The mechanism is contained in an amendment set to be introduced in mid-November by Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-Colo.) that would move final authority over the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) from the Securities and Exchange Commission to a new body, a so-called "oversight" board, that would include the officials charged with managing systemic risks to the financial markets.
These regulators would have the authority to override FASB's accounting guidelines by taking into account economic conditions. (emphasis added)
The key factor in Japanification is that you don't allow bankrupt or insolvent banks or other major firms to fail. You let them keep bad loans and "assets" on their book at inflated values, and you let time go by, intending to write the bad loans down very slowly as time goes by. The effect of this is that real access to credit in the actual economy dries up, and as a result there is much less real growth.
There is going to be a recovery, it has already started in Asia. Job numbers should start turning around in the spring in the US, though the number of people employed as a percentage of the population will not recover this economic cycle, and probably not for a generation.
However, Japanification doesn't mean you don't get some recoveries. You do, then they sputter out. Employment never really recovers, wages stagnate and things are just generally lousy without plunging the country into an all out depression. So, yes, in that sense the country was "saved' from a Great Depression, but choosing the worst alternative.
That alternative isn't just Japanification, it is a continuation of the status-quo ante. The Bush years, and indeed the Clinton years to a lesser extent, were about financial plays. Instead of building a real economy, the chimerical returns of financialization were pursued. Real businesses return 5% and consider that good. Financialized companies, taking on too much risk and debt, slashing employees and capital and seeking returns through offshoring and outsourcing return 15%. Leveraged financial plays return far more even than that. The returns are fictional, the bailouts wiped out most of the profits of the last 8 years, but bonuses and salaries are paid on them, so they aren't fictional to executives, and it is executives who make the decisions.
What Obama, Geithner and Bernanke have been doing is attempting to reboot the financialized economy. Rather than winding it down, breaking up banks, reinstituting Glass-Steagall, and regulating banks like utilities, they are attempting to get the Busheconomy working again.
The cost of all of this has been high. In the trillions. Instead of increasing progressive taxation to make the rich pay for their bailouts, what is being done is to make the poor and middle class pay. This may be through high interest rates (letting credit card rates go to 29%, among other things) or it may be forcing the population to buy private health insurance, but once again, the rich fail, and everyone else pays the price.
The end result of Japanifying, regressive taxation (whether direct or indirect) and attempting to restart the financial casino will not be pretty. There will not necessarily be any immediate disaster, and some numbers will look good. But the fundamental problems of the economy under Bush have not only not been fixed, they have been made worse and the evidence is being systematically buried. There won't be another financial crisis immediately, but another one has been made inevitable.
Economically this is the legacy of this Congress, Federal reserve, and presidency.
It's time to evaluate where health care reform stands at this point.
Guaranteed Issue: The best thing about the bill is unquestionably the fact that insurers have to issue policies to anyone who can pay. No one can be denied coverage, no matter what pre-existing conditions they have. This is a big deal. While it can help people of any age, it is most important to older people, who are more likely to have pre-existing conditions. This also helps people who are stuck with very expensive insurance because they have pre-existing conditions and if they cancel their insurance wouldn't be able to get new insurance.
If there is no cost reduction due to systematic changes in the system, however, all that an individual mandate does is share costs through the entire population and direct profits to private insurers and medical providers of various kinds by giving them a captive consumer based, forced by government mandate to buy their services.
People who don't have insurance right now are primarily younger people or those who feel they can't afford it. What individual mandates will do, then, is subsidize older people's insurance costs and the price of guaranteed issue, which is very costly since it forces insurers to cover people who are very likely to get sick. The people who subsidize this are, generally speaking younger and poorer.
If subsidies were adequate, then in fact, it would be the government subsidizing the costs, through progressive income tax and corporate taxes. However, since the subsidies in the various bills do not cover the full cost, poorer and younger people will subsidize older people. Since many of those people didn't buy insurance because they are right on the edge financially already it means that some of them will go without food, not be able to pay tuition, or lose their homes as a result. Many people are already on the edge already, this is one more burden for them.
No Robust Public Option: A robust public option is one that is large enough and with enough pricing power to force down costs, and one which is available to everyone. At this point, the public option will likely have between 5 to 9 million enrollees (the CBO says 6 million, but we'll be generous). As such it will be smaller than most private insurers and will not have pricing power. If it were linked to Medicare and could use Medicare's clout, it could reduce costs, but the Medicare +5 amendment, which would have had it paying providers at Medicare rates +5% was defeated.
