LOVE as Action : Augmented Triads
What IS NEOLIBERALISM (alias, Neoconservatism)?
3. Glenn Greenwald:
Distortions in the healthcare debate
“As I’ve documented before, the “debate” over the President’s health care reform bill has come to resemble most political debates in the U.S.: dominated by ludicrous, obvious strawmen and bullying, manipulative tactics in lieu of substantive debate. Proponents of the bill have continuously claimed — falsely — that progressive opponents object to the bill because they’re petulant purists who didn’t get everything they want and are therefore willing to sacrifice expanded access to health care in pursuit of ideological dogma. We like to think we’ve come a long way since 2003, yet the health care “debate” is being shaped by the likes of The New Republic‘s Jonathan Chait and his fellow Beltway Democratic comrades reprising their standard, typical role of deriding anyone “to their Left” who opposes their President’s plan as unSerious, unhinged losers who don’t care about serious policy matters or progressive goals. When it’s The New Republic — whose self-proclaimed editorial mission is to re-make the Democratic Party in Joe Lieberman’s image — taking the lead in dictating what every Good, Serious Progressive must affirm (this “bill is the greatest social achievement of our time”), you know the debate has gone seriously awry.
Today, The New York Times‘ Bob Herbert has an excellent column giving the lie to those tactics from the President’s most loyal supporters. Herbert explains why the health care bill — with its reliance on taxes on so-called “Cadillac” plans — is far more likely to end up burdening the middle class and reducing health insurance coverage for tens of millions of people:
In fact, it’s a tax that in a few years will hammer millions of middle-class policyholders, forcing them to scale back their access to medical care. Which is exactly what the tax is designed to do. . . .
Within three years of its implementation, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the tax would apply to nearly 20 percent of all workers with employer-provided health coverage in the country, affecting some 31 million people. Within six years, according to Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation, the tax would reach a fifth of all households earning between $50,000 and $75,000 annually. Those families can hardly be considered very wealthy. . . .
The idea is that rather than fork over 40 percent in taxes on the amount by which policies exceed the threshold, employers (and individuals who purchase health insurance on their own) will have little choice but to ratchet down the quality of their health plans. . . . These lower-value plans would have higher out-of-pocket costs, thus increasing the very things that are so maddening to so many policyholders right now: higher and higher co-payments, soaring deductibles and so forth. . . .
Proponents say this is a terrific way to hold down health care costs. If policyholders have to pay more out of their own pockets, they will be more careful — that is to say, more reluctant — to access health services. On the other hand, people with very serious illnesses will be saddled with much higher out-of-pocket costs. And a reluctance to seek treatment for something that might seem relatively minor at first could well have terrible (and terribly expensive) consequences in the long run.
Herbert also explains why the central assumptions of the plan are patently unrealistic. There are substantive replies one can make to these claims, but Herbert’s column demonstrates a truth that has been deliberately distorted by the President’s defenders: the progressive case against the health care bill is not grounded in “ideological purity” or childish anger or any of the other deceitful strawmen that have been created. It is based on these substantive policy objections. Along with the extreme burden that will be imposed on those forced by penalty of law to purchase private insurance policies they cannot afford and do not want, the argument has always been that the Senate bill will cause massive amounts of harm both from the perspective of health care policy and generally by filling the coffers of large insurance and pharmaceutical industry interests at the expense of the middle class.
The title of Herbert’s column is ”A Less Than Honest Policy.” The same can be said of the principal tactics used by the bill’s proponents, who have relied far more on the old reliable, trite derision and demonization of The Angry, Purist Left than they have on honest discussions.”
Greenwald continues:
The Underlying Divisions in the Health Care Debate
“…There are many reasons for the progressive division on the health care bill. There are differences over the narrow question of health care policy, with some believing the bill does more harm than good just on that ground alone. Some of it has to do with broader questions of political power: if progressives always announce that they are willing to accept whatever miniscule benefits are tossed at them (on the ground that it’s better than nothing) and unfailingly support Democratic initiatives (on the ground that the GOP is worse), then they will (and should) always be ignored when it comes time to negotiate; nobody takes seriously the demands of those who announce they’ll go along with whatever the final outcome is. But the most significant underlying division identified by Kilgore is the divergent views over the rapidly growing corporatism that defines our political system.
Kilgore doesn’t call it “corporatism” — the virtually complete dominance of government by large corporations, even a merger between the two — but that’s what he’s talking about. He puts it in slightly more palatable terms:
To put it simply, and perhaps over-simply, on a variety of fronts (most notably financial restructuring and health care reform, but arguably on climate change as well), the Obama administration has chosen the strategy of deploying regulated and subsidized private sector entities to achieve progressive policy results. This approach was a hallmark of the so-called Clintonian, “New Democrat” movement, and the broader international movement sometimes referred to as “the Third Way,” which often defended the use of private means for public ends.
