2020...

Andy Dukes said:
My problem is I can't think of one positive reason for Schultz to run, let alone to vote for him.
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Hmm... I guess to reduce it down to a sentence or two what I like about Schultz and the reason I would have for supporting him is that he's not Trump who seems intent on taking my money and giving it to rich people. And he's not a Sander's, wanting to take my money and give it to poor people.

Or to put it into his words...

Howard Schultz says a far-left Democrat could re-elect Trump
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/howard-schultz-says-a-far-left-democrat-could-re-elect-trump/
 
tenacious said:
Hmm... you used to talk about how you were a socialist as I remember? Or are you saying your not a socialist, you just don't support the crazy ones...
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I just have not voted for one yet. I still consider myself a socialist much like Booter does. I earn my living as a complete capitalist but support the democratic socialist programs like, public roads, public education and public healthcare for all.
 
tenacious said:
Hmm... I guess to reduce it down to a sentence or two what I like about Schultz and the reason I would have for supporting him is that he's not Trump who seems intent on taking my money and giving it to rich people. And he's not a Sander's, wanting to take my money and give it to poor people.

Or to put it into his words...

Howard Schultz says a far-left Democrat could re-elect Trump
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/howard-schultz-says-a-far-left-democrat-could-re-elect-trump/
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I get that but why him? What has he done to gain my vote? Sell drugs in an attractive way?
 
Andy Dukes said:
I just have not voted for one yet. I still consider myself a socialist much like Booter does. I earn my living as a complete capitalist but support the democratic socialist programs like, public roads, public education and public healthcare for all.
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I like ice cream... doesn't mean I'm only going to eat desert from now on.
Or to put it another way, this idea that because I agree that public roads make it easier to get goods to and from market- doesn't mean I have to buy into the argument that socialism should be our default economic plan. I get how that logic might work on 20 year olds, but come on Andy don't tell you're going to fall for that line.
 
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Andy Dukes said:
I get that but why him? What has he done to gain my vote? Sell drugs in an attractive way?
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Sell drugs? Are you talking about coffee? He must really have you upset if you're going to spin selling cold brew like its oxycontin.

Personally I just feel like it's time for a third party candidate; and given his background Schultz has proven to be both an astute business man, and also able to inspire with his positive socially liberal positions. Right off the top that doesn't strike me as any worse then what Bernie or Warren is offering?
 
tenacious said:
I like ice cream... doesn't mean I'm only going to eat desert from now on.
Or to put it another way, this idea that because I agree that public roads make it easier to get goods too and from market- doesn't mean I have to buy into the argument that socialism should be our default economic plan. I get how that logic might work on 20 year olds, but come on Andy don't tell you're going to fall for that line.
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The cost for single payer healthcare is shown to be lower in costs per citizen. That is what we see all over the modern world except here. I don't need the US government to own the oil companies but I see no issue with cities owning public utilities and trading costs across the businesses and households in their city. We decided to have Social Security and Medicare for a reason. It works and is sustainable.
 
tenacious said:
Sell drugs? Are you talking about coffee? He must really have you upset if you're going to spin selling cold brew like its oxycontin.

Personally I just feel like it's time for a third party candidate; and given his background Schultz has proven to be both an astute business man, and also able to inspire with his positive socially liberal positions. Right off the top that doesn't strike me as any worse then what Bernie or Warren is offering?
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More people take coffee than oxy, me included. He did not piss me off. He just has done nothing to show me he should be President. At least Bloomberg went and ran the largest city. Let Howard run for Mayor of Seattle and then come looking for the big league job. I have no belief that public company CEO's have a leg up on politicians when it comes to running public institutions.
 
Andy Dukes said:
The cost for single payer healthcare is shown to be lower in costs per citizen. That is what we see all over the modern world except here. I don't need the US government to own the oil companies but I see no issue with cities owning public utilities and trading costs across the businesses and households in their city. We decided to have Social Security and Medicare for a reason. It works and is sustainable.
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Isn't it pretty to think it's that easy. Although once you start actually talking numbers... the tricky part is paying for the transition. Actually David Brooks had a nice write up on this very topic just the other day I encourage you to read.

‘Medicare for All’: The Impossible Dream
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/opinion/medicare-for-all.html?module=inline

The Brits and Canadians I know certainly love their single-payer health care systems. If one of their politicians suggested they should switch to the American health care model, they’d throw him out the window.

So single-payer health care, or in our case “Medicare for all,” is worth taking seriously. I’ve just never understood how we get from here to there, how we transition from our current system to the one Bernie Sanders has proposed and Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and others have endorsed.