Reduces Practical Access to Abortion: The Stupak amendment, passed Saturday evening, makes it illegal for any plan offered on the exchanges to finance abortions. Any woman who wants abortion access, after being forced to buy insurance that doesn't include it, will have to buy it elsewhere. The practical result of this is a reduction in access to abortions. This, of course, primarily affects young, childbearing age women though their family members, boyfriends and so on will likewise be effected.
The Bottom Line: Who's Getting What, and Who's Paying
Meanwhile, the news about last week’s GDP numbers was that a big chunk of the 3.5% gain came from “motor vehicles”, which most economists are reading as meaning that the cash for clunkers program, in which the government gave credits for purchasing a new relatively fuel efficient car if you turned in an older car, was wildly succesful.
Think about that for a moment. 3 billion for the cash for clunkers produced a huge chunk of GDP growth. It probably wasn’t the full 1.7%, but it was significant. So far, about 160 billion dollars of the stimulus bill has been spent (bear in mind, about 37% of the bill was tax cuts and not spending).
What this should twig you to is that most of the stimulus was done in incredibly inefficient fashion. If 3 billion could be responsible for that much GDP growth, it means the the remaining 157 billion wasn’t pulling its weight.
A proper stimulus should do a few things (more in the extended entry):.
It will concentrate on risk management, which is to say trying to tie pay to longer term measures rather than shorter term measures
The big banks will have to give their compensation packages to the Fed upfront, but the review will be confidential. Only the bank and the Fed will know the contents of the review.
Small banks will have their pay reviewed when they are examined.
Meanwhile, Feinberg, the pay czar, has restricted compensation at bailout recipients. Cash compensation is restricked to 500K a year until they pay back the bailouts, but once they do they can receive more, and they do have bonuses tied to various goals given by the treasury till then.
I am skeptical. The end result of Feinberg’s plan will simply be that the companies will pay off the bailouts as fast as they can, even if that means borrowing the money at higher rates than the feds have loaned it to them.
As for the Fed’s plan, it requires us to trust the Federal Reserve to really restrict pay and to really understand what type of compensation creates long and short term risks. Given the Federal Reserve’s track record in understanding systemic risk, which indicates they have no understanding of systemic risk worth speaking of, I’m skeptical that they can do this. And that assumes one trusts the Fed to tell its friends in the banks they can’t have what they want, which, again, given their track record, is questionable. Especially when the Federal Reserve itself seems to essentially be run by Goldman Sachs.
Furthermore, the Federal Reserve is confused. When they say it's not about "social equity" it's about risk, what they mean is "we don't mind them getting paid a lot of money if it doesn't lead to risky behavior". But receiving enough money in a year or 3 years to retire inevitably means that people will engage in risky behavior because they don't need the job. They may want to keep it, they may like it, but if their company goes under, at the end of the day, they're still going to be rich, rich, rich—and never have to work another day of their lives. And, after all, even if they do blow it, this crisis shows that the government will probably bail them out so they probably will keep their jobs.
The objection to this sort of taxation, or any other severe restrictions on excessive pay is:
But, bowing to concerns that too heavy a hand could lead to a mass exodus of executives, both the Treasury and Fed policies will permit top earners to reap millions of dollars.
This is insane. These executives are the folks who lead the world to the greatest financial crisis since the great depression. The goal shouldn’t be to keep them working, the goal should be to convince them to quit. Let some middle managers take over, it is beyond comprehension that they could cause a greater disaster, and if they are only earning a few hundred K a year, they’ll have every incentive to turn their banks around so they can keep their jobs, which they’ll actually need to keep unlike the current generation of overpaid, incompetent, executives.
These executives' management lead to the greatest destruction of wealth and the largest job downturn in post-war history. They did so by pushing products and practices which were frankly fraudulent. In a sane world, huge criminal investigations would be ongoing and most of them would be spending all of their time huddled with their lawyers, rather than sending out millions of dollars worth of lobbyists.
