741–750 of 839 posts
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So you think a debt purchase is blindongly obvious example of bribery? Then it should be easy to explain how it is bribery.
You comply, we buy your asset for 5x its value. You don't comply, we don't. Simple.
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> I don't know about that, but certainly it has exposed a significant weakness in the US democratic structure: it is based on the supposition that everyone will follow the rules (i.e., accepting the results of an election, following the laws passed by congress, etc.) A president who defies both conventions and laws is hard to stop. This isn't true at all. The main way the President is stopped is through the courts, w…
> This isn't true at all. > > The main way the President is stopped is through the courts, which is already underway, but Trump has actually prevailed in several decisions (e.g. right to cancel government contracts, right to fire probationary employees) while blocked other (e.g. birthright citizenship). It is absolutely true. The judiciary has no mechanism to _enforce_ laws. Enforcement belongs to the executive branc…
A few issues with that statement.
First, law enforcement can defy the President in order to follow the law or court orders (which they are required to do).
Second, enforcement isn't always through law enforcement. If the courts decide that an agency can do X, then they can go ahead and do X. No FBI involvement needed. Same if the issue ends up being something the state execute on.
> The current sitting president lead an insurrection against the United States and was not convicted in Congress.
That's because he was never charged. Why was he never charged? It's kind of hard to claim insurrection when nobody was armed and didn't actually have the ability to commit insurrection.
A person trying to break down a door was shot and killed and that ended things pretty quickly.
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Unless you're paying for it 100% out of pocket, this will never happen. In all socialized systems the government decides what your doctor can do, 100% of the time. Of course from a patient perspective it looks much less restrictive, but that's only because your doctor never brings up treatments that aren't paid for. One of the big issues with the US system is that the patient is put right in the middle of the decisio…
After going through 8 specialists, I ended up learning a bunch myself, and paying out of pocket for the last one. Patients need to be more involved.
There is universal healthcare through compulsory national health insurance (premiums subsidized if needed).
However, the insurance only covers a portion. About 10-20% will come from a forced medical savings account.
Then there is the cash part of the cost.
The government has designed the entire system to make sure no patients pay $0 of their own money. Even indignant patients will work with a social worker to figure out what they can pay. If it's only $2, then they are billed $2.
It's a pretty good system in terms of keeping costs down, keeping patients involved in the cost of their care, yet ensuring nobody goes without critical healthcare.
The issue with the US is that it's kinda set up for patients to be at the center, but misses critical components (like price transparency) to the point that even though patients are required to manage their own healthcare financiing, they aren't actually given the tools to do it efficiently.
And that’s even before we consider that the current administration has shown a tremendous affinity for enemies and dictators while putting the hammer down on allies and friends.
And I nearly forgot the appointment of individuals to the highest positions in charge of state secrets and intelligence, who are either already compromised or highly sympathetic to those enemy regimes.
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It is unbelievable that they would be unable to figure out where these people live. I literally do not believe it.
Can we all agree it’s absolutely absurd that it’s a chore at all to find out, let alone to have this need in the first place? This is insane.
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The laws were broken in the 1930s when we created the unconstitutional monstrosity that is the modern executive branch. If you want to turn that back then I’m on board. But if not then it must at least be democratically responsive. When republicans win the presidency—or a progressive or populist democrat—the 90% of the administrative state that’s comprised of Acela liberals should be asking how high to jump. Otherwis…
> The laws were broken in the 1930s when we created the unconstitutional monstrosity that is the modern executive branch That's bibliolatry, directed to a long-obsolete interpretation of the Constitution and the role of the federal government. FDR was analogous to Copernicus and Kepler, rescuing the country from Ptolemaic interpretations of the Constitution that were based on outdated data sets. He pushed successfull…
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This is normal in every election so you can use the same logic to dismiss any president. Do you only respect 100% sampling rates in other statistical situations? At a certain point this line of thinking is just saying you don’t think elections work, or that there should be some non-democratic supervisor to undo bad ones. There is also an older idea that getting people out to vote is part of the game. An election is w…
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Why are you using a quote about censorship and free speech to talk about the outcome of an election? Those aren’t related things.
Nobody thinks majority vote makes truth, but majority of electoral voters does determine the president of the US.
> Even if Trump had 99% of the votes
It sounds like your previous comment expressing concern about the number of voters was in bad faith.
> Trump voters have no clue how tariffs work
I noticed this actually isn’t an argument against tariffs.
I don’t think it’s going to look pretty if we starting quizzing low class democratic voters on economic questions either. This has no bearing on whether the policy is a good idea or not.
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After going through 8 specialists, I ended up learning a bunch myself, and paying out of pocket for the last one. Patients need to be more involved.
Singapore is an interesting example of that. There is universal healthcare through compulsory national health insurance (premiums subsidized if needed). However, the insurance only covers a portion. About 10-20% will come from a forced medical savings account. Then there is the cash part of the cost. The government has designed the entire system to make sure no patients pay $0 of their own money. Even indignant patie…
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> This isn't true at all. > > The main way the President is stopped is through the courts, which is already underway, but Trump has actually prevailed in several decisions (e.g. right to cancel government contracts, right to fire probationary employees) while blocked other (e.g. birthright citizenship). It is absolutely true. The judiciary has no mechanism to _enforce_ laws. Enforcement belongs to the executive branc…
> It is absolutely true. The judiciary has no mechanism to _enforce_ laws. Enforcement belongs to the executive branch. A few issues with that statement. First, law enforcement can defy the President in order to follow the law or court orders (which they are required to do). Second, enforcement isn't always through law enforcement. If the courts decide that an agency can do X, then they can go ahead and do X. No FBI…
If you’re actually defending the events of Jan 6 as not an insurrection then you are part of the problem and we have nothing more to debate.