Despite differences between individual proposals, the broad outlines of Medicare for all are easy to grasp. We’d take the money we’re spending on private health insurance and private health care, and we’d shift it over to the federal government through higher taxes in some form.

Then, since health care would be a public monopoly, the government could set prices and force health care providers to accept current Medicare payment rates. Medicare reimburses hospitals at 87 percent of costs while private insurance reimburses at 145 percent of costs. Charles Blahous, a former Social Security and Medicare public trustee, estimates that under the Sanders plan, the government could pay about 40 percent less than what private insurers now pay for treatments.

If this version of Medicare for all worked as planned, everybody would be insured, health care usage would rise sharply because it would be free, without even a co-payment, and America would spend less over all on health care.

It sounds good. But the trick is in the transition.

First, patients would have to transition. Right now, roughly 181 million Americans receive health insurance through employers. About 70 percent of these people say they are happy with their coverage. Proponents of Medicare for all are saying: We’re going to take away the insurance you have and are happy with, and we’re going to replace it with a new system you haven’t experienced yet because, trust us, we’re the federal government!

The insurance companies would have to transition. Lots of people work for and serve this industry. All-inclusive public health care would destroy this industry beyond recognition, and those people would have to find other work.

Hospitals would have to transition. In many small cities the local health care system is the biggest employer. As Reihan Salam points out in The Atlantic, the United States has far more fully stocked hospitals relative to its population and much lower bed occupancy than comparable European nations have.

If you live in a place where the health system is a big employer, think what happens when that sector takes a sudden, huge pay cut. The ripple effects would be immediate — like a small deindustrialization.

Doctors would have to transition. Salary losses would differ by specialty, but imagine you came out of med school saddled with debt and learn that your payments are going to be down by, say 30 percent. Similar shocks would ripple to other health care workers.

The American people would have to transition. Americans are more decentralized, diverse and individualistic than people in the nations with single-payer systems. They are more suspicious of centralized government and tend to dislike higher taxes.

The Sanders plan would increase federal spending by about $32.6 trillion over its first 10 years, according to a Mercatus Center study that Blahous led. Compare that with the Congressional Budget Office’s projection for the entire 2019 fiscal year budget, $4.4 trillion. That kind of sticker shock is why a plan for single-payer in Vermont collapsed in 2014 and why Colorado voters overwhelmingly rejected one in 2016. It’s why legislators in California killed one. In this plan, the taxes are upfront, the purported savings are down the line.

Once they learn that Medicare for all would eliminate private insurance and raise taxes, only 37 percent of Americans support it, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey. In 2010, Republicans scored an enormous electoral victory because voters feared that the government was taking over their health care, even though Obamacare really didn’t. Now, under Medicare for all, it really would. This seems like an excellent way to re-elect Donald Trump.

The government would also have to transition. Medicare for all works only if politicians ruthlessly enforce those spending cuts. But in our system of government, members of Congress are terrible at fiscal discipline. They are quick to cater to special interest groups, terrible at saying no. To make single-payer really work, we’d probably have to scrap the U.S. Congress and move to a more centralized parliamentary system.

Finally, patient expectations would have to transition. Today, getting a doctor’s appointment is annoying but not onerous. In Canada, the median wait time between seeing a general practitioner and a specialist is 8.7 weeks; between a G.P. referral and an orthopedic surgeon, it’s nine months. That would take some adjusting.

If America were a blank slate, Medicare for all would be a plausible policy, but we are not a blank slate. At this point, the easiest way to get to a single-payer system would probably be to go back to 1776 and undo that whole American Revolution thing.
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Andy Dukes said:
More people take coffee than oxy, me included. He did not piss me off. He just has done nothing to show me he should be President. At least Bloomberg went and ran the largest city. Let Howard run for Mayor of Seattle and then come looking for the big league job. I have no belief that public company CEO's have a leg up on politicians when it comes to running public institutions.
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I'd agree with you if the politicians, with all the experience in the world- weren't proving so inept.
 
tenacious said:
Isn't it pretty to think it's that easy. Although once you start actually talking numbers... the tricky part is paying for the transition. Actually David Brooks had a nice write up on this very topic just the other day I encourage you to read.
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We would struggle to transition to a complete National system where the DR's Administrators and all work for the government. We could however transition to our current Medicare system where you have the straight lower serviced 100% government paid system along with the same Medicare supplemental system where private insurance offers additional coverage and could administer the standard items as part of their benefits. All using the existing DR's and hospitals that are not part of the US employee base. Benefits for the supplemental insurance could still be offered as part of employment but their benefits would be considered taxable income. Pretty easy system replacing all the other systems including the VA, private insurance and [public employee systems. The massive long term liability to the US Postal Service and public unions would be relieved incredibly. The VA could concentrate on treating specific war time medical issues instead of all medical practices. Would not be as cheap as in Canada or other fully National systems but much cheaper than the hodgepodge system in place now.
 
