Healthcare around the world vs. America

Paul Krugman points out that Every wealthy country other than the United States guarantees essential care to all its citizens. Why doesn't America? Look at who is opposed to universal health care. The big money opposing health care reform is coming from the existing health insurers and from the big pharmacy companies because as long as there is no guarantee of health care with an organized and systematic national form of paying for it, they can exploit sick and frightened people and make big profits.

How big are the profits they get from the current system? Consider that they are conservatively estimated to be spending $1.4 million a day right now to kill the health care reform effort. They expect to recover that and much more if they are successful. But what does it mean that every other wealthy nation in the world guarantees essential health care to its citizens? Krugman provides a short summary of the systems.

Every wealthy country other than the United States guarantees essential care to all its citizens. There are, however, wide variations in the specifics, with three main approaches taken.

In Britain, the government itself runs the hospitals and employs the doctors. We’ve all heard scare stories about how that works in practice; these stories are false. Like every system, the National Health Service has problems, but over all it appears to provide quite good care while spending only about 40 percent as much per person as we do. By the way, our own Veterans Health Administration, which is run somewhat like the British health service, also manages to combine quality care with low costs.

The second route to universal coverage leaves the actual delivery of health care in private hands, but the government pays most of the bills. That’s how Canada and, in a more complex fashion, France do it. It’s also a system familiar to most Americans, since even those of us not yet on Medicare have parents and relatives who are.

Again, you hear a lot of horror stories about such systems, most of them false. French health care is excellent. Canadians with chronic conditions are more satisfied with their system than their U.S. counterparts. And Medicare is highly popular, as evidenced by the tendency of town-hall protesters to demand that the government keep its hands off the program.

Finally, the third route to universal coverage relies on private insurance companies, using a combination of regulation and subsidies to ensure that everyone is covered. Switzerland offers the clearest example: everyone is required to buy insurance, insurers can’t discriminate based on medical history or pre-existing conditions, and lower-income citizens get government help in paying for their policies.

In this country, the Massachusetts health reform more or less follows the Swiss model; costs are running higher than expected, but the reform has greatly reduced the number of uninsured. And the most common form of health insurance in America, employment-based coverage, actually has some “Swiss” aspects: to avoid making benefits taxable, employers have to follow rules that effectively rule out discrimination based on medical history and subsidize care for lower-wage workers.

So where does Obamacare fit into all this? Basically, it’s a plan to Swissify America, using regulation and subsidies to ensure universal coverage.

Would the Swiss plan be bad for America? Not for most Americans. Not even for most employees of American health insurance firms. Only for a few top executives who are currently vastly overpaid for any rational services that they perform, and for "investors" who are gambling money on the above normal profitability of health insurance firms once they kill the health care proposal. Against these undeserving groups consider the 45 to 50 million uninsured Americans and the almost equal numbers of people with insurance that pays so little if they or someone in their family gets ill that they are driven into bankruptcy.

What are the opponents of health care reform selling? Not health care, that's for sure. They are selling that old classic "Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt" to people who find the status quo satisfactory for right now. America can do much better, as all of the other wealth nations demonstrate. It's high time that America had a rational health care system that is not held hostage by extortionists and profiteers. Let's get universal health care passed this time.

The Republicans need to admit they got it wrong before being considered credible

The Republicans were in complete charge of the federal government from 2001 until 2006 and got the whole thing seriously wrong. An incomplete list of their failures includes:

• Running one of the most corrupt political administrations seen in America. this has been true both for the Executive and for the Congressional branches.
• Failed to deal adequately with the problem of anti-American terrorism,
• Embroiled America in two wars, at least one of them totally unnecessary and neither of which was well prosecuted.
• Failed to adequately deal with the well-anticipated problems that occurred when Katrina struck the Gulf Coast and New Orleans (then did not live up to the promises to rebuild New Orleans),
• Illegally wiretapped American citizens more for political purposes than for American security purposes while shredding the Constitutional due process requirements of the Rule of Law (a truly bedrock requirement for a Constitutional democratic Republic),
• Broke the law by authorizing the useless and counterproductive process of state sanctioned torture.
• And created economic conditions that put America and the entire world into financial conditions worse than any since the Great Depression of the 1930's. Had Barack Obama not directed unprecedented and desperate financial actions that have place the American taxpayers in the position of saving the Wall Street bankers whose unregulated risk-taking was the major contributor to the financial instability that effectively destroyed the world financial system, America and the world would now be deep into the greatest financial depression the world has ever seen.

Mind you, this is only a partial list of everything the conservative Republicans have gotten wrong. A much larger list will be available as historians dig out the criminality and idiocies that have been buried behind government secrecy laws.

The American voting public has caught on to the failure of the conservative Republicans and has repudiated them at the polls in 2006 and 2008. But the media acts as though the conservatives remain the more credible of the two significant American political parties, and the Republicans themselves have refused to recognize that anything they have done contributed to the major problems their governance have left for America to dig out of.

Steve Benen has been discussing this situation with Bruce Bartlett, a well-known and capable conservative analyst who worked in both the Reagan and H.W. Bush administrations. This is what Bartlett wrote to Steve about the Republican Party:

I believe that political parties should do penance for their mistakes and just losing power is not enough. Part of that involves understanding why those mistakes were made and how to prevent them from happening again. Republicans, however, have done no penance. They just pretend that they did nothing wrong. But until they do penance they don't deserve any credibility and should be ignored until they do. That's what my attacks on Bush are all about. I want Republicans to admit they were wrong about him, accept blame for his mistakes, and take some meaningful action to keep them from happening again. Bush should be treated as a pariah, as Richard Nixon was for many years until he rebuilt his credibility by more or less coming clean about Watergate with David Frost and writing a number of thoughtful books.

One reason this isn't happening is because the media don't treat Republicans as if they are discredited. On the contrary, they often seem to be treated as if they have more credibility than the administration. Just look at the silly issue of death panels. The media should have laughed it out the window, ridiculed it or at least ignored it once it was determined that there was no basis to the charge. Instead, those making the most outlandish charges are treated with deference and respect, while those that actually have credibility on the subject are treated as equals at best and often with deep skepticism, as if they are the ones with an ax to grind.

I am truly baffled by this situation, as I'm sure you are.

The American Constitution is very much the basis for the liberal American political system, but it was written by a group of the wealthiest men in Revolutionary America as a protest to the arbitrary tyranny of the King of England and an English Parliament that had no consideration for the rights of Englishmen who were overseas colonists. For all it's virtues, the Constitution set into place a government of limited and carefully separated powers that allows a small minority of wealthy and powerful Americans to relatively easily frustrate the will of the American people.

That's no surprise. The founding fathers represented the American oligarchy which dominated the primarily agricultural set of colonies that were later to grow into America. For all the advantages that the Constitution has given America as it grew into a massive urban industrialize nation spread across the North American continent, it failed to adequately deal with the corrosive problems of slavery which resulted instead in the Civil War followed by the American apartheid of segregation and it did not provide for a true democracy in which the government adequately deals with the economic problems created by exploitative and ignorant business people and especially Wall Street Bankers.

A preplanned and structured government to deal with those issues would have locked the nation into too many errors unforeseen at the time they were adopted. The ability to innovate and create better ways to do things created a much better overall system. But now we have a two-century old philosophy of government that locks the status quo and the existing power oligarchy into control at a time when the needs of the American people are opposed by that oligarchy. One of their weapons to maintain the status quo (by which they benefit at the cost of millions of Americans)is the philosophy of an agriculturally-based system of small government with low taxes and a set of tax and power preferences for the existing oligarchs. Worse, this is unquestioned by the mass media which those same oligarch control. Those oligarchs are in the catbird seat. Is it any wonder that they do not want to change a system they control and one in which they gain great advantage?