However, as a second best scenario, their pay should be restricted, and if that makes them leave, well, that’s a bonus. Let them go work for companies in any country stupid enough to want them. Hopefully if not operating from the US anymore they’ll only be able to trash their new host economy, and not the entire world economy. These men and (a few) women, are parasites who feed off and damage their hosts. They are not a benefit to the country or company they work for, but an active hazard.
I’m glad to see the Fed and Feinberg doing something. But it’s not nearly enough, and it won’t be sufficient to stop the same suspects from causing yet another financial crisis.
The Obama administration has helped pull the U.S. economy back from the “abyss” with aggressive efforts to spur growth and stabilize financial markets, a top White House adviser said on Monday…
…”Thanks largely to the Recovery Act, alongside an aggressive financial stabilization plan and a program to keep responsible homeowners in their homes, we have walked a substantial distance back from the economic abyss and are on the path toward economic recovery,” Summers wrote to House Republican leader John Boehner.
All they did was throw cash at the problem, without dealing with the underlying issues, which is why they didn’t manage (as Jerome points out) to kickstart ANY net private spending. They didn’t break up major banks. They didn’t allow bankruptcy judges to rewrite mortgages. Their mortgage program kept hardly anyone in the house. And their money for financial firms did not increase lending by one cent.
So, as a Stirling Newberry likes to say “the economy breathes fine, as long as we don’t unplug the life support machines”.
That’s all they did - throw the economy on life support by hooking it up to a money spigot, then wander off and have a cup of coffee and tell each other how brilliant they were, not noticing that they hadn’t actually cured the patient.
This is going to be the wost “recovery” of your lifetime, unless you’re in the financial sector at a relatively high level. Bank profits have recovered but ordinary people are not, in a generation, going to see a full recovery from this clusterfuck - employment will not recover to pre-recession levels before the next recession, and I don’t expect it to recover after that recession either.
At this point, in fact, I am expecting this to turn into a double dip recession—this “recovery” will not have any significant legs.
Anyone who believes Summer when he pats himself on his back should remember that Summers record of being wrong about everything of significance is awe inspiring in its completeness. This is the man who helped create the necessary preconditions for the financial crisis through radical deregulation of financial markets, then didn’t see the crisis coming till it was already well underway.
Oh, and one reason any peaceniks reading this kiss any chance of the Afghan war ending is that Obama needs the war stimulus to keep the economy on life support and military Keynesianism is the type of stimulus Republicans and Blue Dogs won’t vote against.
Welcome to endless war, money for rich people, and trickle down for you. The future looks an awful lot like the past, doesn’t it?
Went and renewed my Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP) card today. Stepped into the OHIP office at 8:30, an office close enough to where I live that I could walk to it . A receptionist looked at my forms and documentation (a phone bill to show my address, my passport to show a signature with a picture, my old health card and a one page form.) She gave me a number, I sat down and was called less than 5 minutes later. The agent looked over my papers, chided me for not renewing it sooner, took a new picture of me, and gave me a letter to use along with my old health card so I can get care till I receive my new card in the mail.
Total elapsed time? Less than 15 minutes.
Now, to be fair, this is a lot better than experience with them in the early 2000's when I was upgraded from a non-picture card to a picture card. That experience was a nightmare-long lines, unclear instructions so that I had to come back a second time, and a hostile and overworked agent. But in general my experiences with the OHIP bureaucracy, including the time I moved provinces twice in less than six months, theoretically making me covered by neither province, have been nothing but positive. In the case where I was covered by no one, a manager quickly made the right decision: I had to be covered by someone, I was now living in Ontario, and therefore Ontario would cover me.
Simplicity is next to Godliness when it comes to bureaucracy, and from a patient's perspective, the Canadian health care system tends to be simplicity itself.
The story is questionable at best. Under the Non Proliferation Treaty, Iran believes it needs to only declare sites 180 days before it introduces nuclear materials to them. This has been Iran's stand for years, and there is no evidence that the site has any nuclear materials in it.
Second: we don't know why Iran declared the site now. Maybe it's because they knew the US knew (what is this, n-dimensional chess), or maybe it's because they were going to anyway. We don't know. We do know that the last time the US accused a country of having a nuclear program, however, that the US lied.
At this point there is no firm evidence that Iran is trying to get nuclear weapons. Various intelligence services have claimed Iran is, but none of them have produced evidence to be evaluated in the light of day.
