Mark Twain once said that "There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics." And in the case of Obamacare, Trumpcare and the Healthcare debate, all three kinds of lies are in play.
When the Affordable Care Act was enacted, it had no support from the GOP, even though the design came out of a GOP think tank. The GOP was so focused on making Obama a one term president, that it became an extremely polarized opposition to anything supported by Obama. And this included the beginnings of a national health care system based on free market principles, yet tempered by the realities of unequal wealth distribution and unequal health across subgroups of our nation's population.
I was surprised to find that a president and party would have spent so much political capital oh health care. And in retrospect, I am reminded of LBJ who noted that by standing up for civil rights, he was giving the "Old South" to the GOP. It seems like healthcare reform may symbolize something similar for Democrats, as the GOP has used Obamacare as a tool to rally the base.
Over the past few years, the Democratic party has been losing seats in both the House and the Senate. In 2016, the Democrats finally lost the presidency, which gave the GOP a chance to remake healthcare in ways that may reflect either an ideological purity or a pragmatic recognition of reality. Unfortunately, the first important draft at a reform bill will only serve to double the number of uninsured people, and give excessive tax cuts to the rich.
Designing reforms to a health insurance system is not something that can be done in days. It took the Democrats months to flesh out a plan, and then they had to pull out all stops (including bringing in a sickly Ted Kennedy to help break a filibuster) to get the bill passed. Even then, the bill was far from perfect - and was signed into law with known problems. The Obama administration figured that Healthcare reform was now in play, but repeal would be political suicide once the average citizen started to receive the benefits of this new entitlement.
President Trump promised that he would sign a repeal of Obamacare the day he took office. It's been roughly two months since he took office, and no repeal or replacement bill has been signed into law at the time I'm writing this entry. The GOP never thought that they would be in a position to fulfill its promises to repeal Obamacare, and now they are caught between keeping this promise and doing the right thing.
The GOP is saying lies of varying magnitudes in regard to the ACA. What they are not saying is that their lack of cooperation in congress and in their statehouses helped to cause major problems in the "Red States". Obamacare is in trouble in many of the Red States, as quite a few did not accept federal monies for Medicaid expansion. As a result, many people who could have gotten medical care were caught in a gap - between Medicaid eligibility and being able to afford healthcare. So they got screwed by their own leaders, just because of a political game that was being played.
In the "Blue States", we see a system that is relatively successful. Yes, there are problems. But people are accessing healthcare who could never have afforded it in the past. So, what's going to happen to them now that the GOP is in charge? Trump and the rest of the GOP do not want to look at the statistics regarding Obamacare. The Congressional Budget Office did predict a $370+ million savings due to the GOP's most recent health care reform bill. But it said that the number of uninsured would more than double. This means that the GOP will need to tell big lies to mollify its base - a base which is finally coming to terms with the Affordable Care Act, not realizing that it is one and the same as the dreaded "Obamacare".
There are Senators warning GOP house members that the current bill will be DOA if it reaches the Senate. Both the President and the Speaker of the House are saying that this bill is the only one that might pass muster in the House. Yet something more may be going on here. Could a bad bill be written up, making it possible for purists to say they voted for an acceptable bill that will never come to law - and please their constituents? Could a future bill be designed to "repeal" the ACA, but merely be a set of tweaks to make the existing law more palatable?
What is most telling is that TRUMP, a man who puts his name on everything, boils red when he hears the phrase "Trumpcare". He doesn't want his name associated with a GOP suicide pact. And yet, that's what seems to be happening right now - GOP Congressmen and Senators are avoiding their constituents in order not to address their fears of losing affordable health care. Does this mean that because of ideological concerns that the GOP may commit political suicide? Who knows?
The other night, Bernie Sanders held a town hall in "Trump Territory". And it is amazing how he addressed the concerns of West Virginia voters better than that of their own leaders. In fact, one person there said that he was amazed that Sanders was looking out for retired coal miners more than Mitch McConnell, a Senator from a nearby coal mining state. What does this say about our 2 party system? To me, it says that if a party ignores the concerns of people who are minorities in the party, it will lose the votes to the other party - even if the only things given are lip service and lies, as the GOP has done for years.
