Since it is Perceived by Ignorant Voters as One Issue, the Green Party is a Political Rat Hole

Cenk Uygur fails to mention that the Progressives have lost everything for 30 years and there literally is nothing left to lose. The economy already collapsed, just as you would expect after no non-right wing management of it at all for 30 years, so it is too late to get much benefit from "financial reform" at least in our lifetimes. Maybe it would benefit the next generation.

As for trying to get this or that right wing operator including Obama to change his or her ways, that is not reasonable as most here realize.

Rather, if they want to move toward finally winning a game after losing about the last 50 political games in a row, progressives have to unify their thousands of Internet sites, hundreds of organizations and "movements," and dozens of unelectable parties into an overall umbrella organization. Progressives love little niches and don't fully appreciate the value of unity. This would have to change were they to really want to actually win a game in the future.

On a related note, I finally got around to checking out the Cohn article that was referenced in yesterday's Peter Dreier article: "Pass the Health Bill, Then Improve It". Dreier and Cohn claim that the health insurance deform will improve the financial lives of lower income families. It made my day to shoot huge holes in that one, which I did in brief comments at the Dreier article.

GUEST COMMENT

The Left needs a political party ...

Register Green Party ... without a political arm alll those liberal and progressive blogs and websites are just noise. Then there are all the Environmental, Human Rights,
Anti War, Civil Rights, Labor and Clean Government groups that need to coalesce around a political party.

UNITY PROGRESS COMMENT
Change the name of the Green party because the name right now shouts one issue and there is no way a party perceived by the ignorant voters as a one issue party can ever succeed in the US.

GUEST COMMENT
Do you have any idea what's involved in changing the name of a political party? We did it here in Oregon about 10 years ago, from Pacific to Pacific Green, and lost a dangerous number of registrations when we did it. EVERY member had to change their registration, and new members had to look for the new name. I think there are still people registered "Pacific Party."

Anyway, the name might be our biggest advantage. Saving the environment - "Going Green" - is the best supported single progressive issue. People seem to grasp that it's a question of survival. Only health-care, also a survival issue, draws such universal support and passion - and we're on the popular side on that one, too.

UNITY PROGRESS COMMENT
The best supported progressive issue is economic survival, especially now but always. (It would be nice to not have to live under the bridge and/or file bankruptcy every few years, wouldn't it?)

You should have left your party named the way it was if you really want to win elections and not just a few movement votes.

Again, there is no way any party which has a name which shouts one issue will ever win much of anything in the US. There are like two or three countries where the Green party has ever actually won anything important, with Germany being by far the most important one. Germans very often don't judge political books by their covers, but Americans and people in most other countries mostly do. It's just a quirk of Germans that allows the Green party to win some things in Germany.

The above exchange was in response to this article.

Rulers, Serfs, and the Stock Market Experiment

GUEST COMMENT

teddy December 29th, 2009 12:19 pm
America will have another "great depression" if it's not here already. that's just a matter of naming.

this time around, the bankers with their allies in government have found a solution for themselves:

KEEP the Depression at bay from THEIR doors. and LET the rest of America SINK.

and so - the INTENT which is at the heart of "americanism" is achieved:

effectively, by means of law, Fascistic law, create a permanent two-tier society without any further apologies:

RULERS and SERFS.

I have always said : america is really just the modern day version of the continuation , under different disguise of SLAVERY.

it is like the modern day version of having Pharaohs and servants...the servants build the Pyramids to the glory of pharaohs.

or as the great canadian thinker, John Kenneth Galbraith said:

"CAPITALISM is really the modern way of playing a very, very old game: finding moral justification for Greed."

and in america and FROM america this is expressed most solidly in its Corporatist culture...of

RULERS (management, administration, shareholders, board)

and SERFS (workers and consumers)

America merely subsituted CORPORATISM for PLANTATION SLAVERY.

that's all.

UNITY-PROGRESS COMMENT
All exactly true and well stated.

There is an experiment being conducted right now to see if the stock market, at least, can grow even if the underlying economy is treading water or is still shrinking (the so-called "jobless recovery"). The common people are the guinea pigs.

The above was in response to this article about the 40% excise tax on the "Cadillac health plans".

Norway and Switzerland: Two Examples of a far Better Health System

GUEST COMMENT
The European countries that use private insurers (among them Norway and Switzerland) have systems that in some ways are similar to the Senate plan (mandatory insurance, government help in paying for premiums if one is poor). HOWEVER, they spend a minimum of 40 percent less per capita than we do because they treat health insurance as a public utility instead of a for-profit industry.

All insurers must be non-profits. The government reviews health care costs annually to be sure providers are decently recompensed and sets premiums to match. Businesses and individuals pay the set premiums and every resident receives the same set of benefits. There are no co-pays, no denials (except for obvious fraud), no excuses like imaginary pre-existing conditions to refuse to insure.

Competition is based only on each company's level of customer service.

Is it too late for some good Dem on the conference committee to suggest burying both the House and Senate versions of the bill and substituting the Norway plan for REAL reform?? (Second only to single-payer.)

UNITY PROGRESS COMMENTS
Norway has a straight up public system paid for by progressive taxation. The system is administered by the Norway Government. All citizens and I think all residents who are not citizens are automatically enrolled. Those who have no taxable income (such as housewives) get health care at no charge.

Norway heavily subsidizes the supply side: doctors get educated at extremely low cost to them, and hospitals are mostly or entirely funded by Norway Government.

This is the best possible system yet thought of and proved to be successful. Health care systems have to be run by the government or they simply do not work out right: people end up not getting care they need for any of numerous reasons when the private sector is involved. Moreover, when the private sector is involved with health care, other parts of the private economy are damaged when the health sector overuses scarce financial resources.

Private health insurance has virtually no presence in Norway except at the margins, for example, for dental care.

It's not simply that countries like Norway do not have large amounts of money going to insurance companies. It's that countries like Norway do not agree in the first place that the insurance concept is appropriate or useful for health care, which it is not when you truly understand what insurance is and when you spend some time thinking about whether it works for health care.

Switzerland has private insurance companies but they are very strictly non-profit, not to mention that all high income individuals in Switzerland (including executives of the private insurance companies) make a lot less than half what their US counterparts fleece from their "customers". When a private company is strictly non-profit (not the pretend, sort of non-profit which is so common in the States) it economically acts not all that differently than a government agency.

The above was in response to this article at Common Dreams.

The Racket, Summarized in one Paragraph or Less

Laugh out loud. So money from China and US taxpayers is being used to cover the spread between reasonable health costs and the exhorbitant health costs in the US. The spread goes to the executives and other very highly paid but unneeded employees. But the executives don't have to pay back their loot to either China or the US taxpayers.

The above was in response to this article at Common Dreams.

Under new Laws, Health Care Will Still not be Affordable for Ordinary Families, so Many Will go Without Care

Anyone who claims this law will be affordable for ordinary families is, whether they know it or not, being a moron, because no one and nothing is talking about the following items which determine whether a very large expense is affordable or not.

In other words, the following are the reasons why there is no way that a scheme like this will ever be affordable for a good percentage of the peasants, public option or not.

1. The federal subsidies are determined only by adjusted gross income (AGI)and without regard to expenses that can not be deducted when AGI is calculated. Some families simply can not afford 20% or more(10% for premiums and 10% or more for deductibles, co-pays, medications, and uncovered items) of income for health care; there are too many other important items on the expense list. Families living in high cost of living areas are especially hurt by the false assumption that 20%-25% of income on health care is reasonable.

2. The subsidies are determined without regard to net worth, liabilities (debts) and debt repayment. A family paying $1,000 or $1,500 a month on student loan and/or credit card debts gets no more subsidy than one paying nothing on student loan and credit card debt. Since the majority of but not all families have debts, and since debt servicing varies radically from one family to another, this issue alone makes the scheme unworkable.

3. In the real world, incomes can fall from whatever they were in year x to next to nothing in year y. Since the subsidies are based on last year's income, some families will face an impossible cash flow problem and will not be able to actually pay the premiums in year y when unemployment or other fiascos strike. So they end up uninsured even though they paid handsomely for some years prior and even though the federal government paid the subsidy to the insurance company.

In the real world, families have sometimes been paying premiums (full or employee share) and sometimes not, depending on whether they are employed or not and what their pay rate is in different years. When you deny that reality and declare that families should every year pay for grossly overpriced health insurance policies, you have completely moved to la la land where money grows on trees, and you have totally messed up the household finances of tens of millions of people.

Yes, it's true, this cumbersome system will result in the US government, using your income tax receipts and money borrowed from China, paying subsidies to insurance companies, but then the people for whom the companies were paid are uninsured because they can't pay their share when they get invoiced. Will the federal government get a refund? I highly, highly doubt it. That money will be down the rat hole.

Not to mention that even if and when the policy is fully paid for, if the family can not afford the deductibles, co-pays, medications, and uncovered items, they are not going to get the actual health care or else they are going to get it and file for bankruptcy! And that means more of your tax money and more of China's money down the rat hole, too.

