not a huge rate of return on health care for the elderly, who are done working.

Bob, I'm sure you've seen data about life expectancy. The main reason it has shot up isn't because of health care for the elderly. People who lived into their 60s and 70s always tended to live for a while. The main reason - or at least one of them - that life expectancy has gone up is because we've reduced drastically the rates of child mortality.

 

How so?

 

The payroll tax vacation was passed on Obama's watch.

Therefore, over the eight years of his administration, you will pay less in payroll taxes than you would have had Obama not enacted the payroll tax vacation.

 

Whitman's Dr. Shockley bit is what happens when efficiency is put uber alles, as it were. What, pray tell, is your alternative to that evil keeping-people-alive bit?

 

If you accept that reasoning then you also have to accept that he just increased our payroll tax.

 

Maybe we should just use the whole federal budget - all 100 percent - to take care of the elderly?

If 34 percent is good, 100 percent is even better.

 

"Efficiency" here is used in two ways:

(1) We could get the same results for a lot less money, if we changed some things;

(2) We could improve the quality of life for a lot more present (kids) and, particularly, future people by spending a little less on improving quality of life for a relatively smaller current group of people and putting that money instead into investments for the future. Like Obama's brain mapping plan, for example. Or renewable energy. Or preschool. Or infrastructure.

 

It's time we care more about the "future people"

 

Indeed.