Even in a state that bleeds red, the ACA has shown to be useful. It made sure that coal miners suffering from Black Lung disease got the benefit of the doubt when claiming benefits - something that would be lost in an ACA repeal. People in Trump Country see this, and do not want the ACA repealed - they want it fixed. Even so, our VP went to Kentucky and talked about all of Obamacare's failures - even when the little guy is starting to see the benefits of the law. I can only imagine what would happen to the GOP if more people started seeing the lies for what they are - mistaken tribal and ideological opposition to a "lesser of evils" law.
In the major Western nations, there is no country which has free market health care - not even us. In a free market, people would die if they were taken to the hospital without money or insurance coverage. Out of humanity, we require hospitals to treat all people regardless of ability to pay, and then those hospitals shift their unreimbursed costs to those least able to pay "rack rate" for medical care. And yet, the GOP keeps arguing that a free market can work with health care when there are no examples in the world of a free market working for health care. What lies will they tell to bamboozle their base to convince them that a return to healthcare's past is what is needed in a "reform" effort?
Luckily, there are a few GOP Congressmen and Senators willing to buck party ideology and demand that a replacement bill actually be better than the system we have now. It's not important that they dress up their verbiage in fantasy talk or pragmatic statements. Instead, it's important that they are realizing that if the GOP breaks Obamacare without having a better Trumpcare ready to roll, then the GOP could lose both houses in the next election, and possibly start losing the statehouses as well.
I predict that we will hear a lot of misinformation spouted over the next few weeks while ACA repeal is being discussed. Luckily, the Democrats still have the ability to filibuster many bills that come through the Senate, and have an effective veto that can be used for most half-assed attempts to repeal the ACA. Hopefully, the Democrats will use what little power they have left in both a wise and effective manner. And I hope that in the middle of this political game being played, that people lose the ability to purchase healthcare that they once enjoyed under the ACA.
With the 2016 election cycle, we may be seeing a seismic change in American politics as we know it. America saw it happen on the brink of the Civil War, when the Whig party collapsed, and the Republicans took their place. In 1912, something similar almost happened, where the Reform (better known as "Bull Moose" party) under Teddy Roosevelt had a shot at disrupting the two party system. And now, we had two major disruptors in the name of Trump and Sanders who almost emasculated the power of the political elites to control elections.
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Over the past 50 years or so, we've seen great cultural change. Bill Maher commented "If you liked the 50's, you're a Republican. If you liked the 60's, you're a Democrat." In so many ways it is true - the cultural divide we have now comes from the conflict from that era. If you were a white male, the 1950's were the apex of White privilege in America. If you were a white male, you had virtually everything handed to you - as there were no challengers from other backgrounds, nor did any females pose a threat. People of color (Blacks, Latinos, Asians) had yet to demand political inclusion, and women were expected to be at home. This started to change with the protest movements of the 1960's, and the extension of civil rights to most people upset those who formerly held all the power in our society.
During LBJ's presidency (1963-1969), the Democratic party sowed the seeds that would cause it to lose the American South as a voting bloc. LBJ was forced to carry out JFK's promises (always meant to be hollow ones) to deliver civil rights to people of color and to women. This did not go well in the South. As a result, in the late 1960's / early 1970's, Richard Nixon developed a strategy to wrest the American South from the Democratic party. The "Party of Lincoln" sold its soul to gain these votes by putting every roadblock it could in the way of helping the groups LBJ helped, so urban dwellers who once voted for the GOP started to vote Democratic for the first time. This tendency continued through the presidency of Ronald Reagan, where the South and rural areas of the country became solidly Republican, while the North and urban areas of the country became solidly Democrat.
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America became a culturally divided country from its beginning. Rural areas of any country tend to be the most conservative in nature. In the United States, this meant that few people took chances to unionize their work forces in these areas, unless the work had become extremely dangerous (such as mine work). For the most part, jobs were few, and people took work at whatever terms were offered by their employers. It was only one step above slavery, save that the mill owner did not have to care for his employees once fired. Contrast this with what happened in urban areas. Jobs were plenty, and employees had greater bargaining power. Unions formed both to provide better working conditions and to provide better pay. Corporate socialism evolved here, and prospered when America was the unchallenged economic power in the world.
With technological change, the globalization of world markets, and a greater concern for the environment, the old orders became threatened by pressures they could not control. As technology eliminated many jobs, nothing was done for the displaced workers. As competitors from abroad forced American manufacturing to cut costs, many American workers lost good jobs and had nothing to fall back on. And as we slowly learned to stop polluting our local environment, we put local workers out of work as we shipped dirty businesses to places where they didn't care about their people and their land. In short, the promises made by both business and government to the public at large were broken. The elites didn't care what happened to the common person, as long as they stayed in power.
