Stidmatt

In response to https://captainstack.medium.com/washington-legislature-kills-universal-healthcare-bill-2ae7b804da34

“SJM.8006 is not a long bill. It is not complicated. It costs no money. It has no risk of legal challenge.”

In other words, it was not a universal health care bill. So whether it passed or failed, everything would stay the same. They need to try again with a bill that will do something and not waste our time with these trivial items. Resolutions are cheap and unimportant, bills are challenging and meaningful.

I volunteered as a lobbyist for many environmental issues in Washington state for the better part of a decade. My parents and all 4 of my grandparents live there. I am deeply invested in the outcome of these proposals.

If you want to pass a bill in the legislature, it must have substance. According to OP‘s article, this bill did not set up a universal health care system. Creating universal insurance plans is hard work; it requires a lot of consideration about how such a system will be designed, and there are many ways to do it.

The United States also needs to bring down the cost of health care, and reduce the number of uninsured people to zero as soon as possible. This bill would have done neither. It is good that the legislature will focus on bills that will impact people’s lives instead of trivial nonsense like this. A real single-payer healthcare bill (which seems to be the only thing we talk about in the United States) that is thought out and will probably be at least 1000 pages long will be proposed or, at minimum, address the issues Washington State faces realistically. Washington is the most advanced state in the nation on this issue because it has a public option for health insurance, similar to Germany and Austria’s universal healthcare systems. The easy, realistic way for Washington state to get to Universal health insurance is to close the Medicaid gap by using their existing public option. At that point, Washington state will have universal healthcare because everyone will be insured. It might not be the British model, but the British model is not the only system of universal healthcare.

Focus on SB.5335, as OP mentions, or build a bill that gives free access to the already existing public option to people who don’t have health insurance through their employers or Medicare or Medicaid. That will achieve universal health care.

Relationships

There are several major players in this convoluted mess, and each of them has a complex relationship with the other:

• • ISIS
  • Hamas
  • Palestinian Authority
  • Russia
  • Israel
  • Ukraine
  • United States
  • the rest of NATO

 

ISIS doesn’t have any state allies, and they have complex relations with Hamas. While both Hamas and ISIS are Sunni, ISIS is Salafi, and Hamas is nationalist. Hamas is not a major threat globally, ISIS and al Qaeda are.

But where ISIS and Hamas agree is hostility towards the Israeli state. This is where ISIS’ latest attack on Russia is very revealing. Why is ISIS attacking Russia and not a NATO member or candidate?

First of all, we must establish how ISIS does not attack countries randomly. They are methodical. If they wanted to attack countries randomly, they would reliably attack least developed countries outside the Arab world with marginally functional governments, but they don’t.

The ISIS attack on Russia is simply because Russia continues to prop up the Syrian regime. It has little to nothing to do with Ukraine or with the war Israel is waging with Hamas.

That’s all there is to this. Sometimes it really is just that simple.

References:
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/11/21/hamas-isis-are-not-the-same-00128107

https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/hamas-restore-syria-ties-after-10-years-dispute-sources-say-2022-06-21/

It’s exhausting.

On a per-vehicle basis, buses are cheaper to run than trains. On a passenger km basis, if both vehicles are full, the train is cheaper to run than the bus, keeping capacity constant.

Buses are great for low-demand routes. Great transit systems use buses extensively for local routes, solving that last mile problem at a reasonable cost, cheaper than taxis can.

Trains are great for high-demand routes. If you have a dense urban core with lots of demand for mobility, trolleys often provide a lot of service for relatively fast speeds which is faster than walking. Trains are great when you have long distances with few stops where lots of people are going to be traveling between two places. There are always going to be fixed routes with predictable high demand in larger cities. Even smaller cities of around 100,000 people can often have routes with higher demand where a modern trolley can be the most optimal option. Likewise, using a trolley for a long distance high demand route is generally foolish, and you would be better off with a faster, higher capacity train like the NYC Subway or BART.

It’s all about what is most optimal for that route in order to build a network where trains and buses work together seemlessly.

The most useful transit systems typically use a combination of trains, trolleys, and buses. Trains serve the high demand predictable fixed routes, buses provide local connectivity, and trolleys in dense urban cores provide faster high capacity transportation for those short high demand routes.

That is how you build a modern transit system which people love to use.

It is obvious to anyone with a passive interest in foreign relations at this point that the Gaza war is a massive humanitarian crisis given how Israel is killing civilians and denying food to enter the region.

That by itself should be enough for every democracy to stop providing aid to that rogue nation.

