Reply #13: I agree .... [View All]

[gleaner]

It is the same thing that Bush did. When he wanted to draw attention from the specifics of his actions and discredit his critics he raised the terror alert or found some other way to distract attention from what he was really doing until he was finished.

I have said this too. They did make a useful noise for Obama when he was dismantling any real health care reform, didn't they? And what I knew would happen with that bill is happening. It did not do that much to begin with and it was written in a way that allowed the insurance companies to find loopholes that they could litigate for years to come without putting any of the provisions in force.

The same thing happened in California with the auto insurance industry. A ballot proposition, (103) was passed regulating them strictly and setting up a state bureau to deal with any type of insurance being sold in California. It regulated rates, who could be refused insurance, who was liable if there was an accident and allowed the insurance companies to be held responsible financially for acts of bad faith against their insureds. It also provided for rebates for people who had paid their insurance premiums in good faith and had been gouged for years and surcharged for filing claims that were caused by things that were completely out of their control. Weather damage, vandalism, theft, fire and so on. It was tightly written because it was a ballot initiative, but the insurance companies still held it up for years in court. They lost and we got our rebates but it took a long time even though it was legal and binding not full of friendly loopholes like Obamacare. There was no supervising agency set up to watchdog the health insurance companies by the administration either. They thought it was too "expensive."

And all of this was covered by the administrations sudden concern over the rising tide of right wing violence which had been there all along and which they had tolerated if not encouraged in some ways by failing to respond to it at all in the beginning. Then of course when they did respond the noise is now covering up things like the widening of the wars, the desecration of the environment and probably other things that we have not found out about yet. If we criticize we are pounded and called liars, no matter how much Obama's policies are making us suffer. It has been entirely cynical and predictable.