As I’ve written for quite some time, I’ve honestly never understood how anyone could think that Obama was going to bring about some sort of “new” political approach or governing method when, as Kilgore notes, what he practices — politically and substantively — is the Third Way, DLC, triangulating corporatism of the Clinton era, just re-packaged with some sleeker and more updated marketing. At its core, it seeks to use government power not to regulate, but to benefit and even merge with, large corporate interests, both for political power (those corporate interests, in return, then fund the Party and its campaigns) and for policy ends. It’s devoted to empowering large corporations, letting them always get what they want from government, and extracting, at best, some very modest concessions in return. This is the same point Taibbi made about the Democratic Party in the context of economic policy:
The significance of all of these appointments isn’t that the Wall Street types are now in a position to provide direct favors to their former employers. It’s that, with one or two exceptions, they collectively offer a microcosm of what the Democratic Party has come to stand for in the 21st century. Virtually all of the Rubinites brought in to manage the economy under Obama share the same fundamental political philosophy carefully articulated for years by the Hamilton Project: Expand the safety net to protect the poor, but let Wall Street do whatever it wants.
One finds this in far more than just economic policy, and it’s about more than just letting corporations do what they want. It’s about affirmatively harnessing government power in order to benefit and strengthen those corporate interests and even merging government and the private sector. In the intelligence and surveillance realms, for instance, the line between government agencies and private corporations barely exists. Military policy is carried out almost as much by private contractors as by our state’s armed forces. Corporate executives and lobbyists can shuffle between the public and private sectors so seamlessly because the divisions have been so eroded. Our laws are written not by elected representatives but, literally, by the largest and richest corporations. At the level of the most concentrated power, large corporate interests and government actions are basically inseparable.
The health care bill is one of the most flagrant advancements of this corporatism yet, as it bizarrely forces millions of people to buy extremely inadequate products from the private health insurance industry — regardless of whether they want it or, worse, whether they can afford it (even with some subsidies). In other words, it uses the power of government, the force of law, to give the greatest gift imaginable to this industry — tens of millions of coerced customers, many of whom will be truly burdened by having to turn their money over to these corporations — and is thus a truly extreme advancement of this corporatist model. It’s undeniably true that the bill will also do some genuine good, as it will help many people who can’t get coverage now to get it (though it will also severely burden many people with compelled, uncontrolled premiums and will potentially weaken coverage for millions as well). If one judges the bill purely from the narrow perspective of coverage, a rational and reasonable (though by no means conclusive) case can be made in its favor. But if one finds this creeping corporatism to be a truly disturbing and nefarious trend, then the bill will seem far less benign.
As I’ve noted before, this growing opposition to corporatism — to the virtually absolute domination of our political process by large corporations — is one of the many issues that transcend the trite left/right drama endlessly used as a distraction. The anger among both the left and right towards the bank bailout, and towards lobbyist influence in general, illustrates that. Kilgore says that anger among the left and right over corporatism is irreconcilable, and this is the point I think he has mostly wrong:
To put it more bluntly, on a widening range of issues, Obama’s critics to the right say he’s engineering a government takeover of the private sector, while his critics to the left accuse him of promoting a corporate takeover of the public sector. They can’t both be right, of course, and these critics would take the country in completely different directions if given a chance. But the tactical convergence is there if they choose to pursue it.
This supposedly irreconcilable difference Kilgore identifies is more semantics than substance. It’s certainly true that health care opponents on the left want more a expansive plan while opponents on the right want the opposite. But the objections over the mandate are largely identical — it’s a coerced gift to the private health insurance industry that underwrites the Democratic Party. The same was true over opposition to the bailout, objections to lobbying influence over Washington, and most of all, the growing anger that Washington serves the interests of financial elites at the expense of the working class.
Whether you call it “a government takeover of the private sector” or a “private sector takeover of government,” it’s the same thing: a merger of government power and corporate interests which benefits both of the merged entities (the party in power and the corporations) at everyone else’s expense….” - continues in full at
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/12/18-2
Greenwald continues:
“…Independent of the reasonable debate over whether this bill is a marginal improvement over the status quo, there are truly horrible elements to it. Two of the most popular provisions (both of which, not coincidentally, were highly adverse to industry interests) — the public option and Medicare expansion — are stripped out (a new Washington Post/ABC poll out today shows that the public favors expansion of Medicare to age 55 by a 30-point margin). What remains is a politically distastrous and highly coercive “mandate” gift to the health insurance industry, described perfectly by Digby:
Obama can say that you’re getting a lot, but also saying that it “covers everyone,” as if there’s a big new benefit is a big stretch. Nothing will have changed on that count except changing the law to force people to buy private insurance if they don’t get it from their employer. I guess you can call that progressive, but that doesn’t make it so. In fact, mandating that all people pay money to a private interest isn’t even conservative, free market or otherwise. It’s some kind of weird corporatism that’s very hard to square with the common good philosophy that Democrats supposedly espouse.
