May 13, 20205 yr 23 minutes ago, Toastrel said: So, barrel through and let all the people who will die, croak? That's the answer? You prefer a larger death toll? That's what Sweden has. Herd immunity = letting all the weak die. Great plan. You get herd immunity through lockdown too - it just spreads the deaths out over time. I doubt your prefer putting tens of millions of people out of work with no regard for their future so how about we stop that nonsense? Continue to protect the weak. Stay home if you are at risk. Wear a mask and social distance.
May 13, 20205 yr 40 minutes ago, Tnt4philly said: I doubt your prefer putting tens of millions of people out of work with no regard for their future so how about we stop that nonsense? Continue to protect the weak. Stay home if you are at risk. Wear a mask and social distance. I do prefer putting tens of millions of people out of work, as opposed to letting the virus overwhelm our medical infrastructure and I bury 5% more loved ones. Those are your choices. Opening the country up will produce the deadlier second wave many people would prefer to avoid. From the beginning, it is my belief it is easier to fix broke than dead.
May 13, 20205 yr The fix for the broken economy is going to be a worse than the virus. https://reason.com/2020/05/12/the-next-coronavirus-stimulus-bill-is-here-its-a-3-trillion-spending-plan-that-bails-out-states-and-the-post-office/
May 13, 20205 yr The world will never go back. Welcome to the post pandemic world. Such a shame our current president ACTIVELY DISARMED THE US RESPONSE. Then he refused to admit there was a problem. This moron just YESTERDAY decided to implement a mask policy in the White House. A policy he feels no need to adhere to.
May 13, 20205 yr 4 minutes ago, Toastrel said: The world will never go back. Welcome to the post pandemic world. Such a shame our current president ACTIVELY DISARMED THE US RESPONSE. Then he refused to admit there was a problem. This moron just YESTERDAY decided to implement a mask policy in the White House. A policy he feels no need to adhere to. No doubt that clown in chief made this worse, but the disarming of our response was set in motion long long ago.
May 13, 20205 yr 6 minutes ago, Tnt4philly said: No doubt that clown in chief made this worse, but the disarming of our response was set in motion long long ago. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6819258-Playbook.html#document/p2 Trump specifically disarmed our response. He owns this.
May 13, 20205 yr 1 hour ago, Tnt4philly said: The fix for the broken economy is going to be a worse than the virus. https://reason.com/2020/05/12/the-next-coronavirus-stimulus-bill-is-here-its-a-3-trillion-spending-plan-that-bails-out-states-and-the-post-office/ Don't know why this article targets the post office. The Post Office is not screwed due to it's own mismanagement. It's screwed because a bill was written specifically to screw it in 2006. They need a bailout now and then they need to rewrite that bill so that it's actually allowed to make money again.
May 13, 20205 yr 29 minutes ago, JohnSnowsHair said: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6819258-Playbook.html#document/p2 Trump specifically disarmed our response. He owns this. And so did the lawmakers that passEd certificate of need regulations that limit the number of beds a hospital can have. Or the licensing restrictions that limit the number of doctors we have. Not to mention the state of the economy that started long before trump took office.
May 13, 20205 yr 5 minutes ago, VanHammersly said: Don't know why this article targets the post office. The Post Office is not screwed due to it's own mismanagement. It's screwed because a bill was written specifically to screw it in 2006. They need a bailout now and then they need to rewrite that bill so that it's actually allowed to make money again. The same thing could be said for the states that also need bailed out. They screwed themselves with bad economic polices. However, I disagree that the post office isn’t mismanaged. The fed should sell it off yesterday.
May 13, 20205 yr 3 minutes ago, Tnt4philly said: The same thing could be said for the states that also need bailed out. They screwed themselves with bad economic polices. However, I disagree that the post office isn’t mismanaged. The fed should sell it off yesterday. The Feds didn't write a bill that syphons all of the states money from them and also caps how much they can charge for their services. They did for the Post Office. They aren't mismanaged (or they weren't. They may be now that Trump just appointed one of his unqualified lackeys to lead them) The 2006 bill was designed to sink them. And obviously, it's worked. There are poor people across the country that wouldn't be able to get mail or medication delivered without the Post Office and certainly wouldn't be able to afford the much higher price of having something delivered by FedEx or UPS. You're essentially cutting them off and for no good reason except government/cheaper services bad. Up until 2006, the Post Office never had a problem supporting itself. They should've struck down that bill a decade ago.