4. The subsidies are also without regard to number of children, and without regard to whether those children are in college or not. Families with the same adjusted gross income obviously have radically different expenses depending on those and related factors. Some of those expenses incurred for children of all ages are deductible when AGI is calculated but many of them are not.

5. The rest of the world has decided that middle income families should pay no more than about 10% of their income for health care and low income people should pay nothing, while the right wing Americans are saying 20-25% of income for middle and 10% of income for low income families is good.

No, that is not at all good. Sorry, but the days when the rest of the world is wrong and only the Americans are right are over.

The above was in response to this news article at Common Dreams.

No Unity Equals no Chance to Stop the Right Wing Juggernaut

Would somebody take the thousands of internet sites, the hundreds of organizations and "movements," and the dozens of tiny political parties that make up the non-right and organize them all into one unified entity? Please complete that by the end of 2010 if you would. Thanks in advance.

Remuneration? I'm sure you will make some tip jar and Google Adsense money besides saving the planet. Seriously, if someone could do that I'm sure they would become fairly rich.

The above was in response to this article at Common Dreams.

Lies, More Lies, and Lies That Even Chronic Liars Won't Tell

GUEST COMMENT

bardamu December 26th, 2009 1:12 pm
To pass this bill in hopes it should become some thing it is not, even in many ways the opposite of that it is, is irresponsible.

To pretend that doing so takes the food from babies or leaves poor uncared for that the bill would protect is bad rhetoric at best, and lying if Dreier does not actually believe it.

Either way, Dreier proceeds by false figures and false analogy.

The figures Dreier cites ignore the portion of the population who eat, pay our rent, and educate our children because we do not pay that premium of $12,042 but go without.

There are a lot of us in that category, and someone is disingenuous in neglecting this, if not Dreir himself.

Compromises are fine. This bill is not a compromise.

The difference lies at the heart of Dreir's false analogies:

The Social Security Act did not collect money from the poor and middle class to distribute to a set of private thugs, but provided some funding for the poor from general taxes.

That was progressive legislation, though imperfect, and therefore the opposite of this bill, not analogous.

The National Labor Relations (Wagner) Act and the Fair Labor Standards (minimum wage/40 hour week) Act were not acts to restrict labor--to force all labor to accept full time work or a government equivalent, while providing little or nothing in the nature of limitations to management.

That was progressive legislation, though certainly it did not go far enough. That was a compromise. That was worth supporting.

The Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts did not force African Americans or other minorities to pay into the coffers of the racists who oppressed them. It did provide some legislative basis, however inadequate, to prosecute those who denied them their rights.

These were therefore progressive pieces of legislation that deserved support.

The Clean Air Act did not force those in East Los Angeles or Pasadena, where smog abounds, to underwrite General Motors -- one particular company among those responsible for the smog.

If a decent bill or even an embarrassing but authentic compromise cannot be passed in relatively public debate before a population that is something like 70% in favor of Single Payer health care for another ten years, how much less likely is it that such a bill will be changed for the better by backroom lobbyists and the same lying, money-pandering legislators who are right now selling their sick constituents for campaign moneys and whatever other sweetheart deals they have negotiated in private?

How can people like Dreier and Krugman ignore something so obvious? Congress is not trustworthy. Those who would have us trust Congress are not trustworthy, at least to that extent.

I agree with his last three "lessons," but find that accepting their premises causes me to reject his first.

UNITY-PROGRESS COMMENTS
That this is a compromise or that this can be improved in the future are lies that even a chronic liar like Obama won't tell. It has been left to Obama cronies such as Peter Dreier, the author of this article here, to tell these new, after the fact lies.

It's simple: this is totally anti-progressive and can not possibly be improved at the margins in the future. It will either be largely scrapped or it will be regarded as an abject failure by almost everyone (but not the insurance company executives) roughly a decade from now or sooner. Wheras real progressives, to my relief, realize it is an abject failure already.

The above was in response to this article.

On Compromising, and Progressives are Better Even When They Can't do Anything

GUEST COMMENT

www.NotOneMore.US December 23rd, 2009 5:53 pm
matti writes: "Politics works by compromise, and if you come to the table with something already compromised to your limits, you will leave it with something beyond those limits."

Actually, the truth is the exact opposite. Politics doesn't work because of compromise.

And when politicians or people agree to compromise core issues because 'that is how the system works' they are doing themselves, and justice, a severe disservice. Our current situation is a prime example of how politics and compromise doesn't work.

The unfair situation is that 'they' have framed how things work. 'They' say that you need to compromise. You actually don't need to compromise if your position is thought out, rational, just and fair, and important to you. It doesn't have to make everyone happy.

You don't compromise on your principle values.

Unfortunately, when you allow others to frame the scenario, to define the playing field, you have already lost.

You can compromise on what color to paint the kitchen. You shouldn't compromise on the war, health care, corporate bailouts.

This is what compromise is. You say you need your nose 2 inches above water. The other side says that you need it 12 inches under the water. You compromise, because they tell you that that is the way the game is played, so you agree to having your nose be only 4 inches under the water. After all, they compromised, and you compromised. Unfortunately having your nose 4 inches underwater is no different than having it 12 inches underwater.

You don't compromise core values. Others may call you selfish, unbending, egotistic, but in fact you are just standing up for your principles. Principles are only principles if you stand up for them.

Ethics and leadership require you to stand up against compromise against core values.

UNITY-PROGRESS COMMENTS
I gather you've noticed that in America some get everything they want without any compromise, some are supposed to compromise from time to time and get some but not all of what they want, and others are supposed to compromise every last thing away every time. You have to ignore the "supposed to's.

The only reasonable position was and will always be single payer or nothing. If there was a non right-wing president (yeah right, that will happen sometime before there is no US anymore) that's what he or she would say. So absolutely nothing would get done until single payer could and did pass. And nothing would be (a little or substantially) better than what actually passed, which only goes to prove that even when progressives are unable to do anything you are still better off having them.

The above was in response to this article at Common Dreams.

Obama is so bad that it's Hard to Ignore Him Anymore

GUEST COMMENT

Stone December 23rd, 2009 11:06 pm
Will Progressives finally get the idea that Obama is their man out of their minds. Obama has done NOTHING to earn your hope or respect. He has done EVERYTHING to harm and derail your aspirations. There is no hope or expectation in Obama. He is an extreme corporatist who lacks compassion. Obama is about Obama. Forget him and move on.

UNITY-PROGRESS COMMENT
I totally ignored Obama until he turned out to be much worse than even I thought, and until I started to read this site much more often than I used to. Nowadays, watching Obama dissemble about just about everything is like looking at a car wreck: it's human nature to keep looking even though it's basically a waste of time at this point because Obama is going to continue to just mock progressives going forward.

I just wish the Greens would change the name of their party to escape the one issue branding and the severe limitations on winning potential that entails. Yes, I know that branding is unfair, but except for maybe Germany and parts of Scandinavia, the Greens are branded this way everywhere.

The above was in response to this articleat Common Dreams.

The new Insurance law is so bad that you can Forget About Complying with Word Limits

Laugh out loud that yesterday I posted the 2,500 words in one article at Common Dreams and they were deleted due to the 1,000 word comment limit. Now this law will be remembered as so bad that I couldn't possibly limit the summary of reasons to 1,000 words. Actually, each of the twenty reasons could justify a 2,000 or more word article in itself, for a total of 40,000 or more words. There is plenty of content for a book, and I am sure there will be many books coming out after it becomes obvious that this law is a failure.

There was a Vancouver, Washington local progressive site that, before all 20 were deleted at Common Dreams, cut and paste the whole thing onto their nice little site. So if I had been dumb enough not to have it on Word on a drive, I could have retrieved it there. Oh well, such is the wild, unpredictable, but never enough traffic life on the Internet.

But a note to inexperienced internet writers: assume everything on the Internet is going to be deleted because sooner or later it is. You need to save your writing to your disc and then back that up.

Very happy holidays y'all.

The above was in response to this important article.

The Last Time There was an Increase in Jobs by State

Mega dittos Mr. Green, but as politicalpen says, don't use the cuss words in class, laugh out loud.

"Sure, people want healthcare reform right now (especially if it were to miraculously also have the virtue of being authentic healthcare reform), but what they really want, overwhelmingly, is jobs"

The US now has massive problems even in areas that it was supposed to have a guarantee against. For several decades, US politicians in both parties claimed that although workers at the low end received lower pay, far fewer benefits, and had much less job security than in Europe, at least they would almost always have a job available to get, whereas in Europe, due to "excessive government interference", you would often have a situation where you could not get a job even if you desperately wanted or needed one.

Well now the US has that same problem that was supposed to be limited to certain European countries: sheer unavailability of jobs. So the US workers now have pretty much every possible problem going against them.

