Some of the plans do contain mandates – mandates that require you to have some insurance, just as you're currently required to have some car insurance if you drive. In those cases, the option is which insurance package you'll choose. It's also worth noting that the plan that will finally get through Congress will almost definitely not contain mandates. So, that's a bit of a red herring, IMNSHO.

As far as your racecar analogy goes, you're absolutely spot on. After all, look at the way that the USPS drove out UPS and FedEx through similar practices. Oh wait, they didn't. So, that raises the question: what evidence do you have that the gov't option would do that? The only discussion I've seen even similar requires insurance companies to actually abide by the contracts that they themselves drew up. Oh, the horror!

As for your equal parts discussion, the real problem isn't the disagreement about whether one party is more repsonsible than the other, but that it doesn't matter who is more responsible. What matters is who has the better plan now. Of course, one could say that historical issues can help us to gauge track records. If you were to do so objectively, the results might surprise you: every study I've seen on economic issues have shown Democratic administrations to be more fiscally responsible (i.e., run up less of a debt). On the other hand, if I were to think back over the major skirmishes, it seems that Republicans have actually been (historically) less involved in wars. That's not a study, just me thinking of a few examples. (We entered both WWI and WWII under Democratic presidents, for example.) Perhaps this reflects on the expression "only Nixon could go to China." As we're seeing now, Democrats have a tendency to overcompensate for their perceived liberalness. (In case it's not clear, most of us here don't think they're liberal enough.)

And so you are o.k. with only fixing it 5% and let's move on to the next problem?

No, but it's better than 0%. What makes you think I am OK with only fixing it 5%?

Look at the healthcare system and all the times that only a %, or partisan element,  of a problem was fix or done over the years, by both parties (maybe not equally) , but is it any wonder that the government is still trying to reform that system?

Yes, it seems the only time true transformation takes place is when it benefits the wealthy. E.g., Nixon and HMOs. This was the single biggest step backwards in the healthcare system. The current plan won't fix all of that, but a little improvement is better than none.

Yeah, I know.  That's my point.  I'm not a Democrat, BTW.  Did you assume that I was?

You do understand that blame is not afforded equally to two parties in all cases merely because there are two parties, right?  That they can have varying degrees of responsibility for certain outcomes depending on the circumstances?  I've given you my notes on why I think the GOP is more at fault.  All you've done is to mention GSE securities.  That tells me nothing about A) why you think the economy failed or B) why you think both parties share equally in the blame for this failure.

Nearly everyone that I know of seems to understand that the GOP advocated for the policies that were the most damaging.  You've done nothing to describe any alternative case.  In fact, the only group I think of that think that's the Fannie and Freddie, which were being run as private corporations BTW, were entirely to blame for the mess are in fact the right-wing Republicans that don't want to be blamed for what they did.

So, you can make your case for how you think the blame breaks out.  Or, you can post quotes that you seem to understand no better than the logical fallacies you employ in your arguments.

So basically you're saying that no compromise is possible because any compromise "opens doors" to what we really want, is that it?

It's funny how the Democrats are painted as being the intransigent ones in that equation…

You're betting that I'm as left as left can get, but then you deride me for making assumptions?  This is why you aren't worth communicating with.  You cannot maintain coherence even within a single comment, much less several comments.  You are curiously obsessed with judging others as being biased, but completely fail to recognize any of your own.  What might be a better approach is to stop trying to insist that you have rightfully claimed the unbiased center, which in fact doesn't exist, and to simply acknowledge and justify your own bias.

Yes, modest reforms, at least if you allow your "p.o.v." to include the facts of the healthcare systems of other industrialized democracies.  You can understand this or not.  Whether you do or don't is not something that I care about at this point.

Did you even read the policy paper you linked?  Hands down, bar none, the assessment is that per capita healthcare costs in the private sector are growing unsustainably and are the source of the majority of inefficiencies in the system.  Trying to blame all of the inefficiencies on government alone is factual unsupportable and typically right-wing.  Yes, there are inefficiencies in government programs, but anyone who has actually looked at the data knows where the most glaring inefficiencies are in the case of healthcare.

What, exactly, is your solution to these problems?  Can you offer anything specific beyond vague suggestions like incentivizing healthier behavior or "educating on consumption efficiencies"?  What, exactly, does this mean?  What specific incentives?  What specific behavior?  Do you mean to imply that all you need for a more efficient system is to tell people to make more efficient decisions?  I've no more time for your generalities.  Be specific or I won't be reading what you have to say or responding to you any further.

I'm not hung up on GSE securities.  You are.  You keep insisting they are a problem that has yet to be fixed.  You are simply wrong when you say that they are largely sub-prime.  I know this because, once again, I have actually looked at the facts:

CRA assessment-area lending accounted for only nine percent of higher-priced loans to lower-income borrowers and neighborhoods, while independent mortgage companies accounted for the majority.

So, when you say "largely subprime" you are either grossly uninformed or willfully deceitful.  Which is it?

I never said that "the problem with Fannie and Freddie was fixed with last year's regulatory reform bill."  But I'm not the one who keeps insisting that Fannie and Freddie should be the focus of the discussion.  That's the rag of the right-wing and is not supported by the facts.  If you think government guarantees on government sponsored securities is the problem, what do you think of government guarantees of wholly private entities?  That's where most of the money has gone.

