Profiles in Shame: Progressive Democrats of America
Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) is a wing of the US Democratic party that is committed to pulling the party as far left as possible. I don't discuss political parties very often on this site, but this is an exception. I consider myself a centrist and I wouldn't want anything to do with any of these goons.
Right now they are pushing for universal health care. By itself, that would not be so surprising. But they don't just want it for all Americans; they want it for everyone in America, including the estimated 12 million illegal aliens. This is not an exaggeration. Lou Dobbs called them out on his show, and interestingly, while they loudly complain, they don't dispute the charge.
Not only would this be rewarding lawbreaking, and is an outright attack on US sovereignty, but any adult knows it is not feasible. You simply cannot have open borders and a welfare state at the same time. But that matters little to folks who want to destroy the US and let the international community all take a slice.
All of them want to impeach everyone in the executive branch, and have written many books and articles to that effect. But they go farther than that. Some of it's members, such as Rep. Raul Grijalva, advocate Mexican reclamation of US lands, and others, such as Rep. John Conyers, have asked for UN monitoring of US elections.
Their other contributors read like a rogues gallery of the radical left: Jodie Evans, Tom Hayden, Rep. Barbara Lee, Medea Benjamin, and many, many other notorious figures.
Their plans don't have a chance in hell of succeeding, but it's frightening to know that people like this have substantial positions of leadership in the government.
4 comments:
Interesting. Personally, I believe that mandatory healthcare is a good thing, like they do have in Germany. Employers have to insure employees, and it is simply not possible that you don't have any sort of access to healthcare. There are of course problems with that system, but overall I fnd it the better option. It is a mystery to me that one of the most advanced nations is somehow unable to find a way to provide healthcare for its citizens. I agree though that providing healthcare for everybody is not the way to go. Immigration is a problem that would increase exponentially with that approach.
On another note, there has been a definite shift to the right within left governments all over the world. Take Tony Blair's New Labour for instance, he is definitly more right than his predecessors. The same is true for the Democratic Party in the US if you compare it to lets say 20 years ago. I find it always amazing that many Americans equal left with socialism or even fascism without really knowing what that actually means - or they wouldn't use it that way. My mom grew up in a socialist country (Yugoslavia) and even the most left oppinions don't come close to what a state like that would be like.
There are of course nut cases and extremists which make me very wary, and I doubt that the US will ever concede parts of conquered country back to Mexico even if you got that during a brief imperialistic phase in your history. But I doubt that those people have a majority inside the democratic party anyway, and they get elected into office like everybody else so they probably convinced enough people of their merit. Gotta love democracy!
PS I didn't follow Obamas tour through Europe one bit
"I didn't follow Obamas tour through Europe one bit"
Then you were the exception... it looks like the whole country turned out in Berlin to see a guy who isn't even the president yet!
“ It is a mystery to me that one of the most advanced nations is somehow unable to find a way to provide healthcare for its citizens”
If employers are forced to insure employees doesn’t this cause “job lock” and thus make it difficult for employee’s to leave or advance to other fields because of temporary loss of medical benefits? Not to mention when do corporations ever pay taxes? They just pass their costs to the consumer. In this case a tax or mandated healthcare it’s all the same the accountants in the firms will just shift the costs to the bottom of the economic food chain. The only reason I would assume its’ advisable to corporations to pay healthcare is if you wish to create job lock.
It should be clear why one of the most advanced nations cannot provide healthcare because of the advanced nature of our healthcare system. The cost on average is much higher the less advanced nations because of its technical nature. As a result if we were to socialize or nationalize the service side of medicine we would see price fixing(cost ceilings), that would lead to those supplying medicine at a marginally higher cost as their competitors out of the industry, as they could no longer cover their costs of operation. This would then cause the supply of healthcare to dwindle. Demand however would not decline but increase and with less Dr’s or nurses we would have the various atrocities you see committed by the largest public provider of healthcare in the history of man the UK’s NHS. In fact in USA we have price fixing, not to mention Medicare and Medicaid which are a substantial % of our federal budget. One of these entities grows on average 20billion a year. Costs for healthcare in America are outrageous and will continue to climb as long as we have this type of risk insulation to consumers. Dr’s are smart they don’t need to submit to the compassionate egalitarian mandates of government officials that dictate the market value of the Dr’s service. Dr’s can just schedule an unnecessary test here or there to increase the cost so the Dr’s can feed their kids pay their employee’s and their high malpractice insurance. Not to mention the litigious nature of our society requires Dr’s to be heavily protected from lawsuit. This is fine if you wish to enable people to sue Dr’s, but we have to realize that this is one of the reasons costs are high.
Healthcare is a commodity like everything else, somebody has to provide it. Even if we only allow the government to centrally tax and be the payer of everybody’s healthcare how long before the government starts setting price ceilings on the price of care, ignoring the costs to provide that care.
“On another note, there has been a definite shift to the right within left governments all over the world. Take Tony Blair's New Labour for instance, he is definitly more right than his predecessors. The same is true for the Democratic Party in the US if you compare it to lets say 20 years ago. I find it always amazing that many Americans equal left with socialism “
Socialism is when the government wishes not to own but control the actions of industry. Isn’t that essentially what the left wants? Price fixing, regulation, etc? Sounds about right to me. You all might like to call it “3rd way” or “state capitalism” but to me socialism is socialism and every intervention the government does on industry will likely result in a market failure or distortion of the price signal as illustrated with the healthcare price fixing example, even if guns and overt violence aren’t used to ensure fairness and equality.
I think a lot of these countries are getting punished for their socialist arrogance, the belief they can somehow plan an economy and that there is no repercussion from wealth redistribution and regulation. Hopefully as markets become more and more complex and companies more and more mobile “3rd way” nations will be discarded by business for greener less punitive fields with less significant price signal distortion.
@fullmentaljackpot:
Germany has a free economy, a free market and is incidentally one of the strongest economic countries at the moment. Rules and regulations imposed by the government do not equal automatic total control of the whole economic sector by the Government as you can see at the example of Germany where there are certain rules in effect that have an impact on businesses like laws against price fixing, cartels etc. They do not in any way hinder a free market economy.
I also would strongly make the distinction between socialism and social democracy. FYI What socialism historically was like is a far cry from what you envision.
That is a rather philosophical stance and I guess it boils down to what ideal you have of what a nation should look like and what its function should be. I believe that the Government of a modern industrialized nation is also responsible for the well being of its citizens and therefore should strive to make laws that protect the rights of the weak and ensure a balance. Thats why you need rules and regulations. You seem to favour a kind of economic and social darwinism instead where everybody fends for themselves and the weak just perish.
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