I read with an interest a partisan Congressional Tea Party Republican's view on the state of politics. His view is that he doesn't need to compromise or even contemplate the middle ground because his brand of politics dominates his electorate so he is no danger of losing his job. He also sees this as true of most Democrats who have no risk of losing their jobs either by being diametrically opposed to him.
This certainly casts doubt upon my original goal for this blog which was to foster thoughts about a proper path between Democrat and Republican points of view to find a balance which takes the best of both worlds. Instead, we get nothing but gridlock and parliamentary type system without the constraints of a parliamentary system.
I have no doubt that gerrymandering is the driver of all this and wish statewide elections were a growing norm rather than the small trend toward driving everything down to the Congressional Districts. That might be OK if Congressional District winners recognized that they owe some leadership potential for the 20% to 49% of the voters who didn't vote for them and want to see compromise over some issues sometime. But I suspect we will not see this any time soon.
Similarly, Tim McGraw is finding out that a country star cannot play a benefit for Sandy Hook victims because some Sandy Hook victims support a verification system before allowing the purchase of a gun. The NRA has worked up such a high level of hysteria over reasonable gun control (it used to be handgun controls, but now we can't even control military weapons, and then people wonder why police are fearful for their lives every time they stop someone), that Tim McGraw is being seen as a traitor to the country music world and NRA supporters are going to boycott his music. Maybe he should have just sent a donation, but I read somewhere he already has a net worth in excess of $30 mm so I guess he is now rich enough to not care if he maximizes the profits from every song.
Meanwhile, Chris Christie is trying to resurrect his campaign by coming after entitlements. I have written extensively about the need to fix entitlements, but also must note that sending block grants to states to fix Medicaid will force the states to create death panels. Most of the growth in medicaid spending is the direct result of the ever increasing number of elderly alzheimer's patients who become institutionalized, spend down their resources and go onto Medicaid to pay for their long term care. They have no life and they are doomed, but someone has to pay for their care unless you have death panels and euthanasia, which most conservatives and liberals are against. This is where the rubber meets the road. You either support robust palliative care or you need to authorize euthanasia if you want to control the growth in Medicaid spending. DEMENTIA is growing rapidly, not the cost of covering poor children.
I don't have a solution for this except to support robust palliative care. Dr assisted death only works if the patient is cognizant and dementia patients are not cognizant. I know this because my mother had Alzheimers, cost the system over $600,000 for her last 4 years of life and did not have one iota of cognizant thought in those 4 years. I wanted her to die with dignity but instead she ended up with an ignored DNR and 4 months in an ICU on a ventilator before she died. The Dr who oversaw that should go to jail but instead he got paid handsomely no doubt.
The failure to regulate the financial system well in the years leading up to the 2008 financial collapse now has a measure of what it did to global growth. Global GDP is now 3% lower than it would otherwise be according to J.P. Morgan economists. Since GDP is annual concept that is how much lower aggregate incomes are each year. That is a lot of foregone income and would have helped people and governments afford things better if the collapse had not happened. I don't understand why Republicans, who studied economics, don't understand the need for prudent financial regulation. An unregulated economy leads to excesses that have disastrous results.
No comments:
Post a Comment