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The rise of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders is an indication that the public is tired of an elite that makes promises every election cycle, and that never delivers on its promises. Trump lies in every speech that he is making, and his supporters don't give a damn. He appeals to these voters on a more primitive level of thought. The same might be said about Bernie Sanders, except that he is not peppering his speeches with falsehoods. Instead, Bernie told the truth as he saw it - America hasn't been run for the benefit of "the people" for years, and made both an intellectual and emotional appeal to his base. Bernie's supporters are young, and see that there is no way the elites can or will do anything for them. So they gave the system a vote of no confidence by supporting Bernie. In short, the insurgents from both extremes realized the same truth - it's time to replace the ruling elites.
Trump's nomination and Bernie's failure to be nominated pose a question that America has to answer. Do we want to overthrow the elites and deal with the risks of the amateurs being in charge? Or, do we want to allow them to stay in power (with a big warning) as long as they change their tune and start looking out for the people as a whole? This question gets complicated when rumors fly about Jeb Bush looking to support the Libertarian Party's candidate for the presidency. Could the GOP establishment be looking to flee their old party, clean up its mess, and find a path to becoming a center-right party again? If so, I see the old GOP becoming a populist party for a generation or two. And I would also see the Libertarians becoming like the GOP of the 1950's. Could this be a harbinger of a potential three-party system? Who knows? But I'm looking forward to the ascendancy of the Libertarians the the collapse of the GOP.
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If the Libertarians become a political force to be reckoned with, the democrats will face attacks on two fronts - one social, and the other, economic. In a way, this will be good for the Democratic party. It has been around almost since the founding of the republic, and it has been good at adapting to change. Will it adapt again? Who knows? But all I can say is that I think we're seeing a political shift like we haven't seen in 150 years....
Flint, Michigan. Not a place you'll hear mentioned in the "Pure Michigan" tourism spots. And it sickens me to hear that a Republican Governor who appointed Republican cronies to run a bankrupt city is still in office after poisoning the water of a city of 100,000 people by use of untreated Flint River water.
Would this disaster have happened if the people affected were rich and white? Probably not. One of the mantras of the GOP is mindless cost cutting - if one breaks with the orthodoxy of "no new taxes". They have no compassion for the poor, and months after the water mains were contaminated by leached lead, neither the governor nor the government of which he is in charge has any plan on how to fix this problem.
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The other day, I had the privilege of having a conversation with a "person of color" who is in my circle of acquaintances. I noted that thanks to the internet and our mass media, it is now impossible for an intelligent person to ignore the racism that has been built into the structure of society. (Before we go too far here, I have to note that "racism" is only a partially correct word here. Although these problems mostly affect people of color, they also affect poor whites in similar ways.) We've seen how Ferguson, Missouri's law enforcement policies hurt the predominantly Black community. We've seen how Chicago's police department has had a "hall pass" for many years, where police could easily get away with killing innocent people of color because of a "Blue code of silence" and institutionalized corruption in the police department. And now we're seeing the poisoning of the people of Flint - with no one having a clue about what to do next, because of the size, complexity, and cost of fixing this major problem.
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I don't like using the word "Racism", because it only talks about the problems that affect people of color. The word doesn't talk about the structural problems that affect isolated poor whites in places such as Appalachia, many of which are associated only with people of color. For example, in many states, when a person is convicted of a felony (and has served his/her time), that person is disenfranchised for life - no longer is he/she able to vote in public elections. Many rights and privileges are never restored to the felon - even when none of them were abused in the act of committing the crime for which he/she was convicted.
Structural problems beset both the rural poor (who are predominantly white) and the urban poor (who are predominantly people of color). Jobs that pay a livable wage have left their communities. In Appalachia, coal mines have shut down, leaving large numbers of isolated towns to live on the government dole. In the inner cities, the manufacturing jobs that once provided a leg up for the urban poor are gone, leaving only those service jobs that have salaries well below the poverty line for those lower skilled people looking to work. (In both cases, higher education is unavailable to them, as both the local schools leave them unprepared for college work, and that the effective price of college (even with grants and loans) is way too high for many to afford college. This leaves many of the poor (in both rural and urban settings) to do business in the "shadow economy".