Andy Dukes said:
We would struggle to transition to a complete National system where the DR's Administrators and all work for the government. We could however transition to our current Medicare system where you have the straight lower serviced 100% government paid system along with the same Medicare supplemental system where private insurance offers additional coverage and could administer the standard items as part of their benefits. All using the existing DR's and hospitals that are not part of the US employee base. Benefits for the supplemental insurance could still be offered as part of employment but their benefits would be considered taxable income. Pretty easy system replacing all the other systems including the VA, private insurance and [public employee systems. The massive long term liability to the US Postal Service and public unions would be relieved incredibly. The VA could concentrate on treating specific war time medical issues instead of all medical practices. Would not be as cheap as in Canada or other fully National systems but much cheaper than the hodgepodge system in place now.
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We would struggle is the understatement of the year. Right now we spend less then a trillion a year on defense. To pull off single payer we're talking $33 Trillion over the first ten years. Then you throw in free college, a Green New Deal chalked full of items like regulating cow flatulence...

Count me out.
 
tenacious said:
We would struggle is the understatement of the year. Right now we spend less then a trillion a year on defense. To pull off single payer we're talking $33 Trillion over the first ten years. Then you throw in free college, a Green New Deal chalked full of items like regulating cow flatulence...

Count me out.
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Looks like the current crop of Dems are scaring you more than they are scaring me.
 

Howard Schultz laments 'character assassination' as he mulls 2020 White House run
By John Bowden - 03/12/19 11:44 AM EDT 313

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© Getty Images
Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz reportedly said Monday he "never thought" he would get so much criticism for his potential 2020 White House bid.

During a book event in Alabama, Schultz expressed surprise at the "character assassination" he says he's faced from Democrats since expressing interest in a third-party run, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

“I’ve never thought I’d be criticized as much. I didn’t think this would be a character assassination [from Democrats]," Schultz said. "I think the concerns the American people have are greater than the threat to the two-party system.”

Schultz went on to tell CNN's Van Jones, as he has said before, that he does not intend to "jeopardize" the chances of removing President Trump
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Donald John TrumpTrump: Socialism 'easy to campaign on but tough to govern on'Stone's defense denies using court to generate publicity for his book releaseOcasio-Cortez: Trump sets tone of 'misogyny, racism, conspiracy theory-ism'MORE from the Oval Office.

“I don’t think that answer can be answered in March of 2019. We’re 18 months away and a lot could happen,” he reportedly added. “I won’t do anything to jeopardize the critical importance of removing this president from the Oval Office.”

Schultz's comments come as he has faced weeks of criticism from prominent 2020 Democrats, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren
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Elizabeth Ann WarrenTrump: Socialism 'easy to campaign on but tough to govern on'Facebook restores Warren ads removed for criticizing the platformFeehery: Dems' embrace of socialism makes a Trump reelection look inevitableMORE (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders
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Bernard (Bernie) SandersTrump: Socialism 'easy to campaign on but tough to govern on'Trump tries to win votes in Senate fightHillicon Valley: US threatens to hold intel from Germany over Huawei | GOP senator targets FTC over privacy | Bipartisan bill would beef up 'internet of things' security | Privacy groups seize on suspended NSA program | Tesla makes U-turnMORE (I-Vt.), for hinting at a third-party bid. They have accused him of using his substantial wealth to "buy" political influence and raise clout around his announcement and fear he could split the liberal vote.

"What's 'ridiculous' is billionaires who think they can buy the presidency to keep the system rigged for themselves while opportunity slips away for everyone else," Warren tweeted, responding to Schultz's characterization of her tax plan as "ridiculous."

Sanders attacked Schultz during a CBS interview, telling host John Dickerson that Schultz's status as a billionaire was the only reason his speculation about a bid for the White House was getting attention.

"Because we have a corrupt system, anybody who is a billionaire and can throw a lot of TV ads around on television suddenly becomes very, very credible," the senator said in February.

"So Mr. Schultz, what is he blackmailing the Democratic Party? If you don't nominate Bernie Sanders, he's not going to run?" Sanders added. "Well, I don't think we should succumb to that kind of blackmail."
 
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