Without a moment's pause for reflection, Donald Trump has done a cannonball into the cesspool of U.S. neoliberal consensus politics. He's upset the still, fetid waters with his bloated, self-unaware orange corpus and in reaction conventional politicians and pundits are floundering, saying and doing things you would never see or hear them do otherwise, when everybody sticks to the script.
Such was the case yesterday with far-right political pundit Charles Krauthammer on the O'Reilly Factor.
Mark this moment: tried-and-true conservative Charles Krauthammer said that class and (lack of) education were central to Trump's appeal and the U.S. Presidential race.
He said, beautifully, that the GOP is already a party of whites, so Bill O'Reilly's adducing "white grievance" was irrelevant to the GOP primary contest.
Krauthammer said that Trump has tapped into something else.
If a Democrat would have said this on any other Monday, FOX would have shrieked "class warfare." But this was no ordinary Monday, no ordinary GOP primary. And sometimes, a little bit of the truth squirts out when you bite into a bullshit sandwich.
Enjoy:
http://video.foxnews.com/v/4831340298001/white-grievance-and-the-republican-party/
P.S. -- The bullshit bread of this truth sandwich was Krauthammer's assertion that we don't know how to address lack of education and opportunity in America. No, we know plenty. Just listen to Bernie Sanders. Step 1: Educate, train and heal American workers without putting them into a lifetime of debt. Step 2: Stop giving tax breaks and trade deals to multinational corporations (MNCs) that are nominally American yet do most of their production, and pay most of their taxes, overseas, and then "import" their products into America. Yeah, I'm talking about you, Apple.
Showing posts with label GOP. Show all posts
Showing posts with label GOP. Show all posts
Monday, April 4, 2016
Saturday, February 6, 2016
Trump sold old lie of health insurance across state lines
Trump just said in New Hampshire that he's going to unleash competition on U.S. healthcare after he repeals Obamacare, specifically by allowing Americans to buy health insurance across state lines.
Trump said the insurance companies are making a killing on Obamacare. The fact is, insurance companies are taking about 3 cents of every healthcare dollar in profit.
The problem is that U.S. medical care is too damn expensive. Insurance companies chip away at the edges and screw us in the process, through recission, yes, but they aren't the real problem.
Buying a cracker-jack health policy from a rinky-dink insurance provider in Rhode Island isn't going to do a thing for the cost of your care at home; it's only going to hit you when you actually need it that your insurance policy doesn't cover s**t.
Trump said the insurance companies are making a killing on Obamacare. The fact is, insurance companies are taking about 3 cents of every healthcare dollar in profit.
The problem is that U.S. medical care is too damn expensive. Insurance companies chip away at the edges and screw us in the process, through recission, yes, but they aren't the real problem.
Buying a cracker-jack health policy from a rinky-dink insurance provider in Rhode Island isn't going to do a thing for the cost of your care at home; it's only going to hit you when you actually need it that your insurance policy doesn't cover s**t.
Ted Cruz: The first talk radio presidential candidate
Ted Cruz is the first talk radio presidential candidate, so it's no wonder Glenn Beck has endorsed him. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and others also gush over him.
I say that because Cruz, like a talk radio host, owes his popularity to staking out the "purest" (read: most extreme) views within his party, without any hope of ever getting what he wants.
Cruz has never compromised in the Senate, he only grandstands, meaning he gets nothing done. He's a shameless self-promoter who has zero endorsements from his Republican colleagues in the Senate, who can't stand him.
It's amazing that Cruz looks like a strong candidate for the GOP nomination, having just won Iowa. (But not without some dirty tricks.)
It just goes to show that talk radio runs the GOP. Too bad talk radio takes zero responsibility for governing, just like Ted Cruz.
Now if you want a good look at the real Ted Cruz, in his young and striving young-adult years, read this:
http://theslot.jezebel.com/heres-what-happens-when-you-try-and-track-down-a-ted-cr-1752337625
I say that because Cruz, like a talk radio host, owes his popularity to staking out the "purest" (read: most extreme) views within his party, without any hope of ever getting what he wants.
Cruz has never compromised in the Senate, he only grandstands, meaning he gets nothing done. He's a shameless self-promoter who has zero endorsements from his Republican colleagues in the Senate, who can't stand him.
It's amazing that Cruz looks like a strong candidate for the GOP nomination, having just won Iowa. (But not without some dirty tricks.)
It just goes to show that talk radio runs the GOP. Too bad talk radio takes zero responsibility for governing, just like Ted Cruz.
