Democrats in Congress showed what resembles a spine in connection with their responsibility to govern when they met to discuss possible strategies for passing legislation without GOP support. The public impatience toward Congress because of the continuing economic slump and anemic recovery demands action. The technical requirement of a super-majority of 60 votes in the Senate to move legislation forward is little understood by the average voter who maintains a simplistic idea of democracy, thinking that "majority rules." In light of the GOP resistance to any constructive measure, and rebuff of any sincere attempt to work out compromises, the Democratic leadership has begun exploring strategic ways to get some legislation passed without relying upon GOP legislators to "cross the aisle."
For all the blather about “bipartisanship” in the media, the reality is that the GOP leadership has issued a clear and unequivocal directive to its members of obstruction and obfuscation toward any initiative that relates to public spending for the benefit of the poor and average US citizen. Witness the GOP wrath directed at the rookie Senator Brown of Massachusetts for voting in support of cloture [precluding a filibuster] on a major jobs bill so that it could be voted on by the full Senate. [You may recall that I previously opined that the GOP would expect Brown to be their lap dog and follow the "party line."]
Measures like true health care reform and jobs or unemployment benefits support are prime targets. Yet the scope of the opposition is made clearer when one looks at the recent report of more than 275 legislative measures passed by the House of Representatives that are stalled in the Senate. Some measures are earmarks and pork for specialized local constituencies that deserve to wither and die, but the majority of bills are broader measures directed to helping the country recover from the years of profligacy and ineptitude of the Bush Administration and to provide immediate relief to pressing public needs. Given this “stonewalling” approach to governance by the GOP, the only logical and sensible approach for the Democrats is to proceed with the country’s business as best they can in spite of the GOP, instead of waiting for some miracle of conscience or compassion to cause a change in GOP strategy.
Consider an interesting comment by Senate Majority leader McConnell regarding the Blair House health Care Summit. He declared that there was no point in attending a Summit on health care reform sponsored by the President because the Democrats were preparing to try to pass legislation without GOP votes. Now keep in mind that the reason the Democratic strategy may be necessary is the obdurate obstructionism by the GOP and a complete unwillingness by the GOP to put forward any constructive proposal. In essence, he was saying that the GOP need not attend a meeting in which they were invited to present and responsibly discuss constructive legislation to address the health care crisis because the GOP is going to oppose any reform legislation and the democrats are preparing to circumvent that obstruction. McConnell made no mention of an intention to offer any constructive approach to health care reform.
The GOP strategy is a form of waiting game. With an inability to lead or come up with constructive ideas, Republicans are hoping to curry favor with the public in two ways. First, by obstructing any useful broad based legislation proposed by the Democratic majority, they hope to portray the Democratic leadership as ineffective in the eyes of the public. Since the public tends to hold a negative view of politicians generally and Congress in particular, the GOP believes that the public wrath can be directed toward the party in the majority. They trust that the public is too stupid to realize that the REASON for the inaction on important matters affecting the public is the GOP obstruction. In this regard, ignorance and stupidity of the electorate, recent history has proven them right. The delay tactic is positioning for the midterm elections.
Second, the GOP hopes to stall any legislation that might have a real positive impact upon the economy and the jobless rate for as long as possible. The purpose of this delay is to strengthen the argument that the responsibility for the economic crisis the country faces lies in the lap of Obama instead of the Bush Administration. This too is an effective, if cynical, ploy to manipulate public opinion. The further we are from Bush’s departure from office, the more plausible it is that people will forget the true genesis of the economic misery they are facing. The sitting President is a much more likely target for the weak minded and those with limited attention spans. And yet a failure of the current President to devise a strategy for overcoming the deliberate obstruction DOES represent a failure of leadership. It is not how good government is supposed to work, but it does indicate the depths to which the US government and the game of politics have fallen.
While this gamesmanship continues, the jobless rate remains unnecessarily and unreasonably high. The blockage of financial reform means that small businesses remain starved for credit and capital they need to revitalize the economy. Millions of families without health care insurance, joined by more families losing such benefits in the worsening economy, are threatened each day that the Congress fails to pass effective health care reform. The GOP is playing the “waiting game” in hopes that the US voters will get angrier as they stew in their misery. They are betting that the public will blame the party in the majority for failure to help, instead of the party who has obstructed every effort to help. Unless the electorate wakes up and smartens up, the GOP strategy will succeed. And we will all be the worse for it.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Sunday, February 07, 2010
Mental Illness and Health Care Reform
In 2009, health care spending grew by 5.7 percent, now reaching $2.5 trillion. It is the largest increase since the federal government began tracking these figures in 1960, according to a report from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Health care costs also made up 17.3 percent of the US's gross domestic product (GDP), which was 1.1 percent higher than in 2008. CMS's 2009-2019 projections indicate that health expenditures will continue to grow "increasingly faster," at an annual rate of 6.1 percent - 1.7 percentage points faster than annual GDP growth - and climb to $4.5 trillion.
