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How to trap a whistleblower

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Re: How to trap a whistleblower

#91

Post by graycat »

1337biz wrote: post #84
graycat wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, I'm curious what would lead one to expect any other response from a politician. I will give some examples of US presidents who actually did some things. This will take me into some very contentious history: My goal isn't to take sides in the history but just to illustrate that some presidents actually try to do things. For some of the items in history, you may believe that the presidents did well or poorly…

Even so one might be critical of it I think Obamas central accomplishment will be Obamacare. If this will be finally rolled out all other agenda points are going to become just smallprint in his legacy.

The US health care system can use improvements, but the improvements will not be easy to implement in practice, and there is a risk of "doing harm".

If ObamaCare is a good design for the US health care system or can be morphed into such a design, then Obama, Pelosi, Reid, the Senator Kennedy staffers who wrote an early version, etc. will deserve credit.

My guess (from reading some of an earlier bill) is that as passed it was a steaming pile of sewage, to mess up the US health care system and kill people and waste money, but eventually it may get turned into something good as implemented in the Executive Branch.

I do fear the influence of Dr. Karen Davis and her academic, economic, health care systems research nonsense -- I've been too close to such nonsense.

There are major suggestions, e.g., from Barney Frank, that ObamaCare is just a step to 'single payer' and, with the power of the Commissioner, really just nationalization of the US health care industry, a huge fraction of the US economy. I'm very afraid of the consequences in health care quality, cost, and abuses of government power.

I know; I know; the US health care system is a very long way from free enterprise now. NIH pays for a huge fraction of the medical research. Likely, as elsewhere in Federal Government research grants, the research supports the 'research-teaching' hospitals that do so much for patients, and poor patients, training physicians, and doing medical research. The FDA is right on top of each new product. The CDC plays a major role in US health care. The Hill Burton hospitals admit anyone regardless of ability to pay. Many hospitals are funded by city taxes. Etc.

Improvement: Needed? Yes. Possible? Maybe. Easy? No. A mess? Easy!

Yes, Obama has supported ObamaCare, but actually he showed that he knows next to nothing about the issue, e.g., during the summer of the big debate made some uninformed town hall statements and got slapped down hard by the US College of Surgeons and then mostly just shut up about the details.

I suspect that ObamaCare will be put on a back burner, maybe become just a subsidized insurance plan, and otherwise junked, a little after Obama leaves office.

Re: How to trap a whistleblower

#92

Post by graycat »

venus wrote: post #85
graycat wrote: post #31

My guess is that much of Obama's political strategy is mostly just to pretend. So, there he sees a public issue and says something, just something, just says it, to defuse the issue and, then, counts on (1) the mainstream media not getting into the details of what is wrong with the fantasy statement, (2) the voters being busy with other things, and (3) soon something else in the headlines. Except for the fantasy stat…

You could replace "Obama" with pretty any other PM or president of any country on earth, mix around the current affairs to suit, and your comment would be just as true. Welcome to media-driven representative democracy. And when I say "representative", I mean the media represents us, which it basically does. And when the media gets tired of a story, after a few days or weeks, they move onto something else, and so do w…

At times I've blurted out that the most serious problem facing Western Civilization now is the news media, journalism, that fails to provide the information needed by well informed citizens.

My hope is that the Internet will make the needed information available and that enough citizens will get and use the information to get the government we need to meet the challenges of our current world.

E.g., the OP points out some of Obama's superficial nonsense, and we discuss it here. Much more such activity, and Obama will have to think twice and talk once, and we might be on the way to better government.

Re: How to trap a whistleblower

#94

Post by pavanred »

spin wrote: post #59
danenania wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another explanation that I sadly believe to be much more realistic is that Obama never had pure motives. He was just playing the game (as any candidate must to win the support of either establishment party), and he took many millions of hopeful people along for the ride. It's important for people who believed in Obama's rhetoric to stop making excuses and realize that they were conned. Fool me once, shame on you...

I wonder, though, if perhaps a lot of "power decisions" are made at the margin. (I mean "making decisions at the margin" in the way that economists use the term. For example: I wish cheese was free. But, in real life, I have a choice between $2.49 cheese and $2.19 cheese. So I buy the cheaper cheese, not the free cheese. Because the free cheese doesn't exist.) If the President has to make small decisions about "the l…

Lesser of the two evils, I don't think its that polarized, there are grey areas. Not closing down Gitmo because of the lack of political will from congress is understandable but there are other decisions such as curbing the hunger strike with forced nasal feeding every day is another decision. I agree it's in the rule book that says if the body weight index drops beyond a point, use nasal feeding but I guess when you make such a decision you can weigh the differences between a medical decision and a hunger protest and deal with them a little differently.

Besides, if you are the president and your campaign promise was to close a prison. Keeping in mind that many people there are held without charges for over a decade and a few are already cleared to be let go but are still there for reasons I don't understand, if you can't do this being a president in 2 terms then perhaps you just can't do it, least you can do is make way for someone who can.

