Here is the publications page for the "Center for Labor Market Studies". Nice material for anyone keen on finding out exactly how bad things really are.
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Saturday, January 23, 2010
Media Constructs Versus Reality
GUEST COMMENT ONE
UNITY PROGRESS
True, and notice that not one mention was made of how the Haitian government installed from without (repeatedly) has been killing its opponents in substantial numbers.
GUEST COMMENT TWO
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qatzelok January 23rd, 2010 1:11 pm
I think Laura embarrasses herself and pseudo-left-wing media with this show.
"Haiti" isn't a mass media meme that needs to be analyzed in terms of which narratives it helps construct. It's a country of people who have been abused by the colonial thinking and behavior of rich countries and their business elites.
This post-modern gab-a-thon about "comparitive disaster narratives" is an affront to reality and to the rich/poor and broadcaster/viewer divide.
Rich broadcasters - both left and right - tend to present the world in terms of which texts are the most amusing - most stimulating. There are no real people with real needs. The world - from the vantage point of the broadcaster - is made up of abstract political actors with strategic reactions to measure and compare for media points.
UNITY PROGRESS
True, and notice that not one mention was made of how the Haitian government installed from without (repeatedly) has been killing its opponents in substantial numbers.
GUEST COMMENT TWO
redballoon January 24th, 2010 2:09 am
"...a country of people who have been abused by the colonial thinking and behavior of rich countries and their business elites."
This is also a narrative that has been constructed. Narratives are constructed because they contain the meaning of events. Narratives are important because they are the basis of belief and action.
Some call them history; some call them myth. But they drive interpretation and agency.
What the "broadcasters" are presenting is a false narrative, with false meaning, intended to misdirect.
It is entirely appropriate to ask how Haiti and New Orleans are similar or different, and to find disturbing parallels there. It's a little narcissistic: no matter what happens to others anywhere in the world always goes back to Americans worrying about themselves - Can it / Did it happen to us? to me?
What was missing from the discussion was the similarity of the deployment of heavily armed military forces, the application of a military solutions to humanitarian problems, the criminalization of self-help, especially by Blacks, the heavy-handed use of force by those who do not understand or care about the local situation (shooting first and asking questions later), and the treatment of Blacks as vermin. Further parallels will emerge as time goes by- you watch. Ultimately, the basis of the similarities is the issue of how the moneyed elites can enrich themselves even further by intervening. Like New Orleans, Haiti is merely another "opportunity".
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Friday, January 22, 2010
Appearance Versus Reality: Where Exactly is the Competence?
There was this business associate in Ohio I knew once who Obama reminds me of. He was on the surface professional, competent, and well spoken. So I started doing business with him with a fairly high confidence level. Within a few months, however, it was revealed he was generally incompetent and also in his case dangerously volatile. I had to discontinue working with him; I had no choice in my view.
Obama is like him except that Obama is at least not volatile. As the author of this article states, Obama is showing incompetence in a rather dull, non-volatile way.
Although I am not an expert on personalities, I think that people like this, who appear to be competent but when all is said and done are not very competent, are all too common.
As for this article, it’s very thorough, very accurate, and very well written. Its very, very unfortunate that anyone would be motivated to write this article, but it is Mr. Obama's fault that someone was so motivated.
GUEST COMMENT
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Obama is like him except that Obama is at least not volatile. As the author of this article states, Obama is showing incompetence in a rather dull, non-volatile way.
Although I am not an expert on personalities, I think that people like this, who appear to be competent but when all is said and done are not very competent, are all too common.
As for this article, it’s very thorough, very accurate, and very well written. Its very, very unfortunate that anyone would be motivated to write this article, but it is Mr. Obama's fault that someone was so motivated.
GUEST COMMENT
Samalabear January 23rd, 2010 3:12 pm
It is my impression, from reading other articles, that Obama's volatility comes out on members of his own party when they disagree with him, if the DeFazio incident is to be believed. He's subtle but vicious and snide. That came across in a couple of his town halls. I'm sure Obama would have no idea that us common, stupid, gullible people caught these "slips," but we did -- because there's a large measure of us that aren't that gullible and do look closely at something or someone who appears "to good to be true."
I have never found Obama warm, convincing or sincere. I remember during the campaign they had a lunch or dinner with Obama thing -- some contest. I remember thinking at that time thinking this is the last person I would want to have an extended conversation with. He leaves me cold.
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What Needs to Stop in Haiti and What to Hope For
It seems that since the Revolution in 1804 there has continually been too much foreign intervention in Haiti. There has been for example installation of several dictators by the US, removal of tariffs by the same at the point of a gun, and never ending onerous and impossible to resolve debt burdens. Another constant seems to have been the continual killing of opponents of Haitian dictators by government thugs working for dictators. These are among the primary reasons for the failure of Haiti to achieve even $1,000 per capita income.
All of this needs to stop or Haiti will remain dirt poor indefinitely. No more debts for Haiti, and existing ones need to be renounced. No more dictators and foreign imposed rulers for Haiti, and the existing one should be forced out of the country by Haitians who understand how to travel the road to escaping extreme poverty.
That road out of extreme poverty is all about true freedom, unity, and cooperative and fair economics. Note that Cubans whose government roughly and imperfectly follows these principles are rich compared to Haitians.
Violent opposition by forces of the dictator to progress in Haiti, unfortunately, should and probably will be to one extent or another met with force from those desperate for post-Quake progress. For once, "the other side," the side that has been largely shut out of Haiti for its entire post-colonial history (and this would be the right side) needs to win the war on the streets in Haiti. Let all those murdered by the Haitian government be honored post-mortem.
Post-Quake, you can actually imagine the right side winning for a change in Haiti.
But what about the US? Would the US kill roughly half a million people in response to a mass uprising against the Haitian dictator of the hour? I doubt it; there’s no oil, no gold, and nothing else of major value to the Americans in Haiti anymore, especially now after the Quake. And the international corporations have always been relatively reluctant to invest in Haiti; they will be even more reluctant now.
The Haitian dictatorship is even more useless and counterproductive now than it was before the Quake. It was already useless and counterproductive to everyone including even the corporations and the Americans. Only the dictator and his top cronies benefit from the dictatorship, so what is the point?
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All of this needs to stop or Haiti will remain dirt poor indefinitely. No more debts for Haiti, and existing ones need to be renounced. No more dictators and foreign imposed rulers for Haiti, and the existing one should be forced out of the country by Haitians who understand how to travel the road to escaping extreme poverty.
That road out of extreme poverty is all about true freedom, unity, and cooperative and fair economics. Note that Cubans whose government roughly and imperfectly follows these principles are rich compared to Haitians.
Violent opposition by forces of the dictator to progress in Haiti, unfortunately, should and probably will be to one extent or another met with force from those desperate for post-Quake progress. For once, "the other side," the side that has been largely shut out of Haiti for its entire post-colonial history (and this would be the right side) needs to win the war on the streets in Haiti. Let all those murdered by the Haitian government be honored post-mortem.
Post-Quake, you can actually imagine the right side winning for a change in Haiti.
But what about the US? Would the US kill roughly half a million people in response to a mass uprising against the Haitian dictator of the hour? I doubt it; there’s no oil, no gold, and nothing else of major value to the Americans in Haiti anymore, especially now after the Quake. And the international corporations have always been relatively reluctant to invest in Haiti; they will be even more reluctant now.
The Haitian dictatorship is even more useless and counterproductive now than it was before the Quake. It was already useless and counterproductive to everyone including even the corporations and the Americans. Only the dictator and his top cronies benefit from the dictatorship, so what is the point?
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Ultimate Summary of Reasons why the Democrats' new Right Wing Health Insurance Laws do Much More Harm than Good
As of January 23 2010 there are 25 reasons why the new laws do more harm than good. We expect that eventually there will be at least 40 reasons. As of January 23 2010 this outline of and brief discussion of reasons contains about 4,300 words. We expect that by the time this cruicial report is considered completely done that there will be about 7,000 to 8,000 words. This project is expected to be completed by May 1, 2010. It will be completed regardless of whether or not the proposed law is passed in early 2010.
This date of this post will be changed so as to make sure that it is always the first post that is seen when someone visits Unity Progress. However, since the root post will not be deleted, bookmarks to this particular post will continue to work regardless of how many times the date of the post changes. Eventually, sometime after it is completed in 2010, this post will probably be placed on it's own separate page, and there will be impossible to miss links to it from the main page.
Until this all important post is given it's own page, visitors can scroll down below it to see much shorter new Unity Progress posts that have been made since their last visit. Or they can use the Google blog archive in the right sidebar. Remember, health care is just one of three main topics we like to cover here. The other two are jobs and how the non-right wing people should organize and unify themselves.
The following are reasons why the Democrats' health legislation of 2009-10 will do more harm than good if passed and implemented. There is a basic explanation of each reason, but time and space limitations prevent an exhaustive explanation of most of them. From time to time, we will be adding links to exhaustive explanations of reasons, whether those explanations are by Unity-Progress or by other respected sources such as Physicians for a National Health Program.
The reasons are categorized into the following seven categories:
BAD LEGAL FOUNDATION
BAD POLITICAL FOUNDATION
BAD ECONOMIC FOUNDATION
EXCESSIVE COSTS CONTINUE--INADEQUATE CONTROL OF COSTS
LOOPHOLES THAT INCREASE INSURANCE COMPANY PROFITS AND DENY PEOPLE HEALTH CARE
LACK OF UNIVERSAL AND ADEQUATE ACTUAL HEALTH CARE
UNNECESSARY RESTRICTIONS OF FREEDOM
BAD LEGAL FOUNDATION
---Even if a shot is never fired over this, it is obvious that existing non-compliance with tax laws will be vastly increased over this. Specifically, the motivation for criminals to not report income and/or to not file at all will more than double overnight. The IRS will become much “more hated” than they already are among anti-tax type people.
