Buyer's remorse? Not me. At the North American summit in Guadalajara this week, President Obama resumed the role he is best at -- representing the U.S. with dignity and authority abroad. This is why I, for one, voted for Obama and continue to support him. The damage done to U.S. prestige by the feckless, buffoonish George W. Bush will take years to repair. Obama has barely begun the crucial mission that he was elected to do.
Having said that, I must confess my dismay bordering on horror at the amateurism of the White House apparatus for domestic policy. When will heads start to roll? I was glad to see the White House counsel booted, as well as Michelle Obama's chief of staff, and hope it's a harbinger of things to come. Except for that wily fox, David Axelrod, who could charm gold threads out of moonbeams, Obama seems to be surrounded by juvenile tinhorns, bumbling mediocrities and crass bully boys.
Case in point: the administration's grotesque mishandling of healthcare reform, one of the most vital issues facing the nation. Ever since Hillary Clinton's megalomaniacal annihilation of our last best chance at reform in 1993 (all of which was suppressed by the mainstream media when she was running for president), Democrats have been longing for that happy day when this issue would once again be front and center.
There is plenty of blame to go around. Obama's aggressive endorsement of a healthcare plan that does not even exist yet, except in five competing, fluctuating drafts, makes Washington seem like Cloud Cuckoo Land. The president is promoting the most colossal, brazen bait-and-switch operation since the Bush administration snookered the country into invading Iraq with apocalyptic visions of mushroom clouds over American cities.But who would have thought that the sober, deliberative Barack Obama would have nothing to propose but vague and slippery promises -- or that he would so easily cede the leadership clout of the executive branch to a chaotic, rapacious, solipsistic Congress? House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whom I used to admire for her smooth aplomb under pressure, has clearly gone off the deep end with her bizarre rants about legitimate town-hall protests by American citizens. She is doing grievous damage to the party and should immediately step down.You can keep your doctor; you can keep your insurance, if you're happy with it, Obama keeps assuring us in soothing, lullaby tones. Oh, really? And what if my doctor is not the one appointed by the new government medical boards for ruling on my access to tests and specialists? And what if my insurance company goes belly up because of undercutting by its government-bankrolled competitor? Face it: Virtually all nationalized health systems, neither nourished nor updated by profit-driven private investment, eventually lead to rationing.
I just don't get it. Why the insane rush to pass a bill, any bill, in three weeks? And why such an abject failure by the Obama administration to present the issues to the public in a rational, detailed, informational way? The U.S. is gigantic; many of our states are bigger than whole European nations. The bureaucracy required to institute and manage a nationalized health system here would be Byzantine beyond belief and would vampirically absorb whatever savings Obama thinks could be made. And the transition period would be a nightmare of red tape and mammoth screw-ups, which we can ill afford with a faltering economy.
As with the massive boondoggle of the stimulus package, which Obama foolishly let Congress turn into a pork rut, too much has been attempted all at once; focused, targeted initiatives would, instead, have won wide public support. How is it possible that Democrats, through their own clumsiness and arrogance, have sabotaged healthcare reform yet again? Blaming obstructionist Republicans is nonsensical because Democrats control all three branches of government. It isn't conservative rumors or lies that are stopping healthcare legislation; it's the justifiable alarm of an electorate that has been cut out of the loop and is watching its representatives construct a tangled labyrinth for others but not for themselves. No, the airheads of Congress will keep their own plush healthcare plan -- it's the rest of us guinea pigs who will be thrown to the wolves.
With the Republican party leaderless and in backbiting disarray following its destruction by the ideologically incoherent George W. Bush, Democrats are apparently eager to join the hara-kiri brigade. What looked like smooth coasting to the 2010 election has now become a nail-biter. Both major parties have become a rats' nest of hypocrisy and incompetence. That, combined with our stratospheric, near-criminal indebtedness to China (which could destroy the dollar overnight), should raise signal flags. Are we like late Rome, infatuated with past glories, ruled by a complacent, greedy elite, and hopelessly powerless to respond to changing conditions?
What does either party stand for these days? Republican politicians, with their endless scandals, are hardly exemplars of traditional moral values. Nor have they generated new ideas for healthcare, except for medical savings accounts, which would be pathetically inadequate in a major crisis for anyone earning at or below a median income.
And what do Democrats stand for, if they are so ready to defame concerned citizens as the "mob" -- a word betraying a Marie Antoinette delusion of superiority to ordinary mortals. I thought my party was populist, attentive to the needs and wishes of those outside the power structure. And as a product of the 1960s, I thought the Democratic party was passionately committed to freedom of thought and speech.
But somehow liberals have drifted into a strange servility toward big government, which they revere as a godlike foster father-mother who can dispense all bounty and magically heal all ills. The ethical collapse of the left was nowhere more evident than in the near total silence of liberal media and Web sites at the Obama administration's outrageous solicitation to private citizens to report unacceptable "casual conversations" to the White House. If Republicans had done this, there would have been an angry explosion by Democrats from coast to coast. I was stunned at the failure of liberals to see the blatant totalitarianism in this incident, which the president should have immediately denounced. His failure to do so implicates him in it.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
From the mouth of a Liberal
She is no fan of the right, which makes this an interesting read.
