Tag: Plouffed

WH Has Social Security Cuts on Their Table

Get a load of this.  It was released late yesterday evening in The Hill.

2 things happened Wednesday.  The new Republican majority House gleefully voted to overturn the last session’s PPACA health care reform bill completely, as expected.  And the Chinese President, Hu Jintao had a fancy state dinner at the White House with the President. It was said to be a “quintessentially American” state dinner, with lobster, rib eye beef with onion crisps, potatoes, and apple pie for dessert.


Wednesday, January 19th, 2011.

The Hill

Senior White House officials have told Senate Democrats that raising the Social Security retirement age and changing the calculation for cost-of-living adjustments are “on the table” but no final decisions have been made, according to Senate sources.

A White House spokesman declined to comment.

Strategists for congressional Democrats fear this could create permanent Democratic minorities in the House and Senate.

http://thehill.com/homenews/ad…

These so – called political strategists really have their heads up their bums if they think their biggest problem is that it could create permanent Democratic minorities in the House and Senate.

I bet they want me and you to be civil about this.

Let’s get this straight.

This isn’t about which Party gets to be on top.  This isn’t about getting somebody elected, or re elected, and it’s sure not about being able to pass more pathetic legislation and declaring a victory at the photo – opp.

This isn’t about writing your best selling, tell all,  cover up biography afterwards, nor your cushy post administration job in the private sector or think tank.  

This is literally about life and death for the elderly and the most vulnerable in our population.

They really think they can extort their remaining constituency on this issue.

They really think they can raise the retirement age to 68 or 69 before somebody can collect on Social Security or Medicare.

They think this is merely a matter of strategizing for the 2012 national re election of the Democratic candidate for the White House, and to hell with the House and Senate.

This is war.

Hey, Madame ex Speaker, we saw what you did before in the House, when push came to shove, on that concept of everybody in the tax extraction in exchange for universal eligibility of coverage for a government program. You punted, and it was disgraceful.  Senate Majority Leader, too.

You know and I know what’s going down on that State of the Union speech this month.

There Will Be Platitudes.  “And I pledge to you, Social Security will remain safe and solvent on my watch.”  

Then afterwards he does whateverthehell he wants.  

Don’t make me use the Mother of 5 Voice.  

Froomkin has more:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

You’ll Love This- WH Sides With Big Pharma vs. Clinics on Prices

There are over 15,000 clinics and hospitals in this country, which get their drugs for poorer patients from a government discount – drug act which was created in 1992.   They spend over $6 billion, and they are supposed to get a discount of 30% to 50% off.

During the past 8 years, (that’s mostly during the Bush administration 2002 – , with some overlap into the 3rd Term of Bipartisanbamaship ) the inspector general for HHS noticed drug manufacturers were overcharging their customers, but not getting dinged for it and being motivated to be good contractors.


Ted Slafsky, executive director of Safety Net Hospitals for Pharmaceutical Access — which represents 600 hospitals in the program — said that “manufacturers have been able to overcharge covered entities with impunity.”

http://www.californiahealthlin…

Santa Clara County and Santa Cruz County in California sued Astra Zeneca USA.   This upset Big Pharma.

In Dec 2009, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals of San Francisco ruled that clinics and hospitals could sue.

The Supreme Court is asked to rule next.

The U.S. Department of Justice, Eric Holder, Attorney General, under the Presidency of Barack Obama, is now siding with the Pharmaceutical companies to overturn that decision, and telling the Supreme Court they don’t want counties and clinics suing over drug price rip offs.   Per the DOJ, only the Federal Government (not meaning Congress, I guess, but the secret deal maker- in – chief) had the authority to enforce the law.

JP Morgan Chase Exec For WH Chief of Staff?

Things I Couldn’t Make Up If I Tried, continued:

William Daley, an executive with JP Morgan Chase in Chicago, is under consideration to replace Rahm Emanuel, who is running for Mayor of Chicago, as President Obama’s Chief of Staff.


http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-…

Emanuel hopes to succeed outgoing Mayor Richard M. Daley, the brother of William Daley. Like Emanuel, Daley would be a choice with strong ties to the president’s hometown of Chicago.

