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 Posted March 1st, 2010 at 12:20PM
Fatigued by the tea? Looking for a movement named after a drink popular with 21st century Americans? Look no further than the Coffee Party, a sorta-lame-at-first-glance rejoinder with a lot more going for it once you skim the surface:
Many of us had the same thought: the tactics being employed by the Tea Party movement are not likely to produce solutions to the problems that we face as a nation, and we urgently need an alternative.
It’s very hard to get people to rally around a new idea. But here I am reminding them of something that they already know: that we are all Americans. We should not divide ourselves over differences of opinion. We need to be one community. Our democracy is what unites us as a people. We must protect it, and to protect it we must engage in the political process, respecting the reality that we are diverse nation with diverse points of view.
- Annabel Park, founder of Coffee Party USA, via a live Q&A at the Washington Post
My initial reaction when getting the Facebook invite was of the “oh, that’s cute” nature. But with all the talk of participatory democracy, civic engagement, and public discourse, this nascent movement appears to be more Public Policy 201, less hysteric “Down Wit Gubment” herd mentality. And I can get behind any movement that actually addresses an issue at hand, of our fractured, tug-of-war method of governance. The schizoid two party system we have would seem amusing, but for actually living here and paying the taxes to support it.
Particularly disheartening this week was David Gregory, on Meet The Press doing his part to discredit the Mainstream Media, blithely glossing over all public opinion outside of the Tea Bagger movement, proclaiming that, “The only protests you’ve seen publicly are on the right in opposition to the [healthcare] bill.”
Truly, this would only be the case if your sole window on the world was the 6 o’clock news. Not only do I subscribe to newsletters of national movements in favor of reform (Healthcare-NOW!), but I have seen and heard of protest efforts coming from the left and center, across my local region. From demonstrations at the state Capitol, to the street corners of routes I take every day, there demonstrably are people frustrated at current national affairs, who still fall far short of the fanatical “fly a plane into an IRS building” stripe.
To say that the Right are the only ones expressing themselves is a fundamental failure of journalism, which purportedly exists to deliver news, not craft it as the NY Times has with New York’s coming gubernatorial election. I posit that perhaps 20th century news structures would not be in the dire straits they’re in if they were doing a better job at the close of the century. (Sometimes it feels like I only blog to contradict the notion of the blogosphere as a vast right-wing echo-chamber.)
The Tea Party is not an issue-based group per se, as far as limited or nonexistent government can be considered an “issue” (I consider it an ideology). It’s bizarre to think of Righties as sign-toting protesters, but then I can certainly empathize with the emotions of disconnect with government and the free press. They’re failing us all. Coffee is arguably the better direction; otherwise, politicos and big biz (I mean, the media) will continue to eagerly play us as fools. We need a fundamental redress of the systems at play, because TARP didn’t address the problems of Wall Street, and likewise with the stimulus and our economy. And while I’m not loony enough to proclaim government “the problem,” a nonfunctioning one certainly contributes to our ills.
Posted January 24th, 2010 at 1:59PM
Thursday’s decision, in Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission, “is going to flip the existing campaign order on its head,” said Benjamin L. Ginsberg, a Republican campaign lawyer at the law-and-lobbying firm Patton Boggs who has represented both candidates and outside groups, including Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group formed to oppose Senator John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign.
“It will put on steroids the trend that outside groups are increasingly dominating campaigns,” Mr. Ginsberg said.
Great, so expect this court decision to spur an even greater emphasis on dollars spent each election cycle, becoming ever larger the biggest determining factor in sorting winners from losers. It was always my interpretation that the bill of rights spoke for the rights of the US citizen, not institutions of any stripe. Obviously the Supreme Court has set off on a different understanding while attempting to cohere various first amendment rulings. Unfortunately the divergent result is to limit the individuals’ voice during the democratic process. From the NY Times op-ed -
The [Supreme Court] majority is deeply wrong on the law. Most wrongheaded of all is its insistence that corporations are just like people and entitled to the same First Amendment rights. It is an odd claim since companies are creations of the state that exist to make money. They are given special privileges, including different tax rates, to do just that. It was a fundamental misreading of the Constitution to say that these artificial legal constructs have the same right to spend money on politics as ordinary Americans have to speak out in support of a candidate.
