¶ The Paragraph

The debate on a U.S. national health insurance bill has ranged over three main plans: at one end, the single-payer system most favored by the people; at the other end, the all-private system favored by insurance companies; and in the middle, the public option among private options, favored by the majority Democratic leadership.x¹⁰ Since that leadership barred the single-payer plan from Congressional committees working on the bill, insurance companies have lowered their sights on the public option. At the first Senate committee hearing, insurance company agent Karen Ignagni offered to give up charging women more for medical insurance than men, as a concession towards killing the public option.x¹¹ But Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) did not see that as a worthy bargaining chip. “The disparity between women and men in the individual marketplace is just plain wrong and it has to change,” he said. And before the day was out, Kerry put in a bill to ban that practice.x¹²x¹³ While that one try did not work out for the insurance companies, it still serves to show a contrast in bargaining styles. At one end, the people’s supposed representatives open with a position that has already ceded half the ground, while at the other end, the insurance companies see even a small concession as a bargaining chip.

Sources

Read the rest of this entry »

As the U.S. Congress works on a national health care bill, people have lined-up behind three main proposals. The one most favored by citizens and doctors — and many Democratic lawmakers — is the single-payer system, which would improve and extend Medicare to all persons.x¹ With this system everyone chooses one’s own doctors, and no one has to shop for health insurance. This type of system has been proven to work well in many other developed countries.x² But both Congressional committees working on the national health care bill have taken single-payer off the table, saying that moving to it from today’s huge for-profit insurance system would be “disruptive”.x³ The second proposal, favored by much of the national Democratic leadership, is the public option, where a person would pick one from a menu of several insurance company plans and a non-profit government insurance plan.x⁵ Like single-payer, the public option would be free of the huge costs in marketing, executive pay and profits of insurance company plans. But, to keep the public option viable, lawmakers would have to tool the system to guard against insurance companies cherry-picking the healthiest persons. To get the public option passed, proponents might have to deal with renegade Democrats sympathetic to insurance company gripes of not being able to compete.x⁶ The third proposal, favored by insurance companies, and those Republican lawmakers who favor any proposal at all, keeps an all-private insurance system, which would have some new regulation while requiring all persons to buy insurance.x⁷ This type of system was adopted three years ago in Massachusetts, but has failed to control costs and provide health care to all.x⁸ Still, the millions of dollars the insurance business has put into lobbying and lawmakers’ campaign chests might sway Congress to choose this system.x⁹ So, while it appears that corporate pull has yanked single-payer off the table, it remains to be seen if the people have enough pull in Congress to at least get a viable public option.

Sources

Cartoon credit: ‘Count Bleed-Ya-Dry’ by Bill Jarcho via The Backbone Campaign

Read the rest of this entry »

In the 1990’s right-wing talk spread to nearly every radio dial in the United States, and, day-after-day, pelted liberal-thinking citizens with scorn, and railed against use of government to help the people — even knocking long-established programs such as the minimum wage and social security.x⁷⁰x⁷¹x⁷² Behind that barrage, a Republican majority rode into Congress, and cut regulations for financial corporations.x⁷³ Later, under cover of the ongoing barrage — now strengthened by a new right-wing TV news network — the right-wing corporate Bush regime snuck into power, and pushed through big tax cuts for the richest citizens, and cut enforcement of regulations on big corporations.x⁷⁴x⁷⁵x⁷⁶ So, with a free rein, big financial corporations sold trillions of dollars of shaky bonds, bets on bonds, and bonds on bets, which poisoned and slowed the world-wide economy, causing millions of people to lose their jobs.x⁷⁷ During all of this, the Black Hills wind blew across Mount Rushmore and the chiseled faces of four past leaders who warned about such events.

George Washington warned against internal enemies who would try to separate one group of citizens from another, and the people from their government:

The unity of Government, which constitutes you one people, … is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquillity at home, your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very Liberty, which you so highly prize. But … it is easy to foresee, that … much pains will be taken, many artifices employed, to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed …x⁸⁵

Thomas Jefferson foresaw fraudulent banking:

[L]iable as [a bank’s] cash would be to be pilfered and robbed, and its paper to be fraudulently re-issued, or issued without deposit, it would require skilful and strict regulation.x⁸⁶

Abraham Lincoln believed that government “for the people” should include protecting workers’ wages:

[I]t has so happened in all ages of the world, that some have laboured, and others have, without labour, enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits. This is wrong, and should not continue. To [secure] to each labourer the whole product of his labour, or as nearly as possible, is a most worthy object of any good government. x⁸⁷

Theodore Roosevelt warned of corporate bosses undermining government for the people:

The big trust magnates …, the big politicians of the old boss type …, stand against the people. They object to the government, to government being used primarily in the interest of the people themselves. Naturally, they will do all they can to breakdown the only real enemies that they have and the only real champions, the only real and efficient champions of popular right, and economic, social, and industrial justice.x⁸⁸

Now there is liberal talk — though not nearly on every radio dial. But where it exists, it serves to beat back the right-wing barrage, and to broadcast words like those from the Rushmore wind.

