The recent concern about spinach E-coli contamination is a case of two pillars of the so-called conservative agenda meeting: (1) deregulation of industry ("We can trust businesses to monitor themselves because there are market disincentives to do otherwise.") and (2) tort reform ("It dampens economic activity if we allow businesses to be punished through the courts if they harm their customers."). The first posits that all it takes for businesses to do right is market pressure. The second posits that courts are independent of the marketplace and therefore should not be used to punish businesses for injuring consumers.
How can market pressures keep industries in line when simultaneously pressure is being reduced by legislatively reducing the costs for misbehaving? Don't suits seeking relief from patent infringement or intellectual property piracy have major market implications? So where is the bright line between the marketplace and court judgments? I think there is none unless expediency in the name of so-called conservative principles demands there be one!
This is just one of many cases of doublespeak by the so-called conservative brain trust that has contributed to the mess in which the country finds itself.
Oregon Senator Wyden's Healthy American Act is hardly new. It is simply a rehashing of a plan that creates an insurance cartel with a direct pipeline into the U.S. Treasury and provides profit insurance for the insurance companies not health insurance for all Americans. By creating a special insurable pool, separate from Medicare and the federal plan, it cannot be universal by any rational definition of that term.
It would invite the most egregious corruption of Congress because which insurance companies would be included in the plan would be a function of who had the most political clout (read that as campaign contributions) in Congress and institutionalize the skimming off of 25%(+ or -) of the nation's healthcare costs to fund the life style of those who contribute nothing to the actual delivery of care.
Say, "No" to Wyden and hold off for a real universal single-payer system that is neither a works program for insurance filing clerks or a federal profit insurance program for an elite part of the insurance industry.
Nicholas Kristof's suggestion in recent NY Times op-ed that voting for Hillary Clinton is a vote for a political dynasty is about as silly an idea as I have ever heard. Dynasties result from inheriting offices not being elected to them...something that has not happened in our history. There were three Presidents between John Adams and John Quincy Adams, two Clinton terms between G.H.W.Bush and G.W. Bush and there will be two G.W. Bush terms between Clinton and Clinton if Hillary is elected. Dynasties and elected highest offices are contradictory terms and fears of a Clinton "dynasty" has to take the award for the most outrageous of red herrings.
If we want to strike a blow against inherited political power and toward the egalitarianism to which Kristof tips his hat, we can divest America's economic royalty (the grandchildren of the 19th Century economic barons) of the wealth they use to manipulate today's political landscape...and we can start with the Coors and Mellon families.
Paul Krugman's recent op-ed, Divided over Trade in the NY Times is worth reading. Our trade agreements have hurt American wages, however, returning to pre-NAFTA days might make things worse not better. His suggestion that corrective action might better focus on non-trade issues, for example: "Universal health care, paid for by taxing the economy's winners, would be a good place to start" might be worthy of consideration. It sure beats the hell out of starting a circular firing squad inside the Democratic Party in my opinion.
If one of the pillars of peace in Iraq is oil revenue sharing we might be in for a long, long war. Except for a few empty phrases like ownership without power, Bush's plan calls for the Iraqis to trade 100% of the oil revenues and total control of the oil fields for 12.5% of the revenues and zero control of the oil fields.
Paul Wolfowitz said that the Iraqi oil would pay for the invasion, maybe this is what he had in mind. Oil might not have been the reason for the invasion but it seems that it is the price we are demanding the Iraqis pay for the "de-invasion."
Bush looks into his tea leaves and sees the insurgents putting down their weapons and just waiting for us to leave, if we say when that will be. Those same tea leaves do not show that, if we do not set a date to leave, the Iraqi army will put down their weapons and wait for us to win the war against the insurgents.
Is Bush's arrival at a different psychological analysis due (1) to the leaves, (2) that insurgents and the Iraqi army thinks differently (even though they might be members of the same family) or (3) the expertise of the leaves reader, you know, the one who said the Iraqi people would greet us with a flower-strewn invasion victory parade? And, if the latter, how long are we willing to pour our money and blood into a war initiated by this seer?