Now if you want a good look at the real Ted Cruz, in his young and striving young-adult years, read this:
http://theslot.jezebel.com/heres-what-happens-when-you-try-and-track-down-a-ted-cr-1752337625
Tuesday, December 9, 2014
Godspeed, Ebola 'czar' Ron Klain!
Am I missing something or is the "unqualified" Ebola czar Ron Klain the most successful "czar" under any U.S. President? No Americans died, Ebola is off the TV and out of the papers, we're all breathing easy again.... I mean, the only possible retort I can think of is that Ebola wasn't that big a deal to begin with; that the CDC had it under control all along; that maybe the GOP and its colleagues on Fox and talk radio just made it erupt into a pants-shitting crisis to win votes and then promptly dropped it mid-November as soon as they had what they wanted -- a Congressional majority...
..But no, no. I can't accept that cynical explanation. I prefer the more positive explanation: that Ron Klain is public health genius on par with Albert Sabin and a saint on par with Mother Teresa.
Godspeed, Mr. Klain! We thank you for your selfless service to our country!
By Anita Kumar
December 8, 2014 | McClatchy Washington Bureau
Monday, August 11, 2014
Frum: There is no 'libertarian' movement
I hate to use the term "libertards," but... if the orthopedic shoe fits....
By David Frum
August 11, 2014 | The Atlantic
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
The GOP insurgent who heralded the Progressive Era and paved the way for the Tea Parties (Atlantic)
"He’s a fanatic," charged a corporate attorney, "and the way that man goes around spreading discontent is a menace to law, property, business, and all American institutions. If we don’t stop him here he will go out and agitate all over the United States. We’re getting him now; you’ll get him next. That man must be blocked.""Yes," added an indignant banker, "La Follette will spread socialism all over the world."
Well, according to Glenn Beck, that's just what La Follette and others did in the early 1900s -- by starting the Progressive Movement.
In fact, the Progressives, who were born out of the corrupt 19th century GOP, saved capitalism and American democracy for almost a century. What do I mean? Let me quote myself from 2007:
Progressives wanted government to take action against rising economic inequality, discrimination against freed blacks, child labor, squalid living conditions and "slumlords," price discrimination and monopolies; high protective tariffs; and in general, gov't serving Big Business.Progressive reforms included: breaking up trusts and interlocking directorates; new food safety standards (Meat Inspection Act and Pure Food and Drug Act); sanitation codes for sweatshops; reform of "reform" schools and prisons; workmen's compensation laws; use of the political referendum; direct election of U.S. Senators via the 17th Amendment (they called the Senate the "Millionaires Club" even back then!); regulation of the railroads through the 1903 Elkins Act and local public utilities commissions; and state corrupt-practices acts. They also campaigned for women's suffrage, the 8-hour workday, and prohibition, but weren't successful until the 1920s.
Sounds like a bunch of stuff straight outta Marx, huh? In fact it's the America we know today, a country we wouldn't want to give up.
Says Wolraich in The Atlantic of La Follette:
If "Fighting Bob" were alive today, he’d be howling in the Capitol. A hundred years before the Tea Parties, Senator Bob La Follette of Wisconsin was the original Republican insurgent. In the early 1900s, he led a grassroots revolt against the GOP establishment and pioneered the ferocious tactics that the Tea Parties use today—long-shot primary challenges, sensational filibusters, uncompromising ideology, and populist rhetoric. But there was a crucial difference between La Follette and today’s right-wing insurgents: “Fighting Bob” was a founding father of the progressive movement.
Git yerselves edumacated and read on!....
By Michael Wolraich
July 22, 2014 | The Atlantic
Sunday, June 8, 2014
Our McJobs economy...and the GOP plan to make it worse
My dear conservative friends will blame the shrinking middle class and more McJobs on Obama, naturally.
But to see they're wrong you only have to look at their policy "fixes": no minimum wage; no guaranteed health insurance for workers; no right to unionize; and privatizing Medicare. Oh, and cutting unemployment benefits to motivate more people to compete for low-wage jobs, thereby driving wages down even further. The most radical Tea Partiers even say we should abolish the Department of Education, when U.S. public schools are most people's shot at a better life.
None of these ideas makes any economic sense. (It makes a heckuva lot of sense from a class warfare perspective, however.) And in the case of conservatives' debt fetish, they confuse economic cause and effect: debt causes recessions, not the other way around.
So they can't diagnose the problem, nor can they prescribe any cures.
So they can't diagnose the problem, nor can they prescribe any cures.
But wait, they have more great ideas. Cutting "job-killing regulations" and income taxes on the rich should stimulate growth, then all the unemployed could get jobs in the new businesses that Republicans say their hands-off policies would create. Yet we tried that before and saw how it worked out.
