JimofPennsylvan
Platinum Member
- Jun 6, 2007
- 865
- 508
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Kamala Harris made a great decision selecting Governor Tim Walz as her running mate the media tries to make the selection a salacious issue but you know the real prudence behind Kamala's decision is that the manner in which the Democrat Party chose its Presidential nominee this year subverted the primary process the Democrat primary voters did not select the current presumptive nominee their selection dropped out and Kamala took steps to minimize the fallout from these facts because in choosing Tim Walz, Kamala said to these primary voters the Democrat party leadership respects your involvement in the process and we will follow your will Tim Waltz has solid bona fides as a progressive so the Democrat primary voter is essentially getting the Biden/Harris ticket there is a change in personnel but the policy agenda largely stays the same and the party's interest is best served because now the Democrats will largely have a unified convention this year and the Party will be unified throughout the balance of the election season! An observation of Tim Walz campaigning so far is that he is doing an outstanding job he is energetic and is a good communicator just a minor suggestion is that Governor Waltz on at least one occasion tried to make the point that Kamala Harris will bring "joy" to the Presidency just the polar opposite of Donald Trump, not really a topic for a Presidential race. The point is absolutely true but it is amateurish to raise it, it will trigger a negative response amongst some Republicans because they will say if Americans want joy they can turn on the TV and watch a situation comedy what Americans want from their President is a better standard of living, affordable housing, freedom from fear of economic devastation if they get sick, things like that.
Donald Trump is a deficient campaigner but Republican power factions behind him aren't they are going to prosecute a tough race focusing on the policies that a President Harris will promulgate on the country and the Harris team would be better off improving their policy agenda especially in appealing to centrist Americans who historically decide races. Before offering some suggestions I would like to note that the Harris campaign is spot on in focusing on Trump's agenda to repeal the Affordable Care Act if Trump accomplishes nothing of note during his second term he is repealing the ACA it is a real sore point for him he failed in doing this during his first term and he resented big-time the person responsible the late Senator McCain and he resents Barack Obama's great reputational success with this signature legislation. There is no better health insurance policy design than the ACA design because it spreads the high cost of treating people with pre-existing conditions in large pools of insurance enrollees, so Trump will be doing an outstandingly bad thing trying to repeal it; regardless if Trump cannot get a repeal through Congress there should be no doubt that by executive order he will give states that want it the power to roll back the ACA protection mandates resulting in devasting effects on people seeking individual insurance in that state. This issue alone is one compelling reason to vote against Trump and it is absolutely prudent for the Harris campaign to keep it in the forefront during the campaign.
There is a lot of areas in our country that need responsible government action that Presidential candidate Harris should adopt. In our country right now there is a significant number of Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBM's) the bureaucracy that handles the purchasing of pharmaceuticals for people with health insurance that require enrollees to buy certain drugs on an on-line Pharmacy and sometimes one which the PBM owns and the outcome of this requirement is the drugs cost dramatically more on-line than at a brick and mortar pharmacy, Candidate Harris should come out and say as President she would ban this practice by PBMs of mandating where to buy pharmaceuticals. Currently in America approximately half of seniors in Medicare that is over twenty-seven million Americans are in Medicare Advantage programs, these are private health insurance company plans where instead of going through regular Medicare where if you go to a doctor or the hospital the Medicare system pays the bill in Medicare Advantage the private insurance company handles the complete health insurance arrangement, in a broad sense financially how it works is that the Medicare system gives the private insurance company X number of dollars for each senior enrolled in their Medicare Advantage plan this is a critical detail though Medicare gives the insurance companies an additional amount of money for each certain health condition if the enrollee has such for the fair reason that such a condition ordinarily requires additional health care services which cost money. But this is the big wrench, this is the big wrongdoing in the system specifically the private insurance companies game the system they either on their own or through nurses claim these additional fee health care conditions for their enrollees. These insurance companies send nurses out to seniors homes to do test and ask questions to generate a basis for claiming these additional fee health conditions. One example is these nurses diagnosing peripheral artery disease this is a condition where the blood flow in one's arms and legs is restricted by narrowing arteries and veins because of a build up of plaque in these blood vessels and it can in some cases cause significant pain, all older people get some buildup of plaque build up in their blood vessels because the body creates plaque and over time it builds up. The visiting nurses were using this device called a QuantaFlo to measure blood flow for the senior; but the device was not certified to make the diagnosis alone and when the nurses did make the diagnosis it was often not treated by a doctor. The Wall Street Journal reported that the insurance companies in the Medicare Advantage system alone or with nurses without a Doctor diagnosis added on these extra fee health conditions in such numbers it cost Medicare fifty billion dollars for the three years from 2019 to 2021; it seems a no brainer responsible government policy that the Medicare Advantage Insurance companies cannot get extra fees for health conditions they diagnose or their visiting nurses diagnose it has to be for a health condition a doctor and /or hospital diagnoses and treats or at least monitors - the Harris Campaign should offer such a policy that addresses this abuse of the system.
