I certainly don't think anybody stole the 2008 election. Obama won fair and square... imo of course. With or without ACORN, same result in 2008. That said, Nancy Pelosi would have heads on spits across the National Mall if ACORN intentially generated voter contributions to benefit Republican candidates instead of Democrats. As with just about everything in politics, it's only wrong when the other team does it.
I appreciate your response.
I haven't posted in the OT on political subjects for some time, but I do have a lot of things to say on a variety of subjects, so please accept my apology for the following rant.
Ultimately, ACORN exists to empower the young, poor and minorities to register to vote. I have no doubt that the people they target as a whole are likely to vote democratic, but there is no direct relationship between the two and some of the people ACORN registers vote republican.
There is hypocrisy on both sides, but there is also a false equivalency that is often claimed.
The GOP has lost its way and is clinging to the ugliest side of its base. They have decided that rather than trying to work with President Obama and the Democratic majority, they will work against him and the country and hope that things are so bad at the next election that the people will give the country back to them.
There are legitimate conservative points to be made on a variety of issues, from health care to climate change to name a few, but they are not being made.
Instead, we get death panels and calls for revolution and Teabagger Parties and a bunch of other theatrical BS, half of which is organized by lobbyists.
Pelosi is tenacious, but she is not the evil witch she is portrayed as by some. To their credit and their detriment, Democrats usually start from the compromise position.
Democrats don't try for universal public health care through a single payer system, they go for the middle of the road public option, which is an insurance fund that would compete with private insurers, and have watered it down to basically reform in name only.
Some claim that any type of expanded government program would destroy the quality of health care in this country because the private system could not compete. (Medicare and the VA already disprove that notion.)
The same people also claim, usually during the same article or speech, that the public option would provide horrible care and be much worse than the existing private insurance.
Both of these things cannot be true.
If the public option sucks, then it is not going to drive the private insurers out of business. If it is great, then it is a better way to provide health care and the private insurers will have to adapt and focus on quality of care instead of denying claims and maximizing stock price.
When it comes to the environment, Democrats don't try to destroy industry, eliminate fossil fuels or any other extreme left-wing position. They adopt cap and trade, an idea of conservative intellectuals and a similar middle of the road option. It is market-based.
Obama is basically a pragmatist. He is barely a liberal and certainly not a socialist by any rational and honest definition of the term.
Recently, we had to listen to the claim that it would destroy America to hold a trial of the people who attacked us?
Never mind that most of the people saying that are on record saying the opposite during the Bush Administration. Never mind that we have tried many a domestic and foreign terrorist and hold many in our prisons.
The rule of law is what makes this country great. If we are going to claim the moral superiority to act as a benevolent superpower and spread democracy, we have to live up to the ideals we claim. Some means cannot be justified.
But back to the question of health care and public versus private. I offer the following on the virtue of public interest:
Some aspects of public service should remain distinct from the private sector.
The core function of a mental health agency is the treatment of mental illness. The success or failure of the agency should be measured in terms of the treatment of mental illness.
The agency should be as efficient and self-sustaining as reasonably possible, but the treatment of mental illness should not be subverted in the pursuit of windfall profits, bonuses and stock options.
When you privatize a public service, profit becomes the ultimate goal. Too often, that goal is achieved at the expense of the public.
Privatization of our military and our prisons, to name a few, threatens our national security and our humanity.
We have seen the failure of privatization and deregulation, and see it now in our current health care system. The solution need not be all public or all private, but we need an honest debate and it seems pretty clear that some level of governmental intervention is required.