Conservative talk radio says we can all move to Texas or North Dakota and find high-paying jobs in the shale gas boom, but that's hardly practical. Most people can't just pick up and move their entire lives, like Okies of the Depression era, to where the jobs are. Doesn't matter. Republicans want to open up even more public lands for oil & gas drilling, even though that oil is sold by multinational corporations on the world market; it's not "ours."
Or as I like to sum it up, the GOP thinks we can cut and burn our way to a better economic future.
It’s the sixth year of Barack Obama’s presidency, the job market is still sluggish, most Americans say they’re unhappy with the economy, and Obama’s approval ratings are down. So what’s the Republican plan to turn it around?The answer is, they don’t all think they need one and those who do can’t agree on a unified view.
This is why it's so ominous that Republicans, thanks to gerrymandering and stronger off-election turnout, could take over Congress in November. I'm not saying they're solely responsible for the Great Recession, (although Phil Gramm could certainly make a case), but they certainly haven't learned any economic lessons from it, and that's scary. This is a party that's pissed off yet feels zero responsibility for its policies -- it's a veritable chimpanzee with a hand grenade.... And they have as many good ideas as a chimp how to grow the middle class and get Americans back to work.
Posted by mybudget360 | June 8, 2014
The US is slowly becoming a McJob nation. While the press jumps up and down that the US is now finally at a breakeven point from the jobs lost since the recession started in 2007, they fail to mention that those not in the labor force is up by nearly 13 million. Even looking into the recent employment report, we continue to find a heavy trend of hiring in low wage employment sectors. For example, 32,000 jobs were added in “leisure and hospitality” bringing the annual total of jobs added to 311,000. Another 21,000 jobs were added in social assistance which pay very little but will grow as demand for health support grows by an aging population. The system at least in the eyes of Wall Street and the government is working perfectly fine. We have a plentiful supply of low wage labor while laws and bailout mechanisms are in place for the financially and politically connected. The middle class continues to fall off the bandwagon one by one and enters a labor force of permanent low wage labor with very little prospect of a decent retirement. In fact, most will be working until all the wheels come flying off. We also find that 1 out of 4 Americans are working in jobs that pay $10 or less per hour. How about trying to earn the Americans Dream on that McJob salary?
Breaking even and seeing the non-labor force surge
It has taken us 7 slow and painful years simply to recover the jobs we had back in 2007. With the latest jobs number, we finally are back to where we were in 2007. Of course, the population has increased and many of these new jobs come with horrible benefits, lower wages, and very little security. Is it any wonder why home buying in the country continues to be so anemic?
Low wages are also creating an entire nation that is unprepared for retirement. For example, 1 out of 3 Americans has zero dollars in their savings account. Half the country is one paycheck away from a financial avalanche. During the last 7 years, we have added close to 13 million Americans to the “not in the labor force” category:
record jobs in context
Source: BLS, ZH
A part of this growth is an older population but a large part of it isn’t. We have many digging into college degrees with massive debt to avoid the current economic situation. Others have simply given up looking for work. The low wage recovery has been extremely painful for many Americans and wealth growth has not occurred for 90 percent of the country. These are simply the facts. This is what we find in every piece of data we look at.
Economist Tim Taylor presented a chart highlighting that the US has a very high portion of its population working in low wage jobs. This is contrary to the image that the US is a land with middle class jobs for many:
low-wage-2
Low wage work as defined in the data set above is employment that pays less than $10 per hour. Imagine trying to support a family on this. 2,000 hours of work would yield $20,000 which is below the poverty line for a family of three. And then we wonder how we have roughly 47 million Americans on food stamps.
The reason we continue to see this kind of recovery is that all policy made during the collapse was dictated by those in the banking industry that led up to this collapse in the first place. Even former Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner mentioned that if we didn’t do the bailouts exactly as we did (i.e., keep big payouts to banking execs, money for corrupt workers, etc) then the economy would have imploded. Well the economy did implode for most workers and a recovery never happened. Maybe for his closely knit group of people things are looking great:
growth-in-income-inequality
But for the rest of country people are running the Red Queen’s Race by working harder and harder simply to stay in the same place. A McJob recovery is not something to be proud about especially when the middle class in the US continues to dwindle.
Thursday, May 22, 2014
Cox: McConnell's win is a victory for the Tea Parties
My friends in the Tea Parties won't see it this way, but Cox is right: Bevin, et al, have successfully moved the GOP even farther to the Right. Indeed, McConnell is consistently rated as one of the most conservative voters in the U.S. Senate:
McConnell didn't win because he became a Tea Party member – he's so conservative, he didn't have to. (A vote analysis casts him as one of the top 25 conservative members of the Senate, and Tea Party darling and intrastate rival Paul is at number 19.) Instead, McConnell's win just shows how easily the GOP grows over its fringes.What's happening in the Republican party is the worst of both the Tea Party and more traditional "free-market" (but never really as free as advertised) economics: an aggressive "pro-business" agenda combined with radically retrogressive social policies.