The current inflation rate may have dropped to 2.5% the ceiling of the stable and okay range and if the country sticks with a Fed Chairman like Jay Powell who appreciates the danger of ingrained inflation he will stabilize it at two percent; however the country has still experienced 19.5% inflation during the Biden administration and I personally think and most people would agree that food inflation during these years has risen at least thirty percent so the Harris campaign should be offering responsible policies to alleviate the burden of high inflation. One area I think the Federal government should be taking action on is too high credit card rates, my department store credit card recently raised their credit card rate to 25% per year this is way too high it is what the bible refers to as usury rates it is morally wrong. The Federal Government should cap credit card rates at 20% (twenty percent) if this causes credit card issuers to lower credit card limits to reduce their loss from credit card defaults good, excellent that will reduce people's monthly credit card bill interest payments. Further they should prohibit credit card companies from setting credit card interest rates based on individual criteria, that is, underwriting the interest rate charged based on the holder's credit score this will result in credit card companies offering the same rate for all their credit card holders and most importantly this will result in lower income Americans who usually have low credit scores getting a lower credit card interest rate than they currently have and thus having a lower monthly credit card bill. A relevant point here I could be wrong but my recollection is that credit card companies used to not individually underwrite the credit card interest rates they used to offer the same rate to all people that took out a credit card with them!
Numerous surveys indicate at least forty percent of Americans are largely living paycheck to paycheck this accentuates the hardship of high inflation and explains why people cannot get ahead and have the peace of mind of getting ahead. Part of the solution to this is to create more widespread inherited wealth in America because if more Americans received this they could put this into brokerage and/or saving accounts and use the principle and earnings of such accounts to live on and get out of this cycle of living paycheck to paycheck. In order to do this more Americans must have a larger retirement nest egg so that when they die the balance of this nest egg becomes inherited wealth to their surviving family members. This writer has written about this idea before and it is indefensible that elected members of Congress and for that matter corporations who have a civic duty do not fully support this idea. If Americans had larger 401K accounts they would have larger retirement nest eggs. What 401K accounts are essentially are savings accounts Americans contribute to during their working life and the employer matches their contribution and this joint contribution account grows tax free so when an individual American reaches retirement age he or she can begin withdrawing from the account. The shortcoming of this system to help Americans live when they are retired and can no longer work is that many Americans cannot afford to contribute to the account or contribute to the level where they get the full match from their employer during their working life because they need their wages to live on. To reiterate the shortcoming in this system is that many Americans do not get any 401k contributions from their employer or do not get the maximum the employe is prepared to contribute and further the growth over time of these contributions that would occur if the contribution monies was working in a 401k account. What is the remedy to this shortcoming yes the obvious solution is the right one the Federal government should require these employers to contribute eighty percent of the maximum they are prepared to contribute, why only eighty because that leaves an incentive for the employee to make their contribution. Specifically what this means is lets say the 401K terms for an employer are the employer will match one hundred percent up to five percent of an employees wages so if an employee contributes five percent of their wages the company contributes the same five percent but lets say an employee cannot afford to make o contribution because he or she needs the money to pay his or her bills that employee gets no contribution into the 401k account from that employee's employers but under the new system that strapped employee would get a four percent contribution from their employer. The federal law should mandate this for employers that do not provide a defined pension plan for their employees because in reality their 401k is their pension plan for their employees and employers do have a civic obligation to provide for the financial support for their employee's when they can no longer work and need to retire because they used their labor during their working life. It is not like a tax on an employer because it is only requiring an employer to give to that employer's employee that which the employer is already prepared to give, that is, if the employee made the maximum match contribution.
There is one critical question the Harris campaign needs to address by the end of this month will President Harris sign into law a piece of legislation that violates the current filibuster rule in the Senate that requires sixty Senators to vote to stop a debate or a filibuster on a bill and allow it to come up for a passage vote; and ignoring the question is not an option! Because if President Harris changes this critical rule and allows just fifty-one votes needed in the Senate to get bills through that chamber she will set off permanent vibrations in our nation that will eventually bring about the end of the United states of America as deep red or politically right states secede from the nation of America because they find it completely reprehensible and intolerable the left wing socialist state the Democrat Party will be able to impose on American by holding the majority of power in Washington; it won't happen over the next ten years but it will definitely happen during the children's lives living today. It would be okay if President Harris signs on to changing the filibuster rule to only fifty-seven votes needed to end a debate on a bill that will be enough to stop any Party from ramming the policy agenda of the extreme wings of their party into law. If President Harris has as her agenda killing the filibuster rule I don't think that should be a deal breaker for centrists and other Americans voting for Kamala Harris as President, a fully Progressive President Harris is still a better choice than a Second Term President Trump because Donald Trump has no principle guard rails there is nothing he is not capable of and so he poses an existential threat to America. This factor still holds critical importance though if President Harris is prepared to kill the filibuster the American people need to pull out all the stops in preventing the Democrats from having control of the Senate, the expert consensus is that the Democrats will definitely lose the West Virginia seat but some other seats are vulnerable the American people can still stop this country destroying vibration trajectory far left Democrats don't care about triggering in America!
