The Story Of Our Country

Paul Gottfried writes,

What are at issue here are two different conceptions of the welfare state, both with rival advocates. The Tea Partiers favor a massive welfare state, providing that entitlements are aimed at them. They oppose the increased use of revenues and above all, the increase of taxes to finance a different welfare state, one designed to accommodate low-income minorities, government workers, and amnestied illegal aliens.

I disagree with Gottfried, on the whole. The population in this nation that wants a social safety net that helps others is quite small. Pretty much every population, individual or corporate, fits the description Gottfried assigns to Tea Partiers, "favor[ing] a massive welfare state, providing that entitlements are aimed at them".

For those trying to ensure a social safety net to benefit others, I'm really not aware of any of note who favor what is so easily caricatured as "a massive welfare state". That may be a suitable description for some of the advocates of social welfare programs in the 1960's or 1970's, but the notion of "a hand up, not a handout" seems more resonant post Reagan's "welfare queen" stories and Clinton's welfare reform. (G.W.'s advisors recognized that fact, and thus put those very words into his mouth; unfortunately, he had little interest in doing more than mouthing them.)

These are the groups that are likely to benefit most from the present Democratic revamping of the public sector. They are also groups that will propel Democratic victories in the future; and what such legislation as national health care, and the bill to amnesty illegals, now under congressional consideration, will do is create a more solidified Democratic constituency.

Even if you accept Gottfried's thesis that the Democrats are trying to build a welfare state that will inure principally to the benefit of low-income minorities, government workers, and beneficiaries of what to-date is an imaginary amnesty bill, what he describes is in no way altruistic. He's describing G.W.'s push for immigration reform in the early months of his Presidency (when his approval ratings were quickly tanking), G.W.'s push for a massive expansion of the corporate welfare state, G.W.'s unfunded "Medicare, Part D", G.W.'s financial industry bailout proposal (initially "You give us $1 trillion or so, you get no oversight, we're not answerable to anybody in how we spend the money", but "refined" into a corporate welfare program both parties could support). You could argue that Bush thought each of those welfare programs was "for the good of the nation" but, as with Gottfried's cynical interpretation of the Obama Administration's agenda, "for the good of the party" might be a better answer.

Gottfried's idea that "a gift-bearing regime always lands up producing squabbles among the gift-recipients" is not untrue, but given the actual track record of the Republican Party the conceit that we're talking about a "democratic welfare state" is laughable. Both parties got us into this mess, and it's usually the Republicans who strive to identify and exploit wedge issues to create the various "squabbles" over who gets what.

Bush was trying to serve business interests that want immigration reform, and to gain advantage in the immigrant communities that would benefit from reform and amnesty; it's not that the Democrats have an advantage in implementing immigration reform, so much as it is that the Republican Party's catering to populist rage against immigrants "taking our jobs" has poisoned the well for that party's outreach. It's the same thing Chairman Steele conceded to the African American community. The Democratic Party doesn't have to work very hard to gain an advantage in the communities the Republican Party is content to alienate as they instead attempt to leverage Tea Party rage.

The RNC's 2010 "Obama Agenda Survey" Push Poll

Talk about your push polling. Michael Steele, hard at work (and far from being an honest man) serves up the following. If he had a sense of humor, perhaps it could be read as parody.

There is so much about the Obama agenda that most Americans do not know, thanks to the non-stop, swooning coverage of the ultra-biased media.

But with your help, we are going to expose the Obama agenda for all Americans to see so that we create a groundswell of opposition.

A few "did you knows", that exist principally in Republican Party propaganda and right-wing radio:

That's why we are asking where you stand on Barack Obama's promise to raise taxes...

...On his plans to give amnesty to illegal immigrants, which could lead to billions of dollars of government handouts and possibly bankrupt Social Security...

...And how do you feel about Obama's efforts to nationalize health care and have it run by bureaucrats in Washington, D.C?

These are Obama's top priorities!

All the quality of one of those email forwards you get from people who are clueless about the facts or issues, but get ginned up by disinformation from the likes of... Michael Steele. And away we go....

1. Do you agree with Barack Obama and the Democrats that taxes should be raised for the sake of "fairness," regardless of the negative impact it is likely to have on the economy?

2. Do you believe the federal government has gone too far in bailing out failing banks, insurance companies and the auto industry?

3. Do you support amnesty for illegal immigrants?

4. Should English be the official language of the United States?

5. Are you in favor of granting retroactive Social Security eligibility to illegal immigrants who gain U.S. citizenship through an amnesty program?

6. Are you in favor of the expanded welfare benefits and unlimited eligibility (no time, education or work requirements) that Democrats in Congress are pushing to pass?

7. Do you believe that Barack Obama's nominees for federal courts should be immediately and unquestionably approved for their lifetime appointments by the U.S. Senate?

8. Do you believe that the best way to increase the quality and effectiveness of public education in the U.S. is to rapidly expand federal funding while eliminating performance standards and accountability?

