Political Conservatism, Authoritarian-Motivated Social Cognition

Funny that the authoritarian Right didn't learn from the last time it attacked the military. Joseph McCarthy's latest reincarnation, Liz Cheney, ought to know that the hapless drunk of a senator from Wisconsin went down after targeting the military as harboring "communists." In going after the DOJ as the "Al Qaida 7," Cheney should meet a similar fate. Although, it is true that "conservatives" these days are allowed to say whatever asinine things they want through media without serious rebuke (Must be a left-wing mainstream media conspiracy). Quite the contrary, they usually get a louder mic and more coverage. This really is appalling:

The tough and terrified hypocritical vein that "conservatives" try so desperately to strike really is an overt appeal to the authoritarians among us: those susceptible to the irrationality of FEAR. A couple of years ago, I wasn't surprised to learn that according to a psychological study, "conservatives" are more prone to fear as a motivating force (This study was much talked about at the time. However, I am not sure what to make of the methodology of it though).

I've long wished someone would write a book (Tough and Terrified) juxtaposing all the jingoistic-America is#1-tough-guy-rhetoric against all the fear-the-Islamic-medievalist-cave-man-existential-terrorist-threat messages out there. Which is it, authoritarian propagandists? We are either tough, or terrified. Not both. For more on this historical, psychological drama there's this great BBC documentary about the parallel rise of the neo-conservative and Islamic jihadi movements, which was banned here in freedom-loving America, The Power of Nightmares.

After watching this film, the context of "conservative" fear is quite apparent. If the right wing has any discernible credibility left, Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol's propagandistic neo-McCarthyism would be repudiated by every single so-called conservative who participates in the public sphere. This is inexcusable.

Money for Breakfast for Mouths Full of Money

One should really never underestimate Fox News' capacity for unabashed vulgarity. The corporate statism that their hired cynics, ignoramuses, and opportunists call "capitalism" apparently does a body good because they have a show called Money for Breakfast. For some reason I'm reminded of American Psycho, especially the scenes where Patrick Bateman works out to porn before going to work in the morning.

But money isn't just something we're putting in our mouths for breakfast these days; legally speaking, its also coming out of our mouths in a curiously ironic form known as "free speech." About this subject, everyone is opining, which is generally a good thing because the Citizen's United ruling, which will allow corporations, unions, and other organizations to spend unlimited amounts on elections, is one of those cases that truly warrants plenty of discussion. However, I would place one conversation in particular between Harvard Law Professor Larry Lessig and Salon's Glenn Greenwald above most in the analyzing-each-side-rationally-category.

But seriously: I don't know what to think about this case. I hate the notion of money being equivalent to speech, but I know that even the dissenting judges believe it to be true legally. And even though the court went beyond the narrow issue specifically raised by United, and also defied a century of precedent, I think Greenwald and the ACLU are mostly correct here (One should read their positions carefully). However, my inchoate thoughts on what's at issue here are finding lucid articulation in Patricia Williams latest piece in The Nation.

Even accepting that progressives are clearly outmatched by reactionary corporate interests, I'm not sure this decision is really the death knell of the American republic that so many in media are portraying it as. Even given that the common understanding or established interpretation that corporations are more than, in Patricia Williams' words, a "juridical stand-in for a person" is erroneous nonsense (See below for why), campaign finance laws prevented little to no corruption, because they protected Congress little---if at all---from the influence of money. Likewise, some respected people Greenwald cites say "this decision will do little more than move money around that is already flooding the political process."

Furthermore: to say that corruption is only going to get worse because of this decision isn't a prudent legal opinion either. The "compelling state interest" argument is not only an insufficient reason for restricting this kind of stupid speech, but really quite frightening, and even possibly harmful if it is used against clearly enumerated, core civil liberties, such as freedom of speech---both individual and collective. As Greenwald persuasively argues, whether or not there will be even more corruption is besides the point: judges are not supposed to rule on pragmatic, "outcome-based" grounds---- the desirable effects of a possible decision----but strictly on constitutional grounds:

The "rule of law,"however, means that if the Constitution or other laws bar X, then X is not allowed regardless of how many good outcomes can be achieved by X. That was true for the "crisis" of Terrorism, and it's just as true for the crisis of corporate influence over our political process.