---The mandate is unconstitutional regardless of whether it is ruled thus or not. At a rock bottom minimum, it violates the spirit of the Constitution and, indeed, it violates the whole purpose of the US revolution and the Constitution that emerged out of it, which was to put an end to taxation and other burdens without representation and without freedom of action and thought. This law creates taxation where regardless of how incompetent they are you can’t vote those who get the tax funds (the insurance executives and employees) out of office.
And obviously, the whole idea behind the Constitution and the Revolution was to expand freedom to the maximum extent possible, whereas this law limits freedom for no compelling or truly valid reason. The reason might be valid if this were the only way to get more people access to health care, but (a)It is obviously not the only way and (b)This bill is inferior to other ways and (c)This bill fails to pass basic cost-benefit hurdles.
BAD POLITICAL FOUNDATION
---People will be legally slaves to health insurance executives or to the penalty division of the IRS, their choice. 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 Congress has no excuse for why all the “good things” such as no pre-existing conditions, no lifetime caps, no recessions, and so forth, were not already law years and years and years ago. Moreover, obviously, the Democrats could easily pass “the good things” now (right now, this month) without the slavery mandate and you would have no major complaints (and Obama might even be able to win re-election, so if he does lose in 2012, which seems increasingly likely, it will be 100% his fault.)
---You can not trust much of anything that proponents are saying about this; they are out to in their mind save their political futures by ramming through anything they can possibly ram through. Obama and his cronies have lied about literally everything important. He said there would be no mandates when he was campaigning. He claimed that there would be no new taxes on those earning less than $200,000. He claimed he wanted “the public option”. He claimed the process would be deliberative and transparent. He has claimed that the country would go bankrupt if this particular law is not passed by the end of 2009. Obama has been a chronic liar during this entire sordid process.
BAD ECONOMIC FOUNDATION
---Insurance is actually a bad way to do health care, period. Insurance was created to protect people from events that are not supposed to happen at all. Health care is most definitely not something that is not supposed to happen at all, not only because preventive care should be ongoing, but also because unless they die young, people need health care sooner or later, even if it’s just some minor treatments here and there. By contrast, when you buy house insurance, you nevertheless hope and expect that your house will not be burning down or blowing down (and your hope and expectation is often what actually happens: your house never burns down or blows down).
---Although there are some progressive aspects, most notably the expansion of Medicaid, The majority of the taxes, and certainly the mandate itself, which is heavy taxation in disguise, are very, very regressive. Such taxes are a very bad idea in any economy of course, but in a depressed economy, new regressive taxes must be about the worst thing you could possibly do. The financial provisions in this legislation could easily cause another million or more people to lose their jobs. At a minimum, the clock will keep ticking on the 10 years plus and running during which there has been no increase in jobs. It almost goes without saying that the US government would be far, far better off spending money on job creation right now than on subsidizing grossly overpriced and dysfunctional insurance policies.
Additionally, the new taxes will indisputably make the US a high tax country, even though US citizens enjoy only a small fraction of the benefits that other high tax countries get. Obviously, if the threatened laws are implemented, and to the extent they have income and don’t cheat on their taxes, US citizens will going forward be treated worse by their taxation system than people of any other country.
---US companies will continue to be at a major competitive disadvantage versus companies in most other countries if and when this health insurance deform passes. Obviously, you have to lower the actual costs of health care if you want the US companies to be on a level playing field.
---States are being treated harshly by being, along with individuals, given an unfunded mandate for Medicaid expansion. Medicaid is being expanded from being a program limited to poor people in various specific designations to being a program that all very low income people including "generic very low income people" are eligible for. However, following two years of total federal government funding, the states will have to pay various percentages of the cost of the expansion.
As you might expect if you are familiar with the byzantine ways that states interact with federal legislation, states will be treated very unequally based on several characteristics including their pre-existing relative Medicaid eligibility. States that have been most restrictive until now with offering Medicaid to poor residents will get the most federal assistance after all very low income people are eligible, whereas states that have been far more humane will face much lower federal reimbursement. States such as New York, California, and even Arizona will get financially penalized for having expanded Medicaid eligibility years ago, whereas far right, harsh states such as Alabama and Tennessee will receive far more federal assistance over the next decade.
But wait, it gets even worse. The ultimate state fiscal inequality is that Nebraska will pay nothing! To secure the crucial 60th vote from Senator Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska, Senate leaders permanently exempted his state from paying to expand Medicaid!
EXCESSIVE COSTS CONTINUE--INADEQUATE CONTROL OF COSTS
---The administrative overhang for health care will be even worse than it is already. There will be no reduction in health insurance company overhead, but now there will be many new government bureaucracies creating many new overheads. The sheer number of bureaucratic components involved in the new laws will inevitably lead to confusion between different bureaucracies as they interact with each other, which will lead to additional waste.
---Health care will remain unaffordable for millions and millions of ordinary families. 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 percentage of income that Americans are induced to pay for health care remains excessive and economically damaging. The percentage of income that Americans will pay for health care under the deform remains in excess of 10% for those who don’t use health care either because they are not sick or because they are sick but can not afford the deductibles, co pays, medications, and/or the non-covered items. So that's 10% for nothing, actually.
For those who are sick, 20-30% of income in total health related payments will be the norm, roughly triple what sick people would pay in Canada, almost all of Europe, and much of Asia for that matter. That is nothing short of extortion of Americans even without a mandate, let alone with one. And again, this means that there will be very little reduction of medical bankruptcy.
Note that this reason is the cousin of the one just above it. The one above gets at real budgets and real cash flows of real people, up to and including people not being able to pay their health insurance invoices they get in the mail. That reason is, in economics jargon, a microeconomics reason why the new laws will fail.
Whereas the reason you just read evokes macroeconomic theory and especially the concept of opportunity cost. This concept actually simultaneously operates at the family and at the national levels. Every dollar spent on health insurance is a dollar that can not be spent on other needed goods and services or on investing in growing the productive capacity of the country. Each dollar can only go to one place, and it is supposed to go to the place that is optimal for the family or the economy as a whole.
Families who are “forced” to overspend on health insurance and health care will be left without enough money for other badly needed things, some of which will in the long run be even more important than certain health expenditures they were induced to make.
At the national level, health insurance and health care in the US are soaking up trillions of dollars that would be much better spent elsewhere. Thus, an economist would say that there is an excessive and sub-optimal opportunity cost being incurred as a result of the dysfunctional US system.
---At least $300 (probably $325-$350) of every $1,000 you pay to the insurance company will continue to not go for yours or anyone else’s health care. It will go for $20 million or more a year insurance executives, it will go to the claims denial departments of the insurance companies, it will go to dividends for shareholders, it will go for that nice big insurance company building with the nice artificial plants in the lobby, it will go for advertising of health insurance, and it will go for other corporate perks and pork. The $625 to $667 remainder of each $1,000 you pay the insurance company will go for health care, but only for the health care that the insurance company, not your doctor, decides should be paid for. Whether you get covered for what your doctor recommends depends on the insurance company, not your doctor and certainly not little old you. If you and your doctor think something should be covered but the insurance company doesn’t, well, you’ll have to start your own insurance company, buddy.
---The cost control (more precisely, the protection from premium increases in excess of general inflation) in this bill is literally trivial. All of the things that would have led to some cost control were stripped, leaving only trivial cost control (that you won’t even notice) and a few window dressing “studies” or “pilot programs” that look to the future. Whereas, the US has already gone off the deep end of the cost curve, and should be slashing and burning health costs, rather than just studying things that might slow the rate of increase in the future. To say the cost control is inadequate in this law is a ridiculous understatement. It’s like your house is burning down and all that you have decided to do is to plan to call your buddy down the street some time next month about borrowing a hose.
LOOPHOLES THAT INCREASE INSURANCE COMPANY PROFITS AND DENY PEOPLE HEATH CARE
---The biggest loophole of all would be that, as is often the case when the US government is giving the store away to private corporations, there will be very little effective regulation of health insurance contracts, including the charges made and paid for those policies. First, since insurance companies are still completely free (and encouraged!) to offer many different policies with complicated differences between them, the difficulty factor for enforcing the few federal level regulations that exist is so high that even if the federal government was doing the enforcement, the regulation would still fail.
The second reason that regulation will fail and the private insurance companies will continue to cheat their customers is that none of the detailed policy provision regulations will be regulated at the federal level. The regulations will be poorly and unevenly enforced on a state by state basis. No state including California has the resources to actually monitor and enforce the limited regulations that do exist, due to the complex differences between policies and due to sheer lack of resources.
The insurance companies will have to regulate themselves (good luck with that).
Adding insult to injury, the insurance company behemoths have been authorized to avoid state regulators that they don't like by changing domicile of their policies; they can choose to be regulated by the state that has the easiest state regulations and/or the most lax enforcement. When and if you buy a policy, it will be regulated by a state’s insurance regulators, but it won’t necessarily be the regulations and regulators of your state! It may be a state with extremely loose regulation as opposed to simply loose regulation. All states have loose regulation, but some have looser regulation than others.
