Truth is stranger than fiction
In the political charade
Especially in the diction
Of the candidate parade
Where a word may have meaning
Or perhaps not
Depending on your leaning
And if you smoke pot
As hopefuls scratch and fight
While moving to the right
The current overexposure of politicians calling themselves Republicans in a series of reality dramas being called debates is both humorous and scary. It is like Freddy from Friday the 13th fame meeting up with the Three Stooges for an unscripted joint project. As I studied the eight most common participants, their similarity to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs became increasingly clear except that nobody in the old fairy tale group of eight was running for president.
Allow me to introduce the group:
Sleazy is Herman Cain who seems to excel in domestic affairs (six and counting), but has trouble with foreign affairs. Is Libya a real country? Iran has high mountains that keep us out, but we need an electric fence to keep immigrants out. He was chosen by God to run.
Sleepy is Jon Huntsman who has trouble keeping up with the comedians in the group but does not want to stir them enough to notice that he is on stage with another Mormon. He wants to be on the far right of the stage, but is too polite to argue.
Dopey is Rick Perry who cannot list more than 2 items without a brain freeze; wants Congress to work part time and he wants to lead the nation if he does not secede from it. He would prosecute the Social Security Administration for its Ponzi scheme. He was chosen by God to run.
Doc is Ron Paul who sees pot as a personal choice as is the creation of an Army. He is the gold standard for eliminating the Fed. He thinks we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in DC are semi-criminal or entirely criminal. MLK Day is annual Hate Whitey Day.
Happy is Mitt Romney who seems delighted that his career of crushing companies and firing employees or cutting their pay qualifies him as a job creator. Healthcare should be supported by a mandate unless it should not be supported by a mandate. Claims he once saw a poor person, but may flip-flop on that.
Bashful is Rick Santorum who wants sex in the closet where it belongs. Life begins at the thought of sex or slightly before. And flag pins make the man unless they don’t. He was chosen by God to run.
Grumpy is Newt Gingrich who wants to return to child labor to lower wages and wants to fire federal judges he disagrees with while nuking Iran and returning to Iraq. Palestinians are an invented people. Campaigns by others should be more civil. Hypocrisy does not include Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac lobbying or his $300,000 House fine for a Jim Wright style ethics lapse.
Snow White is Michele Bachman who claims an Amazing Immaculate Conception for getting both federal and state money for her farm and husband’s “gay cure” clinic while never getting a subsidy. She claims that our founding fathers worked tirelessly to free the slaves despite Mt. Vernon and Monticello. Hmm. Snow White as history dwarf, but chosen by God to run.
It has become obvious that these presidential hopefuls are indeed all dwarfs, not in the sense of physically or genetically affected people, but intellectual and emotional dwarfs who generate bumper stickers that are placed further on the starboard side than any Republicans in history. Barry Goldwater was a Conservative. These candidates are Fascist Looney Tunes that would make Goldwater blush. Let us look at a few ideas that are being promoted and even exaggerated by their rhetoric:
Many candidates have announced that they have been chosen by God to run for president. I don’t know your belief system, but my wager (not $10,000) is that God is much smarter than that. This may be an attempt to secure the Religious Right vote, but it will probably only confuse people who hear voices and not anybody else. In Iowa, as of now, pastors are splitting their support because they are not sure that God spoke or sent a text as he did with Moses. Candidates do not appear to be readers of the New Testament, given their quest for blood and vengeance on the international scene. Despite this drastic policy, for Gingrich and Cain, self-forgiveness trumps all. It may be a sign that King David has replaced Ronald Reagan as Most Dear Leader, especially with Newt the Martyr, who has reinterpreted the Constitution as a quaint preamble to his reign as King of America, Infinity and Beyond. His plan to colonize the moon calls for sending his enemies first to establish the first lunar penal colony. Because of the number of enemies, life support issues are paramount and this may delay the project due to budget constraints.
Snow White has also been chosen by God to run as a serious candidate and to foil Newt the Martyr who has converted to Catholicism and sided with the Pope who is the Anti-Christ. This has confounded non-evangelical pastors and annoyed Catholics and moderate evangelicals who were seeking the True Conservative and they have announced in Iowa that she should step down and endorse Rick Santorum who is male and biologically and morally superior. One might think that after GW Bush announced that God chose him, that candidates might fear not being taken seriously if they followed suit. Snow White claims that her Salem Lutherans never burned witches. It is no surprise that Christine O'Donnell endorsed Romney.
