The Meritocracy has been Turned into "The Unmeritocracy"

GUEST COMMENTARY:

Kay Johnson September 12th, 2009
This is the same United Health Care that pays their CEO, Stephen Hemsley, $102,000 per hour. No doubt, his salary is about to go up!

socialist September 12th, 2009
Wow, his hourly earnings exceed the yearly earnings of 90+% of people lucky enough to have a job. It seems the concept of meritocracy has been inverted. Parasites that destroy are rewarded lavishly, while those that do productive work are treated like indentured servants.

True, in the USA, "meritocracy has been inverted". It has been flipped around so that the USA can now accurately and fairly be called an "unmeritocracy," or a "reverse meritocracy." The more rotten and useless you are, the higher your pay. Laugh out loud, but it's not really funny because it is very real.

For many years now, executives have been rewarded for how aggressively they gut pay, send jobs out of the country, and shrink employment above and beyond the off-shoring.

At the same time, a big majority of US corporate executives will not commonly hire, in the US at least, the most academically gifted, intellectual type people into their front line, "regular operations" positions. They will hire such clearly intelligent people only for the very, very small number of "academic back office type" jobs that might be available. And even before the current jobs depression, there were often no such jobs available.

[All of the above was in response to this article.]

Stop Wasting Time and Money on the Democrats; and how the US Health System is Poised to get even Worse

Don't waste time or money on the Democrats any longer. For 30 years or more they have been useless. They have been clearly and solidly right wing. There are no prospects for this changing. The Democrats being right wing appears to be locked-in, given what the economy and society as a whole have evolved into.

It could be argued that the Democrats’ unresponsiveness to lower income people and to true progressives is due as much to the changed economic structure as to their lust for campaign money. The US economic structure, in three words, is extreme, unprecedented inequality. For this short article, let's divide the economy into three equal classes, upper, middle, and lower. The low end of the lower third is indisputably living in a third world situation.

Obama himself commonly mentions that he is working for "the middle class." A politician admitting openly he is working for just one economic class is basically unprecedented, although Bill Clinton waffled between saying he was working "for the middle class" and working for everyone. Prior to Clinton, Presidents who said who they were working for at all invariably said they were working for everyone.

It's interesting to note that even in societies that historically have had strong class systems, such as Britain and to a lesser but still significant degree The Netherlands, it has been anathema for close to a century for any politician to claim that he or she is working only or mostly for a particular class. So the USA is moving backwards in this regard, becoming like some European countries were more than a century ago in terms of being hidebound by an inefficient class-based political and economic system.

But realistically, Obama actually has a practical reason for saying he is working only for the middle class. The reason is apparently that the USA has moved so far in the direction of a third world economy in general and a third world income structure in particular, that in many policy areas, unless revolutionary change is brought about, you really with one law can only address at most one "class tier," either upper class, middle class, or lower class.

The new health care reform, as Obama himself says, is designed primarily for the middle class. Even for that class, results will ultimately be grossly inferior both economically and health-wise, compared with what everyone gets in reputable countries that have enacted smart combinations of single payer, good regulations on players in the health industry, true cost controls, and generous subsidies for such things as education for doctors and construction of new hospitals.

For the lower class or tier, the new law, that will supposedly require individuals to purchase health insurance, poses the threat of being devastating. Consider the basic facts. A big majority of the uninsured are in the lower third. The cost of health insurance, especially when you don't make the mistake of not including the deductibles, co-pays, and disallowed items, has become completely prohibitive for any single person with an income of less than between $25,000 and $40,000 per year, with the specific level depending on where the person lives.

The US Government does not have the resources to fully or adequately subsidize the many millions who are in this lower range who do not have health insurance. Nor would the Government want to do so if it did have the reources. Simply but accurately put, the amount of money needed to fully or just truly adequately subsidize the purchase of health insurance, by lower tier people, is far in excess of what the US can possibly afford.

We already know the subsidies are going to be inadequate, though it will be interesting if you are a wonk to find out exactly how inadequate they will be. As a result, non-compliance will be very large scale compared with normal expectations of compliance with national laws. It is plausible that we will be seeing non-compliance similar to non-compliance with prohibition, especially considering that the right wing has clearly dug in it's heals against anything associated with Obama.

There will be two levels of non-compliance. First, at least compared with normal non-compliance rates, there will be extremely heavy non-compliance with the mandate to buy health insurance. Second, there will be surprisingly high and plausibly unprecedented taxation non-compliance, specifically with the requirement to pay a tax penalty if the insurance is not purchased.