---The insurance companies are still allowed to cap annual payouts, although now they can do so only if the payouts above whatever they think the annual limit should be are considered "non-essential"– non essential to them! The new 80% of premiums must go for health care will rule will reduce the motivation for insurance companies to cap annual payouts, but will hardly eliminate the heavy motivation to do so.
---There is a loophole in the no pre-existing conditions prohibition. If the insurance companies declare fraud, and obviously they will still have wide latitude to do so, someone with a pre-existing condition can still be retroactively denied coverage, regardless of any premiums they have paid.
---Insurance companies will still be able to deny coverage as they wish, so whether you actually get anything back from your premium payments if you get sick remains completely up to the insurance companies, who obviously have ulterior motives to deny your claim. There will be a small reduction in the motivation of insurance companies to deny your claim due to new minimum percentages of premium revenue that they must pay for health care (80-85%), but there will still be a lot of motivation for them to deny your claim.
This is another reason why medical bankruptcies will be going down by a very, very small amount, certainly no more than 20% when everything is factored in.
This reason could be alternatively classified in the “Lack of Actual Universal Care” section, since some people in some situations will decide not to get the care if they know in advance that the insurance company will not pay the claim.
LACK OF UNIVERSAL AND ADEQUATE ACTUAL HEALTH CARE
---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.
This bill does not by any stretch of the imagination constitute a national health program, or even a national health insurance program, for that matter.
For a complete, detailed explanation of this very important reason, see this article.
---These will be millions of people who have insurance policies as mantle piece novelties only, never to be used. Why? Because they can and do pay premiums, but then they can not afford deductibles, co pays, medications, or uncovered items. This problem is often called underinsurance, a problem that will be much, much worse if this is passed. The entire notion of deductibles is poisonous with respect to people seeking necessary screening and treatment early when it does the most good. Deductibles and co pays encourage people instead to put things off until the situation becomes intolerable, by which time it’s often too late.
---Due in part to the fact that insurance is not appropriate for health care, and obviously due to the profit motive, the insurance companies deny claims whenever possible. This constant possibility of claim denial creates a fear factor in the public, where people become afraid to actually seek treatment unless it is obviously an emergency. People not seeking care when they should to be on the safe side defeats the whole purpose of the health care system! Doctors might as well not have gotten all the training and education they got if their patients are going to be extremely reluctant to see them despite having insurance. The bottom line is that the very concept of insurance is bad for health care, so the last thing a country should be doing is subsidizing the purchase of health insurance.
---The number of people dying due to lack of health insurance and due to underinsurance will decline by a small percentage, perhaps by a greater percentage than bankruptcies will, but by less than 33%, I would project (someone’s got to do it). Underinsurance, again, is where the insured can not afford deductibles, co-pays, medications, and/or uncovered items and so he or she decides to not get care. Gambles like that sometimes lead to early, preventable death.
---The percentage of small and medium sized businesses that do not offer their employees a health plan will increase after this is passed, because some companies who have been providing limited policies will not be able to afford to provide their employees the government-mandated package of benefits, because some will decide to wash their hands of the whole mess for ideological and/or anti-bureaucracy reasons, and because some will be cutting this benefit as a result of the lack of true, real economic growth. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that some 10 million workers who currently have employer-provided health care will lose it, but other experts predict that the number could be much higher.
---There are no provisions for increase of supply of health care goods and services. This means that all programs and plans new enrollees come into will be stressed and strained. People will have to in many instances wait longer for care now. There will in fact be some new rationing across the board, and this will be a very serious thing in Medicaid, where already about 40% of physicians refuse to participate. Whereas, many other countries subsidize the training of doctors and nurses to a far greater extent than does the US. For example, huge student loans are still considered bad things in most other countries. Those countries have the capability of rapidly increasing the supply of doctors, hospital beds, and so on, whereas the US does not realistically have this capability.
(This could alternatively be classified in the Bad Economic Foundation section.)
UNNECESSARY RESTRICTIONS OF FREEDOM
---Roughly 2/3 of the public is opposed to the mandates, substantially more than I would have predicted. Internet comments are running at least 90% against the mandate. I have myself been perusing hundreds of such comments at sites of all types and ideological persuasions. The right wing sites feature comments from “patriots” who claim that violence or even revolution is a possibility if this law is passed.
Although I think the right wingers need to be educated on the huge advantages of well run government programs, I do agree with them that more freedom is always preferable to less freedom, and I agree with them that this bill takes freedom away for bad, invalid reasons. I also agree with them that there should be no taxation unless there are extremely good reasons for it, and paying for health insurance is not even close to being an extremely good reason, due to the other ways that health care can (and is around the world) being paid for.
This date of this post will be changed so as to make sure that it is always the first post that is seen when someone visits Unity Progress. However, since the root post will not be deleted, bookmarks to this particular post will continue to work regardless of how many times the date of the post changes. Eventually, sometime after it is completed in 2010, this post will probably be placed on it's own separate page, and there will be impossible to miss links to it from the main page.
Until this all important post is given it's own page, visitors can scroll down below it to see much shorter new Unity Progress posts that have been made since their last visit. Or they can use the Google blog archive in the right sidebar. Remember, health care is just one of three main topics we like to cover here. The other two are jobs and how the non-right wing people should organize and unify themselves.
The following are reasons why the Democrats' health legislation of 2009-10 will do more harm than good if passed and implemented. There is a basic explanation of each reason, but time and space limitations prevent an exhaustive explanation of most of them. From time to time, we will be adding links to exhaustive explanations of reasons, whether those explanations are by Unity-Progress or by other respected sources such as Physicians for a National Health Program.
The reasons are categorized into the following seven categories:
BAD LEGAL FOUNDATION
BAD POLITICAL FOUNDATION
BAD ECONOMIC FOUNDATION
EXCESSIVE COSTS CONTINUE--INADEQUATE CONTROL OF COSTS
LOOPHOLES THAT INCREASE INSURANCE COMPANY PROFITS AND DENY PEOPLE HEALTH CARE
LACK OF UNIVERSAL AND ADEQUATE ACTUAL HEALTH CARE
UNNECESSARY RESTRICTIONS OF FREEDOM
BAD LEGAL FOUNDATION
---Even if a shot is never fired over this, it is obvious that existing non-compliance with tax laws will be vastly increased over this. Specifically, the motivation for criminals to not report income and/or to not file at all will more than double overnight. The IRS will become much “more hated” than they already are among anti-tax type people.
---The mandate is unconstitutional regardless of whether it is ruled thus or not. At a rock bottom minimum, it violates the spirit of the Constitution and, indeed, it violates the whole purpose of the US revolution and the Constitution that emerged out of it, which was to put an end to taxation and other burdens without representation and without freedom of action and thought. This law creates taxation where regardless of how incompetent they are you can’t vote those who get the tax funds (the insurance executives and employees) out of office.
And obviously, the whole idea behind the Constitution and the Revolution was to expand freedom to the maximum extent possible, whereas this law limits freedom for no compelling or truly valid reason. The reason might be valid if this were the only way to get more people access to health care, but (a)It is obviously not the only way and (b)This bill is inferior to other ways and (c)This bill fails to pass basic cost-benefit hurdles.
BAD POLITICAL FOUNDATION
---People will be legally slaves to health insurance executives or to the penalty division of the IRS, their choice. 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 Congress has no excuse for why all the “good things” such as no pre-existing conditions, no lifetime caps, no recessions, and so forth, were not already law years and years and years ago. Moreover, obviously, the Democrats could easily pass “the good things” now (right now, this month) without the slavery mandate and you would have no major complaints (and Obama might even be able to win re-election, so if he does lose in 2012, which seems increasingly likely, it will be 100% his fault.)
---You can not trust much of anything that proponents are saying about this; they are out to in their mind save their political futures by ramming through anything they can possibly ram through. Obama and his cronies have lied about literally everything important. He said there would be no mandates when he was campaigning. He claimed that there would be no new taxes on those earning less than $200,000. He claimed he wanted “the public option”. He claimed the process would be deliberative and transparent. He has claimed that the country would go bankrupt if this particular law is not passed by the end of 2009. Obama has been a chronic liar during this entire sordid process.
BAD ECONOMIC FOUNDATION
---Insurance is actually a bad way to do health care, period. Insurance was created to protect people from events that are not supposed to happen at all. Health care is most definitely not something that is not supposed to happen at all, not only because preventive care should be ongoing, but also because unless they die young, people need health care sooner or later, even if it’s just some minor treatments here and there. By contrast, when you buy house insurance, you nevertheless hope and expect that your house will not be burning down or blowing down (and your hope and expectation is often what actually happens: your house never burns down or blows down).
---Although there are some progressive aspects, most notably the expansion of Medicaid, The majority of the taxes, and certainly the mandate itself, which is heavy taxation in disguise, are very, very regressive. Such taxes are a very bad idea in any economy of course, but in a depressed economy, new regressive taxes must be about the worst thing you could possibly do. The financial provisions in this legislation could easily cause another million or more people to lose their jobs. At a minimum, the clock will keep ticking on the 10 years plus and running during which there has been no increase in jobs. It almost goes without saying that the US government would be far, far better off spending money on job creation right now than on subsidizing grossly overpriced and dysfunctional insurance policies.
Additionally, the new taxes will indisputably make the US a high tax country, even though US citizens enjoy only a small fraction of the benefits that other high tax countries get. Obviously, if the threatened laws are implemented, and to the extent they have income and don’t cheat on their taxes, US citizens will going forward be treated worse by their taxation system than people of any other country.