The American oligarchs are in a similar social and economic position today as were the French aristocrats in France against which the French people rebelled in 1792. They do not want to give up the advantages they have, and they do not want to permit the government to tax them further individually to support America. This is nothing new. The same economic and power class in America pushed through massive tax cuts for the wealthy in the 1920's just as they have again in the 1980's, 90's and the first decade of the 21st century. The economic and social result has been the same. The great and growing financial inequality has led to massive economic instability.

But since the same class of oligarchs control the American mass media, there has been little discussion of their power and of the dangers of the extremes of economic inequality that the oligarchs revel in. They prefer the secrecy that they enforce by propaganda and by control of the major media centers. The discussion has not escaped their control until the economic and political disasters they have fostered have festered and grown to an obvious wound in American society.

Bruce Bartlett professes to be "...truly baffled by this situation." He shouldn't be. The problem is that the small group of people who get the greatest advantage from the current system also have sufficient power to control the terms of debate through control of much of the media and through propaganda techniques that pushes a traditional conservative ideology rather than a fact-based modern scientific discussion. The oligarchs are conservative, since their power is based on tradition. The facts no longer support their ideology. They recognize this and fear what the actual facts will suggest should be enacted.

I am not arguing that modernism and the currently known facts should trump tradition and conservatism all the time, but when there are massive problems spread across society they can only be ignored so long before they endanger what America is and can be. Tradition is an important part of what makes any people great. But a tradition based on secrecy and secretly enacted power held by a small oligarchy who is gaining more power and wealth because of the problems in society is an illness in America. The strengths of the American Constitution all grow out of the collection, analysis and exposure of facts. The Constitution is a great document because it both grew out of traditional English law and political experience and yet was the result of a group of men who sat down together, collected the known facts of the situation and developed a new governmental structure to replace two that had failed - a distant traditional Monarchy and the Articles of Confederation.

The attempt of the then new Constitutional government to incorporate the economic system based on slavery failed because slavery cannot coexist with a democratic form of government, and the Constitution could not create an organic way to deal with slavery. The Civil War partially resolved that problem, although it festered on in segregation until the Civil Rights Movement finally placed American society on the path to correcting that clearly unAmerican problem.

Now, with modern America having grown into an urban industrial power, once again the conservative structures within society are failing to meet the needs of American society. Health care cannot be provided efficiently to everyone in America by the private and unregulated health insurance system, and the economy cannot be allowed to go under the control of oligopolistic and monopolistic economic power structures. The 18th century philosophy of Adam Smith does not work in a modern industrial society the way Smith described it in an economy dominated by craftsmen and small farmers.

It is time now to remove the blinders of tradition and ideology, collect reliable facts, and create new structures within the American tradition of government controlled by the people and conducted in public with minimal secrecy.

When that occurs, Bruce Bartlett will find that he is no longer baffled by the situation because he has stopped ignoring the power discrepancies that have created it.One very important step in that direction will include credible self-analysis of the Republican failures by Republicans themselves, aided by sharp and insightful analysis from the media. We Democrats are going to have to help them get there.

Are the rabid political mobs organized or spontaneous?

Rick Perlstein reports on the birthers, the anti-tax tea-partiers, the hecklers and the gun toting participants as they have appeared in American history.

The quiver on the lips of the man pushing the wheelchair, the crazed risk of carrying a pistol around a president -- too heartfelt to be an act. The lockstep strangeness of the mad lies on the protesters' signs -- too uniform to be spontaneous. They are both. If you don't understand that any moment of genuine political change always produces both, you can't understand America, where the crazy tree blooms in every moment of liberal ascendancy, and where elites exploit the crazy for their own narrow interests.

This nation, based on liberal change, is run by wealthy elites who fear liberal change for fear of what it will do to their narrow interests.The "Crazy" is traditional American.

What America has is a pool of not very well educated individuals - much of the conservative population - who have been trained to fear their own government unless it is organizing an army to fight overseas. America also has a number of wealthy conservative individuals who fund groups and hire extremely well educated individuals to organize the activities of the conservative population primarily to protect their own wealth and streams of income.

The results can be seen in the August Congressional townhall meetings. The health insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies have tapped into the conservative political machine to defend their current power to suck irrationally high profits from ill Americans, a process made much easier as long as their is a sizable pool of uninsured Americans that everyone else is afraid of being forced into.

So if you thing that the current made-for-TV and video political events are spontaneous, yes they are to some extent. But they are focused as a result of long planning and hard work but those who will lose if universal health care is passed.

The danger of "The Family" at the heart of American politics

This is the segment from the Rachel Maddow Show in which she interviews Jeff Sharlet, the author of the book The Family which describes the secretive christian fundamentalist group that controls so many Washington politicians.



When you hear a Washington politician make a totally nonsense statement and present it as "fact," check for their connection to "The Family."

Cheney and/or Palin in 2012? Ridiculous.

I have read that there are people proposing a run for President by Sarah Palin and possibly a run by a Cheney/Palin ticket. While nothing is impossible, the likelihood of such a ticket is - let's just say extremely limited. Here's my reasoning.

Palin has a truly fervent support group, but it's probably not as large by itself as Huckabee's was in 2008. She's a Dominionist with the belief that government should be controlled by evangelicals (like herself) who rule with the Bible as the ultimate source of law. That's the identical belief held by the Ayatollah in Iran and by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. That belief leads to that same philosophy and structure of government as in current Iran, except with a different book. Since Palin is an evangelical herself, she has the support of those like her who vote identity politics. They'll never dominate America, although they certainly do dominate much of the South, Texas and some of the Midwest. But they are a minority even there, who only get political dominance because of the fervency of their beliefs.

Then there is the fact that Palin has always quit her state-wide offices before the end of the term when she could not do the job successfully and began to fail. She can't deliver what she promises her supporters. She is an inherent outsider. She is not competent to perform as someone who is an insider and who has to be depended on. That's simply beyond her.

Palin only got state-wide jobs in the first place because Alaska is such a small and insular state and because she represents the small but fervent evangelical political group who votes identity politics. She'll never stand up to real competition. Her incompetence is now clear, her actual record of performance is too checkered, and her sick evangelical dominionist religious beliefs will scare off too many voters. She'll wither like a snowflake in front of a blast furnace. Which, of course, is why she resigned from the previous council she was on as well as resigning as governor. When I was in the artillery I would have described enemy on a battleground like that as a target-rich environment.

Then there's Dick Cheney. With Cheney's heart troubles, he isn't going to run for President, assuming he lives that long, and that's not very likely. He's on borrowed time right now. The stress of running would kill him, and if that didn't happen, he wouldn't last a single term. And he knows it himself. Don't expect him to run or to be open to an invitation to run. He'd rather live longer and influence the debates.

Cheney for President in 2012? He is not likely to live that long.

Neither person is any more likely to get the Republican nomination than Ron Paul or Mike Huckabee was in 2008. Plan on it. It ain't going to happen, folks.

Here's what the health care battle is all about.

The health insurance companies are in business to make profits, not to provide health care. When they have a choice between paying for health care a client expects or for making a profit, they will refuse to pay for the health care in order to increase their profit. They won't admit this, because admitting it is bad for business, but it is what they are in business to do. They collect as much money as possible and pay out as little as they can get away with.

The so-called free market for health insurance does not work to provide the best benefit at the lowest price. Effective free markets of knowledgeable sellers and buyers negotiating price and service is not possible. Since most geographic areas are provided insurance by a dominant insurer and a lot of people get only the insurance offered by their employer, there is little real price competition. Worse, most healthy people buy insurance to protect them from the unknown, so they have no idea what will really happen if they get sick or have an accident. The result is that since the insured has no idea what they are buying at the time they contract for it, price competition doesn't work. The lowest price will win most decisions even if the contract limits payments below what is needed. That results in many bankruptcies for supposedly insured people who find their insurance does not provide the protection they expected.

