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If you think the previous administration was "better", you probably haven't read Thomas Frank's book, "Listen, Liberal!". Thomas Frank is a lifelong Democrat an

If you think the previous administration was "better", you probably haven't read Thomas Frank's book, "Listen, Liberal!". Thomas Frank is a lifelong Democrat and an actual liberal. It illustrates how US politics were hijacked, and the horrible policies of the administrations since Bill Clintons inauguration. If you are someone who thinks Obama or Clinton were "good" presidents, the book will dispell you of that notion. I'm not saying the things you enumerated are bad things. Personally, I am fiercly pro-NN, and I think Pai should actually be imprisoned (though there's probably no current law that would allow it, obviously IANAL), and the CFPB is something the US has lacked for ages (though I'm not sure if it has enough powers to enforce anything much). But I am saying that the previous administration was actually not better, all things considered. And if you think so, the book will convince you otherwise.

victor106 9y ago
They might not be "good" in all the things that they did. Running a federal govt like the US is no joke and I am sure that everything that they did they could have done better. But you cannot compare to the level of dishonesty and incompetency that this administration has. Lets not make the perfect the enemy of the good.
- folknor 9y ago
  Yes, I can, but that's only because I have read that book. Which cites its sources for everything. If you can't compare it, that's because you're missing the data to do so. I'm quite certain you'd like reading it. I don't really want to push that book this much, but I do want liberals to understand the dishonesty and malice inherent in the actings of previous administrations that are held in high esteem for no apparent reason - like Clinton and Obama. And the reason I want that is because it would be helpful to liberals. The US is so far behind on many basic things, it's a joke to the rest of the world; - The level of poverty in the US is staggering - you can reasonably say that more than 50% of citizens live below the poverty line. - The lack of basic bank security, the fact that if someone steals your bank account money, you don't automatically get it back from the bank. - The cost of health care is actually insane - The number of citizens in jail, and the exploitation of them for manufacturing (talk about slavery) - The low number of people who vote. In my country, more people vote in _city_ level elections than do in your presidential elections. Always. By a factor of 20%. "representative democracy" my ass. Anyone who lives in Europe knows these things. And any honest US citizen who has lived abroad knows it. I am saying these things to illustrate that I want to _help_ you. And that includes reading that book, and dispelling your notion that Clinton or Obama were good or honest. Competent, oh yes - competent enough to literally destroy your nation.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- craftyguy 9y ago
  >Running a federal govt like the US is no joke Ha. Donald & friends' behavior disgrees with that statement.
ivraatiems 9y ago
If the summary of the book is, as Wikipedia puts it, that " the American Democratic Party has changed to support elitism in the form of a professional class instead of the working class," then I don't disagree. And if the suggestion is that all administrations since Clinton are responsible for that, I don't disagree with that either - in fact, I'd go further back, and I would make it bipartisan. But we are making an in-group comparison here: the current administrations versus previous ones on the topics at hand. To imply complete equivalence between the two on the grounds that both suffer from some of the same systemic problems is moving the goalposts. Were previous administrations also corporatist and deeply flawed? Yes. Does that mean that the Obama administration didn't also provide demonstrably better outcomes than the Trump administration on a range of issues? No. Dismissing the clear policy differences between the two actually does a disservice to the cause of making government better, because it ignores the positive things that did happen that we want to encourage and further. For instance, if you support a single-payer healthcare system, you can say both "the ACA has made healthcare in the US better than before, and closer to what I want," and "the ACA doesn't get me all the way to what I want." But it would be dishonest to suggest that the ACA didn't bring us much closer to healthcare-for-all than we were before it passed. Incremental change is still change. (And if you have the opposite stance on healthcare, the same logic applies in reverse.)
- indubitable 9y ago
  Incremental change is often counter productive. Major change requires major problems because people are inertial. Picture things as a number line. 0 is something 100% beneficial to society at expense of special interests. 100 is something that is 100% beneficial to special interests at expense of society. Major changes, such as single payer healthcare, require major action and major support. It's highly controversial and would require a massive rethinking of an enormous amount of our society - and all at substantial risk to many people. To get this sort of action you need people pretty far along that number line - perhaps at 85 - to drag people out of their naturally inertial state. And indeed it may have been the case that before the ACA people were starting to reach into the 90s. What has the ACA done? It's certainly a very flawed system and that's seen, arguably predictably, skyrocketing premiums (an average 25% increase in premiums in 2017 alone [1] ) and other more systemic issues such as rapidly decreasing competition. But it's better than what we had before, even if just incrementally. But now instead of being in the 90s, our numberline on the 'fairness' of healthcare is now somewhere in the high 70s. Another way of looking at this is that the odds of something like single payer entering the political conversation, which was a very real possibility before, are now effectively zero. And this has been a recurring theme throughout many of Obama's actions. Of course this all begs an obvious question. Was he behaving this way intentionally to maximize the value of special interests, or was he just a well intentioned person trying to make progress in a difficult system? Given one of the first things he did after leaving office was to go give a private talk to a wall street firm on healthcare, for a $400k "speaking fee" - well... [1] - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-obamacare-premiums-are-rising-and-what-you-can-do/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-obamacare-premiums-are-risi...