---US companies will continue to be at a major competitive disadvantage versus companies in most other countries if and when this health insurance deform passes. Obviously, you have to lower the actual costs of health care if you want the US companies to be on a level playing field.
---States are being treated harshly by being, along with individuals, given an unfunded mandate for Medicaid expansion. Medicaid is being expanded from being a program limited to poor people in various specific designations to being a program that all very low income people including "generic very low income people" are eligible for. However, following two years of total federal government funding, the states will have to pay various percentages of the cost of the expansion.
As you might expect if you are familiar with the byzantine ways that states interact with federal legislation, states will be treated very unequally based on several characteristics including their pre-existing relative Medicaid eligibility. States that have been most restrictive until now with offering Medicaid to poor residents will get the most federal assistance after all very low income people are eligible, whereas states that have been far more humane will face much lower federal reimbursement. States such as New York, California, and even Arizona will get financially penalized for having expanded Medicaid eligibility years ago, whereas far right, harsh states such as Alabama and Tennessee will receive far more federal assistance over the next decade.
But wait, it gets even worse. The ultimate state fiscal inequality is that Nebraska will pay nothing! To secure the crucial 60th vote from Senator Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska, Senate leaders permanently exempted his state from paying to expand Medicaid!
EXCESSIVE COSTS CONTINUE--INADEQUATE CONTROL OF COSTS
---The administrative overhang for health care will be even worse than it is already. There will be no reduction in health insurance company overhead, but now there will be many new government bureaucracies creating many new overheads. The sheer number of bureaucratic components involved in the new laws will inevitably lead to confusion between different bureaucracies as they interact with each other, which will lead to additional waste.
---Health care will remain unaffordable for millions and millions of ordinary families. 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 percentage of income that Americans are induced to pay for health care remains excessive and economically damaging. The percentage of income that Americans will pay for health care under the deform remains in excess of 10% for those who don’t use health care either because they are not sick or because they are sick but can not afford the deductibles, co pays, medications, and/or the non-covered items. So that's 10% for nothing, actually.
For those who are sick, 20-30% of income in total health related payments will be the norm, roughly triple what sick people would pay in Canada, almost all of Europe, and much of Asia for that matter. That is nothing short of extortion of Americans even without a mandate, let alone with one. And again, this means that there will be very little reduction of medical bankruptcy.
Note that this reason is the cousin of the one just above it. The one above gets at real budgets and real cash flows of real people, up to and including people not being able to pay their health insurance invoices they get in the mail. That reason is, in economics jargon, a microeconomics reason why the new laws will fail.
Whereas the reason you just read evokes macroeconomic theory and especially the concept of opportunity cost. This concept actually simultaneously operates at the family and at the national levels. Every dollar spent on health insurance is a dollar that can not be spent on other needed goods and services or on investing in growing the productive capacity of the country. Each dollar can only go to one place, and it is supposed to go to the place that is optimal for the family or the economy as a whole.
Families who are “forced” to overspend on health insurance and health care will be left without enough money for other badly needed things, some of which will in the long run be even more important than certain health expenditures they were induced to make.
At the national level, health insurance and health care in the US are soaking up trillions of dollars that would be much better spent elsewhere. Thus, an economist would say that there is an excessive and sub-optimal opportunity cost being incurred as a result of the dysfunctional US system.
---At least $300 (probably $325-$350) of every $1,000 you pay to the insurance company will continue to not go for yours or anyone else’s health care. It will go for $20 million or more a year insurance executives, it will go to the claims denial departments of the insurance companies, it will go to dividends for shareholders, it will go for that nice big insurance company building with the nice artificial plants in the lobby, it will go for advertising of health insurance, and it will go for other corporate perks and pork. The $625 to $667 remainder of each $1,000 you pay the insurance company will go for health care, but only for the health care that the insurance company, not your doctor, decides should be paid for. Whether you get covered for what your doctor recommends depends on the insurance company, not your doctor and certainly not little old you. If you and your doctor think something should be covered but the insurance company doesn’t, well, you’ll have to start your own insurance company, buddy.
---The cost control (more precisely, the protection from premium increases in excess of general inflation) in this bill is literally trivial. All of the things that would have led to some cost control were stripped, leaving only trivial cost control (that you won’t even notice) and a few window dressing “studies” or “pilot programs” that look to the future. Whereas, the US has already gone off the deep end of the cost curve, and should be slashing and burning health costs, rather than just studying things that might slow the rate of increase in the future. To say the cost control is inadequate in this law is a ridiculous understatement. It’s like your house is burning down and all that you have decided to do is to plan to call your buddy down the street some time next month about borrowing a hose.
LOOPHOLES THAT INCREASE INSURANCE COMPANY PROFITS AND DENY PEOPLE HEATH CARE
---The biggest loophole of all would be that, as is often the case when the US government is giving the store away to private corporations, there will be very little effective regulation of health insurance contracts, including the charges made and paid for those policies. First, since insurance companies are still completely free (and encouraged!) to offer many different policies with complicated differences between them, the difficulty factor for enforcing the few federal level regulations that exist is so high that even if the federal government was doing the enforcement, the regulation would still fail.
The second reason that regulation will fail and the private insurance companies will continue to cheat their customers is that none of the detailed policy provision regulations will be regulated at the federal level. The regulations will be poorly and unevenly enforced on a state by state basis. No state including California has the resources to actually monitor and enforce the limited regulations that do exist, due to the complex differences between policies and due to sheer lack of resources.
The insurance companies will have to regulate themselves (good luck with that).
Adding insult to injury, the insurance company behemoths have been authorized to avoid state regulators that they don't like by changing domicile of their policies; they can choose to be regulated by the state that has the easiest state regulations and/or the most lax enforcement. When and if you buy a policy, it will be regulated by a state’s insurance regulators, but it won’t necessarily be the regulations and regulators of your state! It may be a state with extremely loose regulation as opposed to simply loose regulation. All states have loose regulation, but some have looser regulation than others.
---The insurance companies are still allowed to cap annual payouts, although now they can do so only if the payouts above whatever they think the annual limit should be are considered "non-essential"– non essential to them! The new 80% of premiums must go for health care will rule will reduce the motivation for insurance companies to cap annual payouts, but will hardly eliminate the heavy motivation to do so.
---There is a loophole in the no pre-existing conditions prohibition. If the insurance companies declare fraud, and obviously they will still have wide latitude to do so, someone with a pre-existing condition can still be retroactively denied coverage, regardless of any premiums they have paid.
---Insurance companies will still be able to deny coverage as they wish, so whether you actually get anything back from your premium payments if you get sick remains completely up to the insurance companies, who obviously have ulterior motives to deny your claim. There will be a small reduction in the motivation of insurance companies to deny your claim due to new minimum percentages of premium revenue that they must pay for health care (80-85%), but there will still be a lot of motivation for them to deny your claim.
This is another reason why medical bankruptcies will be going down by a very, very small amount, certainly no more than 20% when everything is factored in.
This reason could be alternatively classified in the “Lack of Actual Universal Care” section, since some people in some situations will decide not to get the care if they know in advance that the insurance company will not pay the claim.
LACK OF UNIVERSAL AND ADEQUATE ACTUAL HEALTH CARE
---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.
This bill does not by any stretch of the imagination constitute a national health program, or even a national health insurance program, for that matter.
For a complete, detailed explanation of this very important reason, see this article.
---These will be millions of people who have insurance policies as mantle piece novelties only, never to be used. Why? Because they can and do pay premiums, but then they can not afford deductibles, co pays, medications, or uncovered items. This problem is often called underinsurance, a problem that will be much, much worse if this is passed. The entire notion of deductibles is poisonous with respect to people seeking necessary screening and treatment early when it does the most good. Deductibles and co pays encourage people instead to put things off until the situation becomes intolerable, by which time it’s often too late.
---Due in part to the fact that insurance is not appropriate for health care, and obviously due to the profit motive, the insurance companies deny claims whenever possible. This constant possibility of claim denial creates a fear factor in the public, where people become afraid to actually seek treatment unless it is obviously an emergency. People not seeking care when they should to be on the safe side defeats the whole purpose of the health care system! Doctors might as well not have gotten all the training and education they got if their patients are going to be extremely reluctant to see them despite having insurance. The bottom line is that the very concept of insurance is bad for health care, so the last thing a country should be doing is subsidizing the purchase of health insurance.
---The number of people dying due to lack of health insurance and due to underinsurance will decline by a small percentage, perhaps by a greater percentage than bankruptcies will, but by less than 33%, I would project (someone’s got to do it). Underinsurance, again, is where the insured can not afford deductibles, co-pays, medications, and/or uncovered items and so he or she decides to not get care. Gambles like that sometimes lead to early, preventable death.
---The percentage of small and medium sized businesses that do not offer their employees a health plan will increase after this is passed, because some companies who have been providing limited policies will not be able to afford to provide their employees the government-mandated package of benefits, because some will decide to wash their hands of the whole mess for ideological and/or anti-bureaucracy reasons, and because some will be cutting this benefit as a result of the lack of true, real economic growth. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that some 10 million workers who currently have employer-provided health care will lose it, but other experts predict that the number could be much higher.
