A few more lessons from Bernie Sanders' run for President

I don't disagree with Jeb Lund on the positivity of Sen. Bernie Sanders' run for President, but there's a bit more to say here.

First, about being the right-looking "blowdried" candidate with a red tie: yes, true, alas. But let's not swoon over Bernie just because he "doesn't give a f--k" about his image. Let's swoon over him because he does give a f--k about the right things. And he actually proposes good legislation: on the minimum wage; regulating the Wall Street fraudsters; and on and on.

I mean, image is a terrible thing nowadays. The Republicans' version of the perfect-image candidate is Ben Carson: a black identity politician whose positions are indistinguishable from anybody else's (insofar as he has stated positions on anything). His bona fides are that he pulled himself up by his bootstraps despite being black and poor, can't stand his fellow African-American Barack Obama, and most importantly, rails against Obamacare. Beyond that, Ben Carson is a cipher... or an empty suit. He doesn't have many policy ideas because, as is blindingly obvious -- and this only adds to his appeal among Republicans -- it never occurred to him to run for President until quite recently, at the urging of Republicans who were out to prove they didn't distrust black people... as long as they believed all the "right" things.  

Second, Bernie's humble economic station is a good thing nowadays; but a politician's wealth or privileged background was not always a predictor of his political leanings or his performance in office. FDR, an all-time top 3 U.S. President and blueblood patrician, proved that. What Roosevelt had was a sense of old-money, old-fashioned noblesse oblige. With the recent departure of Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the closest things we have to old money in U.S. politics today are Jeb Bush and Donald Trump.  

In fact, running for President today -- the GOP presidential nomination, that is -- is not a result of a candidate's wealth and privilege, necessarily, it is a path to wealth and privilege: as a FOX contributor / talk radio host / author / highly-paid guest speaker. Never before was political loserdom a path to anything but a ticket to retirement.  Now with enough Super PAC money and a favorable audience with Sheldon Anderson, a nominee can be plucked from political obscurity and made a front-runner, with his guaranteed payday at the end, whatever the result.

Third, there's something different about a Bernie Sanders or Ralph Nader running for the Democratic nomination, knowing he's going to lose, in the hopes of nudging (or embarrassing) the eventual nominee to move slightly to the Left, and the gaggle of Republican candidates trying to outrun each other to the Right, eastward beyond the horizon.  Because many Democratic voters would be uncomfortable with a Bernie Sanders as a nominee -- "too liberal!" -- whereas, no matter who gets nominated by the GOP, most Republican voters will be dissatisfied -- "he's not conservative enough" -- or even bestow the worst insult imaginable -- "he's a RINO."  

Most Republicans probably don't stop to think why there's no equivalent of the "RINO" label among Democrats. (I wish there were). But if they did, they might realize that we Democrats are a pretty diverse bunch who can't even agree among ourselves what a true Democrat is. On the Republican side, talk radio settled that issue at least 15 years ago; and the media masters of the GOP police their ideological purity mercilessly...even at the expense of losing elections. (Which I grudgingly give them credit for; although they have convinced themselves that they speak for America's "Silent Majority," and when they lose, it is thanks to George Soros and the Lib'rul Media conspiracy, not their ideology). 

Bernie Sanders doesn't have to win the Democratic primary to do a lot of good

By Jeb Lund

May 27, 2015 | Guardian

URL: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/27/bernie-sanders-democratic-primary-do-good?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Gmail

VA scandal is an indictment of US health care, not Big Government

Bravo, Mr. Wapshott!  Conservatives too often employ a version of the following syllogism: John is bad; John is a government employee; thus all government employees are bad.  

Here's a good 'graph:

Cannot those employed on salaries by private companies, particularly employees of corporate behemoths who operate near-monopolies, also ration their customers and say they have been put them on waitlists that do not exist? Can employees of commercial firms not also be corrupt and lazy? Does the free market not employ salaried workers? This muddled thinking is simply partisanship posing as intellectual rigor.

Intellectual rigor mortis, yes, but intellectual rigor among conservatives? Heck, no!  

Waitlists, Charles Krauthammer laments?  Gee, I called my primary care physician in January; he said the earliest he could see me was April.  Rationing, he says?  Gee, what do you call preferred providers networks, approved lists of procedures, payment ceilings, and the whole list of restrictions that private insurance companies put on our health care to cut costs and increase their profits?Private health insurance is all about rationing, because that's the only way they make money!