Be aware though that this "health insurance mandate" has been talked about and then planned for in right of center elite academic and political circles for at least 20 years. The "health reform" you are going to end up with was indeed decided in advance of all the dog and pony shows you are seeing now. The "town hall meetings" could not be more of a meaningless sham than they are.

Elitists working for rich people long ago decided they would prevent the health insurance system from complete collapse, at least for a few decades, by "requiring purchase" of grossly overpriced health insurance. They decided they would use the IRS as a collection agency for Blue Cross and Blue Shield and other large insurance corporations.

And make sure you understand that the elites know right now, in advance, that there will be heavy non-compliance. So they are designing specific aspects to as much as possible force compliance from the non-compliant. For example, there will be people who lose their tax refunds when they try to avoid chipping in to the bloated and failed health insurance racket.

[The above was in response to this article.]

The Unity Progress Manifesto

How anyone who is not a right winger can remain in the same party as Rahm Emanuel, the Blue Dogs, and even Steny Hoyer is beyond me.

Americans MUST form a party similar to the NDP-Canada party or they will continue to decline into poverty and homelessness due to lower incomes and lack of enough jobs. And the health situation of many, many Americans will continue to deteriorate due to a combination of lack of health care, and in some cases due to the wrong health care due to overly financial incentives in the current health system.

BOTH mainstream US parties are right-wing parties. Repeat that to yourself at least twice a day so you don't forget it. If you are not a right winger and yet you give money or time to the Democratic Party in the US, you are actually working against your own interests. This is worse than being totally apolitical and reserving all of your time and money for things other than politics.

All existing non-right wing parties in the US have to be be unified. Even the NDP-Canada party, as relatively successful as it is, suffers from lack of unity with the Greens in Canada. For example, the NDP (and the Greens for that matter) would be in charge in British Columbia right now were it not for the Greens siphoning off a substantial number of what would otherwise be NDP votes.

The NDP and the Greens in both the USA and Canada, assuming they can't unify into one party, (and assuming the US ever has a NDP) should at least sign a promise that they will join forces to form governments whenever that is possible.

Existing American politicians who are not right wingers have no business being in the Democratic Party. At the very least, they are living in the past. For two brief periods of time, from roughly 1935 until about 1950, and then from roughly 1961 to 1975, the Democrats were to some degree a non-right wing party. In other words, they were mostly a centrist party or a very small ways to the left. From 1975-1980, the Democrats under Carter were mostly but not 100% somewhat right of center.

But that is all history, and as of 2009, it has become obvious that the Democrats are not going to be returning to their centrist roots for at least several decades, assuming they ever do so at all. The country could easily be a military or fascist dictatorship by the time the Democrats (might have) returned to being centrist.

"Oh well, Nancy and Barrack, you had your chance, and you insisted on staying way out there in right field while the country went to hell. Now, be good and it's off to the camps with you." Laugh out loud.

The bottom line is simple yet not very well known: The Democrats have been a right wing party, and a fairly hard one at that, for just about 30 years now. And they will remain so for at least 30 years more! They have clearly signed on to a second generation of being right wing. So if my math is correct, it will be at least 2040 before the Democrats might possibly become a centrist party again.

The problem with waiting around until the Democrats become non-right wing again, assuming they ever do which, as I said, is a dubious assumption, is that the US is literally disintegrating due in part to the total absence of the non right-wing viewpoint in the operation of society. People are getting sick and dying for lack of health care, and due to unemployment and homelessness and so forth. Waiting around is simply a luxury that can no longer be afforded.

Dennis Kucinich, Bernie Sanders, and so on and so forth must stop waiting and start doing, by forming a new party. They can and should use NDP-Canada as a prototype. Bernie Sanders is a nice guy, but ultimately, being "a man without a party" is kind of lame, at least until parties are completely history.

In the USA, progressives face a dual challenge. First, they have to get a viable non-right wing party established in the first place. And second, they have to unify non-progressives into that newly formulated party.

A new party, as opposed to going forward with one of the current, obscure non right-wing parties, is needed due to the current atomization caused by the existence of numerous parties that are completely disunified, due to the staleness and long histories of futility of the current, obscure parties, and due to negative caricatures that have been cemented in consciousness over many years.

Terminology demonized by propaganda has to be avoided with the new party. Specifically for example, the new US party should avoid self-defeating terminology such as use of the word "socialist".

