Friday, September 15, 2017

Washington Post Columnist: The Democrats Have Become Socialists


This is the way things are headingWashington Post columnist Dana Milbank gets it correct.

He writes:
When Bernie Sanders launched his bid for the Democratic nomination, he was often asked whether he, a democratic socialist, would actually become a Democrat. Now, more than a year after he ignited a movement with his unsuccessful bid, that question is moot. The Democrats have become
socialists.

This became official, more or less, Wednesday afternoon, when Sanders rolled out his socialized health-care plan, Medicare for All, and he was supported by 16 of his Senate Democratic colleagues who signed on as co-sponsors, including the party’s rising stars and potential presidential candidates in 2020: Elizabeth Warren. Cory Booker. Kamala Harris. Kirsten Gillibrand... 
This is a dramatic shift. In 2013, when Sanders introduced similar legislation, he didn’t have a single co-sponsor. By contrast, you could have been forgiven for thinking Wednesday’s rollout, with Sanders, Warren, Booker, Harris and Gillibrand testing their messages, was the first Democratic cattle call of the 2020 campaign...
This embrace of an unabashedly socialist position by the Democrats delights nobody more than the original socialists, the Democratic Socialists of America. David Duhalde, the group’s deputy director, was one of the first in line for the event, carrying a Medicare-for-All sign.

“Socialism has been most successful in this country when its ideas have been adopted by other parties,” he said, listing the enactment of labor laws, Social Security and Medicare. But “this is a high water mark,” he said...
Sanders lost the nomination battle to Hillary Clinton (who favored a more incremental approach to health care and gives the single-payer debate little mention in her new book about the campaign). But he seems to be winning the war over the direction of the Democratic agenda. Sanders now has 35 percent of the Senate Democratic Caucus, and some of the biggest names in the party, embracing his call. So when he predicts, as he did Wednesday, that “this nation, sooner than people believe, will in fact pass a Medicare-for-All, single-payer system,” it doesn’t sound as crazy as it once did.

....And Trump is not far behind. Liberty and free markets are sinking.

-RW

13 comments:

  1. Let them suffer. if they want Venezuela and Greece, let them have it. They'll get no sympathy or charity from me when the consequences arrive.

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  2. Looking at the (long-run) glass as half full, we've been living under creeping socialism (economic fascism) for years, but the uninformed believe this is capitalism, and so capitalism gets blamed for societal woes. At least if the masses start explicitly recognizing changes as socialism, when these changes worsen the situation there might be some recognition, as there was in eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall, that perhaps free(r) markets are the way to go.

    If we have to get to the disastrous end point to enable the liberty option to shine and be more persuasive, we may as well hope to get there faster.

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    1. "we've been living under creeping socialism (economic fascism) for years, but the uninformed believe this is capitalism, and so capitalism gets blamed for societal woes."

      Government education + info bottleneck = ignorant masses

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    2. So long as the government has the schools liberty will not return in any meaningful way. They took the schools first for a reason.

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    3. JJM: only if government schools retain their prominence in educating the kids. With the rise of online learning alternatives, over time it's possible that sufficient folks might circumvent the schools such that this dominance will start to erode.

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    4. Government is acting against home schooling and is still pushing their takeover of private schools ordinary people can afford. Also sandboxing is a new online tool to push things back to the newsletter days in a way. Even without it takes people making the effort.

      The best hope for government schooling's dominance to end is for it to simply go bankrupt paying teachers and administrators ever higher salaries and pensions.Other people's money eventually runs out.

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  3. Democracy *is* socialism. Even if the majority may choose for the time being to allow some modicum of private ownership for practical or aesthetic reasons, it can always reverse course. Property rights are never secure in any permanent way. Morality and ethics are constantly up for vote. What's "right" is simply the opinion of 51% of the voters.

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  4. And yet when a Pinochet comes to power to purge the communists and actually make the economy more free, the Lolbertarians will still be bitching about muh NAP.

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    1. @Paul Hansen

      I'd be very careful about advocating punishment for thought-crimes if I were you...

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    2. LOL...you think it makes a difference whether there is one voter (as in a dictatorship) or 1 million voters (as in a democracy)?! Either way is statism and the crushing of individual human rights. And this can only lead to impoverishment, both spiritual and non-spiritual.

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    3. Yeah and in this the real idiocracy even NAPSter's pipe dream of awareness will do nothing upon the outcome of a liberty crushed populace. We are a on a permanent march to fascism and worse

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  5. Socialized medicine can't possibly work when only 50% of the people using it are actually paying into it.

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  6. The way the math of this program seems to shaping up is that if it passes everyone who is working will seriously need to examine what their post tax income is vs. what would have making less.

    I figure there will be a serious income cliff somewhere north of the present median house hold income. Probably around 80-100K. That is a person making a 100K might have an after tax income close to that of someone making 50K.

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