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bolverk

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Posts posted by bolverk

  1. 44 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

    This.  When the government's goal/role with respect to most facets of this crisis was....AT BEST....abdication....that's not a great comparator/benchmark.

    I don't think that anyone but the most strident of gov't healthcare proponents would argue that the private sector shouldn't have a role (again, look to any number of western democracies that have both private players in the healthcare and drug markets, as well as a single-payer system).

    For fuck's sake, all that most of us are saying is that we have literally dozens of models that are more cost-effective and successful than ours.  Let's steal the things that work, ditch the things that don't, and build a better system than the most-expensive one in the world, with mediocre results....which is what we have now.

    Yup. There are a range of options from which to choose, ranging from a fully nationalized system like the UK where the doctors are government workers to one that is a mix of private/public insurance providers.

    There's too much here to copy/paste, but below is a nice comparison from a few years ago of just a few in a tournament-style competition that has stuck with me showing various trade-offs among the systems of Canada, Britain, Singapore, Germany, Switzerland, France, Australia, and the US.

    https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/09/18/upshot/best-health-care-system-country-bracket.html

    First Round

    UK over Canada: 4-1

    US over Singapore: 4-1

    France over Australia: 4-1

    Switzerland over Germany: 3-2

    Semifinal

    Switzerland over UK: 3-2

    France over US: 3-2

    Final

    Switzerland over France: 3-2

    Quote

     

    Conclusion

    Germany would have tied Switzerland had we averaged our rankings of the nations instead of using head-to-head matchups in a bracket system (Switzerland eliminated Germany in the first round). It’s an example of how close the voting was. Not one vote was unanimous among the judges, and all the semifinal and final votes were 3-2. Clearly, there is room for disagreement about the relative merits of health systems, and different experts would surely reach different conclusions.

    Some judges took a global view, giving the edge to countries, like the United States, that promoted innovation that benefited the rest of the world. In other cases, how health systems treated the poorest of society was paramount.

    To nobody’s surprise, the United States could do better at balancing health care costs with access, quality and outcomes. But there are many ways to reach that goal, and there will always be trade-offs. Learning about them from other systems and debating them honestly would probably do us a lot of good.

     

    To select the winner of each matchup, we gathered a small judging panel, which includes us:

    Aaron Carroll, a health services researcher and professor of pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine
    Austin Frakt, director of the Partnered Evidence-Based Policy Resource Center at the V.A. Boston Healthcare System; associate professor with Boston University’s School of Public Health; and adjunct associate professor with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
    and three economists and physician experts in health care systems:

    Craig Garthwaite, a health economist with Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management
    Uwe Reinhardt, a health economist with Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs
    Ashish Jha, a physician with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute

    About the judges:

    Craig Garthwaite is a conservative economist who believes that well-regulated markets offer the best means of providing quality and innovation. He’s a lifelong Republican but has been broadly supportive of the market-based A.C.A.

    Uwe Reinhardt, who has analyzed health care systems around the world for half a century, has been a longtime supporter of single-payer, although he has said he doesn’t believe the United States could manage that system well because it’s captured by special interests.

    Ashish Jha and Aaron Carroll believe in universal coverage. Austin Frakt is less invested in universal coverage than universal access to affordable coverage. All three pay less attention to whether a system is more government-run or more market-based because they think either approach can succeed if devised well. Aaron and Austin blog at The Incidental Economist. For more information on health care systems, you can view Aaron's Healthcare Triage playlist of videos. Ashish blogs at an Ounce of Evidence.

     

     

  2. 4 hours ago, pyrohornIII said:

     

    My situation is much like yours, potholes and all.  Our tax district for the county, schools and ESD has been severely depleted by the decline in  O&G prices and production in the past 5 years.  Guess what's coming along to save all these MAGA loving assholes?   A solar farm.   Thank god they didn't have to vote on allowing it, or they'd have voted it down, being good Trumpkins.

    I've been hearing about the hubbub in Van Zandt County over some proposed solar farms because of a fear over the non-existent threat of what their queer panels will do to the soil. Oh, yeah, that and "what about if a tornado hits one!"