But it clearly is not enough to convince the American government to stop sending weapons to that rogue nation.

The other big reason is because the treatment of Palestinians has been used by terrorists for decades as a rallying cry to recruit members to their cause. By continuing to support Israel’s ruthless assault on Palestinian civilians, not only does it reduce the possibility of a real peace agreement in the area, but it will be used by terrorist groups across the Muslim world.

The countries which support Israel with the most military aid will be the one who are attacked first.

Supplying Israel with endless weapons is not just fueling a humanitarian disaster but it is bad for American domestic security and against the interests of the American people.

I-93 will now start in Woburn.

The I-93 tunnel will be turned into a rail tunnel connecting the North and South stations.

The rest of I-93 south of Woburn will be reclaimed urban space.

Problem solved.

Ukraine is right to attack Russian oil refineries.

1. Very few civilian deaths.
2. Handicaps the ability of Russia to provide oil to their military. This saves many civilian lives.
3. Doesn’t harm Ukraine, the EU, or the US at all.
4. Russia is not allowed to export oil to Europe anyways because that money flows right to Putin’s war chest. It’s already off the global oil market, hurting oil refineries has a minimal impact on the price of oil.

Reducing Russia’s oil refining capacity is a net gain in terms of human life, significantly helps Ukraine win, and is a win for the environment.

Biden also refuses to send what aid to Ukraine he can, while he sends (illegal) military aid to Israel under the table. Israel is already a de facto ally with Russia, and they refuse to impose sanctions on Russia. Tel Aviv is next to London, Riyadh, Dubai, and Doha as one of the money laundering capitals of the world. Just abandon them already.

Biden, once again, gets everything wrong about foreign policy, as has been his norm since 1973.

https://www.ft.com/content/98f15b60-bc4d-4d3c-9e57-cbdde122ac0c

Biden is asking Ukraine to stop attacking Russian military targets inside Russia.

This guy totally sucks, he should not have run for reelection. He is currently swinging 0 for 3 in terms of foreign policy crises. He is a mere accelerationist, exactly the thing his ilk thinks all progressives are, where really its only the tankies.

His foreign policy advice is clearly horrible. After the Taliban took over Afghanistan Blinken and Austen should have been fired given that they fed the president clearly wrong information and their administrations had such poor quality control of information which led to the Presidents ears. If I EVER failed in my job as badly as Blinken and Austen did regarding Afghanistan I would be fired so badly I would have trouble finding another job. In their case they have cost the lives of tens of thousands of people.

But Biden has gotten what he wanted. His “friend” (his words) Netanyahu has a free pass to fulfill his goal of eliminating the Palestinians. The New Democratic goal of the elimination of Ukraine is underway. They never cared about Afghanistan in the first place, despite how their member Jimmy Carter is the one who put the Mujahideen (Taliban) there in the first place.

We need real democrats back.

God I hate the New Democrats.

My grandmother is a retired 1st grade teacher, and my grandfather is a veteran. She was able to save up money with those salaries to save enough money in my 541 plan that if it was not for the slashing of education funding in 2008 that the money she saved with the interest it had accumulated would have been enough to pay for an entire bachelor’s degree in-state. After getting 60 credits of my associates paid for by Running Start (a program in Washington State where the state will pay all of your tuition for you to go to community college in high school), and finishing up my associates degree there, there still was not enough money to pay for everything in the 541 plan after the social contract had been so entirely broken by the state and federal government in 2008. Fortunately my grandparents were able to pull some money out of their IRA plans without putting themselves in jeopardy, and I still ended up with a small amount of student loans. If my grandparents had maximum benefit pensions, I likely would have had tens of thousands of dollars more in student loan debt. Add onto this the rapidly increased cost of housing, and basically unless if your parents are millionaires or you are so poor that you qualify for every program, it is not possible to pay for college nowadays.

Also, quick note on John Oliver’s piece which I am responding to… that lazy river at Louisiana State University is not paid for by tuition, it is paid for by fees, which are added on. Tuition pays for teacher’s salaries and essential services which run the school, but mostly teacher’s salaries. That’s an important note, adding amenities to large campuses is not the driver of increased tuition. It is 100% because state governments have stopped paying the bulk of teacher’s salaries.

States have reduced funding because student loans are available, as every state has regressive tax codes. City budgets mostly pay for police, and that is our priority as a country.

Student loans should not exist. We should just pay for people to go to college, it is worth it.

The military-industrial complex relishes a potential war with China. It could be long and drawn out, at least from a cursory overview, and their profits would soar.