9. Do you support the creation of a national health insurance plan that would be administered by bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.?

10. Do you believe that the quality and availability of health care will increase if the federal government dictates pricing to doctors and hospitals?

11. Are you confident that new medicines and medical treatments will continue to be developed if the federal government controls prescription drug prices and sets profit margins for research and pharmaceutical companies?

12. Are you in favor of creating a government-funded "Citizen Volunteer Corps" that would pay young people to do work now done by churches and charities, earning Corps Members the same pay and benefits given to military veterans?

13. Are you in favor of reinstituting the military draft, as Democrats in Congress have proposed?

14. Do you believe that the federal government should allow the unionization of Department of Homeland Security employees who serve in positions critical to the safety and security of our nation?

15. Do you support Democrats' drive to eliminate workers' right to a private ballot when considering unionization of their place of employment?

Lying and scaring people worked pretty well for the Republicans for six of the eight Bush years, so why not give it another chance?

The Tea Party Takeover

A statement of the Republican Party's intent, followed by... some wishful thinking.

"The Republican Party would be really smart to try and absorb as much of the Tea Party movement as possible," [Sarah Palin] said. A spokesman for the Republican National Committee agreed. "Chairman [Michael] Steele believes that when engaging grassroots the more, the merrier," said Doug Heye.

Some supporters at the convention took the same view. "I suspect the Tea Party strategy is to commandeer the Republican machine," said Roger Webb, a 65-year-old freelance photojournalist.

The last movement that thought it could take over the Republican Party was the religious right. The Republican Party bent a lot of its policy, particularly on things it didn't actually care about, to satisfy that faction. It's hoping the Tea Party movement serves as a stand-in for upcoming elections. But if its members think that their support is going to do much more than help the Republican Party advance its own agenda, or the Cheney-era agenda voiced by Sarah Palin at the convention, they're kidding themselves.

I like this, from the organizers of an expensive, seemingly profit-oriented and Republican Party-aligned convention:

Attendees were urged not to spend their money traveling to Tea Party rallies in 2010, and to support political candidates instead.

That sounds a lot like, "Support the candidates we pick, and don't go giving money to rival Tea Party factions."

Health Care Reform

One of the biggest problems with healthcare reform is the insistence that it must take the form of a single bill, and that bill must be "everything to everyone." That is, the bill must:

• Bring about universal or near-universal coverage;

• Limit the abuses of the insurance industry; and

• Maintain or reduce present levels of healthcare expenditure;

The Washington Post adds a fourth demand,

• Malpractice reform,

despite there being no evidence that malpractice reform will advance any of the three other goals of reform - and plenty that it will not. (I've written quite a bit about the fiscal reality of "malpractice reform".)

It's not the worst unsigned editorial the Post has ever run, but Fred Hiatt is out to maintain the editorial board's reputation as a gang that can't shoot straight. At least half the time they time they don't know the target, don't actually want to hit it, or both. The editorial praises the atrociously deficient Max Baucus "reform" bill, while at best hinting at its most significant deficiencies: its deliberate underfunding of insurance costs for the uninsured working class, and its deliberate failure to provide any mechanism to pressure insurance companies to bring down insurance costs for people who don't have the good fortune to participate in employer-sponsored group plans. The Bacus bill bends over backwards to make sure that co-ops would be hamstrung and useless. I could cynically ask, how much did the insurance industry pay him (or promise to pay him) - except given the extent to which he kowtows is it truly cynical to ask?

A few years ago, I was paying for insurance through COBRA, continuing my wife's coverage through a full service Blue Cross/Blue Shield group plan. Over the course of eighteen months the price went from "really high" to "extraordinary", inspiring me to check out what I could get from other sources. Even through supposed "group rates" available through some professional organizations of which I'm a member, I couldn't find anything that came close to the group plan's benefits. In fact, the typical plan offered vastly less coverage, very high copays and deductibles, and... came at a similar cost. The only way I could "save" money would have been by using a catastrophic policy and covering "routine" medical expenses out-of-pocket, but given the health problems my family was experiencing at the time that would have been worthless. So I kept on paying under COBRA until my wife found a government job where... she became eligible for a Blue Cross/Blue Shield group plan that wasn't quite as good as her former plan, but was nonetheless very good - and, once again, offered at a group rate that was vastly below the "group" plans available to me as a self-insured individual.

The Baucus plan, quite deliberately, changes none of that. In that same position, I would have been offered only one other option - the co-op option Baucus has deliberately sabotaged, the overpriced "group" plan, or the useless "catastrophic care" plan. Had I faced a mandate at the time, but been ineligible for COBRA, I would have found the absolute cheapest catastrophic insurance plan that met the terms of the mandate, and been very angry at the government for making me waste my money on a useless POS of an insurance policy. The right-wing should be celebrating Baucus's crappy bill - in its present for, it stands to make their angry supporters even angrier.