Nobody’s “getting covered” here. After all, people are already “free” to buy private insurance and one must assume they have reasons for not doing it already. Whether those reasons are good or bad won’t make a difference when they are suddenly forced to write big checks to Aetna or Blue Cross that they previously had decided they couldn’t or didn’t want to write. Indeed, it actually looks like the worst caricature of liberals: taking people’s money against their will, saying it’s for their own good — and doing it without even the cover that FDR wisely insisted upon with social security, by having it withdrawn from paychecks. People don’t miss the money as much when they never see it.’
In essence, this reinforces all of the worst dynamics of Washington. The insurance industry gets the biggest bonanza imaginable in the form of tens of millions of coerced new customers without any competition or other price controls. Progressive opinion-makers, as always, signaled that they can and should be ignored (don’t worry about us — we’re announcing in advance that we’ll support whatever you feed us no matter how little it contains of what we want and will never exercise raw political power to get what we want; make sure those other people are happy but ignore us). Most of this was negotiated and effectuated in complete secrecy, in the sleazy sewers populated by lobbyists, industry insiders, and their wholly-owned pawns in the Congress. And highly unpopular, industry-serving legislation is passed off as ”centrist,” the noblest Beltway value….
UPDATE III: …Over at Politico, Jane Hamsher documents how Joe Lieberman’s conduct on the health care bill provides the perfect vehicle to advance the agenda of the White House and Harry Reid. Consistent with that, she independently notes media reports that White House officials are privately expressing extreme irritation with Howard Dean for opposing the Senate bill as insufficient, but have nothing bad to say about Lieberman, who supposedly single-handedly sabotaged what the White House was hoping for in this bill.
UPDATE IV: Immediately prior to the MSNBC segment I just did — video for which I will post when it’s available — an NBC reporter explained how Robert Gibbs used his Press Briefing today to harshly criticize Howard Dean for opposing the health care bill. Why did Gibbs never publicly criticize people like Blanche Lincoln, Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman and the like if they were supposedly obstructing and impeding the White House’s agenda on health care reform (this is a point Yglesias acknowledges as a “fair” one)? Having a Democratic White House publicly criticize a Democratic Senator can be a much more effective pressure tactic than doing so against a former Governor who no longer holds office.
Meanwhile, as one would expect, health insurance stocks are soaring today in response to the industry-serving “health care reform” bill backed by the Democratic Senate and White House — the same people who began advocating for “health care reform” based on the need to restrain on an out-of-control and profit-inflated health insurance industry (h/t Markos)….” – continues in full at http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/12/16/white_house/index.html
[Meanwhile back in the hard lived realities of "everyday People" who voted for very different changes as promised when REAL Progressives surrounded Obama on the campaign trail (before they and their policies were all cast out by the Faux "New-DLCee" Progressive-Deceptive Corporatists AFTER Obama won the election). The "everyday People" who see through when cliched and lying politicians who have been "standing up WITH the insurance lobbyists (not "to" them)" all along ARE making "the real and imperfectly good" the enemies of their public front they want to call "good" - which is, instead, a perfectly 'evil' boon for the healthcare industry and themselves:
In case you were wondering, voters are not having it with insurance mandates in a package that leaves out a public option. And Obama's getting the blame for not doing more to save the public option.
'President Obama has said he favors a public health insurance option. Senator Joe Lieberman is widely credited with forcing Senate Democrats to take the public option off the table in order to win his vote. Do you think President Obama should have done more to pressure Lieberman to allow the public option to move forward?
YES NO
All: 63% 29%
Dems: 87% 10%
Ind: 72% 18%'
That will just about do it.
from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/20/tv-soundoff-sunday-talkin_n_398437.html
Yup!
And I'm glad I slept right through those bogus TeeVee news "shows."
As Neil Postman aptly warned, "There's No Business BUT 'Show' Business."