Nonetheless the call is out for "severe sanctions". Now, I'm not entirely sure that I know what severe sanctions means, but I think a safe guess is that the US wants sanctions similar to those imposed on Iraq in the nineties.
Those sanctions killed hundreds of thousands of people, possibly as many as a million. They were as devastating to Iraq as an all-out war. In terms of lives lost, the substantive difference between the sanctions and the Iraq war is that in the Iraq war American soldiers were killed as well-a few thousand American soldiers, a number much smaller than the Iraqi deaths, but a number which matters much more to Americans.
However, if deaths of non-Americans matter to you, then you should oppose Iranian sanctions. Especially since there is so far no convincing evidence that Iran even has a military nuclear program.
But even if Iran did have a military nuclear program, severe sanctions, or a military strike might still be overkill. Like them or hate them, Iran's leadership are not insane. Nuclear weapons come with return addresses. If Iran were foolish enough to use a nuke, the country would be reduced to a glowing glass lined parking lot. Iran's leadership would have to be insane and suicidal to do so.
Screaming constantly about how dangerous a nuclear Iran would be is simply war-mongering intended to whip up hysteria. The sort of lies which are used to whip Westerners up before every action which kills large numbers of foreigners.
Ezra Klein has an article whose thesis is that as Americans don't directly pay the full cost of their healthcare since employers pay a large chunk, or they're on Medicare, Medicaid or some form of socialized medicine (the military and the Veterans administration) Americans aren't for radical change.
Americans may not pay the full cost of insurance, but they are well aware of the full cost of health care. About 60% of all bankruptcies are caused by health bills, everyone who is self-employed knows the full cost, and people who get sick routinely had claims denied or lose coverage. The full cost of healthcare becomes evident when you get sick, and the health care you thought your insurance provided doesn't actually appear, or you have to fight tooth and nail for it.
Everyone may not have experienced these costs and problems directly, but I'd be willing to lay long odds that almost no Americans haven't had them happen to a friend, co-worker or family member.
And so, contra-Ezra, in fact Americans are ready for radical change. Even if you don't consider the public option radical, single payer is, and a majority of Americans want it. One might argue that that the intensity of desire for change is not there, that there haven't been huge crowds in support of health care change, but the problem there is Obama has been rather wishy-washy. He isn't offering single payer, which is what would get the hard left out in large numbers, and he isn't even willing to say that his bill must have a strong public option. His plan, and those offered by the House and Senate, have a mushy feel to them. "Might pass this, might not, and we aren't committed to it."
It's hard to get worked up for mush and so, by and large, people aren't.
But still, it's clear Americans want radical change of the health care system. It's the politicians who don't.
Specifically Democratic conservative Senators like Baucus and Conrad, virtually every Republican Senator, and President Barack Obama, who ruled out radical change in the form of single payer and who won't insist on even a bad public option, let alone a truly robust one, are the ones who don't want radical change.
And yes, it's probably because American politicians don't feel the cost of health care: they're fully covered, and virtually all of them are millionaires.
So, no, the problem isn't American citizens not having the appetite for necessary radical change. The problem is American politicians.
I assume, by this point, no one expected anything else?
If not, forgive me, but you're the living definition of denial.
The fundamental truth about the Obama administration is that it is the Bush administration run by slightly less incompetent, marginally less evil people:
The Iraq occupation will end when Bush wanted it to.
The Bush administration's campaign of eradication of fundamental civil liberties, including the gutting of the 4th amendment and holding people without trial, continues.
The Afghan war continues, and is even being escalated.
The signature issue of "health care reform" is a scheme which will force citizens to buy private insurance which, because of lack of effective controls, will increase in price faster than wages or inflation.
Obama and Geithner have followed the Bush/Paulson financial policies, virtually to the letter, spending trillions bailing out Wall Street and creating a financial sector which has fewer, larger actors with more political power than before.
Obama continues to exert pressure primarily on Progressives rather than on Blue Dogs in order to obtain relatively more conservative rather than liberal bills. (This is not an accident.) The most liberal bill always comes from the House, the conference committee bill is inevitably closer to the more conservative Senate bill. (This is not an accident.)
Unlike Bush Jr, Bush Sr., Clinton, and Reagan, Obama has not replaced the prior administration's district attorneys wholesale, instead leaving in place the majority of the Bush administration DA's who had survived Rove's purges intended to make sure they were loyal Republican apparatchiks.