Not surprisingly, given his obeisance to corporate interests, Hiatt's editorial page doesn't express any concern for the quality of health insurance that will be available to individuals. It does mention cost:

Asking families earning $66,000 a year to devote 13 percent of their income to insurance premiums - and more once deductibles and co-payments are involved - is asking them to assume a heavy lift.

They have a gift for understatement. A head of household with a $66,000 income takes home about $52,000. After the cost of housing, one or two cars, food, clothes... it's unlikely that the family has a great deal of wiggle room in its budget. Asking them to devote more like 16-17% of their take-home pay to an insurance plan - even more, to an overpriced insurance plan... and "more once deductibles and co-payments are involved" - is going to push a lot of families into foreclosure or bankruptcy. What a solution - rather than having your medical bankruptcy after you get sick (and your insurance proves inadequate), Baucus will force you into a preemptive medical bankruptcy! What's not to love?

I recognize why the disingenuous cowards, Jack Kingston and Darrell Issa, are afraid to put their (or is it our) money where their mouths are, and introduce an option allowing individuals to buy into the current federal insurance plan. (Maybe Kingston wrote a bill, but accidentally left it somewhere with his flag pin, never to be found?) But why doesn't Baucus have the cajones to add that option? (Or are we back to that "bought and paid for by the insurance industry" thing?) Conversely, if he thinks his watered-down co-ops are worth the paper their written on, why not require that federal employees obtain their coverage through co-ops? Including, of course, Senators? No, as you know, when a self-serving Senator is involved (and you rarely find another kind) sauce for the goose is never sauce for the gander - if he did that he would either have to fix the myriad defects in his co-op proposal or face hurricane-force blowback.

Top it off with this:

In addition, the proposal's version of an employer mandate - a so-called "free rider" provision that would penalize employers not offering insurance only if their employees obtained government subsidies - could have the perverse effect of discouraging employers from hiring workers from low-income families.

Are we sure Baucus hasn't changed parties? Given his apparent eagerness to cause the uninsured working and middle class to hate the Democratic Party, I'd swear he has his eyes on Michael Steele's job....

Giving Liars a Platform

In what could be take as evidence that the Washington Post editorial page has an anti-reform agenda, today Fred Hiatt rolls out the red carpet for an editorial by Michael Steele. Steele has, of course, been a leading voice in the GOP effort to frighten seniors into thinking that their healthcare is jeopardized by the reform bill, and in suggesting that seniors will face death panels which will decide if they deserve additional medical care.

Steele is a liar, a coward and a hypocrite, which perhaps makes him a good representative of what's left of his party.

At a certain point, I do think that the media should call out liars - declare, either directly or by simply declining to print their latest set of lies and deceptions, that their tactics render them undeserving of a platform. And yes, that also means on the editorial pages - excuses such as "it's a widely held view, so we're giving it space" don't hold water. Perhaps Sarah Palin proves that if you push things far enough there's still a tipping point, as I suspect a month or two ago the same editorial (perhaps penned by the same author) might have been published under her byline. But Steele has embraced every single lie that Palin and others associated with the anti-reform movement have advanced. He should be held accountable. And I suspect that had Palin handed Hiatt an editorial he would have run it - that the shift in spokesperson comes from the party's recognition that Palin has lost her credibility, not the paper's.

But more than that, Steele's yammering about a "Seniors' Health Care Bill of Rights" - a law that would "protect" Medicare recipients from having their benefits reduced, or even having the government attempt to negotiate better price terms with doctors and hospitals. This, as a representative of a party that has attempted to kill Medicare from its inception. Talk about spitting in the face of Reagan's legacy. Yes, the same party that hates Medicare and only a few years ago attempted to gut Social Security is now the champion of senior citizens' rights to unlimited entitlement benefits. And a shockingly high number of seniors believe them!

There's something a bit sad, and a bit too American, about getting a faction of citizens riled up because they may (in theory) see change in their free, taxpayer funded benefit if a similar benefit is made available to others. (I quote Grandpa Simpson on this attitude, perhaps too often.... "I didn't earn it, I don't need it, but if they miss one payment I'll raise hell!") The Republican Party's mantra, "Ask what your country can do for you...."

Update: There he goes again....

Cowardice

Why is the GOP so scared of Rush?

n comments that were broadcast over the weekend, Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele called Rush Limbaugh's rhetoric "incendiary" and "ugly" and insisted that he is in charge of the GOP.

On Monday, however, after a blistering response from the conservative talk-radio kingpin, Steele told the online journal Politico that he "was maybe a little bit inarticulate."

"There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership," Steele said. He added, "There are those out there who want to look at what he's saying as incendiary and divisive and ugly. That's what I was trying to say. It didn't come out that way."

Steele apparently was one of those people, before being confronted and proving that his backbone is in no way as impressive as his name.