I applaud him for reminding liberals why we opposed the Bush administration's assault on civil liberties: warrantless wiretapping, indefinite detention, denial of habeas corpus, etc.etc. There too was a "compelling state interest," right? President Obama certainly thought so when he hypocritically voted for retroactive immunity for the telecoms as a senator. Today, he shows little reservation about carrying out all those other policies that were SO odious when Bush was in power. Let's not also forget the right to assassinate American citizens too. Sounds like a right-wing conspiracy theory (as some variations are), but this painfully absurd fact is also very true, acknowledged by the Director of National Intelligence himself last week. (Yemen, beware of harboring more alleged, American-born terrorists lest the U.S. government arbitrarily decides to bomb you silly again!) But back to the issue at hand...

Does it even matter that corporations aren't actually people when the Constitution says Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press? It doesn't say only individual speech is protected---and clearly----by press we can infer collective entities and organizations, right? So what do we do about that? Money=speech; individuals and organizations' rights of speech=shall not be abridged; money shall not be abridged the freedom of speech, apparently. Moreover, we too would like our own advocacy groups spending money in order to nudge representatives towards our own special causes. And until the Citizens United case, many of The Good Guys out there were prevented from doing so. So is it all that bad?

Yet still: corporations will win this battle to inundate our politics with their "speech." Simply the threat of withdrawing inordinate sums of money from a candidate's campaign will no doubt induce complete and utter obeisance. People will have to organize and finance counter messages to feed the Public Mind, at which point we can hope that unadulterated facts, reason, and rationality will prevail in the end despite our better funded adversaries. Public discourse will have to step up qualitatively to match this fusillade of corporate, post-truth political advertising. Maybe this is just the opening salvo necessary to re-galvanize the public financing of elections movement.

Supposedly states can alter corporate charters to remedy the United decision without over-reaching on the First Amendment. There are, and there should continue to be, thoughtful discussions on passing a constitutional amendment that could answer the problems of the court's ruling----despite the difficulty of doing so. And lastly, the U.S. Congress should be compelled to pass legislation for the public financing of elections, period.

With all of that said, Patricia Williams makes a typically trenchant observation about the history of money as "political speech" that all nine justices should avail themselves to understand (This, admittedly, makes United so frustrating and complicated because---again---none of the justices see the notion of money as political speech this way). Juxtaposing the corporate restrictions on speech for those within the organization against their newly won unrestricted "freedom," Williams sets out to answer "why 'freedom' (as in speech) has become the functional equivalent of 'expenditure' (as in money) and why on earth corporations are considered 'persons' to begin with." She takes the interpretation of the courts since Buckley v. Valeo to task:

the "corporate citizenship" that the majority in Citizens United touts so blithely is a very different beast from citizenship founded on a constitution of enfranchised individuals and premised on a constituency of souls united in allegiance to an ideal of community, an egalitarianism of society, the mutual shelter of a nation.

But it gets better:

about the history of legal "persons": for more than a hundred years, certain inanimate entities have been granted the status of fictive personhood for limited purposes. The concept grew out of the necessity for businesses to negotiate as well as to be accountable in the marketplace. When, for example, a company manufactures a defective product and sells it to you, you sue the company--not the individual executives or employees (unless there has been some act of extreme wrongdoing on their part). In other words, the company is a kind of juridical stand-in for a person, with that status rooted in the efficiency interests of contract and property law.

Ok, so not only can corporations restrict the individual speech of their members, but they are able to advocate for policies counter to the public good, the "egalitarianism" of the "ideal of community," all because of an erroneous conflation between the animate----actual people----and the "inanimate entities" whose "limited," "fictive personhood," "a kind of juridical stand-in for a person" is no longer interpretively "rooted in the efficiency interests of contract and property law." That "efficiency interest," as I understand it from my privately-financed, undergraduate public education, is the whole point of forming a corporation: limited liability. Whose speech rights are actually restricted:

If a public "person" is capacious enough to encompass a privatized "corporate" plurality, then are "We, the people" not thereby reduced by propertied fiefdoms huddled behind a facade of "free" republicanism?If, once upon a time, enfranchisement was calculated according to such diminishing metrics as "three-fifths of a person," does not this ruling confer a similar, if magnifying, mathematical disproportion upon the organizational prostheses we know as corporations?

