A very smart Balloon Juice community member, quantum man, e-mailed me over the weekend with a good idea:
I recently saw some discussion about keeping a log of violent events since Trump’s election. I have a similar idea, but I am neither tech savvy enough, or internet savvy enough, to pull it off. My idea is for some folks to collect stories about people who end up dying due to loss of health insurance when (assuming it happens) the ACA is repealed. The stories could be collected and put into a kind of narrative history of the consequences of repeal of this act. This narrative history could help put a face on the people who suffer as a consequence of this action. I believe it was Stalin who said something to the effect, a single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic. Someone needs to put a face on what is possibly coming with repeal of the ACA. Maybe you could suggest such a project in one of your posts.
In comments to my first post-WTF healthcare policy thread, a few people noted the limitations of the media. They chase very few stories compared to running things that are handed to them on a silver platter:
I wouldn’t worry. Unless it’s somebody you know you will have to go out of your way to find out about all the deaths. It’s not as though the media will give it much press.
Don’t be so sure about that. As a former media member, I can tell you that TV in particular loves to show someone suffering on camera so the shut-ins who watch can say, “how awful.” But they won’t go find those stories, they will have to be brought to them. Otherwise, it’ll just be the usual fires and fatal automobile accidents.
I can only do a Google Forms for Version 1.0. There will be a better way of inventorying the very predictable results of Repeal with a minimal replacement plan.
But let’s get it started here and then we can build out.
Here is the form to enter your story:
rikyrah
You are good people, Mayhew.
Alain the site fixer
All: Adam, Majorx4 -and myself are hard at work on this. We’re building a site and process to submit, track, verify and share these attacks and threats. More soon
To be clear, we’re going to be tracking violence and threats not healthcare related issues! It’s early still and was up late.well not early but brain is slowly getting into the gear it needs to be in.
gene108
Might I suggest to be a bit pre-emptive and start documenting cases of people, who have serious medical conditions, such as cancer, who are alive and receiving medical care because of Obamacare.
Maybe start a YouTube channel, with people telling their stories. Spread the word about it through other blogs and social media.
If it gets enough hits, the media will pick-up on it.
The media likes nothing more than showing popular YouTube videos to fill up screen time.
Richard Mayhew
@gene108: We can build on that… very good idea… my goal is to get it to the point where a story is 90% assembled with real people telling real situations instead of wonkese
WereBear
I have already started a tumblr for health care purposes, where people can submit their health stories. We are just a few days away of going live.
It is the CouldHappentoYou project.
So I am very pleased Alain and Richard and company are getting on the violent story tracking.
Tumblr lets people submit their posts so all myself and my volunteers need to do is approve them. Since I’m still recovering, I can only do so much.
Anyone who can volunteer for us please reach me though my contact form. OR [email protected]
And get those stories ready.
Patricia Kayden
@Alain the site fixer: Here’s another violent incidence for you.
GxB
@Alain the site fixer: I was about to suggest a similar expansion. Complete with sources and full documentation. We need to have an LTE deluge to push back on the appalling deficit of our media, and this would be a priceless resource. When shit starts getting freaky, I’d feel a touch better in that we pointed out the overwhelming warning signs that disaster was imminent.
gene108
@Richard Mayhew:
I think you are the only person capable of speaking wonkese, with respect to insurance.
For most folks it is binary: covered or not covered.
azlib
Excellent idea. Slightly off topic as I remember, Congressional staff is under the ACA. What happens to their coverage? Be interesting to point out the Republicans are dropping coverage for themselves and their own staff.
Jeffro
Here’s something we can all take action on as well: don’t let the GOP get away with a (complete) victory for their unprecedented obstruction of Merrick Garland’s nomination.
In short:
– try to push Obama to make a recess appointment of Garland
– filibuster any Trump nominee who’s remotely right wing (LOL – I know, sometimes I crack myself up)
– keep it in the headlines
The important thing is to point out Republican obstruction and hypocrisy. Just a few weeks ago, Ted Cruz was okay with the idea of having just eight justices and some National Review kkklown wrote an article about letting the entire Court wither away to nothing.
Grung_e_Gene
Not to be a downer but, everyone here realizes the WWC will never believe any of the stories coming forth of violence and harassment. Additionally, the right now has a fully functioning alternate media empire which will churn out loads of propaganda, (#AnotherFakeTrumpAccuser andTrump won the popular vote as recent examples) to keep their minions in a constant state of arousal and agitation.