Face it, US workers have no real representation from either of the right wing parties. The information I have provided below is the kind of information that would be common knowledge were it not for the fact that most US politicians have number of jobs and workers in general as very low priorities. Workers need to wake up and demand a new party, and help to create it.

Number of jobs is an extremely important real world economic indicator, as important as GDP in my view. But as an example of how this matters very little to the ones in charge, number of jobs is not even a major factor with respect to whether the economy is considered to be in recession or not in the US, thus the bizarre, bogus, and ultra right concept of "jobless recovery".

The following dates are, as of October 2009, the last month in which each state had the same number of jobs as that state had in September 2009. In other words, this tells you how long it has been since one or more jobs have been created, net of job losses, in each state. States where the month shown is September 1999 or earlier have failed to create a net job for more than 10 years. There are several states showing October 1999; as of September 2009, there have been zero new net jobs in those states for one month shy of ten years.

And if I counted correctly, there are 32 states which have not created a single net job since the 21st century began (which is January 1, 2001 technically).

The greater the amount of time since jobs increased, the worse the depression or recession is in that state. Data comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Alabama: September 1998
Alaska: June 2006
Arizona: October 2004
Arkansas: September 2005
California: November 1999
Colorado: November 2000
Connecticut: October 1997
Delaware: May 1999
District of Columbia: June 2008
Florida: November 2003
Georgia: May 1999
Hawaii: October 2004
Idaho: September 2005
Illinois: December 1995
Indiana: September 1995
Iowa: May 1999
Kansas: November 1998
Kentucky: September 1998
Louisiana: October 1999
Maine: October 1999
Maryland: June 2004
Massachusetts: June 1998
Michigan: September 1988
Minnesota: October 1999
Mississippi: May 1997
Missouri: December 1998
Montana: June 2006
Nebraska: May 2006
Nevada: October 2004
New Hampshire: December 2000
New Jersey: June 1999
New Mexico: December 2005
New York: October 1999
North Carolina: June 2000
North Dakota: October 2008
Ohio: September 1994
Oklahoma: November 2006
Oregon: June 2000
Pennsylvania: October 1999
Puerto Rico: December 1995
Rhode Island: June 1998
South Carolina: November 1999
South Dakota: June 2006
Tennessee: September 1998
Texas: April 2007
Utah: June 2006
Vermont: October 1999
Virginia: December 2004
Washington: May 2006
West Virginia: May 2000
Wisconsin: June 1998
Wyoming: June 2007

=====================================
The above was in response to this article at Common Dreams.

Mitch McConnell and Bart Stupak Among the Last Hopes

GUEST COMMENT

RichM December 19th, 2009 3:09 pm
It's a measure of just how far we've sunk, that the best outcome one can now hope for in the health care debacle is that Mitch McConnell -- long one of the most thoroughly loathesome figures in the Senate -- should prevail.

Rather than wishing for a White Christmas, I'm just wishing that the Republicans will be able to destroy this monstrosity, even if they do it for all the wrong reasons. Then Obama will be widely perceived as the pathetic failure that he is, the insurance companies won't get their millions of "mandated" new customers, & the Democrats will go onto the slag heap of history, where they so richly belong.

Go, Mitch!!

UNITY-PROGRESS RESPONSE
Mega Dittos, Rush, and go Mitch!

Now excuse me while I heave up my lunch, laugh out loud.

No seriously, did you know that if this bill fails, Lord Obama would have no alternative but to settle for passing the obviously good things like no pre-existing conditions and no lifetime caps? (Well, he could resign instead.) But most likely, if the bill fails, you would get much of the good without most of the bad, because the Democrats would still have to pass something.

===============================
The above was in response to this article at Common Dreams.

Romney / Pawlenty Ticket to win in 34 Months?

Well, Lord Obama could be counting on the fact that there are still 34 months before the election to make up for his abandonment of those who elected him. Then again, he has done so many right wing things already that in my view no amount of public relations in the last few months before the election will save him from losing to the Romney/Pawlenty ticket or some other non-redneck ticket designed by the Republicans to kick Obama's posterior.

===============================
The above was in response to this article at Common Dreams.

A Nice Poem for the Holidays

GUEST COMMENT (POEM)

micki December 20th, 2009 12:15 pm
‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the Senate,
Not a critter was honest, not even a Dem-mit,
The pork was all hung for the lobbyists with care,
In hopes that the citizens soon would not care.

The politicians were nestled all smug in their beds,
While visions of dollars danced in their heads.
The homeless in tents were fending a cold snap,
As Congress settled down to give us more crap.

When over the land there arose such a chatter,
That DC didn’t know what the hell was the matter,
Away to big biz they raced for more cash,
Tore apart peoples’ dreams, let’s hurry slapdash!

The goons on the right caused much of the woe,
But they had their enablers, one was named Joe.
Then, some were still hoping the prez would appear,
And take a strong stand that would cause a great cheer!

With a flick of his tongue, so lively and quick,
We knew in a moment his words were still slick.
So rapid was Rahm, there was more of the same,
Everything we got grew more and more lame.

"Now Baucus! now, Lincoln! now, Nelson and Snow!
On, Landrieu! On, Reid! on and on we can crow!”
At the top of their lungs! to the top of the hall!
“To hell with the voters, we make the call.”

As premiums rise like a wild hurricane fly,
Not an obstacle for them, for they are so sly,
So up to the hilt they continue to screw,
The American people into deeper doo-doo.

And though there’s an inkling, we’ve had quite enough,
They’ll continue to act like it’s all a great bluff,
For they’re moving ahead, not turning around,
They’re passing this bill though it’s very unsound.

They’re dressed in their finest, from head to their foot,
Their souls a bit tarnished, but they’ll stay put,
Because a bundle of pork they want to give back,
To corporate patrons who they need like more smack!

Their eyes, how they twinkle! Their laughter how merry!
They don’t give a damn if the people are wary!
Their slick little game all tied up with a bow,
They’ll continue to win because they get the dough.

When they’re out on the stump they lie through their teeth,
And hope we won’t know, they think we’re beneath,
Even as they act like the cunning Machiavelli,
We shake, and they laugh like a bowlful of jelly!

They’re clubby and smug, all full of them self,
They laugh, but we know it’s each man for himself!
They wink but don’t blink as they turn words on their head,
And continue to think they have nothing to dread.

They speak not a true word to voters, but work
For their corporate funders with whom they do smirk.
And lifting their finger aside of their nose,
They hope they will always smell like a rose!

They spring to their districts, to their states give a whistle,
And continue to fund wars like an unguided missile.
But, the day will soon come when the voters do fight,
And tell them “Get lost! Get out of our sight!”

UNITY-PROGRESS COMMENT
Yes, brilliant and perfectly timed five days before the holiday.

All they had to do to not screw things up was to pass the obvious regulations that should have been in effect already for decades. But no, they had to badly screw things up by restricting liberties, by rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, and by in general pretending that you can resurrect and preserve the failed US health care system by applying carrots (subsidies) and sticks (restrictions on freedom) to try to force people to prop it up.

Governments should never expect people to be able to prop up a largely failed system. People are not responsible for whether a system is failed or not; a system is either a failure or it is not, and trying to force people to do things they don't want to do is not a substitute for redesigning a failed system.

=======================
The above was in response to this article

Democrats' new Health Insurance Laws: Big Trouble and big Expense for Small Gain

The “30 million are going to get health insurance” claim that is being bandied about by the Democrats is very, very misleading. It sounds kind of impressive when looking at the current total number of uninsured, which is roughly 50 million. But it is very unimpressive when you look about six years into the future, which is when the 30 million increase is supposed to take place. The big problem for the Democrats is that they are chasing a swiftly moving target when they try to reduce the total number of uninsured in the inefficient and expensive way they are trying to do it.

With no legislation at all and given the nightmarish economic conditions, we can, based on a few known facts and trends, make a rough but useful baseline estimate of how many uninsured there would be if nothing changed:

2009 50 million / 35 million not counting illegal aliens
2010 54 million / 39 million not counting illegal aliens
2011 57 million / 41 million not counting illegal aliens
2012 60 million / 44 million not counting illegal aliens
2013 63 million / 47 million not counting illegal aliens
2014 66 million / 50 million not counting illegal aliens
2015 69 million / 52 million not counting illegal aliens

NUMBER OF UNINSURED BY YEAR PROJECTIONS AND ANALYSIS
As of 2015, there would probably be about 70 million residents with no health insurance if nothing changed. Of this number, first subtract 15 million for newly Medicaid eligible, yielding about 55 million. Second, subtract another 17 million as a rough but reasonably good estimate of the number of illegal aliens there will be as of 2015. Illegal aliens are left out of the new requirement to buy grossly overpriced and dysfunctional health insurance, which may ironically give them an advantage in economic life over US citizens. So at the moment we are down to about 38 million uninsured legal residents as of 2015.