Obama has not cleaned out the administration in general of Bush-era appointees and plants; indeed he has filled less spots than either Clinton or Bush II had by this point in their terms—and no, it's not because the Senate won't confirm them.
Obama appointees will be forced to resign if the right wing (aka Beck) goes after them hard, but if progressives don't like them, tough luck.
Obama's economic team is filled with people who created the framework which allowed the financial meltdown to occur, who didn't see it coming, and whose solution to it is to give money to their friends and colleagues and try and get another bubble started.
Etc.
In most meaningful ways, Obama is running a slightly kinder, gentler and very moderately less-stupid version of the Bush constitutional framework.
"I am not the first President to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last."
"...under my plan, individuals will be required to carry basic health insurance"
"I have no interest in putting insurance companies out of business."
" we believe that less than 5 percent of Americans would sign up" (for the public option)
"Nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have."
(editor note: or allows you to, if you have insurance through an employer.)
Clearer Obama:
As Health Secretary Sebelius said, we are determined to create a health system in this country which is designed so it can never become single payer. My mandate system, forcing you to buy insurance from insurance companies with inadequate subsidies, will preclude that possibility and save the American consumer for the American insurance and pharmaceutical industries.
Rule 1: the best way to make money is to have the government force people to buy your product.
Rule 2: Any major industry with a revenue stream is entitled to that revenue stream forever, no matter how bad the service they provide is, or how much they overcharge.
Rule 3: Any failure of the system will be paid for by forcing ordinary people to pay to bail out the elites who failed. Making the rich pay for their own mistakes is unacceptable.
Let’s deal with a common misunderstanding, that “dollar devaluation is going to save the US.” The lie supposes that if only the US dollar were low enough, the US would become competitive.
First, take a look at the charts to the left. The US dollar under Bush took a nosedive versus the Euro (and most other currencies as far as that goes). Note that the Yuan appreciates against the Euro, but not the dollar, during that same period.
Why is that? Because China spends a huge chunk of money keeping the Yuan pegged to the dollar. In some years, as much as 10% of their entire GDP.
During the Bush administration we had a massive experiment in devaluation. During the Bush administration ordinary people’s incomes went nowhere, and the era ended in a massive financial crisis.
Before that financial crisis something else interesting happened: there was a huge rise in the price of oil, up to $150 a barrel. (For much of the nineties it had been below $20/barrel.)
At the current time, if the dollar drops, the price of oil will rise.
An increase in the price of oil and other commodities will increases the trade deficit, because commodities need to be imported.
China is the largest source of the US trade deficit: between 2001 and 2009, China accounted for $1.58 trillion of the $3.81 trillion trade deficit (and the percentage increased throughout the period). China will make sure that there is no devaluation of the dollar relative to the Yuan.
Given that the Chinese proportion of the US non oil deficit is 83%, the effect of devaluing the dollar on trade deficits will be essentially zero.
I wasn't sure whether to bother writing about Bernanke's reappointment. Why? Because it's just the status quo. But perhaps it's worth spelling out the status quo.
Bernanke bailed out the banks and the rich. You know this, but what is not clear to many people is that bailing out the banks and fixing the banking system were not connected at the hip. It was possible to fix what was wrong with the banks by taking the big banks into receivership and then using them to lend directly. Wipe out the shareholders, write down the bondholders to the actual value of the banks, but keep lending to the real economy, and indeed increase lending and capital flows, by, say, deciding to refit every single building in America for energy efficiency and generation, and to take every clunker off the road.
The banking class, and the rich as a group, tanked the system. They committed what amounted to systematic fraud, and earned billions of dollars of bonuses for themselves by crashing out the system and daring Bernanke and other politicians (and Ben is nothing if not a pol) to do something about it. Bernanke folded, and threw trillions of dollars at them.
Despite what Bernanke's, Paulson's, Bush's and yes, Obama's, apologists say, this was not necessary. It resulted from a deep confusion of banks with what banks do, and a deep desire to keep the same class of people in charge of the economy, despite their manifest failures. Ben Bernanke, Paulson, Geithner, Bush, Obama and so on could not imagine taking out their friends—could not imagine letting them suffer the consequences of their results—could not even understand that their friends were parasites who were not necessary for the continuation of the system but were instead the people who had caused it to collapse.