Conservatives will never believe anything from media source like the NYT or WaPo which does not reinforce their beliefs and will immediately decry any independent work as loony leftists.
WaterGirl
Seems like a lot of us are thinking along the same lines. I sent this message to Cole last Friday. Maybe there’s a way to combine some of these ideas?
Another Scott
@gene108: There’s also StoryCorps. Lots of people still listen to NPR, and documenting things for history via the Library of Congress is important.
They have an app for smart phones which could be used the same time that YouTube videos are recorded.
You folks are doing good work. Let’s keep at it.
Cheers,
Scott.
aimai
@Grung_e_Gene: Yes, this is true. But their is a way in–inroads can be made through Facebook. The trick is that people have to be willing to be identified and identifiable in their communities, among their relatives and friends. And that can be dangerous for people in some situations. But a lot of the hate mongering that Trump has taken advantage of is based on fear of the other,the distant. As Trump’s policies affect Grandma and grandpa, cousins and sisters and brothers, it may be possible to peel back some of those people as their bubble gets burst.
D58826
Couple of related comments
1. Bernie had one of his destroy the elites tweeters. But it is the comments that I found most interesting. Most of his supporters hate Hillary and the democrats as much, maybe more, than the GOP. Does not bode well for rebuilding the party (which I suspect Bernie doesn’t want to do).
2. Liz Warren gave a speech in which she criticized Obamacare. According to Liz it was not the messaging tat failed but Obamacare itself because it wasn’t transformative. That at the very lease the democrats should have been saying ‘we know it’s only 1/2 a loaf but will fight for the other half’. Now Sen. Warren is well liked and a very smart woman but her makes me ask – ‘Does the American left live in it’s own sealed bubble like the American right? Are we dealing with LWNJ as well as RWNJ?.
Lets hop in the way back machine for a moment:
1. there were not enough votes for the whole loaf let along transformative in 2009
2. Bernie was in the Senate and could not even get his plan to a vote
3. what did finally pass made it by the skin of it’s teeth
4. w/o the hated blue dogs it would have died
5. I don’t remember seeing any member of the Obama team saying that the plan was the end all be all of healthcare reform.
6. Everyone agreed that it needed more work
7. After 2010 the GOP would not have voted yes to see Jesus walk down the street if his first stop was a meeting with Obama.
Or am I missing something here?
Another Scott
@Grung_e_Gene: Never is a very long time.
We won’t win if we surrender before the first battle even starts. We have to try. We have to fight for what we believe in, for what we, our friends and neighbors, our parents and grandparents have built up and left to us.
If you want to convince yourself it’s hopeless – fine. But get out of the way of people who are willing to fight and work to make things better.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
JMG
@Jeffro: No matter what kind of people they are, people give credibility to stories about things happening in their own communities, and the smaller the community, the more credibility a story has. One thing about the violent incidents. They’re almost all taking place in locations where the perpetrators are part of the political minority. College campuses. Cities, affluent suburbs, etc.
The health care stories will be spread throughout the land and are probably therefore going to be more effective as a political device.
Weaselone
@Jeffro:
There’s not going to be a recess during which Obama could appoint Garland.
Matt McIrvin
@Grung_e_Gene: The people we need to reach aren’t the ones inside the Breitbart bubble. They’re gone.
A lot of people didn’t vote this year. Or voted for other offices and left President blank. Rage against them if you like, I blame them to some degree, but they’re probably gettable in future elections.
Jeffro
@JMG: Sounds good!
In the meantime, I am heartened – the gloom and doom is fading, the urge to fight is actually getting stronger by the day. If this moron (someone so stupid, he didn’t realize he was going to staff the West Wing as well as 4,000 other jobs), this friendless idiot, thinks he’s going to roll over this country, he’s got another thing coming.
Grung_e_Gene
@Another Scott: Sorry Scott. You’re right. I’m not giving up in despair but, as a liberal in a reactionary job field I was bombarded daily. I’m willing to do what I can and I agree with aimai about Facebook and local community and close relatives being a good place to start.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@D58826: I’m beginning to think she’s just as dumb as every other white liberal.
FlipYrWhig
@D58826: What you’re missing is that “the left” is a small number of abject preening narcissists.