Now let's break down the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) estimate of the 30 million increase in the number owning insurance policies by 2015 or 2016, which is composed of the 15 million new Medicaid enrollees and 15 million with higher than poverty incomes who buy insurance instead of paying the penalty.

Incidentally, Medicaid is considered an insurance policy by the CBO and the Democrats when they discuss their new laws, but it is clearly not really an insurance policy but rather a Government health care program for destitute people.

And as another “incidentally”, as a very rough estimate, about 30% of the 15 million buying insurance will get partial subsidies and the other 70% with the higher incomes not eligible for Medicaid will buy policies with no subsidy assistance from the Government.

Judging from polling and other evidence, I expect CBO’s 15 million estimate is a little high. I would predict that the number who will buy policies will be more like 13 million than 15 million. But give CBO a lot of credit, because their estimate is in fact conservative (just not as conservative as my estimate). CBO's estimate is close to what will actually happen.

However, for the record, the unexpected confluence between the CBO estimate and the Unity-Progress estimate is probably due to differing assumptions about the economy and the resulting different baseline number of insured (the number of uninsured there would be with no change in the law) instead of differing compliance estimates. CBO very likely has substantially lower baseline uninsured numbers and substantially higher compliance rate estimations than I do.

Using my baseline uninsured number, the estimate from CBO of the percentage of those who are supposed to buy health insurance who will actually buy it is about 40%. But CBO is probably underestimating the baseline number who would lose insurance between 2009 and 2015 because they are probably overestimating the strength of recovery in the real economy and especially in the job market. CBO's true compliance estimate (percentage that buy insurance out of the total who are supposed to) is probably at least 45% and may be close to 50%. My compliance estimate is 13.5/38 = 35.5%.

In any event, the CBO and the Unity-Progress estimates of the actual number of newly purchased insurance policies are very close, and I will use theirs in a sign of respect for the quality work they are known for.

Recall that after we subtracted out the Medicaid enrollees and the illegal aliens we were left with an estimated 38 million uninsured in 2015. From this we subtract the 15 million who will buy insurance due to the mandate. So we finally have a pretty good estimate of how many uninsured legal residents there will still be in 2015: 23 million. So obviously, there will still be a huge number of peoplw with no health insurance.

Now if you add back the illegal aliens, the estimate of the total number of uninsured in the country for 2015 is 40 million, which indeed is 30 million less than the baseline.

So the proponents of the law may not be materially lying when they say that 30 million more will be insured as of 2015; but they are not telling you that the underlying problem will grow substantially between 2009 and 2015, so that the actual number who are still not insured in 2015 after the new laws are imposed will be only about 12 million fewer than it is in 2009! Yes, this monstrous legislation, the Constitutional challenges, all the new bureaucracy, people becoming homeless after they buy health insurance and then lose their jobs, etc. etc. all of the trouble, dislocation and misery produces just a 12 million reduction in the number of uninsured in a country of about 315 million people when you compare 2009 and 2015!.

But wait, it gets even worse. The number of uninsured will still be going up even after this law is in effect, because the population will be increasing and also because, as everyone knows, there is very little real health cost control in this law, so when deductibles, co-pays, uncovered items, and the cost of medications go up by more than overall inflation as they inevitably will, and when most likely inflation adjusted subsidies go down, and when the economy keeps throwing skilled employees into unemployment, and when small businesses keep having to discontinue offering health insurance as a benefit, the number and the percentage for who can not or will not buy the health insurance will be going up.

So that 12 million advantage will shrink and, by roughly 2025 at the latest, there will be just as many uninsured as there were in 2009.

So the bottom line is that the new monstrous law “buys” at the most 16 years of no increase in the total number of uninsured. Then after roughly 2025, the number of uninsured residents will be greater than the number in 2009.

NUMBER OF UNINSURED LEGAL CITIZENS BY YEAR
We can do the same estimates but this time let’s treat the illegal aliens as if they don’t exist:

2009 Number of legal citizens uninsured: 35 million
2015 Number of legal citizens uninsured: 22 million (52 baseline minus 15 million Medicaid minus 15 million who buy private insurance)

Assuming the 22 million in 2015 increases at 5% a year, which would be roughly half the rate of increase of 2007-2009, we have:

2020: Number of legal citizens uninsured: 28.3 million
2025: Number of legal citizens uninsured: 36.2 million

With these assumptions, the number of legal citizens uninsured will reach the 2009 number by 2025, so in effect the new law will have “bought” 16 years of no increase in the number.

I hope you can not see that overall, this new law not only does not solve the problem, but does not really come close to doing so. This new law is not even remotely a true national health program, or even merely a national health insurance policy. A good analogy is that this is like a football team that can not make a first down has decided to punt the ball downfield.

A FEW OBSERVATIONS ABOUT THOSE WHO WILL NOT COMPLY
You know the old saying: you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink? With 2/3 of the population overall against the mandate, this means that it is likely that at least 85% of the non-insured are against the mandate. The Republicans in particular are very fiercely against this and there will be resistance in bulk from them. Many of these people will find a way to not comply.

Moreover, consider also that there will be a reverse effect. There will apparently be at least close to two million people in total who indefinitely drop, or whose employers indefinitely drop, health insurance after this passes, some because their premiums will go up when they are forced to buy a plan in compliance, some for ideological reasons, and some due to the one-two punch of the new taxes and the depressed economy. These people and businesses will either gladly pay the penalty or in some cases will try to dodge even the penalty.

The above was in response to this articleat Common Dreams.

New Health Insurance Laws Have Both Fascist and Feudal Characteristics

People who do not want and/or can not afford health insurance but who comply will be legally slaves to health insurance executives or to the penalty division of the IRS, their choice. (At least you get a choice as to who you are a slave to, laugh out loud.)

This is a very fascist oriented bill in many respects. It is also distinctly feudal, with the health insurance executives similar to powerful feudal lords and the people forced to pay them the serfs and the weaker feudal lords who “need protection”.

The above was in response to this article.

Bernie Sanders Abandons Public Option and True Affordability for Small Scale Side Programs

Sanders is either not a progressive, on the take big time, or a complete wuss. I doubt he would "make the cut" to make it into a genuine non-right wing party.

Sanders might be thinking that improvements will be made. But this bill is far more likely to be repealed than improved in the future. How are you going to improve something with new provisions that are even more objectionable to the Republicans than the ones they already unanimously refused to support, keeping in mind that the number of Republicans in both the Senate and the House is going up about a year from now? The Republicans will be out to repeal much of it, not improve it, and I actually can't blame them.

This is dead on arrival and guaranteed to fail or, to be more precise, to do more harm than good. All of "the good stuff" directly regulating the insurance companies should have been law already, for years and years and years. Obviously, these things could have been passed by themselves and then there would be no big problem going forward as there is now.

The above was based on this article at Common Dreams.

Thom Hartmann and other True Progressives Catch up to Common Dreams

The following was in response to this article.

Well we are ahead of you here at Common Dreams, Mr. Hartmann, because a lot of us here have for weeks and in some cases for months saying Obama will probably (or most likely) lose in 2012. And we have been virtually unanimous in saying this law is an abomination for months. Nice to see everyone catching up to Common Dreams, it’s better late than never.

With the advent of this unprecedentedly bad law, the progressives can't play games and hide behind Obama’s slick pimping anymore. Either they create a new party that is marketable (can't use "Socialist" or "Green" or “progressive” trashed by right wing propaganda words like that in the name of it) or they just remain corporate serfs. It’s either new party or fascism with medieval tendencies, one or the other.

And yes, even though I don't know the details, I am well aware that anti-democratic and unconstitutional state laws are designed to prevent third parties from getting on the ballot. But if you have a new organization that almost overnight has ten million or more followers, which you could achieve, those petty state laws would become irrelevant to a large degree, either because the new party could jump over all the hurdles in those anti-democratic laws, or because the new party would have enough legal clout to get those laws declared unconstitutional and tossed out.

So as far as I am concerned, there are no excuses for anyone in this fiasco including progressives. Progressives can never ever vote Democratic again (assuming they are not living under a bridge and unable to vote thanks to Obama) and they need to start a new party, such as for example New Democrat Party (US). Hint: start it before you are living under the bridge.

Could Sarah Palin Defeat Barack Obama in 2012? Yes She Could!

If the Republicans are lucky (can't use the word smart there) they will go with Romney or Pawlenty. However, even if Sarah Palin is nominated, Obama might lose to her due to the health deform and Afghanistan and no jobs and bankster welfare and (I don't have time to type all 565 things Obama has screwed up).

Laugh out loud at the plausible idea of Obama losing to Palin. You have to be a real loser and/or a far right wacko yourself to have even a chance of losing to Palin.

White House Spokesman Gibbs Headlines for C-Span (Comedy-Span)

The following was from this article at Common Dreams.

"White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters Tuesday. 'On balance, does this legislation make a big difference in the lives of everyday working men and women? It's not even a close call on that."