Good question. Williams' correct understanding of history here, and her premise that "If there is no such grounding in practical purpose, we humanize a golem" challenges Greenwald's view that since the nine justices aren't even considering corporations' "personhood" and whether speech for them is money, then the battle against Citizens United must necessarily be a legislative one. To my mind, Greenwald's strict, conscientious fidelity to the oft-abused "rule of law"---such as it is today---is in contention with Williams' more fundamental truth, the veracity of history, which should be inviolable. Reconciling these two perspectives is extraordinarily difficult. Not least because the importance of historical perspective and the "original intent" of corporate, contractual law are contending with practical applications of why corporations must be protected as individuals: Ironically, Greenwald's view becomes more "practical"* than historical because his legal reasoning here builds off of contemporary interpretational concerns, whereas, Williams is advancing an "originalist" view, one based around the historical intent of this legal construct----the corporation (This is an ironic switch because I believe liberal interpretations tend to be of more the pragmatic strain---seeing the constitution as a "living" and "evolving" document. Conservatives, at least Scalia---and usually in an ahistorical, ideologically-driven manner----feign to interpret the constitution in the "originalist," historical-contextual mode).

*(Indeed, Greenwald is very much thinking about the practical ramifications of not defending money as free speech. See these questions he asks to illustrate the point.)

But still, Goddamnit!---how does one respond to Williams' underlying point, which she emphasizes with a brilliant quote from "the great legal realist philosopher Felix S. Cohen":

When the vivid fictions and metaphors of traditional jurisprudence are thought of as reasons for decisions, rather than poetical or mnemonic devices for formulating decisions reached on other grounds, then the author, as well as the reader, of the opinion or argument, is apt to forget the social forces which mold the law and the social ideals by which the law is to be judged.

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Anyways, for more on the new ruling and it's likely pernicious effects on judicial elections, one of which is increased conservative "judicial activism," watch Moyers here (And then don't miss him with Jefferey Toobin). Also check out his interview with First Amendment lawyer, Floyd Abrams, and then Floyd Abrams v. Trevor Potter . Lastly, see Larry Lessig debate Nick Gillespie on Moyers.

And speaking of the conservative brand of judicial activism, with its purported reverence for tradition, precedent, and stare decisis take a look at Colbert's destruction of Justice Roberts' flimsy opinion on United.

(Starts around 2:00)

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I tried to get at few words on this decision from someone whose legal opinions I really hold in high regard:

Orange Gatito, AKA Kittyheart

He KNOWS WHAT'S TO BE DONE ABOUT ALL THIS.

Who's Surprised Now? (And for How Long Can They Stay That Way?)

Image: Gilbert Garcin. Le moulin de l’oubli - Mill of oblivion. 1999.

Anyone really surprised, like Mr. Harkin was, that Obama didn't try and lobby Lieberman on the public option? Of course not. Not if you're paying even marginal attention to the health care "debate."

What's a supposed progressive being so gullible and credulous for anyway? Assuming Harkin actually is "surprised," it's probably painful to realize the scope of the Democratic Party's corporate give away, and know that this bill was not inevitable: It was willed that way. This corporate nanny-state mandate, forcing people to purchase insurance without a strong public option, is a kind of audacity that the market is rewarding generously. Glenn Greenwald's post today illustrates just how much health insurance stocks have gone up since Lieberman stated he'd filibuster on the public option:

*Coventry Health Care, Inc. is up 31.6 percent;

* CIGNA Corp. is up 29.1 percent;

* Aetna Inc. is up 27.1 percent;

* WellPoint, Inc. is up 26.6 percent;

* UnitedHealth Group Inc. is up 20.5 percent;

* And Humana Inc. is up 13.6 percent" -- Shahien Nasiripour, The Huffington Post's business reporter, yesterday.

He also points out just how riven the Democratic Party is with conflicts of interest relating to this bill (It's worth quoting in full):

Evan Bayh's wife, Susan, "owns from $500,001 to $1 million in employee stock in WellPoint, the Indianapolis-based insurance giant on whose board she sits." That would mean that the value of her personal holdings in that one health insurance company alone, in the last six weeks alone (since Lieberman and her husband began menacing the public option), would have increased by a value of between $125,000 and $250,000. As part of the bonanza of health care industry board positions she magically received since her husband became a Senator, Susan Bayh is given a quarter-million dollars each year in stocks and stock options from Wellpoint.

But notwithstanding the underlying corruption, the question for progressives still remains: Do the benefits of the bill outweigh the drawbacks? Greenwald astutely--and rightly--frames the choice for progressives this way:

one must weigh (a) the corrupt, mandate-based strengthening of the private insurance industry, the major advancement of the corporatism model of government...[and] (b) the various substantial benefits to many people who do not now have and cannot obtain health insurance and the risk that defeat of this bill will ensure preservation of the status quo.