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The "Shadow Economy" is one of great risk. For some, it is turning what were once "Food Stamps" into cash by trading "food stuffs" (which in some states include sugary, carbonated beverages) for cash, goods, and services. In one online article I read, the effective price of sexual favors in a rural shadow economy (net cash, after translation from food stamps) was as little at $13.50. That's much cheaper than the price of legally provided sexual services in a Nevada bordello, where oral sex costs roughly $100, and Coitus costs roughly $200 - as of 2002. For others, it is the ability to participate in the drug trade - where one's criminal record has no standing on whether one gets hired or not. With the exception of the drug kingpins, people on the low end of the drug trade (e.g.: street dealers) make less money per hour (according to the people who wrote "Freakonomics") than they would if they flipped burgers at the local McDonald's.
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So where do we go to fix this problem? The rural poor see the people in the "big city" as the enemy. How else could Ted Cruz have gotten away with slandering Donald Trump for having "New York Values"? But one has to contrast this with the Reverend Al Sharpton's knee jerk defense of Tawana Brawley - even though her claims were discredited later on. His constituency has just as much disdain for rural areas of this country, as the rural areas help to perpetuate the racist myth that the poverty in urban poor areas is caused by the poor alone.
To me, the only way to answer this question is the way LBJ answered it. Remove color from the equation and look at the problem as an issue of both socially and physically isolated communities which have been effectively alienated from the larger society. My question becomes: How do we integrate both rural and urban poor back into the larger society. Hopefully, we can answer this question sooner, rather than later....
P.S.: It looks like the Flint Water Poisonings may now be treated as a criminal matter.
Recently, "The New Yorker" published this little satire about Ted Cruz:
A disturbed Canadian man wants to try to get into the White House, according to reports.
The man, who was born in Calgary before drifting to Texas, has been spotted in Washington, D.C. in recent years exhibiting erratic behavior, sources said.
In 2013, he gained entry to the United States Senate and was heard quoting incoherently from a children’s book before he was finally subdued.
More recently, he was heard ranting about a plan to dismantle large components of the federal government, such as the Internal Revenue Service and the nation’s health-care program.
Despite a record of such bizarre episodes and unhinged utterances, observers expressed little concern about his plans to get into the White House, calling them “delusional.”
Although I find this article amusing, it says one important thing - the race to the White House is now on.
Lately, I find myself politically leaning towards the left, only because the right has gone off the rails. In the past, being conservative only meant that one prefers a slower rate of social change, where being liberal meant that one prefers a faster rate of social change. Now, conservatives want to roll back change - in part because many people who label themselves as conservative have been sold on the idea that if we restore the values of the 1950's, everything else will fall into place, and a prosperous America will be restored.
In the case of Ted Cruz, he denies reality to stir up his base. How many of us really think it possible to dismantle the IRS? And if we did so (with the dismantling of the government that would ensue), we'd be left with a government in worse shape than the United States was under the Articles of Confederation. Yet, the base cheers him on. But I wonder - Can any sane person take this person seriously? He is a serious risk to this country, but he's more of a bad joke being played at the expense of his base.
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Cruz is only one of a large field of GOP contenders for the office of POTUS. And each one of them is singing the song so popular among the GOP's base: "Repeal Obamacare." But what do any of them have to replace Obamacare?
Obamacare is not the only issue. We also have "Pro-Choice" vs. "Pro-Life". It's hard to believe that at one time, Abortion was not an issue in our society. When "Roe vs. Wade" was being decided, it was the pro-choice side that offered a compromise that the pro-life side didn't accept. And SCOTUS gave the Pro-Choice side more than it ever dreamed of. And now, "Choice" is under siege in many states. Terrorism has been used to intimidate anyone connected with or doing business with an abortion clinic. The authors of Freakonomics have shown with statistics that there is a correlation that links legal abortion to a reduction in teenager crime in urban settings. Are we ready for the potential increase in the crime rate if abortion again is illegal?
Regardless of where one stands on these issues (and I can make good arguments against the positions I support), one should be looking at the degree of honesty between a politician's words and actions, as well as that politician's position before supporting him/her.
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You'll note that I painted the Abortion issue from a mildly leftist viewpoint. In order to understand the Right Wing of American politics, one has to come to it from the Left. And we're seeing a GOP (largely old and white) out of sync with America's long term demographics (largely young and people of color).