Donald Trump is a deficient campaigner but Republican power factions behind him aren't they are going to prosecute a tough race focusing on the policies that a President Harris will promulgate on the country and the Harris team would be better off improving their policy agenda especially in appealing to centrist Americans who historically decide races. Before offering some suggestions I would like to note that the Harris campaign is spot on in focusing on Trump's agenda to repeal the Affordable Care Act if Trump accomplishes nothing of note during his second term he is repealing the ACA it is a real sore point for him he failed in doing this during his first term and he resented big-time the person responsible the late Senator McCain and he resents Barack Obama's great reputational success with this signature legislation. There is no better health insurance policy design than the ACA design because it spreads the high cost of treating people with pre-existing conditions in large pools of insurance enrollees, so Trump will be doing an outstandingly bad thing trying to repeal it; regardless if Trump cannot get a repeal through Congress there should be no doubt that by executive order he will give states that want it the power to roll back the ACA protection mandates resulting in devasting effects on people seeking individual insurance in that state. This issue alone is one compelling reason to vote against Trump and it is absolutely prudent for the Harris campaign to keep it in the forefront during the campaign.
There is a lot of areas in our country that need responsible government action that Presidential candidate Harris should adopt. In our country right now there is a significant number of Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBM's) the bureaucracy that handles the purchasing of pharmaceuticals for people with health insurance that require enrollees to buy certain drugs on an on-line Pharmacy and sometimes one which the PBM owns and the outcome of this requirement is the drugs cost dramatically more on-line than at a brick and mortar pharmacy, Candidate Harris should come out and say as President she would ban this practice by PBMs of mandating where to buy pharmaceuticals. Currently in America approximately half of seniors in Medicare that is over twenty-seven million Americans are in Medicare Advantage programs, these are private health insurance company plans where instead of going through regular Medicare where if you go to a doctor or the hospital the Medicare system pays the bill in Medicare Advantage the private insurance company handles the complete health insurance arrangement, in a broad sense financially how it works is that the Medicare system gives the private insurance company X number of dollars for each senior enrolled in their Medicare Advantage plan this is a critical detail though Medicare gives the insurance companies an additional amount of money for each certain health condition if the enrollee has such for the fair reason that such a condition ordinarily requires additional health care services which cost money. But this is the big wrench, this is the big wrongdoing in the system specifically the private insurance companies game the system they either on their own or through nurses claim these additional fee health care conditions for their enrollees. These insurance companies send nurses out to seniors homes to do test and ask questions to generate a basis for claiming these additional fee health conditions. One example is these nurses diagnosing peripheral artery disease this is a condition where the blood flow in one's arms and legs is restricted by narrowing arteries and veins because of a build up of plaque in these blood vessels and it can in some cases cause significant pain, all older people get some buildup of plaque build up in their blood vessels because the body creates plaque and over time it builds up. The visiting nurses were using this device called a QuantaFlo to measure blood flow for the senior; but the device was not certified to make the diagnosis alone and when the nurses did make the diagnosis it was often not treated by a doctor. The Wall Street Journal reported that the insurance companies in the Medicare Advantage system alone or with nurses without a Doctor diagnosis added on these extra fee health conditions in such numbers it cost Medicare fifty billion dollars for the three years from 2019 to 2021; it seems a no brainer responsible government policy that the Medicare Advantage Insurance companies cannot get extra fees for health conditions they diagnose or their visiting nurses diagnose it has to be for a health condition a doctor and /or hospital diagnoses and treats or at least monitors - the Harris Campaign should offer such a policy that addresses this abuse of the system.
