Fake and Real Progressives: Only Those who vote "No" on the Health Insurance "Reform" are Doing Their Progressive Duty to Protect the Jobs and Resources of the "Common People"

It is Dennis Kucinich who is right in his no vote and it is all the other "progressives" who are planning to violate their pledge and vote yes who are wrong. The other progressives swore more than once that they would not vote for a right wing health insurance bill with no public option. Now, we will apparently soon see that they are liars. I honestly don't care if the turncoats lose their seats to right wingers after voting for laws that will do almost nothing in the short run other than collect some new taxes and impose some Medicare cutbacks, do at least as much bad as good in the medium term, and most definitely do more harm than good in the longer term (15 years and more).

In fact, it would be nice to see every single one who votes in favor of the enhanced looting by the health insurance companies that these proposals will enable be defeated. This would clear the decks and pave the way for a new center-left party in the US.

In a new American center-left party, everyone except the loonies who think that a government can not do anything at all well will be welcome so that the numbers are adequate to actually win a lot of Senate and House seats. This center-left American party would favor more libertarian and less bureaucratic solutions to solve problems than do center-left parties elsewhere, simply because Americans favor these approaches by fairly wide margins.

Actually, some government bureaucracy is actually a good thing, but Americans have been brainwashed into thinking that any bureaucracy is bad, thus the need to minimize it. But the era of government not being able to do anything good has got to come to an end: that madness has to end. In other words, America needs a party that will create government operations that are stripped down to the barest essentials but will nevertheless accomplish important objectives that the private sector can not or will not achieve. Although unusually simple and basic approaches will be favored, I repeat for emphasis that anyone who thinks that governments can not do anything at all well will not have a place in the new party.

But let us return to health insurance. The looting victims of the health insurance mandate, if it passes, will of course be lower but not extremely low income citizens who can not really afford health insurance even with the planned subsidies, especially when the total cost is figured, which includes most or all of: premiums, deductibles, co pays, prescription drugs, and uncovered items of various types including vision and dental care.

The "liberal principals" involved, as wonderful as they are (most notably that there is a "right" to health care) are not the only reasons why a true progressive must vote no on the health insurance laws that the obsessed and misguided Democrats are doing somersaults on the lawn to try to pass. It is also that the health insurance subsidies are going to further damage the economy at a time when it is teetering on the brink of catastrophe. Americans do not seem to understand (as most Europeans do due to a rougher and much longer economic history) that no matter how bad an economy is, it can always get worse. Single payer, as all the reputable countries have realized, is an economic necessity, not a social luxury.

True progressives do not take gambles with the economy when there is already a 25-30 million jobs deficit. (There has been no increase in the number of jobs for about 11 years and a reasonable rate of growth requires at least 2,500,000 jobs per year.) Rather, true progressives are supposed to support the availability of jobs for those who need them over and above everything else.

But these new laws, if passed, will not lower total health costs for businesses or individuals. Any reduction in health inflation will be minimal at best, trivial at worse, and will be ridiculously small compared with how much real, no pretending, and no wishful thinking cost containment is really needed for the US. Unless single payer is adopted, health costs will remain excessively high and thus the severely depressing effects those costs have on job creation will continue.

It is logically and clearly true that progressives must support single payer and only single payer or they are not only voting for an inferior health system but they are also failing to help rescue the job market (with lower health costs) when that market is already partially collapsed.

Shame on anyone who supports subsidizing already well off physicians, health insurance companies, and so forth at the expense of job creation for those who have virtually no income.

Oh, and judging from his threatening of a primary challenge of Dennis Kucinich, Markos Moulitsas of the Daily Kos Internet site is a whiny fool and he is hardly a progressive. For one thing, Kucinich is just one of more than 400 Representatives who are split down the middle on the health insurance "reform". For another thing, Kucinich and those voting no are in the right and those voting yes are in the wrong.

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

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How big does the Jobs Deficit have to get Before There is a new Political Party in the US?

It's not true that "3rd parties" can not possibly succeed in the US. For example, the Republican Party was formed in 1854 and its standard bearer Abraham Lincoln became President a short time later in 1861.

There can also be a split of an existing party into two parties, both of which can be viable for some time after the split. This is technically how the Democratic Party formed about 1825.

Yes it is much more difficult for a viable (one that can win elections to the House and Senate) party to form in the US than elsewhere, but it is not impossible.

There has been no increase in gainful employment in the US for about 11 years, creating a job deficit relative to "normally functioning" advanced economies of about 25-30 million jobs.

Since both the current Republican Party and the current Democratic Party are too far to the right (and too much controlled by elites in huge corporations) to be able to support policies that will create jobs, "progressives" in the Democratic Party are doomed to be eventually exposed as totally irrelevant if there are few or no jobs indefinitely. To me and to many others here at Common Dreams, the "progressives" are already seen as irrelevant. Obama is worse than irrelevant. If the labor market collapse continues for a second decade or more, sooner or later the "progressives" in the Democratic Party will have two choices: form a new party or be defeated by fascists of various types.

Fascist voters don't like unemployment either if only because they don't want to support those who don't have a job. Fascists came to power in Germany due to economics in general and lack of enough gainful employment in particular (along with massive inflation).

If the progressives split from the Democrats when the job deficit reaches 50 million or whatever, the new party will obviously (a) promise jobs and (b) be instantly viable. If instead the progressives go down with their ship, a new party can and presumably will form from the ground up. Either way, if and when the point of total economic desperation arrives, the new party will instantly gain massive support from roughly 50 million or more people lacking jobs and another 100 million or many more who don't want to or simply can not support them anymore.

In other words, I doubt that even in the US it will ever get to the point that millions are starving in the streets and yet still there is no new party to address the economic wreckage that the Democratic and the Republican parties have caused.

Precisely because it is so difficult for a new party to be viable in the US you have no choice but to base it on economics rather than on a less popular concern such as the environment. It is no surprise that the Green Party concept works to some extent in parliamentary Germany but not in the more crude US system.

But yes, I do know that the environment is ultimately more important than the economy, please don't waste your time typing that.

Technically I am just speculating and the country’s economy could be destroyed beyond repair (creating the need for very extensive international intervention) but all of those possibilities are beyond the scope of this comment.

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