1691 Always Sonny.
I fell asleep when I was gonna write something here.
I got woken up enough that I can’t go back to sleep now. So let me talk a little about the health care thing.
The affordable care act was far from perfect. It failed to address a lot of problems and created others. The new thing is largely the same in different ways. You can debate the ins and outs of that till you pass out. I know that my rates tripled because of the ACA. Insurers have fled my state because of it. My rates aren’t showing any signs of dropping under the new regime. Who knows how this whole thing will play out. The problem is that the people who typically buy my ad space are terrified and not spending like they used to. Public perception is that the sky is falling when it’s really doing the same things it always does with a new cast. That’s my biggest problem with everything right now.
No one can trust anyone else because no news source has enough integrity to actually be above it all anymore. Every outlet has clear bias or at the very least obvious conflicts of interest. It is a time of chaos because society is trying to decide how to cope with news never stopping, and actual news not making money. Fear kills the economy. Real or imagined threats stifle spending, and I can track it with my advertising numbers. Never more so than now. That is not a fun thing to watch.
Trump just fired the director of the FBI. I shudder to think what sort of effect that will have on my bottom line for this month. It’s total fucking chaos all the time anymore. It’s up close with the people I’m related to and it’s out in the world all the time now, and it’s exhausting…
29 Comments
PFFFFT! That last line. It killed me. Dead from laughter.
I always thought, one of the most obvious problems with the ACA, is a lot of those advocating it are rich people. :p They come out looking like saints to the poor and downtrodden, get to feel good about themselves, but it had no effect on them, and notice they don’t go “You know what? I don’t need this 1million dollar house. Let me give most of that to causes to help poor people.”
Then you have those who want it but know they won’t have to worry about the costs because they couldn’t pay them anyways.
And lately I’ve been seeing people go “There isn’t fake news.” However, just last year we saw the news networks would edit footage so things play out in a totally different direction. There is fake news. It’s sucks and like you said, it’s because they want to make money, not report the news.
Maybe this is the buildup of me watching the governmental corruption build since the Clinton administration(when I started paying attention to politics), but I think allot of this chaos may stem from someone with pruning shears cutting anything they see as corrupt or failing without considering the effect it has on the whole system. If anything, I think that the old boys club in Washington needed something like this to happen to put them back in fear of losing their seat.
I guess trumps’ presidency may go down in history as the great shakedown, and if that’s all trump accomplishes, the anarchist in me will be happy with that
If all he does for four years is make people realize how many things are screwed up and need fixing…. I’d have to say that’s probably better IMO than the eight years Obama had. I really wish people would stop trying to get the government to do things it was never meant to do, and just assuming that there won’t be any consequences. Government wasn’t designed to do X? Well make it do X anyways, and surely it’ll all sort out, right? Then when it doesn’t sort out, everyone is surprised.
It goes farther back than Clinton. It sort of starts right after Nixon. I’ve been alive that long that my Wayback Machine is sort of seeing double now.
This isn’t new. This is actually a repeat of the 60s, 70s and then leading into the 80s. What we had was a fairly liberal, trying-to-help-everyone government. The problem was that shit had gotten so bad by the end of the 50s that everyone wanted to try it the other way. Inflation, civil right violations, coming off several “police actions” aka wars.
So what people did was vote for a more socially active government. They wanted people like Nixon and Ford and Carter to basically “shake up” the government. But … it didn’t happen. So they voted on AN ACTOR named Ronald Reagan to drain the swamp and change Washington. He was the outsider. Not a lot of experience with government. People idolized him (still sort of do, save a lot have come around lately in hindsight). “He’ll change EVERYTHING,” is what I heard all the damn time. “Give him a chance,” was the other thing. And he didn’t. And today you can look back and see Congress and Reagan mucked up a lot of things in government during his term. We had Bush Sr and then Clinton as a result of people wanting to go back the other way, away from Reagan’s administration.