Is Gibbs being humorously ironic, is he just shooting the bull, or does he actually believe working men and women will gain from this? Whichever of the three it is, laugh out loud. It seems that Gibbs is a budding stand-up comedian.

Howard Dean: Health Reform has Failed

Keith Olbermann: Health Reform has Failed

Thom Hartmann: Health Reform has Failed

The Big Lie: That it's all Your Fault

In a far right society laws are based on the premise that individuals are responsible for things, including things that have “gone wrong”. Obviously, the health insurance system in the US has gone wrong. The new health insurance laws and regulations contain the premise that the individual is responsible for the current mess.

Under right wing doctrine, the fact that the US health system has collapsed; that tens of millions have no insurance; that there have been more than a million preventable deaths in the last few decades while no one was looking or caring, why, all of that is YOUR fault. You sitting there reading this: all of this failure and suffering and death is your fault, at least in the twisted minds of fascists and right wingers.

And it’s your fault if you can’t get a job even if there are no jobs. And it’s your fault and you deserve your low credit score regardless of whether you can get credit or money with which to pay bills or not. It’s your fault if you can not afford health insurance. Officially, everything is your fault in the US, but of course, in the reality zone, none of it is your fault.

But the far right is in full control in the US, and they are out now to force you to start correcting your health insurance failures. They are going to “force” you to buy health insurance via the mandate. (Isn’t “mandate,” a wonderful world, fellow fascists and right wingers? Glorious word, that one.)

Actually, not everyone is being forced to become a slave of the health insurance executives and incompetent employees. The rich and the dirt poor are sort of off the hook. The rich are almost always off the hook in right wing societies, so that is no surprise. The US economy, even from the vantage point of the rich, has partially collapsed, and the mandate is the way that the rich can feed off the decaying corpses of the middle class, which of course is collapsing right along with the economy.

Whereas, in the reputable countries, the premise underlying health laws is, as even just mere common sense informs you, but as the highest quality economics research also informs you, that there are some things that only the government can be responsible for if success is the objective. Unless you want to play pretend, fascist games, which the Europeans outgrew during and after the unpleasantries in the 1940’s.

While components of the US system that the rich need to stay rich have been rescued and artificially propped up, (such as the huge banks and the stock markets) numerous components of the system needed for the non-rich to function have collapsed. The job markets, the credit markets, the health insurance market, these have all collapsed insofar as they do not work for the common man anymore. As just one notable example, there has been no increase in jobs in the States for more than 10 years.

At the root of all right wing societies is this “Big Lie” that the individual is responsible for everything bad. At the risk of stating the obvious, the right is completely wrong with their premise. Unless perhaps if you are born rich, you can not, as the right wing system presupposes, be responsible for this, that, and the other thing. You can not completely control your career, your employment, your credit score, whether or not you have health care, and so on and so forth. True, you can and have to influence those things to one extent or another, but to say that a non-rich individual can really, dependably control those things over the years is absurd and is a right wing lie.

What about right wing laws, in particular, the one regarding health insurance under discussion in 2009? You can not safely assume that you should maintain your status as a slave of the system by being herded by every new law and regulation that comes out because “it will all work out for the best.” Untold millions have died young under that assumption.

There are going to be millions of people who are better off steering clear of far right health insurance laws. There are going to be millions who are better off paying the penalty rather than buying grossly overpriced and undependable private health insurance. There are going to be some people who should work less, so that they are taken off the mandate hook, so that they come out economically ahead overall. There are going to be small business owners who are better off discontinuing offering health insurance to their employees.

There are going to be who knows how many people better off relying on savings and direct cash payments to progressive clinics and physicians for their health care. There will be millions who would be better off if they shed 50 pounds and/or exercise more, while forgetting about the entire health care mess in the States until they are 65, at which time they can get Medicare.

The point is, you have to understand that only fools assume that US laws are all designed to be favorable to everyone. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In right wing societies, laws are usually designed to penalize and punish individuals who are deemed responsible for this or that failure of society. This new law is no exception. In fact, it is an unprecedented example of bad law derived from false premises.

By contrast, in modern, non-right wing societies, such as you have in western or northern European countries, most if not all laws are in fact designed to be as favorable and beneficial as possible for almost everyone. Those societies have their governments take responsibility for things in accordance with what is optimal for society as a whole. Many, I want to say, most Europeans don’t play the blame game or the gotcha game, whereas in the States these are the only games in town.

So in those countries, it is far more often the case that you can safely do what new legislation asks you to do, without ever considering whether you should make big changes in your life in order to avoid this or that provision. Not so in the States. In the States, the one thing you are responsible for is to make sure that you don’t get destroyed by right wing laws and contracts which are trying to force you to be responsible for the failures of society.

===================================
The above was in response to this article at Common Dreams.

Obama Continues Republican Policies and the Objections to them are Fewer due to his Persona

GUEST COMMENT
We are now officially the world's chief imperialist country without a bit of difference between the traditional "left" and "right" parties on that issue. We have unity on the need to invade anywhere and everywhere and for any or no good reason. It is horrible.

The press is complicit as they were in the Vietnam war. They make things up and uncritically publish any inane statement from an official.

Case in point, the statement "we have to stay in order to prevent India and Pakistan from going to war with each other." This statement should have been accompanied by some data about sales of arms and war planes to Pakistan during the last 3 years and Secretary of State Clinton's recent trip to India to sell war planes.

We have to sell war materials both countries and then go to other nearby countries with our soldiers and war materials to keep these other countries from using the weapons we sold. Convoluted enough for you? In collaboration with the right wing oligarchs in India and Pakistan, we have to sabotage any moves toward detente.

It's a win-win-win for the armaments industry and nobody else. The New York Times is reprising its disgusting performance during the Vietnam War. The Republicans have now been fully joined by the Democratic Party and the Democratic President, who have been effective in pulling in many of those who were doubters during the Bush years. Almost all elected officials and Party machineries are now backing criminal mass murder.

I hope that nobody here is still harboring the illusion that Obama has good intentions. It is up to us to resist.

UNITY-PROGRESS RESPONSE

The Republicans have now been fully joined by the Democratic Party and the Democratic President, who have been effective in pulling in many of those who were doubters during the Bush years.

Just when the public became seriously disgusted with far right Republican policies and began to rebel a little, for example, by not signing up for military service in adequate numbers, along came Barak Obama to continue those same policies but also to calm the public down, to regain cooperation from the public, and to fool the public into thinking those policies are not so bad.

We wouldn't want any real controversy, dissent, or public discussion of policy, would we? No, we can't have that, so the Republicans who were getting even dumbed down Americans upset had to go on hiatus.

But the Republicans will in a few short years be back in control since, for one thing, the Democrats are showing themselves to be dangerously incompetent in the eyes of "middle of the road voters". Obama's likely 2012 concession speech is a likely point in time for their return.

The above was in response to this article by Glenn Greenwald.

The Marathon Dog and Pony Show

Well for those who know that single payer is literally the only good solution, this year's marathon dog and pony show is sort of entertaining. On the other hand, at the same time, it's like living within a horror movie that won't come to an end and where you don't know whether you are going to survive. So it's a strange experience with good and bad aspects.

Seriously though, it is definitely not a coincidence that the one country that has shut out real progressives from participating in the political process and the one country in which middle and lower income workers have no real representation is also the one country that has a very bad health system and is now also the one country that not only can not pass a good health bill, but can hardly pass any new health laws at all, even bad ones.

I mean, it goes from bad to worse to pathetic to where we need a new word to describe how bad things are in "The States".

The above was in response to this news article.

Valuable Practical Politics Instruction

I freely admit that I am not an experienced or skilled political organizer. I'm an economist first and foremost and as far as politics goes, I'm good at theory but don't know much about real world political activities. The writer of this guest comment clearly does know quite a bit about real world political activities:

GUEST COMMENT
Time has come today for a national progressive leadership summit. And I don’t mean one open to Democrats or their dedicated support groups. Once progressives are sufficiently organized, then they can start to reach out to alienated Democrats and their support groups who have realized that the DLC has utterly betrayed and abandoned them. This summit should accomplish at least seven primary objectives:

(1) To select a name for a new national umbrella Party that unites all authentic progressives. I suggest something whose acronym is either difficult to make fun of or too cute to successfully make fun of like Progressive Unity Party (PUP)—something that avoids “PP” in the acronym. I think we need a new umbrella Party that does not carry with it the baggage of older progressive party feuds, such as the notorious arguments between hill and yon over whether Nader cost the Dems the 2000 elections, and within the Green Party over whether or not Ralph Nader is a “real” Green. A truly unified progressive movement in America must eventually be able to reach out to alienated former Democrats and many of them revile the Green Party because they never heard about the falsified felon voter list in Florida in ’02 or the NAACP vs. Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris lawsuit.

(2) To compile a list of potential Party platform planks to refer to the members of the various organizations for them to vote on the top five planks that they feel are the most important for the country to achieve (said list to be voted on nationally at a second national leadership summit to select five national Party platform planks).