The majority also makes the nonsensical claim that, unlike campaign contributions, which are still prohibited, independent expenditures by corporations “do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” If Wall Street bankers told members of Congress that they would spend millions of dollars to defeat anyone who opposed their bailout, and then did so, it would certainly look corrupt.
McCain for his part has called campaign finance reform “dead” and the majority ruling in the Supreme Court “naive.” It seems like Obama, being the constitutional law scholar he is, could chart the course toward renewed campaign finance reform, viewed constitutionally legal by this conservatively activist Court. It seems like the only hope for rational government down the line.
If payola and the exchange of money is granted a verifiable constitutional guarantee, where does that leave us? If freedom of expression extends to corporations buying elections, will it similarly extend to the individual looking to purchase crack cocaine or solicit prostitutes?
Posted January 20th, 2010 at 4:00PM
Whenever there are circumstances these days that require direction from the Oval Office, it becomes a chance to “test” Obama. During immediate coverage of the Haitian earthquake last week, Matt Lauer eagerly and repeatedly dubbed it a “test.” Or cite Biden’s flub over being tested within six months in office. Has No Child Left Behind progressed to the presidency, where we now compulsively scrutinize, dutifully grading along some cosmic POTUS curve?
Never mind the response he gives when asked to self-grade (who doesn’t give themselves an A?), but think of the ludicrous proportions that question assumes when posed to his predecessor – a man familiar only with the “gentleman’s C.” (No, I would not like to be shown to YouTube footage of aforementioned question being asked.)
No one has been pleased all of the time here, myself least of all. But Obama has arguably proven his acumen for the job by now. Can it with the ongoing tallying of job performance assessments and get to analyzing the policy already. Or dare I ask too much from broadcast news?
Posted November 12th, 2009 at 1:17PM
He told the media from his Saratoga Springs office on Monday that he believes health care reform is critical, but it’s coming at too high a cost to cornerstone businesses in the North Country. That is why he voted “no” on the bill.
Murphy says the bill makes a number of important reforms which he supported, however, such as lifetime caps on insurance benefits as well as the pre-existing condition exclusion – meaning an insurance company can refuse you if you have a preexisting medical condition.
But during Saturday’s vote in Washington, Murphy sided with 39 other Democrats who also voted with Republicans, saying the plan would put affordable health care out of reach of many small businesses and that it unfairly targets some Capital Region industries, like Finch Paper in Glens Falls.
I was surprised to see Smurphy vote against the healthcare bill in the house after being a supporter of the stimulus plan – and really the overall Dem agenda coming from Washington – since being elected. A talking head on the news the other night suggested that certain house Dems from conservative districts (Murphy included) may have very well been given the OK to dissent, political self-preservation in mind.
Was the vote orchestrated as such? If so, I feel the danger is that political calculation playing out too well. Because the real question is whether anyone interested in substantial reform should have supported the bill in the first place. In his public statement, Murphy faults the measure for affordability and putting an additional burden on area businesses.
Rep. Dennis Kucinich, co-author of H.R. 676 (the single-payer bill that should have been included in this debate) was another ‘no’ Democratic vote. In part:
“We have been led to believe that we must make our health care choices only within the current structure of a predatory, for-profit insurance system which makes money not providing health care. We cannot fault the insurance companies for being what they are. But we can fault legislation in which the government incentivizes the perpetuation, indeed the strengthening, of the for-profit health insurance industry, the very source of the problem. When health insurance companies deny care or raise premiums, co-pays and deductibles they are simply trying to make a profit. That is our system.”