May 13, 20205 yr Cheap mail delivery across the country is an institution in the USA. I'm not sure why people want to get rid of USPS (or drastically change the post office by selling it off to private investors). USPS actually compares well to other countries' postal services. LINK
May 13, 20205 yr 2 hours ago, Tnt4philly said: And so did the lawmakers that passEd certificate of need regulations that limit the number of beds a hospital can have. Or the licensing restrictions that limit the number of doctors we have. Not to mention the state of the economy that started long before trump took office. We could keep expanding out to find arguments for various "first cause" cases. Personally I blame Eve for this mess we're in. If she hadn't eaten that apple after all.... In seriousness, I think it's totally fair to discuss the efficacy of CON legislation, but it's a bit of a tortured argument to point to that as some sort of major factor here. If you replace the orange clown with a competent leader who managed this crisis better from the beginning and I don't know that we're at a place where we're talking about whether this or that regulation would have made us better prepared. A holistic view of how broken our healthcare system is overdue, it didn't take the pandemic to point that out. Maybe start with the AMA artificially limiting the supply of doctors to inflate their own wages?
May 13, 20205 yr 2 hours ago, VanHammersly said: The Feds didn't write a bill that syphons all of the states money from them and also caps how much they can charge for their services. They did for the Post Office. They aren't mismanaged (or they weren't. They may be now that Trump just appointed one of his unqualified lackeys to lead them) The 2006 bill was designed to sink them. And obviously, it's worked. There are poor people across the country that wouldn't be able to get mail or medication delivered without the Post Office and certainly wouldn't be able to afford the much higher price of having something delivered by FedEx or UPS. You're essentially cutting them off and for no good reason except government/cheaper services bad. Up until 2006, the Post Office never had a problem supporting itself. They should've struck down that bill a decade ago. https://reason.org/commentary/usps-has-120-billion-in-pension-and-other-post-employment-unfunded-liabilities/
May 13, 20205 yr 5 minutes ago, Tnt4philly said: https://reason.org/commentary/usps-has-120-billion-in-pension-and-other-post-employment-unfunded-liabilities/ Quote The USPS didn’t have this prefunded system for health benefits until 2006. After realizing that the USPS was on the hook for an estimated $50 to $59 billion in future health premium payments, Congress decided to make a change. Ironically, the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 required the USPS to change from pay-as-you-go into prefunded health benefits, just like its pensions. This was meant to put USPS retiree health benefits on track to full funding. Unfortunately, the USPS retiree health care reform coincided with significant declines in revenues. From 2007 through the 2019 fiscal year, the USPS lost $77 billion and hasn’t contributed to its retiree health care fund since 2012. "USPS has missed $48.2 billion in required payments for postal retiree health and pension benefits through fiscal year 2018,” the Government Accountability Office reported in March. That wasn't some weird coincidence. It was specifically because of the Postal Accountability Bill. I'm not saying the USPS didn't need to do something about their pensions, but now they've been stripped of their ability to do it and Congess is acting like it's the Post Office's fault. It's not. It's the bill's fault. Here's John Oliver's take:
May 13, 20205 yr 10 minutes ago, VanHammersly said: That wasn't some weird coincidence. It was specifically because of the Postal Accountability Bill. I'm not saying the USPS didn't need to do something about their pensions, but now they've been stripped of their ability to do it and Congess is acting like it's the Post Office's fault. It's not. It's the bill's fault. Here's John Oliver's take: So the government is responsible for the mismanagement of a government ran program but it’s not their fault? https://www.cato.org/blog/us-postal-service-crisis
May 13, 20205 yr 3 minutes ago, Tnt4philly said: So the government is responsible for the mismanagement of a government ran program but it’s not their fault? I'm saying it's Congress's fault, not the post office itself that they're now completely unable to cover their costs. I mean, you can talk about how their not meeting their obligations, but when it's literally written into a bill that they're not allowed to, I'm not sure what you expect them to do.