Right now, if you have insurance, all you have is a contract for which you have to pay rapidly increasing premiums and which you can be kicked out of at the insurance company's whim. Once you are kicked out you become uninsurable. This may be hidden from you if you get your health insurance through your employer, but it applies to you also.

If you do get sick and the expense of your illness or accident is expected to be large, then your insurance policy is much more likely to be canceled. In the meantime, the prices for all insurance and for health care services are rising uncontrollably. Many people are simply priced out of the market for insurance, or are sold policies with high deductibles, high copays, and caps on the total that will be paid out. Even if you have "insurance" if you get ill you have a high chance of being bankrupted by high medical expenses. This is exactly why you purchase health insurance - to get health care if you get ill and to avoid bankruptcy if you need health care.

Government regulations that require insurers to accept anyone who applies will keep them from selecting only the healthy and from avoiding or dropping the sick. A standardized set of benefits will permit the insured to know in advance what they are paying for, and a national regulator will give anyone the right to appeal unfair denial of payments. The public option will offer a safe and reasonably priced competitor to anyone who objects to the dominant private insurer in any given area. That completion will prevent private insurers from raising premiums unreasonably.

Is there any value in private insurers developing innovative ways to collect from the insured and paying for the services required? Not if everyone is insured. That reduces the entire process of providing health insurance to a simple administrative process of collecting the money and paying it out. Innovation needs to be done in actual provision of health care services, and insurance companies can only innovate in ways to avoid payments for health care services. That eliminates the complexity of insurance policies. Customers choose the policy they expect will offer the best services for the price, with full knowledge that they are getting real insurance against the unexpected.

That deals with fairness to people who need to buy and pay for health insurance. It also cuts down on the additional costs created when insurers fight to avoid paying for people who are sick or who should be insurance by some other insurer. What it does not do is slow the increase in medical costs.

Those have to be addressed by revising the way physicians and other health providers practice medicine and by removing the unnecessary aspects to administration in getting reimbursement for services provided. Studies of best practices and wide publication of the most effective and efficient are one answer to that. Another is to make sure that when someone needs medical care, the provider knows he or she will be paid for providing it. The cost of dealing with the uninsured is effectively eliminated by providing universal health care. If all Americans are in the insured pool, the costs of paying for the uninsured are pretty well eliminated. That means there is no excuse for cost-shifting by hospitals and health care suppliers who charge the insured more to cover the expense of people who cannot pay for the services they receive.

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Addendum 8/15/2009 9:24 am
Steve Benen has written an excellent post about what Wendell Potter is saying about how the insurance companies "put profits before patients" and how they are behind the current public attack on the effort to reform health care.

Wendell Potter was the top Public Relations Manager for one of the major health insurance companies, and was himself directly involved in killing Bill Clinton's attempt to reform the health care system.

NY Times commits journalism; World asks what's happening?

Back in 2007 Barack Obama claimed that if the Democrats would nominate and elect him President he would bring America out of the "Red/Blue" partisan political wars and back into a more civil United states of America. Yesterday, Paul Krugman scans across the current insane political battle ground that is America and comments on what has really happened. This is a very important column.

Of even greater importance, however, is the wondrous and very unusual effort of the New York Times to actually commit journalism on its front page. Jim Rutenberg and Jackie Calmes have written a superb analysis of the current health care battles entitled False 'Death Panel' Rumor Has Some Familiar Roots. This article has several elements that make it unlike any effort by the New York Times to commit ab act if journalism in over a decade and a half. First, it specifically labels the 'Death Panel' canards as 'False.' That is a clear statement that has been quite noticeable for its sad absence in political reporting out of Washington,D.C. for decades. Instead of presenting stenography and "he said, he said" reports and requiring readers to decide who is lying with no guidance, the New York Times has actually recognized and reported that the rumors are false.

Second, it specifically names the individuals responsible for creating and spreading the lie. The story points out that the lie was "Advanced even this week by Republican stalwarts including the party’s last vice-presidential nominee, Sarah Palin, and Charles E. Grassley, the veteran Iowa senator". Further information on the source of the lie is added:

the rumor — which has come up at Congressional town-hall-style meetings this week in spite of an avalanche of reports laying out why it was false — was not born of anonymous e-mailers, partisan bloggers or stealthy cyberconspiracy theorists.

Rather, it has a far more mainstream provenance, openly emanating months ago from many of the same pundits and conservative media outlets that were central in defeating President Bill Clinton’s health care proposals 16 years ago, including the editorial board of The Washington Times, the American Spectator magazine and Betsy McCaughey, whose 1994 health care critique made her a star of the conservative movement (and ultimately, New York’s lieutenant governor).

But the surprising willingness of the New York Times to call the rumor a falsehood and to specifically name the purveyors of that falsehood pales beside the single most important aspect of this story. The third and most important element is that this story has actually been published by the New York Times itself. And not just 'published.' We are told that "... a version of the article appeared in print on August 14, 2009, on page A1 of the New York edition." That's not in the back pages where inconvenient stories are sent to die a silent death. It's right up front where it is intended to be widely seen and to cause public conversation.

What makes this story so unusual is that, as Bob Somerby points out in his new Howler article on the subject, the New York Times itself has been the source and purveyor of most of the similar lies designed to destroy Bill Clinton and Al Gore, The very fact that the source of so much of the evil paranoid fear-mongering rhetoric that has polluted America's politics for the last two decades, the publication of this story is a real watershed. The question immediately arises - has their been a coup of sorts in the NY Times Editorial staff, or has someone there actually gotten a conscience and decided to commit journalism instead of pushing the right-wing ideology? Is the publication of this story a result of a personnel change, or of the personal change of an individual who approved it? That would be interesting to know, since it would tell us a lot about "the Grey Lady."

All three articles are well worth reading. The first two may indicate a watershed difference in American politics, and Somerby's Howler article offers some perspective and an explanation of the meaning of the publication of the first two articles. Something has appeared to be changing in American national politics since 2004, and these articles indicate that there may be a similar but belated change beginning to happen in the journalism of covering American national politics. It'll take time to tell what it means.

Right-wing "outgunned" on the Internet

This is a rather illuminating comment

Erick Erickson from RedState said that on the right, the focus has been “on punditry as opposed to activism.” “It has been focused on bloggers trying to be the next Rush Limbaugh or the next columnist, not on urging readers to call members of Congress or go to tea parties,” he added.
[Source: Think Progress]

Do you think the distinction could be the different mindset between individualists out to make it on their own against people who belong to a community and contribute to making it better?

If that's the case then the right-wingers simply cannot operate successfully using the Internet as a way of linking their community without changing the individual mindset of their members. Until they make that change, the Internet will remain an advantage for the left. But if they do make that change, they will become left-wingers themselves.

That leaves the right-wingers with only one way to fight the advantage the Internet gives the left-wingers - somehow deny the left-wingers the use of the Internet. Legal, sabotage, whatever. But it will not be the kind of highly effective asset for the right-wing that the left-wing already has found it to be.

Cheny still obsessive about the threats America faces

Even after leaving public office and while suffering from weak heart, Dick Cheney is as obsessive as ever about correcting the many mistakes American politicians are making.

Cheney passes most of his days at the top of the garage at his new house in McLean, where he built an office under the dormered roof and filled it with books and binders of his vice presidential papers. He kept copies of the unclassified ones and consults the rest on visits to the National Archives. He took detailed notes in the White House, head bobbing up and down as he wrote and sometimes disappearing from the screen in videoconferences. Those notes, according to one person who has discussed them with Cheney, will form the core of his account of the Bush years.

