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Forest? What forest? All I see is trees.
But (the GOP) is even more frightened by another group of people: those who have lost loved ones due to dropped coverage or lifetime limits. Why?
Because it’s impossible to defend a system in which corporations invest in the deaths of their clients to the relatives of the deceased. Rationing works according to a terrible but understandable rationale: “You must die so that others may live.” But the current system works according to a singularly grim calculation: “You must die so that others might profit.” That’s not a winning argument and those responding to this advertisement know it. They need to transform its message into something palatable.
...
There only “appears to be no policy or business critique” because someone’s afraid that confronting it will remind people of the substantial policy and business critiques that are always at play: that relying on an insurance system that’s only affordable when partially subsidized by an employer leads to a situation in which chronic unemployment is tantamount to a death sentence. They can’t even bring up that fact to refute it without ending up defending an untenable argument. So they deflect:
...
Because if they focus on the specific facts presented in this particular argument they might not be compelled to defend the current system on principle. They might be able to avoid the unpleasant truth that the emotional appeal of the advertisement comes from the manner in which it militates the facts of a life against the callousness of a corporate culture. Remove Bain from the equation and the appeal is no less effective. Conservatives know and fear this: they know that they’ll be running against stories like this and they know that the only humane response to them is to discredit the particulars. If they can convince the electorate that this tragedy didn’t happen as advertised they might not have to discuss the many millions that did. So this argument will be about the administration’s reluctance to distance itself from the advertisement. Or it’ll be about whether Romney’s personally responsible for this man losing his job. Or it’ll be about how unions are culpable in the closing of the plant that employed him.
It’ll be about any and everything except what it’s about: the fact that the impoverished and unemployed have a better chance of living a full life than they did before Obama was elected.
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2012/08/forest-what-forest-all-i-see-is-trees
Because it’s impossible to defend a system in which corporations invest in the deaths of their clients to the relatives of the deceased. Rationing works according to a terrible but understandable rationale: “You must die so that others may live.” But the current system works according to a singularly grim calculation: “You must die so that others might profit.” That’s not a winning argument and those responding to this advertisement know it. They need to transform its message into something palatable.
...
There only “appears to be no policy or business critique” because someone’s afraid that confronting it will remind people of the substantial policy and business critiques that are always at play: that relying on an insurance system that’s only affordable when partially subsidized by an employer leads to a situation in which chronic unemployment is tantamount to a death sentence. They can’t even bring up that fact to refute it without ending up defending an untenable argument. So they deflect:
...
Because if they focus on the specific facts presented in this particular argument they might not be compelled to defend the current system on principle. They might be able to avoid the unpleasant truth that the emotional appeal of the advertisement comes from the manner in which it militates the facts of a life against the callousness of a corporate culture. Remove Bain from the equation and the appeal is no less effective. Conservatives know and fear this: they know that they’ll be running against stories like this and they know that the only humane response to them is to discredit the particulars. If they can convince the electorate that this tragedy didn’t happen as advertised they might not have to discuss the many millions that did. So this argument will be about the administration’s reluctance to distance itself from the advertisement. Or it’ll be about whether Romney’s personally responsible for this man losing his job. Or it’ll be about how unions are culpable in the closing of the plant that employed him.
It’ll be about any and everything except what it’s about: the fact that the impoverished and unemployed have a better chance of living a full life than they did before Obama was elected.
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2012/08/forest-what-forest-all-i-see-is-trees