Rick Santorum, being slightly more Catholic than the Pope has simultaneously embraced the theology and scolded the Pope for his slack acceptance of homosexuals as worthy beings. He has denounced Darwin as only a theory and endorsed Intelligent Design. His support of educational vouchers thrills some fellow Catholics, but Intelligent Design has been co-opted by political enemies such as Snow White. Some Republican conciliators have asked Bashful to kiss and make up with Snow White by putting her on his ticket as a Vice Presidential candidate, but kissing leads to sin and he has agreed to briefly shake hands instead.
Doc, or Ron Paul has threatened to run as a Third Party candidate to emphasize his Libertarian credentials. This has split the social conservative factions who support his White is Right statements but have trouble with his policy on marijuana. The Third Party may provide another conflict with Donald Trump who did not make the travel team for the debate tournament. The Donald (not to be confused with the Duck of the same name) has also threatened to run on a Third Party ticket thus creating the real struggle as to which will be Third and which will be Fourth.
Happy has endured campaigning for president twice within memory as well as serious personal privation in his personal and business life. While a missionary in Paris, he was forced to live in an austere hotel that was formerly the embassy for the United Arab Emirates. A chef prepared food, often without input from Mitt and there was hardly room for his bicycle in his hotel closet. The hotel was in the chic “16th” of Paris making it difficult to find the lower middle class he sought to convert. There were so many baths that Happy learned decision-making by choosing the site for his bath to be drawn. It’s not easy being green (with money) and it is emotionally crushing to make millions from layoffs.
Sleepy is in difficult straits. He is sometimes the only adult on stage and he confuses candidates with his bipartisan anecdotes and shows he lacks understanding by suggesting dialogue instead of war on nations not accepting American Exceptionalism defined by Perry, Gingrich and Romney. He lacks the energy to keep the other candidates awake because of his polite demeanor. He leans starboard but talks to Democrats proving that he is unreliable in a fight. His days on the team are limited.
Sleazy has now borrowed a world atlas and is preparing to lower his sights to become the Secretary of Defense. Defense is his preferred positioning and, in fact, he is under Secret Service protection due to credible threats, probably from his wife. He has suspended his presidential campaign until the next debate or sexual allegation, whichever comes first. This may be a clever ploy like the Mohammed Ali “rope-a-dope” trick where he laid low and then punched out his rivals.
Peace,
George Giacoppe
20 December 2011
Showing posts with label attack politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label attack politics. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Sunday, December 05, 2010
Politics Uber Alles
Sail on O Ship of State
Unless it has become too late
To save us from plutocracy
In the name of our democracy
As we edge to immolation
And pick this mighty nation
Apart to little bits
While playing politics
I don’t know about each of you, but I feel that we have reached a point in our democratic republic when we need to reassess the mechanics of governing. For the past two years, The Democratic party has “enjoyed” sizable pluralities in the House and Senate as well as holding the bully pulpit of the White House. The majority did not rule. They were attacked constantly by a noisy minority that has used every technique available to delay, defer, deny or otherwise thwart the will of the people. And here is the rub. We need to protect the minority so that the majority does not simply trample on the rights and needs of a minority that may also have the interests of the nation at heart. The majority perhaps could have been more forceful or even more creative in framing the issues that are at stake, but, save a miracle, the outcome would not have been altered a whit because we are engaged in a partisan struggle of the powerful and wealthy versus the great but shrinking middle class people of our republic.
Interestingly in the latest election, the interpretation of the votes has been made a measure of propagandistic effectiveness instead of fact or reflecting actual opinions and votes. When voters were questioned regarding continuing the tax break for the top 2%, their overwhelming opinion, regardless of party, was that the break for “millionaires and billionaires” should end. Republicans have claimed an entirely different message and have simultaneously called for extension of the tax break and also for reduction of the national debt that will be worsened by $700 Billion over the next ten years if the tax break is extended. So Democrats have used language indicating “millionaires and billionaires” when the actual line is $250,000 for joint returns. That was oversimplification. Millionaires and billionaires would get the break up to $250,000 as well as those who earn less, but Republicans ignored that subtle fact. That is careful word choice. Republicans say that this is not the time to increase taxes on the wealthy since the economy is in decline and that (here we go again) giving the tax breaks to the wealthy will trickle down to the ordinary people and create jobs.
