Posts Tagged Health Care Reform
Two Prestigious Scholars Blame The Republican Party For The Stalemate In The 112th Congress
Posted by Ronald in News and Politics on May 22, 2012
Two well known scholars, Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution and Norman J. Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute, have recently published a book and authored articles criticizing the Republican Party for the stalemate in the 112th Congress.
The Republican Party is blamed for its refusal to hold members of their party in Congress accountable for their wild statements; is seen as totally against compromise; refuses to accept facts, evidence and science; lacks respect for the legitimacy of the opposition party and its members; and is so far outside the mainstream as to be alarming for any hope of accomplishment of any goals or programs!
The two people most responsible for this extremism are former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, and Grover Norquist of the Americans for Tax Reform. But also the filibuster has been abused in the Senate, and prevented many executive branch appointments from being confirmed, both in the government agencies and in the court system.
The reaction to Roe V. Wade after 1973 mobilized social conservatives, while the tax revolt in California in 1978 mobilized anti tax activists. Also, the South turned conservative Republican after the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s; and the rise of conservative talk radio, and the growing impact of Fox News on cable, also had a great impact on what has become a growing stalemate and gridlock.
Health care reform, climate change, economic recovery, deficits, and debt issues have become a chasm between the two major political parties. Polarization has become the norm, and is a dangerous trend which may continue, if the voters again send a confusing message of a divided Congress in the 2012 Congressional elections. The Tea Party movement, if it grows, will further create conflict at a time when we need negotiation and compromise!
This assessment is extremely worrisome, as it means that our national government may be totally paralyzed, when we need true statesmen in both parties dealing with our important national agenda!
Richard Nixon Health Care Proposal 38 Years Ago Today: Another Republican President Besides TR Calls For Health Care For All!
Posted by Ronald in News and Politics on February 6, 2012
One of the readers and commentators on my blog today made me aware of the fact that on this day in 1974, at the height of the Watergate Scandal that would bring him down six months later, President Richard Nixon sent a message to Congress calling for a comprehensive Health Care reform to cover all Americans, as a basic right of citizenship!
The link to this is on the entry today on Republicans, and Hispanics and Latinos being wary of backing the party and Mitt Romney, due to their anti immigrant mentality. I wish to thank “Engineer Of Knowledge” for contributing this idea, and that has provoked me to mention it in a followup post here on the blog.
Nixon, like Theodore Roosevelt before him, understood the importance of this idea of health care for all, and it becomes clear that the Republican Party of today would reject both TR and Nixon for their far sighted ideas.
It is further proof of why the GOP in 2012 is dramatically different than it was in 1912 or 1974!
The Lunatic Audiences At GOP Debates: A Total Disgrace!
Posted by Ronald in News and Politics on October 19, 2011
What kind of country are we that we can have lunatic audiences cheering on crazy, nasty, cruel comments on issues involving capital punishment, gays in the military, lack of health care insurance, illegal immigration, and American citizens involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement?
It is shocking that people would cheer the number of people executed under Texas Governor Rick Perry!
It is unbelievable that people would boo a gay soldier who has served our country!
It is dismaying that people would call for letting a person without health insurance, who is seriously ill, to just die!
It is outrageous that people would applaud the idea of an electrified fence to keep illegal immigrants out of the country!
It is disgraceful that an audience would applaud that if people are unemployed or poor in a time of the Great Recession, the worst conditions since the Great Depression, that it is their own fault, and to condemn the marches and demonstrations of the Occupy Wall Street movement, which has spread throughout the nation and overseas!
Have some Americans lost our common humanity, our rationality, our morality, in the name of self centered egotism, that all that matters is our own selfish interests, and to hell with basic common decency? We should mourn the deterioration in civility as a danger sign of the decline of our whole civilization!