  3. Didn't feel like this belonged in the Israel thread, so did a search and found one to necro bump. The article very much has a "State of the US in 2020" vibe to it, especially the bolded parts.

     

    Netanyahu Enters Plea of Not Guilty in Corruption Trial
    Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel returned to court with a general election just weeks away. The trial is viewed by many as a test of the nation’s judicial system.

    JERUSALEM — Few world leaders have ever stood trial while in office, let alone while running for re-election in the middle of a pandemic.

    Yet on Monday morning — with a general election just weeks away, and a fraught decision about reopening the education system due soon — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel was forced to shift his attention away from matters of state and attend instead the resumption of his trial on corruption charges.

    The hearing was largely administrative, and Mr. Netanyahu spoke only briefly to plead his innocence.

    “I confirm the response that was filed in my name,” the prime minister said, referring to a written plea that his lawyers entered several weeks ago.

    Mr. Netanyahu spent less than half an hour inside the courtroom before leaving his lawyers to argue with the three judges about procedural matters. But that was the first time that Mr. Netanyahu had spoken in the court itself since the trial started last May, and only the second time that he had attended in person.

    And the simple spectacle of a sitting prime minister in the dock has kindled a debate about the health of Israel’s democracy and judicial system.

    For some, the fact that an Israeli prime minister can be brought to trial in an Israeli court is strong evidence of judicial independence and equality before the law. But others fear that the discourse surrounding the trial — which Mr. Netanyahu has himself portrayed as a plot by unelected bureaucrats to undermine the will of the people — has undermined public trust in the judicial system.

    On Monday, the chief prosecutor in the case, Liat Ben-Ari, arrived in court accompanied by a security detail, after threats to her safety.

    “It’s a clash that we see elsewhere in the world between a certain kind of populism and a rules-based justice system,” said Ofer Zalzberg, an analyst based in Jerusalem for the Herbert C. Kelman Institute, a research group focused on conflict resolution.

    The trial is taking place in a courtroom in East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed after the Arab-Israeli War of 1967, but which Palestinians hope will be the capital of a future Palestinian state.

    Mr. Netanyahu faces multiple charges. In one case, he is accused of granting political favors to two businessmen in exchange for gifts worth several hundred thousand dollars, including cigars and Champagne. In other cases, he is accused of having sought favorable media coverage from major news outlets in exchange for regulatory changes that benefited their owners.

    If convicted, Mr. Netanyahu could face several years in prison, but a verdict is not expected for several months, if not years. The trial has already been delayed several times by coronavirus restrictions — and it may yet be delayed again. The judges will decide this week whether to uphold a request made on Monday by Mr. Netanyahu’s lawyers to postpone the summoning of witnesses until after the March 23 election — Israel’s fourth in two years.

    But either way, many analysts say they believe that the trial may not have a large impact on public opinion.

    The election is widely considered an informal referendum on Mr. Netanyahu. But most voters formed their opinions on the allegations against the prime minister long ago, since the trial and the investigation that led to it have dragged on for years, said Dahlia Scheindlin, an Israeli political analyst and pollster.

    “Could the opening of the trial really change anybody’s mind?” Dr. Scheindlin said. “So far, I don’t really see it.”

    “None of this is new — people have had years to factor this in,” she added.

    In fact, one reason Israel faces yet another election in such a short span of time is because the pools of voters who support and oppose Mr. Netanyahu have remained fairly equal in size in recent years. This has made it impossible for either Mr. Netanyahu or his political opponents to achieve a stable parliamentary majority, leading to election after election to break the deadlock.

    “Most people have already decided what they feel about the trial,” said Nahum Barnea, a leading Israeli columnist. “Many of them believe he is either innocent — or even if he is not innocent, he is such a good prime minister that he should not be on trial. But at the same time, a large part of the public has a fixed idea that Netanyahu is a criminal.”

    To his critics, the simple fact that Mr. Netanyahu opted not to resign from office, despite being distracted by complicated criminal proceedings, was already evidence of a dangerous selfishness.

