If President Obama is truly serious about changing the way Washington operates, he'd begin to aggressively hector the entourage of lawmakers that I've not-so-affectionately nicknamed the "Coalition of the Corrupt and Spineless [ http://www.bobcesca.com/blog-archives/2009/06/coalition_of_th.html ]" (COCS) -- the Democratic Senators who have very obviously been bought off by the healthcare lobby, along with other almost-as-awful Democrats whose cowardice is only matched by their weakness of will.
Throw down, Mr. President.
Maybe even do one of those big Hollywood movie style presidential speeches, like the one at the end of The Contender in which President Jeff Bridges calls out that slippery douche Congressman Gary Oldman in front of a joint session:
"I am not free of blame. Right from the start, I should have come down here, pointed a finger your way -- pointed a finger your way and asked you, "Have you no decency, sir?" Yesterday, I met -- Mr. Runyon, you may walk out on me, you may walk out on this body, but you cannot walk out on the will of the American people."
There can be no denying that the COCS are flagrantly and unapologetically legislating against -- what's the word? -- overwhelming super-majority popular support for the public health insurance option. And why is that? I can't recall another example in recent memory when the collusion of lobbyists, corporate PACs and members of the United States Senate has been quite this obvious.
We can only conclude that the COCS are entirely ignoring the will of the American people because they're hiking the Appalachian Trail with the healthcare industrial complex.
What other excuse might they have? To date, not a single senator in the COCS has explained this disparity, chiefly because it's such an awkward and transparent illustration of the very worst side of Washington -- the side that President Obama pledged to help mitigate.
Nate Silver analyzed the president's polling [ http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/07/obama-has-health-care-plan.html ] and noted that the popularity of healthcare reform and the popularity of the president should mean that the president's healthcare approval numbers should be Herculean. Yet they're weaker than expected. This leads Silver to conclude: "That's not to suggest that Obama should throw caution to the wind and push for single payer. But he needs to begin pushing for something, and something fairly specific."
That something has to be the public option.
It's seriously the right time for the president to make the hard sell on the public option -- to knock some heads and to push it through. Hard. This means perhaps calling out healthcare lobby errand boys like Joe Lieberman [ http://www.bobcesca.com/blog-archives/2009/07/lieberman_follo.html ] and Max Baucus, or at least using some of his considerable popularity to privately smack them around a little. Threaten to pull back the curtain on their healthcare mob ties.
Meanwhile, the 120 member TriCaucus (the House Black Caucus, the House Hispanic Caucus and the House Progressive Caucus) have pledged to vote against any healthcare reform bill [ http://www.bobcesca.com/blog-archives/2009/06/great_news_from.html ] that doesn't include a robust public option. Without these 120 votes, there are only 131 Democratic votes left. They need 218 votes to pass the House and, if their voting record this year is any indication, you can count on zero Republican votes for anything authored by Democrats.
In other words, the president's healthcare reform agenda depends entirely upon the inclusion of an acceptable government-run option for affordable health insurance.
So why not own it? Why not make it a central front in his campaign for healthcare reform?
Plus, there's a real opportunity here to achieve more that just healthcare reform. In addition to giving us a public health insurance option, the president can do some serious damage to the healthcare lobby, as well as to the members of Congress who so brazenly suck down the lobby's collective diarrheic filth.
Knowing all of this, do the COCS support the will of their voters (and now the TriCaucus, the CBO and the AMA)?
Of course not. Because they're being paid to oppose the public option. Again, there aren't any other explanations. And so calling bullshit on this corporate-congressional exercise in mutual masturbation ought to be a cakewalk.
Regarding the pitch for the public option, by the way, there's a stronger argument to be made beyond the pitch for simply insuring people like me and my friend Lee Stranahan [ http://leestranahan.com/ ] who have lost our health insurance for whatever reason. It's about everyone else -- the other 250 million Americans who have health insurance and who, one day soon, will be screwed by their provider. The mafia never wants to pay, and it's only a matter of time, as costs skyrocket, before even those with Cadillac plans will be dropped, investigated, gouged, or denied. Think of the public option as Screwing Insurance.