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ReplyDeleteWhile the article makes some valid points, this is nonsense:
ReplyDelete"...President Obama resumed the role he is best at -- representing the U.S. with dignity and authority abroad..."
What he does abroad is dump on his own country and/or Israel to win points with foreign audiences. This is only one despicable thing he does with regularity.
>Virtually all nationalized health systems, neither nourished nor updated by profit-driven private investment, eventually lead to rationing.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly, all for-profit health care systems also lead to rationing. Because people can't afford care. And if you can't afford care, you don't get it. And if you don't get it, then your care has just been rationed. Free market principles do not ensure that grandma gets end of life care - Medicare does. There is no rational insurance company that is willing to give old or sick people affordable insurance, for the same reason that FedEx does not deliver to podunk little towns in Wyoming - it makes no economic sense.
And while it's a shame that the government cannot guarantee every possible medical treatment to everybody, I fail to see how denying people the ability to participate in an insurance exchange is worse than having no insurance at all.
Think of it like education. In the United States, we can send our kids to public or private school. In most public schools in the United States, there is no class in Japanese, because it isn't really practical except in communities where lots of the families speak Japanese. People don't then say "Let's scrap public schooling because they're rationing my child's education by not teaching him Japanese!" Because it's understood that if you really want your kid to learn Japanese, you are free to pay for his private lessons. Scrapping public education will not make the situation better, but will instead make it worse. Because instead of just having kids without basic competence in Japanese, which is merely unfortunate, you will have children without basic competence in English, Math, etc. which is tragic.
Why doesn't the same apply in health care? The government is guaranteeing a certain level of care. If you can afford to buy your own, go ahead. If you can't, the government will do it for you. If you want more than the basic plan, you can buy that for yourself too. How, by guaranteeing at least basic care, is the government rationing health care? The same free market advanced care still applies to people who want to pay for it. Scrapping government health care would not make the situation better, but would make it worse. Because instead of just having people without access to advanced care, which is bad, you will leave many people without basic care, or forced to buy basic care they can't afford, which is much worse.
>The U.S. is gigantic; many of our states are bigger than whole European nations. The bureaucracy required to institute and manage a nationalized health system here would be Byzantine beyond belief and would vampirically absorb whatever savings Obama thinks could be made.
ReplyDeleteThe population of the European Union is almost 500 million. Each of those countries, if I recall correctly, has some sort of national health care plan. And they seem to like it just fine. It's hard to say that they have a lower quality of life then we do. Every industrialized democratic nation has a government health care plan. Why is it that only American states can be "laboratories of democracy" but not, you know, other democracies?
>And the transition period would be a nightmare of red tape and mammoth screw-ups, which we can ill afford with a faltering economy.
When would be a good time? Democrats have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, a large majority in the House and control the Presidency. They ran on a platform of health care reform and won handily, this during the economic collapse, mind you. Seems like now is as good a time as any.
>But somehow liberals have drifted into a strange servility toward big government, which they revere as a godlike foster father-mother who can dispense all bounty and magically heal all ills.
ReplyDeleteThe left has always been more accepting of big government. That's what they do. I don't see how trying to guarantee basic health care to people who couldn't otherwise afford it qualifies as believing the government to be a "god-like foster father mother who can dispense all bounty and magically heal all ills". Every other democratic and industrial country does this, and much more besides than our Democrats are willing to do. Our domestic government is actually pretty feeble, then, considering.
>The ethical collapse of the left was nowhere more evident than in the near total silence of liberal media and Web sites at the Obama administration's outrageous solicitation to private citizens to report unacceptable "casual conversations" to the White House....I was stunned at the failure of liberals to see the blatant totalitarianism in this incident, which the president should have immediately denounced. His failure to do so implicates him in it.
I don't see the totalitarianism. The White House is engaged in an effort to combat misinformation about the health care plan. They are asking people who advocate the plan to argue with people who don't. Also, if they come across any chain mails or something, or across misleading arguments, they should inform the White House of such arguments. They are not asking for names and addresses. They are asking for the arguments. If you get a chain mail, just forward it to the White House. The government isn't going to know who wrote the chain mail, just like I don't know who writes the chain mails that keep ending up in my inbox. The Administration probably wants to send out their own annoying letters, to combat those of the opposition. How can they combat misinformation if they do not know what is being said?
I suppose, in theory, the government could call in the CIA to do some computer magic to find out who is writing all these chain mails, but I don't think they would waste their time, not that I would mind. I hate chain mails. And if they were going to do it, I don't think they would ask the public for chain mails. Something tells me chain letters are not too hard to come by, that the FBI or whatever has to sneakily solicit them. Honestly, I don't understand the desire to see something sinister or fascist in everything the government does, I just don't.
The White House is engaged in an effort to create misinformation about the health care plan, while stifling efforts by others to reveal its many flaws.
ReplyDelete