---There are no provisions for increase of supply of health care goods and services. This means that all programs and plans new enrollees come into will be stressed and strained. People will have to in many instances wait longer for care now. There will in fact be some new rationing across the board, and this will be a very serious thing in Medicaid, where already about 40% of physicians refuse to participate. Whereas, many other countries subsidize the training of doctors and nurses to a far greater extent than does the US. For example, huge student loans are still considered bad things in most other countries. Those countries have the capability of rapidly increasing the supply of doctors, hospital beds, and so on, whereas the US does not realistically have this capability.
(This could alternatively be classified in the Bad Economic Foundation section.)
UNNECESSARY RESTRICTIONS OF FREEDOM
---Roughly 2/3 of the public is opposed to the mandates, substantially more than I would have predicted. Internet comments are running at least 90% against the mandate. I have myself been perusing hundreds of such comments at sites of all types and ideological persuasions. The right wing sites feature comments from “patriots” who claim that violence or even revolution is a possibility if this law is passed.
Although I think the right wingers need to be educated on the huge advantages of well run government programs, I do agree with them that more freedom is always preferable to less freedom, and I agree with them that this bill takes freedom away for bad, invalid reasons. I also agree with them that there should be no taxation unless there are extremely good reasons for it, and paying for health insurance is not even close to being an extremely good reason, due to the other ways that health care can (and is around the world) being paid for.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Can't Decide Whether to Abandon the Democrats or Not? You Don't Have to Decide, Actually
From the article linked to below:
Not to mention that those who refuse to face the music regarding the total and complete failure of the Democratic party can, until a new party shows it can win at least one federal election, be in two parties at once: the Democratic and the new one: the New Democratic Party or American Party or whatever marketable name is chosen. (Your registration is a meaningless technicality; you can always work within as many parties as you want.)
As to this article as a whole, I agree with all of it.
The above is in response to this article.
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"Meanwhile, at the grassroots, many progressives are apt to buy into a false choice between capitulating inside the Democratic Party or staying away from it. But there's another option: an inside/outside strategy that involves openly fighting for progressive power within the party while also organizing outside of it."
Not to mention that those who refuse to face the music regarding the total and complete failure of the Democratic party can, until a new party shows it can win at least one federal election, be in two parties at once: the Democratic and the new one: the New Democratic Party or American Party or whatever marketable name is chosen. (Your registration is a meaningless technicality; you can always work within as many parties as you want.)
As to this article as a whole, I agree with all of it.
The above is in response to this article.
-----------------------
Comments are very appreciated. Comments are moderated but all comments will be approved except for those that do not belong on Unity-Progress. For example, comments that contain any commercial advertising and ones that contain objectionable hatred will not be approved. Many comments that appear will receive a return comment by Unity-Progress.
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Wednesday, January 20, 2010
The Fifty Million Stooges
GUEST COMMENT
UNITY PROGRESS
This was an extra outstanding exposition that I was glad to organize into paragraphs and to which make a few grammatical corrections. I especially love this description of how and why the "tea partiers" (and Fox News) are just stooges for the rich and powerful. At one time it was the "Three Stooges", but now it's more like the 50 Million Stooges.
The above was in response to this article.
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johnny u January 21st, 2010 2:12 am
It's simple, folks. As soon as the economy teetered in 2008, people began having basic questions and doubts about the form of our capitalist economy. Polls then showed that a sizeable minority of voters under 30 preferred a socialist system.
What to do, then, if you're part of the capitalist elite who hears the faint hoof beats of the proletariat from somewhere out in the distance? Well, invent a white working class icon like a Joe Plumber and get him over to Uncle Rupert to give him a forum for his rants on Fox News. Poor, underachieving, and angry Joe, so typical of those right wingers who rage in the streets, decried redistributionist economics and became hugely popular among latent racists looking for a pretext to slam Obama.
Then the tea teabaggers appeared, not out of nowhere, but through the monied mediation of the elite interests that so cringed at the same sound of the distant hoof beats. The elites sensed a creeping loss in the capitalist faith, so they had to put a brake on real populism. They spent millions to organize average citizens into a venomous street army that demonized any doctrine save laissez-faire capitalism.
The tea partiers achieved their masters' aims by making it seem wrong for people to expect basic economic justice. With carefree abandon, they misused terms like socialism, fascism. dictator, and even communism. Their bombast served to divert the proletariat's mind from the true makers of the current crisis, those who would make war and money without end.
Later, Rupert Murdoch set Fox News after Acorn. Crippling Acorn's funding sources would disempower about the only institution left that can organize the poorest of Americans for their political or economic betterment. The threat of real political power in the hands of the poor when the economic system is trembling is something that Murdoch and his elite can not tolerate.
If Obama had addressed the concerns of these disgruntled folks by using his oratorical skills to put a national spotlight on where the blame belonged, then perhaps some of the unfocussed rage could have been harnessed by a true populist movement. But, Obama allowed the progressive groups that got him elected to wither through neglect, as he knew that cultivating their power after they had served his electoral purpose could check him from becoming the corporate and military headmaster that he probably planned to be all along. For that reason, he has not forged a clear line of demarcation between the forces of greed and militarism that produced the national crises and the progressive ideology that could defeat faux populists and underline a new system of values and laws that would make people hope and work for a better day.
UNITY PROGRESS
This was an extra outstanding exposition that I was glad to organize into paragraphs and to which make a few grammatical corrections. I especially love this description of how and why the "tea partiers" (and Fox News) are just stooges for the rich and powerful. At one time it was the "Three Stooges", but now it's more like the 50 Million Stooges.
The above was in response to this article.
-----------------------
Comments are very appreciated. Comments are moderated but all comments will be approved except for those that do not belong on Unity-Progress. For example, comments that contain any commercial advertising and ones that contain objectionable hatred will not be approved. Many comments that appear will receive a return comment by Unity-Progress.
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Use this address for all communications, including requests for link exchange if you have a good economics or political site.
What Besides the Police Force Actually has Real Capabilities in Haiti?
Again, I repeat that Haitians, particularly the ones who have left Port-au-Prince, should use this opportunity to declare a new Haiti (with a new constitution). If they did this, things in New Haiti or North Haiti or whatever could not possibly be any worse than they have been until now: a gigantic slum overseen by a puppet, killer regime run by Washington and the international corporations and the international financial organizations.
As just one specific example where improvement can come (time for more is totally lacking at the moment) in the Preval dictatorship, how much money was provided for the Health Ministry? Almost nothing, assuming there was a truly functioning Health Ministry in existence at all. How about a Health Ministry in a New Haiti or a North Haiti that actually provides real assistance to people?
Why is it that the only Haitian Government operation up and running to any degree a week or so after the quake was the police force? You may already know the answer: the Preval government was nothing more than a stooge for the US and the corporations and was clearly an enemy of the people of Haiti.
The above is in response to this article.
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Comments are very appreciated. Comments are moderated but all comments will be approved except for those that do not belong on Unity-Progress. For example, comments that contain any commercial advertising and ones that contain objectionable hatred will not be approved. Many comments that appear will receive a return comment by Unity-Progress.
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Use this address for all communications, including requests for link exchange if you have a good economics or political site.
As just one specific example where improvement can come (time for more is totally lacking at the moment) in the Preval dictatorship, how much money was provided for the Health Ministry? Almost nothing, assuming there was a truly functioning Health Ministry in existence at all. How about a Health Ministry in a New Haiti or a North Haiti that actually provides real assistance to people?
Why is it that the only Haitian Government operation up and running to any degree a week or so after the quake was the police force? You may already know the answer: the Preval government was nothing more than a stooge for the US and the corporations and was clearly an enemy of the people of Haiti.
The above is in response to this article.
-----------------------
Comments are very appreciated. Comments are moderated but all comments will be approved except for those that do not belong on Unity-Progress. For example, comments that contain any commercial advertising and ones that contain objectionable hatred will not be approved. Many comments that appear will receive a return comment by Unity-Progress.
The email address for Unity-Progress is
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More on Obama's Mistakes
I agree with most of this article (see link below) except that I would point out that the health care mess is one of the reasons why the US will not be creating all that many jobs for the foreseeable future. Health care costs have gone off the deep end, to the point where they are harming the economy in general and job creation in particular. Of course, since Obama and the Democrats failed to actually come up with cost reductions in their failed legislation, the fact that they spent a lot of time on health in 2009 was meaningless instead of smart.
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A Doctor of Philosophy Reads Obama the Riot Act
I agree with this great summary of Obama (see link below), who is either a complete fraud or one of the most incompetent Presidents in the history of the US. In a parliamentary system he would be gone by the end of 2010 at the latest.
Anyone who ever again votes for a Democrat or a Republican is part of the problem. If you can't vote for someone who is neither a Democrat nor a Republican, would you at least stay home to avoid making a bad situation worse and to avoid making a fool of yourself?
The above was in response to this article where Doctor of Philosophy Drew Westen reads President Obama the Riot Act.
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Anyone who ever again votes for a Democrat or a Republican is part of the problem. If you can't vote for someone who is neither a Democrat nor a Republican, would you at least stay home to avoid making a bad situation worse and to avoid making a fool of yourself?
The above was in response to this article where Doctor of Philosophy Drew Westen reads President Obama the Riot Act.
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Tuesday, January 19, 2010
The Future of Haiti
For anyone thinking that Haiti will be made better than before by being developed by the international corporations of the global economic system (and this would include Bill Clinton and Barack Obama) I am afraid that this is simply not going to happen.
