Pollster.com

Is the Tea Party candidate for sure on the ballot?

As you may know, Sue Lowden has proposed reducing medical costs by having patients barter with their doctor instead of using health insurance. Under Lowden's barter proposal, patients would negotiate directly with doctors, offering services or goods such as painting the doctor's home or giving the doctor a chicken, in exchange for medical treatment.

QUESTION: Do you think Lowden's proposal is a realistic way to bring medical costs down for most families?

Yes No Not Sure
ALL 14 81 5
DEM 5 91 4
REP 27 68 5
IND 7 87 6

---------------------------------------------------------

Funny that they actually polled that.

A quarter of republicans think chickencare is a good idea? No wonder this country is having problems!

I personally thinks its a great idea. The only way to solve the health care dilemma is through HSAs with high deductibles and tax-free contributions. Patients should be allowed to shop around and deal with doctors like any other service or good.

This country is a mess because too many Dems think the government will solve the problem. Good luck with that.

If Ashjian does make the ballot the "Tea Party" designation will not accompany his name so using that in the survey question would seem to bias the results.\

The Lowden barter question seems to be a bit of push poll activity on the part of Kos - though it did appear at the end of the survey so at least it didn't affect the earlier questions.

I don't think you understand what a push poll is, try google.

Field Marshal:

"I personally thinks its a great idea. The only way to solve the health care dilemma is through HSAs with high deductibles and tax-free contributions. Patients should be allowed to shop around and deal with doctors like any other service or good.

This country is a mess because too many Dems think the government will solve the problem. Good luck with that.""--Field Marshal

Now, see, this is what's so crazy about Republicans. They take one thing that often doesn't work as well as it should (the government, usually) and propose replacing it with something that would work even worse.

Chris V:

When you go buy something at the store, say milk, does that not work? I don't understand how it wouldn't work other than it uses the marketplace to do it instead of the almighty Government.

I do realize that many dems need the government to do things for them. I do realize that they lack the personal responsibility and the wherewithal to actually take their own health care into their own hands. I do realize that they need to the comfort of the nanny state blanket to protect them from the big bad free market that is out to get them and hurt them. However, i think you are off on this one.

I'll start seriously debating you when you come up with actionable, fact-driven arguments instead of asinine talking points about what you think other people think.

Comparing going to store to buy a two dollar gallon of milk to paying your doctor for a $20,000 heart operation is a great analogy though. Kudos to you and Sue Lowden on that one.

"I personally thinks its a great idea. The only way to solve the health care dilemma is through HSAs with high deductibles and tax-free contributions. Patients should be allowed to shop around and deal with doctors like any other service or good. "

Hard to shop around when you are in the hospital unconscious... And when you haggle with your doctor over needed care, the doctor always wins. The patient has zero clout or leverage in that situation. Who is the patient to know what tests they need or don't need? Doctors "compete" on quality, not price. No one wants a "discount" heart surgery.

People should not be reduced to begging or offering chickens to get health care in a first world country.

"If Ashjian does make the ballot the "Tea Party" designation will not accompany his name so using that in the survey question would seem to bias the results.\"

Ahh...that does seem to be an important distinction. Simply having the Tea Party by a candidates name could get them a certain level of support. Without that, Asjian is not going to get 5-6 percent of the vote.

Harry Reid not only has to win to keep his seat, but it would be downright embarrassing to lose to someone who made such a ridiculous statement as lowden

FIRED UP AND READY TO GO! (But maybe Harry you shouldn't say that in Nevada)

Obama still has some living down to do himself when he made two jokes about saving your money and not "taking a vacation to Vegas". I would have simply said, "Save your money Americans, pay off your debt and take less expensive and lavish vacations".

Are you sure about that, Kevin? I thought I read that the Tea Party qualified as a party designation on the ballot.

"I don't think you understand what a push poll is, try google."

Actually I do - but I see that I was very sloppy in my remark. I was lamely trying to indicate that this resembled the kind of question seen in a push poll.

This question looked to me like Kos was surreptitiously trying to feed the subject the information about "Lowden's proposal" in order to ask the follow-up question about how the negative information might affect their vote.

LordMike:

Are you sure about that, Kevin? I thought I read that the Tea Party qualified as a party designation on the ballot.

------------------------------------------------------------

I have no idea i was quoting a previous user.

How do you haggle with a doctor when you need a kidney transplant? Come on, be real here... Lowden's barter comment was ridiculous. How the hell do you barter for an MRI? It costs doctors and hospitals real money to perform these services. I guess a doctor can just mail Novartis five chickens for your flu shot this year.

And the Tea Party will push Reid over the edge here.

Irrespective of the Kos "house effect", if you look at the previous KOS poll in NV it's easy to see that, since "chickengate" Reid is climbing back up in the polls and Lowdon is going the other way...fast.