Liberal Talk Radio Links

Read the rest of this entry »

In September last year, the Bush regime left behind its old refrain that “the fundamentals of the economy are strong,” and went to Congress for a quick $700B to bail out collapsing banks stuck with toxic assets.x⁶⁰x⁶¹ Then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson called for giving himself total control of the fund and making his decisions “non-reviewable … by any court of law or any administrative agency.“x⁶² Congress passed the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) to provide the money, but wrote-in oversight, and created the Congressional Oversight Panel (COP). Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) appointed as chairman Elizabeth Warren, a bankruptcy law professor free of banking and government ties. In October, Paulson reported to COP that Treasury had used the TARP fund to buy assets “at or near par”, but COP researched and found that to be false: Paulson had overpaid by $78B, nearly a third of what was spent. Now, with a new regime, and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner in charge of TARP, the U.S. may be getting a better price for bank assets, but it still avoids taking over big banks, de-toxing them and selling them back into private hands — like the FDIC does for smaller failed banks. As chairman of COP, Warren does not give policy advice, but the professor did answer an interviewer’s question about what a bankruptcy proceeding for a bank would look like:

Here’s how it would work in a Chapter 11 if this were any other industry: all the equity would be wiped out, then the creditors would get a percentage on the dollar,” she said. “We would totally protect all the deposit accounts, and the rest of the debt would get some combination of stock and pennies on the dollar. The minute that happens, the banks are solvent, and new capital can flow in.”

Someone said to me, You’re describing ripping the Band-Aid off all at once, and we’re saying how ‘bout we just keep peeling the corners off a little at a time — ouchy, ouchy, ouchy — and maybe we can adjust as we go along. [In the early 90’s,] Sweden ripped the Band-Aid off all at once, and Japan took ten years. But the Band-Aid had to come off.

Who are we trying to protect here? Is it a banking system that is in service to American families and the economy, or is it the American families and the economy in service to a banking system? I know what I think the answer should be.”

The biggest taker of banking bailout money, AIG — getting $40B of TARP money in November, plus $43B from its own special bailout fund and $38B in loan money — is now in line to get another $30B from TARP.x⁶³ Ouchy, ouchy, ouchy.

Sources

Photo of Elizabeth Warren by Millicent Harvey, published in the Harvard Law Bulletin

Read the rest of this entry »

(Analysis.) In his inauguration speech, President Obama made this appeal:x⁵⁰

[T]he time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history …”

But when a child clings to childish ways, an adult should be firm. In a news conference last week, Obama addressed some of the childish arguments he heard during debate on his jobs bill.x⁵¹ For instance, he addressed Republican rewriting of the history of the New Deal:

Now, you have some people, very sincere, who philosophically just think the government has no business interfering in the marketplace. And, in fact, there are several who’ve suggested that FDR was wrong to interfere back in the New Deal. They’re fighting battles that I thought were resolved a pretty long time ago. Most economists, almost unanimously, recognize that, … when you have the kind of problem we have right now, … that government is an important element of introducing some additional demand into the economy.

Obama also addressed Republican stubbornness in sticking with trickle-down economics, and opposition to oversight of corporations:

I’m happy to get good ideas from across the political spectrum, from Democrats and Republicans. What I won’t do is return to the failed theories of the last eight years that got us into this fix in the first place, because those theories have been tested, and they have failed.

And he addressed Republican cries of “pork!”:

What I’ve been concerned about is some of the language that’s been used suggesting that this is full of pork and this is wasteful government spending, so on and so forth.

First of all, when I hear that from folks who presided over a doubling of the national debt, then, you know, I just want them to not engage in some revisionist history. I inherited the deficit that we have right now and the economic crisis that we have right now.

…

But when they start characterizing this as pork, without acknowledging that there are no earmarks in this package — something, again, that was pretty rare over the last eight years — then you get a feeling that maybe we’re playing politics instead of actually trying to solve problems for the American people.

An adult should also be patient, and give a child the leeway for and example of good behavior. Obama wrapped-up the news conference by saying:

But I am the eternal optimist. I think that, over time, people respond to civility and — and rational argument. I think that’s what … the people around America are looking for. And … that’s the kind of leadership I’m going to try to provide.

Still, when a child given such leeway gets destructive, an adult should reel that child in. Right from the start, Obama put a big chunk of tax cuts favored by Republicans into his jobs bill, and hoped to get more than 20 Republican votes for the bill in the Senate.x⁵² Instead, only three Republicans voted for the bill, and only after they threatened to filibuster (an action meant for extraordinary circumstance only), and got some items they didn’t like removed.x⁵³ So the jobs bill passed without school construction funding and the 400,000 jobs it would have brought, and without federal employee whistleblower protection and the guard against money being wasted that it would have brought.x⁵⁴x⁵⁵ When asked how he would get Republican cooperation in the future, Obama answered:

I suppose what I could have done is started off with no tax cuts, knowing that I was going to want some, and then let them take credit for all of them, and maybe that’s the lesson I learned. But there was consultation [with Republicans]; there will continue to be consultation.

Sources

Read the rest of this entry »