Government

Matt Taibbi:

The reason a real health-care bill is not going to get passed is simple: because nobody in Washington really wants it. There is insufficient political will to get it done. It doesn’t matter that it’s an urgent national calamity, that it is plainly obvious to anyone with an IQ over 8 that our system could not possibly be worse and needs to be fixed very soon, and that, moreover, the only people opposing a real reform bill are a pitifully small number of executives in the insurance industry who stand to lose the chance for a fifth summer house if this thing passes.

It won’t get done, because that’s not the way our government works. Our government doesn’t exist to protect voters from interests, it exists to protect interests from voters. The situation we have here is an angry and desperate population that at long last has voted in a majority that it believes should be able to pass a health care bill. It expects something to be done. The task of the lawmakers on the Hill, at least as they see things, is to create the appearance of having done something. And that’s what they’re doing.

Indeed. Greenwald specifically points to the first poll on that sheet, but really all of them show solid support for guaranteed health coverage. 55 percent believe guaranteeing coverage for everyone is more important than containing cost. Yes, the number has been slipping, thanks to the one-sided propaganda war waged by Serious People and their corporate media lackeys, but it remains positive. That's not nothing.

Liberals, of course, are barely much help. Smoky, backroom debating among intellectual philosopher-kings is just how they imagine government working; it's only a matter of finding that elusive combination. They paid for that education. Surely it ought to give them some special clout. Populism? Let's not be uncivilized here!

The first epistle of Apostle Milton to the Suckers

Yes, we are near the blessed end of the Sarah Palin era in American politics, but one more before we go.

She also attacked Hollywood, which enlists "delicate, tiny, very talented celebrity starlets" in their "anti-Second Amendment causes," against which "patriots will protect our individual guaranteed right to bear arms." She warned against "enslavement to big central government," because "it can't make you happy or healthy or wealthy or wise," which comes instead from "God's grace helping those who help themselves."

I am curious as to where this theological tradition comes from. It seems to have become part of the canon of Free Market Christianity. Apparently, when John the Baptist said "The man with two tunics should share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same," he forgot to add "but only when he is satisfied that the man with none has worked hard enough to earn one."

Resolve

Statement A: Government-run enterprises are bulkier and more inefficient than privately-owned business.

Statement B: Government cannot be allowed to run a health care program because it will compete out the more-efficient private insurance in the "free market."

Hypothesis: People who reflexively claim Statement A don't actually believe it.

Uniquely American

An email from my esteemed representative.

There are many parts of our health care system that are the envy of the world, but the parts that aren’t working threaten to bankrupt families, businesses and government alike. We literally cannot afford to not address this challenge head-on. As we move forward, our goal should be protecting what works and fixing what doesn’t.

Only a uniquely American solution will fix the weaknesses in the current system, and any solution must first start with an honest and open conversation. I’ve always said we will never achieve real health care reform without giving all of the stakeholders in this debate a seat at the table. That includes you.

I've figured it out. The United States is like the aging hipster of the world community; the kind of person who won't listen to a band if their entire fanbase can't fit in his closet. Why can't we learn anything from other industrialized democracies who have faced similar challenges and...really don't envy all that much about our health care system? Because we're just that special, that's why.

Things I remember happening

The National League winning the All-Star Game.

Class warfare

And a final word to you arrogant rich: Take some lessons in lament. You'll need buckets for the tears when the crash comes upon you. Your money is corrupt and your fine clothes stink. Your greedy luxuries are a cancer in your gut, destroying your life from within. You thought you were piling up wealth. What you've piled up is judgment.

All the workers you've exploited and cheated cry out for judgment. The groans of the workers you used and abused are a roar in the ears of the Master Avenger. You've looted the earth and lived it up. But all you'll have to show for it is a fatter than usual corpse. In fact, what you've done is condemn and murder perfectly good persons, who stand there and take it.

James 5, The Message

Pope speak, you listen!

Pope calls for a new financial order.

In a key passage, the encyclical says: "The conviction that the economy must be autonomous, that it must be shielded from 'influences' of a moral character, has led man to abuse the economic process in a thoroughly destructive way. In the long term, these convictions have led to economic, social and political systems that trample upon personal and social freedom, and are therefore unable to deliver the justice that they promise."

Then in an unequivocal critique of unbridled markets, the pope writes that "grave imbalances are produced when economic action, conceived merely as an engine for wealth creation, is detached from political action, conceived as a means for pursuing justice through redistribution."

This is not especially new; popes have been issuing similar encyclicals on economics for a hundred years. Of course, they are always careful to spend a great deal of effort to distance themselves from socialists, which is as cute as that little hat on the pope's head, but whatever gets the job done.

There's nothing in it about abortion, though, so no one in the American press, whether mainstream or the important "liberal" outlets, will pay much attention.

