Pepper sprayed for public safety.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Icky Thump

Sounds like my soulmate.

how about tort reform!

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall

Sounds like Sebby to me.

'Given Warren’s star power, the progressive activists who fuel her campaign see her as a leader in Washington whose influence extends far beyond her single vote in the Senate. Many are rallying around her vision of a “balanced approach” to reducing the deficit, which is notch or two to the left of Obama’s.

Beyond tax increases for the wealthy, she has called for the elimination of many agriculture and oil subsidies, cuts to defense and an end to the war in Afghanistan (which costs about $2 billion a week) while leaving Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security untouched.'

(Well, except for not touching entitlements, that is.)

http://www.salon.com/2012/12/13/poll...nced_approach/

TM

If I see her float a defense cut of at least $100bil, and agree to at least minor medicare/medicaid cuts, and SS means testing for those pulling in over $300k per year, I'll be a Warren supporter.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

With the possibility of another Senate Seat opening up in Mass., I'm trying to push Susan Rice as a candidate.

Rice and Warren as Senators from our state. Damn, we'd have some swagger! I just want to see a Rice - McCain foreign policy debate on the floor of the Senate. With a Warren-Shelby banking double bill.

Rice is "frustrated hot." She looks so pissed (for good reason). Whoever's sleeping with her is having to put up with hearing about the motherlode of work-complaint bitching... but getting laid more than 99.9% of married men.

ETA: She just dropped out of the running. Disregard. Somebody's jerking off, and giving a shitload of back massages.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Adder

It's a classic on so many levels.

It's reality on so many levels. And I want to strangle Bernanke for the dumb shit he floated this week. Tying unemployment so directly to monetary policy is giving Wall Street hollow point bullets.

"Hmmmm... How should we fuck-up the nascent employment recovery?"

"Perhaps tie it more directly to short term shareholder returns?"

"How could do that any more than it already is?"

"Make it the main driver of the baseline rate of lending?"

"What lunatic would to that?"

"Call Beeks-- I mean, Bernanke."

[Icky Thump]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

how about tort reform!

I thought that she's against tort reform, which is one of the only ways we differ.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

how about tort reform!

Or patent reform?

[Adder]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

If I see her float a defense cut of at least $100bil, and agree to at least minor medicare/medicaid cuts, and SS means testing for those pulling in over $300k per year, I'll be a Warren supporter.

What kind of cuts are you looking for in providing health care for the old and the poor?

I ask because the idea of raising the Medicare legibility age seems to be getting some traction, despite being an objective terrible and counter productive idea. It makes zero sense to take elder people out of the cheapest and most effective (well, maybe second behind the VA) system for providing health care and putting them either into the private individual market, where they will be close in uninsurable or back onto Hank's employer plan as they decide they need to work until 67 so Hank will keep paying their health care bills.

So, yeah, brilliant idea. Let's have them all make less efficient private health insurance more expensive instead!

[Adder]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

It's reality on so many levels. And I want to strangle Bernanke for the dumb shit he floated this week. Tying unemployment so directly to monetary policy is giving Wall Street hollow point bullets.

"Hmmmm... How should we fuck-up the nascent employment recovery?"

"Perhaps tie it more directly to short term shareholder returns?"

"How could do that any more than it already is?"

"Make it the main driver of the baseline rate of lending?"

"What lunatic would to that?"

"Call Beeks-- I mean, Bernanke."

As usual, I don't know what you are on about. The "Evans Rule" they adopted this week is simply a stronger way of making the commitment they already made -- that they will keep monetary policy in an accomodative state even if the recovery causes some small uptick in inflation.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Adder

As usual, I don't know what you are on about. The "Evans Rule" they adopted this week is simply a stronger way of making the commitment they already made -- that they will keep monetary policy in an accomodative state even if the recovery causes some small uptick in inflation.

Tying low rates so explicitly to a certain unemployment target could be self-defeating. We could see pullbacks in equities as unemployment nears the target. Those who fear a removal of the cheap money from the system would tank growth will likely sell off as the unemployment numbers drop. And a whole lot of investors hold that belief. This would in turn stall the economy.

This sort of policy could give us a future of persistent unemployment above 6.5%. You'd be right to say that inevitably, even if investor fear kept unemployment above that number, the cheap money couldn't help but create some sort of growth. I just wonder how long we could see a stalemate, and unemployment hovering above 6.5%, before that happened. That could be a long time.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Adder

What kind of cuts are you looking for in providing health care for the old and the poor?

I ask because the idea of raising the Medicare legibility age seems to be getting some traction, despite being an objective terrible and counter productive idea. It makes zero sense to take elder people out of the cheapest and most effective (well, maybe second behind the VA) system for providing health care and putting them either into the private individual market, where they will be close in uninsurable or back onto Hank's employer plan as they decide they need to work until 67 so Hank will keep paying their health care bills.