The decision comes at a critical point of turnover for the Obama administration, as it pivots toward the back half of its first term, and looks toward re-election in 2012.

HumpDay Part III: Bush Tax Cuts for Richest a Go, per Axelrod, Walks back Afghantime

Just before midnight, Wednesday, November 10, 2010, Pacific West Coast time:

Just when you really wanted to effing just go to bed and bury your head in a pillow for the next 24 hours, White House top advisor (at this hour….) David Axelrod has been tasked with imparting this cheery news:  The George W. Bush Tax Cuts for the Wealthiest, began at the beginning of the Afghan and Iraq wars (2001 and 2003) due to expire at the end of the year, are alive and well, and won’t be rescinded after all.  Yay Chicago Neoliberal Ekonomists !  


HuffPo 11/10/10

White House Gives In On Bush Tax Cuts

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

“We have to deal with the world as we find it,” Axelrod said during an unusually candid and reflective 90-minute interview in his office, steps away from the Oval Office. “The world of what it takes to get this done.”

“There are concerns,” he added, that Congress will continue to kick the can down the road in the future by passing temporary extensions for the wealthy time and time again. “But I don’t want to trade away security for the middle class in order to make that point.”

Axelrod said the President would not comment on the Deficit, aka the Catfood Commision’s, draconium domestic spending cut proposals until the report is formally finished and presented on December 1.  A preliminary report by the Presidential appointed co chairs, Simpson and Bowles, was released earlier today.

https://www.docudharma.com/diar…

Oh, and that story I deconstructed earlier, https://www.docudharma.com/diar…      that the Cable News Peeps were sort of ignoring or downplaying earlier this evening, from Tuesday’s McClatchy, http://www.mcclatchydc.com/201… which quoted “administration and military officials”   about the change in the timeline for beginning withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan ? Axelrod walked it back.


Meanwhile, on the war in Afghanistan — an expensive and increasingly unpopular conflict — Axelrod pushed back hard against the notion, floated in some recent stories quoting “senior administration sources,” that the deadline for beginning troop withdrawals had been pushed back from July 2011 to some time in 2014.

“If it is being sourced to senior administration officials, than someone has bad administration sources,” Axelrod said. “There is no change in the president’s position. There is no change in that basic commitment.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

Well, look at the McClatchy story link again.


….administration and military officials have told McClatchy.

So far, the U.S. Central Command, the military division that oversees Afghanistan operations, hasn’t submitted any kind of withdrawal order for forces for the July deadline, two of those officials told McClatchy.

…. said one senior administration official.

….. one Pentagon advisor said

…. on Tuesday, a White House official who spoke with reporters in a conference call

“Bad administration sources ?”

This was a very coordinated trial balloon that fell like a lump of lead.  Or the guy left babysitting the press at the Oval Office in DC, Axelrod, is either out of the loop, or trying to spin it as nothing to see here.

Axelrod has lots of practice at spinning. In March 2008, Businessweek wrote “The Secret Side of David Axelrod, a master of astroturfing who has a second firm that shapes public opinion for corporations.”

The website is here http://askps.com/whatwedo.php  altho Axelrod’s name is not on the masthead now, they continue to specialize in “a disciplined focus on message development and message delivery.”  And they create lots of front groups for clients to do that.


March 2008

http://www.businessweek.com/bw…

From the same address in Chicago’s River North neighborhood, Axelrod operates a second business, ASK Public Strategies, that discreetly plots strategy and advertising campaigns for corporate clients to tilt public opinion their way. He and his partners consider virtually everything about ASK to be top secret, from its client roster and revenue to even the number of its employees. But customers and public records confirm that it has quarterbacked campaigns for the Chicago Children’s Museum, ComEd, Cablevision, and AT&T.

Eric Sedler, 39, a former public relations director at AT&T and corporate-reputation specialist at PR giant Edelman, is the “S” in ASK and the company’s managing partner. The “K” is John Kupper, 51, a former congressional press secretary and ad-industry consultant…

In politics, Axelrod’s AKP&D is as partisan as they come. But ASK travels easily across the aisle. Gene Reineke, head of Hill & Knowlton’s Chicago office and former chief of staff for Republican Governor Jim Edgar, says his PR firm shared ComEd as a client and now works with ASK on the Children’s Museum. “Their firm is outstanding,” he says. “I think it’s one of the best in the field, to be honest.”

