ABC finally figures out Tea Party not party of Wall Street
The Tea Party movement is not the Get In Bed With Wall Street movement (that would be Democrats and Republicans)
I think ABC has been reading Think Progress and Media Matters too much, because as with most of the mainstream media, ABC can’t figure out why the Tea Party is not toeing the Wall Street and big business line on Obamacare and the debt ceiling.
Wall Street Can’t Influence Tea Party to End Shutdown, DC Watchers Say:
The government shutdown is bad for business, bad for the economy and bad for your 401(k). So why aren’t the politicians listening to the overwhelmingly negative sentiments of Wall Street and the big-business lobby? After all, business titans like Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon have managed to get their way on financial regulations before Congress, so why can’t they break the log jam and get government reopened?
Even with numerous lobbying groups calling for an end to the government shutdown, lawmakers are still at an impasse centered on the Affordable Care Act and the debt ceiling limit.
Lawmakers aligned with the Tea Party are holding out to squash if not delay for a year, the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act, while President Obama said he would remain open to a short-term increase in the debt ceiling.
Wall Street and business efforts to persuade the Tea Party to end the shutdown have thus far been tepid and ineffective. Part of the reason may be that the Tea Party faction in the House has proved to be an immovable object.
Anyone who really understood the Tea Party movement would know that the Tea Party is not the party of Wall Street or big business.
I particularly like the absurdity and self-parody of this former J.P. Morgan investment banker now with the liberal Brookings Institute:
“The only way that Wall Street can influence the Tea Party is by putting their money where their mouth is and selling stocks,” Douglas Elliott, a fellow in economic studies with The Brookings Institution and former managing director with J.P. Morgan, said. “Congress would notice a 500 or a 1,000 point decline in the Dow.”
Even then, Elliott said, the “real impact” would be felt by persuading Republicans in the House who are not die-hard Tea Party members that they have to push House Speaker Boehner to pass an increase in the debt limit.
“The more radical members of the Tea Party just do not see the world as the rest of us do,” he said.
So “tank the market” is the advice from the Brookings Institute former investment banker? And they call us suicide bombers?
While the Tea Party movement is not Occupy Wall Street movement, it is not the Get In Bed With Wall Street movement either.
That latter description would be Democrats and Republicans.
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I still find it interesting that BOTH the Occucommies and Tea Party patriots have almost the same view of the Wall Street money-grubbing economic rapists of America and Wall Street’s #1 protector and benefactor, the reckless, irresponsible, middle-class destroying Federal Reserve.
It is interesting to observe the parallels. Of course the differences are in the desired goals, preferred means, and behavior.
Who is the Tea Party. Just a few million concerned people who are tired of seeing the Elite mess up our country with their greed and their grab for more and more control over our money and our lives.
And it’s made up of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents.
Add Libertarians. And none-of-the-aboves.
It is, of course, both striking and unsurprising to compare the coverage given to OccupyWallStreet and OccupyAmerica.
The fact is that the Tea Party is a diverse group of people who know you don’t spend more than you make and government is not the solution. So, how about this for the Tea Party motto during this time:
We are the Individual Mandate!
Lawsuits are also bad for business, bad for the economy, and bad for somebody’s 401k. They don’t exist for that purpose. They exist to redress grievances.
So does the power of the purse, which resides in the House of Representatives. The Democrats were not just being rude to the Republicans when they passed their dog’s breakfast of an Obamacare insurance policy act — they were stupid, because they failed to address the legitimate concerns of the Republicans. Now, the law needs to be repealed, replaced, or fixed, somehow. I am sure that some health insurance regulation is necessary. This one, however, is pernicious.
I completely disagree that “some health insurance regulation is necessary.” May I ask, where were all the “regulators” when the country expanded from one settlement, to where we were at the time of the Revolutionary War? Read Edmund Burke’s Speech on Conciliation with America, given in Parliment in 1775 for a discussion of the explosive growth in the colonies – which had been left to grow pretty much with their own devices. It’s quite the read.
The solutions to provision of medical care involve a different philosophic approach. If you’re wedded to socialism, then single payer is your holy grail. If you’re a lover of freedom, then you want none or almost no regulation of medical insurance.
A major driver of the high cost of medical insurance is that it’s linked in the tax code to employment, making it attractive to supply by employers because of favorable tax treatment relative to wages paid. Employers made that benefit more and more attractive because the same dollar for medical insurance benefits was a more valuable dollar to the employee for less tax to the employer.
Another major driver is: the paper shuffling it requires. Employers had tax incentives to give insurance with lower and lower deductibles and co-pays. That does various negative things:
1. It means every visit involves the paper shuffle.
2. Causes insureds to go to the doctor for more ailments because their marginal cost is so low.
3. Which causes more paper to be shuffled.
4. Which causes physicians and hospitals to charge more, because they’re paying staff just to shuffle paper, and insurance companies don’t pay promptly which costs the medical practices money.
5. It has caused a very disturbing change in patients’ views toward payment of their medical bills: they don’t think they should have to pay them. This is a moral hazard the effect of which I see growing all the time.
So, one of the first steps is decoupling employment from insurance.
Next, if you REALLY want to give folks incentive to pay their medical bills, make every penny you spend on medical care and medical insurance, even if it’s a baby aspirin, deductible on your tax return. This way, no matter what the deductible on the insurance is, the expenses are deductible from income from the first dollar, and the insurance deductible poses less challenge from a financial standpoint.
This would eliminate the need for health savings accounts as I understand them. Anything that requires paperwork means a person is less likely to take advantage of it. On the HSAs as I understand them, you make a guess. Why? The whole point of life is LIFE.