The Green party is stigmatized in both the US and Canada as a one issue party that is not generally qualified to govern. US Greens should agree to fold themselves into NDP-US, which will in turn espouse very strong pro-environment policies.

Americans, if they were smart, could simply formulate a NDP-US Party, which would be a fresh start for non-right wing interests in the country. Although NDP-Canada might not officially or formally help in the establishment of NDP-USA, it certainly would not stand in the way when individual members of and supporters of NDP-Canada assisted in the formation of NDP-USA.

Eventually, there would be a synergistic feedback loop going both ways between the NDP-Canada Party and the NDP-USA party. Each party would be strengthened by the other one.

[The above was in response to this article.]

I'll Take the Vulgar Over the Drivel When Describing Obama's Failure

Guest Commentary by Barry Greene

The trouble with the whole goddamn thing is that no-one, including Obama, has the SPINE to cut the bull and call a spade a shovel. It is truly an outrage that there's this much 'debate', not to mention the howling, slavering, mouth-foaming hatred and sheer imbecilic garbage screamed by those goddamn philistines at the town hall meetings, going on about a FUNDAMENTAL HUMAN RIGHT. HEALTH CARE IS NOT A COMMODITY; IT IS AN INALIENABLE HUMAN RIGHT.

To continue to screw around with 'political expediency’ is to accelerate the process of the destruction of the country.

America is the laughing stock of the world on this issue, and not least because of its being tangled up with the very thing not even mentioned in a single one of the comments on this article: WAR. The U.S. is a war-MONGERING rogue state, its very SURVIVAL through this century and into the next hinges upon making the collective welfare of its people less important than money or war. For reasons so deeply mired in the screwed up mythology, the people of the U.S., by and large, have no problem whatsoever with illegal wars, perpetual war, war-profiteering, and a culture of violence, but have a very big problem with the idea of taking care of each other for the collective good.

Obama is more interested in how shiny he looks and going down in history ONLY as the first black president, than he is being the head cheerleader in dragging his country out of the astronomical and possibly unsurvivable situation it is in. He's rapidly turning out to be unfit to utter the name of Martin Luther King. I don't suppose that too many people have confronted the likelihood that MLK KNEW he'd almost definitely be killed for saying the stuff he did. Sweet Jesus Christ, King SPAT (in a dignified fashion) RIGHT IN THE FACES OF THE GREEDY RACIST MURDERERS RUNNING THE COUNTRY AND SUPPORTING THOSE WHO WERE RUNNING THE COUNTRY.

Barack Obama, if he were to be worth the stuff that came out of his mouth in the campaign and in the inaugural, especially in what ways it related to the ideals of MLK, would go in front of Congress and the country and ORDER that universal, yes, SOCIALIZED, healthcare was going to become the law of the fucking land, and if you don't like it, you CAN KISS MY BLACK ASS. And if you're thinking of arming yourself and a load of cronies and having a go at me as your elected president and commander-in-chief, come on, I'm waiting for you..

The smartest, most forward looking and compassionate people in this country and a whole bunch of others have determined that universal health care is long past due in America, and there's no point dawdling and pissing around with political niceties and expediencies and waiting until the climate is more favorable. GIVEN THE LEVEL OF JUVENILE, PUERILE, CRIMINAL AND UNCIVILIZED PEOPLE AND BEHAVIOUR ON DISPLAY OVER THE ISSUE OF HEALTHCARE, THE CLIMATE WILL NEVER BE MORE FAVOURABLE.

Right NOW would be a good time to straighten out this mess, because it'll straighten YOU out, sure as hell. AS LONG AS PROFITS TRUMP PEOPLE IN THIS COUNTRY, THIS COUNTRY IS GOING DOWN. PERIOD, WAKE THE HELL UP.

Americans are proud that they kicked out the British? Think they're so big, strong, manly, and all the rest of that? Where the hell were you when the Bush cabal staged a coup d’état? Why didn't you burn some stuff down then? When that asshole took America into an invasion of Iraq and killed thousands of your precious children, where the hell were you?

It is time to stop screwing around and FORCE Obama to do the right thing, and forget about 'voting' and 'elections'. I cannot believe that after eight years of the illegal 'presidency' of Bush, and the fact that there's no way in hell Obama would have gotten in without close to a billion dollars and sleeping with the enemy, that you people still even talk about 'voting'. Until there's a campaign spending cap of about two thousand bucks, and all media must serve all candidates free, there is no democracy, there is no voting. IT IS A SCAM. WAKE UP.