victor106 9y ago

They might not be "good" in all the things that they did. Running a federal govt like the US is no joke and I am sure that everything that they did they could have done better. But you cannot compare to the level of dishonesty and incompetency that this administration has. Lets not make the perfect the enemy of the good.

folknor 9y ago
Yes, I can, but that's only because I have read that book. Which cites its sources for everything. If you can't compare it, that's because you're missing the data to do so. I'm quite certain you'd like reading it. I don't really want to push that book this much, but I do want liberals to understand the dishonesty and malice inherent in the actings of previous administrations that are held in high esteem for no apparent reason - like Clinton and Obama. And the reason I want that is because it would be helpful to liberals. The US is so far behind on many basic things, it's a joke to the rest of the world; - The level of poverty in the US is staggering - you can reasonably say that more than 50% of citizens live below the poverty line. - The lack of basic bank security, the fact that if someone steals your bank account money, you don't automatically get it back from the bank. - The cost of health care is actually insane - The number of citizens in jail, and the exploitation of them for manufacturing (talk about slavery) - The low number of people who vote. In my country, more people vote in _city_ level elections than do in your presidential elections. Always. By a factor of 20%. "representative democracy" my ass. Anyone who lives in Europe knows these things. And any honest US citizen who has lived abroad knows it. I am saying these things to illustrate that I want to _help_ you. And that includes reading that book, and dispelling your notion that Clinton or Obama were good or honest. Competent, oh yes - competent enough to literally destroy your nation.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
craftyguy 9y ago
>Running a federal govt like the US is no joke Ha. Donald & friends' behavior disgrees with that statement.

ivraatiems 9y ago

If the summary of the book is, as Wikipedia puts it, that " the American Democratic Party has changed to support elitism in the form of a professional class instead of the working class," then I don't disagree. And if the suggestion is that all administrations since Clinton are responsible for that, I don't disagree with that either - in fact, I'd go further back, and I would make it bipartisan. But we are making an in-group comparison here: the current administrations versus previous ones on the topics at hand. To imply complete equivalence between the two on the grounds that both suffer from some of the same systemic problems is moving the goalposts. Were previous administrations also corporatist and deeply flawed? Yes. Does that mean that the Obama administration didn't also provide demonstrably better outcomes than the Trump administration on a range of issues? No. Dismissing the clear policy differences between the two actually does a disservice to the cause of making government better, because it ignores the positive things that did happen that we want to encourage and further. For instance, if you support a single-payer healthcare system, you can say both "the ACA has made healthcare in the US better than before, and closer to what I want," and "the ACA doesn't get me all the way to what I want." But it would be dishonest to suggest that the ACA didn't bring us much closer to healthcare-for-all than we were before it passed. Incremental change is still change. (And if you have the opposite stance on healthcare, the same logic applies in reverse.)

indubitable 9y ago
Incremental change is often counter productive. Major change requires major problems because people are inertial. Picture things as a number line. 0 is something 100% beneficial to society at expense of special interests. 100 is something that is 100% beneficial to special interests at expense of society. Major changes, such as single payer healthcare, require major action and major support. It's highly controversial and would require a massive rethinking of an enormous amount of our society - and all at substantial risk to many people. To get this sort of action you need people pretty far along that number line - perhaps at 85 - to drag people out of their naturally inertial state. And indeed it may have been the case that before the ACA people were starting to reach into the 90s. What has the ACA done? It's certainly a very flawed system and that's seen, arguably predictably, skyrocketing premiums (an average 25% increase in premiums in 2017 alone [1] ) and other more systemic issues such as rapidly decreasing competition. But it's better than what we had before, even if just incrementally. But now instead of being in the 90s, our numberline on the 'fairness' of healthcare is now somewhere in the high 70s. Another way of looking at this is that the odds of something like single payer entering the political conversation, which was a very real possibility before, are now effectively zero. And this has been a recurring theme throughout many of Obama's actions. Of course this all begs an obvious question. Was he behaving this way intentionally to maximize the value of special interests, or was he just a well intentioned person trying to make progress in a difficult system? Given one of the first things he did after leaving office was to go give a private talk to a wall street firm on healthcare, for a $400k "speaking fee" - well... [1] - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-obamacare-premiums-are-rising-and-what-you-can-do/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-obamacare-premiums-are-risi...