"What impressed me was his continuing zeal," said an associate who discussed the book with Cheney. "He hadn't stepped back a bit from the positions he took in office to a more relaxed, Olympian view. He was still very much in the fray. He's not going to soften anything or accommodate shifts of conscience. There was no sense in which he looked back and said, 'I wish I'd done something differently.' Rather, there was a sense that they hadn't gone far enough. If he'd been equipped with a group of people as ideologically rigorous as he was, they'd have been able to push further."

Barton Gellman, author of Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency the biography on Cheney, continues to tell the story of Mr. Cheney in his retirement.

History will determine which has been more destructive to the unique American Democratic Republic - the threats that Cheney perceives or Dick Cheney himself.

Why Republicans buy the "widespread voter fraud" lie

It has always seemed to me that a great many Republicans firmly believe that no rational person could reject the policies they push, so the only rational answer to why so many people do reject them has to be voter fraud by their enemies.

Since those Republicans believe that everyone who opposes them is a liar and criminal, they also don't believe any of the evidence that anyone suggests proves that their policies don't and can't work. So like all "true believers" with an ideology to sell, they know it can't be the ideology that has failed. The problem has to be enemies opposing it and the fact that those supporting it haven't worked hard enough to get the ideology implemented proper over such obstruction.

There is also the fact that they know the mass population has no clue about the way they should be governed. They are just waiting to be led, either in the right or the wrong direction. In spite of their patriotic rhetoric, they have no belief in the ability of the voting public to get it right unless they are led. Democracy is only "magic" to them because it gives them a possibility of replacing the existing government themselves.

Dedicated Communists have exactly the same problem. They know in their hearts that Communism is the wave of the future, so if they just redouble their efforts it will be accepted. Needless to say, such doubled and redoubled efforts frequently involve criminal or near criminal activities, at least by some extremists.

The whole package is a coherent internally self-reinforcing meme, one that applies to true-believer ideologues. Everything they know to be true supports it, and their system of thought is designed to reject evidence that they might be wrong. My point, though, is that such people really believe what they are saying.

This is what the tea bagger efforts are intended to do.

An AFL/CIO individual was included on a Republican strategy phone call about the Democratic townhall event. Here is what the Republicans are trying to do:

According to AFL-CIO's notes, the moderator on the call said, "The goal is not compromise, and ANY bill coming out this year would be a failure for us."

Another organizer added, "The purpose of Tea Parties is not to find a solution to the health care crisis -- it is to stop what is not the solution: Obamacare."

A spokesperson for the American Liberty Alliance told Greg that these sentiments "may have been expressed" on the call, though she isn't sure about the exact language.

Gee. What a surprise.

Remember, these guys are members of a political minority party. They want their views forces on all of us.

Obama needs to do more of these speeches

This is what we have needed out of our President. He gives a good speech, and this one on health care is one of his better ones.

what will it take to reach out to the Republicans on health care reform?

What kinds of proposals can Democrats accept that will allow the Republicans to compromise and work seriously on a reform of the American health care mess? Digby thinks history has the answer:

Adam Green notes Mark Warner's tiresome comments over the week-end about the need for bipartisanship and reminds us that this isn't the first time the Democratic Charlie Brown's have fallen for this:

Newt Gingrich on the House floor during the health care debate -- March 16, 1994:

Mr. GINGRICH.

I agree with my friend, the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Gephardt]. I want to reach out in a bipartisan way to pass the bill. I praise the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Bilirakis] and the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Rowland] for a bipartisan bill. I praise the gentleman from Iowa [Mr. Grandy] and the gentleman from Tennessee [Mr. Cooper] for a bipartisan bill. They are starting in the right direction to reach out.

How did that work out?

[Digby responds with another quote] I can answer that:

Then minority whip Newt Gingrich (R-GA) led a politically opportunistic and stubborn conservative charge against health care reform. He argued internally that any successful bill would set back Republican electoral prospects in November 1994. At a March 1994 strategy retreat, Gingrich warned GOP senators that “any Republican concessions will be met with more Democratic demands,” and that the GOP should concede nothing.

[Again from Digby}I doubt the game plan has changed.

I agree with Digby. I doubt that the Republican game plan has changed.

The Republicans simply don't believe that the American people should be provided with universal health care or anything like it from the government. Period. They also are certain that they are right, and that the majority of Americans who disagree with them are wrong. Besides not believing in government benefits for anyone except the rich, they don't especially believe in democracy either.

They strongly believe these thins. But if they admitted it in public, they also know the media would pillory them with the admissions and they would lose the next election. So they act on their core beliefs, but do not publicly admit to them. [I suspect that this knowledge of how the media would expose their true beliefs to the public is the reason why they also strongly believe that the major media is liberal and opposed to them.]

That's a rather schizophrenic form of thinking, of course. The have their personal goals [personal power and personal wealth], and they have their strong personal beliefs. But to achieve those goals, they have to show a very different mask, one that does not display those beliefs, to the media for exposure to the public. They will do so as long as it remains rewarding. But it must be difficult.

There will be no bipartisan health care bill, no matter how badly America desperately needs massive reform in the health care lack-of-system. The Republicans will continue to talk a seemingly somewhat conciliatory game until the very end. But at the end, they will pull out all the stops to kill health care reform.

If the Democrats are fooled by this "Lucy's Football" again and do not succeed in passing the health care legislation in spite of the Republican obstructionism, then the next election is going to be a bad one for the Democrats.

If that's the case then the Blue Dogs who ultimately defeat the bill should be taken out in the primaries. Only the Democrats can make government work again, and if the Blue Dogs obstruct that, then they go or the Democratic Party itself goes.

To answer the question this essay started with, nothing will reach the Republicans. They cannot and will not act in a bipartisan manner on health care. It's that simple.And the Democratic Party will once again severely regret it if it ignores this truth

Obama is sequencing his big initiatives

To those Progressives angry that Obama hasn't started on things like Don't Ask Don't Tell and Immigration reform, I've been saying - wait until after health care. Health care is his biggest and most important battle. You won't see anything else until after health care.

well, to the impatient and the unconvinced, here's a better source.

GUADALAJARA, Mexico - Joined by leaders whose countries border the United States, President Barack Obama on Monday said that while immigration reform is important other priorities such as his health care overhaul and financial regulation will be tackled first.

"I've got a lot on my plate and it's very important for us to sequence these big initiatives so they don't crash at the same time," Obama said when asked by a reporter about the prospects for immigration reform.

OK? Got it yet?

The things you have to do to get hits on UTube

Sometimes you have to go weird to spice up a routine exercise video.

Anti-health care activist asking for donations for his own health care

A conservative activist in St. Louis named Kenneth Gladney claims he was beaten by union thugs because he was demonstrating against the health care bill. His story may have some holes in it, but what makes it interesting is that he is now requesting donations for his medical care.

It seems that he was recently laid off and lost his health care. (Story from Steve Benen at the Political Animal.)

What was it he claimed he got beaten up for doing again?

This is the truth!

Kevin Drum describes his latest problem with corporate America. This was his conclusion, so accurate, routine and mundane as to almost escape notice these days.

...if you wonder why I'm not bothered by the idea of government-funded healthcare, that's why. Frankly, my dealings with the government, on average, are better than most of my dealings with corporations. The government might sometimes provide poor customer service just because they lack the motivation to do better, but corporate America routinely provides crappy customer service as part of a deliberate and minutely planned strategy. I'll take my chances with the feds.