Our Congressional Health care's Lobbying Army: Standing Up"with" the Lobbyists (not "to" them.)
http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/chi-091218-lobbyingdatabase-html,0,4298069.htmlpage
With a DLC Rahm in Hand that's worth two in the GOP BUSH, maybe more! ]
Greenwald continues: Health care industry stocks explode as bill progresses
“…I’ve also been fairly repulsed by the 2003-like swarming, bullying efforts of the President’s loyal supporters (both in the White House and from Beltway journalists and their partially cloned liberal bloggers) not merely to dispute, but to demonize and personally discredit, the bill’s progressive critics as insane, crazy, childish, idiotic and drugged-out, Naderite, purist liars who — we now learn today — are the equivalent of “global warming denialists.” Whatever else is true, progressive opponents of the Senate bill (virtually all of whom offer strategic arguments for improving it, not for preserving the status quo), have been making well-informed and substantive critiques. I don’t want to overstate this: there has been some very responsible and informative debate among these various factions, the insults have flown in both directions, and it’s understandable that passions run high on an issue of this significance among opponents, particularly as the process mercifully draws to a close. Still, it seems clear that campaigns by White House loyalists in government and the media to destroy the personal credibility and malign the character of the President’s critics — and to depict “the Left” as shrill, unSerious losers — obviously aren’t confined to the Bush years or to Bush supporters…
….whatever else one might want to say in favor of this health care bill — and there are compelling arguments to make in its favor — the notion that Democrats have “stood up to the special interests who prevented reform for decades” is too blatantly false, insultingly so, to tolerate. As even the bill’s most vocal supporters acknowledge, the White House’s strategy from the start was to negotiate in secret with those very special interests in order to craft a bill that they liked and that benefits them. If one wants to invoke the Obama-era religious mantra of “pragmatism” [a vulgar defamation of American philosophical 'pragmatism'] to argue that this was a shrewd strategic decision necessary for getting a bill passed, that at least is coherent (though not, in my view, persuasive). But this bill is unquestionably one of the greatest boons in recent history for the private health insurance industry and other “special interests” that have long been opposing “reform.” It’s a major advancement for the corporatist model on which both parties rely. It should lead a rational person to want to buy large amounts of stock in Goldman Sachs and Citigroup in anticipation of the upcoming “reform” of that industry. Whatever this bill is, “standing up to special interests” is not it; quite the opposite.“
2. Howard Dean and Robert Parry:
“Honestly, the best thing to do right now is kill the Senate bill and go back to the House and start the reconciliation process, where you only need fifty-one votes and it would be a much simpler bill. You have the vast majority of Americans want the choices. They want real choices. They don’t have them in this bill. This is not healthcare reform, and it’s not close to healthcare reform.” – Howard Dean
from DEMOCRACY NOW! at http://www.democracynow.org/2009/12/16/headlines#6
Howard Dean, Movement Leader
Dean (continues): “…We’ve gotten to the stage, George, you know this better than most, in Washington, where passing any bill is a victory. And that’s the problem. Decisions are made about the long-term future of this country for short-term political reasons. And that’s never a good sign.
There are some good things in this bill. The problem is, we’re now committed to a solution using the private insurance companies. And you will be forced to buy insurance. If you don’t, you’ll pay a fine. And 27 percent of the money you put in will not go to your health care. It will go to CEOs, who make $20 million a year. This is a bigger bailout for the insurance industry than AIG. And not one person — excuse me. A very small number of people will get any insurance at all until 2014, if the bill works….
…I’m not saying they’re selling out. These are wonderful people. And there’s good things in the bill. But the problem is, there has to be a line beyond which you think the bill’s bad for the country. I think at this point, the bill does more harm than good. I don’t believe there’s going to be the money around in five years for — because the insurance companies are charging so much. The pre-existing conditions piece, which — has disappeared essentially. This fine print in this bill allows that insurance companies charge you three-times as much if you’re older than they do if you’re younger. This is an insurance company’s dream this bill. And I think it’s gone too far. It’s a shame. But bad decisions were made along the way. Now, we’re in the last week of this. And this is the Washington scramble. And I think it’s ill-advised…
I see little cost control in this bill at all. I really don’t. I want health care reform. But the choices have been taken away for the American people. The special interests, basically, made a lot of demands on the people passing this bill. And everybody has to decide for themselves. I think Jay Rockefeller and Tom Harkin and Dick Durbin are fantastic human beings. I think they’re wonderful people. But in Washington, you get into this crunch where bad — good money gets thrown after bad and bad money gets thrown after bad policy. And at this point, this bill is not worth passing in its present form. One of the things you could do is take some of the things in this bill, community health center money, wellness and prevention money, the exchanges, which are a good way — which was done in Massachusetts, to help people buy health insurance.