NotMax
@Jeffro
We all know what the odious Cruz meant, but what he alluded to was not incorrect although it was incorrectly applicable.
@ of SCOTUS justices required to form a full court has varied.
1789 – 1807: 6
1807 – 1837: 7
1837 – 1863: 9
1863 – 1866: 10
1866 – 1869: 7 (to be reached by attrition)
1869 – present: 9
OzarkHillbilly
@Grung_e_Gene: All the more reason to do it. We aren’t doing it to change their minds. They are the enemy.
Baud
@D58826: I’m willing to cut Warren some slack to try to save health care. The time for defending Obamacare was in the election. Hillary did it, but the voters did not.
Tarragon
Fuck man. I don’t know what I can do.
Last night I went to post some pushback on the Medicare is broke bullshit on facebook. But I got scared to do it so I couldn’t pull the trigger.
How far can I go before some asshole decides to threaten me and mine? I’m getting anxiety attacks just comtemplating the possibility.
WaterGirl
Along the lines of speaking out, this is the letter I sent to my family just now. I am feeling quite anxious about sending it, but I felt that I couldn’t not send it. (quite a few edits from yesterday’s draft)
gene108
@Grung_e_Gene:
The goal should not be to reach the Trump voters. Conservatives decided the NYT and WaPo, et al were liberal organs that could not be trusted, by the late 1980’s.
I think the goal should be to reach out to other shocked liberals / Democrats to reassure them they are not alone and second to set-up a counter-narrative for the millions of voters, who decided not to vote this year, that the system is not hopeless and good government is possible and it does produce practical, life saving results.
O. Felix Culpa
I think this is an excellent idea. We need to put a face to the suffering that would result if Obamacare were repealed. I like the idea of a YouTube campaign, similar to Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better” videos, which were very powerful.
The NYT (spit!) had a request up recently for people to send in their Obamacare stories, but I can’t find it right now. I think it’s better to create our own repository to present to our fellow citizens and legislators, and let the MSM pick up on it if they will.
OzarkHillbilly
@Tarragon: They already are threatening you and yours.
ETA: that comes across a little too flippant, don’t mean to. The threat level you are willing to live with is yours alone and only you can decide. Mine is a little higher than most but I do have a point I will not go beyond.
Patricia Kayden
@Baud: The ACA will be gutted and that appears to be ok with at least 59 million voters. Will be interesting to see whether Trump replaces it with something else or just kicks 20 million off it with no replacement.
D58826
@Baud: I am to but her comments seemed like such a rewrite of history. Same kind of rewrite that you would expect from the elephant echo chamber, which is why I asked the question about there starting to be a liberal echo chamber. We have already seen some of that in the glee with which the left dismisses the blue dogs. The GOP has it’s RINO’s and I guess now the D’s want to have a bunch of DINO’s. The problem is the GOP seems to be able to win while casting out it’s RINO’s but the D’s come up short w/o the bluedogs. Now maybe there is an argument to be made that there is a difference between bluedogs and Dino’s but I think it will be a case of hairsplitting that will get lost on the campaign trail. Blue dogs will very quickly be written off as DINO’s by the Bernie left.
The other way that the left is beginning to look like the right is their dismissing evidence. Even under the best of circumstances, outside a few very very blue enclaves, there are not enough voters who identify as a Bernie/Liz progressive to win at the state and national level. Even liberal MA and MD have GOP governors for example. And the left In CA was not large enough to prevent the recall of Grey Davis a few years back
FlipYrWhig
@Patricia Kayden: I guarantee you that the people who oppose Obamacare think that it’s giving free health care to black and brown people, and that rises in premiums are the cost of Those People’s sweet sweet goodies. So when Obamacare gets all fucked up and the people who oppose it are harmed, they’ll continue to blame Obama and Those People, because it is an article of their new-old faith: Democrats gouge The Good People to lavish favors on the Other.
WTF
@D58826:
I think you are spot on, and that is somewhat disheartening. This link is just depressing.
WTF
@D58826:
We are in the process of a major realignment occuring at a time when there is a great degree of balkanization in the country and , deep schism on both the right and left. It is a very crazy time.