Accidental reporting

Living where I do, the drooling of Bircherites and other righty tinfoil-hatters eventually trickles down and gets me wet. Here a couple of whoppers I've come across lately:

1) The Radical Muslim Black Christian Nazi Communist Preznit is somehow going to commandeer 2010 Census data as some kind of evil plot to steal your children or somesuch. The Census bureau is even taking this seriously enough that it has dispatched representatives to town council meetings urging them to reassure residents that turning in their census forms won't get them sent to a gulag in Montana.

2) Digital TV converter boxes are equipped with audio/video recording equipment so Big Brother can watch you. I suppose this one was inevitable, since any new piece of equipment or identification which everyone has to buy--except, you know, those who don't--will become a Lindseyan mark of the beast. Bur really, consider the utter absurdity of this for a moment.

It's not that I'm completely unsympathetic to people who are skeptical of government intrusiveness, rather that I'm highly doubtful most of the people pushing these new conspiracies had the same skepticism seven months ago. That's the trouble with conspiracy theories, though, and perhaps it's not just a right-wing thing. Americans seem to be fascinated by conspiracies in inverse proportion to how believable they are. Iran-Contra? WMD's? Extraordinary rendition? Pfft, no one cares. The Masons had JFK killed? Gimme some of that action!

(Yes, I am reading Charlie Pierce's book.)

Ebert

I never thought anything concerning Michael Bay, even a post ridiculing Michael Bay, could contain such pearls of wisdom.

What I believe is that all clear-minded people should remain two things throughout their lifetimes: Curious and teachable. If someone I respect tells me I must take a closer look at the films of Abbas Kiarostami, I will take that seriously. If someone says the kung-fu movies of the 1970s, which I used for our old Dog of the Week segments, deserve serious consideration, I will listen. I will try to do what Pauline Kael said she did: Take everything you are, and all the films you've seen, into the theater. See the film, and decide if anything has changed. The older you are and the more films you've seen, the more you take into the theater. When I had been a film critic for ten minutes, I treated Doris Day as a target for cheap shots. I have learned enough to say today that the woman was rarely gifted.

One good turn

I've been cynical about the trendy outpouring of enthusiasm from American desk jockeys supporting the Iranian opposition by making their Twitter icon green. But I've also noticed that public interest in the Honduran coup has been unusually high, and I wonder how much of it is a byproduct of Americans' sudden interest in foreign struggles.

If there is a causal relationship, I suspect it's largely unintended. The American ruling class is quite happy to fan popular outrage at the Official Enemy in Tehran but would probably wish for fewer prying eyes looking at the history of military coups in Latin America.

A patriotic song

The only one worth a damn.

Can't...look...away.....

Palin is clearly not setting up a run at the presidency; otherwise she would have simply not sought re-election. As it stands, she now has the mark of someone who couldn't manage to finish one term as a governor.

It's more likely that she's become bored with the day-to-day minutiae of governing the Alaskan wasteland and can't wait to become a full-time member of the right-wing media circuit which she has been essentially since the end of the campaign. If the ink isn't already dry on the Fox News contract, I'd be surprised.

If only I could say I love you

Mark Wesbrot wonders how sincere Washington's opposition to the Honduran coup really is.

The coup leaders have no international support, but they could still succeed by running out the clock – Zelaya has less than six months left in his term. Will the Obama administration support sanctions against the coup government in order to prevent this? The neighbouring governments of Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador have already fired a warning shot by announcing a 48-hour cut-off of trade.

By contrast, one reason for Clinton's reluctance to call the coup a coup is because the US Foreign Assistance Act prohibits funds going to governments where the head of state has been deposed by a military coup.

Unconditional is also a key word here: the Obama administration may want to extract concessions from Zelaya as part of a deal for his return to office. But this is not how democracy works. If Zelaya wants to negotiate a settlement with his political opponents after he returns, that is another story. But nobody has the right to extract political concession from him in exile, over the barrel of a gun.

Indeed, rumors have been circulating that a deal may be in the works for Zelaya to return to power if he gives up his calls for constitutional reform.

In the Honduran coup, the Obama administration claims that it tried to discourage the Honduran military from taking this action. It would be interesting to know what these discussions were like. Did administration officials say, "You know that we will have to say that we are against such a move if you do it, because everyone else will?" Or was it more like, "Don't do it, because we will do everything in our power to reverse any such coup"? The administration's actions since the coup indicate something more like the former, if not worse.

There are always pretty good reasons to suspect U.S. complicity in any coup in Latin America; we have a long history of such things (even preceding the Cold War) and, in Honduras particularly, the military has been heavily subsidized for years by Washington. It is difficult to believe--though theoretically not impossible--that it would have taken such a drastic action without first getting American approval. Because of this, the administration won't be able to credibly claim ambivalence; it will have to come out against the coup to avoid looking guilty.