(3) To delegate a committee to study and prepare media strategy for the new Party. The central problem confronting progressives besides lack of unity is lack of access to mass media to get out a progressive message. One strategy to achieve large media market penetration is to help organize non-profit progressive organizations across the country to obtain low power FM radio stations. If enough of these stations blanket a medium or large-sized city with contiguous broadcast radii, then they can (periodically) simultaneously focus on key progressive issues in a timely manner and mirror the market penetration of corporate “mainstream” media in those areas. The rest of the time they can be as diversely progressive in their formats and station fundraising as they want to be. This year there is a chance that access to low power FM will finally be opened up. Progressives should jump on this opportunity because if they don’t, then the religious or far-Right will. The nature of the media message of the new Party should be simultaneously political and educational. This requires broadcasters and candidates who can relate difficult or complex subjects in ways average Americans can either relate to in their own lives or readily grasp in a way that would make sense to an average twelve year old.

(4) To delegate a committee responsible for fundraising. I’m not the first to recognize that with the current level of wealth concentration and income disparity it’s time for wealthy progressives to put their money where their mouths are if they want to achieve real reform on a timeframe that isn’t frozen in corporatist stasis. The fundraising committee should have its best people eventually meet with progressive-leaning affluent liberals to gauge whether or not they are sufficiently disgusted with the DLC status quo to fight the good fight with an energized, united, more focused and authentic national progressive Party. But the new Party has to be built to a sufficient size for that appeal to work. Meanwhile, it will have to rely on membership contributions and appeals to known affluent progressives who do not support the DLC establishment. The committee should solicit lists of people who fit this criterion from the membership. The more progressives we unite, the broader our appeal will be.

(5) To lay out a process for State and local Party leaders to begin selecting and grooming candidates for office at all levels of government.

(6) To create a committee responsible for internal Party issue education and the online dissemination of Party media material for members to both learn from themselves and distribute to others interested in learning about contemporary issues from a progressive perspective. I envision that this committee would rely on many volunteer researchers from within the Party’s membership as well as outside reference sources. I think the nature of this material should be variable-- some of it purely informational and some of it entertaining as well as informative, including music, plays, games, printable posters and other creative media.

(7) To create a voluntary legal staff to help the Party and its membership negotiate the various legal challenges that will come our way. This committee will be responsible for soliciting a national protest “bailout and fine” fund for members to use when they are arrested and fined for public protests on behalf of progressive causes. With increasingly dangerous and illegal police technologies, crooked cops and crooked mayors routinely abusing citizens merely for daring to participate in public protests these days I feel that such a fund is vital.

It would be best to organize and help create a nation-wide network of progressive low power FM stations BEFORE we start voting on Party planks or selecting candidates because it would be much easier with our own media already in place to support us when we start running candidates.

In some States the temptation would be to run as a Democrat or Republican to be able to run in the Democratic or Republican primary. I would rather candidates for the new Party avoid that by conducting numerous educational/political town-hall meetings and other public speaking and radio interview events letting people know they are running in the general election as Third Party and/or write-in candidates. In other words, they would have to "campaign" unofficially in the primaries and officially in the general elections. But to get on the ballots in many States there would have to be large scale petition drives and large numbers on the petitions. This depends on the persuasiveness of our speakers & the size, discipline and persuasiveness of our petition drive volunteers. The big problem will be fundraising as I previously detailed.

We will not have the numbers to get on the ballot in some States, yet.

I personally feel that for informed progressives, progressive-leaning liberals increasingly alienated from the Democratic Party, and the poor & minorities who are part of the 80 million eligible voters who do not vote--to whom we want to make our strongest appeal--the name "Democratic Party" is more off-putting than "Progressive" and we need to reclaim and reassert the proud history of early 20th century progressivism as part of our educational rhetoric. We should never duplicate the Democratic Party failure to proudly stand up for and defend our progressive policies and the progressive principles upon which they are based. Democrats have been in constant ideological retreat for 30 years because of this spinelessness--even when the voters temporarily thrust them back into office out of periodic disgust with the Republicans.

UNITY-PROGRESS RESPONSE
Great plan, I really like your plan. If all of this happened it would be possible to get on most of the state ballots, wouldn't it? Whereas you probably wouldn't get on many ballots without such a big preparation.

Researching how new parties get on the ballot is on my mile long to do list; I'll get to it within a month.

Please call the new party the "New Democratic Party". This name is marketable, not one issue (like Greens) not subject to negative propaganda, and has a familiar, American feel to it. If the name was struck down in courts as too close to the old Democratic Party, you could call it "American Democratic Party" as a plan B. Or "New American Party". You can't put "socialist" or even "progressive" in the name, because those words are trashed in America and would never succeed.

The above was in response to this article.

War is Peace and Barack Obama is George Orwell's Second Coming

The Nobel Prize has been cheapened to the point that I for one will never look at it again in the same way. Every once in a while Europeans, with their minds lost completely in a fictional la la land, will do something very loopy and goofy and this is a textbook example of that. It's incidents such as this that give a little bit of support for the American conservative notion that left of center Europeans are not well grounded in the real world. But actually, regardless of these ocassional loopy incidents, the European left has figured out the real world very, very well.

And when you think about it, the real winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize is George Orwell, because Obama is simply following the script laid out for him by Mr. Orwell. Seriously, Orwell's publisher needs to add some of Obama's speeches on to the back of Orwell's books as appendices.

As for the Obama speeches: tune them out! Seriously, I just saw the headline, scrolled past the speech, and read the comments. The best advice is to stop reading or listening to this very disturbing combination of Orwell and Slick Willy 2: Ultra Slick Pimpin, and wait for the 2012 Obama concession speech. That is the speech that will be the one to listen to while congratulating yourself for knowing Obama was going to lose and for knowing that the difference between Obama and Romney or Pawlenty is so small that it isn't worth worrying about.

The above was in response to this article.

Poetry Corner: "The Loot Purloined"

GUEST COMMENT
An extrapolation of Obama's logic, in the form of a poem:

Let us scorch the earth,
that the grain may grow.

Let us wreck the homes,
that we may build them anew,
and profit mightily.

Let us destroy the past,
that our time may become all time.

Let us rape the girls,
that their milk may feed
the spawn of our seed.

Let kill the fathers,
let us kill the sons,
that peace may reign
in the land of the dead.

UNITY-PROGRESS RESPONSE
"The Loot Purloined"

Let us give all the gold
To the bankers and the rich
Then form barricades on the road
From the unemployed fifth

Let the loot thus purloined
Be the value enjoyed
So that both rich and poor shall be idle
And all dissent shall be only libel

The above exchange of poems was in response to this article.

Few new Jobs Means Obama Loses in 2012

In the real world electoral trenches Obama is defeated in 2012 due to the lack of jobs, as long as the Republicans don't dominate a total nut case like Palin or a southern Redneck like Huckabee. Ohio, North Carolina, Florida, Indiana, Virginia etc. were all states that elected Obama for one reason: to create jobs. None of these states will vote for Obama in 2012 if there are no new jobs to speak of, as long as the Republicans nominate someone who sounds sensible to desperate job-seekers, like Pawlenty from Minnesota or Romney from Massachusetts, as seems likely. Obama is toast as long as the Republicans don't nominate a complete looney bird.

And I am sorry, but regardless of how much money Obama rakes in after he loses in 2012, he still goes down in history as a one-term President, which is politically a failure regardless of anything else.

Jimmy Carter lost his re-election for basic economics reasons also; for him it was at least as much due to inflation as it was due to unemployment.

Unlike Carter who was swept away by forces beyond his control, with Obama being defeated in 2012 serves him right, because he alone decided that the banksters and the rich people in general were far more important than the tens of millions needing decent incomes from jobs.

It was disturbing when Obama started blaming black poverty on black people not able to maintain families and so forth. It became devastating when Obama started blaming white poverty on white people deciding they need a job because they can't make their own nicely profitable business out of thin air. It seems that in Obama's twisted, right-wing mind, you don't absolutely have to have a job, because you should be able to automatically generate enough income from your own business for you and your family to live on. It's your fault and your problem if you can't.

But as anyone knows who knows anything about business, and/or anything about the current state of the economy, Obama's real views (which he dares not spell out in full in public) are totally unrealistic and are utter garbage. So good riddance to Obama in advance; I'm tuning him out until his 2012 concession speech.

I don't have a clue why the author was taken in by the theatrics of the 1-day mini "summit"; why he states that Obama is open to real jobs programs. There were several reports coming from "well-placed Obama insiders" last week indicating that in January Obama plans to announce deficit reduction will, beginning in 2010, be far more important than any jobs programs. In Obama World, there are going to be a lot of dead people instead of employed people. Obama is literally killing off some of his own would-be voters.