The reality is this, people. Politicians become politicians when they enter government. Trying to fix politics by hiring an outsider who you love INTO POLITICS is not going to fix it. Not a rich guy, not a poor guy, not a nice guy, not an asshole. The answer? I dunno – work at the local level and not elect idiots who are clearly rich and paid out from the get-go just because they espouse a party you support. How about research? Again, I don’t have your easy answer. Just that outsiders do better if they drive change from the OUTSIDE. Putting public pressure on the government itself.
Change doesn’t happen in 8 years, either. Change in government in the past has taken four decades at best, maybe six. FOUR DECADES. 40 years. A majority of your lifetime. Expecting Obama or Trump to fix anything in 8 years is folly. Clinton was the result of trying to fix some crazy ass economic BS and political stagnation from the Reagan years. Obama was the attempt to fix 8 years of economic insanity and ultra conservatism under Bush Jr. Trump is the result of a deadlocked Congress and Obama’s failure to be 100% effective. I’m sure whoever follows up Trump will be swing back towards a more socially active government.
Also, there is no Shadow Government. Alex Jones is hilarious, but he’s an act. He stokes conspiracy fears over civilian run intelligence services who – I will confess – are intimidating and probably did intimidate Trump into being diplomatically destructive than I thought he’d be. I just have to scramble to fix the insanity of his cabinet and other appointees who are his idiot friends.
*Trump into being LESS diplomatically destructive.
Typing too fast for my own thoughts there. The CIA and the FBI are the only things that kept Trump from massively ruining all our alliances at this point. He used to actively hate them, now he loves them. Well, save the former FBI Director.
Which is ironic: the most effective and steady stopgaps against Trump are the very agencies of which the people can’t elect or vote for. Which means, that those two bureaus of intelligence are there to make sure that the outside political game for EEUU just doesn’t implode. With all their modern prerrogatives, it isn’t impossible for them to “game” boastful candidates into moderate, “sensible” positions
I feel that’s some of the things people forget. Lots of people still look back at Clinton as a time of greatness, always forgetting he got to be president during the tech boom.
But yes, what one president does will take years to see the effect of often.
Snacks for the Lord. Sounds like the name of Romans second store
I found it very interesting to actually hear a real world effect from the ACA, between a media that always spins it either left or right and a bulk of aggressively unhelpful raw data is can be hard to actually know the effects.
The thing is; a fallacies when it comes to tax and government incentives is if you give a tax break or subsidize a group/product/commodity, there is no guarantee that private businesses will pass on the money from those breaks/subsidies. Its entirely possible for them to pocket the whole or part of the difference, and keep the end consumer/customer paying the same inflated amount. I wonder if this is the case with Medical Insurers, in that the healthcare revisions may have caused savings, but the companies just aren’t passing on that savings down the line, or are at the very least delaying doing so.
I hope it gets better for you.
From time to time, I see articles and statistics that states the US has by far the highest costs for various acts related to healthcare, for a quality that is not particularly exceptional outside particuliarly renowned institutions with even higher premiums. I did hear those higher prices are related to a higher lawsuits-related costs or that US customers supports more of the R&D costs because drugs are under patent for longer than other countries along with other random things. Not entirely sure how true any of this is, though, so you might be on to something.
I work in the manufacturing end of big pharma.
– the costs are not there –
Research is done at the tax subsidized colleges / universities.
Big Pharma research is primarily engineering for scale-up to production levels and marketing, marketing, marketing, did I mention marketing? And those costs? Totally tax deductible and a spitoon splat when it comes to the lake size budgets at these companies.
Think Ferenghi but without any rules of acquisition restraining their actions.
The first rule of aquistion is once you have their money never give it back
Definitely what happened with the banks.
The US Government has a system of checks and balances. Every once in awhile we feel the need to elect someone who will test those checks and balances to the limit, just to make sure they still work.
