Don't blame me, I voted for the other guy. (Politics General)

BlitztheDragon
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Some folks on Bluesky were sharing around how our media coverage and political culture seems to assume that Democrats are the only party in our system that has any agency, and Republicans are more like an unfeeling force of nature, one that is exempt from any sort of standards or accountability. It’s what Democrats do in response to what Republicans are doing that anybody ever cares about and holds them to.
BlitztheDragon
Lunar Supporter - Helped forge New Lunar Republic's freedom in the face of the Solar Empire's oppressive tyrannical regime (April Fools 2023).
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Sounds like things are going swimmingly for Trump’s transition team…not.
Disagreements over how Trump’s next four years should be prepared for have intensified into “shouting matches, expulsions from meetings and name-calling,” and three distinct factions have emerged on Trump’s transition team. One contains Donald Trump Jr., J. D. Vance, and “longtime MAGA warriors” such as Tucker Carlson; one is made up of campaign co-chair Susan Wiles and her underlings; the third has formed around Linda McMahon, Brooke Rollins, and Mike Pence’s former National Security Advisor Keith Kellogg.
Trump attorney Boris Epshteyn appears to be involved in many of the loudest altercations.
BlueYoshi
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It’s like what Kreia said in “Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II”:
“To be united by hatred is a fragile alliance at best.”
Latecomer

@BlitztheDragon
Given that they seem to have approached these people to argue these topics just on the basis of their characteristics while they were doing mundane things, who are the “identitarians* again?
marinus18

The frustrating thing to me is just like last time the economic growth will continue for 1 or 2 years into Trump’s new term before cratering again which allows Trump to take credit for it and to shove off the blame for the cratering on the next administration.
Stealing credit and shoving off blame is something Trump is a professional in.
marinus18

@igotnopicks
Maybe he only says that to make people anxious about losing the Affordable Care Act feel slightly more at ease. Maybe he actually means he will abolish it and replace it with nothing.
Most likely he will try to revive Trump care which was rejected in his first term with only a 17% approval rating. It was basically completely privitizing healthcare by eliminating any and all standards. Making healthcare completely a way to transfer tax dollars to private bank accounts and making the healthcare portion of it a complete afterthought. The affordable care act does include standards on what the money is allowed to be used for as well as standards of accountability. I still don’t like it because it still includes capitalist middlemen that just drive up costs for no reason but there are still standards.
I don’t think Trump will get rid of medicare entirely. Several megacorps get billions from it, it eliminates the need to invest in research by big pharma and it enables corporations to make strikes even harder by binding healthcare to employment.
Big pharma has the biggest lobbying arm of any economic sector including both oil and arms. Insurance companies have massive lobbying arms as well. They don’t want their billions of medicare/medicaid money cut off.
It’s important to remember that Medicare/medicaid is a republican policy, the democrats wanted a more nationalized system so that less money would go to capitalist middlemen. Obama though was a big fan of compromise so he agreed to the republican plan in exchange for concessions on having standards applied to the private providers if they get government money. What I think will happen is that Trump will get rid of those standards and make it what the republican plan originally was.
The republican propaganda machine was very effective at making people feel corporate power in healthcare is good and government power is bad. Even though the government has an interest in the health of it’s people while healthcare corporations if anything have an interest to keep people unhealthy. However it’s again part of the standard rhetoric of: Corporate power good, government power bad so therefore we should allow capitalists to pocket billions of dollars meant for healthcare all to avoid the government paying doctors directly.
Ciaran
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Senior Moderator
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@marinus18
I’m not trying to single you out, and I’m not writing this as a moderator - I’m just geniunely curious.
You say:
[Medicare] eliminates the need to invest in research by big pharma
How do you see Medicare eliminating the need for investment in research?
[Medicare] enables corporations to make strikes even harder by binding healthcare to employment
Medicare doesn’t have anything to do with health care before the age of 65. And Medicare could theoretically eliminate employer based health care if it were extended to all Americans.
So how do you see Medicare making it easier for corporations to tie healthcare to employment?
Yeah Trump’s transition team is going to go over well it seems :D
When everything is transactional, and your obligation and oath are to one person who determines your value, it’s easy for people to point at what others are getting, and what they themselves have donated or ‘paid’, and fight for a better return on their investment, or larger rewards for any promised future transactions. Then all transactions are commercial and you can incentivize anything that would normally be just a part of your job.
You can actually see this playing out in real time - Graetz’s value was a ticking clock, running down the transactional value of his past work for Trump until the clock hit zero and he was out.
It was like watching the financial clock counting down in the ending of THX-1138. It hit zero, and it was done.
Now someone else’s transactional clock is ticking.
By contrast, when everyone’s obligation and oath is to the constitution and the institutions themselves, then any transactions are unrewarded - or even punished as what they really are: bribes and collusion. Your only reward in that system for doing your job, is you did your job.
marinus18