A difficult question to answer, indeed. But whatever one's position, I agree with Greenwald that it is still excruciating to watch the Dems play this off as if they got the votes to pass this bill in the Senate despite all the "special interests." For more on the merits of supporting this bill or not, TPM has an excellent discussion with many smart and wonky guest bloggers.

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And... as if there really needs to be a defense of the notion that presidents actually can keep their promises once elected, David Sirota offers a much needed civics lesson to Obama apologists. His defense of actual, republican democracy, is centered around Obama's utterly hypocritical capitulation to the pharmaceutical industry:

the Obama administration crushed legislation that would have allowed Americans to purchase lower-priced FDA-approved medicines from abroad — legislation President Obama promised to support as a presidential candidate; legislation that would have reduced drug profiteering and saved the government and consumers $100 billion.

I wonder if Harkin is surprised by that reversal? He shouldn't be. Sadly, this president has been continuing many of his predecessor's destructive policies (state secrets privilege, tiered justice system, civil liberties violations, bailouts with no regulation, use of private contractors and mercenaries, collective punishment of civilian populations: see--Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and most recently Yemen, etc., etc.). And so this is just more of the same. As Stephen Colbert puts it, and I'm paraphrasing, "The lack of change is the change you can believe in."

In defense of reneging on campaign promises---and right on cue---a pharmaceutical spokesperson pulled out that old, tired canard: "It's about being a candidate as opposed to being president." Remember, "serious" people acknowledge, and then submit to domestic "realpolitik."

But Sirota drills this excuse---this "logic":

...it's not unreasonable to ask officeholders to at least try to honor the campaign commitments that informed voters' electoral decisions.

That's especially true on something like drug importation, whose opposition is about enlarging profits, not, as Obama aides argue, about protecting consumer safety.

Drug companies already manufacture medicines in the developing world so as to evade U.S. labor, environmental and safety regulations. They then legally import those products for sale to Americans at inflated prices. The new bill would have merely let wholesalers, not just manufacturers, also import medicines — but at the lower prices the manufacturers concurrently sell those medicines abroad.

He goes on to remind the administration (and its defenders) that wholesale importation is legal in the rest of the civilized world, and that if it were unsafe, "then where are the dead Europeans?" Do we see a pattern of behavior with Obama yet?

So in short: this major point of contention that divides progressives over the health care debate, whether to pass a bill that clearly forces people to become customers of private enterprise, is obviously part of a larger issue, and is a grave problem that Americans have to face: the confluence of private power and government. There is no escaping this fact. And Senator Harkin (and Obama acolytes) should know that, should recognize that, and stop being so (willfully?) surprised.

Thankfully, we've got Colbert, who once again, knocks it out of the park with a genius piece of satire (He is the only man who can string together both Jefferson and Mussolini).

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Now let's show corporate America what we think by going to the mall and celebrating the holidays!

A Perfect Semblance

With all the contentious disputation over the health care debate, I felt it necessary to educate myself about many of the main proposals and key players in the Senate. During that process of getting familiar with these advocates and their policy ideas, one invariably comes across that infamous and ignoble group of senators we've all now become so familiar with: the Gang of Six and the so-called Blue Dogs, who have been working indefatigably to stymie actual, progressive reform. Of that latter group, there is one senator, who like Lieberman, often goes about the airwaves demanding that Dems craft the health care bill in a fashion more to his liking.

And that man is Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska----to whom, despite my initial unfamiliarity and lack of sympathy for his views, I still felt some kind of nebulous connection, as if he came from some distant, dark childhood memory. That was until yesterday, when it became clear to me as I listened to David Bowie on my ipod. After several frustrating months wondering how I knew Ben Nelson, the mystery ended with a euphoric, "That's fuckin' it!"

Ben Nelson used to be an actor, and starred in one of the most profound movies ever made---one I still cherish today as an adult.

Bill Nelson played Hoggle in Jim Henson's Labyrinth.

If one has any doubts, just look at the semblance below: although---granted----the Ben Nelson of today looks a lot older and more troll-like. But in his heart, just as his character, Hoggle, Nelson has proved willing to sell out. And he'll do it again in the future. But will he ever try and redeem himself from this betrayal, as his troll character, Hoggle, did in the end? Not likely. He'll stay unrepentant.