Those checks and balances were subverted after 9-11 where the oversight changed to cooperation and secrecy of all things no matter what because – scary stuff [T-word]
The roots may have been planted earlier but the crapbush burst into full bloom after that even.
Someone blows the whistle on an agency doing bad, awful and down right traitorous things and a whole lot of time and energy is spent on going after the whistle blower and nothing at all is done about the criminal stuff that was revealed – excuse – [T-word]
How do you know they are terrified to spend vs they just don’t have the money (recession)?
The sharp fluctuation can be tracked by date to each time something happened. The month trump was elected the ad values halved the day after.
I see by people you mean viewers not advertisers (advertisers wouldn’t be able to change their budget right away). Very interesting. Then Trump has been killing the economy in the last few months without stats reflecting it. So I’ll blame Obama only for tripling the debt and not taking out NK satellites.
Why would you think advertisers couldn’t change their budget right away? All you have to do is cancel your bids. Web advertising bidding can change moment by moment. You can buy time for seconds at a time if you want.
I don’t have time to explain this to you. I’m not talking about the larger economy. The cattle market actually rose when Trump was elected. The difference is that people that advertise with me tend to be liberal, artists, LGBT, ect. that perceive the changes in the government as dangerous and scary. Which has a measurable effect on my revenue.
Which is sad. But also indicative of the demographic. Which is also sad. I had a conservative friends who did a webcomic, and Assad pretty darn good at it too, but he couldn’t do it anymore because he basically was brushed off the hosting site.
Now he wouldn’t name who did it, but they replaced his comic with a lgbt comic.
I wish that people would stop being intolerant of each other. I consider myself conservative but I don’t hate lgbt or anything, I just try to let people do what they want.
Why can’t they let us do what we want?
Have you ever noticed that the guy who’s always claiming people are lying is the biggest liar? Or that the thief is especially sensitive/aware of security flaws? Then it’s no surprise that those who complain/worry most about politically-motivated violence are the largest perpetrators of it.
That’s why “they” can’t let us do what we want, but insist that they be allowed to.
Belated: yes they can change immediately but they wouldn’t be thinking about it. What happens with Trump is disturbing on a more subconscious level (people not buying or visiting), rather than advertisers collectively going hm I’m going to lower my budget today. Most accounts are managed by 3rd parties anyhow. Also sales are usually a fixed percentage of views or clicks so if there is less traffic they automatically pay less. Of course then there is the adbot net generated traffic but most people have no idea how that is affecting them.
Never mind my blabblering.
Well, the ACA is still in effect as the only thing that happened is that the House passed a new bill, but it still needs to go to the Senate. The Senate has said however, that they intend to start completely from scratch, and if the two bills differ, then they will have to go to conference committee in order to “blend” them together somehow.
Once that is done, it goes to the president for his signature, and guess what, we are still not done yet, as regulations need to be put into place at the HHS, insurance carriers need to plan for future years based upon what finally emerges, and after all of that happens, you will start to see the new insurance plans hit the market. Even if this goes as a well oiled machine, we are probably talking years before it is fully implemented.
OH – I just updated my pledge by a bit – had a hiccup with the web page, most likely at my end. So Jackie, if you see something weird with the Patreon thingy, then that was me hitting the wrong button.
To anyone who can – sacrifice a starbucks – or just send the equivalent of a small cuppa joe once a month his way. ^_^
I just try to remember the major difference for ACA and the new one isn’t about how it affects me, though I have many personal health issues and am very concerned. I am an anecdote; one miniscule fraction of the population, as are
Ugh, sorry, accidentally posted early. Anyway, it will take care away from a much larger group of people, the ones who suffer the most. I want the new bill to not continue to widen the gap between the classes and feed into a dysfunctional system.
I do empathize with your exhaustion, and think a lot of the chaos is engineered to exhaust us. Keep fighting, and look up ‘dime game dbt’ to maybe help set boundaries with the draining people in your life.