The 2020 Crash and Failed Response to Corona virus

So the Virus we knew was coming a decade ago finally hit us and the USA is woefully unprepared. Pay attention and please share these talking points as we still have a chance to reduce the damage the next time this happens, and it WILL happen again.

Why its so bad

• Trump disbanded the emergency response unit that was put in place to protect us. Standard Conservative policy, cut govt programs because individuals and corporations should be able to fend for themselves.
• Trump has made things much worse by not taking it seriously from the start and worrying more about the stock market than human lives. So he kept telling people it was contained and over rated, nothing to worry about. So it spread further.
• He waited to long to restrict travel and then exempted countries where has hotels.
• Testing kits were offered by WHO early on but Trump admin refused, so an American company could get exclusivity. Except of course the kits were made in China because of our disastrous trade agreement and turned out to be contaminated. This put us way behind the rest of the world.

Trump and Republican "Solutions"?

• Bailouts to major corporations.
• Payroll tax cuts which of course wont help the people sent home without pay or laid off.
• Finally after more than a month persuading insurance companies to not charge copays for testing and our taxes covering their costs. Meanwhile treatment wont be covered, and of course millions of workers will lose their insurance because there no longer working.

The Corporate Response

• Lay off workers because consumer demand in many industries is down.  Honestly you cant blame the companies, but rather than put people on leaves of absence so they keep their health insurance (If they can afford the premiums without a paycheck) their now out of work for an unknown length of time.

The Biden Plan

• This is what the status quo with our health care system looks like.Once you lose your job you lose medical coverage. Even before that happens your discouraged from getting testing (when available) or treatment because for many people the copays and deductibles are too high.
• Taxpayers by the way foot the bill when these people use the ER after it gets serious because they could not afford to go.
• Think about that come election time, The AHCA was better than what we had, and certainly better than the nothing Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnel came up with but it was not enough.

The Sanders Plan

Had Sanders won in 2016 and managed to get his Medicare for all plan through Congress (yes it was and is a long shot and hard. But anything worth doing is hard, and the alternative to not even trying is failure) we would simply not be in this mess.

• You have no Health Insurance now or its too expensive? Under Sanders plan you and all those healthy young people would have been paying into the same healthcare pool everyone uses.  Yale did a study and showed it would save $45 Billion a YEAR. Yes it costs 30 trillion over 10 years as the health insurance companies and the talking heads on TV tell you.  But were already spending 54 trillion in that same time period according to a REPUBLICAN study by The Heritage Foundation. In other words even they know it saves money, they just don't want YOU to know so Health Insurance companies will keep paying them off. Every researcher knows it saves money, they just tell you the costs in taxes but not the savings in your wallet with no more premiums, deductibles, and copays.
• Imagine if everyone who gets sick could get tested (Neither Sanders or Biden would have botched the testing kit thing) and would get tested because they could afford it. Maybe they lose their job for being sick, thats sad but they would still get medical care and maybe quickly find another job.Especially since companies would still be doing a good business.

Summary

Its really too late for this outbreak, we should have elected Sanders in 2016.

However there will be another one, maybe in a few years, maybe a dozen, we do not know when but we know it will happen. In the meantime 45,000 Americans die each year and thousands of newborn babies because people cant afford the current system. It works great for the upper class, lousy for everyone else. And do you really like your insurance company? Not talking about your doctor, but the company you pay every month to help with your medical bills when you need it - are they there for you when you need them? Or do they delay payments and string you along with paperwork?

Getting rid of a business that only makes a profit by not paying out what you pay them for just makes no sense. Of course we have the worst health care in the entire modern world!

Biden is winning the Dem election, not because people like his policies, exit polling in every single state so far proves that. He is winning because the millionaires on TV and the Radio, as well as those in D.C. are telling you everything is fine, lets not rock the boat. Ask yourself, is it fine for you? Would you like it to be better? Sanders can still win if people come out and vote not on nostalgia over President Obama, not over fear of stupid buzz words like socialism but because they want a better future. If Sanders loses America loses, simple as that.

Its true he may not get his plans through Congress and we may lose anyway. But the other side is telling us we certainly will lose of they win and Sanders is defeated because they will change nothing.

I fought for America in the USAF, I'm not surrendering now. My country and generations after me deserve better!

The decline in US Manufacturing

@gop @TheDemocrats @BrandNew535 @justicedems @JoeBiden @BernieSanders @USAutoCouncil

In the 80's 25% of US jobs involved manufacturing, now its 10%. Republicans blame immigrants and regulation saying worker safety, pollution control, and wages are to blame so subsidize companies through tax cuts and they can then afford to higher American workers, even as they give those manufacturers 50% tax breaks to open plants overseas.