Until Obama starts passing executive orders or something and drives the insurance gang the hell out of town, he is not for real, he's working for them. He's not MLK, Roosevelt, or any kind of savior. He's just another puppet. The people will have to rise the hell up.
And I will be very surprised if there isn't a civil war in America REAL soon, between the wars, the insolvency, the constant corporate cronyism and that filthy gang of right wing 'Christian' fundamentalist scum screeching their Gospel of Affluence and Aggression.

Health care MUST be socialized - down-size that goddamn military to do it. STAND UP AND LET OBAMA KNOW IN NO UNCERTAIN TERMS THAT YOU'RE DONE WITH HIS LYING, AND HE NEEDS TO ACT OR STEP ASIDE.
SHOUT DOWN THE OPPOSITION TO SINGLE-PAYER. SOCIALIZE HEALTHCARE LIKE YOU SOCIALIZED YOUR MILITARY SINCE DAY ONE. TIME TO GROW UP, AMERICA, AND STOP PARTYING IN MOTHER EARTH'S BASEMENT UNTIL YOU PASS OUT IN YOUR OWN IDEOLOGICAL VOMIT.

Editorial Note: Below you will see my very brief response, on the overnight after Obama failed to fully support the public option, to three separate comments that were made in response to this article (and to the speech).

The three Common Dreams commenters I mention are Diane, Tranmaker, and Barry Greene. Diane was a right wing troll if there ever was one. Tranmaker was an Obamabot (an "Obamabot" is someone who blindly supports Obama regardless of how little Obama accomplishes) who tried to argue that Obama's health care reform would be so much more wonderful than nothing, given how her mother's combination of Meicare and an insurance policy supplementary to Medicare was so wonderful to her mother. Right, I'm supposed to believe that the health reform is a good one because of his mother. Laugh out loud. Finally Barry Greene's post was vulgar to the max, yet was completely on the mark. The writings of the other two were drivel, but the writings of Greene, at least after I cleanded out the profanity, were most definitely worty of being posted as a guest comment here.

What shall I go for, the polished drivel of the right wing troll Diane, or the vulgar but mostly accurate pronouncements of Barry Greene? The vulgar one, of course! This is a reminder to not let style get in the way of substance.

And Tranmaker, just because your mother in Michigan got a good deal on her supplementary policy doesn't mean that the US is improving its health system by taxing the hell out of low income people. Your commentary is just about drivel as well.

Definition of drivel at Dictionary.com:

1. saliva flowing from the mouth, or mucus from the nose; slaver.
2. childish, silly, or meaningless talk or thinking; nonsense; twaddle.

Laugh out loud.

Projections for Non-Compliance with a "Mandate" to buy Grossly Overpriced Insurance in the USA

Notice above that the Massachusetts auto insurance non compliance rate is very low compared with other states. Their no health insurance percentage was also much lower than that of other states even before they started with Romney care, which is roughly what the right wing Democrats are talking about now for the entire country.

The percentage of Massachusetts residents with no health insurance has declined from about 9% or 10% to between 3% and 4% with the advent of the Romney mandate. So the uninsured have been more than cut in half, but notice that even in Massachusetts, there are still a non-negligible number of uninsured.

Other states will not see their percentage of uninsured drop by more than 50% as happened in Massachusetts. The drops will be lower in many other states for the same reasons that the number of uninsured are much higher in states other than Massachusetts to begin with. These reasons include the fact that incomes range from substantially lower to far lower in most other states as compared to Massachusetts, and the fact that the percentage of the population with incomes of, say, less than four times the poverty rate, is much higher in many other states.

All of this simply means that a much larger percentage of the population will be unable and/or unwilling to comply in other states as compared to Massachusetts.

Here is the percentage with no health insurance as of 2004-2006. Add 10-20% of these percentages to accurately gauge the current percentages. (Do not simply add 10% to 20%. I'm saying to multiply the stated percentage by between .1 and .2 and than add those results to the existing percentage to form an estimation range. For example, the current percentage of the Alabama population that has no health insurance can be roughly estimated as being between 15.5% and 16.9%, which is the 2004-2006 percentage of 14.1% plus between 10% and 20% of that.)