…But the fundamental part of this bill that’s been decided is, we will only do health insurance through the private sector for the future. And you will not have a choice as an American, to get into other kinds of systems which work better. And I think that’s a mistake. And it always happens in the last week where people go too far, water down things too much. Give too much to the special interests. That’s where we are with this bill today….” – continues in full at http://blogs.abcnews.com/george/2009/12/dean-health-bill-not-worth-passing.html
Dean continues:
“This is essentially the collapse of health care reform in the United States Senate...Honestly the best thing to do right now is kill the Senate bill, go back to the House, start the reconciliation process, where you only need 51 votes and it would be a much simpler bill.” – from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/15/kill-the-bill-some-progre_n_392436.html
[In response to White House press secretary Robert Gibbs who asks, disingenuously:
If this is an insurance company's dream, I think the insurance companies have yet to get the memo...Insurance companies have spent hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying against this legislation… If this is such a good deal for them, I'm not entirely sure why they're fighting it.
THIS WRITER says:
"Well, hello, DUH!
Let's take a little closer and more rational look, Bob - both inside and outside. Consider the "situation," how shall we say it, an "insider-outsider" job surrounding TWO KEY HEALTHCARE NUMBERS*, 50 million and 119 million. (*See Robert Parry below).
Behind the dog and pony show(s) with smoke and mirrors we've witnessed via the corporate media this past year - complicit with the DLC Obama Inc. White House and the sham "town hall" talks, along with the entire Republican Party to play the heels in what was and is a "Wresting" sham, the health insurance industrial complex stood to gain a huge bailout boon if their sham of a Neoliberal-conservative healthcare bill passed - which they, indeed, helped to write all along.
So the industry created the corporate funded "Right Wing" facade of "resistance" from "teabaggers" from the outside, all the while the industry was writing the bill that they wanted from the DLC inside - and from the very beginning when single payer was initially axed and closed-door pharm/health industry "deals" *wink wink* - i.e. demands - were made. Very limited "options" and "choices" were actually on the table from the beginning - despite what President Obama claimed then - in light of what Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu aptly slipped or, unwittingly confirmed this evening to Gov. Howard Dean with her 100 million 300 million dollar "last words": "You never had that choice to begin with." [ See transcript: http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2009/12/17/mary-landrieu-admits-public-option-was-all-just-senate-kabuki/ In retrospect, was she referring to 2009 healthcare reform or the 2008 Presidential elections? Perhaps both.]
So why finance such a public sham?
Well, to frame, and limit, the public debate into oversimplistic dichotomous camps that would serve to silence the needed public discussions we should have been having that would have exposed the health insurance industry bailout scam for what it was all along.
The insurance-bought off “elected officials” across both parties played their “centrist” and “independent” sham roles out further to “insure” that any and all progressive changes needed and supported by the American public would get “fully compromised and compromised and compromised away” all along. Courtesy of the “Snowe” job(s).
So, in the end, the insurance industrial complex would get the “deals” they intended to get – and demanded to get – and PAID TO GET – and all behind the facade of any real change or reform.
Such deals are a boon worth far more than the meager peanuts of “hundreds of millions” in what amounts to “chump change” spent financing the public sham of “resistance” to keep the public distracted from what was really happening with the complicity of the DLC White House in general – and Rahm Emanuel in particular http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-feldman/year-of-the-rahm-get-em-t_b_398106.html . ( Rahms, not withstanding, may indeed be sacrificed – get ‘em n gut ‘em. ) Not including the hundreds of millions thrown at the Corporate Democratic Party for its complicity in what amounts to a Neoliberal-conservative bi-partisan scam.
Not much difference between this and the Neoliberal-conservative Wall Street bankster “meaningful,” “breakthrough” scams being played out in the financial industry alongside – the Energy industry scams – from New York to DC to Copenhagen.
Same people, same interests, same sham game.
Same NEOLIBERAL-CONSERVATIVISM. ]
and TWO KEY HEALTHCARE NUMBERS by ROBERT PARRY, timely reminders from JUNE 2009:
“To understand the financial stakes involved in the battle over U.S. health-care reform, it’s useful to keep two numbers in mind: 50 million and 119 million.
The first number is the approximate total of Americans without health insurance, a new market that the private health insurance industry is salivating to get its hands on. The industry’s hope is that the government will mandate that those Americans sign up for private insurance and offer subsidies for those who can’t afford to pay the premiums.
Fifty million new customers and government largesse to help pay the bills would be a huge windfall for the insurance industry, which otherwise faces a decline in its market because Baby Boomers are reaching the age to qualify for Medicare and because rising unemployment is draining the pool of Americans who have insurance through their employers….