But I don't expect the TP maximalists to take any heart from Bevin's loss.... Even worse, most of them will probably hold their noses and vote for Mitch against his formidable Democratic challenger Alison Lundergan Grimes.
UPDATE (30.05.2014): Here's middle-of-the-road political analyst Bill Schneider over at Reuters saying much the same thing as Cox on the same day: "How far right can Republicans go?"
UPDATE (30.05.2014): Here's middle-of-the-road political analyst Bill Schneider over at Reuters saying much the same thing as Cox on the same day: "How far right can Republicans go?"
By Ana Marie Cox
May 21, 2014 | Guardian
Friday, March 21, 2014
Guerilla class warfare: IRS audits fewer rich, more poor people
Channeling the spirit of my man David Cay Johnston, I'm gonna tell you why this mundane story matters.
See, Republicans in Congress cynically under-fund the IRS year in, year out. So an undermanned, undertrained IRS makes do and does what comes easier, relatively -- auditing people with lower incomes. Because higher-income filers have lawyers and complicated returns and it requires more manpower to check them.
What this works out to, in reality, is a calculated game of probability by rich filers: if you're wealthy, and you're lawyered up, chances are you'll come away unaudited; and even if you are audited, you'll come away unscathed.
And so wealth inequality is a double-whammy for the poor and working class: earning so much less, they are still more likely to be audited.
BECAUSE THAT'S THE WAY THE GOP WANTS IT. Don't be naive and believe otherwise.
Finally, do I really have to explain how this makes no business sense? As every auditor knows, you focus your attention on the weakest control points with the highest potential for losses. The potential for losses among poor filers is minimal, almost nil.
All the Tea Partyers who are serious about fiscal health should cheer on the IRS, because every dollar spent on the IRS brings in $255 to the U.S. Treasury. Just by enforcing existing tax laws passed by Congress, nothing more. No other government agency can boast of such efficiency! And so it's time for the TPs to put up or shut up about the IRS, the only government agency that reduces the federal deficit.
By Patrick Temple-West
March 21, 2014 | Reuters
The U.S. Internal Revenue Service said on Friday that it audited fewer high-income Americans in 2013 than it did in 2012 or 2011, while it conducted more audits of people with no income.
Total audits fell by 5 percent from 2012 to reach the lowest level since 2008 as the IRS said it coped with budget cuts.
For the fiscal year that ended September 30, 2013, the IRS said it audited 24.2 percent of individual tax returns with adjusted gross income of $10 million or more. That was down from 27 percent in 2012 and 30 percent in 2011.
There were also fewer individual tax returns audited in the $5 million to $10 million gross income band, the IRS said.
In total, the IRS audited about 1.4 million individual returns. IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said in a statement that budget cuts at the agency have "presented challenges."
Wealthy Americans historically are the likeliest to be audited. The IRS a few years ago started a "Global High Wealth Industry Group" to audit high-wealth individuals more efficiently.
But Congress in January cut the IRS's fiscal 2014 budget by about 4 percent to $11.3 billion.
The funding cuts have forced the IRS to cut the number of customer service representatives it employs during tax season, Colleen Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union said in a statement. "Both taxpayers and employees are frustrated."
Last year, audits were done on 6 percent of individual tax returns reporting no gross income, up from 2.7 percent in 2012 and 3.4 percent in 2011.
Saturday, March 15, 2014
GOP knows U.S. can't do much in Crimea, but blasts Obama anyway
Cohen is right: "Calls for a greater US response to Putin’s military provocations assume a degree of omnipotence in US foreign policy – and an ability to shape foreign events – that simply doesn’t exist, and never really has."
Therefore it's shameful how Republicans try to score political points against President Obama when we're faced with the biggest foreign policy crisis since 1991. The No-Responsibility Wing can't be serious adults for even one second.