NO HEALTH INSURANCE PERCENTAGE AS OF 2004-2006
Alabama 14.1%
Alaska 16.7
Arizona 19.0
Arkansas 17.5
California 18.5
Colorado 16.6
Connecticut 10.4
Delaware 12.5
DC 12.4
Florida 20.3
Georgia 17.6
Hawaii 8.6
Idaho 14.9
Illinois 13.6
Indiana 13.1
Iowa 9.3
Kansas 11.1
Kentucky 13.8
Louisiana 18.5
Maine 9.5
Maryland 13.5
Massachusetts 9.0
Michigan 10.6
Minnesota 8.5
Mississippi 18.1
Missouri 12.3
Montana 17.0
Nebraska 11.1
Nevada 18.3
New Hampshire 10.4
New Jersey 14.6
New Mexico 21.0
New York 13.2
North Carolina 16.0
North Dakota 11.1
Ohio 10.7
Oklahoma 18.7
Oregon 16.6
Pennsylvania 10.2
Rhode Island 10.2
South Carolina 16.0
South Dakota 11.6
Tennessee 13.4
Texas 24.1
Utah 15.7
Vermont 10.8
Virginia 13.2
Washington 12.5
West Virginia 15.5
Wisconsin 9.4
Wyoming 14.0
United States 15.3

Source: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0106394.html

It can be predicted, based on the Massachusetts situation and on differences between Massachusetts and other states, that if the Obama giveaway to the health insurance companies passes, the above state percentages will go down between 35% and 55%, depending on the state. (The 35% to 55% reduction factors in the 10% to 20% increase to reflect 2009 as opposed to 2004-2006; the actual reduction from the actual 2009 rates will be on the order of 40% to 65%, again depending on the state. All of these ballpark estimates are rounded to the nearest 5%.)

So, for example, in Wyoming, the percentage of residents paying the tax penalty, and still with no health insurance, will be between about 6.3% and about 9.1% about 3 years after implementation, which would be as of 2016.

The percentage that will refuse to pay the tax penalty is unknown but is now believed to be some unknown number in excess of 10% of those owing the penalty. How much above 10% the tax rebellion will be will depend primarily on the exact details of the penalty, especially on to what extent the penalty sweeps up low income individuals in its net. The percentage who are simply unable to or refuse to pay the penalty will rise very dramatically as the applicability of the penalty approaches individuals with incomes of close to zero. If the applicability of the penalty was limited to those with incomes of about 300% of poverty or more, a fairly large majority of the non-compliance would be those refusing to pay the penalty as opposed to those unable to pay it. However, at this time it is expected that the penalty will apply much lower down the income scale than 300% of poverty.

Whether a state will see a 55% reduction from, or more like a 35% reduction from the above 2004-2006 numbers depends on numerous variables, most notably on the incomes, unemployment, cost of housing, and homelessness situations in those various states.

Even the relatively small reductions in the percentage with no health coverage discussed above will be temporary, as costs relentlessly rise by much more than the rate of inflation every year. In as little as 12 years and in no more than 30 years, all or at least almost all of the states will be back to the same percentage with no health insurance as they had in 2004-2006!

[The above is in response to this article.]

Auto Insurance Non-Compliance in the USA

For anyone who doubts that there will be a huge number of people not complying with the mandate, consider the large scale non-compliance with required auto insurance.

With auto insurance, you can opt out simply by not driving a car. There will be no way to dodge liability under the health insurance reform proposals (short of intentionally reducing your income and assets to the point where you can get Medicaid).

Non-compliance with a health insurance private product purchase requirement that there is no way to dodge will be substantially greater than is the non-compliance with the auto insurance requirement, and greater still given the fact that health insurance is far more expensive than is car insurance (unless you are a really bad driver), and greater still given the economic conditions. So the percentage of non-compliance will be much greater than what you see for auto insurance below.

ESTIMATED PERCENTAGE OF MOTORISTS WHO ARE UNINSURED BY STATE AS OF 2004
Mississippi 26
Oklahoma 15
Virginia 10
Alabama 25
Rhode Island 14
West Virginia 10
California 25
Wisconsin 14
Pennsylvania 10
New Mexico 24
Arkansas 14
South Carolina 10
Arizona 22
Hawaii 13
Georgia 10
Tennessee 21
Kansas 13
New Jersey 9
Dist. of Col. 21
Montana 12
Utah 9
Florida 19
Iowa 12
Idaho 9
Washington 18
Oregon 12
South Dakota 9
Nevada 17
Missouri 12
New Hampshire 9
Michigan 17
Maryland 12
North Dakota 9
Texas 16
Connecticut 12
North Carolina 8
Illinois 16
Kentucky 12
Nebraska 8
Indiana 16
Delaware 12
New York 7
Ohio 15
Wyoming 11
Massachusetts 6
Alaska 15
Minnesota 10
Vermont 6
Colorado 15
Louisiana 10
Maine 4

The auto insurance non-compliance rates would be much higher now, five years later, 20-70% higher, given the depression/recession conditions.