@marinus18
I’m not trying to single you out, and I’m not writing this as a moderator - I’m just geniunely curious.
You say:
[Medicare] eliminates the need to invest in research by big pharma
How do you see Medicare eliminating the need for investment in research?
[Medicare] enables corporations to make strikes even harder by binding healthcare to employment
Medicare doesn’t have anything to do with health care before the age of 65. And Medicare could theoretically eliminate employer based health care if it were extended to all Americans.
So how do you see Medicare making it easier for corporations to tie healthcare to employment?
Research is done by government agencies so defunding those means big pharma would have to do those themselves. American pharma is very much a parasitic system. With government agencies doing all the research and corporations copyrighting it and selling it as if they developed it.
It’s why big pharma has such an extremely high number of lobbyists and ‘advisors’ in the government. They are very dependent on government funds. So I don’t see these funds getting reduced, I see them mostly just getting diverted more to capitalist pockets rather than medicine.
Medicare makes healthcare insurance mandatory does it not? Which considering how privitized the system is makes employment mandatory too.
Ciaran
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Senior Moderator
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Research is done by government agencies … With government agencies doing all the research and corporations copyrighting it and selling it as if they developed it.
How is Medicare in any way involved in this?
Yes, the US government, particularly through the NIH, invests heavily in basic biomedical research. And that foundational research is often used by private companies to develop marketable drugs. But the pharmaceutical companies then invest heavily in the development, testing, and commercialization of new drugs. Clinical trials, regulatory approvals, scaling distribution and manufacturing - all of that is private sector contributions.
The recombinant human growth hormone is a great example of this collaborative process.
Medicare is a US Federal health insurance program for individuals 65 or older.
Zero dollars from Medicare go toward research.
It can negotiate prices for some high-expenditure drugs, but none of its money goes toward research.
2LDR: Pharmaceutical research in the U.S. is funded through a combination of public investments (mostly through the NIH), but also substantial private sector investments. And the private sector bears most of the cost of creating marketable products that result from the research.
Medicare is centered on providing health coverage and negotiating drug prices. It doesn’t directly fund pharmaceutical research.
Medicare makes healthcare insurance mandatory does it not?
No, it doesn’t.
marinus18

Medicare is centered on providing health coverage and negotiating drug prices. It doesn’t directly fund pharmaceutical research.
I know this one is not true cause before Biden they weren’t allowed to negotiate drug prices. It was one of his best policies.
But for the rest looking it up I was wrong. Thank you for the information.
Ciaran
ラ・ゼッタ - For supporting the site
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Nightmare in the Moon - Had their OC in the 2024 Derpibooru Collab.
Pixel Perfection - I still call her Lightning Bolt
Silly Pony - Celebrated the 13th anniversary of MLP:FIM, and 40 years of MLP!
Shimmering Smile - Celebrated the 10th anniversary of Equestria Girls!
Lunar Guardian - Earned a place among the ranks of the most loyal New Lunar Republic soldiers (April Fools 2023).
Crystal Roseluck - Had their OC in the 2023 Derpibooru Collab.

Senior Moderator
君場森生きる
Per the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, Medicare allowed to negotiate prices for drugs covered under Medicare Part D, especially high-cost drugs that lack generic or biosimilar competition. The scope of the drugs they may negotiate for continues to expand. There are also limits on annual price increases for drugs, tied to the rate of inflation.
I know this one is not true cause before Biden they weren’t allowed to negotiate drug prices. It was one of his best policies.
I don’t know what you’re saying here. It sounds like you are saying one of Biden’s best policies was not allowing negotiation of prices?
Can you please clarify?
marinus18

@Ciaran
I said BEFORE Biden they weren’t allowed.
But it was one of his best policies. It was price controls which is what was needed to stabilize the economy in the aftermath of Covid. It was unfortunately just far too limited.
(I am aware long term price controls can be damaging. But short term they can be an essential tool to stop people taking advantage of economic chaos.)
marinus18

@Background Pony #10F6
I’m guessing another fascist win. No surprise cause if any country has been screwed over by the EU it’s been Romania. Taxes low with tons of outsourcing towards it which means low wages and low taxes and often corruption. Romania came into the EU very weak and in the EU if you are weak you are going to get devoured. The same thing happened to Greece when the EU forced bad economic policies onto them but Romania pretty much entered the EU in Greece’s state from the start so it never had a chance.
Unfortunately fascists usually just care about blaming scapegoats which is all the ones in Italy have been doing for the past few years. Blaming migrants and gay people and not doing anything to fix their myriad of issues.
Being a tax haven in the EU is not a good thing. It means you get next to no income from the corporations you have and it usually also means you have no agency to make them pay decent wages. It just means most of your people are working jobs that mainly enrich capitalists in richer countries. Usually they pay bribes to politicians too which means a decline in social services to help please the donors.
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