Here’s another version, in the New York Times, with names you might recognize.  Of course they were out of the bleeping country when they said it.  Maybe we should check with Julian Assange of wikileaks ?


US Tweaks Message on Troops in Afghanistan

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11…

Nov 10, 2010 By Elisabeth Bumiller

In a move away from President Obama’s deadline of July 2011 for the start of an American drawdown from Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, all cited 2014 this week as the key date for handing over the defense of Afghanistan to the Afghans themselves. Implicit in their message, delivered at a security and diplomatic conference in Australia, was that the United States would be fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan for at least four more years.

The 2014 date will be a focus at a NATO summit meeting that Mr. Obama is to attend next week in Lisbon, Portugal, where the alliance is to be presented with a transition plan, drawn up by Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, that calls for a gradual four-year shifting of security responsibility to the Afghans. Administration officials said that the document had no timetable for specific numbers of troop withdrawals and instead set forth the conditions that had to be met in crucial provinces before NATO forces could hand off security to the Afghans.

per the NYT, another “WH spokesman,” Tommy Vietor, insisted that there had been absolutely “no change” to the original drawdown policy.   And a “White House official” said that “we’re bringing some clarity to the policy of our future in Afghanistan.”

To paraphrase Bush’s Secretary of Unpreparedness, Rumsfeld:

You go to war with the tax rate you have, not the tax rate you might want or wish to have at a later time.

Even if it will add $700 billion more to that deficit the Republicans and the Catfood Commisssion are baying about.

______

update Thurs And we already have some “Democratic” Senators indicating a willingness to put Social Security on the table because of their “concern” for the deficit.


http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-…

Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) on Thursday said Congress should consider all of the proposals coming from President Obama’s fiscal commission, including the controversial proposals to reform Social Security.

In a phone interview with The Hill, Udall said the 50-page proposal released Wednesday by former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles and former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.), the chairmen of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, should be seriously considered even though “none of them are going to be very popular.”

“This is going to be a very painful process. But we must bring down the deficit and the debt, and everything needs to be on the table.

Blue Texan at FDL asks   “If the White House Gets Rolled by the GOP on Tax Cuts, What’s the Point of Voting for Democrats ?”

_______

edited to add link to orig story Huffpo

and links to business week article on Axelrod and his old PR firm, ASK

edited thurs to add link from The Hill about Udall and from FDL

HumpDay Part II: Debt Commish Wants Your Social Security & Medicare, Too

Oh, this is just turning out to be an all kinds of post electoral inspirational day for the Democratic Party.

  First we had this, the Pentagon’s version of the “4 more years!” cheer, and here’s my reaction to that. https://www.docudharma.com/diar…

And if you liked that, you are going to LOVE this.

  Debt Commission Report Targets Social Security and Medicare.  


The most direct assault on Social Security, however, may not be the increase of the retirement age, but rather an attempt to tilt the program toward a welfare model and away from the current, universal insurance model that has made it popular and enduring despite 75 years of attacks. The co-chairs propose to “increase [the] progressivity of [the] benefit formula by creating a new bendpoint at the 50th percentile.” Such a move would require means testing. In other words, the government would determine benefits based on a beneficiary’s assets and other sources of income. Currently, beneficiaries are paid benefits based on their contribution over their working life. Replacing the social insurance model with a welfare model would erode support, encourage fraud and ultimately undermine the program.

If you want to look at the original doc from the co – chairs of the Catfood, er, Fiscal commission, co chaired by ex Republican Senator Alan Simpson and ex COS of Pres. Clinton, Erksine Bowles, here’s the pagestart.  Remember President Obama appointed these clowns. http://www.fiscalcommission.go…

And here are more commissioners.  See anybody familiar on this list ?  Why look, it’s Southern California’s Rep. Xavier Becerra (D, CA 31) one of the Leadership “Liberal” Democrats who wouldn’t commit to signing on for a Public Option.   Bruce Reed, another Clintonite, is the Executive Director.

Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT)

Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-CA 31)

Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI 4)

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK)

Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND)

David Cote, Chairman and CEO, Honeywell International

Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID)

Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL)

Ann Fudge, Former CEO, Young & Rubicam Brands

Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH)

Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX 5)

Alice Rivlin, Senior Fellow, Brookings Institute and former Director, Office of Management & Budget

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI 1)

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL 9)

Rep. John Spratt (D-SC 5)

Andrew Stern, President, Service Employees International Union

The White House is presumably tucked into bed in another Asian time zone, out of range of commenting and wondering if anyone is going to greet them at the airport tarmac on the way home next week other than John Boehner, Mitch McConnell and Robert Gates.  Perpetual occupation of Afghanistan, secret drone wars, arms deals with India vs. Pakistan, and now the Cat Food commission turns loose the proposal to cut income taxes for the richest, and cut Medicare, and cut Social Security.   What’s not to like ?  

It is at this time I am going to relish my earlier assessment of Senator Kent Conrad (D, Fly Over State, North Dakota) as a duplicitous warmongering **** .


” We have now received a proposal from the bipartisan co-chairs of the President’s Fiscal Commission, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson. This is not the conclusion of the commission’s work. This is the beginning.

I commend them for putting together a serious proposal. It reveals just how difficult it is to put the nation on a sound fiscal course. Some of it I agree with; some I strongly disagree with. We will have a chance to offer alternatives as we advance the process later today and next week.”

Paul Krugman thinks they can’t be serious.  http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.c…

Because the good stuff ends up going to the very affluent.


I mean, what’s this about? There is no – zero – evidence that income taxes at current rates are an important drag on growth.

Oh, and they’re talking about raising the retirement age, because people live longer – except that the people who really depend on Social Security, those in the bottom half of the distribution, aren’t living much longer. So you’re going to tell janitors to work until they’re 70 because lawyers are living longer than ever.

It’s here. And it really is that bad. The idea that co-chairs of a commission whose charge is fiscal sustainability should take it upon themselves to (a) declare that federal revenue must not exceed 21 percent of GDP – that’s right, putting a cap on receipts and (b) call for reducing the top rate from 35 to 23 is just awesome.

Oh, Kruggie, since when do the Repukes and the Repuke wanna bees rely on evidence that excessively favoring the affluent might not be good for all of the rest of us ?

Dave Dayen went thru the thing –  hey, there’s cuts for the Veteran’s Administration, and TRICARE, too.

http://news.firedoglake.com/20…

Best comment-

ralphbon:

Splendid timing, given tomorrow’s Veteran’s Day.  

And the other good comment from “ottogrendal”


Indeed. The DoD still grows. Over $700 billion for the FY 2011 budget. http://comptroller.defense.gov…

Yay America !   We’re number 22nd now in life expectancy behind Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Japan, and Cyprus, and a lot of European countries like Switzerland and the United Kingdom.  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

Americablog says we’re actually ranked at 49th worldwide now.


In 1950, the United States was fifth among the leading industrialized nations with respect to female life expectancy at birth, surpassed only by Sweden, Norway, Australia, and the Netherlands The last available measure of female life expectancy had the United States ranked at forty-sixth in the world. As of September 23, 2010, the United States ranked forty-ninth for both male and female life expectancy combined.

Meanwhile, per capita health spending in the United States increased at nearly twice the rate in other wealthy nations between 1970 and 2002. As a result, the United States now spends well over twice the median expenditure of industrialized nations on health care, and far more than any other country as a percentage of its gross domestic product (GDP).

Demographics can be a beautiful thing.

Raise the retirement age, get rid of health care,  and we won’t need that silly Social Security.  

Orszag & Gibbs Have A Bridge In Brooklyn They’d Like To Sell You- On Spec

Peter Orszag, the former White House Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), now a “Distinguished Visiting Fellow” at the   “Council of Foreign Relations,” launched his debut in the New York Times yesterday.  

Orszag’s found a cure for his personal employment prospects:  put himself out for hire to continue the Bush Years deficit spending.

