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.
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