The end result of this is going to be two things.
First - a lost decade or more, just like Japan (I prefer the phrase "bright depression".)
Second - another collapse, even worse than this one.
The books have not been cleared, the garbage has been left on them, just like in Japan, but the US is not Japan, it is not a suprlus society which sells more than it consumes. It is, itself, a parasitical society which needs blood from donors to survive. Furthermore the American ruling elite left in place by this decision is much sicker and more shameless than the Japanese one (where people comitted suicide in shame over what had happened). Having gotten away with it once, they will do it again, indeed the huge bonuses they are paying themselves indicates they still think of themselves as the smartest people in the room, and they're right in a sense. They sold America a pig-in-a-poke, and took America for trillions of dollars. Rule number one of running scams is never give a sucker (that's you) an even break. They aren't going to, and the end result will be another crisis, which is even worse.
Japanification is not a stable solution set given the realities of America's deep structural deficit and the essential con-artist nature of its elites.
All Bernanke's reappointment tells you is that the game is still on. While Bernanke did save the rich, they still lost a lot of money. They want it back. And they're going to get it back, even if it means they suck the last drop of America's blood and the host drops dead.
Welcome the new American century. Unless you're in the charmed circle of con artists and grifters, you aren't going to enjoy it much.
To put it really simply, if you don't need a profit, and if you are only as efficient as your competitors, you will drive them out of business if you are not constrained in some fashion from doing so. (Capital is the usual fashion to wipe out competitors, since non profits have trouble raising it. In the health care context, arranging it so the public option takes on more unhealthy people is the more likely way to do it.)
Since a real public option properly created to not be constrained from doing so WILL drive private insurers out of business, it will not be allowed to happen. It may be called a "public option", but it won't actually be allowed to operate as a public option should. A public option which won't destroy the insurers in time, is also a public option which can't drive down prices effectively.
As Heinlein once said, I laugh because otherwise I'd cry (and scream, and pound my head against the wall):
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said the White House would be open to co-ops instead of a government-run public option, a sign Democrats want a compromise so they can declare a victory on the must-win showdown.(TL)
Ok, so let's say they ditch it and include an individual mandate, meaning you are forced to buy insurance from private insurers or co-ops (which won't be able to contain costs). What is that?
It is a regressive tax. Given the likely pathetic subsidies it will hit the working and middle classes hardest as it will be a higher proportion of their income than for the rich. Since health care costs will not be properly contained, they will rise faster than pay will (they have for decades now). So every year you will be forced to spend more of your money than the year before and will have less money left over.
A regressive tax which rises faster than pay rises.
This is forced increased spending on domestic financial services, which is what insurance is. I guess that's Obama's economic plan as well as his health care plan. And bonus, since there'll be no denials and no recessions, you won't be able to get out of it in any fashion, except death.
Death and taxes, the first gets you out of the second. And a health care mandate without effective cost controls is an ever growing tax till you die.
Members of Congress are rallying around one of their own, collecting donations to help former Rep. Lane Evans (D-Ill.) as he battles Parkinson's Disease.
Isn't that nice? Perhaps their efforts might be better invested in passing legislation that takes care of all Americans, not just Americans they know personally.
China announced that it intended to spend $123 billion by 2011 to establish universal health care for the country's 1.3 billion people.
I guess universal health care isn't just socialistic, it's communistic, since the Communist Party is willing to give it to their people before the US government will pass it for Americans.
China has a health care problem, so China is going to work towards solving it. The US has a healthcare problem, so it is going to force Americans to spend thousands of dollars to buy insurance from insurance companies who are proven to do an awful job instead of revampting the system to cut out the insurance industry and other bad actors, thus saving 5% of GDP.
This is why China is a rising country, for all its problems, and the US is a country in decline. China's elites actually make serious attempts to fix problems which need to be fixed. America's elites just try and make sure the gravy train isn't upset for anyone who's inside the franchise.
Seriously, "grandma's going to be killed by Obama's healthcare plan" (whatever his plan is, even I don't know) wouldn't work on "we're just going to give medicare to everyone".
Just sayin'.
The whole "you can't sell single payer" is turning out to be, well, rather questionable. Because the way things are going it's fairly clear you can't sell some godawful hodgepodge either and all the screaming about "you're going to take away my Medicare" indicates that a lot of the people who oppose Obamacare, love Medicare.
