One More Analysis of Health Care Reform

Health care reform looks like its dragging on President Obama right now, and it probably is.  However, this is still March, and the President is going to look like a genius in November.

The Republicans, in addition to not doing things which benefit quotidian Americans, also manage to not benefit themselves.  Should they continue at this rate, we may actually see a political party succeed at self-immolation. 

John Boehner with his "HELL NO!" rant is living on borrowed time.  While his district is conservative, there is a very good chance that a pro-labor Blue Dog could take the seat from Boehner in southwestern Ohio.  It would be comparatively easy.

First of all, there is the link to unions and jobs.  Southwestern Ohio is still a place with a long legacy to organized labor.  It is also a place which has overlap into the Cincinnati television market, which means that Mitch McConnell is also on the table as a recognizable face.

Link Republican opposition to card check, McConnell's support for NAFTA, and conflate Boehner with both.  This could turn into a very ugly, destructive campaign for the man with the unnaturally orange skin.

The Tea Party movement is also sitting at about 14:55 and counting on their fifteen minutes of fame.  The key Republican strategists know it, and they're also easing their strongest candidate quietly back toward the center.  They need Palin, which also means that they have to protect her.

Sarah Palin is going to be quietly disassociated from her natural constituencies in the Tea Party movement.  She makes her face time at the shindig in Searchlight, throws a couple of screeds on twitter, and over the next six months she is going to have to be a new Sarah. The Republican party cannot afford the old one for more than about 60 more days.

Republicans know that there is no possible way that Health Care Reform can be repealed before people start benefitting from it.  Once an entitlement gets started, there is no turning back.  And once enough people have benefitted from HCR, it is going to be over.

The strategery is to call congresscritters and scream profanities over the telephone.  Other bright ideas include shades-of-kristallnacht vandalism, and attempted sabotage of congresscritter homes.  The former is a strong image for Democratic candidates. The latter is just embarrassing, because they got the wrong house.

A super-genius in Nashville is sitting under a felony reckless endangerment charge after trying to drive over a car with an Obama sticker with his SUV.  This is not the kind of publicity that will further the objectives of a political movement.  Indeed, even people who would find the objectives worthy tend to be turned off by this behavior.

Radio hatemongers Beck, Hannity and Limbaugh are weakened.  They failed to deliver for their business interests.  Glenn Beck's caustic delivery will be the first to go: he isn't delivering on public opinion, and he isn't delivering ad dollars for Fox.  Beck may be lucky if he is not delivering pizzas by the end of 2011.  

Limbaugh and Hannity may survive, but there is a litany of mediocre right-wing talkers who will see their opportunities suddenly reduced.  The Rusty Humphries and Hugh Hewitts of the world will discover their outlets becoming more profitable leasing themselves out to religious broadcasters.  Or even better, they will wind up serving an ethnic community.

One looks forward to the day when Lou Dobbs' radio home in Atlanta starts broadcasting in Spanish.  Play Salsa and Bachata, please.

The future holds the following: A Teabagger in a restaurant acknowledges the image of President Obama, and states, "There goes the rotten so-and-so who brought socialist medicine to America." All it will take is the first waitress to pour a pot of coffee in his lap and respond, "Really? All I see is the man who saved my grandbaby's life."


That is the final break. At the moment, we have a population who cannot believe that the Tea Parties did not stop Health Care Reform from becoming reality. They are not happy, but it is a mentality which has question as to the outcome of a pro wrestling match where the opponent is "Bob from Syracuse."  They got what they did not want, and they aren't coping well.

Democrats are still a bit dazed, but somehow one imagines that they will get used to this idea.  After multiple attempts, the United States has managed to develop a health care system which works for its patients as opposed to a private insurance industry.  It may not be everything the hard core of progressivism would have preferred, but it is a big step in the right direction.

As for the hard core of progressivism goes, how many people think that there is not at least one of those private insurers who hasn't cooked the books?  And who precisely do you think will wind up managing the health care of their customers when the fecal matter hits the ventilation device? Chill out, the Wolf is coming, and he's got Single Payer in his trunk.

There may be a dozen people in the country who will not think its a good idea when all of this happens.  There will not be the money available to sway public opinion in that proximate future.  Indeed, there may be a great deal of industry support for single payer by then.