Kevin's right. As customers we are used to getting the crap kicked out of us by the corporations who sell the stuff they want us to buy.

America has become a Fascist nation

How bad is the shift in America towards a right-wing authoritarian government? Take a look at this definition of Fascism by Robert Paxton, read the papers or watch TV and you tell me. Fascism is:

"... a system of political authority and social order intended to reinforce the unity, energy, and purity of communities in which liberal democracy stands accused of producing division and decline."

Then he gives some details that I will present as a checklist:

"a form of political behavior marked by

• obsessive preoccupation with community decline,
• humiliation or victimhood and
• by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which
• a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites,
• abandons democratic liberties and
• pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints
• goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."

Sara Robinson has presented all this and her analysis of how close we actually are to true Fascism. Her analysis is extremely disquieting, if not too surprising as we have watched the Bush/Cheney administration slide rather rapidly in this direction for the last eight years. She bases her analysis on Robert Paxton's five stages of Fascism. They are:
1. The initial creation of fascist movements.
2. Their rooting as parties in a political system.
3. The acquisition of power.
4. The exercise of power.
5. Radicalization or entropy.

Paxton explains what the stages are, and Sara shows how we have achieved each one. If you have time, start with Paxton's explanation. But Sara's analysis is the most focused on today's America which is suffering through the political illness.

Communism in America has always been extremely unlikely. The barriers here against Fascism, however, have always been much less robust. We are now on the very edge of the precipice.

Constitutional America is under attack by religious zealots

Sarah Palin complains that Obama's mythical"Death Panel" could kill her down syndrome baby. She also quoted a speech by the whacked out Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), (reported by Erik Kleefeld,), in which she [Bachmann] warned of the "dastardly involvement of Rahm Emanuel's brother, who is a doctor, in the health care debate:"

Rep. Michele Bachmann highlighted the Orwellian thinking of the president's health care advisor, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of the White House chief of staff, in a floor speech to the House of Representatives. I commend her for being a voice for the most precious members of our society, our children and our seniors.

Actually I see Palins' reference to Bachman as one wigged out evangelical fundamentalist shouting out to another. Palin, Bachman, and Katherine Harris from Florida are all female members of the political attack on America by the Dominionists. We can see the male equivalent in the C-Street crew such as Sanford, Ensign and others as well as those who are attempting to push the crap put out by the Discovery Institute opposing science and Evolution.

Congress members who stay or stayed at residences owned by the family include

Boarders at the C Street Center currently include Senators Tom Coburn, R-OK; John Ensign, R-Nev.; and Jim DeMint, R-SC; and Representatives Mike Doyle(D-Pa.); Jerry Moran (R-KS); Joseph Pitts(R-PA); Bart Stupak (D-MI); Heath Shuler (D-NC); and Zach Wamp (R-TN).^{[23][50][27][51]}

Other members, some of whom have lived at C Street Center or the Cedars, include Senators Sam Brownback (R-KS), Mark Pryor (D-AR), Charles Grassley (R-IA), James Inhofe (R-OK), Susan Collins (R-ME), John Thune (R-SD), and Bill Nelson (D-FL); Representatives John R. Carter (R-TX), Ander Crenshaw (R-FL), Jo Ann Emerson (R-MI), Mike McIntyre (D-NC), Ben Nelson (D-NE), Jim Slattery (D-KS), Todd Tiahrt (R-KS), Frank Wolf (R-VA), as well as former Senators Norm Coleman (R-MN), Pete Domenici (R-NM) Don Nickles (R-OK), George Allen (R-VA); Conrad Burns (R-MT), Mark O. Hatfield (R-OR), and former Representatives Steve Largent (R-OK); Mark Sanford (R-SC), Chip Pickering (R-MS), Ed Bryant (R-TN), John E. Baldacci (R-ME), and J.C. Watts (R-OK).^[17]

This from the wikipedia entry on C-Street is very interesting.

The C Street Center is immediately behind 132 D Street SE, the "safe house" used by Fellowship member and former Representative and Republican Majority Leader Tom Delay, R-TX, and several associates.^[86] The "house with a red door" had been purchased by the U.S. Family Network, an organization founded by Ed Buckham, a former Delay advisor, in 1999, and housed the offices of Buckham's Alexander Strategy Group and Delay's political action committee, Americans for a Republican Majority (ARMPAC). After the District of Columbia Zoning Administrator intervened, the rowhouse was sold to former Representative Jim Ryun, R-KS, in 2000.

The Dominionists look back to Rousas John Rushdoony, who is the protestant equivalent of the Islamic fundamentalist Sayyid Qutb

Two good books on the subject are American Theocracy by Kevin Phillips
and the more recent The Family by Jeff Sharlet.

This really is an organized effort to subvert America and eliminate the Constitution, replacing it with the Bible and some kind of board of whacked out preachers in a government structure much like that of Iran.

Cllinton's mission to North Korea restarts diplomacy abandoned by Bush

Michael Hirsh of Newsweek reports that on the back story of Clinton's surprise visit to North Korea. This was a renewal of the effort to regularize international relations with North Korea started in 1994.

Apparently the Bush administration objected to the fact that recognition of North Korea and regularized international relations would be a support to the government of Kim Jong Il and prevent the American government from removing them.

But eight years of Bush/Cheney and John Bolton's hard line policy has clearly been a total failure. So a return to the Clinton process can't be worse and offers the possibility of reducing the problems caused by the rogue kingdom on the North Korean peninsula. Control of the nuclear capabilities, terrorism, criminal activities and military threats of the North Korean reclusive regime is a lot more important than continued efforts to remove the regime of the dying Kim Jong Il.

I'm no expert in diplomacy and especially not in North Korea (is anyone?) but with the rather clear regime changeover coming up, efforts to find out what is going on and who to talk to would seem to make it a lot easier to shape the incoming replacement government and its policies would seem to be a very good idea.

Does it give Kim Jong Il a chance to leave a legacy of greater security for his government after he dies? Yeah, that seems likely. But face it. Eight years of the American hard line crap hasn't worked and if continued will cause a lot more trouble than it's limited chance of success is worth. Giving Kim Jong Il a short success just before his death in exchange for the future ability to possibly have greater influence on his successors seems a small price to pay to change a bad situation.

Getting North Korea out of the business of selling nuclear technology, and possibly missile technology, will have real benefits in America's bigger set of international problems. One of those bigger problems is the unstable and terrorist-threatened nuclear-armed Pakistan. Another is the real danger of anti-American international terrorist groups getting nuclear technology. Compared to these problems, the minor negative of making commitments to stop trying to remove the North Korean regime is a very minor cost. And there is no indication that North Korean regime removal has any chance of success anyway. To commit to the near inevitable seems like a very low price to pay to get greater freedom to deal with our other much greater international threats.

It cannot be overemphasized that the Bush policies towards North Korea have utterly failed. To continue them (as demanded by John Bolton) is clearly an example practicing the insanity of repeating the same continuously failed actions over and over, each time hoping for a different outcome.

Of course, there is no indication that Clinton carried any official message to North Korea or that he conducted any official discussions. But it does appear that he may have made contacts that will be available if future diplomatic activities become possible. The anticipated death is Kim Jong Il makes such activities very likely.

What I write here is just speculation about a mysterious but major international trouble spot. Go read Hirsh's article for a few facts being reported. Just don't forget that almost everything important about North Korea is unknown.

Robert Reich on the Republican astro-turf campaign against universal health care

Robert Reich discusses what is happening with the Republicans attacking health care.

The Republicans' goal isn't ideological. It's power. Republicans smell 1994 all over again. That's when they defeated Clinton's healthcare plan -- and in doing so convinced large numbers of Americans that Clinton and the Democrats couldn't be trusted. This enabled the Republicans to retake control of Congress. From then on, they blocked Clinton's agenda. They even gave themselves a shot at the presidency in 1996.