Some have pointed out that the Dominican Republic is much better off than Haiti, so they have asked: "Why can't Haiti develop exactly like the D.R. has?" First, it should be noted that the Dominican Republic outside of Santo Domingo, Santiago and a small number of other towns is only marginally less poor than Haiti. The international corporations have preferred to invest (sweatshops and tourism mostly) in Santo Domingo and a few other select spots in D.R. because the D.R. has been much more politically stable than Haiti, and secondarily in some cases for racist reasons. Obviously, in the aftermath of the catastrophe, those corporations are not going to be suddenly more willing to "take a political risk with Haiti." They will be less willing if anything.
When the corporations and the US government make an already volatile Haiti worse by doing such things as demanding the dismantling of tariffs, by then dumping food on a lush tropical country that does not need to import food, and by overthrowing Aristide, and so forth, the resulting economic and political damage serves to intimidate all but the most fearless corporations and small investors from investing in Haiti.
For those who want to invest in a black Caribbean country, Jamaica has been overwhelmingly favored over Haiti, mainly because Jamaica has stubbornly resisted total dismantling of its government and total control by the US and by international corporations. Thus, when people think of going on vacation in an exotic Caribbean country, far, far more think of Jamaica (or Puerto Rico or Dominican Republic) than Haiti. To be blunt, although Haiti might be able to draw more tourists than it has in the past, it will not be able to effectively compete with those established tourist destinations.
The bottom line is that just as some workers in the US end up unemployed indefinitely due to the global economy, some countries indefinitely end up with the short end of the stick in terms of international investment. Obviously, there are many other countries besides Haiti that the international corporations are not rushing into to invest in. In case you have not noticed, not a few people and countries are ruined by this picking and choosing aspect of right wing economics.
So Haiti will have to develop without private international investment even more so than up until now. But Haiti can only do so effectively and efficiently with a non-right wing government that is not subservient to the United States. If they maintain the US dominated government, they will remain at least as dirt poor as up until now.
If this were 200, 100 or even 60 years ago, it would be all but certain or at least quite likely that the Preval government would fall completely, or that at least it would be effectively limited to Port-au-Prince and vicinity, and a new Haitian government based in the north of the country would form. The new government would simply disavow all debts and most other contracts made with foreign entities.
However, since this kind of response is inhibited indirectly by the current global power structure and by certain other features of modern life, it is simply unknown at this time what will happen politically in Haiti. Suffice it to say that Haiti is in uncharted waters in more ways than one.
For a detailed spreadsheet which shows foreign direct investment by country and by year, click here.
The above is in response to this article.
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Some have pointed out that the Dominican Republic is much better off than Haiti, so they have asked: "Why can't Haiti develop exactly like the D.R. has?" First, it should be noted that the Dominican Republic outside of Santo Domingo, Santiago and a small number of other towns is only marginally less poor than Haiti. The international corporations have preferred to invest (sweatshops and tourism mostly) in Santo Domingo and a few other select spots in D.R. because the D.R. has been much more politically stable than Haiti, and secondarily in some cases for racist reasons. Obviously, in the aftermath of the catastrophe, those corporations are not going to be suddenly more willing to "take a political risk with Haiti." They will be less willing if anything.
When the corporations and the US government make an already volatile Haiti worse by doing such things as demanding the dismantling of tariffs, by then dumping food on a lush tropical country that does not need to import food, and by overthrowing Aristide, and so forth, the resulting economic and political damage serves to intimidate all but the most fearless corporations and small investors from investing in Haiti.
For those who want to invest in a black Caribbean country, Jamaica has been overwhelmingly favored over Haiti, mainly because Jamaica has stubbornly resisted total dismantling of its government and total control by the US and by international corporations. Thus, when people think of going on vacation in an exotic Caribbean country, far, far more think of Jamaica (or Puerto Rico or Dominican Republic) than Haiti. To be blunt, although Haiti might be able to draw more tourists than it has in the past, it will not be able to effectively compete with those established tourist destinations.
The bottom line is that just as some workers in the US end up unemployed indefinitely due to the global economy, some countries indefinitely end up with the short end of the stick in terms of international investment. Obviously, there are many other countries besides Haiti that the international corporations are not rushing into to invest in. In case you have not noticed, not a few people and countries are ruined by this picking and choosing aspect of right wing economics.
So Haiti will have to develop without private international investment even more so than up until now. But Haiti can only do so effectively and efficiently with a non-right wing government that is not subservient to the United States. If they maintain the US dominated government, they will remain at least as dirt poor as up until now.
If this were 200, 100 or even 60 years ago, it would be all but certain or at least quite likely that the Preval government would fall completely, or that at least it would be effectively limited to Port-au-Prince and vicinity, and a new Haitian government based in the north of the country would form. The new government would simply disavow all debts and most other contracts made with foreign entities.
However, since this kind of response is inhibited indirectly by the current global power structure and by certain other features of modern life, it is simply unknown at this time what will happen politically in Haiti. Suffice it to say that Haiti is in uncharted waters in more ways than one.
For a detailed spreadsheet which shows foreign direct investment by country and by year, click here.
The above is in response to this article.
----------------------
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Why and how Creation of a Viable Third Party Needs to be in the Mix
GUEST COMMENT
UNITY PROGRESS
To add to what I said earlier, non-right people can do both things at once: they can fight to retake the Democratic Party from the conservatives as you call them and they can help create a new party. There is no law you can't have allegiance to two parties at once. You don't know for sure that a new party is going to be viable until actual elections start taking place.
Then, after it is determined whether the new party is viable or not, each person can decide whether to remain in the Democratic Party or switch.
Even in the US system which is inflexible and biased in favor of the majority party, there would obviously be substantial beneficial effects from the interplay between the two parties. The new party would at least presumably prevent the Democrats from again making the blunder they made in 2009: thinking they could settle all the time for laws that make the rich even richer and the poor even poorer.
As the NDP party shows in Canada, even a party that never achieves top dog status has continuing, substantial, and beneficial influence on laws and on the economy and so forth. The other two political parties in Canada are always wary of having the NDP call them out if they go too far against ordinary Canadians. They think of the NDP as a dangerous dog that you don't want to have chewing on your leg.
I'm not trying to be all high and mighty about the new party thing at all; we can and must all work together to stop the right wingers from continuing to bring everything to ruination: die hard Democrats, Greens, independents, new party enthusiasts, everyone. If we just agree that we will work together and become unified then the institutional and political stuff will work itself out automatically as time goes by. If we don't agree to unify then we will continue to flounder and continue to be considered inconsequential by the powers that be.
GUEST COMMENT
UNITY PROGRESS
My party doesn't exist in the US and that is the problem. I want my party to be created and I know for a fact that it could be created and be viable from the get go if it was done right. The Democrats are way too far to the right for me, even though I am in the mainstream by European and other standards. In Europe, I would (and I am more or less guessing because it's impossible to imagine exactly what my positions would be if I was in a much different political landscape) be regarded as basically left in economics but with odd Canadian and American-type overlays.
If you want to fight for the Democrats go for it; I gave up on that a long time ago. I've seen polling showing that about 25% of Democrats are voting for Brown because Obama and the Democrats have provided them with nothing but fear that things will get even worse. Roughly 75% of independents are apparently voting for Brown versus 25% for Coakley.
GUEST COMMENT
The above was in response to this article.
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ezeflyer January 19th, 2010 8:16 pm
"This whole episode proves beyond any shadow of a doubt that the Democrats need to be replaced by a new party."
What do you do when somebody comes and takes over your house, your family, your belongings and your dog? Do you abandon them or do you fight to get them back?
Why then would you abandon your party when conservatives come and take it over?
UNITY PROGRESS
To add to what I said earlier, non-right people can do both things at once: they can fight to retake the Democratic Party from the conservatives as you call them and they can help create a new party. There is no law you can't have allegiance to two parties at once. You don't know for sure that a new party is going to be viable until actual elections start taking place.
Then, after it is determined whether the new party is viable or not, each person can decide whether to remain in the Democratic Party or switch.
Even in the US system which is inflexible and biased in favor of the majority party, there would obviously be substantial beneficial effects from the interplay between the two parties. The new party would at least presumably prevent the Democrats from again making the blunder they made in 2009: thinking they could settle all the time for laws that make the rich even richer and the poor even poorer.
As the NDP party shows in Canada, even a party that never achieves top dog status has continuing, substantial, and beneficial influence on laws and on the economy and so forth. The other two political parties in Canada are always wary of having the NDP call them out if they go too far against ordinary Canadians. They think of the NDP as a dangerous dog that you don't want to have chewing on your leg.
I'm not trying to be all high and mighty about the new party thing at all; we can and must all work together to stop the right wingers from continuing to bring everything to ruination: die hard Democrats, Greens, independents, new party enthusiasts, everyone. If we just agree that we will work together and become unified then the institutional and political stuff will work itself out automatically as time goes by. If we don't agree to unify then we will continue to flounder and continue to be considered inconsequential by the powers that be.
GUEST COMMENT
Naturally January 20th, 2010 5:09 am
I'm to the Left of both parties, and I'm with a solid majority of Americans.
That's the realization I think we must all come to.
According to polls, solid majorities want to get out of both Iraq and Afghanistan, reduce military spending, roll back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, implement single-payer health care, and protect the environment at all costs. Neither the Democratic nor the Republican party wants any of these things.
Corporate media imposes a near black-out of the majority opinion on all these issues. They pretend the Left/Majority doesn't exist. Instead, they say that those unaffiliated-with-either-party independents are "centrists," for whom the Republicans are too far right, and Democrats are too far left. That's crap.