D58826
@Patricia Kayden: I mentioned this yesterday but may be worth repeating. The Ryan medicare replacement plan is to allow seniors to buy health insurance from private companies with a gov’t subsidy to help lower income people. This is an example of the free market giving people a choice in their health care. Obamacare which allows non-seniors to buy health insurance from private companies with a gov’t subsidy to help lower income people must be repealed because it is the government making decisions for people and is an attack on free enterprise.
Gin & Tonic
@D58826:
Repeat after me: Bernie Sanders is not now and has never been a Democrat.
D58826
@Gin & Tonic: yep
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@D58826: If you go over to LGM and search past content there are many posts about the passing of the ACA and how anything more liberal than what we got was NEVER going to happen. Warren’s speech on this is stomach churning. 1) since we don’t do nuance in this country it will be used as a weapon to do damage by the Republicans, 2) demonstrates a lack of knowledge of recent history, she should know better. The messaging of Obamacare was not the problem it was the messenger, remember the people that liked the ACA but hated Obamacare.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@Gin & Tonic: If you want to destroy the Democratic party, put Bernie in charge.
debit
@OzarkHillbilly: No, you’re correct. I’m going to ask my boss how she would feel about posting a sign at the door to our tax office saying “Trump Supporters NOT Welcome.” I’m pretty sure she’s going to say no, but I think it’s important to the majority of our clients (who are either Muslim or latino) to know they are in a safe space. And if it keeps out the handful of white people who think that because I’m also white I will appreciate their racists jokes, all the better.
I tweeted yesterday about an incident of one of my female Muslim clients. She was crossing a street in front of her office and was nearly hit by a car turning against a red light. When she yelled at the driver, he screamed at her “Go back to Africa, you fucking monkey.” She is of Somali descent but was born in Minnesota. Someone from the Washington Post replied and asked me for more details, but my client is afraid that she and her business will be targeted as a result.
Matt McIrvin
The thing I really missed during the campaign–and that has become clear in the post-election discussion–is the extent to which Black Lives Matter/Ferguson/Baltimore etc. inflamed white racism, even among some people who were non-racist enough to vote for Barack Obama twice. These people don’t have an overt animus against black people, but they really trust the police. Black people protesting the police really got their goat in a way that a black President didn’t. It didn’t matter that some of the inciting incidents were blatant, straight-up executions of innocents. The whole thing dredged up every old stereotype they ever absorbed from a TV show.
I don’t know if this was the one crucial thing that made the difference, but I think we’ll come to regard it as overdetermined. It’s probably more a factor in the fairly small margin of suburban Obama->Trump voters than in the people who left President blank.
WTF
@D58826:
“The other way that the left is beginning to look like the right is their dismissing evidence.”
The echo chamber effect is almost universal these days. You are thinking like I have been thinking. In fact, I recently decided to revert to being a conservative republican. There are no conservatives on the right. Not a one. But I’ve always agreed with Lord Hailsham; “Conservatism is not so much a philosophy as an attitude, a constant force, performing a timeless function in the development of a free society, and corresponding to a deep and permanent requirement of human nature itself.”
I don’t think most progressives have any idea what Santayana observed about progress. We all know part of the quote:
And republicans? There hasn’t been an authentic republican in this country for longer than I’ve been alive. But few people are even aware of what it means to be a republican. But that is another conversation.
JPL
@Patricia Kayden: You already have that answer. Paul Ryan plans to put those with a pre-existing condition, by putting them in a pool, and fund it with 25 billion dollars. According to Bloomberg the actual cost is between 150-200 billion.
Maybe there will be a drawing to see who gets coverage.
aimai
@D58826: Nope. That’s about the size of it. Success has a thousand fathers, failure is an orphan. The very people who would have taken credit for Hillary’s win are now running and hiding because of the loss. And they are goign to throw President Obama overboard as well.
aimai
@D58826: Right again. Liz WArren is my senator, and she can stay my senator for life, I”m sure, but she is a niche taste. She could not have won the country, and neither could Bernie. Its such, such bullshit.
D58826
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap: I think I disagree slightly. The administration, including Obama, allowed the GOP to define Obamacare to the public. Remember death panels. It’s true that people love the parts of the law just don’t call it Obamacare. The administration failed to make the link that Obamacare is a shorthand way of referring to all of the parts you like, that would not exist without ‘Obamacare’ .
gene108
@D58826:
The GOP does not cast aside RINO’s. They sit quietly and wait for orders. They represent none Southern, non-deep Red states, where the appearance of civility needs to be maintained.