As much as I'd love to hear President Obama use the phrase "Screwing Insurance," he's much more, you know, mature than I am. And that's definitely a good thing. So he can probably come up with something less offensive. But in addition to forcing the private insurance mafia to play on the level, the public option will provide a safety net for 250 million Americans who have insurance, but would prefer not to be left in the lurch when and if they're screwed out of the benefits they paid for. One of the best aspects of Michael Moore's SiCKO was how he focused mainly on people who owned health insurance policies but who were crapped out the ass end of the deal. The lesson was simple: if you have insurance -- even a policy that you like -- history and many horror stories indicate that it's only a matter of time before you are summarily screwed and left for dead.
This is probably why up to three-fourths of Americans want a public option -- far greater numbers than those who are uninsured.
If there's one thing I know for sure, it's that Americans of all parties would applaud the president if he were to call out the corrupt and spineless. The only thing we'd enjoy more, considering the corporate bilking of taxpayer cash for too many years, is the president castrating the seemingly enormous financial balls of the healthcare lobby.
Enough prevaricating. The storm is perfect. Kick some ass, Mr. President.
Top Ten Worst Things about the Bush Decade; Or, the Rise of the New Oligarchs
December 22, 2009
By spring of 2000, Texas governor George W. Bush was wrapping up the Republican nomination for president, and he went on to dominate the rest of the decade. If Dickens proclaimed of the 1790s revolutionary era in France that it was the best of times and the worst of times, the reactionary Bush era was just the worst of times. I declare it the decade of the American oligarchs. Just as the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union allowed the emergence of a class of lawless 'Oligarchs' in Russia, so Neoliberal tax policies and deregulation produced American equivalents. (For more on the analogy, see Michael Hudson.) [ http://www.counterpunch.org/hudson02172009.html ] We have always had robber barons in American politics, but the Neoliberal moment created a new social class. At about 1.3 million adults, it is not too large to have some cohesive interests, and its corporations, lobbyists, and other institutions allow it to intervene systematically in politics. It owns 45 percent of the privately held wealth and is heading toward 50, i.e. toward a Banana Republic. Thus, we have a gutted fairness doctrine and the end of anti-trust concerns in ownership of mass media, allowing a multi-billionaire like Rupert Murdoch to buy up major media properties and to establish a cable television channel which is nothing but oligarch propaganda. They established 'think tanks' like the American Enterprise Institute, which hires only staff that are useful agents of the interests of the very wealthy, and which produce studies denying global climate change or lying about the situation in Iraq. Bush-Cheney were not simply purveyors of wrong-headed ideas. They were the agents of the one percent, and their policies make perfect sense if seen as attempts to advance the interests of this narrow class of persons. It is the class that owns our mass media, that pays for the political campaigns of 'our' (their) representatives, that gives us the Bushes and Cheneys and Palins because they are useful to them, and that blocks progressive reform and legislation with the vast war chest funneled to them by deep tax cuts that allow them to use essential public resources, infrastructure and facilities gratis while making the middle class pay for them.
Here are my picks for the top ten worst things about the wretched period, which, however, will continue to follow us until the economy is re-regulated, anti-trust concerns again pursued, a new, tweaked fairness doctrine is implemented, and we return to a more normal distribution of wealth (surely a quarter of the privately held wealth is enough for the one percent?) It isn't about which party is in power; parties can always be bought. It is about how broadly shared resources are in a society. Egalitarianism is unworkable, but over-concentration of wealth is also impractical. The latter produced a lot of our problems in the past decade, and as long as such massive inequality persists, our politics will be lopsided.
10. Stagnating worker wages and the emergence of a new monied aristocracy. [ http://www.kyklosproductions.com/articles/wages.html ] Of all the income growth of the entire country of the United States in the Bush years, the richest 1 percent of the working population, about 1.3 million persons, grabbed up over two-thirds of it. The Reagan and Bush cuts in tax rates on the wealthy have created a dangerous little alien inside our supposedly democratic society, of the super-rich, with their legions of camp followers (sometimes referred to as 'analysts' or 'economists' or 'journalists'). The new lords and ladies are the Dick and Liz Cheneys and the people for whom they shill. They are the Rupert Murdochs and the Richard Mellon Scaifes, and they are guaranteed to own more and more of the country as long as more progressive taxation (i.e. pre-Reagan, not pre-Bush) is not restored. They are the ones who didn't want a public universal health option, did not want the wars abroad to end abruptly, did not want the Copenhagen Climate convention to succeed. They are driven by pure greed and narrow profit-seeking for themselves. They always get their way, and they always will as long as you poor stupid bastards buy the line that when the government raises their taxes, it is taking something away from you. It is the alliance of the Neoliberal super-rich with the new lower middle class populists led by W. and now by Sarah Palin that produces clown politics in the US unmatched in most advanced industrial countries with the possible exception of Italy.