To borrow a bit from John F. Kennedy, Mr. Obama, your opponents just blinked.

The New Whiskey Rebellion

After all of the tea parties, what seems to be obvious is that Progressives need something to get some attention. What should be proposed is a new Whiskey Rebellion.

A Whiskey Rebellion is obvious. First of all, the tea parties are full of Buick-driving, Rascal-riding old coots that have been getting their information from some clown prince of Conservatism like Limbaugh or Beck. Tea partiers come in two varieties: sober and dull, or sober and arrogant.

The great thing about being progressive is that we don’t have to drive home!

Progressives can take public transit. Therefore we can get hammered and still get back to the collective. Thus, we should bring whiskey, and lots of it. Conservatives no longer drink, much like many conservatives are no longer members of traditional religious denominations.

As progressives, the opportunity exists to offer areas where we may agree with some of the tea party objectives, but with a dollop of unspun truth.

Tea partiers hate government, pretty much in all of its forms. Pop quiz: who was the last president to leave a budget surplus and a thriving economy? (Bill Clinton.) Anyone who wishes to complain about the deficit should be raising hell at George W. Bush, and the Republican congress he had for six years of his administration.

Apparently, the Bush doctrine was somewhere along these lines: Woohoo! Found money! Let’s go blow some stuff up! Whaddaya mean we spent the found money? We can print more! Ah, dang! That blowed up good!

While there are plenty of progressives who really like government, most of us lean toward the libertarian approach to civil liberties. Things like gay rights and abortion rights are not the province of government to regulate, but the responsibility of those who love freedom to protect.

A man may find abortion appalling, but he will never be in the position of making that decision alone. What is the answer to a woman with four healthy children whose husband deserts her when he discovers that she is carrying a fifth, a fetus who will be born with a grave medical issue which would imperil the futures of every healthy member of the household?

It’s easy to be pro-life until the babies are born, requiring education, food, health care, housing, jobs at decent wages, and so on. If a small group has control of the necessities of life, one could care less about their commitment to the unborn, only to starve the ones they don’t like once they’re ambulatory. That is a totalitarian abuse no different from the Soviets.

With regard to gay rights, one more time: marriage is the only religious structure defined by government. If government can define marriage, it is also able to define any other religious structure: baptism, last rites, holy orders.

You know, like government licensed priests and ministers and sanctioned religious operations in Nazi Germany. (Ooops! Wrong answer to that question! Looks like you’re going to camp whether you like it or not!)

With regard to firearm rights, more than a few progressives are weapons enthusiasts. More than a few progressives wish that more progressives still were weapons enthusiasts, but hell, we’re a big tent.

Maybe a progressive likes unions. Maybe he doesn’t. But he might like the option of having a bargaining organization which is equivalent to the collective which he is now obligated to negotiate with alone. We’re just saying here.

A lot of progressives agree that mind-altering substances are a blight on communities. But it seems that a well-regulated system of distribution focused upon keeping dope out of the hands of kids would work a lot better than organizations which finance the destabilization of countries which are ostensibly friendly to the interests of the United States.

Prohibition does not work. It just gives crooks the chance to look like heroes in places which might thrive as strong, prosperous democracies, like Mexico, Colombia, and Peru.

As far as taxes go, nobody is very fond of them. Flat taxes do not work, and a consumption tax is painfully regressive. Therefore, a taxation system which requires more of those who have prospered beyond the average is most just. There is no reason for some poor shmoe yanking down fifty large a year to cough up a pile of dough to hand over to a corporation that just shipped a boatload of jobs overseas.

Someone may dislike entitlements and programs designed to defeat poverty. The amount in question pales in comparison to tax breaks for businesses exporting jobs from the United States. I’d rather pay fifty percent on a hundred grand than ten percent on fifty.

The whole thing about national responsibility on health care is rather embarrassing. We don’t have private fire or police departments. If someone wishes to drive an automobile, every state requires the owner to have insurance. Most places in the United States do not have public transportation options that would allow someone to forego owning a car.

Reform health care. Now. Please. Thank you.

And finally, we tackle immigration reform. Five paragraphs earlier, one will see the words, “prohibition does not work.” It doesn’t work here, either. When one hears of twelve million undocumented in the United States, the number is screwy.