Source: http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2006/06/28/69919.htm

[The above was written in response to this article.]

Rage on all Sides About Health Insurance Fines

Here is what really is happening, a proposal for huge fines of $750 to $3,800 per year if you don't pay $3000-$30,000 a year for health insurance and co-pays and deductibles. This will undoubtedly be reported on Common Dreams soon.

What happens if you can't afford either the health insurance or the fines? It is well known that you can't get taxes owed discharged in bankruptcy. So is this really a proposal to speed up the already existing process of rounding up poor people and throwing them in jail? I mean, if you don’t pay your taxes, you go to jail, right?

Many, many millions of people, of course, are not going to comply with the mandate, some of them unable to and others unwilling to, especially with the ongoing high threats of unemployment and homelessness. What's more, it increasingly looks like even fine compliance will be less than you would have thought. A very substantial number of both right wingers AND left wingers are enraged about the mandate-tax fine combination.

It was apparently the right wing bloggers who were the first to break this story, and so it was they who first started to protest the proposed fines, at least judged from Google search.

Seriously, I'm glad I spent the summer on this topic, because this is seriously looking like it will eventually lead to open and relatively large scale rebellion in this country. Here is the news break

[The above was in response to this article.]

Garbage Socialsm in the USA

GUEST POINTS

From RV
Considering the purported aversion of some Americans to "socializing" health care or anything else, I can't help wondering if they've noticed that the proposal to require and enforce compulsory insurance IS a socialist proposal of truly magnificent proportions?!

Its only substantive difference from an actual "socialized" health care solution would be that the revenues collected, whether from fees, fines, or taxes, are to be channeled through the private insurance industry's profit skimming process rather than being paid directly to the providers of the requisite health care services.

That is certainly uniquely American. Only in America would huge profits for value-negative intermediary corporate processes be considered as making any sense whatever. Elsewhere even most theoreticians dedicated to alleged capitalist benefits would have a hard time with that notion.

U.S. distinctions between glorious capitalism and hated socialism truly are remarkable and quite confusing for poor ignorant foreigners.

Yes, you have got it. It's a perversion of socialism or, in other words, it is garbage, bogus, and criminal socialism to require anyone to buy a private product in a doomed to failure effort to provide what is supposed to be a public good. I guess it's also a form of mockery of socialism.

[The above was in response to this article.]

The Possibilities Left on the Table Range from Trivial to Nothing

Here is a quick and basic guide for the ongoing melodrama. The debate at this point is between:

--Weak public option (up to 5-15 million enrollees if it works at all; 4-10% discounts on health insurance)
--Weaker still public option (up to 1-8 million enrollees if it works at all; 2-6% discounts on health insurance)
--Totally fake, token public option (co-op; up to 10 million enrollees assuming the government enabled co-ops to actually come into existence and survive, discounts of 1-3% on health insurance; laugh out loud at the trivial savings.)
--Punt, or kick the can down the road (trigger; 0 enrollees, discounts of 0% on health insurance)
--Absolutely nothing, not even a trigger (0 enrollees, discounts of 0% on health insurance)

Stronger and strong public options, which would have attracted more than 15 million enrollees and if truly strong would definitely have been viable, at least for a few decades, and which could have generated health insurance discounts of as much as 25%, were eliminated from consideration months ago, when the house bills were first being drafted.

What Little is Left of the Public Option Would do More Harm Than Good

Actually, we probably DON'T want the public option, because the particular "public option" that is being discussed at this stage is not the "public option" that was originally envisioned by Jacob Hacker, who invented it. Hacker wanted roughly 100 million Americans on the public option, whereas even if the "public option" such as it exists now (in the House bills) is passed now, it will be lucky to ever attract 10 million. And who knows how long it would take to even get up to 10 million?

Furthermore, many economists believe that the public option up for grabs now would be like the Hindenburg, doomed to self destruct due to a ruinous combination of being swamped by the sick and being shunned by providers. As a word of advice, if the public option is passed, unless you are totally desperate and absolutely must have health insurance with a 5-10% discount, you should probably steer clear of actually signing up for it.