9. Health and food insecurity increased for ordinary Americans. Health care costs skyrocketed. Most Americans in the work force who have health care are covered via their employers. 'From 1999 to 2009 health insurance premiums increased 132%" for the companies paying most of the costs of coverage to their employees. [ http://www.euromonitor.com/The_USAs_unhealthy_healthcare_system ] Euromonitor adds, "Average private health insurance premiums for a family of four in 1999 were US$5,485 per annum or 7.2% of household disposable income. 2008 premiums were estimated at US$12,973 per annum or 14.8% of average household disposable income." By Bush's last year in office, food insecurity among American families was at a 14-year high. [ http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/us/17hunger.html?_r=1 ] About 49 million Americans, one in six of us, worried about having enough food to eat at some points in that year, and resorted to soup lines, food stamps, or dietary shortcuts. Some 16 million, according to the NYT, suffered from '“very low food security,” meaning lack of money forced members to skip meals, cut portions or otherwise forgo food at some point in the year.' Hundreds of thousands of children are going hungry in the richest country in the world. From being a proud, wealthy people, our social superiors reduced us to the estate of third-world peasants, so as to make sure their bonuses were bigger.
8. The environment became more polluted. The Bush administration was the worst on record on environmental issues. [ http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9030 ] Carbon emissions grew unchecked, and the threat of climate change accelerated. In fact, Bush muzzled government climate scientists and had their reports rewritten by lawyers from Big Oil.
7. The imperial presidency was ensconced in ways it will be difficult to pare back. [ http://thinkprogress.org/2007/10/09/savage-cheney/ ] But note that its powers were never used against the oligarchs (unlike the case in Putin's Russia), but rather deployed to ensure the continued destruction of the labor movement and the political bargaining power of workers and the middle class, and to harass and disrupt peace, rights and environmental movements. A part of this process was the abrogation of fourth amendment protections against arbitrary search, seizure and snooping into people's mail and effects, and of other key constitutional rights under vague and unconstitutional rubrics such as 'providing material aid to terrorists,'(rights which seem unlikely ever to be restored).
6. The Katrina flood and the destruction of much of historic African-American New Orleans, and the massive failure of the Bush administration to come to the aid of one of America's great cities. The administration's unconcern about the unsound dam infrastructure, about climate change, and about the fate of the victims are all a wake-up call for what all of us have in store from the small social class that Bush served.
5. The Bush administration's post-2002 mishandling of Afghanistan, where the Taliban had been overthrown successfully in 2001 and were universally despised. The Bush administration's attempt to assert itself with a big troop presence in the Pashtun provinces, its use of search and destroy tactics and missile strikes, its neglect of civilian reconstruction, and its failure to finish off al-Qaeda, allowed an insurgency gradually to grow. It should have been nipped in the bud, but was not. Once an insurgency becomes well established, it is defeated militarily only about 20 percent of the time. Eight years later, the Neoconservative thrust into Central Asia (in search of hydrocarbon leverage, or in a geopolitical pissing match with Russia and China?) of the early years of this decade has bequeathed us yet another war, this time one that could destabilize neighboring Pakistan-- the world's sole Muslim nuclear power.