With the loss of the Democratic 60 vote supermajority in the Senate, it seems likely that the Health Care Reform legislation passed by both houses of Congress and scheduled for Conference Committee deliberation is on terminal life support. While the legislation produced to date is a weak excuse for real reform of the industry stranglehold on the economy and well being of the public, it was a step in the right direction. Even if the Conference Committee could craft a compromise that satisfied a perceived majority and was in the best interests of the public, that compromise would have to pass both houses. The new configuration provides the GOP their coveted procedural tool of blocking any form of public oriented legislation. The lobbyists for Insurance Industry groups and major health care conglomerates like WellPoint, Humana and Blue Cross-Blue Shield, that hold legislators in their thrall [if not by their scrota] will not allow any reform to pass that might challenge their irrational profit scheme.
In an environment of recession, economic meltdown and sacrifices that have destroyed not only economic stability but even the hope of many families and households in the country, these so-called “health care industry” agents have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to preserve increasing revenues that outstrip the economy by approximately 200%. But that is not the true problem that the country and the people face.
In light of this seeming irrational imbalance of power in which the health care industry is figuratively raping the populace and at the same time excluding more and more families from basic health care, the voters are following, like a herd of lemmings, the clarion call of the Right Wing leadership to advance a campaign to block any real effort to try to restore a modicum of balance. Brown was elected as a new GOP Senator from Massachusetts to replace Ted Kennedy with the express purpose of defeating health care reform. Using fear mongering tactics about "government expense" and taxes associated with health care reform, they conveniently ignore the fact that, according to the CMS Report: “Without the passage of a health care reform bill, currently stalled in the House, public spending will comprise more than 50 percent of all national health expenditures by 2012.”
Ironically, major factors in the inexorable climb of health care costs and public spending for health care in the form of Medicare and Medicaid are: a) the amount of per patient usage and b) the rising unemployment rate from a worsening economy. In the first instance, the health care industry has managed to induce US customers to spend more than twice the average per capita amount spent by developed nations for health care, although the impact and level of overall health derived from such expense places the USA below average among the same developed nations. In the second instance, the Health Care industry has managed to profit from the disadvantage of millions of people in the US resulting from the failing economy.
Behaving as though it is experiencing a psychotic break, the public is being exhorted to get behind right wing demagogues in an effort to prevent any development or passage of legislation that might actually benefit the average citizen and which might both limit the increase in health care costs and provide basic health care coverage to all families in the country. It is only a few steps removed from the mass insanity that led the group in Jonestown to drink the lethal kool aid punch. As long as the public can be driven to mass delusional behavior, believing in actions directly contrary to their own future physical and economic health, then the health care industry will be able to exploit this public mental illness to their economic advantage. And why not? Can you name a single health care executive who does not have the best health care services available 24 hours a day for his family? How fortunate that the very people being exploited can be duped into attacking the ones seeking to help them, rather than the ones profiting from their misery.
With the loss of the Democratic 60 vote supermajority in the Senate, it seems likely that the Health Care Reform legislation passed by both houses of Congress and scheduled for Conference Committee deliberation is on terminal life support. While the legislation produced to date is a weak excuse for real reform of the industry stranglehold on the economy and well being of the public, it was a step in the right direction. Even if the Conference Committee could craft a compromise that satisfied a perceived majority and was in the best interests of the public, that compromise would have to pass both houses. The new configuration provides the GOP their coveted procedural tool of blocking any form of public oriented legislation. The lobbyists for Insurance Industry groups and major health care conglomerates like WellPoint, Humana and Blue Cross-Blue Shield, that hold legislators in their thrall [if not by their scrota] will not allow any reform to pass that might challenge their irrational profit scheme.
In an environment of recession, economic meltdown and sacrifices that have destroyed not only economic stability but even the hope of many families and households in the country, these so-called “health care industry” agents have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to preserve increasing revenues that outstrip the economy by approximately 200%. But that is not the true problem that the country and the people face.