They may vote once or twice against Republicans on some bills, either doomed to fail or too insignificant to matter, so they can tell their constituents they are not beholden to Southern mouth breathers and Bible thumpers.
And they may not care much about banning abortion or having guns everywhere, but they do not mention it. They sit quietly, at the back benches, and glad hand with lobbyists and have fun, because they have no real responsibilities but all the perks of being in Congress.
D58826
@JPL: This is the same Paul Ryan and GOP from the same article that said the country could not afford the 2.5 billion to keep the Obamacare co-ops afloat. I believe New York and a few other states tried the high risk pool idea and the result was an insurance death spiral.
And an aside to some of the other Obamacare comments about what could and could not have passed. IIRC, after Obamacare passed, Bernie’s home state of Vermont tried to implement a single payer plan. They had to pull the plug because they could not afford the price tag at a tax level the voters would accept. But Obama failed the country because he would not wave his magic Kenyan witch doctor wand and passed single payer.
Boussinesque
I really like the idea in general, and I understand the potential security concerns that would make us want to enable anonymous submissions, but then I remember the Russian Troll Army and those Macedonian teens…
It might be better to stick to stories that people are willing to put a name and face to, that can be verified–wouldn’t do to have the entire project dismissed because assholes were able to flood it with false stories, then pointing to those stories as proof that the entire project is a hoax.
That means that having an actual secure database for identifying information for submitters will also be very important–protecting the vulnerable from reprisal while still having the information to prove authenticity.
Richard Mayhew
@Boussinesque: There is a contact and follow-up mechanism… agreed on trust and verify
jenn
@debit: If you want a sign, I think it would be better to make one that is clear who is welcome, rather than who is not. “We welcome all of our clients, including our Latino and Muslim ones.” Okay, that’s a little clunky, but something along those lines, drawing people in, rather than pushing people away. Plus I think it’s probably against the law to discriminate against people from another political party, and even if it’s not, it’s a bad thing to become normalized within our society.
WTF
Call me crazy, many do, but I can’t seem to be so certain about Bernie not having a chance
a) Clinton won the popular vote by a rather large margin that now seems to be in accord with polling and predictions.
b) Trump won the EC by razor thin margins in 3 states with a a total 107,000 votes. That is astonishing. I’d have to find the article but Mich, Penn and one other.
c) A Bernie win of the EC in a similar fashion is not impossible, though unlikely
There were many former Obama voters who voted for Trump, not so much because they liked Trump, but they were Anybody but Hillary voters. They may have voted for Bernie. Negatives work and 20 years of Clinton bashing is going to leaave a mark.
As far as Obamacare goes, I’d have called it what it was, Romeycare. But there is that legacy thing.
dww44
@Patricia Kayden: 59 million people will be okay with the ACA being gutted because they’ve been programmed to believe that by Fox et al. They’ve not genuine understanding of its benefits or faults because they live in a Fox bubble. There was a Facebook post on my feed the day after the election reacting with glee to the idea of Ben Carson being in a position to replace Obamacare with something that works. As if that were a real option.
We Democrats HAVE to figure out how to effectively counter this sort of messaging. We must.
jenn
Reposted from yesterday:
There’s been several discussions in here about what we can do, but I didn’t know until Perfect Tommy just commented, that the 2016 election isn’t over yet. There’s an election in Louisiana on December 10, and Foster Campbell needs support. If he wins, the Senate will be 51-49. Campbell needs support of both money and phones/canvassing. His website is here: http://www.fostercampbell2016.com/
This is something helpful we can do! Let’s do it!
NotMax
@debit
How do you feel about gun stores posting “Clinton supporters not welcome” signs? Other side of the same coin.
A sign prominently placed with the message Bienvenidos and it’s equivalent in Arabic, Farsi, etc. would be more effective, IMHO.
WTF
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap:
We had better think of something fast. According to some, it’s already too late…
The decimation of the Democratic Party, visualized
Like your nick
D58826
@gene108: I disagree some what or maybe we are saying the same thing a different way. The non-crazy GOP congress criters basically keep their mouths shut and play ball for fear of being labeled a RINO and primaried from the right.