The current inflation rate may have dropped to 2.5% the ceiling of the stable and okay range and if the country sticks with a Fed Chairman like Jay Powell who appreciates the danger of ingrained inflation he will stabilize it at two percent; however the country has still experienced 19.5% inflation during the Biden administration and I personally think and most people would agree that food inflation during these years has risen at least thirty percent so the Harris campaign should be offering responsible policies to alleviate the burden of high inflation. One area I think the Federal government should be taking action on is too high credit card rates, my department store credit card recently raised their credit card rate to 25% per year this is way too high it is what the bible refers to as usury rates it is morally wrong. The Federal Government should cap credit card rates at 20% (twenty percent) if this causes credit card issuers to lower credit card limits to reduce their loss from credit card defaults good, excellent that will reduce people's monthly credit card bill interest payments. Further they should prohibit credit card companies from setting credit card interest rates based on individual criteria, that is, underwriting the interest rate charged based on the holder's credit score this will result in credit card companies offering the same rate for all their credit card holders and most importantly this will result in lower income Americans who usually have low credit scores getting a lower credit card interest rate than they currently have and thus having a lower monthly credit card bill. A relevant point here I could be wrong but my recollection is that credit card companies used to not individually underwrite the credit card interest rates they used to offer the same rate to all people that took out a credit card with them!
Numerous surveys indicate at least forty percent of Americans are largely living paycheck to paycheck this accentuates the hardship of high inflation and explains why people cannot get ahead and have the peace of mind of getting ahead. Part of the solution to this is to create more widespread inherited wealth in America because if more Americans received this they could put this into brokerage and/or saving accounts and use the principle and earnings of such accounts to live on and get out of this cycle of living paycheck to paycheck. In order to do this more Americans must have a larger retirement nest egg so that when they die the balance of this nest egg becomes inherited wealth to their surviving family members. This writer has written about this idea before and it is indefensible that elected members of Congress and for that matter corporations who have a civic duty do not fully support this idea. If Americans had larger 401K accounts they would have larger retirement nest eggs. What 401K accounts are essentially are savings accounts Americans contribute to during their working life and the employer matches their contribution and this joint contribution account grows tax free so when an individual American reaches retirement age he or she can begin withdrawing from the account. The shortcoming of this system to help Americans live when they are retired and can no longer work is that many Americans cannot afford to contribute to the account or contribute to the level where they get the full match from their employer during their working life because they need their wages to live on. To reiterate the shortcoming in this system is that many Americans do not get any 401k contributions from their employer or do not get the maximum the employe is prepared to contribute and further the growth over time of these contributions that would occur if the contribution monies was working in a 401k account. What is the remedy to this shortcoming yes the obvious solution is the right one the Federal government should require these employers to contribute eighty percent of the maximum they are prepared to contribute, why only eighty because that leaves an incentive for the employee to make their contribution. Specifically what this means is lets say the 401K terms for an employer are the employer will match one hundred percent up to five percent of an employees wages so if an employee contributes five percent of their wages the company contributes the same five percent but lets say an employee cannot afford to make o contribution because he or she needs the money to pay his or her bills that employee gets no contribution into the 401k account from that employee's employers but under the new system that strapped employee would get a four percent contribution from their employer. The federal law should mandate this for employers that do not provide a defined pension plan for their employees because in reality their 401k is their pension plan for their employees and employers do have a civic obligation to provide for the financial support for their employee's when they can no longer work and need to retire because they used their labor during their working life. It is not like a tax on an employer because it is only requiring an employer to give to that employer's employee that which the employer is already prepared to give, that is, if the employee made the maximum match contribution.
There is one critical question the Harris campaign needs to address by the end of this month will President Harris sign into law a piece of legislation that violates the current filibuster rule in the Senate that requires sixty Senators to vote to stop a debate or a filibuster on a bill and allow it to come up for a passage vote; and ignoring the question is not an option! Because if President Harris changes this critical rule and allows just fifty-one votes needed in the Senate to get bills through that chamber she will set off permanent vibrations in our nation that will eventually bring about the end of the United states of America as deep red or politically right states secede from the nation of America because they find it completely reprehensible and intolerable the left wing socialist state the Democrat Party will be able to impose on American by holding the majority of power in Washington; it won't happen over the next ten years but it will definitely happen during the children's lives living today. It would be okay if President Harris signs on to changing the filibuster rule to only fifty-seven votes needed to end a debate on a bill that will be enough to stop any Party from ramming the policy agenda of the extreme wings of their party into law. If President Harris has as her agenda killing the filibuster rule I don't think that should be a deal breaker for centrists and other Americans voting for Kamala Harris as President, a fully Progressive President Harris is still a better choice than a Second Term President Trump because Donald Trump has no principle guard rails there is nothing he is not capable of and so he poses an existential threat to America. This factor still holds critical importance though if President Harris is prepared to kill the filibuster the American people need to pull out all the stops in preventing the Democrats from having control of the Senate, the expert consensus is that the Democrats will definitely lose the West Virginia seat but some other seats are vulnerable the American people can still stop this country destroying vibration trajectory far left Democrats don't care about triggering in America!