The insurance game is a balancing act involving premiums, benefits and enrollees. It works (makes a profit) only when the insurer can control two out of the three elements. When the government mandates coverage for everyone and sets standards of treatment, the system breaks down - insurers are driven out of business or it becomes one elaborate subsidy for the companies and a work-program for medical insurance filing clerks. For an insurance company to make money there have to be people paying premiums who get little or no benefits. Those kind of persons are hard to find when literally everyone is enrolled and their aging puts added demands for ever more costly benefits.
Employer-funded plans prosper because their enrollees need the least amount of medical care: they are young and healthy. Try to expand that program to include all non-workers over 65 and the wheels start coming off. That is why any national health care plan that is built on an insurance model is doomed to failure. It makes no more sense than attacking hunger with food insurance.
Once you have a population with increasing demands but limited resources to pay premiums the profit potential is squeezed out of the formula and insurers take their money out of the insurance game and put it elsewhere. This is why there is no market-driven solution to the healthcare crisis in America. And that is why those of us who are serious about healthcare reform know we have to be looking at a single-payer plan, modeled after Medicare (without privatization), that implements an electronic filing and payment system.
And what about costs? The first thing is that we have to kick the habit of looking at the cost of everything and the benefits of nothing - the insane tax-reduction mania that has mesmerized some otherwise sane politicians. Health is not just a checkbook item; it impacts the very quality of our life. There has yet to be a therapy that trumps prevention when it comes to how any of us approaches our own health. But costs can be reasonable if we do the following: (1) take out the 30+% overhead costs associated with the insurance approach, (2) credit the savings preventive medicine brings, (3) credit the system for improved productivity through reduced absenteeism and drug addiction, (4) credit efficiencies in doctor's offices, clinics and hospitals and (5) add in savings from negotiated lower pharmaceutical costs. Do this and we are well on the way to providing everyone in America with basic health care with no new taxes.
The Congressional resolution the President signed on October 16, 2002 was designed to be a weapon in the GOP propaganda arsenal to make the President look good and Democrats to look bad by either co-opting their support of a to-be-announced-later war, if it went badly; or by painting them as "soft on national defense" if they voted against it and the war went well. The very ambiguities in the resolution work to the GOP's favor and, as we see, are being used against Democrats sometimes by other Democrats! The actual run-up to the war is a witch's brew of misinformation, fabrications, distortions and deceptions; therefore, characterizing the vote for or against this resolution as some litmus test for Democrats by Democrats is an act of political insanity giving legitimacy to Bush's illegal war.
Read the resolution! The resolution did not authorize a war! The "military force" it authorized the use of, could have been used in a number of ways short of an all-out invasion of Iraq and deposing Saddam Hussein. Rather than ordering the President to take the country to war, the resolution simply sets forth the rules and conditions upon which military force could be used if such was "necessary and appropriate" to "protect our national security" and "enforce UN Security Council Resolutions," neither of which required the invasion of Iraq. Conventional wisdom and partisan rhetoric, however, almost consistently references it as the "Iraq War Resolution." (Senator Joe Biden, just this morning, on Meet the Press, was asked why he "voted for the war." Tim Russert should know better than to be suckered into the GOP spin!)
In fact, at the time of the debate, plans for a war were nowhere to be seen. Indeed, the President had recently held a bi-partisan photo-op with Democratic leaders where he talked about "listening to the American people" and was still talking about negotiating for a peaceful settlement. Secretary of State Collen Powell, two months earlier, on the Nightline program, had said that "the President has no plans to invade Iraq on his desk at this moment, nor has one been presented to him, nor have his advisors come together to put a plan to him." [We now know in great detail the extent of the administration's lies and distortions but we have to hold Congress accountable for what it knew then not what we all know now. Likewise this resolution must be viewed in the context of what was public knowledge in 2002 not five years later.]
So, if the White House was actually planning a war why did it not ask for a declaration of war - that, after all, is Congress' job? The answer cannot be to preserve an element of surprise because the attack was advertised like a Hollywood movie premiere. There are a number of reasons that can be discussed at a different time, but what is germane to our discussion today, is that, for all its other reasons, its residual consequence is that it has created a wedge issue that is being used against Democrats by Republicans and against Democrats by other Democrats almost five years later. Such nonsense! My advice to all Democrats is to not give George Bush cover for his illegal war in order to win political points for your candidate. That is too high a price to pay to win the nomination.