So, yeah, brilliant idea. Let's have them all make less efficient private health insurance more expensive instead!

End of life care. There's huge waste in keeping elderly terminal patients alive for no good reason. Require family members to co-pay for any such efforts provided to anyone with a terminal illness over 80.

Cut back Part D. Let the GOP tie itself in pretzels fighting on that issue.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Tying low rates so explicitly to a certain unemployment target could be self-defeating.

How? Who is going to not hire so they can keep rates low?

And they were always tied. Especially if what you're going to say is that Wall Street will pull back on lending in order to keep rates low.

We could see pullbacks in equities as unemployment nears the target.

So what?

Those who fear a removal of the cheap money from the system would tank growth will likely sell off as the unemployment numbers drop. ...This would in turn stall the economy.

You're over thinking this. You're saying that a growing economy could lead to a stalled economy.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

End of life care. There's huge waste in keeping elderly terminal patients alive for no good reason. Require family members to co-pay for any such efforts provided to anyone with a terminal illness over 80.

Sebby wants to kill grandma!

Of course, your'e right.

Cut back Part D. Let the GOP tie itself in pretzels fighting on that issue.

Part D's a mess, but a ton of money could probably be saved just by turning it into Medicare and letting Medicare use it's purchasing power to get lower prices.

Nothing from Medicaid?

[ThurgreedMarshall]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Tying low rates so explicitly to a certain unemployment target could be self-defeating. We could see pullbacks in equities as unemployment nears the target. Those who fear a removal of the cheap money from the system would tank growth will likely sell off as the unemployment numbers drop. And a whole lot of investors hold that belief. This would in turn stall the economy.

This sort of policy could give us a future of persistent unemployment above 6.5%. You'd be right to say that inevitably, even if investor fear kept unemployment above that number, the cheap money couldn't help but create some sort of growth. I just wonder how long we could see a stalemate, and unemployment hovering above 6.5%, before that happened. That could be a long time.

Dude, do you think the market doesn't know that the Fed will raise rates as the economy and unemployment improve?

TM

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

End of life care. There's huge waste in keeping elderly terminal patients alive for no good reason. Require family members to co-pay for any such efforts provided to anyone with a terminal illness over 80.

Cut back Part D. Let the GOP tie itself in pretzels fighting on that issue.

My 92 year old grandmother died three weeks ago. She'd been suffering from Alzheimers for five years, and she was at the point that she didn't know how to eat anymore. A week before she died, my uncle found her on the floor in her room and called an ambulance. Turns out her hip was jacked.

Everyone in the family was really irritated that the hospital went ahead and performed surgery to fix a hip on a 92 year old who had no idea who she was. I mean, how the hell was she supposed to do rehab if she couldn't remember what someone said to her five minutes ago? On the other hand, holy fuck does a dislocated hip hurt, and painkillers often aren't enough to cut it. I stopped thinking of my grandmother as being around anymore years ago, but I certainly didn't want her to be in pain.

Anyhow, she was at the care facility when she started bleeding, and they rushed her back to the hosptial, and she died there.

Her last week of life was the most expensive, in terms of care received, in that year. But aside from telling the ambulance drivers "just make sure she's not in pain" and hoping for the best, I'm not sure how anyone could have reduced those costs. Nothing that she had was "terminal." If she hadn't had the surgery, she probably wouldn't have bled out, and she'd probably have had to be admitted to some inpatient facility for the rest of her (knowing her, absurdly long and health-complicated free) life, which would have cost a shit ton more than the surgery did.

My 96-year-old great-aunt went through something similar in the weeks around my wedding, and I come to the same conclusion, even though she cost a ton more. She'd had a stroke but TPA was administered in the window, and until the very end, her prognosis was fairly good. (The valve thing was a clinical trial, and she was the second in the world to have that procedure. The cost of the valve was picked up by the drug company, not Medicare.) She wasn't "terminal", but she was clearly declining. I don't know how it would have been possible to decline care for her at any point along the way.

Her 94 year-old sister is still going to her tai chi classes every fucking day (as my aunt puts it). She still drives, lives in the house she's lived in for 50 years, and otherwise seems pretty damned healthy, aside from the terminal nature of life itself. I'd be damned hard pressed to deny her care just because she's old.

ETA: On the part D thing, absolutely. Easy, easy fix, too.

Also, I can't recommend the Incidental Economist blog highly enough for health care policy discussions. Even though they'd shoot me for the above comment because anecdotes aren't data.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

How about gun control?

If only those school children had been armed and able to fight back.