In light of this seeming irrational imbalance of power in which the health care industry is figuratively raping the populace and at the same time excluding more and more families from basic health care, the voters are following, like a herd of lemmings, the clarion call of the Right Wing leadership to advance a campaign to block any real effort to try to restore a modicum of balance. Brown was elected as a new GOP Senator from Massachusetts to replace Ted Kennedy with the express purpose of defeating health care reform. Using fear mongering tactics about "government expense" and taxes associated with health care reform, they conveniently ignore the fact that, according to the CMS Report: “Without the passage of a health care reform bill, currently stalled in the House, public spending will comprise more than 50 percent of all national health expenditures by 2012.”
Ironically, major factors in the inexorable climb of health care costs and public spending for health care in the form of Medicare and Medicaid are: a) the amount of per patient usage and b) the rising unemployment rate from a worsening economy. In the first instance, the health care industry has managed to induce US customers to spend more than twice the average per capita amount spent by developed nations for health care, although the impact and level of overall health derived from such expense places the USA below average among the same developed nations. In the second instance, the Health Care industry has managed to profit from the disadvantage of millions of people in the US resulting from the failing economy.
Behaving as though it is experiencing a psychotic break, the public is being exhorted to get behind right wing demagogues in an effort to prevent any development or passage of legislation that might actually benefit the average citizen and which might both limit the increase in health care costs and provide basic health care coverage to all families in the country. It is only a few steps removed from the mass insanity that led the group in Jonestown to drink the lethal kool aid punch. As long as the public can be driven to mass delusional behavior, believing in actions directly contrary to their own future physical and economic health, then the health care industry will be able to exploit this public mental illness to their economic advantage. And why not? Can you name a single health care executive who does not have the best health care services available 24 hours a day for his family? How fortunate that the very people being exploited can be duped into attacking the ones seeking to help them, rather than the ones profiting from their misery.
Tuesday, February 02, 2010
The P. Diddy School of Business – “Bling Academy”
I read a news article, or actually an “infotainment” article yesterday that made me laugh. In the article, it describes a plan by P. Diddy to form a business school for “young entrepreneurs.” Now, don’t get me wrong, I am no hater. I won’t even get down on the source of much of the entertainer’s wealth, the promotion of misogyny and violence. He does own other more “mainstream” enterprises that manufacture and sell consumer goods. If anyone wants to establish an enterprise to promote educational opportunity, I am usually one of the first in line to support such efforts. Considering the wealth that P. Diddy has gained from his entertainment career and enterprises, the benevolent idea that he may want to give something back to the community by helping inspire and support nascent Black entrepreneurs is heartwarming. So, why the chuckle, you ask?
Earlier in the week, I also read an “infotainment” article about the very same P. Diddy spending over $360,000 to buy a car for his 16 year old son. Yes, this astute businessman who would want to establish a school to communicate his ideas, values and methods to a new generation of entrepreneurs apparently has the sensibilities and the sensitivity to spend well over a third of a million dollars on one vehicle to be driven by an inexperienced 16 year old boy. The purchase was announced at the same time that millions of Haitians are homeless and starving and well over 100,000 have been confirmed dead. I can understand the deep wellsprings of a father’s love for his son. But what lesson is P. Diddy teaching his son by spending in such a profligate and irresponsible way just to demonstrate “Bling” or perhaps to buy the affection of his child. Remember that this child to whom the car is entrusted is in the highest risk rating category of all drivers. Will it be necessary to hire a bevy of bodyguards to surround the child whenever he wants to drive his new toy, in order to prevent damage to the expensive vehicle?
But more to the point, would it not have shown better judgment and parenting to buy the kid a moderately priced, say BMW or Mercedes, car and make a donation of a quarter of a million dollars to Haitian relief in his son’s name with the leftover cash? That would have done more to advance the formation of the son’s character than having the boy walking around bragging that he owns one of the most expensive cars in the world. As a proposed educator, what values and lessons can P. Diddy be expected to teach others that are less dear to him, if that is the caliber of teaching he demonstrates to his son?
Perhaps P. Diddy lives in a different world that the rest of us and has no need for regular values of honesty, compassion for fellow human beings or hard work. Considered judgment and careful planning may be outdated values in the world of P. Diddy entrepreneurs. Unreasonable risk, reckless spending and disregard of humanitarian concerns may be the touchstones of this new “school of business” that P. Diddy wants to establish. Unfortunately, the throng of wanna-be rappers, street hustlers and pseudo gangsters that emulate the image P. Diddy cultivates to promote his career and enterprises would probably be waiting in line to sign up for his business school. And if P. Diddy is true to form, he would charge them high tuition and give them nothing but smoke, in true Barnum & Bailey flim-flam style.