Bernie endorsed a couple of folks as primary challengers because they were to the left of an incumbent who did not pass the Bernie purity test. And before I get yelled at for suggesting it is wrong to mount a primary challenge let me say this. There may be a good reason to mount a primary challenge to an incumbent but failing a purity test is not one of them. Mounting a successful primary challenge to a democratic incumbent from the left in a district that is at best purple and may well be shading into pink is simply handing the seat to the GOP. After the general election you can hold your head high and talk about how you upheld Bernie’s principles but the people in the district will have to live with the consequences of the GOP winner.
NotMax
@NotMax
(No edit function.)
Amended.
… other side of the same coin, the currency of divisiveness.
InternetDragons
@Tarragon:
Don’t give yourself a hard time for not wanting to post on Facebook. We all have different levels of risk, and we all have to decide what sorts of stress we can live with as a result of our choices.
I’m personally not a fan of doing politics on Facebook. That doesn’t mean it’s ineffective. It just means it’s not the strategy that’s right for me. You have a lot of other options for your own style of activism, and if you want to brainstorm some of those choices here, you know you’ll get a lot of support in sorting out which choices are the best fit for you in your particular situation. We need each other, and we need you – and Facebook politics doesn’t have to be your focus.
D58826
@WTF: I agree that Bernie might have pulled it out, long shot that it would have been. The mistake that the BernBros are making is they seem to think he would have been a shoe in. They take one poll near the end of the primary season and say see how much more likely he is to win than Hillary. Since that poll was taken there was no one negative ad, or one piece of negative opo released. No wiki-leaks of his campaign e-mails. I just don’t see those much discussed WWC voters voting for an old NE Jewish socialist. And Bannon would have made sure every one knew that he was a Jewish socialist.
gene108
@D58826:
One complaint from Bernie supporters about wanting single-payer is Obamacare is not affordable for them. They have to pay a premium, which cuts into their budget and the deductibles are prohibitively high for seeking care.
This is a valid issue, but they did not seem to want fixes to the existing law. They wanted something that does not really exist, free healthcare.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@WTF: I think for now the Democratic party is done. They will work with Trump. Schumer and Pelosi making noises about passing infrastructure bills (this will help Trump) and this will turn out to be the same as the Dems working with Reagan. And guess what, the only way back for the Dems from that will be a repeat of what Clinton did in the 90’s. Ha ha, we’re in a loop.
debit
@jenn: It already is normalized. Am I the only one who remembers the business who had signs that Obama supporters should stay the fuck out?
I get what you and NotMax are saying. But as I said in my tweet about my client, you can’t talk to or reason with people who scream at dark skinned people to go back to Africa. There is nothing that is going to change their minds or put an end to their hatred. The only thing we can do now is name them, (try to) shame them and then shun them.
Starfish
Could we track the number of health care help requests coming through sites like YouCaring. There were a lot of requests for help with medical funds before Obamacare. Some requests for medical still exist. Will these requests spike?
D58826
@gene108: And I suspect if you asked Hillary/Obama they would agree. No one ever said the law was going to be perfect right out of the box. The problem is the GOP has prevented any fixes to be made. They have blocked the medicaid expansion in a number of states and they snuck a change to the law that crippled the risk corridors. I’m sure Richard can explain the damage that has done. And in a case of be careful what you wish for. Every one on the left was happy when DOJ said they would oppose the latest Aetna merger. Last spring Aetna was quiet happy with it’s participation in Obamacare. DOJ made it’s announcement and Aetna suddenly finds Obamacare a terribly losing proposition and is pulling out of the market. Co-incidence? I don’t think so.
And yes we could pass ‘free health care’ just like we can pass ‘free college education’ but no one wants to pay the higher taxes. Heck, no one wants to pay the few extra cents on the gas tax to fix our highways and keep them free. They wouldrather privatize the highways to some foreign company that sucks the profits out, goes bankrupt and leaves the tax payer with the bill anyway.
InternetDragons
@Alain the site fixer:
I love you all for the work you are doing on this. I also think that collecting health care-related narratives is really important. I did want to add (and hope this doesn’t get lost as the post drops further down the front page) that the Southern Poverty Law Center is collecting and logging attacks: https://www.splcenter.org/reporthate
It might be worth thinking about consolidating your efforts with theirs in order to develop a more complete record.
And for anyone still sorting out where to allocate precious donation dollars, the SPLC would be a great choice!
