Edwards confronts black lawmakers over refusal to back her

feelosofer

feelosofer

#ninergang
Joined
May 17, 2012
Messages
54,179
Reputation
9,797
Daps
161,845
Reppin
Brick City, NJ
It just seems that the cbc are water.carriers for blue dog democrats. I respect that if nothing else Edwards is keeping them honest.
 
T

THE MACHINE

night owl
Joined
May 27, 2012
Messages
26,877
Reputation
6,540
Daps
104,366
Reppin
P.G. County
horse. kills said:
Emotionally I'm with Edwards. Progressive black woman representing PG County? The day that doesn't strike a chord with me, I'm dead

Politically I like them both and appreciate them for their differences. Van Hollen is a legislator and Edwards is an idealist. It's probably the hardest choice I've made as a voter in my life
Click to expand...
I still haven't decided. My heart is with Donna though
 
FAH1223

FAH1223

Go Wizards, Go Terps, Go Packers!
Staff member
Supporter
Hall of Fame
Joined
May 16, 2012
Messages
81,663
Reputation
10,237
Daps
240,889
Reppin
WASHINGTON, DC
the next guy said:
Smh he should have mollywopped Hogan all over the floor. How you black and you lose one of the blackest states in the union?
Click to expand...

There's a lady at my job, she goes to Reid Temple in Glenn Dale

Brown went there a week before the election and she told me people thought he was whack breh :russ: event was a disaster
 
N

No1

Retired.
Supporter
Joined
Apr 30, 2012
Messages
32,187
Reputation
5,462
Daps
73,186
horse. kills said:
Emotionally I'm with Edwards. Progressive black woman representing PG County? The day that doesn't strike a chord with me, I'm dead

Politically I like them both and appreciate them for their differences. Van Hollen is a legislator and Edwards is an idealist. It's probably the hardest choice I've made as a voter in my life
Click to expand...
I disagree with the legislator/idealist dichotomy. Idealists are some of the best legislators because they open up the realm of possibilities. I think this piece on Sanders hits on that point. It explains why I vote the way I do, so I thought I'd share it. I used to view it the way you do.

Lately, several mainstream liberal commentators have taken to siding with the pragmatist, painstakingly explaining to their readers the importance of preserving existing gains in a time of partisan warfare, and dismissing Sanders’s ambitious platform as misplaced and foolish. Incrementalism is a reasonable ideological preference. But the hot rhetoric and the need for Manichean imperatives that characterizes campaign season has intensified the attacks on Sanders, painting him as a political dilettante who doesn’t understand how Washington works—and, by extension, suggesting that anyone in government with big ideas is doomed to failure and would be better off going along to get along.

That’s where this otherwise typical campaign back-and-forth strays into dangerous territory. When you saw off every policy to what falls into the immediate range of possibility at the present moment, you give supporters little reason to organize behind your ideas. More important, you neglect the creative ways in which those seemingly unrealizable goals can be realized, no matter the situation in Congress.

Maybe you’ve heard the one about the community health centers.


Originated in 1965 as a Great Society reform from the Office of Economic Opportunity, these neighborhood medical clinics provide integrated medical treatment and dental care to low-income and rural patients nationwide, regardless of the ability to pay. No two community health centers look exactly alike. But in general terms, they look more like the socialized medicine of Great Britain’s National Health Service than a single-payer program like those of Canada or France. Federal, state, and local grants fund the doctors and clinic personnel; the clinics refuse nobody for insufficient funds or lack of insurance; some even pick up and drop off patients at their residences.

From two demonstration projects, community health centers have grown to 1,300 networks in 9,200 locations, serving 23 million patients in 2014. As the National Association of Community Health Centers puts it, “In communities fortunate enough to have a health center, fewer babies die, emergency room lines are shorter and people live longer, healthier lives.”

And why do community health centers represent such a robust part of the health safety net today? Bernie Sanders.

In a well-known incident confirmed this week by Tierney Sneed at Talking Points Memo, Sanders made community health centers his cause in the Affordable Care Act debate, ultimately securing $11 billion in mandatory funding—instantly doubling the appropriation, which was previously made only through the discretionary budget. The number of patients served jumped from around 10 million in 2000 to today’s 23 million.

The way Sanders made this happen demonstrates how pushing big ideas outside the bounds of the possible can lead to tangible results, in ways that cautious centrism cannot.

The Affordable Care Act process, at least in the Senate, involved individual senators carrying certain pieces of the bill. Those senators could use the leverage afforded them by the razor-thin margins required for passage to force their favored items into the final product. Some used this power for ill (see Joe Lieberman scotching the Medicare buy-in), some for parochial needs (like Chris Dodd getting a grant for a medical school in Connecticut). But others insisted upon what became fairly vital pieces of the ACA’s infrastructure. Al Franken was synonymous with the medical loss ratio, mandating that insurance companies spend a fixed amount on actual care rather than overhead or executive salaries. And Bernie Sanders made increased community health center funding the condition for his vote.

The relatively small $11 billion investment—a rounding error in the overall bill—gave a lifeline to millions of new patients, now able to obtain primary care (not to mention creating tens of thousands of health-care jobs). Community health centers actually save the overall system money, by limiting the use of emergency rooms as primary care locations and increasing take-up of preventive care. Without the funds, patients in states that expanded Medicaid under the ACA would find it difficult to access care because of doctor shortages and because many don’t take Medicaid; community health centers increase the supply of providers willing to see Medicaid users. The upshot: one of the nation’s bigger socialized medicine programs (which include Tricare and the V.A. system) helps sustain one of the bigger single-payer programs.

The program has been so successful, in fact, that several Republican senators, opponents of the concept of universal health care, have quietly requested additional funding for community health centers. When community health centers faced a funding cliff in 2015, Republicans Roger Wicker (MS), Shelley Moore Capito (WV), Mark Kirk (IL), and James Lankford (OK) fought to fix it, alongside Sanders. President Obama just added $500 million in funding this past September, with funding set at the Sanders level through 2017.
Click to expand...
That is how legislation works and I have a bunch of examples like that. The idea that idealists are poor legislators is patently false. They don't have as much legislation tied to their names because they're the ones carving out progressive pieces before the legislation is voted on. They're the ones who put those small pieces into legislation that actually do some good. But if you don't vote for them, then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. To me, the voter is a no-brainer. There is no evidence that Edwards would not work effectively in the Senate. Sanders is rated as one of the most effective Senators in Congress and he's stubborn as fukk.
 
the next guy

the next guy

Superstar
Joined
May 2, 2012
Messages
42,620
Reputation
1,711
Daps
40,549
Reppin
NULL
FAH1223 said:
There's a lady at my job, she goes to Reid Temple in Glenn Dale

Brown went there a week before the election and she told me people thought he was whack breh :russ: event was a disaster
Click to expand...
Gansler called it but people would not listen. I believe he (Brown) wants to be the next Obama, will be tough though with nothing else going on right now.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top