Cohen sums up the nuttiness of conservative critics [emphasis mine]:
"We don’t want military action" in Crimea, says Rand Paul. "We should be exceedingly reluctant to employ US military force," says Ted Cruz. Even Area Unrepentant War-Monger Dick Cheney says "there are military options that don’t involve putting troops on the ground in Crimea".Indeed, one is hard-pressed to find a single person in Washington who believes the US should send actual American soldiers to Ukraine – even if Russia truly escalates the crisis and send its troops into Eastern Ukraine.All of which raises a quite serious and legitimate question: what the hell are we arguing about?If the US is not prepared to put troops on the ground? If we’re not willing to use military force? If we’re content with taking the biggest tool in the US toolbox off the table, then how exactly is the United States supposed to reverse Russia’s seizure of the Crimea? Our vast military capabilities won’t mean much to Putin if he knows we aren’t willing to use them.Here’s the dirty little secret of the foreign-policy pundit/expert orgy on what to do about Crimea: the US has at its disposal very few levers with which to change Russia’s behavior, at least in the near-term. We can cancel multilateral summits and military training (already done); we can deny visas to Russian officials (just beginning); we can even ramp up bilateral economic sanctions and try to build support among key European allies for a larger, more invasive sanctions regime (under discussion).But as our long effort to bring Iran to the negotiating table over its nuclear ambition reminds us, such steps will take time and diplomatic effort to bring results.
Like I said before, the levers that the U.S. does have at its disposal require that useless gum-flapping diplomacy stuff that Republicans revile.
By Michael Cohen
March 14, 2014 | Guardian
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Limbaugh encapsulates idiocy on Ukraine and foreign policy
This whole segment from Rush's show is idiotic. That's a given. But I'm posting it to illustrate two points -- OK, three.
First, the Zero-Responsibility Wing of the GOP (and that includes the Tea Parties) can say whatever they like to badmouth Obama and that's just fine because they're not in charge. Which leads me to...
...Second, notice here that Rush and his Zero-Responsibility Wing offer no specific instructions what Obama SHOULD do instead. And that's no accident, because Rush is not an idiot. He's an "entertainer," he's a charlatan, but he's not an idiot. He knows that the U.S. cannot very well insert itself militarily in Ukraine to liberate Crimea from Russian occupation without risking World War III. So what can the U.S. do? Rush is silent on that -- yet still critical of President Obama.
Third and finally, just remember this moment next time there's a Republican POTUS in office and Republicans tell Democrats to get in line and "respect the office" or "put partisanship aside" because "politics end at the border." What Republicans are doing now to undermine President Obama and do their best to make him look weak is the basest form of political partisanship -- especially since they won't suggest anything materially different than what Obama is already doing. Not the least of which, because, so much depends on agreement with sanctions against Russia by the European Union -- sanctions which require robust U.S. diplomacy. You know, that gum-flapping, useless talkin' stuff. Yeah, diplomacy actually still matters, my neocon friends, word up!
March 13, 2014 | The Rush Limbaugh Show
Thursday, December 26, 2013
Tea Parties can't win, but won't disappear
As I've said before, the Tea Party should always be referred to in the plural -- the Tea Parties -- because there is no overarching organization, plan or leadership to this loose confederation of like-minded older white people. Tea Party researcher Theda Skocpol elaborates [emphasis mine]:
Even though there is no one center of Tea Party authority -- indeed, in some ways because there is no one organized center -- the entire gaggle of grassroots and elite organizations amounts to a pincer operation that wields money and primary votes to exert powerful pressure on Republican officeholders and candidates. Tea Party influence does not depend on general popularity at all. Even as most Americans have figured out that they do not like the Tea Party or its methods, Tea Party clout has grown in Washington and state capitals.
The Tea Parties have a certain clout because they don't want government to do anything at all, therefore they don't need to compromise. It's easier to destroy than create; likewise it's easier to obstruct than to govern. Since TP'ers believe governing is a "necessary evil," for them the less the better. It's very hard to defeat such nihilism that really wants nothing but to throw a monkey wrench into Big Government's gears. At the national level, they use the filibuster, committee hearings, judicial appointments, the debt ceiling and other parliamentary tactics to distract and obstruct our government from doing anything. Indeed, this Congress has been the most do-nothing in history.
It's also hard to compromise with TP'ers who are fundamentally dishonest about their true aims, and hypocritical to boot. Skocpol studied the TP movement and came to this conclusion:
Fiscal conservatism is often said to be the top grassroots Tea Party priority, but ... I did not find this to be true. Crackdowns on immigrants, fierce opposition to Democrats, and cuts in spending for the young were the overriding priorities we heard from volunteer Tea Partiers, who are often, themselves, collecting costly Social Security, Medicare, and veterans' benefits to which they feel fully entitled as Americans who have “paid their dues” in lifetimes of hard work.
Bottom line: electorally, the Tea Parties will never win. That is, they can't do any better than the old GOP. They can simply replace "RINOs" and moderate Republicans in safely Republican districts with their far-right TP candidates. In competitive races, the nutty TP candidate usually loses to a Democrat.