If you think Sue and her chickens are a Dem talking point, only you haven't been following the news in NV. Tarkanian is now going after Lowden by using video clips of her barter comments to show primary voters that she's unfit to take on Harry Reid.

I'm starting to hope Lowden wins the primary because, when you're the butt of nearly every late-night comedy show and even your Republican opponents think it's fair game to attack you for your foolish remarks it IS hard to take such a candidate seriously. If her support is softening a bit, if many of her supporters WERE Reid supporters and if Congress also passes a popular Financial reform bill (with Reid getting credit for being s tough "general" this time around) I say...game on.

It's still a long shot but Lowden seems to be stupid enough to commit more gaffes like this.

Dailykos poll or dailypush poll you tell me. I'm very liberal yet I'd rather have a senator Sue Lowden than a senator Harry Reid bringing down the entire dem caucus. Electing Sue Lowden is in the democrats best interest.

Hey Mark Blumenthol

Do you think you could comment on this poll constituting a push poll or not, as well as if it would be one if the chicken question occurred at the beginning.

Thanks Man

If democrats think pushing the chicken coop issue will get Harry Reid re-elected then they are really reaching. Sue Lowden is a lot smarter and sharper than people take her for. Not to mention she's very moderate and popular in democratic leaning Clark county. As I have said before I do not lump her with the other republican crazies. Im thinking she wins the primary by around 20 points.

"I do realize that many dems need the government to do things for them. I do realize that they lack the personal responsibility and the wherewithal to actually take their own health care into their own hands. I do realize that they need to the comfort of the nanny state blanket to protect them from the big bad free market that is out to get them and hurt them."

____________________

I love this "personal responsibility" talking point from the Right. When you're dealing with a cartel, by definition, you have no choice. When my wife got sick and her coverage was dropped I couldn't get coverage for her anywhere. She was deemed an uninsurable risk. I would have paid pretty much anything to get her covered, so it had nothing to do with "personal responsibility."

Where is the "personal responsibility" of those who put greed before the rights of another human being, and where is the patriotism of those who ship jobs overseas to increase their profit margins.

Oh, I forgot, we're talking about the same people who brought us slavery and had children working in factories. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

"Oh, I forgot, we're talking about the same people who brought us slavery and had children working in factories. The more things change, the more they stay the same. "

LOL. More stupid hyperbole from the left wing nutjobs. I love it!

11thGenerationAmerican,
"Oh, I forgot, we're talking about the same people who brought us slavery and had children working in factories. The more things change, the more they stay the same."

When disaster looms, we must at least try to avert it, however much we fear that nothing we do can make much difference. Read on, if you like this sort of thing.

Response: You can diss your present day conservative opponents all you like, but you are ahistorical in associating them with proponents of slavery and child labor.

You are not unusual, liberals often have a very skewed idea of what conservatives' beliefs were historically and are presently. Likewise, they often are confused about who did what historically, mainly because liberal writers tend to retroactively label anyone who did something ugly as "conservative" (e.g., Father McGlaughlin, a serious socialist magically transformed into a Roosevelt- opposing conservative).

As a public service, I will tell you what most conservatives think. Surprisingly, most of us really do believe what we write. Statistically, compared to you, we are far more likely to have children, which perhaps makes us somewhat more hardheaded and driven about things we think will affect their futures. We are often not so stupid that we try to hide evil thoughts in codes so ineptly transparent that even you can break them down. We do not dislike liberals as individuals except in the heat of the moment, though we often have unflattering opinions on their clarity of thought, grasp of scientific principles, and dubious grasp of what constitutes personal virtue. According to many surveys, we are far more likely than you to be concerned about keeping God's good opinion of us, which may explain why every survey has shown us as a group to far more generous to charities with our personal time and money than liberals are as a group. By the measures of giving and providing for the next generation, on average conservatives are demonstrably less "greedy" and self-centered than liberals.

"Conservatives" from deTocqueville to Tea Partiers who fear allowing excessive power by the federal government were the original "liberals" (those who value liberty) and are still called that in Europe.

Today you and other "liberals" label them and their concerns as "greedy" conservatism and associate them with past atrocities. In fact, they are the true heirs of the Republicans who opposed slavery, despite convenient liberal amnesia about the black civil rights struggle. It is liberals, by the way, who now label anyone who calls for color-blindness a racist, generally with no sense of irony whatsoever.

I challenge you to read Liberal Fascism and look up the original works (long exerpts are online for most) to challenge Jonah's quotations from prominent progressives and conservatives historically about eugenics, racial segregation, Jim Crow laws, the great syphyllis study, and many other things you probably (and wrongly) think were "conservative."

You will find that those who opposed those things used the arguments of "conservatives" and Tea Partiers of today. All of those atrocities were aggressive uses of government power for illiberal purposes by progressives, your esteemed intellectual heritage at work. Those steps were all done in the name of social utility (the good of the group trumps the good of individuals, especially blacks).

