In today’s political news - Part 6

It always has been referred to Medicare negotiating drug prices. And it has been since the first time they tried to get this passed when “W” was president. Or maybe when Clinton was president.  Anyway it was a while back.

So why would anyone think Medicare had the power to negotiate drug prices for anyone except Medicare?

The number of drugs will increase over time.

And as someone who sitting in wildfire country in the middle of a multi year drought, from my point of view what is in the bill as respect to climate change is not nearly enough but it’s a start.

If people want more then they need to elect a Congress that is willing to address the real issues people face instead of almost half the members of Congress playing silly power games with no interest in actually governing.

I see they pulled the last of the boats out of the Great Salt Lake because the water level has dropped so much.

And then there is this.  

From The New Yorker…

”Inside the War Between Trump and His Generals”

“How Mark Milley and others in the Pentagon handled the national-security threat posed by their own Commander-in-Chief.


In the summer of 2017, after just half a year in the White House, Donald Trump flew to Paris for Bastille Day celebrations thrown by Emmanuel Macron, the new French President. Macron staged a spectacular martial display to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the American entrance into the First World War. Vintage tanks rolled down the Champs-Élysées as fighter jets roared overhead. The event seemed to be calculated to appeal to Trump—his sense of showmanship and grandiosity—and he was visibly delighted. The French general in charge of the parade turned to one of his American counterparts and said, “You are going to be doing this next year.”

Sure enough, Trump returned to Washington determined to have his generals throw him the biggest, grandest military parade ever for the Fourth of July. The generals, to his bewilderment, reacted with disgust. “I’d rather swallow acid,” his Defense Secretary, James Mattis, said. Struggling to dissuade Trump, officials pointed out that the parade would cost millions of dollars and tear up the streets of the capital.

But the gulf between Trump and the generals was not really about money or practicalities, just as their endless policy battles were not only about clashing views on whether to withdraw from Afghanistan or how to combat the nuclear threat posed by North Korea and Iran. The divide was also a matter of values, of how they viewed the United States itself. That was never clearer than when Trump told his new chief of staff, John Kelly—like Mattis, a retired Marine Corps general—about his vision for Independence Day. “Look, I don’t want any wounded guys in the parade,” Trump said. “This doesn’t look good for me.” He explained with distaste that at the Bastille Day parade there had been several formations of injured veterans, including wheelchair-bound soldiers who had lost limbs in battle.

Kelly could not believe what he was hearing. “Those are the heroes,” he told Trump. “In our society, there’s only one group of people who are more heroic than they are—and they are buried over in Arlington.” Kelly did not mention that his own son Robert, a lieutenant killed in action in Afghanistan, was among the dead interred there.

“I don’t want them,” Trump repeated. “It doesn’t look good for me.”

The subject came up again during an Oval Office briefing that included Trump, Kelly, and Paul Selva, an Air Force general and the vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Kelly joked in his deadpan way about the parade. “Well, you know, General Selva is going to be in charge of organizing the Fourth of July parade,” he told the President. Trump did not understand that Kelly was being sarcastic. “So, what do you think of the parade?” Trump asked Selva. Instead of telling Trump what he wanted to hear, Selva was forthright.

“I didn’t grow up in the United States, I actually grew up in Portugal,” Selva said. “Portugal was a dictatorship—and parades were about showing the people who had the guns. And in this country, we don’t do that.” He added, “It’s not who we are.”

Even after this impassioned speech, Trump still did not get it. “So, you don’t like the idea?” he said, incredulous.

“No,” Selva said. “It’s what dictators do.”

I’m always happy when I find someone who says what I think but says it so much better.

I would like to see a Republican make a case against what he is saying about the current crop of Republicans in Congress.  

From the Washington Post..


“Opinion This is what happens when the party in charge cares about governing”

By Paul Waldman
Columnist
August 8, 2022 at 11:29 a.m. EDT


There have been pieces of legislation that were more difficult to birth than the Inflation Reduction Act the Senate passed Sunday — but not many.

This legislation went through so many deaths and reincarnations that it’s hard to keep them all straight — from an initial $3.5 trillion reconciliation plan to a scaled-back $1.75 trillion plan introduced in October to one proposal after another teased and then withdrawn, usually when the mercurial Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) decided he didn’t like whatever was on offer.

But now that it’s done — pending a vote in the House that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) will no doubt deliver — it caps a remarkable burst of legislative achievements, including a gun safety measure, an industrial policy bill to accelerate production of semiconductors and a veterans health bill.

This is what it means to have a party in Washington that cares about governing. Even if the passage of a big, complicated bill doesn’t inspire you to burst into song, and even if the deep structural problems of our system remain, it shows that at the right moment, with the right people in charge, the country can still make progress.

Politics changes all the time, but over the past few decades, a particular cycle has repeated itself. A Democrat gets elected president. Their party labors mightily to pass consequential bills. Not all of them succeed, but many do.
Eventually, a Republican wins the White House, and their party cuts taxes for the wealthy and corporations, then does little else with its control of Congress.

You can’t say elected Democrats didn’t work their hearts out on these bills, especially the Inflation Reduction Act, even if the result is (as always) imperfect. But try to imagine the Republican Party as it’s currently constituted doing what Democrats just did.

Picture Republicans spending a year or so negotiating with one another, producing version after version of a complicated bill, trying to balance competing interests within their party, persisting through repeated setbacks and ultimately producing a victory everyone in their party can live with.

You can’t, because Republicans just don’t have it in them. The only subject they care enough about to craft a complicated bill on is taxes, which is relatively easy because they all agree they should be lower, at least for corporations and the wealthy.

But give Republicans a difficult legislative task — such as following through on their oft-made pledge to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with what Donald Trump memorably called “something terrific” — and they flounder and flail.

There was once a time when Republicans were capable of crafting legislation that could even garner some Democratic support. But that’s a fading memory. After the tea party and the triumph of Trumpism, the number of Republicans interested in using the legislative process to solve complicated problems keeps dwindling.

Say what you will about the superannuated Democratic leaders: At least they know how to pass a bill. Yet the Democratic base is often less satisfied with the quality of its party’s performance than the Republican base is when its party controls Washington. That’s part of the cycle, too. When a Democratic president is elected, expectations run high for a wave of transformative new laws — and the long and painful legislative process inevitably makes people feel at least some measure of disappointment even when a good deal is accomplished.

It’s tempting to tell anyone feeling disillusioned to grow up, that governing is hard and nobody gets everything they want. But I would argue against tempering our hopes for this presidency and those to come.

Taking the governing process seriously means acknowledging the importance of the division of labor, with different people playing different roles. It’s the job of activists to think creatively and press relentlessly for change, which often means saying that legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act doesn’t go far enough. It’s the job of progressive members, such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), to criticize the bill — but give it their votes so it can succeed.

It’s the job of other members to advance the parochial interests of their constituents — and negotiate and compromise. It’s the job of the White House to tell everyone it’s a spectacular accomplishment that should make us all rapturous with joy.

The rest of us should be able to say that this bill is a great achievement for what it does on climate and prescription drug prices and a good deal more, precisely because we know how hard governing is. Mature citizens want to be stirred by grand visions of the future while knowing that the reality will be difficult and involve trade-offs and letdowns.

That’s an inevitable part of the cycle of politics, too: dreaming, then working, then accepting something less than the dream, then deciding to keep working and dream again. So let’s give President Biden and Democrats in Congress the credit they deserve even as we demand they go further and do more. It’s the only way to get anywhere.”