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New York Times: “While Confident Health Care Will Pass This Year, Democrats Still Search for a Plan”
Here’s a plan: Insurance companies really don’t want to cover catastrophic illnesses, so why not make them covered by a national program, either administered by Medicare or some private company? If the whole country were involved, the cost per person should would be minimal.
Then the insurance companies could compete on basic coverage only.
Pacific John at Alegre’s Corner
There was a lot of approving chatter about Obama dueling with the Republicans at their retreat. Good for him. It’s nice to remember that the GOP’s ideas can’t compete.
But as to what we need in terms of leadership, making the GOP look bad with their own ideas is just one small part. A leader needs to have a comprehensive sense of where the organization needs to go, the vision of how to get there, and the ability to revise plans in real time to keep up with events. [Emphasis added.] Obama’s recent performance is about 2% of what a competent corporate manager does on a daily basis – (s)he needs to be able be a rock star in a boardroom showdown before breakfast, plan new products before lunch, and make sure the operation runs like a well oiled machine that afternoon. Someone who pats him/herself on the back for saving the division at one key meeting and coasts for the rest of the week will fail.
John Smart at Liberal Rapture:
There seems to be two ways Obama makes decisions. One is to make a broad announcement without thinking ahead then hoping everything works out – with others doing the “working out” – Health care and the KSM trial are examples. The other is to avoid making a decision at all for as long as possible, then make a decision that covers every possible outcome – which is, of course, not a decision at all. Afghanistan comes to mind. Both processes indicate an empty mind, a kind of dangerous stupidity…
[T]he desire to prove something outweighs what makes the most sense or what is best for the nation. [Emphasis added.]
David Michael Green, writing at Counterpunch:
The obvious solution [for Obama’s failed presidency], of course, would be a sharp turn to the left. [Emphasis added.] Go where the real solutions are. Fight the good fight. Call liars ‘liars’ and thieves ‘thieves’. Do the people’s business. Become their advocate against the monsters bleeding them dry. Create jobs. Build infrastructure. Do real national health care. End the wars. Dramatically slash military spending. Produce actual educational reform. Launch a massive green energy/jobs program. Get serious about global warming. Kick ass on campaign finance reform. Fight for gay rights. Restore the New Deal era regulatory framework and expand it. Restore a fair taxation structure. Rewrite trade agreements that undermine American jobs. Rebuild unions. Fill the spate of vacancies in the federal judiciary, and load those seats up with progressives. Rally the public to demand that Congress act on your agenda. Humiliate the regressives in and out of the GOP for their abysmal sell-out policies.
All of this could be done, and most of it would be very popular, especially if it was backed by an aggressive and righteously angry Oval Office advocate for the people who knew how to use the bully pulpit to shape the narrative, to market ideas, and to mobilize public support.
But I doubt Obama has anything like the constitution for that sort of presidency… [H]e would rather preside as a three year lame-duck over a failed one-term presidency, than actually throw an elbow or two and make anyone uncomfortable. Think how unpleasant it would be.
Instead, he keeps moving further to the right. The Sideshow:
The idea of a special panel to “study” the national debt (that is, try to figure out how to kill Social Security and cut taxes for the rich) was so awful that even the Senate rejected it. so Obama is putting together his own stupid panel.
Even on lefty issues, he makes the wrong decisions: “Obama Pushes Nuclear Energy to Boost Climate Bill.” These types of plants are unreasonably dangerous, and in any case will soon be outmoded:
Laser fusion test results raise energy hopes
Levitating Magnet May Yield New Approach to Clean Energy
Energy needs to not only be clean, but to also be renewable. But we’re letting the Chinese get ahead of us.
Susie says Arlen Specter is drafting a Constitutional amendment to limit corporate campaign contributions.
Tufts University: “Democrats and Republicans Can Be Differentiated from Their Faces”
… the Republicans looked judgmental and mean, and the Democrats looked sympathetic but weak.
New Class of Brain-Protecting Drugs Emerging
Drug helps smoker give up the puff after 50 years
Fake Drugs Bought on the Web Pose Big Health Risks
New Tools and Systems May Help Patients, Primary Care Clinicians Manage Obesity
Plus lots more.
In the past 12 months, the cost of wages and benefits received by workers other than those employed by the federal government rose 1.5%, according to the Labor Department’s employment cost index. In the same period, consumer prices rose 2.7%.
White House economic adviser Larry Summers told the World Economic Forum the United States was experiencing a “statistical recovery and a human recession,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
He noted that one in five American men aged 25 to 54 are unemployed.
Has Larry Summers been reading Make Them Accountable?
Think Progress: “Republicans dismayed by Obama’s strong performance, say it was a ‘mistake’ to let cameras roll.”