@realDonaldTrump @BernieSanders and others, including most labor unions blame trade agreements like NAFTA, TPP, and others where corporations were in charge of setting the trade policy through lobbyists and buying politicians. Trump hit @HillaryClinton hard on this in 2016

@JoeBiden not only voted like Clinton, he whip counted for it and in recent debates still says they were good deals. He will be hit hard on this if he wins the nomination. But the other candidates and #MSM ignore this because they supported it too. Except for @BernieSanders who was one of the very few who predicted the effect to employees and not only them but all Americans and was willing to take the unpopular stand.

That is Senator Sanders in a nutshell! Always looking forward and wiling to take a stand for America rather than bend with the political winds or be bought by corporations. Only one candidate in the 2020 Presidential election has a proven track record of putting Americans first, ahead of his wallet and political self interest. I do not agree with all his decisions, nor perfectly align with his ideology but hes the only one I trust to govern with integrity. That matters!

Unionizing America

Listening to various talking heads I had this thought. What Senator Sanders is trying to do is unionize America.
Labor unions helped the workers by uniting large numbers of workers so they could fight for better pay, benefits, and safety as a group rather than individuals,  As individual employers would simply fire them and the status quo remain. The corporations had all the power.
But by uniting and working together unions led to substantive changes, We enacted child labor laws, shortened the work week, raised pay, increased health benefits, and improved worker safety, among many other improvements.
Of course since the 80's the Republican party has rolled some of that back and virtually destroyed the power of unions, and in large part due to corporate influence the Democrats allowed it. But still a lot of those changes are lasting ones.

What Sanders is talking about is effectively unionizing Americans.
The situation is much the same corporations hold most of the power and control most politicians through large campaign donations and promises of cushy jobs when a congress person retires.
The average American citizen has little power, districts are divvied up with gerrymandering to minimize our votes (If your in a safe district both sides can ignore you as your vote doesn't not typically matter), voter suppression laws and purging of the rolls, and other in my view flat out Anti-American tactics but even more so the ruling that money is free speech and corporations count as people (even if they are owned in whole or in part by non Americans).


The fact is that American citizens have little effective power as individuals but when we unite we do have power. Senator Sanders plan is to give voters something worth fighting for, not more of the same or incremental change that may benefit us a little bit and our grand kids a little more (if not rolled back). Are his ideas bold? Will they be hard to push though Congress? Absolutely!!!
But Freedom isn't free, and anything worth having is worth fighting for. His plan to use the Bully pulpit to bring issues to the voter is a powerful one, little used by previous Presidents.
Trump understands that power and uses it to stir up his base to protect him even when he does things that would have resulted in any other Presidents impeachment and removal from office.

It is a fact that the candidate with the most money usually wins. But what the media and establishment politicians are not really publicly acknowledging is that in 2018 a lot of candidates who were massively out spent won their races.  The trick is to win those seats they had to speak to their voters in clear and inspirational messages that made a stronger impression than the paid for advertising.
Also old fashioned methods like town halls and door to door campaigns as well as reaching people through the internet more than television.
Senator Sanders inspired these grassroots movements by his efforts in 2016. He had the powerful message that he would work for voters, not corporations and put his money where his mouth was by refusing corporate super pac money.

Imagine That Integrity and Powerful Messaging in the White House!

With the bully pulpit of the Presidency he can get air time by simply making a speech. His plan is to put issues to Congress or promote ones he favors in his speeches and get the word out to us, the American voter.
It will be up to us to band together, as we have in the past and tell Congress what We The People think. If he makes a good case we tell that to them, likewise if we disagree.
But by uniting and bringing his case directly to you and me he is helping us gather our power and use it effectively to serve us.  Instead of the current back room politics he will haul it onto the front lawn where we can all see what is really going on.
Like the unions and civil rights movements of the past we can, under President Sanders leadership take back our country and make it work for Americans. This is a powerful opportunity we may not have again if we allow it to slip by.

Bernie Sanders for 2020

So Senator Sanders finally announced and most of the results are as expected.