The Bush tax breaks have been in place since 2001 and have not created jobs except in the government sector where about 1.2 million jobs were created and this by the party of smaller government. The private sector gained about 670,000 jobs before the recession. In other words, we proved again that trickle down does not work and that wealthy people do not spend their money where it gets multiplied in the marketplace. The estimate for the multiplication factor for tax breaks for the top 2% of earners is about 9% while the same action for the middle class is about 65% and still higher for folks on unemployment compensation. The claim that we need to rein in spending while splurging $700 Billion on people who don’t need help and who will not improve the job market seems hollow, especially for the additional millions of people who may lose their homes if the unemployment compensation is not immediately extended. There is a claim that small businesses that are not incorporated could be impacted if the Bush cuts are not extended to the highest 2% of income earners, but that, too, is highly suspect since only 1% of small businesses earn more than $250,000 per year. Just who or what is the “Bush break” aimed at? Let me present a theory that you are free to challenge. Republicans are acting as though wealthy people are somehow more worthy because they are wealthy or plutocrats. It is even more ironic that many of these plutocrats don’t pay taxes anyway because they have the wherewithal and tax attorneys to avoid them. The owners of the LA Dodgers, Frank and Jamie McCourt spend an average of $20 million per year and yet have paid pay no income taxes for the past ten years or so. Others may be more socially conscious, but their taxes are gracefully lower anyway. Hedge fund operators pay taxes “earned” at 15% despite huge profits. Surely you would agree that hedge fund investors are more worthy than engineers or schoolteachers or truck drivers, but would engineers, teachers and truck drivers?
Our current tax rates are the lowest since 1950, but in 1950, America's wealthiest 10% held only 30% of the wealth. Today, the top 1% holds about 40% of the wealth. In other words, the share of pie has increased about ten-fold for the truly wealthy. “Trickle down” has actually bubbled up and the only thing that the middle class feels trickle down is the sweat burning down their necks when they cannot pay their mortgages, or maybe a little pee down their legs when their kids go hungry. The middle class has shrunk as though all this were a zero sum game, but it does not have to be zero sum with more enlightened tax burdens. The top marginal tax bracket during WW II was essentially confiscatory at 94%, but citizens felt a need to support the nation at war. Even as late as 1980, the top rate was 70%. In the thirty years since then, the wealth of the richest few has skyrocketed while the income for middle class Americans who are wage earners and not major investors or inheritors, has barely kept up with inflation. Unfortunately, the bottom 10% have not even been able to keep up with inflation. The logic offered by many Republicans is that fairness means that everybody gets the same break. But the question remains, how do we measure equal breaks? Clearly, percentages have not done that job. Many taxes are absolutely regressive. The sales tax affects the poor far more than the wealthy. If your marginal income is at the poverty level and you need a tank of gas or disposable diapers, the local 8 or 9% sales tax may mean cutting down on food or other necessities. For the wealthy it means nothing, sometimes literally, if they have access to corporate sales tax exclusions for their personal use.
We have seen societies in history that were essentially plutocracies and they were often unstable or ruled with an iron fist. The health of a nation is related to the wealth of a nation, but only insofar as the wealth is distributed well enough to avoid great pain or obvious un-merited inequity. As long as we have inequity of regressive taxation on necessities then the income tax needs to be realistic as well as a balancing factor for the perception of fairness. The obvious endpoint of the current trend is a banana republic where a few families control the fates of the remaining families. We can avoid that and can look to addressing inequities by addressing the factors that create the widening gap. Fairness can be measured partly on the ability to pay. Fairness can be measured by reining in costs for things like education that drive innovation and growth for the entire nation. It is in the best interest of the nation to encourage education and to avoid additional regressive burdens such as the newly proposed elimination or reduction of the mortgage exemption or we will quickly shift into a landlord class of great control that will mimic Dicken’s England. It is ironic that this very day, we are celebrating the highest corporate profits ever and yet we have a national average unemployment of 9.8%. We have had constant and consistent productivity growth over the past 30 years and yet fairness in sharing those productivity gains has escaped the workers in both manufacturing and service industries.