…The big question now is: how far will Obama and the Democrats go in demanding that the final legislation have in it what tens of millions of Americans want – a public option and a chance to escape the clutches of the private medical insurance industry – when that same powerful industry is deathly afraid of just that possibility. …” continues in full at http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/061109.html
Parry continues with “119 Million Americans Can’t Be Wrong”:
As the health insurance industry and its defenders in Congress lay out their case against permitting a public option in a reform bill, perhaps their most curious argument is that some 119 million Americans are ready to dump their private plans and jump to something more like Medicare – and that’s why the choice can’t be permitted.
In other words, the industry and its backers are acknowledging that more than one-third of the American people are so dissatisfied with their private health insurance that they trust the U.S. government to give them a fairer shake on health care. The industry says its allies in Congress must prevent that.
The peculiar argument that 119 million Americans must be denied the public option that they prefer has been made most notably by Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, which is one of two panels that has jurisdiction over the health insurance bill.
‘As many as 119 million Americans would shift from private coverage to the government plan,’ Grassley wrote in a column for Politico.com. That migration, Grassley said, would ‘put America on the path toward a completely government-run health care system. … Eventually, the government plan would overtake the entire market.’
Grassley’s logic is that so many Americans would prefer a government-run plan that the private health insurance industry would collapse or become a shadow of its current self. That, in turn, would lead even more Americans entering the government plan, making private insurance even less viable.
Rarely has an argument more dramatically highlighted the philosophical question of whether in a democracy, the government should represent the people’s interests or an industry’s….
The counter-argument, of course, might be that if the health insurance industry hadn’t dissatisfied so many customers – indeed forcing many sick people into bankruptcy because of excessive fees, denial of coverage and gaps in permitted medical treatments – there wouldn’t be so many Americans eager for a public option.
So, now to protect the health insurance industry, Congress must stop 119 million Americans from leaping into the arms of a government plan….
If the health insurance industry had its way, Congress would produce a bill that simply required Americans (or their employers) to buy health insurance from private industry. That way, the government would compel citizens to become customers while denying them a choice of the public plan.
To avoid such an outcome, proponents of the public option – including those 119 million Americans who are ready to sign up – will have to overcome opposition from Republicans and some Democrats who are determined to protect the interests of the private health insurance industry.” – continues in full at http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/060509.html
[Parry offers a quite interesting angle on Leiberman's recent game and motives in the healthcare fiasco. See: http://consortiumnews.com/2009/121509.html ]
Dean continues: Health-care bill wouldn’t bring real reform
“If I were a senator, I would not vote for the current health-care bill. Any measure that expands private insurers’ monopoly over health care and transfers millions of taxpayer dollars to private corporations is not real health-care reform. Real reform would insert competition into insurance markets, force insurers to cut unnecessary administrative expenses and spend health-care dollars caring for people. Real reform would significantly lower costs, improve the delivery of health care and give all Americans a meaningful choice of coverage. The current Senate bill accomplishes none of these.
Real health-care reform is supposed to eliminate discrimination based on preexisting conditions. But the legislation allows insurance companies to charge older Americans up to three times as much as younger Americans, pricing them out of coverage. The bill was supposed to give Americans choices about what kind of system they wanted to enroll in. Instead, it fines Americans if they do not sign up with an insurance company, which may take up to 30 percent of your premium dollars and spend it on CEO salaries — in the range of $20 million a year — and on return on equity for the company’s shareholders. Few Americans will see any benefit until 2014, by which time premiums are likely to have doubled. In short, the winners in this bill are insurance companies; the American taxpayer is about to be fleeced with a bailout in a situation that dwarfs even what happened at AIG.
From the very beginning of this debate, progressives have argued that a public option or a Medicare buy-in would restore competition and hold the private health insurance industry accountable. Progressives understood that a public plan would give Americans real choices about what kind of system they wanted to be in and how they wanted to spend their money. Yet Washington has decided, once again, that the American people cannot be trusted to choose for themselves. Your money goes to insurers, whether or not you want it to.
To be clear, I’m not giving up on health-care reform. The legislation does have some good points, such as expanding Medicaid and permanently increasing the federal government’s contribution to it. It invests critical dollars in public health, wellness and prevention programs; extends the life of the Medicare trust fund; and allows young Americans to stay on their parents’ health-care plans until they turn 27. Small businesses struggling with rising health-care costs will receive a tax credit, and primary-care physicians will see increases in their Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement rates.
Improvements can still be made in the Senate, and I hope that Senate Democrats will work on this bill as it moves to conference….