P. Diddy certainly has learned some lessons that his progenitors, like M.C. Hammer, failed to learn when they rose to the top of a somewhat peculiar market of entertainment. But along the way, he appears to have never learned or lost sight of some basic values that generally apply to humanity and those seeking a worthwhile role as contributors to society. There are, to be sure, people who have struck it rich by scamming and deceiving others, selling nothing for something and getting people eager to throw money to purchase that valueless “thing.” Bernie Madoff is a good example, and current heads of Wall Street concerns like Bank of America who are walking off with millions of bonus dollars essentially from scamming public taxpayers are too numerous. The DIFFERENCE is that none of these latter gentlemen are offering the pretense that they have anything to share or teach to budding entrepreneurs. They understand that their wealth and success derives from unwholesome greed and deception, from taking advantage of a defective system. Their money does not come from exceptional hard work or even superior talent. Their revenues are wholly disproportionate to the value of their service. So they have nothing of value to “teach” without exposing the chimera that has enabled them to get over.
I am not suggesting that P. Diddy is a crook like Madoff. I am suggesting that if he believes, for even a moment, that he has something of true value to provide as an educator to aspiring young business people he should think again. The judgment that allowed him to spend a third of a million dollars on a car for a 16 year old amply demonstrates his inability to guide the formation of business leaders of the future.
Earlier in the week, I also read an “infotainment” article about the very same P. Diddy spending over $360,000 to buy a car for his 16 year old son. Yes, this astute businessman who would want to establish a school to communicate his ideas, values and methods to a new generation of entrepreneurs apparently has the sensibilities and the sensitivity to spend well over a third of a million dollars on one vehicle to be driven by an inexperienced 16 year old boy. The purchase was announced at the same time that millions of Haitians are homeless and starving and well over 100,000 have been confirmed dead. I can understand the deep wellsprings of a father’s love for his son. But what lesson is P. Diddy teaching his son by spending in such a profligate and irresponsible way just to demonstrate “Bling” or perhaps to buy the affection of his child. Remember that this child to whom the car is entrusted is in the highest risk rating category of all drivers. Will it be necessary to hire a bevy of bodyguards to surround the child whenever he wants to drive his new toy, in order to prevent damage to the expensive vehicle?
But more to the point, would it not have shown better judgment and parenting to buy the kid a moderately priced, say BMW or Mercedes, car and make a donation of a quarter of a million dollars to Haitian relief in his son’s name with the leftover cash? That would have done more to advance the formation of the son’s character than having the boy walking around bragging that he owns one of the most expensive cars in the world. As a proposed educator, what values and lessons can P. Diddy be expected to teach others that are less dear to him, if that is the caliber of teaching he demonstrates to his son?
Perhaps P. Diddy lives in a different world that the rest of us and has no need for regular values of honesty, compassion for fellow human beings or hard work. Considered judgment and careful planning may be outdated values in the world of P. Diddy entrepreneurs. Unreasonable risk, reckless spending and disregard of humanitarian concerns may be the touchstones of this new “school of business” that P. Diddy wants to establish. Unfortunately, the throng of wanna-be rappers, street hustlers and pseudo gangsters that emulate the image P. Diddy cultivates to promote his career and enterprises would probably be waiting in line to sign up for his business school. And if P. Diddy is true to form, he would charge them high tuition and give them nothing but smoke, in true Barnum & Bailey flim-flam style.
P. Diddy certainly has learned some lessons that his progenitors, like M.C. Hammer, failed to learn when they rose to the top of a somewhat peculiar market of entertainment. But along the way, he appears to have never learned or lost sight of some basic values that generally apply to humanity and those seeking a worthwhile role as contributors to society. There are, to be sure, people who have struck it rich by scamming and deceiving others, selling nothing for something and getting people eager to throw money to purchase that valueless “thing.” Bernie Madoff is a good example, and current heads of Wall Street concerns like Bank of America who are walking off with millions of bonus dollars essentially from scamming public taxpayers are too numerous. The DIFFERENCE is that none of these latter gentlemen are offering the pretense that they have anything to share or teach to budding entrepreneurs. They understand that their wealth and success derives from unwholesome greed and deception, from taking advantage of a defective system. Their money does not come from exceptional hard work or even superior talent. Their revenues are wholly disproportionate to the value of their service. So they have nothing of value to “teach” without exposing the chimera that has enabled them to get over.
I am not suggesting that P. Diddy is a crook like Madoff. I am suggesting that if he believes, for even a moment, that he has something of true value to provide as an educator to aspiring young business people he should think again. The judgment that allowed him to spend a third of a million dollars on a car for a 16 year old amply demonstrates his inability to guide the formation of business leaders of the future.
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