Who can blame them for wanting to recreate 1994? Republicans have no other strategy. They can't attack Obama personally because he's just too popular. They've been incapable of coming up with their own plan for healthcare reform. The biggest healthcare interest groups -- the AMA, private insurers, and Big Pharma -- have publicly backed the major healthcare initiatives coming from congressional Democrats (although, I suspect, are quietly supporting the Republicans' Astroturf blitz). Their "tea parties" in April were a flop. Their poll numbers are awful. Their major loudmouths -- Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannnity, and Dick Cheney -- are not exactly attractive to most Americans. Their biggest nightmare, Sarah Pallin, is already on the campaign trail for 2012.

But this Republican strategy will fail. 2010 will not be 1994. There's too much momentum behind universal health care right now to stop it. Yet the Republicans' fake grass-roots campaign may cause some Democratic lawmakers to become even more nervous about universal health care than they already are, or at least give them an excuse to duck when it comes time to vote in September. The result will be a watered-down set of reforms that still leave millions of Americans uninsured and don't slow healthcare costs. This is why Obama has to fight for this so hard over the August recess, why he has to be far more specific about what he wants in the bill, and why he can't afford any more diversions -- like the beer summit, or economic advisers who seem to open the door to middle-class tax increases.

This is the best analysis I have seen. It explains the massive sums of money being spent to try the long shot of killing Universal Health care. Nothing else makes sense.

Then we have a CNN anchor raking, Rick Scott, a major funder and honcho pushing the attack against Universal health car, over the coals for the way his hospital company and had to pay a record fine of $1.2 billion. Yes, that is billion with a "B." Scott is a key individual pushing the attack against universal health cafe.



These same anti-health care Republicans are feeding reports to their paid media stooges, Lou Dobbs and FOX news among others.

Freedom Works is another ultra right-wing organization behind the attack on universal health care.

Where do the rightwing talking points come from?

Jon Stewart masterfully explains the Crank Cycle.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Master Rebators - The Crank Cycle
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Spinal Tap Performance

Ed Kilgore writes on the effectiveness of the Republican mini-mobs.

Ed Kilgore is a pretty effective political analyst. here is his take on the mini-mobs the Republicans are attempting to field to disrupt Democratic town hall events.

There's not much doubt right now that conservatives are feeling their oats, now that the President's approval ratings have dropped, health care reform and climate change legislation are in doubt, and in general, Republicans have no responsibility for governance in Washington.

[...]

It all comes back to a point that conservatives really need to internalize: "base" energy and "noise" can be a significant political asset, but only if it's focused, strategically deployed, representative of actual rank-and-file sentiment, and attractive to "outsiders." If it's none of these things, it's worse than useless, because it simply serves as a reminder of why so many voters don't like the Republican Party in the first place.

So both the mini-mobs at town hall events and the efforts by the Republicans to create an Internet "rightroots" are failing. Instead of demonstrating the popularity of the Republican message, they are mostly demonstrating how great their failure is to reach the masses.

This is the ad CNN refuses to run. How much does the DEO of CNN get paid?

CNN has refused to run an advertisement that criticized Cigna Insurance Company and it's CEO for their decisions and money to kill health care reform.



As Greg Sargent points out, CNN would have no hesitation to run an ad praising Cigna insurance.

The battle over health care reform is another example of what Robert Michels called The Iron Law of Oligarchy. Modern organizations give the ultimate decision of how the resources of an organization will be spent to the top managers. Those top managers then work to maximize their power and retain their position at the top, and spend the resources of the organization to keep their position.

The result is a system of government or management called Oligarchy. That means the rule of the many by the few. In this case the few at the top fear they will lose their catbird seat if universal health care passes, so they are fighting it at every turn.

How much does the CEO of CNN get paid? What's he protecting?

The risks and rewards of Bill Clinton's trip to North Korea

Bill Clinton's trip to North Korea could have been a political disaster for Clinton if Kim Jong Il had wanted to continue playing games with the West, but instead it became a win-win event for all parties involved. Steve Clemons explains.

Steve also points out that John Bolton is trying to have an apoplectic fit over Clinton's trip to North Korea. When Bolton has a fit, that usually means someone did something right.

More warning about the economic false dawn the media is presenting

The talk about the nearing end of the worse recession since the Great depression is just more media economic happy talk.

Keep in mind - the key to recovery is the consumer. The consumer has to be able and wiling to spend more than he is currently spending if the economy is to recover, and folks, the consumer ain't ready or willing. Nor is he likely to be any time soon. Here is a report from The New York Times.

The broader economy may be testing the bottom, but for American consumers, there appears to be no end yet in sight for falling wages and higher living expenses.

That was the picture painted Tuesday by the government’s monthly report on personal incomes and consumer spending. While consumers spent more in June, they did so because prices of food and energy were rising, and not because they were ready to spend freely again.

Personal incomes sagged as employers continued to cut wages and reduce working hours. And the personal saving rate, which had been rising, dropped sharply from a month earlier as one-time transfer payments from the government stopped arriving in people’s bank accounts.

“Consumers are not spending any more money,” Steven Ricchiuto, chief economist at Mizuho Securities, said. “They’re still consolidating.” Personal income fell back 1.3 percent in June, just a month after a one-time $250 payment to Social Security recipients lifted it by the same amount. And in a sign of continuing troubles for American workers, private wages and salaries fell for a fourth month, slipping a seasonally adjusted $28.6 billion after a $11.3 billion drop a month earlier.

Private wages and salaries have fallen for each of the last 10 months as businesses trimmed costs by freezing pay, imposing salary cuts and reducing the work week. Personal income has dropped by a seasonally adjusted $372 billion since September.

“Wage and hour cuts are big right now,” Adam York, an economist at Wells Fargo, said. “The economy remains fairly weak, and the labor market even weaker. We’ve lost 6 million jobs, and unemployment is rapidly heading toward 10 percent. There’s just not a lot of wage pressure out there right now.”

The Commerce Department’s report showed that while consumer spending was no longer falling precipitously, shoppers were still extremely cautious with their money. Personal spending rose by a seasonally adjusted 0.4 percent in June, but factoring in price changes, real consumer spending slipped 0.1 percent.

The consumer is getting no additional money to spend, and he doesn't feel secure so he is going to save any of what he gets. The total available consumption spending is still shrinking and there is no hint of suggestion that it is going to turn around soon.

The best that can be said is that things aren't as bad ad they were slated to be if the government hadn't conducted the massive stimulus spending.

There is no suggestion that these conditions will change soon, either. Certainly not in 2009, and how soon after that is still unknown.

Sorry.

Did Blackwater (XE) have whistleblowers killed?

Jeremy Scahill, the reporter who has written the most about the contract mercenary company Blackwater, reports that Blackwater is being accused of having people who spoke to investigators or who threatened to speak to those investigators.

It looks like it was not just the members of the Bush administration who conducted criminal actions. So did their contractors. And yes, I understand that to be accused or implicated in such assassinations is not the same as being found guilty in court, and may not be the same as actually being guilty. But I'm not on any jury, and Erik Prince (founder of Blackwater) just looks guilty to me. He's going to have to prove himself innocent to me.

The source of the fake "Kenyan" birth certificate has been located

If you have followed the rantings of the "Birthers" and the insane "lawyer" and Dentist Orly Taitz then you have heard of the fake birth certificate the birthers claim to have found that "proves" Barack Obama was born in Kenya rather than in Hawaii. Dave Weigel of the Washington Independent has found the original document from Australia that some birther photo shopped into the so-called Kenyan birth certificate that "proves" their case.