I'm totally uninterested in going any further down the "blame" discussion with you.  It's gone beyond silly.  You don't seem to understand the difference between acknowledging responsibility and allocating blame according to actual accountability on these issues.  I don't find the GOP to be more to blame because they're the GOP.  I find them to be to blame because that's what the facts say.  It is undeniable that the housing bubble inflated and deflated under Bush.  It is undeniable that the Bush administration was warned about this as early as 2002.

It is undeniable that, as was the case with 9/11, they effectively ignored these warnings until it was too late.  You can say that this illustrates my partisanship, but I contend that your reluctance to "go there" illustrates that you are, in fact and despite your denials, being utterly partisan here.  9/11 happened on Bush's watch.  He and Cheney both claimed credit for supposedly keeping us safe in the subequent years.  They cannot claim this and simultaneously avoid the blame for not keeping us safe in their first year.  You are either responsible for what happens on your watch or you are not.  All I'm doing is following the logic of the GOP here.  There's nothing partisan about it.  They set the standard.

Conversely, I can only begin to imagine what the GOP would have said about the Democrats had they let the same things happen.

You say you are well aware that "liberals blame Pres. Bush for everything that has gone wrong."  Are you well aware that he is, in fact, to blame for many of these things?  Blaming Bush for things that he was supposedly responsible isn't liberal or conservative.  It's just honest.

Your Cato link is a bit of a tangent.  The author flatly asserts that the whole cause of the bubble is land use regulation, but offers little to no empircal backing for this statement.  Land use regulation might well be an issue to address, but certain aspects of the author's take are incredibly suspect, including his read of the 2005 Krugman column he links.  If you actually read the Krugman column he links, Krugman briefly draws a distinction between high population areas that have stricter zoning regulations and less populated areas that can simply sprawl out.

The Cato fellow takes this brief comment by Krugman far too literally and as confirmation of his own, biased point of view.  Reading the author's bio reveals easily that he's been grinding the land use de-regulation axe for many years.  He might have some good points on that issue, but this op-ed falls well short of proving that his take is correct as a matter of economic study.

And, of course, the Cato point of view is predictable: Simply de-regulate all land use!  Nevermind the complicating factors in highly populated coastal areas that lead to these regulations in the first place.

Your summary of all this, that the bubble didn't happen equally in all locales, is only superficially true.  The Gaussian risk distribution models that CDOs are based on assumed two facts.  One is that housing prices generally go up over time (historically, they've essentially matched inflation when you look at the long-run trend).  The other assumption was that even when there were declines, they would be localized.

This second assumption is important because while it had historically been true, it failed to remain true in this decade.  This is exactly the definition of the bubble bursting.  The fact that you don't seem to think so shows that you are confused by the difference between variable declines in regional markets across the nation and a general decline nationwide.

I want to be perfectly clear about this: If you do not think that the housing market declined nationwide, then you cannot possibly think that the housing bubble bursted. These ideas are absolutely synonomous.  If you don't think that the housing bubble bursted, then why would you possibly think there is some kind of major financial problem, whether with GSE securities or any other security?  Why did trillions in CDOs suddenly become "toxic assets" across the board?  So much so that the five giant investment banks of last year no longer even exist in their current form?

I agree with you that there isn't a purely objective way to assess the blame.  However, you can base your assessment on facts or not.  I have no interest in blatantly ideological false equivalance that tries to maintain that two parties means equal blame.  If you can't understand why that is silly, then I can't help you.  Do you realize how improbable it would be for both parties to always share equal blame in all cases, regardless of their actual involvement with any particular issue?

Likewise, I agree with your assessment that there are systemic issues with special interests on both sides, issues that go to the level of corruption in some cases.  Your insistence that Democrats are blamable is utterly uncontroversial to me.  Democrats are responsible for their actions as is anyone.  What I absolutely deny is that the Democrats and GOP are equally blamable for all problems and in all cases.  It's a notion so boneheaded that I can hardly believe anyone would need to expend this much energy to draw the distinction.

Finally, you say that you don't care where the blame lies.  Well, you do.  You've expended many words on insisting where you think the distribution of blame is.  Your denial that your allocation is partisan is really beside the point here.  You're highly invested in perceptions of blame, as evidenced by your many comments here.

Furthermore, you say that you only care that the problem gets solved, but problems must first be understood to be solved.  If, in that understanding, you come to discover that one person or group is more responsible than the other, then that realization must be accounted for in crafting a solution.  Avoiding laying the blame simply for its own sake might very well preclude someone from understanding a problem and, as such, from crafting an effective solution.

Which really brings us back to where this all started: Glenn Beck.  You do exactly what Glenn Beck does.  You insist upon your independence.  So does Beck.  You insist that you are not interested in the partisan battles.  So does Beck.  Then you go on arguing right-wing talking points right down the line: Woe for the weak dollar, run for the hills from hyperinflation, healthcare reform is a slippery slope, Fannie and Freddie caused the housing bubble (which might not have even happened apparently), de-regulation is the answer to everything, etc.  Chapter and verse right-wing talking points all.

It's really this simple: If you have a point of view, you have bias.  You are partisan.  It doesn't matter whether you try to draw that point of view as distinct from one of the dominant American political parties or not.  This is the farce of the American political "independent."  If you have a point of view, if you are advocating a point of view, then you are a partisan on behalf of that point of view.

I say: Make your point of view transparent and argue for it on the basis of facts and in good faith.  Anything else is a waste of time.