Americans are essentially fair-minded. Statesmanship demands fairness and not temporary political advantage. Politics in absence of fairness is not only temporary, it is folly that risks our basic structure. We need to reward those who create jobs that stay in the US and stop using labor costs as a trump card to eliminate good jobs. Incidentally, just look at Boeing. They decided that cheaper labor would save their market for the 787 “Dreamliner.” Boeing is 3 years behind schedule and counting. Cheap overseas labor was no solution and is no solution. Instead of a “Dreamliner,” they got a nightmareliner that will not go away. Obama: use your veto. Travesty will surely follow the right wing capture of the House of Representatives. Class warfare has progressed and the Middle Class is losing.
Peace,
George Giacoppe
05 December 2010
Unless it has become too late
To save us from plutocracy
In the name of our democracy
As we edge to immolation
And pick this mighty nation
Apart to little bits
While playing politics
I don’t know about each of you, but I feel that we have reached a point in our democratic republic when we need to reassess the mechanics of governing. For the past two years, The Democratic party has “enjoyed” sizable pluralities in the House and Senate as well as holding the bully pulpit of the White House. The majority did not rule. They were attacked constantly by a noisy minority that has used every technique available to delay, defer, deny or otherwise thwart the will of the people. And here is the rub. We need to protect the minority so that the majority does not simply trample on the rights and needs of a minority that may also have the interests of the nation at heart. The majority perhaps could have been more forceful or even more creative in framing the issues that are at stake, but, save a miracle, the outcome would not have been altered a whit because we are engaged in a partisan struggle of the powerful and wealthy versus the great but shrinking middle class people of our republic.
Interestingly in the latest election, the interpretation of the votes has been made a measure of propagandistic effectiveness instead of fact or reflecting actual opinions and votes. When voters were questioned regarding continuing the tax break for the top 2%, their overwhelming opinion, regardless of party, was that the break for “millionaires and billionaires” should end. Republicans have claimed an entirely different message and have simultaneously called for extension of the tax break and also for reduction of the national debt that will be worsened by $700 Billion over the next ten years if the tax break is extended. So Democrats have used language indicating “millionaires and billionaires” when the actual line is $250,000 for joint returns. That was oversimplification. Millionaires and billionaires would get the break up to $250,000 as well as those who earn less, but Republicans ignored that subtle fact. That is careful word choice. Republicans say that this is not the time to increase taxes on the wealthy since the economy is in decline and that (here we go again) giving the tax breaks to the wealthy will trickle down to the ordinary people and create jobs.
The Bush tax breaks have been in place since 2001 and have not created jobs except in the government sector where about 1.2 million jobs were created and this by the party of smaller government. The private sector gained about 670,000 jobs before the recession. In other words, we proved again that trickle down does not work and that wealthy people do not spend their money where it gets multiplied in the marketplace. The estimate for the multiplication factor for tax breaks for the top 2% of earners is about 9% while the same action for the middle class is about 65% and still higher for folks on unemployment compensation. The claim that we need to rein in spending while splurging $700 Billion on people who don’t need help and who will not improve the job market seems hollow, especially for the additional millions of people who may lose their homes if the unemployment compensation is not immediately extended. There is a claim that small businesses that are not incorporated could be impacted if the Bush cuts are not extended to the highest 2% of income earners, but that, too, is highly suspect since only 1% of small businesses earn more than $250,000 per year. Just who or what is the “Bush break” aimed at? Let me present a theory that you are free to challenge. Republicans are acting as though wealthy people are somehow more worthy because they are wealthy or plutocrats. It is even more ironic that many of these plutocrats don’t pay taxes anyway because they have the wherewithal and tax attorneys to avoid them. The owners of the LA Dodgers, Frank and Jamie McCourt spend an average of $20 million per year and yet have paid pay no income taxes for the past ten years or so. Others may be more socially conscious, but their taxes are gracefully lower anyway. Hedge fund operators pay taxes “earned” at 15% despite huge profits. Surely you would agree that hedge fund investors are more worthy than engineers or schoolteachers or truck drivers, but would engineers, teachers and truck drivers?