May 13, 20205 yr 3 hours ago, VanHammersly said: Don't know why this article targets the post office. The Post Office is not screwed due to it's own mismanagement. It's screwed because a bill was written specifically to screw it in 2006. They need a bailout now and then they need to rewrite that bill so that it's actually allowed to make money again. See the problem is Repugs want it to fail so they can gut it and privatize it. We need more hot trash that is FedEx and to a much less extent UPS. Another problem is the Post Office actually works and can't have a functioning government. That goes against their core beliefs. There is a reason the Post Office no longer offers postal banking.
May 13, 20205 yr 4 minutes ago, Tnt4philly said: https://www.cato.org/blog/usps-privatization-vs-bailouts John Oliver did a great piece this week about the USPS. I'm also not reading that Koch brother propaganda piece. That carries about as much weight as what President Ish for Brains says.
May 13, 20205 yr 8 minutes ago, Tnt4philly said: https://www.cato.org/blog/usps-privatization-vs-bailouts Color me not surprised that the Cato institute favors privatization. They lay out good arguments (like restructuring the bill that was designed to sink the post office and give them no pricing flexibility) but then just tag on Privitize! after every point. Meanwhile, they're completely ignoring that we don't need another private parcel deliver service. We have plenty. They're great for what they do, but they price out a lot of poor people. What we need is a USPS that's actually allowed to operate and cover their own costs like they used to.
May 13, 20205 yr 5 minutes ago, VanHammersly said: Color me not surprised that the Cato institute favors privatization. They lay out good arguments (like restructuring the bill that was designed to sink the post office and give them no pricing flexibility) but then just tags on Privitize! after every point. Meanwhile, they're completely ignoring that we don't need another private parcel deliver service. We have plenty. They're great for what they do, but they price out a lot of poor people. What we need is a USPS that's actually allowed to operate and cover their own costs like they used to. FedEx is not great. I would not even call them adequate at what they do. I refuse to purchase anything anymore that ships via FedEx. They singlehandedly prove that private business does not equal good or that the market has some kind of efficiencies or works. If I ever got anything delivered right and not so slow the pony express could have given it to me a week before by them, it would be a first. I can't express how truly awful FedEx is and their ish service. Also no surprise the Koch brothers want to strip assets and bilk people. One of those ghouls is down, but the other needs to go as well. They've done so much damage to this country.
May 13, 20205 yr 9 minutes ago, Ride the Walrus said: FedEx is not great. I would not even call them adequate at what they do. I refuse to purchase anything anymore that ships via FedEx. They singlehandedly prove that private business does not equal good or that the market has some kind of efficiencies or works. If I ever got anything delivered right and not so slow the pony express could have given it to me a week before by them, it would be a first. I can't express how truly awful FedEx is and their ish service. Also no surprise the Koch brothers want to strip assets and bilk people. One of those ghouls is down, but the other needs to go as well. They've done so much damage to this country. I don't have have a problem with any of them. There's a place for a private parcel service and there's a place for a public one. They all serve their own purpose and their own clientele. I just don't see why Congress needs to be so hell bent on killing an American institution that provides a good - albeit different from private companies - service. Having a successful Post Office doesn't undermine conservatism. It's silly ideological purity stuff like that that screws the American people unnecessarily.
May 13, 20205 yr 9 minutes ago, Ride the Walrus said: FedEx is not great. I would not even call them adequate at what they do. I refuse to purchase anything anymore that ships via FedEx. They singlehandedly prove that private business does not equal good or that the market has some kind of efficiencies or works. If I ever got anything delivered right and not so slow the pony express could have given it to me a week before by them, it would be a first. I can't express how truly awful FedEx is and their ish service. Also no surprise the Koch brothers want to strip assets and bilk people. One of those ghouls is down, but the other needs to go as well. They've done so much damage to this country. In terms of service I would put FedEx above USPS, which itself would be infront of UPS. I don't understand your hate for FedEx. They give great rates and I've never had a problem with them.
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