Large numbers of those who are unpapered would have qualified under the law for normalization before the Orwellian-named Immigration reform and Immigrant responsibility act of 1996 a/k/a IRA-IRA. (A single digit salutes President Clinton for signing this piece of crap.)

More than half entered legally. A bureaucracy which makes other despised government entities look warm and fuzzy impeded many more. The real number of people who behave badly and are harmful to the nation as a whole is probably under 500,000. Another couple of million not only have no business here, we would probably be better off without them.

That leaves about nine million or so who are being dealt with inappropriately by a bad law. That number, if given the opportunity to work and own property, with full legal rights as residents, could replenish the social security and tax rolls. Those have been decimated by retiring baby boomers who have nothing better to do than listen to Glenn Beck and complain about government daring to put its hands on Medicare.

Maybe progressives should call this a Tequila Rebellion instead.

Haiti, Chile, and Sometimes Anorexia Is a Bad Thing

For thirty years the mantra has been consistent.  Smaller government and deregulation are the key to continued prosperity.  This shibboleth has been repeated so often, that it has become tattooed upon the public brain as if it were a law of economics.

These things are not laws, really.  They are theories which serve moneyed interests to consolidate power at the expense of a dwindling middle class.

When taken to an extreme, the end result is not prosperity.  The result is a nonexistent middle class, abject poverty, and the inability of a government to respond to the population it purports to serve.

If any proof is necessary, the Gentle Reader is encouraged to take a really good look at Haiti.

Haiti has never been what one would call a stable or thriving country.  It has almost always been a festering cesspool of corruption.  Any regulation a businessperson could want could be had for a price from the Duvaliers or another dictatorship.

With the atmosphere came a total collapse of mechanisms that people in more developed countries take for granted. There were no building codes, few hospitals or emergency services, nor the technical knowledge to save lives in the event of a catastrophe.

And now, smaller government and deregulation have a body count of almost 250,000.   That equates to the approximate population of Lincoln, Nebraska.

The United States is a big country.  Somehow, one imagines the United States missing a city the size of Lincoln.

A 7.0 earthquake took out 3 of every 100 people in Haiti.  Twenty years ago, the same size earthquake took less than 100 people out of the San Francisco Bay area, population roughly six and a half million.

Twenty years ago, Chile was also in bad shape.  The Chileans were coming off the extended right-wing dictatorship of General Agustin Pinochet.  Much like Haiti, Chile was characterized by poverty and domestic structures designed to concentrate wealth in the hands of a few business interests friendly to the dictatorship.  Pinochet was removed from office.

The Chileans chose to embrace structures which would rebuild their middle class: education, health care, social security.  In twenty years, Chile became a well developed, prosperous country.  They had a good transportation infrastructure, Santiago’s modern downtown, a thriving economy.

And then the Chileans were hit with an 8.8 earthquake, 200 miles (330 km) from Santiago.  People felt it in Buenos Aires, Argentina, 690 miles (1120 km) away.

A little perspective on the size of this earthquake: It would be like an earthquake in Los Angeles shaking El Paso, Texas.  Had an earthquake this size hit near Paso Robles, California, there would be widespread devastation in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Fresno, and Bakersfield. Santa Barbara would be erased.

The Chilean earthquake was very much The Hand of God.

The preliminary death toll stands under 1,000 people.

One does not question that some business interests found building codes, inspections, hospitals, publicly-funded medical care (the Chileans have a strong single-payer system), and education to be extravagant.

These things were unnecessary.  Government was getting in the way of responsible individuals having their own money to spend. The Chilean people could trust private enterprise to look out for their interests. Large government and the Nanny State would destroy initiative and prosperity.

Average per-capita income in Chile: over US$14,000.  Average per-capita income in Haiti: US$ diddly-squat..

But the truth lives in a much more visible place.  While Chile was spending on shared responsibilities, the Haitians were letting technologically unsophisticated people have “individual responsibility” for their personal safety.

Not every shared responsibility is socialism.  Sometimes it’s just good common sense.  Consider the lesson of a quarter million Haitians. 

Pay me now or pay me later, the old saying goes.  Some things, if neglected too long, will return to a natural order as a shared responsibility.  But when they come back, they cost a lot more than anyone is willing to pay.