Those who opposed those things were deemed "conservative" in the sense that by opposing those changes they sought to conserve the traditional ideas of individual liberty and the proper use of government power. Again, that is exactly what Tea Partiers of today are doing.

Until the Progessives came along, those who valued individual freedom over social utility were called liberals. They believed, as warned deTocqueville, that the greatest threat to individual liberty was what we would call "mission-creep" by the federal government. DeTocqueville thought it inevitable that one political faction would one day realize they could buy political dominance by taking from some groups and giving to others. Having economic freedom was crucial to preventing that fatal development because it diffused power and provided opportunities that were not controlled by the government. Sound familiar?

Today's "liberals" should avoid the "L-word" they first perverted then ruined and call themselves "Progressives." As did their forbears, today's progressives get high on government power and see it as a nearly limitlessly useful tool to help the masses (and, typically, themselves) and make individuals in society behave the way they damn well should. Economic freedom is treated with hostility since they believe individual economic freedom should be trumped by maximization of social utility for those they favor. Besides, those who look out for their own economic interests are greedy S.O.B.'s. The idea that the "invisible hand" insures that greedy SOBs inadvertently provide more social good than the most enlightened elite offers too little scope for busybody progressives. In their view, the government should be both the visible and the invisible (nudge, nudge) hand.

Progressives need villains, just like everyone else. There have their convenient whipping boys (e.g., Wall Street, drug companies, etc.) in the "private sector," but before and after the ritualistic posturing of public shaming and the imposition of satisfyingly punitive shackles of regulation, what you actually get is crony capitalism. The cronies support the politicians and the politicians control the regulators to the benefit of their cronies and rent-seekers. The cronies love the regulations because they stifle smaller competitors who have less influence. The regulators love the cronies because they can step through the revolving door to high pay. Its all good for the politicians and the cronies. The more the government spends and more tighly and arbitrarily it regulates, the more power and security the cronies and politicians enjoy.

So it is not surprising that the businesses the ignoratii of progressism love to hate (banks, energy utilties, drug companies, insurance, hospitals, etc.) are heavily regulated and controlled by the government and typically have become oligarchies thanks to the long-term effects of government political and regulatory interventions (watch out Honda, get unionized or you're next!).

"Conservatives" (true liberals) from deTocqueville to Hayek to today see this as the "road to serfdom." Obama has shifted to a yet higher gear; the inexorably process has acclerated frighteningly. When the government controls the economy utterly, we will have little real economic freedom. Already, any company, any executive can be brought low if they do not lie prostrate to the political winds. Obama lectures them and insults them to their face with impunity with even conservatives afraid to object. In the health reform debacle, threats by Waxman, Pelosi, Reid, and Obama to hospitals, drug companies, and insurance companies were unashamedly naked: give us political support or be brought low. As the feckless senatorial candidate for MA put it to insurance executives when in DC rounding up campaign contributions, "You know you will just have to pay more later if you don't pay enough now." Remarkable.

Without economic power, there is only political power, which is always controlled by a small elite who always have special priviledges, including exemptions from most intrusions of government (exemptions for politicians and their SENIOR staffs from onerous ObamaCare provisions). Even their priviledges are condional on enthusiastic political support.

Eventually, we all become serfs whose jobs, business licenses, loans, taxes, and liberty can be threatened by politically directed or indifferent bureacrats. Without economic power, only the top of the political structure has security, and even it is conditional.

Because the goals of bureacracy are heavily affected by politics and by institutional self=-interest, even a government of the highest caliber individuals must be inefficient because its public and actual goals conflict. In reality, you don't get the best people, either. The job security of government workers minimizes internal competition based on job performance and replaces it with demonstrated adherence to and support of political and institutional goals. The more powerful the government, the more its bureacracy can resist the will of the people. Thus, nepotism and political favoritism are less and less constrained by public measures of effectiveness.

Those dynamics affect all large bureacracies (e.g., GM) but affect governments most strongly and most disastrously. When the political needs of the controlling political party serve to promote the growth, wealth, and influence of the bureacracies, you have the equivalent of cancerous growths in the body. Like cancerous cells, they intrude through the boundaries of surrounding tissues, divert the supply of nutrients to themselves, shake off inhibitions to growth, and become effectively immortal by simply refusing to die when they are no longer useful. Their intended function is still needed but their output increasingly ignores signals from the entity they parasitize, so they produce too little, too much, or the wrong things. After a long period of debilitation, their host dies a painful death.

In other words, look for continued increases in public employment and pay and continued deterioration of services in all progressive states, cities and countries until sovereign defaults destroys their central nervous systems.

And it all happens with the best of intentions and no realization that everyone will suffer, not just the fat cats.