Whereas, at least 30 million and probably more than that would be needed for non-negligible cost reduction.

What the current public option would be would be a way for Obama to "thread the needle," a way in other words for him to get both centrist and slightly left of center progressive Democrats at the one extreme and right wing "Blue Dog" Democrats and a smattering of Republicans at the other extreme to sign on to the same final bill.

Public option or no public option, the biggest component of the final bill will be the mandate. Public option or no public option, the second biggest component of the final bill will be how many low income people are allowed to get Medicaid. Public option or no public option, the third biggest component of the final bill will be whether new taxation on businesses thwarts what little job creation they might be able to do if they didn’t have to pay new health taxes. Public option or no public option, the fourth biggest component of the final bill will be exactly what the subsidies will be for low income individuals who still do not qualify for Medicaid, but who now supposedly have to buy insurance.

You can quibble if you want about my importance ordering, but that the public option is far less important than the four items I mentioned is indisputable.

The original public option had real cost control and even underlying health care cost reduction connected with it. The public option hanging in the balance now does not have any substantial cost effect at all. So the public option hanging in the balance as of this writing is nothing more than rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Nothing at all (or just getting the insurance companies to stop acting criminally via recessions etc.) would at least keep the ball alive with respect to single payer state by state or national single payer within the next decade or so. Passing the weak, fake public option would all but close the door on single payer for an unknown but substantial number of decades. It would possibly close the door on single payer forever.

Obama in 2012 Could be Hoover in 1932: Toast

The following is in response to this article.
GUEST POINTS

RichM September 9th, 2009 12:31 pm
Hamsher's explanation of the "memory hole" and "yo-yo" mechanisms is delightfully accurate & perceptive.

However, her predictions that Obama won't escape his supporters' wrath; or will be a one-term president, if "'health care reform' turns into a massive bailout of the private insurance industry," -- on these points, Hamsher is probably wrong.

There's no doubt that health care reform will turn out to be a boondoggle for the insurance industry. But many Obama supporters will simply invent some self-deceiving rationalization for this. The main characteristic of Obama supporters is a capacity for self-deception.

Meanwhile, the question of whether Obama will be a one-term president won't be decided by the outcome of the health-care dispute. For one thing, they're going to put a clause in the final bill so that the "new plan" takes effect only AFTER the next election. So people won't have a chance to see how bad it really is, before they vote. // Furthermore, the issue is far too complicated for most Americans to understand. Most don't know the difference between "single payer," "the public option," and "health exchanges." Keeping the public confused about all this will be like taking candy from a baby.

As is standard for the US, the 2012 election will not be decided on rational grounds (such as the quality of health care reform). It will come down to some match-up of personalities. The public might well simply elect someone who excites them, like a Sarah Palin. They might vote for a General Petraeus, who could be marketed as a "strong man" and military "hero." Believing the public will vote as a sort of rational referendum on health care is giving the US public way too much credit. They'd sooner vote for someone who simply promises them easy riches, & offers a juicy scapegoat for public anger.

All true.

When there are discussions here at CD, they take place on a level well over the heads of the typical American. This is one of the reasons why the powers that be don’t really worry about what we say, by the way.

Although Rahm and Obama are cleverly putting the implementation of any health care regulation changes off until 2013, Obama is nonetheless automatically toast if there are no or virtually no net jobs created during his term, which is looking increasingly likely. He will definitely lose in 2012 under a no new jobs scenario whether or not there are any riots, mass demonstrations, or breadlines of the increasingly desperate masses, as there were in the 1930's.

Did Hoover have a chance in 1932? No, he did not; he was toast.

Obama is also automatically toast if the perception that he is a milquetoast and that he is politically weak gains permanent traction.

Obama is also automatically toast if the Taliban succeed at ramping up the body counts and/or at bringing down the Afghan government in Afghanistan.

For someone who has been in office for only about 8 months, it is notable how many scenarios there already are for Obama to be a lame duck in 2012.

"Doing the Hoover" While Unemployment is more than 20% and Rising

The real underlying "all things considered" unemployment rate has surged above 20% and it is continuing to rise at this writing.

Meanwhile, the powers that be are really just Herbert Hoover redux, as far as 90% of the population is concerned. But this time, they are "doing the Hoover" in such a way that at least the upper 10% can come out of the depression sooner rather than later.