• Talking Heads are going crazy with "How is he going to stand out from the crowd?" The idea here is that many of the Democratic candidates have adopted some of his positions so why go for him in 2020? 
• My thoughts are why vote for the follower or copycat when you can vote for the leader? The one who stuck his neck out for a position before it was popular is more likely to be honest and vigilant in his stance than someone who came to those ideas after they were popular?
• Can he beat Trump?
• Well according to the 2016 Democratic primaries he won most of the Midwest and red states over Clinton. Thats really important and indicates he was more likely to win in 2016 than she was.
• Also hes a fighter and has stood up for his beliefs and a lot of attacks without backing down.
• He had problems with reports of women being sexually harassed in his campaign.  Not by him of course but by some of his volunteers who reportedly made for a unhealthy working environment.
• Anyone who has ever worked for a large company has seen that kind of thing going on. It is important how the leadership deals with it but I give him a pass here because A) He looked into it, said it definitely happened and hes sorry and has taken steps to ensure it wont happen again. That level of self accountability is something we dont see enough of in politics.  Also he ramped up fast which left infrastructure holes and minimal vetting.
• Hes pretty old now, can young people relate to him?
• Hes always polled really well among younger voters.
• Watch him on stage, hes got a lot of energy and is in better shape than Trump.
• And notice how people bring up his age but not that of Joe Biden who is only a year younger.
• Identity Politics, or We need a "X"
• We dont need someone who checks off the right demographic box, that's something Clinton was hoping would carry her in 2016. What we need is not a woman but someone who will fight for women. What we need is not a person of color but someone who will stand up for them. We need a candidate who supports jobs and improved economic opportunity for every American. We need a candidate who is for civil rights and willing to invest in our youth and improve the countries long term growth rather than just looking for how to win the next election.  We need to vote on policies and integrity, if the best one matching our policies is the same or a different gender, orientation, ethnic background or whatever fine, But dont vote for someone like Ben Carson because hes black, or Clinton because shes a woman.
• Fundraising
• Senator Sanders has already raised a lot and based on previous history most of his money will come from small donations from individuals rather than large donations from corporations, PACs, and big name donors.  Those who donate are likely to vote so thats a big starting edge and indicator right off.
• He should run as a Democrat, or since hes not be treated as a third party and not voted for in the primary.
• Do you want to lose?
• Really do you?
• People complain about Jill Stein of the Green Party splitting the vote. If Senator Sanders ran as an Independent or Third party candidate he would split the vote in the general election.  And I think its reasonable to believe he would take far more of the Democratic vote than Jill Stein ever has or could. Instead Bernie has opted to compete among Democrats and abide by the party choice as regards the general election. He stumped heavily for Clinton after he lost to her in 2016, sure those who wanted him to win were mad at and many did not vote for Clinton but thats not on him.  He stumped for her and many other Democratic candidates then and later.
• You want Sanders to run as an Independent in 2020 than you want the Democratic party to lose in 2020. Instead, stop fighting and thank him for his help!

Summary

Personally I think Senator Sanders has the best chance of winning the general in 2020 and its between him and Senator Warren as to who I want to win. Either one will help the country move forward.

Most of the rest I dont trust their positions as they have not been consistent or shown serious efforts at fighting for them.

Single Payer Week

Single payer, Medicare for all, universal health care, what do these things really mean?
In the upcoming week I will be posting an entry a day to explain the concept and what it means for Americans and business, and I look forward to comments and questions.
Starting off lets break down some of the words above.

Medicare For All

The idea here is that we already have a federal health care system for the elderly. Signed into law by Lyndon B. Johnson (Democrat) in 1965 as an amendment to the Social Security Act (Created by Franklin Roosevelt (D)). He also signed Medicaid into law at the same for the disabled. President Truman was actually issued the first Medicare card as part of the ceremony.

It was created because private health insurance was virtually unavailable to those over 65.  Health insurance companies make their profits by charging the healthy and avoiding paying the sick as much as they can. So if they can exclude people based on preexisting conditions or being to old they will in order to increase profits. The reason this has so much traction is it already exists and has a proven track record of low administration costs and overhead so its more efficient per medical dollar than any other system in the USA. The idea here is instead of creating a new thing we just expand it.

Universal Health Care

This is a less specific idea that seems to have less traction but the goal is the same. Create a new agency or process to provide funding for health care. Possibly funded by SSI, possibly another tax.

Single Payer

Really it all boils down to this. The idea is that instead of paying for insurance through your health insurance and its maze of deductibles, co-pays, and caps you use a government issued medical card and its covered by the government. See posts later in the week for plans on how its paid for.

It is important to note that this is not a take over of private medical care, anymore than Medicare or Medicaid uses government doctors instead of private doctors. It wont even completely abolish medical insurance, though they will have stiff competition and be used to cover specialized care such as elective surgery.

What does your Representative stand for?

Listening to an interview with Senator Warren it is clear waht is really important to her.  If you had to say what your representative (at any level) values the most would you be able to say? Would you like that answer?
This is a key thing we should be asking more.
The ones I can think of are...

President Trump

• Being Popular
• Getting wealthier

Senator Bernie Sanders

• Health Care for everyone
• Tuition free College
• Good jobs, including a higher minimum wage and one that keeps up with inflation.

Senator Elizabeth Warren

• Consumer Protection
• Health Care

Senator James Lankford (My Senator)

• Curtailing Government Waste
• Fiscal responsibility in government spending

Contact your representative and ask them for their personal top three issues.  See if you get an honesty answer and one that is supported by their voting records.

Do not let them just give you talking points or a spin but an honest heartfelt answer on the top 3 things they want to address.

If they can not or will not give you a simple list they likely don't really have that much desire.