Our current tax rates are the lowest since 1950, but in 1950, America's wealthiest 10% held only 30% of the wealth. Today, the top 1% holds about 40% of the wealth. In other words, the share of pie has increased about ten-fold for the truly wealthy. “Trickle down” has actually bubbled up and the only thing that the middle class feels trickle down is the sweat burning down their necks when they cannot pay their mortgages, or maybe a little pee down their legs when their kids go hungry. The middle class has shrunk as though all this were a zero sum game, but it does not have to be zero sum with more enlightened tax burdens. The top marginal tax bracket during WW II was essentially confiscatory at 94%, but citizens felt a need to support the nation at war. Even as late as 1980, the top rate was 70%. In the thirty years since then, the wealth of the richest few has skyrocketed while the income for middle class Americans who are wage earners and not major investors or inheritors, has barely kept up with inflation. Unfortunately, the bottom 10% have not even been able to keep up with inflation. The logic offered by many Republicans is that fairness means that everybody gets the same break. But the question remains, how do we measure equal breaks? Clearly, percentages have not done that job. Many taxes are absolutely regressive. The sales tax affects the poor far more than the wealthy. If your marginal income is at the poverty level and you need a tank of gas or disposable diapers, the local 8 or 9% sales tax may mean cutting down on food or other necessities. For the wealthy it means nothing, sometimes literally, if they have access to corporate sales tax exclusions for their personal use.
We have seen societies in history that were essentially plutocracies and they were often unstable or ruled with an iron fist. The health of a nation is related to the wealth of a nation, but only insofar as the wealth is distributed well enough to avoid great pain or obvious un-merited inequity. As long as we have inequity of regressive taxation on necessities then the income tax needs to be realistic as well as a balancing factor for the perception of fairness. The obvious endpoint of the current trend is a banana republic where a few families control the fates of the remaining families. We can avoid that and can look to addressing inequities by addressing the factors that create the widening gap. Fairness can be measured partly on the ability to pay. Fairness can be measured by reining in costs for things like education that drive innovation and growth for the entire nation. It is in the best interest of the nation to encourage education and to avoid additional regressive burdens such as the newly proposed elimination or reduction of the mortgage exemption or we will quickly shift into a landlord class of great control that will mimic Dicken’s England. It is ironic that this very day, we are celebrating the highest corporate profits ever and yet we have a national average unemployment of 9.8%. We have had constant and consistent productivity growth over the past 30 years and yet fairness in sharing those productivity gains has escaped the workers in both manufacturing and service industries.
Americans are essentially fair-minded. Statesmanship demands fairness and not temporary political advantage. Politics in absence of fairness is not only temporary, it is folly that risks our basic structure. We need to reward those who create jobs that stay in the US and stop using labor costs as a trump card to eliminate good jobs. Incidentally, just look at Boeing. They decided that cheaper labor would save their market for the 787 “Dreamliner.” Boeing is 3 years behind schedule and counting. Cheap overseas labor was no solution and is no solution. Instead of a “Dreamliner,” they got a nightmareliner that will not go away. Obama: use your veto. Travesty will surely follow the right wing capture of the House of Representatives. Class warfare has progressed and the Middle Class is losing.
Peace,
George Giacoppe
05 December 2010
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Health Care and Other Sorrows
President Obama and various Democratic Senators trumpeted their “victory” this weekend, when they managed to bribe Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson to pledge his vote for the Health Care Bill in exchange for concessions on abortion (how abortion became part of the health care debate is another matter). Here is how an AP report characterized the concessions: Not only would health plans not have to offer coverage for abortions, but
“In plans that do cover abortion, beneficiaries would have to pay for it separately, and those funds would have to be kept in a separate account from taxpayer money.
Moreover, individual states would be able to prohibit abortion coverage in plans offered through the exchange, but after passing specific legislation to that effect.”
Thus, one reactionary senator from one corny state has dictated the health benefits offered to women in the entire nation.
The rest of the benefits once considered firmly in the bill have been torpedoed by other reactionary senators like Kent Conrad of North Dakota and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut. So gutted has the final bill become that Howard Dean, once a presidential candidate and until the party election this year, chairman of the party, wrote an op-ed piece in the Washington Post that appeared today, condemning the compromise in no uncertain terms. His words pretty much sum up the defeat of Senate liberals on healthcare:
“If I were a senator, I would not vote for the current health care bill. Any measure that expands private insurers’ monopoly over health care and transfers millions of taxpayer dollars to private corporations is not real health care reform.