When you're trying to explain something, you do so by metaphor in almost all cases. Everyone knows what Medicare is. The majority of people with Medicare are happy with it and even people without Medicare know people (usually their parents or grandparents) who have it, and whom it's working for.
Ruling out "single payer" from the very start was an act of mind-bending incompetence on the level of disbanding Iraq's army during the occupation of Iraq. From a policy point of view "Medicare for all" provides massive savings, and we know it works because the equivalent policies have worked for every other nation in the world who ever implemented then. From a sales point of view it's much harder to demonize Medicare and much easier to explain it. From a negotiation point of view pre-compromising is so stupid that anyone who has spent 5 minutes in a third world bazaar or taken even a single negotiating class knows better.
The current health reform "bills" are turning into a clusterfuck of epic proportions. Scrap them, introduce Medicare for all, target Senators who won't vote for it with bone-crushing ads which ask why they want 22,000 American to die every year who could be saved for less money than the Iraq war cost; explain with nice simple pictures how much money they receive from the insurance industry and note that they are willing to let Americans die in exchange for blood money from the medical industry.
I know it's difficult for Democrats to play hardball since they'd have to grow a spine, but perhaps, just perhaps, it's worth it to save lives, end 70% of all bankruptcies and make sure people who are sick get the care they need?
After visiting Victoria for a week, let's do a quick roundup post
Healthcare: I remain convinced that nothing that will come out of this Congress won't be pretty awful. My current belief is that what will be passed will mandate everyone buy insurance but because of inadequate cost controls and subsidies will leave ordinary people forced to buy insurance which will increase in price faster than wages. The optimistic view would be that once everyone is in the system, pressure will build to make the system actually work. We'll see, even if true, there'll be a lot of pain in between.
Unemployment: According to the BLS, the economy lost 274,000 jobs, but the unemployment rate dropped from 9.5% to 9.4%. Welcome to the world of statistics that don't mean what you think they do. People who want jobs, but who are convinced they can't get one and so aren't looking actively don't count as unemployed. So the number of employed people can go down and the unemployment rate can go down. In other words, we're a long way from things getting better, they're just getting worse more slowly.
Resistance: The American right has decided on a policy of resistance to Obama which can be summed up as "thuggery". People are being trained and financed to go out and shout down Democrats or intimidate them. There has already been some violence, there will be more. The Obama administration thought they could avoid the rise of the refusnik right by refusing to act on most social issues, which is why they abandoned their promises to gays and have generally been unwilling to move on other social issues. They took the lesson of the Clinton administration to be "don't inflame the fanatics on the right-avoid social issues, and don't slash the military". They were, of course, wrong: the radical right (and there is hardly a non-radical right left) will oppose Obama no matter what he does and if Obama is unwilling to use to the full might of the administrative apparatus against them, they will simply take advantage of his weakness to escalate. Tactics which are seen to work, will not be abandoned, to the contrary, they will be used more and more.
Obama: Obama's active period is about over. Health care "reform", if he gets it through, will probably be the last major policy. While there are rises and falls, his overall popularity is trending down and that will probably continue. The "honeymoon" is over, and it was used primarily to shove through a lousy stimulus that won't lead to enough of a recovery, and with luck (for him) a bad global warming bill and health reform that isn't. Fortunately, banks and financial firms have been bailed out and are making lots of money, and should be in a position to reward Obama with significant funding in future elections.
Unless they decide that the Republicans will give them everything they want, too.
Add to that Republican weakness, and Obama's inner circle may think they're still cruising for reelection. I'm not so sure. Counting on your enemy's weakness is a dangerous tactic, especially when you are doing little to ensure that they remain weak or that you remain strong.
A compilation of major polling resources shows that republicans have nearly closed the gap with democrats in a generic congressional vote. This is a poll where voters are asked, without naming any specific names, if they are likely to republicans or democrats in the upcoming 2010 midterm elections. Democrats now lead by only 1.5% after the gap had been well into double digits at the time President Obama took office.
The village consensus on this is going to be that if only Democrats had been more bipartisan that the numbers would be better. Debunking such nonsense is a waste of my time and your brain cells. There are two main reasons why these numbers are where they are:
Republicans understand opposition politics: when you're in the opposition, you don't smile bipartisanly, you gnaw at the ankles of the ruling party. Nothing they do is right, everything they do is wrong. You talk about how their policies are going to fail, so that if they do, you are the opposition (Democrats did not understand this when in opposition).
