Day: July 26, 2013

What Is In The Mandate?

Oh God!  The ballet has begun again…….the debate on the law called Obamacare.  Silliness and absurdity are the chorus…….we are hearing all the crap over and over….kinda like the House votes on repealing the Law, 39 times I believe and yet it is still the LAW!  GOP has its head firmly placed in their anus…….before we go on let me say something clever to the Right wing….Obamacare is LAW!  Get over it you twats!

The taxes and the fines and lastly that damn pesky MANDATE.  But wait what is the mandate?  Can you describe it without dashing to the Google machine?  (pause here for the clicking of keys in search of mandate on Google).

Ezra Klein has attempted to explain the mandate……..

The individual mandate is a requirement that all individuals who can afford health-care insurance purchase some minimally comprehensive policy. For the purposes of the law, “individuals who can afford health-care insurance” is defined as people for whom the minimum policy will not cost more than 8 percent of their monthly income, and who make more than the poverty line. So if coverage would cost more than 8 percent of your monthly income, or you’re making very little, you’re not on the hook to buy insurance (and, because of other provisions in the law, you’re getting subsidies that make insurance virtually costless anyway).

The theory behind the mandate is simple: It’s there to protect against an insurance death spiral. Now that insurers can’t discriminate based on preexisting conditions, it would be entirely possible for people to forgo insurance until, well, they develop a medical condition. In that world, the bulk of the people buying insurance on the exchanges are sick, and that makes the average premiums terrifically expensive. The mandate is there to bring healthy people into the pool, which keeps average costs down and also ensures that people aren’t riding free on the system by letting society pay when they get hit by a bus.

The irony of the mandate is that it’s been presented as a terribly onerous tax on decent, hardworking people who don’t want to purchase insurance. In reality, it’s the best deal in the bill: A cynical consumer would be smart to pay the modest penalty rather than pay thousands of dollars a year for insurance. In the current system, that’s a bad idea because insurers won’t let them buy insurance if they get sick later. In the reformed system, there’s no consequence for that behavior. You could pay the penalty for five years and then buy insurance the day you felt a lump.

The Right is fighting the law and in particular the mandate as a TAX….and we know how Americans have been brainwashed into a “no taxation” mode……now we can debate the legitimacy of the argument that it is a tax but it will always depend on your political ideology……..I want to believe that the consumer is smarter than the GOP gives them credit………(I say that and I live in a state where I question the mental capacity of 75% of the voters….so I could be mistaken)……..

Actually the law is too weak….more so than too punitive to the taxpayer……personally, it does not go far enough…..but I can live with it….for now….

Now you have an idea what the mandate is……there is so much more to the law but the mandate seems to be what most are focusing on….at least for this week……

Are Americans Still Pissed?

For more than a month Americans have been debating, griping and yelling about the most recent voyage by the government into the private lives of its citizens….I am talking about the latest NSA “scandal”…..you know that program where every aspect of an American citizen’s life is scrutinized by those in the government….

But as an aged hippie, pinko I am well aware to this type of treatment by the government…ever hear of COINTELPRO?  Let wiki help with the jogging of the citizens collective memory…..

COINTELPRO (an acronym for Counter Intelligence Program) was a series of covert, and at times illegal, projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveying, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic political organizations.
The FBI has used covert operations against domestic political groups since its inception; however, covert operations under the official COINTELPRO label took place between 1956 and 1971. COINTELPRO tactics have been alleged to include discrediting targets through psychological warfare; smearing individuals and groups using forged documents and by planting false reports in the media; harassment; wrongful imprisonment; and illegal violence, including assassination. The FBI’s stated motivation was “protecting national security, preventing violence, and maintaining the existing social and political order.”

Does that sound at all familiar?

As a “subversive”, as I was labelled in the 70’s every word I wrote was scrutinized and I was followed around almost daily….and you know when my civil rights were being stomped on not many mainstream Americans had the balls to stand up and demand accountability….but now all of a sudden, it is so damn important…..amusing ain’t it?

We can piss and moan all we like….but these incidents were not the first time nor the last time crap like this will happen……….as a matter of fact the hero of the Right, Abe Lincoln, was not above these tactics……

Newser) – In its day, it was about as high-tech as surveillance got: Abe Lincoln let war secretary Edwin Stanton reroute the nation’s telegraph lines through his office in 1862 so he could keep tabs on, and control, the flow of information about the war from generals, journalists, and ordinary citizens, writes media studies professor David Mindich in the New York Times. At one point, a House panel grew so worried about the “telegraphic censorship” that it called for restraint. Eventually, however, the war ended, and so did the eavesdropping.

“Part of the reason this calculus was acceptable to me was that the trade-offs were not permanent,” writes Mindich. Similar surveillance, ever more high-tech, happened in subsequent wars, but it always receded when the war ended. Which brings us to Edward Snowden and the war on terror. “If history is any guide, ending the seemingly endless state of war is the first step in returning our civil liberties,” writes Mindich. Because given the state of snooping today, Stanton himself might be aghast at the potential for abuse. Click for the full column.
We can also look at the wording of the act that allows this intrusion into our lives…….
The controversial spying programs that Edward Snowden has revealed can trace their existence to the FISA court’s redefinition of one word: “relevant.” The Patriot Act allows the FBI to demand records as long as they are believed to be “relevant to an authorized investigation.” But the court in the mid-2000s expanded the definition of “relevant” beyond its usual, narrow application in criminal cases to allow the government to collect virtually anything and assemble a database on millions of people, the Wall Street Journal reports. Essentially, “relevant” now means “everything,” a former Justice Department lawyer says. “A grand-jury subpoena for such a broad class of records,” he says, “would be laughed out of court.” But the FISA court’s rulings are made in secret and are almost impossible to challenge. The New York Times yesterday said the court had become “almost a parallel Supreme Court,” regularly ruling on broad constitutional questions. It has, for example, carved out a terrorism exception to the Fourth Amendment’s protections against search and seizures.

Yes I am a bit perturbed about this newest violation of American’s civil rights….but am I shocked?  Nothing about the functioning of this government shocks me…Americans need to realize what lengths the government will go to in the name of national security.  And importantly……they need to realize that they are not as secure as they think…..the government as well as business has been invading your space for a long time…….By all means be outraged but please stop being shocked at what your government is capable of doing…..you will live longer!