As for progressives, if they don't realize they need to unite behind a new party now, I suppose they never will, so the US will be permanently a very right wing country. As with all permanent right wing countries of history, this means nothing but misery, death and destruction for increasing millions.

The above was in response to this article.

Many Democrats and Many "Liberals" are Foolish Wimps on the Take

It’s a dilemma because as Hedges says most "liberals" are foolish wimps who vote Democratic and regret it later. They are too smug, lazy, on the take, or just plain dumb to support a new party that could win votes, the way they did in Canada during the depression and during World War 2 when the New Democratic Party was formed. (This is the party that brought economical health care to Canada. Were it not for the New Democratic Party, the US might not be the only important country without health care, as Canada might be still without it too.)

Now is obviously the time (it's probably the last chance, actually, have you checked the true poverty, homelessness, and unemployment numbers lately?) for liberals to abandon the Democrats and start a new party, one that is not thought of as one issue like the Greens by the way. But as we know the liberals are foolish wimps, who in a hard world deserve every bad thing that happens to them while they live in a relentlessly right wing society.

By contrast, anyone who has moved on past all of that stuff in the slow lane: the Democrats, the foolish liberals, and everything associated with them, we deserve awards, medals, real freedom, and prosperity. But obviously, we are not likely to get those things regardless of what we do in a failed society with a collapsed ecnonomy.

So it is mandatory, we need that New Democratic Party (or the equivalent) as Canadians, who are neither foolish nor wimpy, demonstrated many decades ago.

The above was in response to this article.

Wait for the 2012 Concession Speech and Tune out the Others

There is no need to listen to speeches by Bush III (Revenge of George, starring Barack Obama) anymore unless you want to be depressed. Just wait for his 2012 concession speech and listen to that one.

What is the difference between Obama and Romney or Pawlenty? Almost nothing in terms of policy and the real situation in the country. But at least with Romney or Pawlenty, many will have their guard up against being totally played by right wing contracts and policies. Whereas with Obama, you have all of these pathetic fooled people who think, for example, that the health deform will be a net plus.

For every internet article on why the Afghanistan policy or the health deform will fail, there are what, half a million? people who think these proposals are "necessary" and "not so bad". You know, its really disturbing to live in a country loaded with people so easily fooled by the likes of Obama.

The above was in response to this article. about how Obama's Afghanistan policy is foolish posturing that is doomed to failure.

The Big Three: Help Wanted There Only

I have been waiting for a great summary like this, a clear and complete explanation of what real reform would have entailed from the health industry perspective, from someone whose career is in that industry, from the horses mouth as it were.

I hate to be blunt, but as this writer describes, much of the health care industry has become just like more pigs at the public and the private trough.

The situation in the health industry is very similar to that of two other bloated industries: the military industry and the financial industry. The stark fact is that the health, the military, and the financial industries (Wall Street / the huge banks) are essentially the only three large scale industries left in the United States not subject to the devastating impact of severe recession and depression forces. Most and probably all other large industries are left to implode and rot from more or less permanent severe recession and depression. While employment in the "Big Three" will stay roughly the same or even go up a little, employment in the far larger number of large, depression-impacted industries has gone down, will continue to go down, and will not be coming back under the kind of total right wing control of the economy that you have in the US.

Notice that it is, ironically given all the free market propaganda, taxpayer money and the Government that propels those Big Three industries and protects them from the ravages of economic depression. It is not market forces. There is a massive, unprecedented distortion and perversion of the market involved in the favoritism shown toward the Big Three. Specifically, tax payers and creditors such as China, Japan, and Saudi Arabia are paying or investing through the teeth to engineer a vast increase in the amount of goods and services that are produced and sold in the US by those three particular large industries. The health deform is to legally force some people who have been trying to avoid this perversion and distortion to join in it.

But this is the essence of what the health care deform is really, secretly all about. It allows the health care industry to join the other two as part of the Big Three that will be protected by the Government (and by extension by the people who fund that Government) from the depression that is indefinitely hitting and gradually imploding most other industries. Or to use the metaphor, it is these three industries that are getting on the lifeboats of the Titanic, so that they can then in effect be rescued by another ship. Meanwhile, everybody else gets no lifeboat, but merely the false comfort of rearranged deck chairs and a macabre entertainment while the ship goes down.

Oh, but you were not entertained by the Tiger Woods story nor by the story about the couple that attended Obama’s shindig uninvited? Too bad, you were supposed to be entertained, so that your mind could be taken off the fact that you are being economically abandoned and drowned by your government.

Since 1980 if not longer the US frequently goes from bad to worse under the cover of “reforms” and “commissions”. "Reforming" something is merely an excuse for the pigs to make sure that more and more feed comes into the trough for more gorging. What an irony, for example, that Medicare could be the keystone of a valid and successful reform, but in actual fact the crazed Democrats are CUTTING certain aspects of Medicare and not increasing eligibility for it at all.

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The above was in response to this article by Phillip Caper at Common Dreams.

Poetic Justice

Well, at least there is the poetic justice that a country that repeatedly invades third world countries eventually turns into one. (I'm a fan of poetic justice.)

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The above very brief commentary was in response to this report at Common Dreams.

Sometimes one phrase sums things up very nicely. And sometimes, even a writer who tends to use more words than most other writers to try to make sure he is understood takes a break!

Voting Republican, Though Unlikely, is by no Means out of the Question

Unity-Progress responded when someone made this disturbing comment to this article:

CV November 30th, 2009 11:00 am
Excuse me DF, but this is good insight as to how things like this work. To simply write it off as theatre leaves you without a clear understanding of the system and it's outcomes.

What you have is 56-57 Senators (with a D after their names) trying to pass a healthcare reform that, for the first time, extends National Health to the General Public, not just Seniors or the Poor.

And you have a minority, less than 40 Senators that want to prevent HCR because it would mean political success to their nemesis. Then there are a few Senators that are using their pivotal position for their own powergame.
Reid has to somehow get 60 votes and still deliver for the majority of Americans.
This is how controversial legislation goes. "Everybody gets something, nobody gets everything, nobody gets nothing".

And nobody gets exactly what they want.

Nothing is set in stone, either. Once this foot-in-the-door bill is installed, deficiencies will show up (as if we couldn't see them already). I'd be amazed if there aren't at least two sets of restructuring of the PO and the Exchanges within 15 years. But those adjustments can't happen if there's no Public element to restructure. And it certainly won't happen if the Republicans regain control.
If this goes down to defeat, it'll be another ten to fifteen years before it comes back around, meanwhile, the Insurance Companies will continue on the trajectory they are on, skyrocketing costs, punitive rules and massive profits.

It's really too bad that Progressives didn't get behind this and put pressure on their CongressCritters, particularly in states where they are saddled with Republicans. The Progressive Voice has been split by this purity fight over an unworkable, possibly unconstitutional bill that was never going anywhere, but unfortunately was adopted by the Liberal Elite as a litmus test of your Progressive cred.

Perfect is not going to make an appearance. Good is slipping away. While the Right and the Corpos speak with one clear, powerful voice to prevent any kind of Public Healthcare plan, the Left ranges from tepid support to outright hostility with plenty of onside sniping.

This same pattern is showing up in the AntiWar issue and so many others. Is it any wonder that the Administration doesn't respond to "the Left"? Which Left should he listen to? The Nadirites that have been against him from before the election? The Libertarians that aren't Liberal at all but they've hoodwinked a lot of Progressives to follow them? The Moderate Left?

Progressives can only influence legislation if they stay engaged. Making a stand for a bill that is not under discussion is an abdication, it's walking away from the table.

And if you are not at the table, you are on the menu.

UNITY-PROGRESS RESPONSE
Well, as for "walking away from the table," I'll strongly consider voting Republican for the first time in my life if:

--This health bill abomination is passed just so that the Democrats can pick up the votes of dumb people. No reasonable health care economist says these laws and taxes will reduce costs and prices by more than a trivial amount, so the purpose of the reform has NOT even slightly been met.

--The Republicans promise to dismantle at least the worst parts of the law AND it is clear to me that they will in fact dismantle.

--There continues to be no non-right wing party to vote for that has unified the non-right and that has basic political marketing attributes.

If all those three conditions apply, I'll be a left winger voting for the Republicans laugh out loud. But I'll be "at the table". That's good, right CV?

Oh, and I hate to break this to you, but the most likely final outcome is that there isn't going to be any public option at all but the bill is going to pass. So your precious "public option," which is already a joke, is going to be non-existant, but you will be a slave to the health insurance executives.

PS. No one should want to be at the table when nutritionally worthless garbage is being served.

With Heavy Military and Congressional Support for Afghanistan, you can not Blame only Obama for that Situation

There are apparently a grand total of two large industries that are still growing in the US: military and health. Congress, which keep in mind in theory still has the real decision over deploying forces, has and is continuing to demonstrate that they are whores for both of those remaining industries.