Re: How to trap a whistleblower

#95

Post by graycat »

marze wrote: post #89
graycat wrote: post #31

My guess is that much of Obama's political strategy is mostly just to pretend. So, there he sees a public issue and says something, just something, just says it, to defuse the issue and, then, counts on (1) the mainstream media not getting into the details of what is wrong with the fantasy statement, (2) the voters being busy with other things, and (3) soon something else in the headlines. Except for the fantasy stat…

It is all PR at this point. Snowden really should study the art of PR in depth. I'm not thinking he is doing a terrible job with his limited contact with the press so far, but more education in the PR area wouldn't hurt. To do PR right, you need to pick your message and stay on it. I think what the average person may not grasp about Snowden is that he is a true patriot, who truly loves his country, in a way far beyon…

I believe you have a good point, but it appears that so far he is winning. And the Guardian and the Wapo understand how to push an issue before the public. And apparently Snowden has a long list of stuff he can release slowly, once each few days, for a long time.

Re: How to trap a whistleblower

#96

Post by superuser2 »

protomyth wrote: post #55
pcunite wrote: post #5

Obama could have been special. The symbol, the icon for an America forgiven of its past and now authoring hope for future people of all races. Perhaps it was power that corrupted him or maybe it was his close advisors that stymied his original purer motives. I remember feeling so proud that we had a black President. I knew he was human, I know that skin color does not matter, but it was hard to not hope that given wh…

"Obama could have been special." I have a honest question, did you read his voting record, see what bills he had wrote / sponsored / co-sponsored, or listen to his podcast[1] before deciding he was worth your hope for that symbol? The media narrative for both sides is smoke and mirrors. The only real truth is what the do in legislation. 1) Yes, he had one as a US Senator.

What they do in legislation isn't the full story, either. People vote against bills that sound like good ideas because there's something nasty subtly buried inside them. People vote for bad bills to collect votes for good ones.

Someone who kept a pristine voting record would not actually get anything done.

Re: How to trap a whistleblower

#97

Post by jivatmanx »

graycat wrote: post #87
raheemm wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you classify handling the American economy during the worst banking crisis, killing OBL, pulling US out of Iraq, etc, etc? Pretending or Doing?

Economy: Spend a lot of money via TARP I and TARP II and otherwise let Bernanke handle it. There is one view that the US went from The Great Depression to a hot economy, with 2-3 jobs for everyone who could work, in just 90 days after people started shooting at us. We spent huge bucks, and nearly everything that the bucks bought was junk on a battlefield in a few weeks or sold for war surplus. Still, the spending, ev…

>Still, the spending, even on stuff that was just junk, got us out of The Great Depression.

The U.S. was the only major country with cities and factories left standing, that weren't hit by wave after wave of bombers, so rebuilding your country necessitated buying U.S. goods.

The U.S. also suffered relatively fewer casualties than the other major players. The Nazi scientists didn't hurt either.

You are correct in that spending money on otherwise useless military items / people, is indeed useless[0], though those receiving military contracts argue the opposite, called "Military Keynesianism".

[0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window#Th...

Re: How to trap a whistleblower

#98

Post by graycat »

pavanred wrote: post #88
raheemm wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you classify handling the American economy during the worst banking crisis, killing OBL, pulling US out of Iraq, etc, etc? Pretending or Doing?

I don't know why killing OBL is considered a big win, it's not in my opinion. It took so over 10 years, many human lives, run down the US economy from a surplus, American citizens are giving up on some basic freedoms, people are paranoid with fear, got the ugly side out in form of G-bay, torture etc and more over recently, US is loosing credibility e.g. I saw a cloud services website recently being discussed on HN an…

Pulling out of Iraq? I suspect that Iraq will pour blood into the Persian Gulf and then return to a strong man thug, Saddam II. Maybe not. I hope not. There are various people and factions there eager for blood, and when they get killed off maybe there will be peace there again.

For OBL, you are looking at the bigger picture, starting with 9/11, and not just with the Navy Seals and their raid, and your view is fully appropriate: OBL and a few guys with airline tickets and box cutters got the US to do a lot of harm to itself as you listed. We were sucker punched. We've done it to ourselves.

And apparently OBL was not completely nuts but understood well enough to say that his objective was not to defeat the US but just to watch it bankrupt itself! We need to wise up.

What we do to ourselves if there was a really serious threat and attack?

Re: How to trap a whistleblower

#99

Post by richardjordan »

mikeash wrote: post #38
zzzeek wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the alternative was mccain/palin. In the primaries, Hillary was the alternative. Second time around it was Romney. None of these candidates would have had any substantive differences on these particular issues and on almost every other issue would have been far worse. Single issue voting is just as naive as believing rhetoric at face value. we absolutely need to protest Obama's actions in this area but as far as voti…

Even with a changed voting system, I don't think it's going to change much. The reality is that the average American is frightened of terrorism and wants the government to protect them. The average American believes in "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." The average American is still in a Cold War mindset and thinks that we need a massive military and intelligence apparatus to avoid being invaded…

So I think this is actually not true. The average American isn't really frightened of terrorism. They don't pay attention and just want decisions made by someone else. They are comfortable when those decisions are framed in simplistic Manichaean terms because it demands little thought.

Re: How to trap a whistleblower

#100

Post by rjsw »

alan_cx wrote: post #73
rjsw wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lesson should be not to elect slippery lawyers in future, the UK made that mistake with Tony Blair too.

And not Cameron? Blair had a plan, he managed to execute a fair amount of it, then fell apart. Exactly like Thatcher. Cameron has none. Oh yeah, "austerity", which I think the US has now shown to be not the way to go. Heh, Cameron even nicked that idea off Brown. Like Obama, he just continued with the previous leader's polices. Sorry, both sides are full of crap. UK, US, its all the same. Its that old thing, "no matt…

I was discounting Cameron as he hasn't won an election and isn't very good at getting people to believe in stuff.
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