What MAGA Doesnât Understand About Us â And Why It Matters
Thereâs this idea out there â a loud, angry idea â that progressives are trying to take something away from conservatives. That we want to ban your religion, seize your guns, force you into abortions, and open the borders so we can replace you. Itâs everywhere: on cable news, in social media echo chambers, in speeches designed to scare instead of inform.
But the truth is⦠thatâs just not what weâre about.
We donât want anything for ourselves that we wouldnât want for you. And weâre not trying to force anything on anyone â quite the opposite. What we want is choice, freedom, dignity, and a country where everyone, including you, gets to live a decent life, feel safe, and be treated with respect.
Progressives arenât trying to make you have an abortion. Weâre just saying donât force us to give birth if weâre not ready, or itâs unsafe, or it's simply not our path. Thatâs not an attack on your beliefs â itâs a defense of ours.
Weâre not trying to take away your right to marry who you love, worship how you want, or teach your children your values. We just ask for the same freedom in return. Let us live without being told our families are illegitimate, our love is wrong, or our beliefs are a threat to the nation.
Weâre not trying to abolish the Second Amendment. Many of us own guns. But we also want our kids to come home from school alive. We want to be able to go to church, the movies, or the grocery store without looking for the nearest exit in case someone with an AR-15 decides to make a statement. Thatâs not tyranny â thatâs grief asking for mercy.
We want safe, strong public schools for all kids â not just the ones in wealthy ZIP codes. We want a fair economy, where teachers, firefighters, and nurses donât pay a higher tax rate than billionaires. We want healthcare that doesnât bankrupt families, and housing that doesnât take two jobs and a miracle to afford. We want clean air, clean water, and a livable planet â for everyoneâs grandchildren.
And above all, we want peace. Not the peace of silence or submission, but the peace of mutual respect â of a society that works because we see each other as fellow Americans, not enemies.
We know there are real fears out there. Cultural change is fast. The world is complicated. And for many, things have gotten harder â jobs lost, communities hollowed out, traditions shaken. Itâs easy, in those moments, to look for someone to blame. To believe the voices that say someone else is taking what was yours.
But those voices are lying to you. This isnât a zero-sum game. Your dignity and our dignity donât cancel each other out. We all lose when weâre divided, and we all win when we invest in each other â when we build a country where everyone can thrive.
Progressives arenât perfect. We get things wrong. But our beliefs are rooted in hope, not hatred. We want what most Americans want: safety, fairness, freedom, and opportunity.
We just want a country where no one is left behind â not rural towns, not immigrants, not teachers, not LGBTQ kids, not factory workers, not single moms, not veterans struggling to find work. Everyone.
So letâs stop letting fear and misinformation define our politics. Letâs stop shouting past each other and start listening for the humanity beneath the noise. Because at the end of the day, most of us â right, left, or somewhere in between â want the same basic things:
To raise our kids in peace.
To live with dignity.
To matter.
I don't know who hurt this guy, but he's waaaaay out in left field.
Is he?
This looks like a cult.
I can see your point; it looks to me like any call-and-response in a church. (Hi, I'm a preacher's kid, mainstream denomination, please don't tell me I don't know what I'm talking about.)
The growth rate of U.S. health care spending over the next decade is likely climb faster than it has since the Great Recession, according new government projections published Tuesday. And as the growth rate creeps higher, by 2024 nearly 20 percent of spending in the U.S. economy — one dollar in every five — will be related to health care, up from 17.4 percent in 2013.
As it is, health care spending reached an estimated $3.1 trillion last year, or nearly $9,700 per person. That represents an increase of 5.5 percent, the first time since 2007 that spending growth has topped 5 percent.
To experts in the economics of health care, the findings in the new paper by a team of economists and actuaries from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services are still modestly encouraging. Despite the addition of millions of people to the health care system under the Affordable Care Act, the rate of spending growth doesn’t appear to be headed back toward pre-recession rates. For the next decade and more, the annual growth rate will stay at around 5.8 percent, well below the 9 percent annual increase that was standard in the years prior to the Great Recession.
Among the forces expected to drive health spending higher are expanded coverage as a result of Obamacare, rising prices and an improving economy, along with an aging population, that both mean more people will be seeking medical care.
If the U.S. didn’t already outpace every single developed country on the planet in health spending as a percentage of GDP, this uptick in the spending growth rate might not be the worst news. It might also be okay if the U.S. consumer, dollar for dollar, got more out of money spent on health care than folks in other countries. But alas, that doesn’t seem to be the case either.
Location: i believe, i believe, it's silly, but I believe Gender:
Posted:
Jul 29, 2015 - 10:36am
our liberal pyro posted this #overatthatotherplace
Warning: Explicit Language
The Unbearable Whiteness of Being July 22nd, 2015 | Author: Michael Douglass
If you have medical insurance and you make less than $50k a year and you still get a bill from the emergency room you should just toss it. I had to visit the emergency room about eight months ago. I was passing a kidney stone and was really only there for the morphine. I wanted to land on a cloud instead of the bathroom floor if I crashed again.
