Tag: aca

Day 110: The Incredible Smallness of the Modern World

It has been a struggle to post this last week. To find a purpose in doing so. In a world so determined to end itself, I feel attempting to stop the suicide to be a grain of sand caught in the oceanic drift.

On the right, a crowd whose empathy ends with their outer dermal layer. On the left, a crowd who see empathy as an end or rather see no further than feeling.
AHCA is a bad bill. It hasn’t been scored by the CBO and as such there is no analysis what it will do. It will cause people to lose coverage and thats enough for it to not live up to the GOP promise. They forgot the dead can’t vote.
P.C. Culture is a failed solution to real problems in society. After 27 years of academic witch hunts, it fractured the Dems coalition. Pushing former leftists into the Alt-Right. Kids still get gunned down by cops for no reason everyday. 
The Alt-Right a vague coalition of reactionaries to whom 1950 is still hell. They are the product of the bubbles we built. Rejected by all, they have come to raze and pillage and rape. Armored in our beloved Irony, they are immune to shame and guilt. They are the priests and flocks of whataboutism and the ultimate product of the internet. They are something new. They wish to supplant democracy and install a CEO, one without a board to answer to.
Those of us outside their circle must decide if we wish to live in a society that self-governs or to bow. That decision must begin with real bipartisanship from both sides. ACA was always more conservative in its solution than progressive. The GOP could repair it and show alternative to single payer healthcare. Progressivism needs to promote concrete quantifiable solutions and worry less about when an ally trips. Those would be baby steps.
Art doesn’t function as a window and politics isn’t a football game. We can either accept the world and save democracy or drown in our own shit.
-E.C. Fiori

Day 17/18/19: An Empty Olympus 

Shame on Republicans especially Rubio, McCain, and Graham on supporting DeVos to become Sec. of Education. Even if you agree with her ideologies, she proved herself to be completely ignorant of her duties in her hearing. Not to mention the confirmation of Tillerson. The story of the Justice Department is equally shameful. Sessions confirmation vote has been delayed to allow him to push through other nominations as a sitting senator leaving the Justice department leaderless as serious court battles befall the executive branch. 
America is without a doubt broken. Congress should be a body to itself and long before Trump gave up their own integrity rubber stamping presidential agendas. Each senator receives a mandate in their election to uphold the constitution and represent their constituents interests. By allowing harmful and incompetent cabinet choices, Congress has seceded their right to advise. With the Wall coming through executive order, they have seceded border control. Each refusal to govern whether by obstruction or blind agreement bleeds our republic and aids the birth of the coming Monarchy. 
This morning has proven to me the easy of the autocracy. Reading about Eric Trump’s recent 2 day business trip cost us $100,000 in secret service and state department costs. Including possible charges for staying and eating in Trump hotels. That’s right the Trump family might be charging us to put their security detail up and making money off it again. This happened during the campaign. For a man who says he is too rich to be bought, his company seems desperate to steal any dime possible from the taxpayer. Granted without his tax returns, we’ll never know anything about his money. The entire Trump cover for the business separation relies on one believing that Trump and his sons don’t talk and Trump is okay losing it all in order to put America first. An impossible position. 
Meanwhile Trump has delayed the ACA replacement until after 2018 midterms. Will he undo his executive order against it? Or will GOP congressman reverse their budget vote? No of course not, so the holes in ACA just got larger. I bet it is an attempt to keep the spectre of the law in play for the midterms. Will it work? They sure weren’t punished for the gov. shutdown. Going back to why elections only work with an informed voter base.
Trump’s defense of Russia keeps getting stranger. I don’t think Putin denies that he is a killer himself, he was KGB. Trump’s belief in the kindness of Putin must stem from the election interference because Putin doesn’t care about non Russians maybe no one other than himself. Trump’s reliance on Putin’s friendship is at least rightfully making waves among the GOP leadership.
In Rome, the shadow president is attempting another halfass coup against Francis. It is foolish because Francis isn’t some global elite pushing an agenda but a humble servant of the Lord simply caring for the poor and other sufferers. It is hard not to see the hand of God in the rise of Francis. His needed shift from the bedroom of believers to the whole of their life. The people have responded I do not believe that Bannon can stop the wave.
In Yemen, Trump’s first authorized raid was so bungled that US ground forces no longer have Yemen’s permission to operate. Iran has used Trump’s provocations to strengthen their totalitarian state. 
Back home Melania is suing over the concept of paid First Lady endorsements in a slander suit. Those are her words “had the unique, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, as an extremely famous and well-known person, as well as a former professional model and brand spokesperson, and successful businesswoman, to launch a broad-based commercial brand in multiple product categories, each of which could have garnered multimillion-dollar business relationships for a multiyear term during which plaintiff is one of the most photographed women in the world.” She shouldn’t worry all press is good press for the Trumps no? 
All this begs the question is anyone running America? Trump’s hiring freeze to further shrink a diminishing federal work force. A task the GOP congress would love to finish. 
Not that it matters because the grand new scheme of the left is a Rosie O’Donnell Bannon on SNL as Trump would hate it so much he would get rid of Bannon. This assumes that Trump is manipulated by television and not that television is manipulated by Trump. An argument I don’t believe. The man knows his medium of choice probably better than the Ivied offices of SNL. It never faced Nixon. Go ask the Smother Brothers.
In the 19 days in office, Trump has been busy raising a lot of dirt. Will it amount to anything great? That’s still anyone’s guess. 
-E.C. Fiori 

Day 4: Rebranding the Rose

Only 1 in 4 people want Obamacare repealed as reported by Fox News

Only 52% of Republicans want repeal.
I argue that most supporters and critics don’t understand ACA and all its effects. The amount of spin on both sides and dearth of education for most citizens. To be fair it is a complicated law with many aspects that almost everyone benefits in some way. No one wants to return to the previous system.
First let’s talk personal responsibility, the conservative boilerplate. Politically the term is never connected to self reflection. It is a charge to be leveled not at any real living citizen but the straw men of the world. People who are cared for by doing nothing. Never the disabled neighbor hurt on site or the family using snap while wearing their walmart uniform but even if the lazy cannot be found they exist for the good Speaker tells me so. I don’t think the feeling of the undeserving receiver is irrational rather I think it stems from a world run by elites who don’t understand the cost of living which is not just comparing median wages and average rents. It is the experience of making a life and always having to find new cuts to make even after a small raise. It is the fickleness of red tape and the pains that come from reckoning with self-worth. Poor people usually don’t chose poverty and the work needed for opportunities is not equal even if it is all hard work. Also to complain about personal responsibility when you as an uninsured citizen cause higher costs is hypocritical.
Second the repeal and replace movement which turns seven this year still hasn’t a plan. The closest is the Senate announced making participation a state issue. This is a cowardly way of saying I don’t want my re-election to depend on actually resolving the problems of big healthcare.
Third is the change in medicine in the past hundred years. We all remember Dr. Salks for choosing the public good over profit but research has changed. Now the patent isn’t up to the doctors who cure but their corporate masters who charge administrators in the medical industrial complex. In between are the insurers and us. Three of the five have profit as their only motive. No wonder care costs more.
How do you fix that system I’m not sure myself but I know ACA was a step forward worth saving and building on to achieve lower premiums and deductibles to save lives.
-E.C. Fiori