Taitz is just another crazy Russian expatriate who has found a way to use the media to spread her madness. Who is behind her and using her to spread the message? Why are the Republicans in Congress supporting the entire birther insanity?

Is that and the tea bagger thugs all the Republicans have left to throw at American politics?

They appear sick and desperate. That's the current status of the conservative movement and the American Republican Party.

The teabaggers are an echo from the past

I was reading a historical wikipedia article, and noted these political tactics being used by a political movement. Somehow they seemed familiar. The conditions in which that political movement grew were clearly different from those we in America face today, but look at these tactics.

[An unnamed political Party] would come to be defined by these two characteristics; opposition to Socialism and explicit nationalism. [A politician] founded the [media organization.] This [media organization] would become the party organ of the [...] movement.

[...]

[The unnamed politician]...despite his movement being a minority of [the national population] moved to make his vision of [?]ism a reality. In doing so he used the methods of organized violence, propaganda, and sometimes powerful but often Machiavellian logic.

[..]

The [unnamed political movement] would exploit [a country] Nationalism, and their sense of the failure of democracy, socialism and liberalism in their rise to power.

[...]

[The political leader] declared that "We declare war on socialism, not because it is socialist, but because it has opposed nationalism...." Between [dates] [the political movement] began to appeal both to [national] industrialists and landowners in the [rural areas.]

These are extremist political tactics designed to use rural nationalist values to oppose the needs of urban workers. These tactics are directed and funded by wealthy oligarchs who want to protect their fortunes and the high social status - often above the law - those fortunes buy for them.

Somehow this sounded very familiar and very current as I read it. Go look at the Wikipedia article.

Rachel Maddow reports on the Republican "tea-bagger" thugs

This is what conservative Republican money is buying. The "tea-baggers" are the modern example of them German brown shirts from the 1920's. The job of both organizations is the same - shut down the public presentations of the opposition.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

---

Addendum 3:49 pm

Surprise, surprise! Rick Scott, the CEO of the anti-health care reform group Conservatives for Patients Right (CPR), has stated publicly that his organization is behind the supposedly "Grassroots" mobs who are attempting to shut down Democratic discussions of health care reform.

There goes the fantasy that these teabaggers are all coming out at the same time as some kind of grass-roots movement that is not beholden to the insurance companies who hate the very idea of universal health care.

The desperate Republicans have deployed their thugs; the ball is now in the Democrat's court

From the Washington Post's E. J. dionne:

Things are looking up for the Republicans, relatively speaking. President Obama's poll numbers have dipped, GOP recruitment for the 2010 elections is going better than expected, and the health-care battle has been rough on the Democrats.

On top of that, the surveys show Republicans now leading in this year's two major governor's races, in Virginia and New Jersey.

There's just one problem: The country still doesn't like Republicans.

[...]

In the short term, these tussles and rumblings may not matter much. The country is focused on judging what the Democrats are doing with the power they hold. The path that politics will take depends largely on the outcome of the health-care battle and the direction of the economy.

But to take advantage of the opportunities that might come their way, Republicans will have to make themselves an acceptable alternative. They have not done this yet. Facing down extremism and breaking out of the party's regional enclave would be good places to start

Has the effort by the Republican extremists to send the brown-shirt "tea-baggers" out into the streets with their efforts to shut down the health care debate caught the Democrats flat-footed?

Sure looks like it right now, but then what we see comes from the same national media that offered this "fair and balanced reporting" last night. Essentially Katie Couric of CBS gave the Republican right-wing extremists a great big slobbering kiss of love and support.

Viacom, GE, Disney and News Corp ^* simply don't want the Democrats and the American people to win this current battle.

What happens next? Are the Democrats just standing there like the proverbial "Deer in the headlight" frozen in shock and fear? When do they scatter for the woods and run for cover, every man on his own?

Or will we see some kind of organized push-back?

Barack Obama's effort to get the health care ball rolling and implemented has been strategically better than anything since LBJ's Medicare and Civil Rights legislation pushes. But the Republicans feel their status and pocketbooks threatened and have come back with tactics straight out of the playbook of the 1920's European fascists and Nazis.

The traditional disorganization of the Democratic Party is clearly exemplified by the break-away Blue-Dogs who seem to be entirely out for their own advantage and to be willing to work with or for no one consistently.

So what happens next? The ball is in the Democrat's court.

---

^* Viacom, GE, Disney and News Corp are respectively the corporate owners of CBS, NBC, ABC and FOX. The recent agreement between GE and News Corp to shut down the public disagreements between Keith Olbermann and Bill O'Reilly because it damaged the images of the corporate overlords of the news organizations is an example of how the media is managed to present the corporations in the best possible light.

None of those corporations considers their long term financial health to be improved by supporting universal health care, and their captive news outlets certainly demonstrate the corporate pressure.

America's news media system is in as much of a crisis as its system of providing and paying for health care is.

Hey! Someone in the media has figured out the real significance of the Cambridge, Mass arrest of Professor Gates in his own home and why it matters to President Barack Obama. The answer is: it doesn't matter to the President in his role as President at all. But the media would rather run a story about Race than one about health care. That demonstrates that the news media system has failed to meet the needs of the American public as thoroughly as has the American health care lack-of-system. Wonder why?

Race is safe, sexy and attracts ratings for the media at a time when newer and less well-developed issues offer only the danger of feeding conflict that will result in losing readers or viewers. The media does not cover news. It works to increase media revenue.

The much more important policy debate debate about health care is frankly boring. Besides, the media has evolved now to cover race. Race has been the key American topic since World War II, so the dangers to media revenue are well known. The newer and generally more contentions issue of national health care financing is a subject with unknown revenue risks and the media is strapped for revenue. The media has few reporters or editors who understand government or policy well enough to write about it generally. They have even fewer people capable of understanding the issues involved in the disaster that is the current health care lack-of-system together with the parasites who use fear of illness and the lack of easy access to health care to get rich. But the biggest problem is that covering the true issues in the national health care financing debate will not increase media revenue at a time when the reliable revenue streams for TV and Newspaper organizations are under heavy attack by competitors.

Then there is the problem of failed journalistic standards. Whether these failed standards are a cause or a result of the general revenue stream problems for the media is not clear. But the fact that the standard method of reporting political conflict does not tell the public what they need to know about the issues. Here's what journalists today do. The sacred and unquestionable journalistic orthodoxy that there are two and only two reportable sides to a political policy debate. Both sides are of equal importance, the the job of the media is simply to give equal weight to each of the two sides. It is up to the readers to determine which of the two sides is accurate or more meaningful. The journalistic community rarely reports anything that would provide readers or reviewers some standards by which they could measure the relative importance of the two sides, nor does the media ever explain how they determined what the two sides would be. The journalistic substitute for reporting on the standards the readers or viewers could use to evaluate the news is to get biased pundits to offer their opinions in a "he said - he said" conflict that is likely to increase ratings but provides no real information.

Finally, the media is supposed to cover only the political and entertainment aspects, never the boring policy aspects themselves and the reasons why the policy itself matters is irrelevant to the media buying public. The only thing that matters is what draws ratings that can be sold to the media advertisers.

The result is that the media generally tells the public little comprehensible about the health care debate since most of the people on both sides of the debate are already locked into fixed positions and do not appreciate it when the media actually tried to inform them of the real facts.