    Many government failings throughout the pandemic were “all because of the trial,” the Black Flags, an opposition movement that has led protests against Mr. Netanyahu, posted on Twitter on Monday morning. “His personal survival is more important to him than the survival of the state.”

    But to Mr. Netanyahu’s supporters, the trial is proof of a deep conspiracy against him, and little that occurs during the hearings will change their mind.

    “Today marks another stage in the attempted political assassination known as the Netanyahu cases,” Osnat Mark, a lawmaker from Mr. Netanyahu’s party, wrote on Twitter. “With incredible timing, the prosecution seeks to expedite the hearing of prosecution witnesses near the election as a political battering tool.”

  4. 6 minutes ago, Hate said:

    I don’t search that kind of shit because I don’t want to. I don’t want to ever be in any way associated with those fucking morons and POSs. I have no clue who the Proud Boys are or any of the other right wing losers are. If someone here knows the answer and feels like indulging me, great. Otherwise I’ll just go on about my life having no clue who these people are or that they exist until they do something stupid and someone here posts about it.

    My broad understanding is that there are multiple groups/gangs/militias that have somewhat differing agendas but are generally in agreement on their goals.

    The Proud Boys state that they are pro-Western culture/civilization chauvinistic (in both senses of the word: classical and contemporary) organization. They operate more-or-less like a street gang and often engage in street violence (in fact, they relish in it). They claim to not be racists but are often found on the opposing side at BLM protests.

    The Three Percenters, on the other hand, are more like a militia group with a strongly nationalistic agenda. The name comes from their mistaken belief that only three percent of American colonials actively rebelled against the British. As a result, they think that even just a small force, such as themselves, could topple a government through revolution.

    Anyway, that about sums up everything I know about either group. 

     

  5. I'm curious. How is Fox going about reporting news of themselves being sued? Will their audience, who gets 90% of their information from Fox, even know about this lawsuit? I don't see anything about it on the front page of their website.

  6. Went for a breakfast taco run earlier this morning and noticed a green tinge along the bare branches of some trees in the neighborhood. I left my glasses at home and couldn't make them out precisely but am pretty sure those were the first green shoots of budding trees.

  7. 1 hour ago, workswithseed said:

    Lol, the okay sign is not a white power sign, NBC.

    Are you suggesting that a hand sign cannot have more than one meaning or even change over time and depending on the circumstances or context?

    Tell us, what does this hand sign mean to you? ✌️

    • the number two?
    • a gesture of peace?
    • a signal for victory?
    • an insult?
    • any/all of the above?
    1 hour ago, workswithseed said:

    Or he's doing it for the meme.

    And, now, you're suggesting he's doing it as a mean for pretending to be a white nationalist/supremacist for the lulz while also hanging out with adult men singing the Proud Boys anthem. Are you suggesting he's not taking seriously the fact that he killed two people, and it's all really just fun and games? I mean, he's famous now and shit.

    Why not just go for the simpler, more straightforward, explanation and take it at face value? Maybe he's actually using the hand sign to tell us (and his fawners) who he actually is.

  8. Somehow we missed out on this story from mid-January: 

    https://www.nbcnews.com/video/kyle-rittenhouse-seen-flashing-white-power-sign-drinking-alcohol-while-out-on-bail-99456581654

    A more restrictive bond agreement is being sought for Kyle Rittenhouse, the 18-year-old accused of shooting two people to death during protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Prosecutors say Rittenhouse visited a bar where he drank alcohol, flashed a white power symbol while being photographed and was serenaded with the "Proud Boys" theme. WTMJ's Tom Durian reports.
     

  9. 7 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

    Well, there's a serious question whether a President leaving office moots an impeachment/conviction.  

    That's procedural, but about 50-75% of the "rule of law" is based on procedure.

    The entire 4th amendment is basically procedural, as are the 5th, 6th, and 7th.

    It doesn't have anything to do with the merits of the articles of impeachment, true, but it can't be casually dismissed.

    Here's some good reading on the constitutionality of impeachment after office.

    https://www.npr.org/2021/01/29/961330810/there-is-precedent-for-trying-a-former-government-official-established-145-years

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