“Clearly, the insurance companies are the problem, not the solution. They are driving up the cost of health care. Because their massive bureaucracy avoids paying bills so effectively, they force hospitals and doctors to hire their own bureaucracy to fight the insurance companies to avoid getting stuck with an unfair share of the bills. The result is that since 1970, the number of physicians has increased by less than 200% while the number of administrators has increased by 3000%. It is no wonder that 31 cents of every health care dollar goes to administrative costs, not toward providing care. Even those with insurance are at risk. The single biggest cause of bankruptcies in the U.S. is health insurance policies that do not cover you when you get sick.”
“But instead of working toward the elimination of for-profit insurance, H.R. 3962 would put the government in the role of accelerating the privatization of health care.
The final tally on H.R. 3962?
- A mandate to at least 21 million to buy into the broken system – resulting in an estimated $70 billion in new revenue to the health insurance industry
- A crippled public option, potentially enrolling only 6 million – available only to those people deemed unprofitable to insure privately
- Little to nothing in the way of cost containment or prevention
- A provision to allow states to implement their own single-payer (read: effective) systems was stripped from the final bill
- A four year period until the bill goes into effect, after the 2013 presidential elections. Seen the banking industry’s reaction to the grace period for new credit regulations? Enjoy watching healthcare costs balloon these next four years, and keep in mind the Journal of Public Health’s recently published study estimating that 45,000 Americans die annually due to unaffordable, unobtainable treatment. What happened to the immediacy of reform?
It appears then that this is substantial reform in name only. Nader’s take:
Still Waiting for Health Care
…
During this overall debate on the bill, Republicans stood up one by one, as prevaricatory dittoheads, to often scream and howl (like coyotes) that this is “a government takeover of one sixth of the economy,” “would destroy the economy,” “put 5.5 million people out of work,” “destroy the doctor-patient relationship,” “be a steamroller of socialism,” “force millions of seniors to lose their current health coverage” (meaning, Medicare?) and, in a passionate appeal to the Almighty, Congressman John Fleming (R-LA) declared “God help us as the government takes over your day-to-day life.”
Never mind that this bill is just an expansion, however misdirected, of government health insurance designed to increase corporate profits and increase the corporate grip over the day-to-day decisions regarding who, when and how people get their health care or get their bills paid.
So whether Murphy’s vote was political calculation or not, I can hardly fault it.
UPDATE: More, from today’s Healthcare-NOW! newsletter:
So is the House bill better than nothing?
“I don’t think so,” writes Marcia Angell, M.D., former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine. “It simply throws more money into a dysfunctional and unsustainable system, with only a few improvements at the edges, and it augments the central role of the investor-owned insurance industry. The danger is that as costs continue to rise and coverage becomes less comprehensive, people will conclude that we’ve tried health reform and it didn’t work. But the real problem will be that we didn’t really try it. I would rather see us do nothing now, and have a better chance of trying again later and then doing it right.”
Given that the bill does nothing to contain or reduce rising costs or end the private health insurance industry’s dominance, we hoped that the Progressive Caucus would stand strong. But they did not. All but two of H.R. 676’s cosponsors voted for H.R. 3962 — Rep. Eric Massa [D-NY] and Rep. Kucinich [D-OH].
Rep. Massa stated, “At the highest level, this bill will enshrine in law the monopolistic powers of the private health insurance industry, period. There’s really no other way to look at it.”
Posted September 6th, 2009 at 12:21PM
Looking at the main news stories of the day can make your head spin. Obama’s planned televised pep talk has been churned into a massive indoctrination plot. His adviser on green jobs, Van Jones, resigns for signing a petition, with Congressman Mike Pence saying that, “His extremist views and coarse rhetoric have no place in this administration or the public debate.” Cheney, meanwhile, continues to pardon each new brutality revealed to have occurred during his watch. (Power drills? Condonable? Really?) And on the healthcare front, all indications are to expect major concessionary overtones the next time Obama comes on air.
As the guy on Meet The Press said today: at some point, you just look at some of the headlines of the day and think, “That’s flat out stupid.”
I’d say it’s bizarre, and we’ve been here for awhile. Recent news cycles have been on a rightward spiral since the perceived stall in healthcare reform. It’s the hard right segment of the public that’s framing every debate right now.