In typical neocon- liberal fashion, he admits there is a problem, and them offers a “compromise” which is supposed to be a concession, which actually does not nothing but continue the current status quo, because it doesn’t really happen.  Orszag writes:


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09…

” Yet no one wants to make an already stagnating jobs market worse over the next year or two, which is exactly what would happen if the cuts expire as planned.  Higher taxes now would crimp consumer spending, further depressing the already inadequate demand for what firms are capable of producing at full tilt. ”

_____

” …. extend the tax cuts for two years, and then end them altogether.  Ideally, only the middle class tax cuts would be continued for now.

Getting a deal in Congress, though, may require keeping the the high income tax cuts, too. And that would still be worth it. ”

On consumer demand, they spend on shelter/utilities and food and then transportation, clothes, and finally luxury goods.  Shelter- we have a housing glut, and don’t need to produce any in the immediate future.  Food- no shortages yet, thankfully, only HUNGER, aka “food insecurity,” whereby the millions of jobless and underemployed are relying on food stamps, food banks, and charities to feed themselves and the school lunch program to feed the kids.  Transportation, ie gasoline prices, are not spiking, but public transportation maintenance is lagging, and even the interstates are literally crumbling in hard hit states, such as CA.  Manufacturing for clothing and consumer goods for things like appliances and electronics, we outsourced overseas in the name of stockholder’s profits.  

WH Budget Muppet Peter Orszag About to Deploy Parachute

Oh, fvucking Hallelujah – maybe.

Another one who’s going to get his life back from what the London School of Economics taught him. https://www.docudharma.com/diar…

Of course, the announcement was made Annonrahmously so they can then poll furiously to see if this pre election maneuver stokes the proper response from the 50% of the electorate which doesn’t know who he is nor what he does.


WASHINGTON – White House Budget Director Peter Orszag plans to resign, a Democratic official said Monday night, positioning him to be the first high-profile member of President Barack Obama’s team to depart the administration.

Orszag is expected to leave in the coming months. The exact timing is not known.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

The New York Times Blog claims he is out of there by July and is getting married in September.

Keyboard Spew Alert:


http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes…

Mr. Orszag argued inside the White House that his successor should be in place to put the next budget together from the start.

In recent months, Mr. Orszag, 41, espoused deficit reduction strategies in administration debates against those who pressed for more stimulus spending and tax cuts to keep the economy from slipping back into recession. He will leave before the bipartisan debt-reduction commission that Mr. Obama formed earlier this year – and which Mr. Orszag championed – is due to report its recommendations by Dec. 1.

A longtime scholar of health policy economics, Mr. Orszag also helped devise and sell the president’s signature initiative overhauling the health insurance system. He privately has told associates that having worked on two budgets, a stimulus plan and the health care law, it is time to leave while he is ahead.

From Reuters, we receive hints that we aren’t going to get much of a policy change,  


http://www.reuters.com/article…

Potential successors include Laura Tyson, an economist of the University of California at Berkeley, and Gene Sperling, counselor to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. Both are former White House economic advisers who served in President Bill Clinton’s administration.  

Another candidate is Robert Greenstein, executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Orszag announced in a speech earlier this month that government agencies were being asked to plan for 5 percent cuts in an array of domestic programs.

Peter Orszag Ready to Cash Out of Obama Cabinet ?

Say it ain’t so, Peter!

Bloomberg News and HuffPo reporting that the White House’s Budget director and bonne vivant “deficit hawk” (sic) Peter Orszag may be considering taking the first lifeboat off the Titanic  leaving President Barack Obama’s cabinet soon.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…


Orszag will make his decision soon, according to a person familiar with the matter, Bloomberg BusinessWeek will report in its April 26 issue. The 41-year-old budget director had been signaling to White House officials that he didn’t plan to remain for the next budget cycle, the person said.

“Signaling ?”  