Case in point, they are now painting the Democratic loss in Massachusetts as a sea change for the Republicans. No, media monkeys, the Democrats lost because the Left/Majority had no one to vote for, so many of them didn't vote. Others held their noses and voted for the Republican specifically to kill Obama's health deform.
So, yes, there's a natural constituency for a progressive-populist party, and there should be such a party. We should be voting for progressive populists (whether they call themselves Independents, Greens or something else) whenever there's "not a dime's worth of difference" between Dem and Repub candidates. (I voted for Ralph Nader the last three times, and if a few more of us had done so we would have a solid voting block pulling Obama and the corporate Dems to the Left today.)
UNITY PROGRESS
My party doesn't exist in the US and that is the problem. I want my party to be created and I know for a fact that it could be created and be viable from the get go if it was done right. The Democrats are way too far to the right for me, even though I am in the mainstream by European and other standards. In Europe, I would (and I am more or less guessing because it's impossible to imagine exactly what my positions would be if I was in a much different political landscape) be regarded as basically left in economics but with odd Canadian and American-type overlays.
If you want to fight for the Democrats go for it; I gave up on that a long time ago. I've seen polling showing that about 25% of Democrats are voting for Brown because Obama and the Democrats have provided them with nothing but fear that things will get even worse. Roughly 75% of independents are apparently voting for Brown versus 25% for Coakley.
GUEST COMMENT
independentminded January 19th, 2010 10:46 pm
Bill Maher said that there are presently two political parties here in the United States:
The Conservative Party and the Batsh*t Insane Party.
He's right, imho.
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Progressive Blues: An Endless Flow of Rosy Scenarios that Never Come True
[NOTE: This was written on January 19, just before the returns form the Massachusetts special senate election came in.]
No offense, Jane Hamsher, and I love your site, but don't you and your most popular bloggers ever get tired of coming up with rosy scenarios, none of which ever play out? I mean, get real. And you have been doing this over and over and over again, as the proposals actually on the table have become more and more worse than doing nothing.
Again, no offense, but the scenario in this article seems totally ridiculous to me. It seems to me that the Democrats already fired every bit of deal making ammunition they have just to get the razor thin margins they needed to arrive at the present proposals. They can't do your scenario unless every single one of the legislators who swore they would draw the line somewhere decide to renege on whatever issue they said they would draw the line on: public option, abortion, excise tax, subsidies, what have you.
That despite Obama's chronic right wing proclivities, despite his base-abandoning approach, and despite his general political incompetence the health deform the right wing Democrats really want has gotten as close as it has to passing is a small miracle for them.
It will also be a small miracle for the Democrats if their health insurance deform is lost due to the Republicans' capture of the Kennedy seat, because starting over with a ground up, piece by piece approach is now the only thing the Democrats can do to cut their November losses, which at the moment look to be massive.
This whole episode proves beyond any shadow of a doubt that the Democrats need to be replaced by a new party. Now I'm off to watch the Massachusetts returns live, with the side benefit that I can get my mind off Haiti for a while. The main benefit is that I get to see my warnings about Obama being way too far to the right that started many months ago validated.
GUEST COMMENT
Among dozens of things he should do, firing Rahm Emanuel and any similar advisors would be a wonderful start for President Obama. Emanuel has been proven to be completely and totally wrong about present day politics.
GUEST COMMENT
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No offense, Jane Hamsher, and I love your site, but don't you and your most popular bloggers ever get tired of coming up with rosy scenarios, none of which ever play out? I mean, get real. And you have been doing this over and over and over again, as the proposals actually on the table have become more and more worse than doing nothing.
Again, no offense, but the scenario in this article seems totally ridiculous to me. It seems to me that the Democrats already fired every bit of deal making ammunition they have just to get the razor thin margins they needed to arrive at the present proposals. They can't do your scenario unless every single one of the legislators who swore they would draw the line somewhere decide to renege on whatever issue they said they would draw the line on: public option, abortion, excise tax, subsidies, what have you.
That despite Obama's chronic right wing proclivities, despite his base-abandoning approach, and despite his general political incompetence the health deform the right wing Democrats really want has gotten as close as it has to passing is a small miracle for them.
It will also be a small miracle for the Democrats if their health insurance deform is lost due to the Republicans' capture of the Kennedy seat, because starting over with a ground up, piece by piece approach is now the only thing the Democrats can do to cut their November losses, which at the moment look to be massive.
This whole episode proves beyond any shadow of a doubt that the Democrats need to be replaced by a new party. Now I'm off to watch the Massachusetts returns live, with the side benefit that I can get my mind off Haiti for a while. The main benefit is that I get to see my warnings about Obama being way too far to the right that started many months ago validated.
GUEST COMMENT
aremagen January 19th, 2010 10:40 pmUNITY PROGRESS
I notice the same "apologist" attitude at FDL. I just left their site and "Scarecrow" earlier this afternoon said it was a "no-brainer" voting for Coakley. Really?
It would be better to vote for someone who will vote for a deformed bill which many on FDL have consistently agreed is a bad bill?
It would be better to stay the course on issues that so many many Democrats and Independents reject?
The "no-brainer" was that this turned out to be an excellent opportunity for Democrats and Independents to do what has been needed for a long time. To fire a shot not across the bow but into the bow.
I eagerly await Captain Obama's much anticipated assessment of damage to his bi-partisan ship.
Among dozens of things he should do, firing Rahm Emanuel and any similar advisors would be a wonderful start for President Obama. Emanuel has been proven to be completely and totally wrong about present day politics.
GUEST COMMENT
aremagen January 19th, 2010 11:39 pmThe above was in response to this article.
Unfortunately, Emanuel does the work of Obama's contributors while "the great impostor" himself remains under a cloak created by the same Madison Ave. that sells us deodorants that makes us smell nice if we vote for their candidate.
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Far Right Haitian Government is Irrelevant and Helpless After the big Quake
Thousands more are dying long after the quake due to untreated injuries and infections.
After the quake struck the fact that the Haitian government was nothing more than a paper tiger puppet of the US and of the international corporations was exposed more than before. This government was the enemy of the poor prior to the quake, which means it was the enemy of the great majority of the population.
So is it any wonder that the Haitian government is unable to coordinate assistance for the poor after the earthquake? Short of waving a magic wand and creating ministries and/or public agencies that have real capabilities out of thin air, there was no way the far right Haitian government was ever going to be able to coordinate much of anything other than police brutality.
He who lives by the sword dies by the sword.
The above was in response to this article.
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After the quake struck the fact that the Haitian government was nothing more than a paper tiger puppet of the US and of the international corporations was exposed more than before. This government was the enemy of the poor prior to the quake, which means it was the enemy of the great majority of the population.
So is it any wonder that the Haitian government is unable to coordinate assistance for the poor after the earthquake? Short of waving a magic wand and creating ministries and/or public agencies that have real capabilities out of thin air, there was no way the far right Haitian government was ever going to be able to coordinate much of anything other than police brutality.
He who lives by the sword dies by the sword.
The above was in response to this article.
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Monday, January 18, 2010
Haiti: Our Hearts Have Broken for you and we Wish you Sweet Victory
Free in spirit Haitians, here is your assignment should you choose wisely, proudly, and courageously to accept it:
1. Leave Port-au-Prince and what was pre-earthquake already a dead end economy run by right wing, greedy foreigners and a few local uber rich oligarchs.
2. Stand up a new government in North Haiti with Aristide's party or a brand new party.
3. Declare independence for "New Haiti," make plans for a constitution to be established by the end of 2010.
4. All foreign debts and contracts are cancelled.
5. New Haiti shall be a non-right wing country free of international domination.
A boy can dream, especially since #1 has already come to pass. Haitians are responding to Bill and Hillary Clinton's promises of aid and a better Haiti for all by leaving Port-au-Prince, an obvious and deserved embarrassment for the former President and his wife.
Any American who in the 1990's decided to leave America rather than stay for the aftermath of Clinton's orgy of program cuts and subservience to globalism is today considered to be a genius. I, for one, am hoping that the Haitians leaving Port-au-Prince today will eventually be considered to be geniuses.
Our hearts have broken for you and we wish you sweet victory.
The above was in response to this article.
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1. Leave Port-au-Prince and what was pre-earthquake already a dead end economy run by right wing, greedy foreigners and a few local uber rich oligarchs.
2. Stand up a new government in North Haiti with Aristide's party or a brand new party.
3. Declare independence for "New Haiti," make plans for a constitution to be established by the end of 2010.
4. All foreign debts and contracts are cancelled.
5. New Haiti shall be a non-right wing country free of international domination.
A boy can dream, especially since #1 has already come to pass. Haitians are responding to Bill and Hillary Clinton's promises of aid and a better Haiti for all by leaving Port-au-Prince, an obvious and deserved embarrassment for the former President and his wife.
Any American who in the 1990's decided to leave America rather than stay for the aftermath of Clinton's orgy of program cuts and subservience to globalism is today considered to be a genius. I, for one, am hoping that the Haitians leaving Port-au-Prince today will eventually be considered to be geniuses.
Our hearts have broken for you and we wish you sweet victory.
The above was in response to this article.
-----------------------
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Sunday, January 17, 2010
An Unauthorized Discussion Four Days Before Ted Kennedy's Seat was Lost
[NOTE: The following was written on January 15, four days before the Massachusetts special senate election.]
UNITY PROGRESS
You never know, stranger things have happened. A better bill and system would eventually result if the Democrat loses this Mass. race. Both parties are corrupt failures that are now generally doing more harm than good.