On healthcare, I’m feeling more and more ambivalent about said efforts. I had enough concerns about a “robust” public option. But for it to be crippled or completely axed? Expanded Medicare for people deemed unprofitable to insure, operating under the current rules of the game, will result in huge, unsustainable government bloat. So OK – go the incremental route. But make sure to drop the ’substantial’ from before the Health Insurance Reform banners.
For certain, there would be a much smaller cost of implementing reforms absent any direct gov’t effort to insure more people. Incremental reform for incremental results. The public option fails mostly because it’s an additional cost to the taxpayer, above and beyond their current exorbitant insurance premiums. Place the burden only on the $250k+’ers? Fine, “tax the rich,” but it’s disingenuous way to fund reform. And no plan currently being floated in the mainstream ensures access to everyone. I’ll go ahead and beat the dead horse: a single-payer system paid equitably (based on ability, allowing a progressive curve) would be healthcare paid for by the people using it.
Why can’t we have an honest discussion about the way we already spend our healthcare dollars? Serious reform efforts may mean increased government spending, but hysterically delineating between private and public sidesteps the real issue of out-of-control costs.
Canada’s healthcare expenses under their single-payer system are similarly outpacing inflation – but that’s a worldwide trend, and their’s is to a lesser extent than our private insurance boondoggle. Their government is doing a better job of reigning in costs than our market system. If Americans are so lousy at self-governance that we can’t insure our own citizens, who are we to be dictating terms to Afghans? Hell, we oppose their sole source of real income, poppies. 
Posted August 24th, 2009 at 1:07PM
This Modern World for August 18th:
What if Democrats behaved more like Republicans?
Yup. Tom Tomorrow is a genius and, coincidentally, my hero. Guy creates a comic strip that is on the money, day after day after day.
Posted August 12th, 2009 at 12:52PM
Michael Moore in the latest Rolling Stone:
If a true public option is enacted – and Obama knows this – it will eventually bring about a single-payer system, because the profit-making insurance companies won’t be able to compete with a government plan and make the profits that they want to make.
Mikey gives Obama too much credit throughout the article. Everything coming out of the White House and Congress indicates that the ‘public option’ will be a severely handicapped one – you can thank bipartisan compromise and that $1.4 million a day in insurance company lobbying for that. Significantly, Obama’s recent mention of the US Postal Service during a town meeting on healthcare portends a far more likely future for the ‘public option’ than leading to single-payer.
The option to purchase a public plan within a market of private health insurance plans would merely provide one more player in our inefficient, dysfunctional, fragmented, multi-payer system of financing health care, that is if the public option even survives the political process. It would leave in place the deficiencies that have resulted in very high costs with the poorest health care value of all nations (i.e., overpriced mediocrity in health care).
Those who believe that the people of this nation would have the wisdom to drop their private plans and join the government program are ignoring history. When Congress authorized private plans to compete with our existing public program, Medicare, many enrollees did just the opposite. One-fifth have left the traditional Medicare program and joined the private plans.
So why should we care? Why shouldn’t they have the right to choose private plans if they want them? We know that those private plans are wasting money, both in their own costs and the administrative burden they place on the delivery system, but what all too many don’t realize is that we are all paying for that waste because of the inherent structural deficiencies in our financing system. Plus we are being deprived of the reforms needed in our health care delivery system that our own single payer monopsony would bring us.
Further reading: Comparing single-payer with the ‘public option’
And for those confused between single-payer and OMFGOSH SOCIALISM…
Martin Feldstein, Harvard professor, talking about stuff he doesn’t understand
Obama has said that he would favor a British-style “single payer” system in which the government owns the hospitals and the doctors are salaried but that he recognizes that such a shift would be too disruptive to the health-care industry. The Obama plan to have a government insurance provider that can undercut the premiums charged by private insurers would undoubtedly speed the arrival of such a single-payer plan.
FiveThirtyEight >> Not All Socialist Countries are Alike
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