"As of January 2016, the UK Parliament has no plans to introduce electronic voting for statutory elections, either using electronic voting in polling booths or remotely via the internet"
"Germany ended electronic voting in 2009, with the German Federal Constitutional Court finding that the inability to have meaningful public scrutiny meant that electronic voting was unconstitutional."
While I am not doubting the outcome of the 2020 election, electronic voting machines are ridiculously easy to hack, and too many of the electronic machines give you a "receipt" that is machine readable only. So I think a debate on this issue is defnitely warranted.
The reality is we don't know how effective the current vaccines (or previous infection) are against Omicron yet. Many scientists are not optimistic (because of the large number of mutations), but they don't know, and Biden certainly doesn't.
Presidents don't want panic, so Biden will lie (if necessary) to try to prevent one (like Fauci lied about masks not helping at the start of COVID). You can call them noble lies, but they still hurt credibility if/when discovered.
The US has essentially abandoned all strategies except vaccines, whose effectiveness wanes fairly quickly. Mask wearing and improved ventilation would help against all variants of COVID, but the CDC's latest recommendation is vaccines, boosters, and hand washing. I guess the good news is that we (probably) won't get to a million COVID deaths until next year.
The value of the preexisting conditions protection in the ACA is overstated. Such protections are also found in HIPAA, although they are weaker in two important ways: 1) They only cover those getting insurance through their employer (which is still how the considerable majority of ACA eligible people get their insurance); 2) During your first year in a new job, if youve had ~2 month gap in your previous coverage, you can be denied coverage. So the ACA protections are better than those in HIPAA, but if the ACA goes away there arent suddenly tens of millions of people who cant get or lose their insurance because of it.
Newsweek in August found that 87% of Democrats support Medicare for All. A more recent FOX news poll found that 72% of Fox viewers(!) support a government-run healthcare plan. As AOC noted, every swing district representative who supported Medicare for All won, while a long list of Democrats who opposed it lost (including all of the Democratic challengers in AZ). Even with the ACA, 30 million are still uninsured and tens of millions more cant afford their deductible to actually get the care they need.
So the Democratic response to the pandemic should not be to hope and pray the ACA is not overturned. It should not be, as Hillary Clinton advocated, to re-open the ACA exchanges (so that people with no jobs and no money can buy insurance they cant afford to use?). It should be to enact what their constituents overwhelmingly want and support: Medicare for All.
"So when I see Donald Trump and the Republican Party try to rush through a Supreme Court appointment just to overturn the Affordable Care Act, especially in the middle of a pandemic, I am as confused as I am horrified."
As others have posted, it is very murky whether ACB will indeed torpedo the ACA. It is almost certain that her appointment is not "just" to overturn the ACA (as opposed to Roe v Wade, gay marriage, etc.)
As the 2nd link posted says, most of the drop in the % of uninsured in AZ is due to the Medicaid expansion, not the pre-existing conditions coverage. Even pre ACA, most people who had pre-existing conditions could still get insurance.
Don't get me wrong, there is a lot of good in the ACA. I don't want it to go away. But it is more like treating a bullet wound with a bandaid.
So when I see something that would actually treat the problem (Medicare for All), and I see Joe Biden repeatedly say he would veto it..."I am as confused as I am horrified". Then I remember that we live in an oligarchy and that both parties work for their donors...and I am no longer confused. Still horrified though.
Pennsylvania as well. And Democrats are hailing these as "victories", when this is contributing to the death of democracy.100 million+ already do not vote. Rather than trying to get more people to vote, Democrats fight to remove legitimate voting choices.
Obama at the DNC said that voting is not transactional. He is wrong. Parties and politicians are not owed votes, they need to offer something. Saying "Have you seen the other guy?" is not offering anything, but that's what HRC did and that's what Biden is doing.
The for-profit private-insurance healthcare system in the US has always been broken; COVID-19 has just laid this (and many other) truths bare.
US hospitals raise prices, cuts costs and lay off staff in midst of COVID-19 crisis Link: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/04/0… Dated April 7th. So when 40 million are out of work, no longer getting insurance through their jobs, our for-profit hospitals are raising their prices and cutting staffing.
Virtually every other country (even Russia!) has already figured this out. So forget making the US great, just catch us up to the rest of the world and take the profit (and profit motive) out of healthcare. Single-payer (aka Medicare For All) now.