The GOP's base has some legitimate complaints. We did not bother enforcing our laws regarding illegal immigration. There are over 12 million (estimated) illegal aliens resident in the USA, almost 30 years after the blanket amnesty given during the Reagan administration. And the base is rightfully upset about successive GOP and Democratic administrations not doing anything these immigrants who (wrongfully) are seen as taking the jobs once held by white males. The reality is different and more damning - neither political party has a F'ing clue about what to do about structural unemployment.
Fear motivates much of the base. There is a very high correlation between being religious and being an active member of the GOP - this being a result of Nixon's successful "Southern Strategy" which flipped the South from Democratic Blue to GOP Red. Many Christian fundamentalists are very fearful of the wrath of God - and internalize that fear. Tradition is extremely important to the base - breaking tradition is as much a cultural crime as it can be a legal crime, when it comes to maintaining the social order. This is why the battle for civil rights is triggering religious lunatics to commit terrorist acts.
When the base chooses news sources, it chooses sources that speak in the words of fear - whether or not this fear is valid. And the base is manipulated by fear. One does not have to go far to see (what should be) a small issue blown way out of proportion by lies that triggers fear in people without cause. For example, take the issue of Same Sex Marriage (SSM). There is no proof that stable marriages between people of the same sex harms any traditional marriage. Yet, traditionalists are being manipulated: "SSM will lead to marriages between men and livestock", "SSM will cause a complete moral breakdown in America", "God will destroy the world, if we allow SSM." The conservative media chosen by the base repeats the same messages, reinforcing fears, and stirs up hatred. And in fear and the hatred of social dysfunction, the base finds false comfort.
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So, what happens if we elect someone to the office of POTUS who panders to this kind of fearful person? In the past, the political machine would listen to this person (and others like him) and give him lip service. But this person (and others like him) will not be satisfied with the usual broken promises. And here is the point where the left should be concerned.
In the past, there was a ruling clique from both parties which knew how to get things done. People like Goldwater and Kennedy knew how to reach across the aisle and find votes to achieve things that benefited people on both left and right. When Johnson (a former US Senator from Texas) fought "the war on poverty", he changed the focus of bills meant to help poor black people, to laws which helped poor people regardless of color. Johnson knew that the South would never help black people, even though the whites there were directly responsible for the poverty of Blacks. But by refocusing the Southern electorate on poverty (instead of its hatred of Blacks), Johnson was able to make the electorate see that these laws benefited them as well.
Today, things are very different. It is virtually a crime for someone to work across the aisle. The GOP's base will not broach compromise with the left - it is tired of compromises they see as not benefiting them. They want ideological purity at all costs. Only through purity can the results they want be achieved. Sadly, reality differs from that faith....
We are now seeing a lot of "potential" candidates looking to establish funding for the race to the White House. The lunatics are out, because they are stirring up the party base for funds and early primary votes. Thankfully, most are unelectable. But what would happen if one of these candidates actually wins? I doubt the base will get what it wants. Instead, I see something like the Iranian Revolution of 1979 happening here - the powers that be will enforce laws to maintain (or roll back to) a conservative cultural conformity we haven't seen since the 1930's, and will not show any restraint in harming Gays, Transgenders, Political Apostates, and People of Color. "Ozzie and Harriet" would be considered leftist by the new standards of the day.
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I am afraid that the Democrats have (mostly) selected Hillary Clinton as their nominee designate. She will not have to fight for her nomination, and as such, she will not be at the top of her game if an energized GOP candidate opposes her. Like many centrists, I will hold my nose if I have to vote for her, as she is someone I can't trust. There is too much history behind this person for me to feel comfortable with her (or anyone named Clinton). A Machiavel like her would make a good president - but only if the people who "own" her have a desire to benefit this country at their own expense. Otherwise, a person like Hillary will use the office of POTUS for her own gain at our expense.
Let's say that something happens to Hillary. Election day 2016 is still a long time away, and anything (such as a health issue) can take her out of the running. Who do the Democrats have on their back bench that can replace her and win the votes needed to keep 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Blue? I do not have a clue. Jerry Brown of California? Possibly - but he isn't running. But who can speak the "fearful" language of the South and gain its trust? Bill Clinton is no longer available, save as someone who can help Hillary. And Obama deserves the much needed rest that he will be required to have....
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It is a good thing that the office of POTUS has term limits. But I wish we had a better filter to prevent unqualified people from holding the office in the first place....