Obama has most of the generals telling him to send in more troops, and he has the Congress APPROVING the war. So actually I'm not all that angry at Obama in this particular case, at least compared to other issues. Obama has totally screwed up job creation and health, and he is very much to blame for those failures.

The above was in response to this article at Common Dreams.

Unity-Progress Music: Luciano: Over the Hills

Michael Moore: Laugh out Loud

Games Without Frontiers: how the Worst Possible (Approximately) new Health Law will Pass

I think I see through this game at this point. The ones who would refuse to vote with Rahm Emanuel and Barack Obama unless the public option is removed are serious about refusing their vote. They would support the Republican filibuster if the public option is left in. Therefore, the public option will most likely come completely out.

Meanwhile, the "progressives," who since they remain in a right wing party (the Democrats) are by no means full scale or truly serious progressives, are not truly serious about their vote. Because all they will do is vote against the final passage, when only 51 votes are required for passage. So it won't matter when they do that. Since there are at best half a dozen senators who will vote against the bill unless it has the public option, it will still pass, with roughly 55 votes.

The main point is, unlike the serious, very right wing, no public option senators, the "progressive" senators will not be refusing to vote for the bill when their vote really packs power, when 60 votes are needed, at the filibuster or cloture stage. They will only make a symbolic no vote when their vote can not change the final result, at the final passage vote.

SUMMARY: YOUR PROGRAM GUIDE TO THE NEXT SCENE IN THE DOG AND PONY PLAY
ACT ONE: The right wing senators insist on stripping the public option at the filibuster level (when they have real power.)

ACT TWO: The "progressive" senators insist on the public option, but are really just playing a public relations game, so they don't attempt to enforce the public option via the filibuster. They vote against final passage when there is no public option, but it is a symbolic, meaningless vote, because only 51 votes are needed for passage at that stage.

This is how one of the worst laws in World history will soon be coming to a country near you.

the above was written in response to this news article about Bernie Sanders at Common Dreams.

The Health Reform (or Deform) is Unconstitutional: a 2009 Introduction

That the health insurance law being debated right now is unconstitutional will become obvious in the coming years, when the courts are deluged with suits by damaged parties in search of relief, and when at least several dozen separate, detailed legal arguments are made that the law is unconstitutional, not all of which could possibly be incorrect. I mean, where there is a huge amount of smoke, there is a fire or something very close to a fire, I can assure you.

This was an essay I wrote in less than one hour flat in response to someone asking about the subject on Common Dreams. I almost never write an essay that quickly. The only time I write that quickly is when I am literally 100% convinced that what I am writing is true and correct in every way....

Well it obviously is unconstitutional since it violates the spirit and, indeed, the basic reason for the Constitution and thus why the US broke off from England: there shall be no more arbitrary laws, taxes, and regulations promulgated from on high (by the King or Queen of England back in those days) without true representation. Technically, though, many revolutionaries would have wanted to break off from England even if the English monarchy had provided a democracy and full representation for the colonials.

This law is obviously unconstitutional in a very fundamental sense. It reestablishes exactly what the Revolution and the Constitution banned, which is subjection to taxation, laws, and regulations without due process and without real representation. The executives and employees of the health insurance companies are foisted upon the people as their health care representatives by this law. The obvious problem is, these are private sector, profit seeking individuals. These health insurance people can not be voted out of office. Their objective and their only duty is to make more money for themselves and for their shareholders. They have no true legal duty or even moral responsibility to make sure you get the health care you might need. Whereas by contrast, in other countries, Government officials operating community-based health systems are legally and morally responsible for the health of the tax paying citizens.

The health insurance executives and employees can not even be exposed in the media as incompetent the way government officials can and often are. They can be UNOFFICIALLY exposed as incompetent at lower traffic internet sites, but the health insurance executives and employees can not be officially and authoritatively exposed as incompetent in the largest media outlets which, like it or not, are the ones that are considered to have the most credibility, and also the most power to change things, in the current right wing US system.

Moreover, the representation in the current US system, as most people here know, is a fake representation. For one thing, there is literally no representation other than right of center representation. Workers and non-right-wingers obviously have essentially no real representation in the US system since roughly 1980.

While essentially all reputable countries in the World, from roughly 1920 to 2000, established real representation for non-right-wingers, the US went in the opposite direction after 1980 if not before that, and eliminated representation for them.

Whether someone has or does not have due process is a major constitutional standard that is ubiquitous throughout the Constitution. The lack of due process in the health care deform would be taking away most of the liberty of people to decide how to arrange for their health care needs. People are funneled into this or that mechanism based on their income and on certain status aspects closely related to income, and they literally have no choice in this regard. (They may have trivial choices within a quite narrow range of choice.)

The health care mechanisms themselves are widely disparate, up to and including very different survival rates. If your income is such and such you are forced into this health care with this survival rate. If your income is this other amount, you are forced into this other health care, with this other survival rate, and which is totally different from what the guy with the other income gets.

Then since there are a lot of regressive taxation provisions where either (a) the money goes to a private for profit company instead of a community-based government and (b) the money goes to the government, PAID AS A PENALTY BY PEOPLE WHO WILL BE LEFT BEHIND WITHOUT HEALTH CARE, but is an extremely regressive penalty against those who literally can not comply, and also against some who will refuse to comply with losing their liberty to arrange for their health care without excessive and/or without irrational interference by a toxic combination of government authority and greedy and incompetent health insurance corporations.

So in summary this new law is like a snake pit of unconstitutional aspects and provisions; there must be dozens. Probably most of these numerous unconstitutional aspects and provisions will be litigated for literally decades to come, up to and including at the Supreme Court.

But you must remember about the courts:

(a) Just because something is unconstitutional does not mean that it will be ruled unconstitutional. There are "practical" (right of center) political and economics aspects that can (and will likely often in this case) trump the constitutionality. The bottom line in this regard is that the powers that be have taken the gloves off and they are clearly bent on impoverishing the general population from either lack of jobs, forced expenditure on health insurance, or both.

(b) Even if this or that specific thing is eventually ruled unconstitutional, it may be only a minor provision ruled thus. Or it may be a big provision, but you or I may be dead or almost dead, and bankrupt due to paying the health insurance execs years earlier than when that finally happens. The Supreme Court will not give refunds (or retroactive health status improvements) to every last person who was harmed by an unconstitutional law while it was in effect.

(c) In the relatively rare case where a law is plainly ruled unconstitutional, the government that passed it often makes clever cosmetic changes which do not actually make it constitutional, but then the Supreme Court will nevertheless rule it as now constitutional, as a kind of good faith gesture among and between the very top public sector elites in the country.

Note: this is merely a very basic outline of what is truly a massive subject. Much is left out here, and there are without a doubt unconstitutional aspects that I am not yet aware of (yet). But this very quick expose is good enough for a comment before the damn thing has even officially passed!

The above was written in response to a comment and in response to this article on Common Dreams.

Common Dreams is the one Internet Place you Definitely need to be

I just want to say at the moment that Common Dreams, among the well known, older progressive sites that have comments, seems to be just about the only one that is overwhelmingly against this very bad law. Congrats to everyone who comes here and doesn't bother with the highest traffic progressive sites, such as Huffington Post and Daily Kos, etc. where (I would assume, because to be honest I seldom go to them, laugh out loud) there is a complete and confusing split of opinion, which is what you expect when the principles of non-right wing politics and economics are either not fully understood or not fully accepted.

Common Dreams has NOT been left confused and split, and this is outstanding and notable.

Go to one of those sites and you will end up very and needlessly confused as to whether the law is a good one or a bad one. Laws are either good or bad, based mostly on the total amount of good and bad they do. Yet Huff Post, Daily Kos, BuzzFlash, etc. are going to be hopelessly confused and split as to whether this proposed law is good or bad. They don't fully understand economics and politics, and they like to ignore what the other countries are doing, at least when it's "crunch time", what else can I say?

So in short, screw those other sites. I hate to be blunt, but it is a fact that you are not a true progressive if you support this legislation.

I for one will not only never vote either Republican nor Democrat, but I will never be participating in the other "progressive" sites, which when all was said and done, mostly sold out, to one extent or another, to the right wing Democrats and their need to pass something, anything, so as to (in their view) avoid losing election the next time they are up.

Common Dreamers know that no law is perfect, but we also damn well know a law that is worse than nothing when we see one. And we can detect a law that is a complete sell out when we see one. Moreover, we know that things would be better off, not worse off, if nothing at all were passed instead of the turkey.

Further, we know that you technically don't even need national laws for there to be beneficial actions, such as for example the free, temporary health care clinics that used to be only in 3rd world countries but have popped up in the US lately. Or how about progressive physicians who accept cash payments on a sliding scale? The point is, if the government is incompetent or too right wing, there are many, many other ways to get the jobs that need doing done.

The above was in response to this article at Common Dreams. More precisely, though, this particular Unity-Progress article was in response to a very impressive, overwhelming rejection of the proposed and likely to pass health care reform (deform, actually) a true legislative disaster in the making