Per Reuters, a spokesperson for the Office of Budget and Management, Kenneth Baer, said that it was merely “idle speculation” and that he was “focused on his job.”

http://www.reuters.com/article…

The Obama Bipartisan “Debt Commission” is scheduled to meet at the White House next Tuesday the 27th.  

http://www.reuters.com/article…

The President is scheduled to speak, followed by remarks from Orszag and Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, who was roasted yesterday in a House hearing before the Financial Services Committee. Most inspiring video and transcript here: https://www.docudharma.com/diar…

No doubt Orszag, who has been following North Dakota Senator Kent Conrad’s conservative views on freezing the domestic budget (and blaming it for deficits)  while expanding the military one, is not really looking forward to it as much as the Republicans are.

My earlier diary, on just “Who is Peter Orszag ? ”   https://www.docudharma.com/diar…


Officially called the Bipartisan Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, the new fiscal watchdog grouping is intended to find ways to bring public spending in line with revenues and slim down massive government borrowing.

It is to offer recommendations to the White House by December 1 to get spending and income back into better balance so deficits fall to 3 percent of total national output by 2015.

Dont forget that War Supplemental Budget for FY 2011 is still pending before Congress and needs to be approved soon-  what’s another $33 Billion for Afghanistan, and $159 billion for the rest of the mid eastern occupation,  off the regular budget, between friends ?

Kewl. No wonder Arizona is leading the way on the plan to deport 20 million American residents who weren’t able to obtain legal status because of our border paranoia and chintzy, racist immigration laws.  Because there is nothing like pandering to the mythology that if you just remove your scapegoat enemies from the territory, you’re going to solve all your own self made problems.  

Espresso Party USA

ESPRESSO PARTY MISSION STATEMENT: The Espresso Party Movement gives voice to Americans who are fed up to fcuking here with the bullsh*t in government.

We recognize that the federal government is the enemy of the people, not the expression of our collective will, and that we must all participate in the process of tearing the system down and kicking ass in November 2010 in order make room for building something fcuking useful to address the challenges that we face as Americans.

As voters and grassroots volunteers, we will support leaders who work toward positive solutions, and we will mercilessly hunt down and politically destroy those who obstruct them.



A Message From Our Founder

“Coffee Party Fact Check”

The title says it all.

Here’s the DCCC talking points & plan for h/c vote

Since the Democrats intend to actually vote on the health insurance bail out next week, now that Speaker Pelosi has repeated that the Public Option is Off of Our Table, and said,

 “I’m quite sad that a public option isn’t in there. ”  

http://tpmlivewire.talkingpoin…

Sad in the Baby Seal Syndrome way, as she also said she was for single payer, herself  (eyeroll icon ΓΈΓΈ),

….   they’ve sent out a memo with the schedule (try not to laugh too hard at the thought of the them sticking to one) and some talking points for Congresspeople to take back to their districts during the Easter vacation.   They also told the members to just shut up on reconciliation:

http://www.politico.com/news/s…

http://www.politico.com/livepu…


“At this point, we have to just rip the band-aid off and have a vote – up or down; yes or no?” the memo said. “Things like reconciliation and what the rules committee does is INSIDE BASEBALL.”

“People who try and start arguments about process on this are almost always against the actual policy substance too, often times for purely political reasons.”

I take it they are going to do everything in their power to prevent just that – an up or down vote – from occurring with the Senate and the Public Option, so look for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ proposed amendment to mysteriously and quietly vanish into the ether.  

“For the Public Option. Just Not This One”

Warning. This is Not P.C.

Did you ever read something so mind bogglingly bereft of compassion, and so full of the banality of the banana slugs, it slimed the inner surface of your computer screen as you scrolled thru it ?  

This much “advocacy” deserves a rewrite. This is the current apogee of argument for “reform.”  All I had to do was substitute a few words for other words, throughout the piece.   And this is what happens:

____________________________________________________________________________

“I’m For A Public Option. Just Not This Public Option ”

I see a ton of enthusiasm for the public flogging.  I understand it.  Emotionally, I agree. Intellectually, not so much.

A public flogging is attractive on paper, but has some serious and real pitfalls, in my view.  

I understand why people don’t want to let slaves escape on this, and also why they hate having commercial slave bearing ships, competing with their breeding operations.  But there are still some very practical, non procedural reasons to stop and think it all thru.

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