Don’t worry, Republicans. Obama may have looked strong at your meeting, but he won’t continue beating up on you.
They’re already saying he lectured them, which he does tend to do.
BBC:
Why do people often vote against their own interests?
Why are so many American voters enraged by attempts to change a horribly inefficient system that leaves them with premiums they often cannot afford?
Why are they manning the barricades to defend insurance companies that routinely deny claims and cancel policies?…
If people vote against their own interests, it is not because they do not understand what is in their interest or have not yet had it properly explained to them…
In his book The Political Brain, psychologist Drew Westen, an exasperated Democrat, tried to show why the Right often wins the argument even when the Left is confident that it has the facts on its side…
For Mr Westen, stories always trump statistics, which means the politician with the best stories is going to win: “One of the fallacies that politicians often have on the Left is that things are obvious, when they are not obvious.
“Obama’s administration made a tremendous mistake by not immediately branding the economic collapse that we had just had as the Republicans’ Depression, caused by the Bush administration’s ideology of unregulated greed. The result is that now people blame him.”…
Thomas Frank, the author of the best-selling book What’s The Matter with Kansas, is an even more exasperated Democrat and he goes further than Mr Westen.
He believes that the voters’ preference for emotional engagement over reasonable argument has allowed the Republican Party to blind them to their own real interests.
The Republicans have learnt how to stoke up resentment against the patronising liberal elite, all those do-gooders who assume they know what poor people ought to be thinking.
Right-wing politics has become a vehicle for channelling this popular anger against intellectual snobs. The result is that many of America’s poorest citizens have a deep emotional attachment to a party that serves the interests of its richest…
“It’s like a French Revolution in reverse in which the workers come pouring down the street screaming more power to the aristocracy.”
As Mr Frank sees it, authenticity has replaced economics as the driving force of modern politics. The authentic politicians are the ones who sound like they are speaking from the gut, not the cerebral cortex. Of course, they might be faking it, but it is no joke to say that in contemporary politics, if you can fake sincerity, you have got it made.
And the ultimate sin in modern politics is appearing to take the voters for granted.
This is a culture war but it is not simply being driven by differences over abortion, or religion, or patriotism. And it is not simply Red states vs. Blue states any more. It is a war on the entire political culture, on the arrogance of politicians, on their slipperiness and lack of principle, on their endless deal making and compromises.
And when the politicians say to the people protesting: ‘But we’re doing this for you’, that just makes it worse. In fact, that seems to be what makes them angriest of all.
So stop blaming the voters, progressives. It’s our own fault that we haven’t convinced them how our policies can benefit them and how Republican policies have and will continue to hurt them.
[W]e’re paralyzed in the face of mass unemployment and out-of-control health care costs. Don’t blame Mr. Obama. There’s only so much one man can do, even if he sits in the White House. Blame our political culture instead, a culture that rewards hypocrisy and irresponsibility rather than serious efforts to solve America’s problems
I blame Obama and all the other members of the Democratic leadership for not fighting the stupid right-wing memes, and instead giving in to them. But what Obama did today is not the way.
POLITICO Breaking News (via email):
President Barack Obama, speaking at the House Republican retreat in Baltimore, accuses Republicans of portraying health care reform as a “Bolshevik plot” and telling their constituents that he is “doing all kinds of crazy stuff that’s going to destroy America.”
He’s talking to the wrong people. They know what they’re doing, and they don’t give a damn what he wants from them. They don’t even pretend to care what he thinks. He needs to be convincing the American people. But he’s nice about Republicans when speaking to the public.
It’s just stupid.
Meanwhile, Republicans and their friends are playing for keeps:
Keep America Safe has yet another video meant to scare the American people, not provide the real facts on America’s counterterrorism efforts. The ad calls President Obama’s policies dangerous and provides a laundry list of political talking points that have no bearing on enhancing American security, but seeks to defend failed legacies and score political points. Among the so-called ‘dangerous policies’:
And on health care, Greg Sargent: Hatch Vows Reconciliation Will Lead To Permanent “War” Between Parties. As thought there wasn’t permanent war already.
People just don’t know what’s going on.
A new Pew Research poll found that just 32% of Americans know the health care reform bill before Congress received no support from Republican Senators.
In addition, just 26% know that 60 votes are needed to break a filibuster in the Senate.
And that’s because DEMOCRATS DON’T EXPLAIN to Americans what they think are the best policies and why, and the procedural obstacles. They don’t show the Republicans to be the obstructionists that they are—to the PEOPLE, not to the Republicans, and repeat it and repeat it and repeat it.
Instead, Obama buys into the right wing mythology. He said recently that if anyone has any better ideas for health care reform, they should tell him about them. Well, there’s been a better idea available for many years, an idea that Obama refused to even allow Congress to consider.