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@WTF: Like I said:
Excusing every bad thing coming down the pike, a quote from Bernie:
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap: HE’S NOT EVEN A FUCKING DEMOCRAT, HE DOESN’T GET TO MAKE EXCUSES FOR ME.
FUCK HIM
FUCK HIM
FUCK HIM
D58826
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap: @Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap: And who were his most fervent supporters at all those rallies – white suburban middle and upper middle class college students. Who he promised lots of free things to. And whatever brand of socialism he represents, socialism has been a non-starter in the country from the days of Eugene Debbs and the wobblies.
WTF
@D58826: @D58826:
For sure the Alll-Wrong would buy it. But again, I say that 20 years ol Clinton bashing compared to a short burst of Bernie bashing, might have made the difference. We lost Obama voters in key swing states because of their blind hatred of Hillary.
They voted for a black man, they may well have voted for a white socialist jew. I did what was right for me. Voted Bernie in the primary and you know the rest.
WTF
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap:
LMAO! I think you are my new BFF!
D58826
@WTF: True about the Clintons. All the GOP and the MSM had to say was ‘Clinton Scandals’ and everyone KNEW that the Clinton’s were corrupt beyond any order of magnitude. Even many of the Bernie folks are convinced that the Clinton sins exceed even Judas and Pontius Pilate No details needed. No facts needed either put since we are in the post facts world that is probably a feature not a bug
WTF
@D58826:
When you call it “socialism” many react as you say. In spite of the fact that they’d raise holy hell if you took their social security away from them, and socialized medicine actually polls rather well. Read this quote to anyone and they say, Karl Marx!
It’s Adam Smith.
D58826
@WTF: Oh I understand my econ 101 about socialism and owner ship of the means of production vs the social democratic/safety net systems of Western Europe. And lets not get started on Jonah Goldberg and his National Socialism stick or the ‘social democrat’ parties in Europe.
Unfortunately if you say ‘Adam Smith’ most people think it’s some dude checking into motel 6 under a false name so he can spend the afternoon dallying with his mistress. And Smith was a government tax collector who said the role of the state would grow as the economy grew more complex. He was not a dog eat dog vulture capitalist. He is probably rolling over in his grave in the way his ideas have been misappropriated.
For way to many people socialism=communism=Stalin.
MadClaw
@azlib: I believe all of congress is under the ACA, no? Wasn’t it Grassley’s idea, thinking it would backfire and instead, it went forward?
D58826
I forget the details but yes it was Grassley’s idea. It passed and then became another Goper non-existent horror story like death panels.
WTF
@D58826:
My worldview did a complete 180 when I began reading Prof. Michael Hudson.
Especially his last book, Killing The Host.
The Clintons are neoliberals. So is Obama, Neoliberalism or neoliberal economic policies, are the reason for the widening gap between the 1% and the 99%. I am a capitalist, but a social democrat. So I want capitalism to do what it used to do, what it did before: Build the Middle Class. Capitalism, industrial capitalism, built our middle class. But we are no longer a country that relies on industrial capitalism, the manufacturing sector that built the middle class. Since 1980 both the US and the UK have allowed the FIRE sector to dominate not only are economics but actually take control of our government. The FIRE sector is the acronym for Finance, Insurance and Real estate.
FIRE Economy
We have de-industrialized capitalism here. It has been finacialized, and we are run by the finance sector. Banks can do anything. They are too big to fail.
It may sound like crackpot stuff, just check out Hudson’s CV. He is now a Distinguished Scholar. But he worked on Wall Street for 20 years. Check him out if you can.
WTF
I realize we have the lowest information voters on the planet. It is a national disgrace
But just imagine how they’ll feel when they find out that a self-described Leninist is in the WH now. The ones who can read, at least.
Oddly enough, or maybe not so odd, Hudson is very popular on some very right wing sites, like ZeroHedge.
Anyway, I’m a political economist of the old school, self-taught. I’m a Georgist, like WFB, Jr.
Ben Cisco
@Grung_e_Gene:
And yet…
WTF
@D58826:
Yes. Smith is an interesting case because if you cherry pick enough, you will find statements made in lectures that seem contradictory from day to day. You can make Smith appear one way, then another. Hudson’s next book is called Junk Economics. When John Bates Clark decided that all income was the same as income earned from labor, Smith started spinning.