Jeb Bush beer koozie. Now available at millennialsforjeb.com for eight lousy bucks!
Hello! My name is Paul Constant and I am currently the lowest possible form of life in the 21st century: a “content creator” without a “platform.” My old/new coworker Goldy was kind enough to loan me the keys to this blog (Horse Sass? Fun name! Is this blog about bronies?) until Nicktopia launches its own internet clubhouse. Thank you in advance for putting up with me.
So. Jeb Bush. A compassionate conservative. Or rather, I mean, a man who’s passionate about transforming America into a kinder, gentler nation. No, wait. What’s his schtick? I’m a little rusty at this…oh, yeah! He’s all about the Right to Rise. And what does that mean, again? It means Jeb Bush really wants us to know that he cares about income inequality. Because he’s supposedly the smart Bush, you see, and he knows that income inequality will be a defining factor in the 2016 presidential elections. Of course, all of the ideas Bush has floated as the solution to income inequality so far have been the same old Republican tropes wrapped up in a shiny new package. Could anyone seriously believe that cutting corporate regulations will somehow provide poor people with higher wages? Does even Jeb Bush believe this bullshit? It’s doubtful.
But this is pretty standard Republican boilerplate. Since Ronald Reagan first bestowed trickle down economics upon an unwitting nation, Republicans have been contorting the same three ideas—fuck you, pay me, and fuck those other guys, too—into an endless variation of gimmicks that always result in “less government, more business.” The vexing thing about trickle down economics as an idea is that it’s proven to be very flexible. Consider the fact that “job creators” became a major issue in the 2012 election. That’s just trickle down economics, repackaged into a Romney-friendly phrase. “You didn’t build that” as a Republican National Convention theme? That’s trickle down. So Bush’s goal this time around is to somehow repackage trickle down into a theory that supposedly fixes income inequality. It’s going to be tough going.
So yesterday, Politico‘s Jennifer Haberkorn published a piece recounting Jeb Bush’s thoughts on the Affordable Care Act. Unsurprisingly, Bush calls Obamacare a “monstrosity.” This is not a surprise; Republicans have been beating their thesauri into coughing up synonyms for “Nazism” ever since the Affordable Care Act was first proposed. But the next thing Jeb Bush says–remember, he’s supposedly the smart one in his family–is un-fucking-believable. Get a load of this:
“The effort by the state, by the government, ought to be to try to create catastrophic coverage, where there is relief for families in our country, where if you have a hardship that goes way beyond your means of paying for it, the government is there or an entity is there to help you deal with that,” Bush said in Iowa last weekend. “The rest of it ought to be shifted back where individuals are empowered to make more decisions themselves.”
Whu-huh? Excuse me? There’s so much to unpack in this statement that I’m not even sure where to begin. First of all, I guess, let’s be clear that catastrophic coverage for the poor is exactly the health care system we had before Obamacare passed. Health care for poor people meant that they only went to the emergency room when they absolutely had to, when their health became a matter of life and death, and then they had to skip out on the bills because they couldn’t afford them. This made everyone’s bills higher. So to formalize catastrophic care into the standard health care for America’s poorest citizens would mean we’d be denying a huge percentage of the population access to preventative care, to basic check-ups, to screenings and vaccinations and all the medical care that every single American should be allowed to enjoy.
Secondly, it sounds to me that in the above quote, Bush is suggesting that we ought to adopt some sort of single-payer catastrophic health care plan, which is in some ways an even more liberal concept than Obamacare. If we establish a safety net of catastrophic coverage for every American citizen—albeit a safety net that hangs about two feet above an unforgiving concrete floor—does that mean we’ll have catastrophic death panels to determine when to cut coverage off? Will there be a catastrophic tax to pay for the catastrophic coverage? What’s to stop some future Democratic president from upgrading catastrophic single-payer coverage into Canadian-style single-payer coverage? Did Bush think this idea through at all?
The questions keep hurtling into my head faster than I can process them. Does Bush think he’ll actually be able to sell this idea—and it’s frankly charitable to even call it an “idea”—to the American voting public? Can trickle down survive this adaptation into the medical arena? Is America ready for a health care system as horrifically imbalanced in favor of the wealthy as our economic system is? Does Bush really expect poor people to swallow this? Is his message of hope for the poor people of America really going to be “you’re only allowed to visit a doctor on the single worst day of your life?”
I hope whomever (ahem) is the Democratic nominee, they state emphatically that the ACA is working even better than expected and they want to expand it. I’m hoping. Fingers crossed.
Woooo! That is all.
Well, no.
This too.
I guess the jebster is to stupid to understand preventive health care, 15$ per month in blood pressure medicine can save hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of health care, not to mention lost productivity.
On a side note its nice to read Paul’s work again
“Could anyone seriously believe that cutting corporate regulations will somehow provide poor people with higher wages?”
Republicans believe it. Just kidding.
Republicans have three solutions which they apply to any problem – deregulation, tax cuts for the rich and senseless war. In this case, they chose deregulation as the solution for income inequality.