Real reform would insert competition into insurance markets, force insurers to cut unnecessary administrative expenses and spend health care dollars caring for people. Real reform would significantly lower costs, improve the delivery of health care and give all Americans a meaningful choice of coverage. The current Senate bill accomplishes none of these.
Real health care reform is supposed to eliminate discrimination based on pre-existing conditions. But the legislation allows insurance companies to charge older Americans up to three times as much as younger Americans, pricing them out of coverage. The bill was supposed to give Americans choices about what kind of system they wanted to enroll in. Instead, it fines Americans if they do not sign up with an insurance company…
If you want to read more of what Dean said, and it is powerful, check out his op-ed.
But the important thing here, as in numerous other initiatives of the Obama Administration and the craven Democrats who promised reform in this and other areas, is the continuing abandonment of long-held principles upon which they were elected. A recent article by Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone Magazine (“Obama’s Big Sellout” Dec. 9, 2009) cites these concessions chapter and verse. It is not a pretty picture. Basically, according to Taibbi, the Obama Adminstration took action as soon as Nov. 5 to abandon the promises (and people—Austin Goolsbee, Karen Kornbluh) that got him elected, and steered deliberately towards the center and the moneyed interests who reign there. It was clear in the appointments Obama made to his economic team—and which we have commented on before. People like Tim Geithner as Secretary of Treasury, Lawrence Summers as Head of the Council of Economic Advisers, Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff, Michael Froman as head of the National Economic Council, and countless others, all came out of a very specific area of Wall Street, many of them aides or protégés of former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. According to Taibbi, Rubin, who came originally from Goldman Sachs, has screwed up every job he’s ever had. Nonetheless, he has been consistently demoted upward, most recently to the Chairmanship of Citigroup, which the Federal Government has bailed out with billions (upwards of $300 billion) of taxpayer dollars. His legacy in the current administration has been extensive and toxic:
The significance of all of these appointments isn't that the Wall Street types are now in a position to provide direct favors to their former employers. It's that, with one or two exceptions, they collectively offer a microcosm of what the Democratic Party has come to stand for in the 21st century. Virtually all of the Rubinites brought in to manage the economy under Obama share the same fundamental political philosophy carefully articulated for years by the Hamilton Project: Expand the safety net to protect the poor, but let Wall Street do whatever it wants. “Bob Rubin, these guys, they're classic limousine liberals,” says David Sirota, a former Democratic strategist. “These are basically people who have made shitloads of money in the speculative economy, but they want to call themselves good Democrats because they're willing to give a little more to the poor. That's the model for this Democratic Party: Let the rich do their thing, but give a fraction more to everyone else.
It is sickening to realize that this pretty much sums up the moves made by the Obama administration in virtually every arena of government: the wars in Iraq/Afghanistan, the policy on torture and Guantanamo, health care reform, and global warming. It is always a compromise with the most reactionary forces, and justified by the catch-phrase that has now become their mantra: Don’t let the perfect become the enemy of the good. But what good is a good that makes matters worse, as Dean says about the current health care compromise? What good is a Nobel Peace Prize for a president who has just ordered 30,000 more troops to a war that never should have been started in the first place?
All one can conclude is that one’s optimism that Obama was a “necessity” ran its course on Inauguration Day when people wept to see a black man as President. Since then, it’s been downhill all the way. The real power in this nation has remained unchanged, and firmly in the hands of Wall Street bankers, corporate CEOs, health-care moguls, and the same wealthy elites who have run things since the beginning. One might have thought that the near-catastrophe that brought the financial system to its knees would change this, but, if anything, it has made conditions for most of us worse. Now the health care “reform” bill threatens to add to the stench.
In this dark season, one cannot help but veer towards that prophetic question of William Butler Yeats:
“what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”
Lawrence DiStasi
=
“In plans that do cover abortion, beneficiaries would have to pay for it separately, and those funds would have to be kept in a separate account from taxpayer money.
Moreover, individual states would be able to prohibit abortion coverage in plans offered through the exchange, but after passing specific legislation to that effect.”
Thus, one reactionary senator from one corny state has dictated the health benefits offered to women in the entire nation.