Hoggle explains his recent vote:

“Without in any way intending to be threatening, to be more in the mode of promising,” Mr. Nelson said, “let me be clear, this cloture vote is based on the full understanding that there will be a limited conference between the Senate and House. If there are material changes in that conference report different from this bill that adversely affect the agreement, I reserve the right to vote against the next cloture vote. Let me repeat it. I reserve the right to vote against the next cloture vote if there are material changes to this agreement in the conference report. And I will vote against it, if that is the case.”

And what did Hoggle get in exchange for being the holdout? Not only will there be strong restrictions on the use of insurance to pay for abortions, but Nebraska has been excepted from helping to fund the new expansion of Medicaid:

The bill calls for broadly expanding Medicaid, the federal-state insurance program for low-income Americans, and eventually most states would have to bear some of the cost – but not Nebraska.

Next, we'll look at the arguments for whether or not one should hold a candidate accountable for his or her campaign promises. And we'll peep at the "progress" Dems are making on drug re-importation, which was a major sticking point against Bush, but apparently no big deal now that Rahm Emanuel et al. are at the helm.

What is happening so that nothing substantial can possibly happen

After a long, healthy absence from ranting into the Ether----the disillusionment and fatalism gets to be a little much ("Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels' hierarchies?)----it's time to check out where I left off...

But first: If you love The Simpsons, don't look at this extremely dismaying piece of information. Bart Simpson's voice just might not be the same afterwards. (Incidentally, the cult of Mithras was big around the time of Rome's collapse. Madonna and faux Kabbalah, anyone?)

Anyways, back to where I left off, the great swindle that is "health care reform." A lot has happened so that nothing substantial, and some things very harmful to us "consumers of health care," can also happen-----possibly.

We'll see.

But...Despite the fact that the general public, along with a 63% majority of doctors, is behind actual, God's-honest health care reform (ie---a choice between a private and public option), Congress is preparing to pass a bill that equates to unequivocal betrayal. Well, that's not exactly true, unless we're talking about the intentions of the Democratic Party because Republicans made it unambiguously clear from the start that they didn't want reform. And here they are again today repeating their intentions to obstruct. Go figure?

Unsurprisingly, the so-called Blue Dogs, the conservative small-state-dominated Group of Six, and Joseph Lieberman are all providing the GOP with a big assist: Not that the White House is flexing any muscle to help pass anything even remotely progressive. On the contrary, true to the argument of the last post, Rahm Emanuel is advising Reid to capitulate to Senator Lieberschmuck. Not only is there not going to be a strong public option, but the latest compromise, a reduction in the age at which people may buy into Medicare, looks D-E-A-D!

Rachel Maddow has an excellent piece on the hypocrisy of Lieberman's current filibuster threat. Mr. Filibuster himself, with his Droopy voice, used to lament the ability of the minority to obstruct the process, even crafting anti-filibuster legislation, only to now employ said weapon to halt reform and protect his insurance lobby paymasters. He is also flipping his position on buying into Medicare earlier, mainly because that proposal is actually possible today, with Democratic majorities in both Houses, and Obama ostensibly at the helm of the Executive (So far though, his strong, posturing rhetoric and lack of any tough regulations on the banks and private health insurers, leads me to believe he's not courageous enough to truly lead, instead of heeding the demands of Big Business, those entities that will determine in which direction corporate money will flow into the next election: power for its own sake apparently, as selling out "health care reform" will be its means).

Lieberman the scape goat? No doubt. I can already see the crocodile tears gushing from the Iron Dome of the White House. And by the way: this kind of filibustering is a new development. We're not even talking about filibustering the passage of a bill; we're talking about filibustering to prohibit a bill from going to the floor for debate. Now that is conviction in Washington that only money could buy. Although, it's not a great precedent to set, allowing this kind of filibustering in a legislative system that is inherently constricted in its ability to pass new laws.

Yes, Lieberman, and the like, will be the convenient excuse for the failure of a substantial bill, even though 81% of Dems want the senator punished. Besides, all the legislation our cynical, nominal representatives have written thus far wouldn't take effect until WAY in the future anyways----2014!* So it's all pipe dreams we're discussing right now: Welcome to mandates, astoundingly high premiums and higher subsidies for private insurance that will continue consolidating the market even further, taking more shares as it shits out its globally-inferior, incomparably expensive health care product onto us all! And if we are lucky: there will be no exceptions on pre-existing conditions. Hooray, the Congress will have finally solved the moral equivalent of making sure cancer patients aren't denied coverage because they once had acne as teenagers! That's categorical imperative for you all right.