To give you an example, over at wingnut blog (u)SP, it was recently proposed by wingnut blogger Nicholas Kerr that the solution for Seattle’s homeless housing problem is, and you may have guessed it already, deregulation. Deregulation in this case means the elimination of Seattle’s building and fire codes, as well as its zoning laws. In other words, the solution for homelessness is to allow developers to build unsafe buildings to the lot line, no setbacks, no sprinklers, no firewalls, no fire rated egress and exit corridors, no fire alarm systems, no fire-rated construction materials, no requirement for structural engineering, no emergency backup power for exit and egress lighting and the list of dangers goes on and on.
It is a return to America’s glory days of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist fire in NYC, back when building occupants found themselves trapped or even locked by their employers in burning buildings, then choosing to leap to their deaths rather than be consumed by the fire, leaving the sidewalks littered with the dead.
Here, you can see for yourself the Republican vision of what Seattle would be like without building and fire codes. See for yourself how the bodies of dead women littered the sidewalks of NYC in 1911.
http://www.csun.edu/~ghy7463/mw2.html
“Does even Jeb Bush believe this bullshit?”
Of course not. It’s all about money and their unquenchable thirst for ever more of it, even if it means people dying.
Tax cuts for the rich, deregulation so they can get even richer, senseless war so they can grab even more loot. It’s all they have and it’s all about the fucking money.
God help us. This country is fucked!
@5 If, as you say “This country is fucked”, it will only be because the people are too fucking lazy to vote. Because we know that when the people vote, good things happen. And when they don’t…well, look at congress.
Actually, the name of this blog is Horses Ass, not Horse Sass. Goldy named it in honor of Tim Eyman, Washington’s foremost horse’s ass.
@7, Horse Sass is an Anna Minard joke.
Welcome, Paul. Glad to see you landed on your feet after being the latest victim of the feckless pathogen known as “Tim Keck”.
Fun read on your first outing, and I look forward to more.
Welcome on board Paul!
re 8 — You mean Annami Nard?
It is great to be reading a Paul Constant column again! Thanks to HA for hosting this excellent writer!
Good article.
Welcome home, Mr. Paul. Horse Sass it is!
7
Yeah, rodent, and you’re the resident egotistical asshole of Washington State.
Hey, Paul!
How does Daddy Warbuck’s cock taste? I guess rich people being evil and all was convenient until it was determined your less-than-stellar blowjob skills were no longer needed to keep Keck’s little nub polished to a high sheen over at the Stranger.
Great to see your column, Paul! As far as a lower form of life, I’d look near the corner of Denny and Fairview.
Hello Paul – Great to see you back on the internets! Anyhoo, a general observation about trickle down economics. Recalling this quote by John Kenneth Galbraith always helps me to understand republican economic ‘theory’:
“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”
For me that quote pretty much explains all the yadda yadda yadda and moral contortions that republicans, plutocrats, right-wing pundits and other unsavory types do to rationalize supporting fundamentally unfair and destructive (social, environmental, etc. take your pick) economic policies.
I could go on, but I’ll leave it at that.
Wait … when did Paul Constant get the boot at The Stranger? Was it announced, or did those gutless bastards do it on the quiet?
Paul was the best thing about the SLOG, for years, even when Goldy was there. There really is an ongoing campaign to destroy everything that made The Stranger worthwhile.
A couple of years ago, The Stranger‘s long-running sarcastic motto “Seattle’s only newspaper that matters” was unexpectedly looking accurate, even prophetic. Since that time the paper has systematically gotten rid of everyone who made that happen. It’s vandalism, pure and simple.
YAY PAUL.
@19 – Yes.
Galbratih was a Keynesian buffoon.
Love your work, Paul. You and Goldy were the reason I used to read Slog on a regular basis (and Anna Minard).
Also: best movie reviews EVER. Keep up the great writing.
Thank god Constant has a place to write. The Stranger is really making a business of firing good writers for bad reasons.
Hey wait doesn’t Nick Hanauer support poverty wages? Paying only an averag of $11/hr at his pillow manufacturing company, meaning many make less than $11/hr. I guess people who support “poverty wages”, enjoying obscene profits while paying their workers sh*t are only evil until Goldy & Paul need a job, then it’s Saint Nick & everyday is Xmas.
No. But the President of his family’s pillow manufacturing business, Joe Crawford, is just “guided by the market”.
If a floor otherwise known as a federal minimum wage increase was placed under the pillow worker’s wages, then the workers would be that much closer out of poverty, able to lift all boats with their disposable income, etc. And the pillow manufacturer stays cost competitive, i.e. all other pillow manufacturers have to abide by the law.
That’s Hanauer’s “capitalist” position on the issue. He hasn’t ever pretended to be anything other than a self-interested capitalist. To insist he just voluntarily pays his workers more than the market rate of labor is just as silly as that old tired argument of rich people voluntarily writing a check to U.S. Dept of the Public Debt if they’re perplexed at not being taxed more.
yay 19
Paul, good to have you back – how often? daily again, please?