The rest of the benefits once considered firmly in the bill have been torpedoed by other reactionary senators like Kent Conrad of North Dakota and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut. So gutted has the final bill become that Howard Dean, once a presidential candidate and until the party election this year, chairman of the party, wrote an op-ed piece in the Washington Post that appeared today, condemning the compromise in no uncertain terms. His words pretty much sum up the defeat of Senate liberals on healthcare:
“If I were a senator, I would not vote for the current health care bill. Any measure that expands private insurers’ monopoly over health care and transfers millions of taxpayer dollars to private corporations is not real health care reform.
Real reform would insert competition into insurance markets, force insurers to cut unnecessary administrative expenses and spend health care dollars caring for people. Real reform would significantly lower costs, improve the delivery of health care and give all Americans a meaningful choice of coverage. The current Senate bill accomplishes none of these.
Real health care reform is supposed to eliminate discrimination based on pre-existing conditions. But the legislation allows insurance companies to charge older Americans up to three times as much as younger Americans, pricing them out of coverage. The bill was supposed to give Americans choices about what kind of system they wanted to enroll in. Instead, it fines Americans if they do not sign up with an insurance company…
If you want to read more of what Dean said, and it is powerful, check out his op-ed.
But the important thing here, as in numerous other initiatives of the Obama Administration and the craven Democrats who promised reform in this and other areas, is the continuing abandonment of long-held principles upon which they were elected. A recent article by Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone Magazine (“Obama’s Big Sellout” Dec. 9, 2009) cites these concessions chapter and verse. It is not a pretty picture. Basically, according to Taibbi, the Obama Adminstration took action as soon as Nov. 5 to abandon the promises (and people—Austin Goolsbee, Karen Kornbluh) that got him elected, and steered deliberately towards the center and the moneyed interests who reign there. It was clear in the appointments Obama made to his economic team—and which we have commented on before. People like Tim Geithner as Secretary of Treasury, Lawrence Summers as Head of the Council of Economic Advisers, Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff, Michael Froman as head of the National Economic Council, and countless others, all came out of a very specific area of Wall Street, many of them aides or protégés of former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. According to Taibbi, Rubin, who came originally from Goldman Sachs, has screwed up every job he’s ever had. Nonetheless, he has been consistently demoted upward, most recently to the Chairmanship of Citigroup, which the Federal Government has bailed out with billions (upwards of $300 billion) of taxpayer dollars. His legacy in the current administration has been extensive and toxic:
The significance of all of these appointments isn't that the Wall Street types are now in a position to provide direct favors to their former employers. It's that, with one or two exceptions, they collectively offer a microcosm of what the Democratic Party has come to stand for in the 21st century. Virtually all of the Rubinites brought in to manage the economy under Obama share the same fundamental political philosophy carefully articulated for years by the Hamilton Project: Expand the safety net to protect the poor, but let Wall Street do whatever it wants. “Bob Rubin, these guys, they're classic limousine liberals,” says David Sirota, a former Democratic strategist. “These are basically people who have made shitloads of money in the speculative economy, but they want to call themselves good Democrats because they're willing to give a little more to the poor. That's the model for this Democratic Party: Let the rich do their thing, but give a fraction more to everyone else.
It is sickening to realize that this pretty much sums up the moves made by the Obama administration in virtually every arena of government: the wars in Iraq/Afghanistan, the policy on torture and Guantanamo, health care reform, and global warming. It is always a compromise with the most reactionary forces, and justified by the catch-phrase that has now become their mantra: Don’t let the perfect become the enemy of the good. But what good is a good that makes matters worse, as Dean says about the current health care compromise? What good is a Nobel Peace Prize for a president who has just ordered 30,000 more troops to a war that never should have been started in the first place?
All one can conclude is that one’s optimism that Obama was a “necessity” ran its course on Inauguration Day when people wept to see a black man as President. Since then, it’s been downhill all the way. The real power in this nation has remained unchanged, and firmly in the hands of Wall Street bankers, corporate CEOs, health-care moguls, and the same wealthy elites who have run things since the beginning. One might have thought that the near-catastrophe that brought the financial system to its knees would change this, but, if anything, it has made conditions for most of us worse. Now the health care “reform” bill threatens to add to the stench.