Unlike Right Wingers, Progressives Don't Seem Very Good at Unity: That Absolutely Must Change

How can Kucinich, Jim McDermott, Maxine Walters, Bernie Sanders, John Kerry etc., etc. be forced to move out of the right of center party they are in and into unification with the Greens and Nader and so on? How do you get all of the above unified with all the other centrist and progressive parties? How do you organize strikes, sit-downs, and boycotts (and just the threat of those) that in some European countries are just as important to the day to day prosperity for the commoners as are the non right-wing parties? Many Europeans would simply start striking and boycotting, and would wait for the government to change, if they were ever stuck in the extreme right wing environment currently existing in the US.

These are the questions that really matter. In politics I might be good at the questions, but probably not so good at the specific answers. I don't "do nuts and bolts politics," simply because I know I'm not naturally all that good at it. So I have an excuse for not doing much in this regard. It would be at least partly and probably mostly a waste of time for me to shut down my economics work to try to "do the politics."

My recent idea for a New Democratic Party in the USA (NDP-US) is probably unfortunately just an example of how my ideas might be nice in theory, but not very practical. In Texas and Florida, Canada might as well be on another planet, so now that I think about it I doubt that even progressives would get all that enthusiastic about a NDP-US party down there. (Then again, you could start it on the Border States and work your way down. You see, I never give up... http://www.ndp.ca/ )

Unfortunately, right wingers much more commonly seem to excel at the nuts and bolts of politics that are necessary for unity than do progressives. By contrast, US progressives don't seem to understand the importance of unity. Either that or they have cynically concluded in advance that unity is impossible.

I can't really say a whole lot more on what to me is a mystery, precisely because I am not a "qualified expert" in this kind of thing. Other economics types, including Paul Krugman, are not really qualified to "do the politics" at the micro level either. If you read Krugman, you can see that he does explain political developments in great detail, but he doesn't tell you exactly how and why this political development happened or how and why this other, alternative possible political development did not happen.

To economists, every political development is just a fait accompli, laugh out

[The above was in response to this article.]

Strategy, Tactics, and the Internet

A GUEST POINT

Ephraim September 6th, 2009 12:45 am
We all hate what these bastards are doing, and Taibbi describes eloquently their demonic machinations, and yet we can't do a god damned thing about it. Sound like a democracy? I don't THINK so.

The infamous Gang of Six is deciding how 300 million people will or won't get any health care. We have absolutely zero input, calling or emailing our comatose Congressmen or not. All we have is our keypads. It's high time for pitchforks and torches, but that's just another cyber slogan. We won't do anything but bitch eternally. Or not vote! We can always refuse to vote!

I'm not going to vote for any of these assholes ever again, and that will solve exactly nothing. Until we ACT in the physical world, against their physical selves, nothing will change. Until ideas and outrage turn into organized, sustained, intelligent action in the real, not the cyber, world, none of this insanity will ever change. Forget health care reform, forget getting out of the Mideast, forget putting Obama's "feet to the fire" over any issue. His feet are in a big bucket of water. Ranting about all this on the web gets us nowhere. When do we start doing something that has teeth? Next millennium?

True, everything really important happens in the real world, and the Internet as a change agent has been remarkably overrated since it began. Even the seemingly simple and humble task of getting non-negligible traffic to a new web site often turns out to be a huge uphill struggle. There is a huge "atomization factor" on the Internet.

On the other hand, assuming you are intelligent enough to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff, and assuming you know how to efficiently navigate on the Internet, both of which are more difficult than most people know, the Internet is the ultimate information and communication source. So the Internet could at least be used to coordinate things that need to happen in the real world, such as strikes and certain administrative aspects of the unification of dozens of non-right wing parties into one Unity Party.

Think of the Internet as helpful on the tactical level as opposed to the strategic level. Strategies have to be operated both on and off the Internet, but certain tactics and certain necessary but boring administrative type tasks can be accomplished largely with just the Internet.

For example, after everyone unifies into one non-right wing party, the Internet can be used by the new party to administratively manage national strikes. (Yes, strikes do have to be managed, laugh out loud.) In Europe, strikes, sit-downs, and boycotts are usually coordinated by Unions, but since unions hardly exist in the US, strikes would have to be coordinated by something else, such as a new political party out to rescue the country from neo-slavery and economic ruination.

(Yes, I realize that the example is purely hypothetical, because the unification will most likely never happen in your or my lifetime. The Greens will stay separate from the Socialists, who will stay separate from the Socialist Workers, who will stay separate from Labor, and so on and so forth.)

[The above was in response to this article.]