By Theda Skocpol
December 26, 2013 | The Atlantic
Wednesday, December 4, 2013
Post-Benghazi, GOP hurts Libyan diplomacy
This is basically what I said earlier: U.S. diplomats understand that they must sometimes work in dangerous places, and they're willing to take some risks to do their jobs:
Thousands of U.S. diplomats do their jobs every day, conscious of the dangers they face but accepting of the risks that come with the job. Excessive security that interferes with their jobs doesn't serve our interests abroad or make us safer at home. The politicians who play political football with Benghazi should be ashamed of themselves.
In other words, our foreign service officers can't do public diplomacy when they are ridiculously outnumbered by armed guards, or holed up in a fortress embassy.
FSOs also receive extra compensation (danger pay) for working in posts like Libya.
(Mieczyslaw Boduszynski was a Foreign Service officer with the State Department from 2004 to 2013.)
By Mieczyslaw P. Boduszynski
December 3, 2013 | Los Angeles Times
Sunday, November 17, 2013
GOP's alternative: Un-Affordable Care Act?
I hesitate to post this because of the author's conclusion: give single-payer (aka "Medicare for all") a second look.
Don't get me wrong, I prefer single-payer. But as I said recently, many Obamacare critics illogically believe the conspiracy theory that Obama has intended all along for the Affordable Care Act to fail, ushering in "socialized medicine" to save the day.
Even single-payer is not socialized medicine; it's socialized payment for medicine. There are plenty of private doctors and hospitals today that make a fine living off Medicare patients, and nobody accuses them of communist sympathies.
By Caroline Poplin
November 14, 2013 | McClatchy-Tribune News Service
Republicans can hardly believe their good luck. The Obama administration has once again snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. After successfully holding off Republican efforts to destroy Obamacare by shutting down the government and threatening default, the administration badly bungled the rollout of the crown jewel of health reform: the insurance exchanges. (No surprise to those of us who wrestle with computers daily.) Somehow administration leaders also failed to anticipate the predictable response of insurance companies to a perfect opportunity to raise premiums wholesale, while blaming someone else.
Nevertheless, we need to keep in mind that even as they gleefully tear into the ACA, Republicans have not offered an alternative.
On reflection, however, this is no surprise. Republicans don't see a problem with health care in America. Insurers can sell what they chose to whom they chose; people can select policies they like and can afford, or save their money for other things. This is how markets work. The only change Republicans would make is deregulation, so insurers and good prospects can find one another more easily across state lines.
As Ronald Reagan said: "Government is not the solution to the problem, government (in this case, the ACA) is the problem."
For conservatives, health insurance and health care are ordinary commodities to be traded in the marketplace, just like automobile insurance and automobiles.
But health care is not just another item in the shopping cart. As the African-American spiritual observed, "If living were something that money could buy, the rich would live and the poor would die."
And that is where we are in the 21st century. Health care is a matter of life and death. Our medicine is highly effective. Today, we can cure, or treat, diseases that were once fatal - heart attacks, many cancers, even HIV. That is, if you have the money. Today rich Americans live, on average, five years longer than poor citizens.
Nor is health insurance an ordinary insurance product.
Illness today is not evenly distributed across the population. Some 10 percent of people are responsible for 60 percent of health-care costs in the United States. Because most illness continues for many years after diagnosis, these people are easy to identify: patients with multiple sclerosis, congestive heart failure, lymphoma.
No one wants to pay for the sick people - not the insurance companies (particularly if they cannot recover their costs by charging the sick higher premiums), and not healthy customers. We hear this now, as single men and older people complain that to comply with the ACA, they have to pay for maternity benefits that they will never use.
A free market with lots of choices among multiple insurers, risk pools, policies with all sorts of benefits and price structures, allows insurers and healthy individuals to avoid the sick. The less affluent healthy can gamble on inexpensive policies with spotty coverage (useless to the chronically ill): since most people are healthy most of the time, few of them will ever need to test their insurance. (Or they can join large groups of other healthy people working for large employers who provide insurance.) Insurers can charge sick people thousands of dollars a month to cover the cost of their claims, and then some.
The result? The people who need health care the most have the most difficulty getting insurance that covers it. Doesn't this defeat the whole purpose of the exercise?
That, however, is the Republican alternative to the ACA. And remember, even before the ACA, things were not stable, but deteriorating: as health costs rose, premiums, co-pays and deductibles were going up, employers were cutting back. Without the ACA, those trends will continue.
The ACA was an effort to preserve a private health insurance market, using regulation to achieve a better result. As we see, this is very complicated.