They don’t want to eliminate the Russian plutocracy because if Russia stops invading their neighbors, they will lose money in the near term. Russia is a long-term investment for these psychopaths by keeping the status quo.

Russia is doing all the things the military-industrial complex is telling us China is doing.

If Russia’s government democratizes, Syria will stabilize, hurting military-industrial complex profits. If Iran loses its primary support, Russia, and its government collapses, the fear-mongering in Israel will be significantly reduced, making peace talks more likely there. All of this reduces military-industrial complex profits.

If Israel and Palestine solved their problem with either a two-state solution or Israeli citizenship for Palestinians, and tensions in the Middle East plummeted, American arms shipments to Israel would collapse, and military-industrial profits would collapse.

Suppose Afghanistan is democratized fully, and the terrorists are removed. In that case, restrictions on our freedom from the PATRIOT ACT will be reduced, and the reduced threat of terrorism will hurt the profits of the military-industrial complex. If we had finished the job in Afghanistan with a slow, steady, drawn-out education of the country and building a robust democratic government, the probability of a resumed War in Afghanistan would have gone down to normal levels, hurting long-term military-industrial complex profits! We had to leave Afghanistan, so Boeing’s stock price will go up when we must take the terrorists out again! Damn the children! There’s money to be made!

Rapid democratization has occurred worldwide. Today, only eight countries have a Democracy Index under 4, a population of over 10 million, and a GDP per capita of over 5000 USD: Azerbaijan, China, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. If these countries improve, the probability of war decreases, and the stock prices of military-industrial complex members will collapse.

Russia and China stand out as the only autocracies with over a hundred million people.

Countries in Africa are so poor they don’t matter on the world stage. They have no power nor the ability to threaten the United States.

The only likely invasion China would do is an invasion of Taiwan. I suppose this would be a boon for the military-industrial complex for obvious reasons.

In the aftermath of America’s unwillingness to supply Ukraine with enough arms for a quick and total victory, China sees its opportunity to potentially take Taiwan.

The best thing to prevent an invasion of Taiwan is to ensure Ukraine has a complete and total victory. Decimate the Russian army.

The People’s Republic of China’s list of military alliances is thin. The total victory of Ukraine would substantially weaken Russia, so Russia would be unable to provide China with any meaningful assistance. China will then need to be self-sufficient. It could get North Korea involved in the war, which would guarantee South Korean involvement, likely ending with the Republic of Korea retaking the entire peninsula. North Korea would be unable to assist in an invasion of Taiwan, facing that existential threat. Japan might even get involved to assist South Korea since North Korea enjoys threatening Japan.

With Russia substantially weakened, the next large player is Saudi Arabia, but given their economic dependence on the United States and Europe, their assisting China would be insignificant and a form of self-harm. Iraq, Cuba, and Azerbaijan are too poor to make much of an impact. Kazakhstan’s population is a literal rounding error, with fewer than 20,000,000 citizens. China would fight alone.

If China wanted to err, they would invade the United States directly, which would guarantee NATO involvement. This would guarantee that they would be fighting a nearly equivalent number of people, and the combined naval and air force strength of all of NATO would prevent China from reaching the main island of Taiwan, and China would face significant naval losses in the process. Over half of all military spending in the world is from NATO. It is a war China would lose.

In the worst possible scenario for China, India would get involved. An invasion of Taiwan with a lone Chinese army distracted by Taiwan could convince India that now is the time to solidify their land claims against China and to free Tibet.

If China invades Taiwan, they will fight alone, and Taiwan will not. The guaranteed loss of trade with the EU, Japan, and the United States will immediately collapse China’s economy, similar to what we see in Russia. If Taiwan is defended by her allies, this is a war China might not just lose but lose badly by losing territory in the East and possibly seeing the Republic of China return to the mainland.

So here we are in the best-case scenario for the military-industrial complex. The Ukraine war has been artificially turned into a long war. There is a brewing terrorist threat in Afghanistan. The US and Israeli governments are acting against any peace agreement with Palestine. Increased tensions with China keep arms sales high, even though the possibility of victory against Taiwan is slim, and the possibility of the worst possible defeat for China is a real possibility. Removing the People’s Republic of China and Putin from the map would be the most significant test of Democratic Peace Theory and, in the long run, bad for military sales.

The military-industrial complex wants to keep the status quo to maximize potential conflict. New wars involving the United States, which could be drawn into long wars, are unlikely, so it is best to keep the status quo while keeping Afghanistan in reserves for a future conflict.

Additional reading:

https://www.economist.com/briefing/2023/03/09/america-and-china-are-preparing-for-a-war-over-taiwan