*(Coincidentally, 2014 is also when we will first be able to read the 22 million "missing" Bush administration emails, thanks to a two-year legal battle). But, four years is forever politically---plenty of time for a new Congress and/or administration to repeal the tepid, compromise health bill should it even pass).

Lastly, how about this for a excellent illustration of just how endemic the corruption of the conservative, corporate-approved, New Democratic Party is? (Clinton's betrayal on NAFTA and "welfare reform" set an illuminating precedent; the Reagan Revolution and neo-conservatism didn't just change Republican politics). The once-Vice-Presidential hopeful, Senator Evan Bayh (Ind), whose conflict of interests sadly mirror Lieberman's in scope, has a wife who raked in $837,000 while sitting on seven different corporate boards. But that's not it:

"She's on the board of E*Trade Bank, a subsidiary of E*Trade Financial Corp., while her husband sits on the Senate Banking Committee. She is lead director at Emmis Communications Corp., an Indianapolis radio-station operator that published Evan Bayh's 2003 book."

Wait, there's more:

She is a director at Indianapolis-based WellPoint Inc., "which is part of a medical research partnership awarded a $24.7 million federal grant in May after Evan Bayh and his Indiana colleagues in Congress recommended the group to the National Institutes of Health,'' Bloomberg's Timothy Burger reports.

Too much. Way too much, but it only scratches the surface...

Quick, must watch "Theatre of Gatos" to repair soul...getting...weak...need to see...Gatitos...So Sweetos... No Son...Malditos....

Why Isn't Obama Doing Anything About Congress? Can He?

After ending on a cynical note in my last post----mentioning my uncomfortable suspicion that the Obama administration, Dems and Republicans, right along with the insurance companies, would like nothing more than to mandate that everybody buy insurance (expanding the market by 50 million), while doing next to nothing to bring down premiums, which would require de-consolidating the industry with a "public option" competitor----I felt slightly guilty.

Well...that was until I read the L.A. Times, which reports that expert analysts are saying that while it's true that there are many bills in circulation right now, many leading proposals have insurers "poised to reap a financial windfall."

The half-dozen leading overhaul proposals circulating in Congress would require all citizens to have health insurance, which would guarantee insurers tens of millions of new customers -- many of whom would get government subsidies to help pay the companies' premiums.

So, the public must continue paying for not only the skyrocketing premiums, which analysts say will double by 2010, but also increased subsidies (tax money that could no doubt be better spent) that go straight back to these providers so they can, in turn, support their ludicrously high prices. Does a guaranteed expansion of the health care market by tens of millions of customers and essentially government-supported consolidation through subsidies without a mechanism for ensuring competition sound like a good deal? Is that really reform? We might also ask ourselves: How much have these premiums been rising the past six years? Answer: "by more than 87 percent, on average, while profits at ten of the largest publicly traded health insurance companies rose 428 percent." No competition. The government will just help pay the exorbitant health care premiums, though the percentage of cost covered is going to drop (should the industry get its way). Sounds like a perverted form of corporate protectionism. Hardly the government intervening to fix an oppressive market failure.

In fact, we could have the opposite: The Senate Finance Committee has been playing around with the idea of requiring insurers to reimburse customers for at least 76% of their medical costs, though that number has now dropped to around 65%. The current percentage that insurers cover is 80-90%, and yet the industry is still arguing for the "government [to] set the floor lower so insurers could provide flexible, more affordable plans." As a consumer, why would I want a health care "reform"bill that actually lowers the percentage of costs they're obligated to pay? Doesn't really sound like an improvement, seeing as how under the current system 50% of bankruptcies are medical related, and 75% of those filing for bankruptcy had private insurance when they filed. This haggling---whatever the result---won't help solve the problem at all, unless of course health insurance covered practically all the costs.

The question remains then: Why hasn't Obama used the bully pulpit to urge Congress in the right direction? Some have argued, like Matt Yglesias, that the president can't control Congress, which is of course very true. Although, as Glenn Greenwald points out: (1) "the President commands a vast infrastructure on which incumbent members of Congress rely for re-election." He cites Rahm Emanuel's ability to whip up votes in the past. And (2) The "Obama White House has proven itself extremely adept at compelling compliance with the President's agenda" when it came to pushing non-compliant progressives into supporting the war supplemental bill.