Here is Frank Rich writing in the New York Times:

You can’t blame Obama if he’s perplexed about the recent events. He answers a single, legitimate race-based question at the end of a news conference and is roundly condemned for “stepping on his own message” about health care. It was the noisiest sector of the news media that did much of the stepping. “Health care is bad for ratings,” explained one cable anchor, Dylan Ratigan of MSNBC, with refreshing public candor. What a relief, then, to drop dreary debates about the public option and declare a national conversation about black-white fisticuffs. Especially when this particular incident is truly small beer next to the far more traumatic national sea change on race that will keep sowing conflict and anger long after Henry Louis Gates Jr. finishes his proposed documentary on racial profiling.

I’ll return to the larger picture, but before the battle of Cambridge fades entirely, let’s note that the only crime Obama committed at his news conference was honesty (always impolitic in Washington). He conceded he did not know “all the facts” and so wisely resisted passing judgment on “what role race played” in the incident. He said, accurately, that “separate and apart from this incident” there is “a long history” of “African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcing disproportionately.” And, yes, the police did act “stupidly in arresting” — not to mention shackling — “somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home.” If Obama had really wanted to go for the jugular, he might have added that the police may have overstepped the law as well.

The president’s subsequent apology for his news-conference answer was superfluous. But he might have used it to acknowledge the one exemplary player in Cambridge, Lucia Whalen, the white passer-by whose good deed of a 911 phone call did not go unpunished. In his police report, Sgt. James Crowley portrayed Whalen as a racial profiler by saying she had told him that the two men at Gates’s door were black. She denied it, and the audio tape of her original call backs her up: she had told the dispatcher (only when asked) that one of the men “looked kind of Hispanic” and that she couldn’t see the other. Yet Whalen, who was pilloried as a racist because of Crowley’s report, received no apology from him and no White House invitation from Obama. That’s stupid behavior by both men.

The real matter of importance to the American public right now is the extended health care crisis which the forces of status quo do not want corrected. The media itself is facing its own crisis of relevancy which this health care debate highlights. Both the big city newspapers and the TV networks have been centralizing and building local monopoly positions within larger national near monopolies for the last five decades as they have fought to make more money and show up well to Wall Street.

The technological challenges of removing the sunk cost of news distribution has knocked the pins from under the traditional model of news gathering, bundling and distribution as the Internet has replaced the need for local department story and classified advertisements and for the daily distribution of the news on dead trees or over limited TV air time at a few selected times of day.

The result is that what now passes for TV and big city news organizations are reduced to trying to pander to selected niche markets which demand entertainment or selected reporting that supports the market's political beliefs. The commercial market for entertainment "news" provides all the so-called news that is needed to fill the available TV airtime or the newspaper entertainment news holes. The political partisans provide the needed talking points to fill the political opinion pages and TV pundit air time.

This explains what is wrong with the misnamed "News" media. The media is shrinking the entire news gathering process to whatever pays for itself, and it does so without searching for new sources of news because there is no known business model that pays for that kind of journalism any more. That's why so few news organizations maintain foreign bureaus any more. It's also why the editorial decisions about what is important out of a Presidential News Conference is about a trivial and only peripherally racial incident rather than the crisis surrounding the failed methods America has developed to pay for health care for a lot of its citizens.

So why is the media no longer properly a "news" media? That's because it has become a "revenue generation" media and nothing else. Of course, if they were honest and renamed it the revenue generation media then they would lose more revenue. So they will try to maintain the fiction that they are still a "news" media.

Krugman explains the connection between GDP growth and unemployment

This is from Paul Krugman's blog Saturday.

August 1, 2009, 11:51 am

Growth and unemployment

A few commenters have asked how it’s possible to have a recovery with rising unemployment; also there seems to be some confusion about what I meant by saying that the unemployment rate isn’t much out of line. So I thought I’d offer a chart — and I learned something in the process.

So here’s what economists mean when they talk about “Okun’s law” (which, like almost everything in economics, is a rough rule of thumb rather than a true law.) On the horizontal axis is the annual rate of growth in real GDP, on the vertical the change in the rate of unemployment (so that if unemployment goes from 5 to 6 percent, that’s a +1). I start with 1995 because that’s about when there seems to have been a pickup in underlying US productivity growth, making comparisons with earlier years problematic.

What you see is that unemployment tends to fall when growth is high, fall rise when it’s low or negative. You also see that growth has to be fairly fast — more than 2 percent — just to keep the unemployment rate from rising. Why? Well, productivity is rising, so that you can produce any given level of output with fewer workers; so output has to rise to keep employment from falling. And the working-age population is growing, so you need positive employment growth just to keep unemployment from rising.

That’s how you can have a technical recovery that feels like a recession: real GDP may be rising, but if it doesn’t rise at a sufficiently high rate, unemployment keeps going up.

Now, notice the red dot at the upper left. That represents what happened from 2008II to 2009II: a huge fall in real GDP, a huge rise in unemployment.

So the recent report that the second quarter Gross Domestic Product only contracted by 1% instead of the very nasty drop of around 6% in the first quarter should result in a smaller increase in the unemployment rate. Of course, the change in GDP does not effect the unemployment rate immediately. There is a lag time.

In my opinion that still means that the economy is improving in a few sectors, especially housing. Those sectors are being "floated" on a sea of government supplied money and credit because the federal government is pumping stimulus money into the economy. The consumption that drives the overall economy is not yet self-sustaining, and gives no indication that it will be anytime soon.

Consumption itself cannot increase or even stop declining until the consumers start getting more money to spend, and they aren't getting it yet. In part that is because there is no increase in wage income, and in part there is a problem that consumers are sensible and want to build or rebuild their savings in case of future problems. Even if they get more money, consumers are going to delay a lot of spending until after they allay their fears of layoff or other job loss. Since Consumption is 70% of the total GDP, and investment that is directed at economic growth caused by an increase in consumption is another big chunks of the 30% of the economy that's left, the economy is not currently improving on its own and will not do so until consumers start making more money.

That means unemployment must drop dramatically, something that will only happen after the GDP has gone into positive numbers. The growth of GDP has to be a sizable one, according to Krugman, And the delay between the time change in GDP actually does turn back into growth until the employers decide it is a permanent or at least predictable change, then the time the employers take to decide to hire more labor and actually get it done, will probably take at least a year or more.

I doubt that the economy could begin to show strong hints that it was starting to be self-sustaining again until Summer of 2010 or later.

This really is the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930's. And it has taken nearly a decade to develop, with the signs of the downturn itself not being publicly obvious until late 2006 or early 2007.

The stimulus funds that have already been committed are only about 30% implemented at this time. It is really surprising that the mere 30% has begun to show significant effects this soon.

This link leads to Krugman's earlier post.

The unknown dangers of cyberwar delayed its introduction

Would you believe there was a form of war the Bush administration was afraid to attempt back in 2003? According to the Global New York times there was.

In 2003, the Pentagon and American intelligence agencies made plans for a cyberattack to freeze billions of dollars in the bank accounts of Saddam Hussein and cripple his government’s financial system before the United States invaded Iraq. He would have no money for war supplies. No money to pay troops.

“We knew we could pull it off — we had the tools,” said one senior official who worked at the Pentagon when the highly classified plan was developed.

But the attack never got the green light. Bush administration officials worried that the effects would not be limited to Iraq but would instead create worldwide financial havoc, spreading across the Middle East to Europe and perhaps to the United States.

Fears of such collateral damage are at the heart of the debate as the Obama administration and its Pentagon leadership struggle to develop rules and tactics for carrying out attacks in cyberspace.

So we could have done it in 2003 but didn't know how far the collateral damage to the global financial system would have extended. So the Bush administration would do it.

But a mere conventional invasion of Iraq was alright. Sure there were certain to be many civilian casualties as collateral damage to a military invasion, but as long as no bankers got hurt ....

Of course, if a terrorist group were to develop the techniques, destroying the global banking networks that the West depend on just might be the goal instead of a nasty side effect to be avoided.