Calitics - Recent Comments

thanks for the link... very informative

fhcec — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 08:00:30 GMT

discussion of Michael Mann's new book, and how trollish tea party members are trying to discredit it.

worth reading to understand all those extremely negative comments that show up en masse = a swarm of angry bees blinded by their own buzzings...

dennis pappas

saadrooking — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 06:24:42 GMT

June's election will be fierce in a few competitive legislative and Congressional seats, but don't expect any big statewide push.
dennis pappas

dennis pappas

jameel123 — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 06:20:18 GMT

While the anti-tobacco groups will be kicking off their campaign to raise cigarette taxes by a $1/pack to pay for cancer research today at the State Capitol, they'll be doing it without a lot of cash.
dennis pappas

Anothger example of info=fasciam

wes — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 20:08:39 GMT

It is pretty clear that opposition to anything government does, or tries to do, can be rather quickly organized. This is just another example of info-fascism in action. The best post I have read recently on this subject comes from antoher area, climate change, but the example shows how well organized the other side really is.

http://climatecrocks.com/2012/...

Correct me if I'm wrong

cenobite — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 17:58:01 GMT

But didn't we manage to get this passed at least twice during Gov Gropinator's administration?

This sounds more like the democratic "designated villain" trick (see Glenn Greenwald). As long as there's a republican in the governor's office who can be counted on to veto, it can pass. As soon as it might put Jerry Brown on the spot, somebody in the senate needed to step up and take one for the team by blocking it.

Some annoyed calls is all it takes?

quixote — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 04:43:41 GMT

That's it? If I call a Representative and get obstreperous, I can stop legislation in its tracks?

Wow.

Who knew?

the market does not deliver health care well

wu ming — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 02:00:16 GMT

not in california, not in america, not anywhere in the world.

everywhere that a single-payer public health insurance system exists, it is superior to the one that we have here in CA. everywhere. i lived under one such system in taiwan for two years, and it was mind-boggling how much better and cheaper it was. the kicker is that it was patterned off of medicare, expanded to everyone.

the whole point of insurance is to create the biggest pool possible. enrolling everyone does that.

there is no need to "compete" on the free market, because the whole idea of competition being efficient and effective is a talking point unsupported by any evidence, when it comes to health insurance.

it's a useless metric. the metric that counts is how well a given system delivers quality care to the greatest number of people, improving the public health, and then after that is fulfilled, which method costs a reasonable amount.

single payer does that, the free market does not.