The White House is playing hardball with Democrats who intend to vote against the supplemental war spending bill, threatening freshmen who oppose it that they won't get help with reelection and will be cut off from the White House, Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) said Friday.

Though Greenwald acknowledges that Obama can't "single-handedly control what Congress does," he notes the disparity of leverage he exerts, on the one hand "protecting" Blue Dog "centrists," while on the other, holding progressives to a different standard. And Republicans still call this guy a "leftist" and a "liberal." One thing I find extremely disconcerting about all of this, if Greenwald's correct, is that

Blue Dogs -- virtually all of whom represent more conservative districts -- are more vulnerable and thus more dependent for re-election on the White House and Democratic Party infrastructure than progressives are.

As far as the whole "bipartisan" excuse for watering down the health care bill, Greenwald is right to point out the obvious: that the GOP was not and is not interested in passing any bill, whatever its form. That has been understood from the outset: "Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) announced that Republicans will reject reform no matter what's in the bill." It makes sense that they'd try and obstruct Obama's agenda regardless of the details. Why would they be interested in passing reform?

Why would the GOP want to help Obama achieve one of his most important and politically profitable goals? Of course they were going to try to sabotage the entire project and would oppose health care reform no matter what form it took.

And now that closed-door meetings with the pharmaceutical industry have been reported, "a deal to block any Congressional effort to extract cost savings from them beyond an agreed-upon $80 billion"despite Obama's pledge to have all wheeling and dealing broadcasted on CNN (like that would ever happen)---how could the purported necessity for a "bipartisan" bill---with all the attendant, illogical excuses for the lack of a more economically practical, progressive bill----not appear like a pretext for a watered-down, industry-friendly piece of legislation?

With the quiet agreement between the White House and industry restricting savings to no more than $80 billion, compare the Urban Institute's study on public policy, which estimates "that a public plan could save taxpayers from $224 billion to $400 billion over 10 years by lowering the cost of proposed subsidies for the uninsured, while preserving private coverage for most people." That is a huge concession to private industry. No wonder they're keeping the meetings closed. Industry is in no hurry to allow substantial reform, and Democrats have only been at this since Roosevelt, so why not make it another 75 years? What's the rush? (See Bill Moyers on the heart wrenching, human cost of the current system here, and media research on the historical efforts to stop health care reform over the past 75 years here).

Everybody knows that Democrats have a super-majority. But need we be reminded that they could pass legislation, like the Republicans did with the Bush tax cuts, with only a simple majority----if they wanted to. Instead, we get more excuses, just as we did back when they were in the minority:

During the early Bush years, the excuse was that they endorsed Bush policies because his popularity and post-9/11 hysteria made it politically unwise to oppose him. In later Bush years when his popularity plummeted, the excuse was that Democrats were in the minority and could do nothing. After 2006 when they won a Congressional majority, the excuse was that Bush still controlled the White House and had veto power. After 2008 when a Democrat won the White House, the excuse was that Republicans could filibuster.

Now that they have a filibuster-proof majority, a huge margin in the House and the White House, the excuses continue unabated, as Democrats are now on the verge of jettisoning one of the most significant attractions for progressives to the Obama campaign -- active government involvement in the health insurance market.

Compounding the disillusionment triggered by the apparently inevitable, Democratic betrayal on this pivotal issue is the fact that the administration dropped the truly progressive agenda before even coming to the table: a single-payer, universal health care plan. In its absence, progressives were placated with a proposed "public option," which now looks to be dead unless the House grows a pair, or Obama retrieves his soul.

How Obama feels about the apparent loss of a public plan is unknowable for sure. But actions do matter, regardless of one's oratorical eloquence, and the bill that's most likely to make it through Congress does have some powerful supporters:

...the pharmaceutical industry is so delighted with what they think will be the ultimate plan that they are spending vast sums of money to advocate for it.

Also factor in

a secret White House deal with that same industry to ensure there are no government negotiations for better prices (a result that, when combined with mandates to buy health insurance, would vastly increase the profits of these industries)

And...with a White House Deputy Chief of Staff (and "Small-State" westerner), Jim Messina, ---who was formerly Chief of Staff to Senator Max Baucus, head of the disproportionately influential, anti-progressive Table of Six----working under the corporate-approved, Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, it seems more than plausible that Obama has been appropriated by anti-progressive forces.