I knew there was nothing else they could do for me.
They did some scans of my torso and gave me an $800 saline drip ( $1.75 wholesale).
Long story short, I got the morphine.
Now I drink lots of cranberry juice and lemon in my water.
So far so good.
I don’t care about that bill. If I ever make any money again I will. If I can’t pay you and I’m not even sure why I owe you, I could not give less of a shit. The hospital can sue me. It will still be my go to emergency room if I ever have to go through that again. It’s really close by.
I live in Los Angeles. If you make less than $50k a year here you should qualify for food stamps. I want a handicapped placard for my rear view on account of my ingrown toenails and sciatica.
I don’t qualify for shit.
It’s not like ever I tried.
I’m your typical liberal.
Lazy and shiftless and just looking for a free ride.
I don’t have a goddamn thing, not on paper at least.
I used to.
A good job, a house, cars.
I didn’t lose my job or my stuff because of the recession. But afterwards it took me a couple years to find something that paid at least a living wage. I had to sell a lot of my stuff. I had to live with my parents. It’s been a struggle ever since. I’m not complaining. I’m a hell of a lot luckier than millions of other people. I’m a white male with a resume in the best country in the world.
I doubt I’ll ever be able to retire.
We live in amazing times. We work harder, longer and more efficiently than any other country. We are afforded less vacation time and sick leave than any other country. Education and healthcare cost about a ten times more than they used to. Seriously, a thousand percent more. Way more than any other country. I don’t make any more than back then and neither do you. We can no longer afford either.
Something like half of us are living check to check.
That’s insane.
It’s not sustainable.
This is why we’re fucking nuts.
White people need to stop voting republican and scare this shit out of democrats by overwhelming them. We simply don’t have time for a third party, it’s too late for that. White people need to understand that we are no longer the shit in America or be complicit in becoming a third world country.
Acting like it matters in the scheme of things that an immigrant mother gets $12k a year in government subsidies for her seven children is moronic. Standing in front of all the modern horrors we can casually survey everyday and thinking this is worthy of anyone’s attention is moronic. We live in a country that blows people just like her to fucking bits all over the world every day.
Find something meaningful to give a self righteous shit about.
White people can still save us. But only if we stop worrying about black men running amok and Mexicans raping our women. Only if we actually realize this isn’t any longer about the color of our skin or the content of our character.
This is not about takers vs. makers.
This is about a concentration of wealth. Income redistribution but not like on the TV. The wealthiest one percent have always gotten that way with a leg up and by shitting down the backs of thousands but now they are getting away with too goddamn much. Power is their crack. They drool and careen behind closed doors, drunk with avaricious obliquity. These fuckers are out of control. They hate us. They’re no longer bothered by what anyone else thinks. It’s a harbinger. An omen.
Us white folks used to be somewhat excluded from the military industrial complex, the financial industrial complex and the energy industrial complex leveraging the political industrial complex. The beginning of the the end of that was Vietnam. These days it’s rolling over all of us with impunity and without regard to complexion. These days being fucked is an equal opportunity liability. Rich people no longer despise the poor and minorities nearly as much as they see the middle class as an inconvenience. An obstacle not to be gotten over or around, but eliminated.
They disenfranchise voters, craft and pay for the passage of profitable legislation, implement policy and ultimately buy our elected representatives and the very elections in which they run.
It’s a goddamn disaster and they don’t give a mad fuck what color we are.
The quicker we understand that we are no different than anyone else and never have been, the quicker we can get on with what needs to happen next. We need to get over all this bullshit they would have us spend the rest of our lives in hand wringing self righteous despair of. They have at least half of us pining and whining to take our country back from the other half by jerking at the strings of a sense of entitlement that is now archaic and obsolete.
Take our country back from what?
From who?
Nobody is coming for your guns, gay people don’t lust after your brats, black men just want a decent job and Latinos wouldn’t mind finally being recognized for how unbelievably fucking hard they work. We don’t all want man caves and nurseries and lawns and cement ponds and fancy eatin’ tables.
We aren’t all the same and we need to stop being distracted by that.
The big secret to equality and justice is one of economics. Racism is a symptom. Greed is the disease. Class warfare has always been the hallmark of an aspiring plutocracy.
You gotta hand it to them, they swindle us with our own egos. Rob us blind with fear and gyp us out of our dignity. White people are kinda new to this. We really need to catch up. White people today are indisputable proof that the cancer of absolute power has metastasized absolutely. We aren’t as bad off as other races yet but it won’t be long.
I don't necessarily agree with that. I think we can make blanket stereotypes out of the 'usual' GOP voter, but it goes deeper. It follows the natural tendency to find evidence that supports your arguments - we minimize some news while praising others. I just think many Conservatives are so wistful for Norman Rockwell days- they think existed - they will accept any evidence, no matter how ridiculous or false, to support their belief. Germans during the holocaust, Slave owners in the South, . . . convincing themselves something is ok when it morally is not.
We already covered that, didn't you learn anything?