In this dark season, one cannot help but veer towards that prophetic question of William Butler Yeats:
“what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”
Lawrence DiStasi
=
Monday, September 29, 2008
The “Inexperience” Code
You’ve all heard it endlessly by now, the Republican attack on Barack Obama which maintains that he has no experience in running a government or a business, and thus is too inexperienced to be President. Now aside from the inanity of this argument, especially when considering the opposite argument employed for Sarah Palin—CEO of Alaska, with a population (around 600,000) smaller than most cities, and Mayor of Wasilla, with a population (6,000) smaller than most colleges—there is a coded message here that is necessary for Americans to understand.
“Inexperience,” when applied to Barack Obama, is code for “race.”
Let me explain with an example. Prior to World War II, the United States Navy was desperately searching for boats to supplement its vastly under-equipped Navy. It began to inspect fishing boats, among them the large purse seiners used by hundreds of Sicilian fishermen along the west coast. The Navy would eventually requisition hundreds of such boats and outfit them as mine sweepers, but before it did, it considered whether it would, like England, induct not just the boats but their crews as well. A February 1939 memo from Admiral Hepburn, commandant of the 12th Naval District, summarizes the Navy’s findings, including its assessment of the Sicilian fishermen it might wish to induct. Here is part of what it said:
“The majority of Italians are not good seamen, good fishermen, nor good navigators. They are not over-intelligent, do not know the Rules of the Road, and, in general, appear to have the characteristics of big, overgrown children….” (see my “Fish Story,” in Lawrence DiStasi, UNA STORIA SEGRETA [2001], for more details.)
Based on such assessments, the Navy decided that it would requisition the boats alright, but not these “child-like” Sicilians, a group that was, at that very time, presiding over the most efficient and opulent sardine fishing industry the world has ever seen.
This type of more subtle racism has been thoroughly analyzed by David A.J. Richards in his 1999 book, “Italian American: The Racializing of an Ethnic Group.” In that book, Richards argued that phrases like “big, overgrown children” really represent a judgment that a group is developmentally inferior, even genetically incomplete. This means that its members never quite reach the full mental and moral development that would make them truly adult, i.e. truly human. African Americans, Native Americans, and, in their turn, many immigrant groups like Italians and Latin Americans have been judged in exactly this way.
Now we come back to the code for Obama. The term “inexperienced,” I would maintain, when applied to Obama, means not just that he has never been a CEO. It cuts deeper, cuts to a place that most Americans understand, if not consciously, then subliminally. And what it is meant to signify is that this man, Harvard-educated or not, U.S. Senator or not, lacks the full development that one finds most ideally in white people—Sarah Palin, for instance. No matter what he does, no matter how eloquently he can speak, therefore, he can never quite rise to the level of full humanity signified by whiteness. That’s because as a black man, by (America’s) definition, he is lacking in those adult qualities of mind and morality that America must have in its president.
Of course, not John McCain nor Sarah Palin nor even the vicious conservative shock jocks could say this outright. That would be racism, and so toxic is this label that even Obama’s comment about not being the right “type” elicited a “reverse racism” accusation from the outraged McCain. No, the Republican slime machine is too canny for that. So it uses code. This year the code word is “inexperienced.” During the Reagan campaign, it was “welfare queens.” George H.W. Bush employed the now-infamous Willie Horton commercial, suggesting that his opponent, Michael Dukakis, would free black rapists. And our dear George, G.W., not only spread racial slurs in the Carolinas to sink McCain’s surging campaign for the nomination (McCain was said to have a black child), but then employed several techniques to disenfranchise mostly black urban voters in Florida, Ohio, and elsewhere in order to steal one, and probably two elections. These slimy tactics are still going on, the latest being the Republican ploy of requiring all voters to display photo IDs allegedly to “ensure against election fraud” (though hardly a single case of election fraud has ever been demonstrated in states with these requirements, like Indiana.) But in reality the tactic is meant to discourage as many inner-city black voters (who almost universally vote Democratic) as possible from attempting to vote. More generally, it is no secret that the Republican Party’s southern strategy—to incite the racial animosity and fear still prevalent in southern and Midwestern states—has been the key to its ability to win elections since Nixon first employed it in 1968.
So count on it. You will hear the “inexperienced” slur against Obama repeatedly, daily, without letup. And to the increasingly fearful white populace of the heartland it will signify what it has always signified: in the United States of America, a black man simply does not have the mental, moral, or emotional heft to be fully human, much less to be the highest official in the land.
Lawrence DiStasi
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