We hear a lot about National Security {NS} (e.g. Edward Snowden compromised our NS and so he is a bad guy etc). Most people think that National Security means something like the safety of the people--you know, "securing the blessing of liberty for ourselves and our posterity". But NS as currently used in the USA means no such thing. It means what we used to call State Security--i.e. the future of the political entity USA, with virtually nothing to do with the safety of Americans. So if the "powers that be" think that letting 100 million Americans die of Coronavirus will enhance the chance of survival of America, they can (and will) do it in the name of NS.
Dershowitz is making the same argument. I agree with you that it is a horrible argument, but horrible because NS as currently used is a horrible doctrine, and countless evils are done in its name. One of the very few advantages of Trump (and his team) is that they say the normally quiet parts (like what NS is) out loud, and wake some of us up.
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Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voting_by…
"As of January 2016, the UK Parliament has no plans to introduce electronic voting for statutory elections, either using electronic voting in polling booths or remotely via the internet"
"Germany ended electronic voting in 2009, with the German Federal Constitutional Court finding that the inability to have meaningful public scrutiny meant that electronic voting was unconstitutional."
While I am not doubting the outcome of the 2020 election, electronic voting machines are ridiculously easy to hack, and too many of the electronic machines give you a "receipt" that is machine readable only. So I think a debate on this issue is defnitely warranted.
Presidents don't want panic, so Biden will lie (if necessary) to try to prevent one (like Fauci lied about masks not helping at the start of COVID). You can call them noble lies, but they still hurt credibility if/when discovered.
The US has essentially abandoned all strategies except vaccines, whose effectiveness wanes fairly quickly. Mask wearing and improved ventilation would help against all variants of COVID, but the CDC's latest recommendation is vaccines, boosters, and hand washing. I guess the good news is that we (probably) won't get to a million COVID deaths until next year.
Newsweek in August found that 87% of Democrats support Medicare for All. A more recent FOX news poll found that 72% of Fox viewers(!) support a government-run healthcare plan. As AOC noted, every swing district representative who supported Medicare for All won, while a long list of Democrats who opposed it lost (including all of the Democratic challengers in AZ). Even with the ACA, 30 million are still uninsured and tens of millions more cant afford their deductible to actually get the care they need.
So the Democratic response to the pandemic should not be to hope and pray the ACA is not overturned. It should not be, as Hillary Clinton advocated, to re-open the ACA exchanges (so that people with no jobs and no money can buy insurance they cant afford to use?). It should be to enact what their constituents overwhelmingly want and support: Medicare for All.
As others have posted, it is very murky whether ACB will indeed torpedo the ACA. It is almost certain that her appointment is not "just" to overturn the ACA (as opposed to Roe v Wade, gay marriage, etc.)
As the 2nd link posted says, most of the drop in the % of uninsured in AZ is due to the Medicaid expansion, not the pre-existing conditions coverage. Even pre ACA, most people who had pre-existing conditions could still get insurance.
Don't get me wrong, there is a lot of good in the ACA. I don't want it to go away. But it is more like treating a bullet wound with a bandaid.
So when I see something that would actually treat the problem (Medicare for All), and I see Joe Biden repeatedly say he would veto it..."I am as confused as I am horrified". Then I remember that we live in an oligarchy and that both parties work for their donors...and I am no longer confused. Still horrified though.
Obama at the DNC said that voting is not transactional. He is wrong. Parties and politicians are not owed votes, they need to offer something. Saying "Have you seen the other guy?" is not offering anything, but that's what HRC did and that's what Biden is doing.
US hospitals raise prices, cuts costs and lay off staff in midst of COVID-19 crisis Link: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/04/0… Dated April 7th. So when 40 million are out of work, no longer getting insurance through their jobs, our for-profit hospitals are raising their prices and cutting staffing.
Virtually every other country (even Russia!) has already figured this out. So forget making the US great, just catch us up to the rest of the world and take the profit (and profit motive) out of healthcare. Single-payer (aka Medicare For All) now.
We hear a lot about National Security {NS} (e.g. Edward Snowden compromised our NS and so he is a bad guy etc). Most people think that National Security means something like the safety of the people--you know, "securing the blessing of liberty for ourselves and our posterity". But NS as currently used in the USA means no such thing. It means what we used to call State Security--i.e. the future of the political entity USA, with virtually nothing to do with the safety of Americans. So if the "powers that be" think that letting 100 million Americans die of Coronavirus will enhance the chance of survival of America, they can (and will) do it in the name of NS.
Dershowitz is making the same argument. I agree with you that it is a horrible argument, but horrible because NS as currently used is a horrible doctrine, and countless evils are done in its name. One of the very few advantages of Trump (and his team) is that they say the normally quiet parts (like what NS is) out loud, and wake some of us up.