VA scandal is no mark against big government

By Nicholas Wapshott

June 3, 2014 | Reuters

For some, the veterans hospitals scandal is a human tragedy pure and simple. Those who loyally served their nation in uniform, putting their lives on the line, were shunned when they sought medical help.

For others, however, the troubles at the Department of Veterans Affairs have provided what one pundit called “A gift from God.”

For those commentators, the scandal confirmed their worst fears. The logic runs like this: The VA provides a government-run health service; the failures of the VA are a disgrace; ipso facto, all government-run health systems are a disgrace; proving that all government-run bodies are a disgrace. So all government should be sharply reduced — if not abandoned altogether.

The VA troubles, however, prove no such thing. The poor treatment of veterans has nothing to do with funding and everything to do with administrative incompetence combined with craven deceit.

Anyone who has been kept waiting inordinately by a doctor or hospital, or who has had their treatment or prescription drugs denied by their health insurance company, knows that. Anyone kept hanging on the line for an ill-named “customer service representative” and told by an automaton, “Your call is important to us,” knows that private companies treat customers with equal disdain.

The difference is that in the VA scandal, democratic accountability eventually — it took far too long, we know — kicked in. The top man resigned and top managers who presided over the incompetence and subterfuge were fired. It is a further scandal that it took President Barack Obama himself to push the wrongdoers into admitting responsibility. But at least the problem was ultimately addressed.

When can you remember a chief executive officer of an aberrant cable TV company or phone or utility company or even a health insurance company — fill in your favorite offender here — falling on their sword for keeping their customers waiting?

This is the full quote from the “Gift from God” analyst, former neurosurgeon Ben Carson: “What’s happening with the veterans is a gift from God to show us what happens when you take layers and layers of bureaucracy and place them between the patients and the healthcare provider.”

Perhaps, as a brain surgeon, Carson is given special treatment when he visits the doctor. But the rest of us endure “layers and layers of bureaucracy” whenever we try to access the healthcare we have so expensively bought.

One reason American healthcare is two-and-a-half times more expensive than in comparable countries is because of the “layers and layers” of insurance sales agents, ID checkers, referral faxers, hospital debt collectors from insurance companies and all the other expensive bureaucrats with no medical knowledge who are employed to administer and police the system. Add to that routine over-charging by doctors and Americans seeking healthcare are being ruthlessly abused and exploited by a commercial scheme that offers them little real choice.

Why do even the smartest free-market dogmatists, who like to paint the world in black and white, fail to see the flaws in commercial companies? Here is the dean of conservative commentators, Charles Krauthammer: “If there’s ever been evidence that a government-run system of healthcare is a disaster, it’s here,” he said. “It’s rationing, it’s waitlists, and corruption and laziness — as you get when people are salaried, rather than working in the free market.”

Cannot those employed on salaries by private companies, particularly employees of corporate behemoths who operate near-monopolies, also ration their customers and say they have been put them on waitlists that do not exist? Can employees of commercial firms not also be corrupt and lazy? Does the free market not employ salaried workers? This muddled thinking is simply partisanship posing as intellectual rigor.

The public-private divide is a red herring that used to distract the left from clear thinking. For a century or more, socialists and communists believed that the world’s problems would be solved if only the “commanding heights” of an economy and the “means of production” were brought into state ownership. Many otherwise smart people fell for an ideology that failed to fulfil its promise the second it was put into practice.

State socialism is now as extinct as the broad-faced potoroo and few except die-hard ideologues dare suggest the government should run everything. Yet the government, tempered by democracy, still has an important role to play when the private sector is found wanting.

It is not merely in treating veterans — whose profound mental and physical wounds can often be so expensive to treat that private insurance companies cannot offer an affordable rate. In many Western European countries taxpayer-funded health systems keep down the skyrocketing costs of treating their ageing populations, just as here in the United States the Social Security system provides an equitable, and relatively inexpensive, way of providing a decent standard of living for retirees.

Other essential services, too, are best administered by the state. Such as the armed services and the police. Schooling, too, is too important to the nation to be left solely to the private sector. State education too often fails, but it is not because taxpayers fund it — it is because the money is spent unwisely.

The question is not whether to have the government provide services the private sector cannot supply. It is a matter of where to draw the line between public and private.