…I know health reform when I see it, and there isn’t much left in the Senate bill. I reluctantly conclude that, as it stands, this bill would do more harm than good to the future of America.” – continued in full at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/16/AR2009121601906.html
1. Matt Taibbi:
OBAMA’S BIG SELLOUT
“…Barack Obama ran for president as a man of the people, standing up to Wall Street as the global economy melted down in that fateful fall of 2008. He pushed a tax plan to soak the rich, ripped NAFTA for hurting the middle class and tore into John McCain for supporting a bankruptcy bill that sided with wealthy bankers “at the expense of hardworking Americans.” Obama may not have run to the left of Samuel Gompers or Cesar Chavez, but it’s not like you saw him on the campaign trail flanked by bankers from Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. What inspired supporters who pushed him to his historic win was the sense that a genuine outsider was finally breaking into an exclusive club, that walls were being torn down, that things were, for lack of a better or more specific term, changing.
Then he got elected.
What’s taken place in the year since Obama won the presidency has turned out to be one of the most dramatic political about-faces in our history. Elected in the midst of a crushing economic crisis brought on by a decade of orgiastic deregulation and unchecked greed, Obama had a clear mandate to rein in Wall Street and remake the entire structure of the American economy. What he did instead was ship even his most marginally progressive campaign advisers off to various bureaucratic Siberias, while packing the key economic positions in his White House with the very people who caused the crisis in the first place. This new team of bubble-fattened ex-bankers and laissez-faire intellectuals then proceeded to sell us all out, instituting a massive, trickle-up bailout and systematically gutting regulatory reform from the inside.
How could Obama let this happen? Is he just a rookie in the political big leagues, hoodwinked by Beltway old-timers? Or is the vacillating, ineffectual servant of banking interests we’ve been seeing on TV this fall who Obama really is?
Whatever the president’s real motives are, the extensive series of loophole-rich financial “reforms” that the Democrats are currently pushing may ultimately do more harm than good. In fact, some parts of the new reforms border on insanity, threatening to vastly amplify Wall Street’s political power by institutionalizing the taxpayer’s role as a welfare provider for the financial-services industry. At one point in the debate, Obama’s top economic advisers demanded the power to award future bailouts without even going to Congress for approval — and without providing taxpayers a single dime in equity on the deals.
How did we get here? It started just moments after the election — and almost nobody noticed.
‘Just look at the timeline of the Citigroup deal,” says one leading Democratic consultant. “Just look at it. It’s fucking amazing. Amazing! And nobody said a thing about it.”
Barack Obama was still just the president-elect when it happened, but the revolting and inexcusable $306 billion bailout that Citigroup received was the first major act of his presidency. In order to grasp the full horror of what took place, however, one needs to go back a few weeks before the actual bailout — to November 5th, 2008, the day after Obama’s election.
That was the day the jubilant Obama campaign announced its transition team. Though many of the names were familiar — former Bill Clinton chief of staff John Podesta, long-time Obama confidante Valerie Jarrett — the list was most notable for who was not on it, especially on the economic side. Austan Goolsbee, a University of Chicago economist who had served as one of Obama’s chief advisers during the campaign, didn’t make the cut. Neither did Karen Kornbluh, who had served as Obama’s policy director and was instrumental in crafting the Democratic Party’s platform. Both had emphasized populist themes during the campaign: Kornbluh was known for pushing Democrats to focus on the plight of the poor and middle class, while Goolsbee was an aggressive critic of Wall Street, declaring that AIG executives should receive “a Nobel Prize — for evil.“
But come November 5th, both were banished from Obama’s inner circle — and replaced with a group of Wall Street bankers….” – continues in full at http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31234647/obamas_big_sellout
See also: Taibbi on the danger(s) of “Obamamania” [Gotta vaccine for that mass St. Neoliberal-Swine Vitus Dance of the Mindless?] – at http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/12/13/obamania/
with “PhRMA Hack: Campaign Promises Are Just That” – at http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/12/15/phrma-hack-campaign-promises-are-just-that/
Friendly Neoliberal-conservative Fa$cism: Washington For Sale?
“Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” – Benito Mussolini
“If Democrats become carbon copies of the opposition, we will lose – and deserve to.” – Edward Moore “Ted” Kennedy
BILL MOYERS JOURNAL NOW
BILL MOYERS: Welcome to the Journal.
Something’s not right here. One year after the great collapse of our financial system, Wall Street is back on top while our politicians dither. As for health care reform, you’re about to be forced to buy insurance from companies whose stock is soaring, and that’s just dandy with the White House.
Truth is, our capitol’s being looted, republicans are acting like the town rowdies, the sheriff is firing blanks, and powerful Democrats in Congress are in cahoots with the gang that’s pulling the heist. This is not capitalism at work. It’s capital. Raw money, mounds of it, buying politicians and policy as if they were futures on the hog market.
Here to talk about all this are two journalists who don’t pull their punches. Robert Kuttner is an economist who helped create and now co-edits the progressive magazine THE AMERICAN PROSPECT, and the author of the book OBAMA’S CHALLENGE, among others.