Continuation of ineffective Bush policies. Not to put too fine a point on it, but in too many cases Obama and the new Congress are pursuing Bush lite policies.
Escalate in Afghanistan
Spend more money on the military
Get out of Iraq around about the time Bush wanted to anyway
Continue the Bush/Paulson financial policies
A stimulus bill which was 40% tax cuts (granted, not tax cuts for the rich, but still tax cuts)
Americans voted for Democrats because they were sick of Bush and Bush era policies. And here Congress is repeatedly voting for Bush era policies. Congressional numbers are melting down faster than presidential ones because people know that Obama's their only hope. It may not be much of a hope, but if he can't fix things, they've got to wait most of 4 years for a chance at someone who does.
Proper governance liberal style works like this. Pass effective bills even if it requires not being bipartisan. When those effective bills create good effects (a good economy, everyone having good health care) reap the benefits of voters being happy with good jobs and not going bankrupt over health care.
Congress's stimulus bill was crap. Congress's cap and trade bill is crap. Every indication is that the health care bill is likely to be... crap.
Why would people be happy with this?
It's the economy stupid. By choosing to bail out financial companies instead of the real economy Obama and Congress cast their die. It has not lead to a recovery in the real economy, and by the time the next recession happens my prediction and that of many others is that jobs will still not have recovered to pre-recession levels. This is not something unknown to the Obama administration, they are well aware of it. Their hopes of winning the next election are based on two things: Republican disarray, and the financial sector continuing to give much more money to Democrats. Neither is a sure thing.
Good policy creates a country in which people are doing better than in the past. People who feel they are doing better vote for the incumbent more than not. Congress and Obama seem to have forgotten this basic electoral reality. The will reap as they have sowed.
Spending money is a matter of priorities. Congress and Obama's first priority is not health care, if it was, they'd be willing to spend money on it. They aren't, so it isn't. Period.
If find this especially odd given that "protecting Americans", aka "saving American lives" is supposedly the job #1 in Washington. 22,000 Americans die every year due to not having health care and many more due to inadequate care,, but apparently "saving American lives" is only job #1 when it means you get to spend money on the military, kill foreigners and put American troops in body bags; or when it means you get spy on Americans and torture people.
Al-Q'aeda would need to commit 11 9/11's a year to kill as many Americans as die due to not having health care.
So, what's more important than American lives, as measured by willingness to actually add to the deficit for it?
Killing Iraqis
Tax Cuts
Killing Afghans
Sending American soldiers to die in foreign countries to "save American lives"
Bailing out large corporations like Citigroup, AIG and Goldman Sachs
Giving money to the IMF to bail out other countries banking systems
What else is more important than saving American lives? Add to the list in comments.
Since politicians can be bought so cheaply, why is it only the big corporations that play the game? Why don't progressive groups, say, tell America that, if every American were to chip in $1, they could have more bargaining power than all of the big corporations? ($300 million > $283 million)
I know the big unions do it too, but why not more? Why are all the progressive fundraising outlets seemingly focused on giving money to politicians' election campaings with few, if any, strings attached?
Act Blue DESPERATELY need s lobbying arm especially since so many of our candidates are turning their backs on us!
Y'know, both of these things are true. Progressives need an effective lobbying arm, and to the best of my knowledge, other than perhaps MoveOn and unions (by which I mostly mean SEIU), we don't have one. And while I love my union friends, they have their own priorities, which while they often match up with progressives, don't always. As for MoveOn, well, let's say that they can't do everything. The whip effort from FDL, Kos and others on healthcare which is going on now is doing yeoman work, but I'm sure they'll agree that more money and full time lobbyists would make a huge difference.
So I'm genuinely throwing this out there. I don't know why we don't have really effective fund-raising which is sufficient to do effective lobbying.
Let’s deal with a common misunderstanding, that “dollar devaluation is going to save the US.” The lie supposes that if only the US dollar were low enough, the US would become competitive.
the Yuan pegged to the dollar. In some years, as much as 10% of their entire GDP.
An increase in the price of oil and other commodities will increases the trade deficit, because commodities need to be imported.