Physicians for a National Health Program, ‘There Is a Better Health Plan, Mr. President’
Rising to President Obama’s challenge to others in his State of the Union address that they come up with a better approach to health care reform than his own, physicians who advocate a single-payer program stepped forward this morning to again make the case for their alternative, which they say has solid public support.
How can you determine the best ideas when the best ideas can’t be considered?
So the DSCC now is worried about Russ Feingold’s re-election, now, and what do they plan to do?
The [DSCC] memo urges Democratic candidates to force their opponents to answer a series of questions:
“Do you believe that Barack Obama is a U.S. citizen? Do you think the 10th Amendment bars Congress from issuing regulations like minimum health care coverage standards? Do you think programs like Social Security and Medicare represent socialism and should never have been created in the first place? Do you think President Obama is a socialist? Do you think America should return to a gold standard?”
Don’t discuss the issues. Don’t convince Americans that Democratic policies are better for them than Republican ones. No, get involved in silly arguments over silly stuff. As if THAT will elevate the discussion.
It won’t.
As expected, a big GDP number…, signifying nothing much. It’s an inventory blip: topline growth at 5.7 percent, but only 2.2 of that is final demand.
“If the federal government had not bailed out Wall Street banks, unemployment could have skyrocketed to 25 percent,” former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in an interview with CBS News.
Yes, well, it COULD HAVE hit 50%,. Or even 100%! Omigod omigod omigod!
In his State of the Union speech on Wednesday, Obama said, “One in ten Americans still can’t find work.” Sorry, Mr. President, but the percentage of Americans unemployed is actually almost 20%, which is ONE IN FIVE, not one in ten. Just because about half of the unemployed have given up even trying to find work doesn’t mean they don’t count. He either has no notion of what we’re facing, or he doesn’t care.
Dean Baker has some ideas on reining in the dangerous big banks, and Joseph Cannon tells us how to fix the economy. Why aren’t we doing what has worked before?
Times Online, U.K., Blair admits Saddam threat was overstated
Foreign Policy, CIA Man Retracts Claim on Waterboarding
Well, it’s official now: John Kiriakou, the former CIA operative who affirmed claims that waterboarding quickly unloosed the tongues of hard-core terrorists, says he didn’t know what he was talking about.
Why isn’t this information being touted all over our news media? Rhetorical question, of course. Our media are obviously in favor of war and torture.
5 Habits That Stop Strokes
Quick and Simple Ways to Work Out at Work
What You Eat After Exercise Matters
3 Ways to Stop Overeating — for Good
Plus lots more.
The progressive PR firm Murray Hill Inc. has announced that it plans to satirically run for Congress in the Republican primary in Maryland’s 8th congressional district to protest the Supreme Court’s disastrous decision. A press release on its website says that the company wants to “eliminate the middle man” and run for Congress directly, rather than influencing it with corporate dollars:
“Until now,” Murray Hill Inc. said in a statement, “corporate interests had to rely on campaign contributions and influence peddling to achieve their goals in Washington. But thanks to an enlightened Supreme Court, now we can eliminate the middle-man and run for office ourselves.”
Murray Hill Inc. released its first campaign video Monday. A narrator in the video explains, “The way we see it, corporate America has been the driving force behind Congress for years. But now it’s time we got behind the wheel ourselves.”
Click here to watch the video.
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While Obama bashes lobbyists, Geithner’s Treasury organizes secret briefings for them
By Brent Budowsky - 01/28/10 01:43 PM ET
To understand why Americans are so angry with Washington, and why I have called for the replacement of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, don’t miss the story broken by Bob Cusack, managing editor of The Hill newspaper.
Cusack reports that staff for Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner organized private, off-the-record, confidential briefings for lobbyists about the president’s State of the Union address and major programs.
These briefings were available to lobbyists, and not the general public. They were secret, and not open to the media, and not to be reported publicly. The president attacks lobbyists while his Treasury secretary gives first-class tickets to insider special interests, while the rest of the American people fly standby.
Wall Street lobbyists pushing for huge bonuses get the first-class ticket; taxpayers who paid for the bailout weren’t invited.
Steve at The Left Coaster, Anger Helps, Mr. President
We know that Obama knows how to give good speeches. His problem has been in being too naïve in dealing with his political opponents, and in translating those speeches into a political operation that pushes those opponents every day. As evidenced by the Democracy Corps instant polling and focus groups last night of independents and others who had moved away from Obama during the course of 2009, he managed to bring those voters back to his side with his rhetoric about jobs, holding Wall Street and the banks accountable, and the difficulties in dealing with the GOP.
Action that helps ordinary Americans would help even more.