Also with me is Matt Taibbi, who covers politics for ROLLING STONE magazine where he is a contributing editor. He’s made a name for himself writing in a no-holds-barred, often profane, but always informative and stimulating style that gets under the skin of the powerful. His most recent article is “Obama’s Big Sellout,” about the President’s team of economic advisers and their Wall Street connections. It’s been burning up the blogosphere. Welcome to both of you….
continued in full at http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/12182009/transcript1.html
Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America
by Bertram Gross, 1980
“Expanded government intervention into the lives of ordinary people is glorified under the slogan “getting the government off our backs.” Decriminalization of corporate bribery, fraud and the dumping of health-killing wastes is justified under the banner of “promoting free enterprise” and countering “environmental extremists.” Private greed, gluttony and speculation are disguised in “free market” imagery. Business corruption is hidden behind smokescreens of exaggerated attacks on the public sector. Like Trojan horses, these ideas penetrate the defenses of those opposed to any new corporatism. They establish strongholds of false consciousness and treacherous terminology in the minds not only of old-fashioned conservatives but also of the most dedicated liberals and left-wingers.
Hence on many issues the left seems bereft, the middle muddled and the right not always wrong…
Looking at the present, I see a more probable future: a new despotism creeping slowly across America. Faceless oligarchs sit at command posts of a corporate-government complex that has been slowly evolving over many decades. In efforts to enlarge their own powers and privileges, they are willing to have others suffer the intended or unintended consequences of their institutional or personal greed. For Americans, these consequences include chronic inflation, recurring recession, open and hidden unemployment, the poisoning of air, water, soil and bodies, and, more important, the subversion of our constitution. More broadly, consequences include widespread intervention in international politics through economic manipulation, covert action, or military invasion…
In this present, many highly intelligent people look with but one eye and see only one part of the emerging Leviathan. From the right, we are warned against the danger of state capitalism or state socialism, in which Big Business is dominated by Big Government. From the left, we hear that the future danger (or present reality) is monopoly capitalism, with finance capitalists dominating the state. I am prepared to offer a cheer and a half for each view; together, they make enough sense for a full three cheers. Big Business and Big Government have been learning how to live in bed together and despite arguments between them, enjoy the cohabitation. Who may be on top at any particular moment is a minor matter-and in any case can be determined only by those with privileged access to a well-positioned keyhole.
I am uneasy with those who still adhere strictly to President Eisenhower’s warning in his farewell address against the potential for the disastrous rise of power in the hands of the military-industrial complex. Nearly two decades later, it should be clear to the opponents of militarism that the military-industrial complex does not walk alone. It has many partners: the nuclear-power complex, the technology-science complex, the energy-auto-highway complex, the banking-investment-housing complex, the city-planning-development-land-speculation complex, the agribusiness complex, the communications complex, and the enormous tangle of public bureaucracies and universities whose overt and secret services provide the foregoing with financial sustenance and a nurturing environment. Equally important, the emerging Big Business-Big Government partnership has a global reach. It is rooted in colossal transnational corporations and complexes that help knit together a “Free World” on which the sun never sets. These are elements of the new despotism….
The major responsibility of corporate executives, so long as they are not constrained by enforced law, is to maximize their long-term accumulation of capital and power no matter what the cost may be to … people or physical resources.”
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Welcome Ladies and Gentlemen to the end of the twentieth century and the arrival of friendly fascism. Regrettably, millions will die as before. But just think of the tremendous selection and savings you’ll gain. Of course the loss of freedom and democracy are tragedies, I know, but consider the entertainment value contained within and to remind you, it is you, the People, who have mandated this course of our fate so please come with me…
Look at the new face of power in America. This is your future you can never leave. Who said tyranny can’t be fun? Friendly fascism having so much fun, what else do you need?
You’ll learn to like what you must do. If you resist you are suppressed. You are told who to fight and when by the POTUS, the Nazi Fascist Friend. Alienating technology wipes out our sense of community. Millions will die just like before. We disconnect and start the war.
We make life a commodity. We turn animals into machines. Kinder and gentler slaughter house. Big business and big government distract us with entertainment. They manufacture our consent while we destroy the environment…
Look at the new face of power in America. This is your future you can never leave. Who said tyranny can’t be fun? Friendly fascism having so much fun, what else do you need?
The feeling is definitely there. It’s a new morning in America – fresh, vital. The old cynicism is gone. We have faith in our leaders. We’re optimistic as to what becomes of it all.
It really boils down to our ability to accept. We don’t need pessimism. There are no limits.”
- Consolidated, “friendly fa$cism”