There is a third option. If everyone is in the same, large, pool, everything medically necessary is covered, insurers are paid merely to process claims, and premiums are scaled to income, there is enough money to cover everyone at reasonable cost without elaborate, expensive, error-prone computer programs and geniuses to run them. People will be able to choose their doctors and hospitals. (And the rich can always buy more if they want.)
A crazy, wild-eyed socialist nightmare? No, this is Medicare, a familiar, popular, competently-run public insurance system that everyone's parents or grandparents rely on. Person-for-person, disease-for-disease, Medicare is the cheapest, most efficient health insurance program in the country. (There is virtue in simplicity.) Medicare already controls health care costs better than private insurers, and with a few tweaks, could do much more, forcing prices down to the level citizens of every other advanced democracy pay, with no sacrifice in quality.
Given the alternatives, maybe Medicare-for-all deserves a second look.
Monday, November 11, 2013
Obamacare: Another conservative-lite idea
As I've said before, Obamacare was not what real liberals and progressives wanted: single-payer. In today's op-ed, Zelizer laments that, and warns liberals against "half-baked" liberal policies that are really just conservative-lite ideas.
Obamacare is the classic example. It was first proposed by the uber-conservative Heritage Foundation in the early 90s, then supported by uber-conservative economist Milton Friedman and Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, among 25 conservative leaders, then implemented on the state level by a Republican governor.
The only problem is that the conservative party in the U.S. has gone farther to the Right since the 90s. Now its "best & brightest" like Rush Limbaugh believe that the answer is to get rid of health insurance altogether. We should return to the 19th century. Idiots!
Before Obamacare, Obama never even put the single-payer option on the table. Congress never voted on it. Obama began with closed-door negotiations with insurance companies and drug makers to see what they'd agree to. Obamacare is what we got. Now their revenues are hitting all-time highs and projected to rise in 2014 as well, so don't cry for them.
Nevertheless, there are those on the Right today who ridiculously view Obamacare as a big, elaborate socialist conspiracy to usher in single-payer health care. Talk about a disconnect! On one side, we have dissatisfied liberals lamenting that Obama missed a once-in-a-generation chance to change the healthcare game. On the other side, we have dissatisfied conservatives who say the liberals are pulling a fast one to get what they want eventually. Eventually, in some distant future.... It's as if paranoid conservatives have more faith in the inevitability of liberal ideals than liberals do!
There are two variants on this conspiracy theory, as far as I can pick up. The first variant goes: expanding Medicaid for the poor is just one more step toward single-payer, since the government already pays for more than half of all healthcare in America. The second one goes: Obamacare is intended to be such a disaster that Americans will throw up their hands, decide private insurance is a mess, and demand single-payer instead.
I'll give both versions more time than they deserve, if only because millions of talk radio/Tea Party Republicans really believe in them. As for expanding Medicaid, conservatives can breathe a partial sigh of relief, because their Republicans governors already blocked Medicaid expansion to 8 million Americans in their respective states. There is a problem here though, and it's real. GOP governors also refused to set up their own health insurance markets, thus shifting the burden to the federal Healthcare.gov website. This is delaying people getting health insurance who want it, and they might just give up entirely.
Rick Moran summed up the self-defeating idiocy of Republicans' spiteful, partisan refusal to establish state health insurance exchanges:
[W]hile conservatives think the Obamacare exchanges are overregulated and oversubsidized, they are actually closer to the right-of-center vision for health care reform than the Obamacare Medicaid expansion, which is happening no matter what transpires with Healthcare.gov. So if the exchanges fail and the Medicaid expansion takes effect (and, inevitably, becomes difficult to roll back), we’ll be left with an individual market that’s completely dysfunctional and a more socialized system over all.
The second variant on this conspiracy theory might end up being true... but only by accident, not by design. I mean, do conservatives really believe that Obama is such a secret, selfless socialist ideologue that he has intended all along for his signature piece of eponymous legislation to be a total failure -- a failure that would define his presidential legacy? Talk about taking one for the team!
Furthermore, if conservatives really believe Obamacare was designed to fail, then... why do they take such glee at every opportunity to declare it a failure? Aren't they playing right into Obama's diabolical hands? But ah, says the tinfoil hat crew, Obama didn't intend for it to fail so soon. Because he's so darn incompetent, see? He can't even screw up right. They say Obama intended for us to get good and used to Obamacare first, so that it could fail several years from now, just when we were about to... so that we would... you see then.... Oh, I can't follow this wacky line of reasoning any further.
By Julian Zelizer
November 11, 2013 | CNN
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
McAuliffe's win and Obamacare spin
Wow, the headline below is awfully ballsy spin by "Fair & Balanced" FoxNews. They're flirting with yellow journalism.