4. The Iraq War, which the US illegally launched a war of aggression that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, displaced 4 million (over as million abroad), destroyed entire cities such as Fallujah, set off a Sunni-Shiite civil war, allowed Baghdad to be ethnically cleansed of its Sunnis, practiced systematic and widespread torture before the eyes of the Muslim Middle East and the world, and immeasurably strengthened Iran's hand in the Middle East. All this on false pretexts such as 'weapons of mass destruction' or 'democratization,' for the sake of opening the Iraqi oil markets to US hydrocarbon firms-- a significant faction of the oligarchic class. [ http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/13/world/middleeast/13iraq.html ] Cost to the US in American military life: 4,373 dead as of Dec 15 and 31,603 wounded in combat. The true totals of war-related dead and injured are higher, since 30,000 troops who were only diagnosed with brain injuries on their return to the US are not counted in the statistics, according to Michael Munk. The cost of the Iraq War when everything is taken into account will likely be $3 trillion.
3. The great $12 trillion Bank Robberry, in which unscrupulous bankers and financiers were deregulated and given free rein to create worthless derivatives, sell impossible mortgages to uninformed marks who could not understand their complicated terms, and then to roll this garbage up into securities re-sold like the Cheshire cat, with a big visible smile of asserted value hanging in the air even as their actual worth disappeared into thin air. Having allowed the one-percent oligarchs to capture most of the increase of the country's wealth in recent decades, Bush and Paulsen now initiated the surrender to them of nearly a further entire year's gross domestic product of the US, stealing it from the rest of us by deficit budget financing that will have the effect of deflating our savings and property values and relative value of our currency against other world currencies. That is, we are to be further beggared for sake of the super-rich. And while the banks and bankers are held harmless, the hardworking Americans who have lost and will lose their homes are extended virtually no help. While 500,000 American children will go hungry at least some of the time this year, the Oligarchs at Goldman, Sachs, will get millions in bonuses, on the backs of the ordinary taxpayers. It seems likely to me that the creation of a pool of vast excess liquidity for the super-rich by the Reagan-Cheney tax cuts was what impelled them to develop the derivatives, since they had too much capital for ordinary investment purposes and were restlessly seeking new gaming tables. The conclusion is that until we get our gini coefficient back into some sort of synch, we are likely at risk for further such meltdowns. [ http://www.sustainablemiddleclass.com/Gini-Coefficient.html ]
2. The September 11 attacks on New York and Washington by al-Qaeda, an organization that stemmed from the Reagan administration's anti-Soviet jihad in the 1980s and which decided that, having defeated one superpower, it could take down the other. Al-Qaeda's largely Arab volunteer fighters had confronted the Soviets over their occupation of a major Muslimm country, Afghanistan. Bin Laden was himself a Neoliberal Oligarch, but he broke with the Gulf consensus of seeking a US security umbrella, thus creating a fissure within his powerful social class. Al-Qaeda viewed the US as only a slightly less objectionable occupier, though they were willing to make an atliance of convenience in the 1980s. But they were increasingly enraged and galvanized to strike, they said, by the post-Gulf-War sanctions on Iraq that killed 500,000 children, the debilitating Israeli occupation of the Palestinians, and the establishment of US bases in the holy Arabian Peninsula (with its oil riches that Bin Laden believed were being looted for pennies by the West, aided by a supine and corrupt Saudi dynasty). Al-Qaeda was a small fringe crackpot group of murderous conspiracy theorists, since most of what they considered an American 'occupation' of Muslims was no such thing. The leasing of Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia was comparable to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan? They intended to make themselves look like a world-historical force, and the US new Oligarchs, who no longer had the international Communist conspiracy with which to scare the American public into letting them have their way, were happy to buy in to the hyping of al-Qaeda, as well. But the catastrophe was not only the attacks, deadly and horrific though they were, but the alacrity with which Americans rsurrendered their birthright of yeoman liberties to a Bonapartist regime that ran roughshod over law, the constitution, the Congress, and anyone, such as Ambassador Joe Wilson, who dared oppose it.
1. The constitutional coup of 2000, in which Bush was declared the winner of an election he had lost, with the deployment of the most ugly racial and other low tricks in the ballot counting and the intervention of a partisan and far right-wing Supreme Court (itself drawn from or serving the oligarchs), and which gave us the worst president in the history of the union, who proceeded to drive the country off a cliff for the succeeding 8 years. And that is because he was not our president, but theirs. [ http://www-personal.umich.edu/~wmebane/mebane.pop2004.pdf ]
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