GUEST COMMENT ONE
GUEST COMMENT TWO
UNITY PROGRESS
It is the ultimate regressive tax, probably never before seen in the World outside of slavery and quasi slavery contexts.
The above discussion was in response to this article.
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UNITY PROGRESS
You never know, stranger things have happened. A better bill and system would eventually result if the Democrat loses this Mass. race. Both parties are corrupt failures that are now generally doing more harm than good.
GUEST COMMENT ONE
Pitch Fork January 15th, 2010 2:36 pm
Exactly. Even the title of this article denies reality: Massachusetts Vote Could Threaten Health Reform
How could a vote threaten what the Obama Party has already killed? There is no healthCARE (title couldn't decide to use insurance or care so they left it out all together) reform. No more than there is banking reform, but rather an institutionalization of bailouts. There has certainly been no reform of World War Permanent, as there has been no reform of spying, torture, elections, or of the Washington-K Street looting spree in even any minor detail. Nada reform to be seen anywhere.
I will pay the 2% tax, which won't amount to much based on income - since I make waaay less than $250K a year O'Promises, promises, and continue to live without health insurance. Thanks for the hope, change, I could believe in and so on and so forth.
GUEST COMMENT TWO
charlesthegreen January 15th, 2010 3:03 pm
Don't Pay the Tax.
Don't buy the insurance, don't pay the penalty. Make them collect it.
Mass Resistance!
You point out another grim reality: the "Mandate" is really a surtax FOR BEING TOO POOR TO BUY MEDICAL INSURANCE, because the penalty is less than the cost of the insurance. Talk about a stab in the back!
UNITY PROGRESS
It is the ultimate regressive tax, probably never before seen in the World outside of slavery and quasi slavery contexts.
The above discussion was in response to this article.
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Why the Democrats may Actually be even Worse than the Republicans
[NOTE: The following was written on January 17, which was two days before the Massachusetts special senate election.]
This senate race in Massachusetts is a scrap between two right wing parties. You have on the one side the Republicans, an ultra right fundamentalist party which truly worships the free market and which wants to maintain right wing economics at all costs, except that since they have demonized the government for decades, they can not fully accept the idea of using the government to implement right wing policies and can not accept the idea at all when it's the Democrats doing the implementing.
On the other side you have the Democrats, who became a true right wing party during the 1980's, which started with Jimmy Carter losing reelection to Ronald Reagan in 1980 and was marked also by Mondale being demolished by Reagan in 1984. The Democrats, who after Mondale's loss became a full scale corporatist, right wing party, today want to implement right wing policies (or at least a mixture of right wing and center-right policies) partly by using the power of government, which means of course that they are flirting with fascism.
Since both parties fundamentally agree that the rich should get richer even if the poor and the middle class have to get poorer as a result, the scrap in Massachusetts is fundamentally about which techniques to use for implementing and maintaining a right wing economy, one that makes the rich richer and the poor poorer for as far as the eye can see. But since the techniques themselves can sometimes seem to be end results, and since the techniques are in fact very different, an illusion is created among the general public that the argument is about results. But when all is said and done, both the Republicans and the Democrats want the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer, which mathematically means that both of them want the middle class to shrink.
So it is no surprise that Republicans and conservatives who speak of Democrats being "left wing" have, as is so often the case, completely missed the boat. The Democrats are not to my knowledge implementing or trying to implement a single solitary non-right policy that could be described as sweeping or national in scope.
Although there are a few progressive elements that should be passed by themselves, the health insurance laws the Democrats are promoting are, overall, right wing and regressive in character and in effect. It simply is absurd to say "there are a few good things" so we have to put up with the fact that on balance this new health insurance law will make the rich richer and the poor poorer, despite the fact the economy is already ruined due to the rich already being too rich and the poor already being too poor.
Not to mention that there will be more than 50 million without health insurance once again, by 2025 at the latest, even if this law is implemented. All the law does is buy about 15 years of lower uninsured numbers, a gain remarkably small compared with all the costs to achieve it.
Again, what is fooling the public and especially the conservatives is that the Democrats want to use mechanisms that are used in all modern, successful countries for implementing non-right policies to implement right wing policies. Thus, the Democrats are guilty of using powers that are supposed to be used for progressive ends for ultimate objectives that are very right wing indeed.
Requiring the purchase of private health insurance contracts without real cost control and without real regulation is the right wing policy in the bright lights at the moment, but the Democrats have been busy implementing other right wing policies while not being shy about using the powers of government to do so. For example, there are the endless subsidies and other rewards to huge banks, investment houses, and other huge corporations under the guise that those beneficiaries of taxpayer money are too big to fail. (News flash: most non-right people are not opposed to even large private companies going bankrupt when they ruin the economy on a greed binge.) There is also the continued support by Democrats for privatized utilities, schools, media outlets, and more.
In case it isn’t already obvious, I say unequivocally that using the government for implementing right wing policies and for achieving right wing objectives is even worse than going for those objectives while mostly refraining from using the powers of government to insure them. If I lived in Mass. and I was forced to vote for one of the two main parties, I'd vote for Brown on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, non-right people don't really have a dog in this fight; we can only look on as outsiders. The best hope for the non-right at the moment is that gridlock be established between the two right wing parties. Then maybe the non-right can get serious about getting a marketable party going and winning some federal elections.
The above was in response to this article.
-----------------------
Comments are very appreciated. Comments are moderated but all comments will be approved except for those that do not belong on Unity-Progress. For example, comments that contain any commercial advertising and ones that contain objectionable hatred will not be approved. Many comments that appear will receive a return comment by Unity-Progress.
The email address for Unity-Progress is
unity.progress.mail at gmail.
Use this address for all communications, including requests for link exchange if you have a good economics or political site.
This senate race in Massachusetts is a scrap between two right wing parties. You have on the one side the Republicans, an ultra right fundamentalist party which truly worships the free market and which wants to maintain right wing economics at all costs, except that since they have demonized the government for decades, they can not fully accept the idea of using the government to implement right wing policies and can not accept the idea at all when it's the Democrats doing the implementing.
On the other side you have the Democrats, who became a true right wing party during the 1980's, which started with Jimmy Carter losing reelection to Ronald Reagan in 1980 and was marked also by Mondale being demolished by Reagan in 1984. The Democrats, who after Mondale's loss became a full scale corporatist, right wing party, today want to implement right wing policies (or at least a mixture of right wing and center-right policies) partly by using the power of government, which means of course that they are flirting with fascism.
Since both parties fundamentally agree that the rich should get richer even if the poor and the middle class have to get poorer as a result, the scrap in Massachusetts is fundamentally about which techniques to use for implementing and maintaining a right wing economy, one that makes the rich richer and the poor poorer for as far as the eye can see. But since the techniques themselves can sometimes seem to be end results, and since the techniques are in fact very different, an illusion is created among the general public that the argument is about results. But when all is said and done, both the Republicans and the Democrats want the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer, which mathematically means that both of them want the middle class to shrink.
So it is no surprise that Republicans and conservatives who speak of Democrats being "left wing" have, as is so often the case, completely missed the boat. The Democrats are not to my knowledge implementing or trying to implement a single solitary non-right policy that could be described as sweeping or national in scope.
Although there are a few progressive elements that should be passed by themselves, the health insurance laws the Democrats are promoting are, overall, right wing and regressive in character and in effect. It simply is absurd to say "there are a few good things" so we have to put up with the fact that on balance this new health insurance law will make the rich richer and the poor poorer, despite the fact the economy is already ruined due to the rich already being too rich and the poor already being too poor.
Not to mention that there will be more than 50 million without health insurance once again, by 2025 at the latest, even if this law is implemented. All the law does is buy about 15 years of lower uninsured numbers, a gain remarkably small compared with all the costs to achieve it.
Again, what is fooling the public and especially the conservatives is that the Democrats want to use mechanisms that are used in all modern, successful countries for implementing non-right policies to implement right wing policies. Thus, the Democrats are guilty of using powers that are supposed to be used for progressive ends for ultimate objectives that are very right wing indeed.
Requiring the purchase of private health insurance contracts without real cost control and without real regulation is the right wing policy in the bright lights at the moment, but the Democrats have been busy implementing other right wing policies while not being shy about using the powers of government to do so. For example, there are the endless subsidies and other rewards to huge banks, investment houses, and other huge corporations under the guise that those beneficiaries of taxpayer money are too big to fail. (News flash: most non-right people are not opposed to even large private companies going bankrupt when they ruin the economy on a greed binge.) There is also the continued support by Democrats for privatized utilities, schools, media outlets, and more.
In case it isn’t already obvious, I say unequivocally that using the government for implementing right wing policies and for achieving right wing objectives is even worse than going for those objectives while mostly refraining from using the powers of government to insure them. If I lived in Mass. and I was forced to vote for one of the two main parties, I'd vote for Brown on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, non-right people don't really have a dog in this fight; we can only look on as outsiders. The best hope for the non-right at the moment is that gridlock be established between the two right wing parties. Then maybe the non-right can get serious about getting a marketable party going and winning some federal elections.
The above was in response to this article.
-----------------------
Comments are very appreciated. Comments are moderated but all comments will be approved except for those that do not belong on Unity-Progress. For example, comments that contain any commercial advertising and ones that contain objectionable hatred will not be approved. Many comments that appear will receive a return comment by Unity-Progress.
The email address for Unity-Progress is
unity.progress.mail at gmail.
Use this address for all communications, including requests for link exchange if you have a good economics or political site.
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