(They employ a typical FOX tactic: it's OK to write a stupid and inflammatory headline as long as it ends with a question mark. Example: "John Stossel To Sell Children's Kidneys on Free Market?").
(They employ a typical FOX tactic: it's OK to write a stupid and inflammatory headline as long as it ends with a question mark. Example: "John Stossel To Sell Children's Kidneys on Free Market?").
Let's recall that Terry McAuliffe was losing in the polls to his Republican rival Ken Cuccinelli, 38 to 40 percent, back in March. By August McAuliffe was up only 6 percentage points. His margin spiked to double-digits during the federal government shutdown, very unpopular with Virginia residents, but after the shutdown his lead returned to about only 6 points.
McAuliffe probably shouldn't have had a chance. He is a Clintonista carpetbagger who never held political office, and was tied to shady business dealings. There hasn't been a Virginia governor from the same party as the U.S. President since 1977. And McAuliffe already lost once to a popular Republican candidate for Virginia's governor.
The reason he came back and won this time? Mainly because Cuccinelli is a Tea Party kook who staked out all sorts of far-right positions on abortion, gay rights and climate science.
The reason he came back and won this time? Mainly because Cuccinelli is a Tea Party kook who staked out all sorts of far-right positions on abortion, gay rights and climate science.
As a result, pre-election polls had McAuliffe leading Cuccinelli among women voters 58 to 34 percent!
Money was certainly a factor. McAuliffe was literally a professional fundraiser, he knows how. But notably, the conservative Chamber of Commerce declined to contribute to Cuccinelli's campaign, although they kicked in $1 million for the GOP candidate Bob McDonnell last election. Why? Because Cuccinelli's too kooky.
So this election certainly was not a 'No' vote on Obamacare, it was a 'No' vote on the Tea Party. Cuccinelli became the GOP nominee through a state convention instead of the usual primary vote, where he probably would have lost to a GOP rival. The Tea Parties hijacked the convention and -- voila! -- kook for a candidate.
And so to my dear Tea Party Republicans I say, please keep doing what you're doing! You keep setting 'em up and we'll keep knocking 'em down, OK?
Tuesday, November 5, 2013
GOP's 'Work or Starve' economic program in effect
This food stamp cut should start boosting employment any day now, since the GOTP has given America's millions of hungry children, disabled vets and seniors the best motivation of all: work or starve.
Indeed, as Rep. Paul Ryan cautioned us, "We don't want to turn the safety net into a hammock that lulls able-bodied people into lives of dependency and complacency."
Yep, we've cut those hammock strings, and now all we have to do is sit back and wait for those BLS employment figures to start ticking up as the free market works its magic....
By Gary Younge
November 4, 2013 | Guardian
Thursday, October 17, 2013
GOP cost U.S. nearly 1 million jobs in 3 years
Before my Republican friends roll their eyes and dismiss this study as some lib'rul media/Media Matters hack job, please note that this study was commissioned by the Peterson Foundation, the founder of the "Fix the Debt CEOs" group that wants to cut the U.S. federal safety net in order to decrease the national debt.
Republicans can't be trusted as stewards of the U.S. economy. They've got two tricks in their bag: tax cuts and deregulation. But after they've cut taxes to the bone and given business license to do anything, anywhere, to anybody... they're worthless.
By Mark Gongloff
October 15, 2013 | Huffington Post
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Frum: 'Tea Parties, don't let the door hit you on the way out'
Boo-ya! Republican David Frum unloads with both barrels on the Tea Parties:
Right now, tea party extremism contaminates the whole Republican brand. It's a very interesting question whether a tea party bolt from the GOP might not just liberate the party to slide back to the political center -- and liberate Republicans from identification with the Sarah Palins and the Ted Cruzes who have done so much harm to their hopes over the past three election cycles.It's worth repeating over and over again. Add Todd Akin in Missouri and Richard Mourdock in Indiana, Sharron Angle in Nevada and Ken Buck in Colorado, Christine O'Donnell in Delaware and Joe Miller in Alaska -- and you have half a dozen Senate races lost to the GOP by extremist nominations.Maybe the right answer to the threat, "Shut down the government or we quit" is: "So sad you feel that way. Don't let the door hit you on the way out."
Nevertheless, if it hurts the GOP if the Tea Parties stay in, then as a Democratic "hack," I think the TPs should stay. The TP pirates will keep on cutting the throats of GOP "RINOs" even as the Republican ship sinks to the bottom. We liberals should let their lust for anarchy wreak its havoc on the Republican Party.
By David Frum
October 14, 2013 | CNN
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