Although HSA money is set aside before taxes, I’m sure some method of computation could be used to give the money spent above similar status.
Next, I’m surprised the states have not already entered into compacts to allow insurance companies to sell products across borders.
Next, all insurance “requirements” imposed by state governments, as to benefits need to be repealed. We aren’t as wealthy as we imagine and we can’t afford everything to be covered. You have to prioritize. People who want to be sure they’re covered in case of catastrophe cannot be required to carry coverage for drug addiction, IVF or dental. Repealing extraneous requirements would almost overnight bring premiums down markedly. But politicians love sounding generous and caring, when what they’re really doing is consigning citizens to living in fear of a catastrophic medical condition because they can’t afford a gold encrusted insurance plan.
It’s getting late, but I also have to mention we have to eliminate the requirement that hospitals provide free care to anyone who shows up. This policy is again a moral hazard which is causing more and more people to assume they deserve free care, rather than paying for it. With foreigners who think Americans are suckers, getting free medical care is one big JOKE on us. But this policy has to change.
This is involuntary servitude imposed upon medical professionals, and I’m surprised they accept that.
Karen Sacandy: It’s getting late, but I also have to mention we have to eliminate the requirement that hospitals provide free care to anyone who shows up.
Hospitals are only required to provide emergency care and stabilize the patient.
If someone were to show up at the emergency room after an accident, your position is to withhold care until the particulars of payment have been arranged. Not sure most Americans would agree.
You could leave decisions about treatment to the individual hospital, but then prudent hospitals would shuttle people to the Good Samaritan hospitals, leading to the bankruptcy of the Good Samaritan hospitals. It’s an untenable situation, which is why Reagan signed the Emergency Medical Treatment Act.
This, of course, leads to another untenable situation, where hospitals treat the immediate effects of heart attacks, but not their underlying causes; hence, incurring far higher costs than preventive care.
“Reagan signed…”
Meaning, the republic functioned without it for over 200 years. Reagan was a good man, but being good doesn’t always mean you’re right. He also pushed and signed amnesty…. How’s that working out for you?
Your analysis is again static. I’m sure, LA RAZA would start some sort of foundation for payment of illegal aliens medical costs – or not. Maybe they would all go home.
In any event, with all the charitable organizations, I’m sure something would be worked out.
Karen Sacandy: Meaning, the republic functioned without it for over 200 years.
Sure, at first, the poor had to do without the benefit of leeches. Life for most was poor, nasty, short and brutish. Doctors would set bones for the price of a couple of chickens. Others would remain lame or die without treatment. Today, the benefits and cost of modern medicine have both increased dramatically. Even the well-situated middle class can only afford many forms of treatment through insurance.
Karen Sacandy: Your analysis is again static.
Indeed, not. We pointed out the problem with the Emergency Medical Treatment Act. You, on the other hand, have yet to own the implications of your own position; that if your child was hurt, and managed to stumble bleeding to the steps of a hospital, that the hospital could refuse your child treatment.
The Tea Party is people with political integrity and basic f**king math skills.
Evidently “basic f**king math skills” don’t include the ability to count to 218 or 60, eh?
You tiresome, irksome person.
In negotiations, it doesn’t matter what the count IS, it matters what it will move TO.
I’m sick of people pretending it’s a metaphysical impossibility for democrats to change their mind because of financial or public relations facts. Dems were peeling off, facts were changing on the ground all the time.
Metaphysical impossibility, my ass.
If your establishment GOP can count to 218 or 60 where Tea Party conservatives cannot, then please explain the constant flow of GOP failures, with only one success, the 2010 midterms – delivered courtesy of the Tea Party.
You and the GOP are like the head coach of an 0-16 team who can’t accept he needs to be fired.
Same old tired drivel from the left blaming everyone else for what they do.
“The more radical members of the Tea Party just do not see the world as the rest of us do,” he said. —
Ah yes, because most people see the world through the eyes of investment bankers.
Oh, so much can be written in response to this blog post, but I’d like to focus on one. The one I feel is most important.
“The more radical members of the Tea Party just do not see the world as the rest of us do,” he said.
The Tea Party movement was created out of whole cloth a mere 5 1/2 years ago.
So, in roughly the same amount of time you’d spend in High School, the progressives have changed the Tea Party movement’s history and definition.
A movement that began to protest government overspending is now the movement to subvert government and everything American.
Yet, so many of us are completely certain that Barack Obama doesn’t have time to fundamentally change American, and it’s history.
“Today, the benefits and cost of modern medicine have both increased dramatically.”
Again, static thinking, not to mention quite emotional.
As long as you continue to think in static and emotional terms, you will never solve the problem.
To Zachriel (there is no reply button on your post):
The cost of modern medicine is much higher due to the distortions introduced by low deductible-low copay insurance, that we don’t really know what the price of medical care would be in a free market. And of course there are many other factors rendering medical care more artificially more expensive, which I do not have time to elucidate.
As far as children bleeding being untreated, well, again, the Red Cross, for example, aids in disaster. Is it unimaginable to you that similar charities would be created for medical care? You show a poverty of imagination. You also seem to believe that medical professionals are of the same moral fiber as federal park rangers. Perhaps they are….
Regardless, government directive creates a structurally unsound foundation, and everything built upon such a foundation eventually becomes sclerotic and unaffordable to society at large. It’s almost a law of nature, from banking to medical care to education.
Obama thinks medical professionals are of a lower moral fiber than federal park rangers, because he never accused park rangers of amputating limbs unnecessarily just to get rich.
And that libelous charge came from the same caring, compassionate guy who told someone his elderly mother should maybe have been given a pain pill instead of the pacemaker that had kept her alive and happy for five years so far.