Even take Tom Daschle, who, forced to withdraw his nomination as head of Health and Human Services because of $140,000 in unpaid back taxes, is serving as an informal advisor to Obama, despite the clear conflicts of interest: Since losing re-election in 2004, Daschle's clients have been those same private health insurance companies the government is ostensibly seeking to regulate.

...he remains a highly paid policy adviser to hospital, drug, pharmaceutical and other health care industry clients of Alston & Bird, the law and lobbying firm.

But don't worry because "Friends and associates of Mr. Daschle say the interests of Alston & Bird’s clients have no influence on his views," even though critics say he's "advocating the very policy which his industry clients want: namely, health care reform with mandates, but no 'public option' -- only with 'co-ops.'" According to the NYT, Daschle has been the main force behind selling "co-ops," a tepid measure that the Democrats and Obama are evidently finding very palatable these days. But then again, we'll just have to wait and see. Maybe progressive forces can push him back on a sustainable track, if they're loud enough.

If not, we can always revert to the early nostalgia phase, when Obama was pretending to be a "liberal" or "progressive," which among other things, currently means one who believes in, and carries out a commitment to transparency and public participation.

And don't miss this useful chart for understanding health care reform.

Note: Even Robert Reich is asking about the disproportionate and inappropriate power of the Table of Six, "Why has it come down to these six? Who anointed them? Apparently, the White House." He doesn't "get it" either:

I really don't get it. We have a Democratic president in the White House. Democrats control sixty votes in the Senate, enough to overcome a filibuster. It is possible to pass health care legislation through the Senate with 51 votes (that's what George W. Bush did with his tax cut plan). Democrats control the House. The Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, is a tough lady. She has said there will be no health care reform bill without a public option...So why does the fate of health care rest in Grassley's hands?

Let's hope the administration is still susceptible to hearing those beyond the private-interest forces that have invested it.

Who Said the Public Option Was Vital?

If I were conspiratorially-minded, I might think the Obama administration is trying to lose the public option (Personally, I think it's less "conspiracy" than the corporatist confluence in government thesis, not the "revolving door" so much as the "corporate archway" that Naomi Klein describes in Ch. 15 of The Shock Doctrine). Many are wondering why he's positioning to turn his back on progressives, who incidentally, take the same position that 72% of Americans do: That there should be a public option to compete with private insurance----which, by the way, has highly consolidated 94% of health care markets . Strangely, most media are reporting this apparent shift as simply a possible betrayal to progressives, and not to the majority of Americans. That's because media like to talk about the "Left" or "Far Left" as The Other. This constitutes "centrism" and "objectivity" by their standards.

But returning to Obama losing substantive health care reform, Ari Berman of The Nation asks, "...how, exactly, was Obama's landslide victory [67 million votes] a mandate for Baucus and Grassley [1,347,000 votes combined] to hijack the president's agenda?"

Good question. And what was/is Obama thinking in trusting Baucus? This is a man who voted with Bush for Medicare privatization and massive tax cuts. On the committee, he even demonstrates an unusual amount of deference towards his supposed counterpart, Sen. Grassley.

Well, over the weekend, Obama and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius started sending the message that the public option is "'not the essential element'" of the administration's health care overhaul." In other words: prepare to be let down, humble majority. Yet in fairness, I should say that in characteristically spineless, Democratic fashion, the White House has since triangulated away from these startling admissions----so who really knows? Still, "not the essential element" is not what Obama was saying while campaigning. It was quite the opposite. And only a month ago, he said reform "must" include a public option. At least many in the House are standing up to this seeming betrayal, with some even threatening to vote against the bill if the public option is left out. Let's hope they keep up the pressure!



*My cynical, haunting suspicion is that both political parties and the insurance companies would like nothing more than to make it mandatory for us all to have (buy) medical insurance----but not do anything (or very little) for those who can't afford it. Already, many of us with insurance can't afford it. For example, the large corporation under whose plan my wife and I are covered is already announcing higher premiums for next year: We'll be paying over $500 a month for the two of us, when we have serious problems making ends meet as it is. Talk about liberty...

**As a side note: If Republicans ever want to stop pretending to look out for and actually start to care about the elderly, maybe they should focus on a problem that actually exists, like this one.

***Lastly: Seeing that Jon Stewart will be interviewing Betsy McCoughey on Thursday, he ought to start preparing by reading this article.