It’s Not Too Late to Change Your Mind

Posted on 2009-12-22 by David

Conservatives, for right reasons and wrong reasons, are united in opposition to the current health care reform legislation. Unfortunately many liberals are falling into the trap of “stand by our guys” that already landed us in NCLB, Medicare Part D, and Iraq during the last administration (for which I apologize to all my liberal friends even though I opposed all of those). Of course liberals have little reason to listen to a conservative like me so rather than make my own argument today I’ll share the conclusion from Fire Dog Lake:

The Senate bill isn’t a “starter home,” it’s a sink hole. It needs to die so something else can take its place. It doesn’t matter whether people are on the right or the left — once they understand the con job that’s about to be foist upon them, they agree. That’s why Harry Reid and President Obama are trying to jam it through as fast as they can, before people get wise. So email the list to your friends and family, tweet it and spread the word.

I was going to add my own perspective when I first started reading that, but it is too well done to be condensed. Go read all 10 Reasons to Kill the Senate Bill.

Many people, liberal and conservative, seem ready to give up because the Senate already cleared their first 60-vote hurdle. That’s exactly what Reid and his company of non-representative public officials would love to see. Please don’t give up yet or settle for this poor excuse for reform. We may not agree on all the right directions, but almost everyone who’s paying attention knows that this legislation is not anything close to what we need. Let’s not allow the Senate to pass this just so they and the president can say they passed something – that is simply not a good enough reason.

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Harry Reid the Insomniac

Posted on 2009-12-21 by David

“Senator” Reid must suffer from insomnia to schedule a vote at 1:00 AM on a Monday to torture his fellow members of the Senate as they vote on a bill to torture their constituents throughout America. That is how Harry Reid fits the definition of “insomniac” as a noun.

The definition of “insomniac” as an adjective also fits because his actions will cause a lot of sleepless nights among people who previously believed they had some freedoms left in this country. Even more dangerously, every lawyer and CEO in the health care industry will undoubtedly suffer from insomnia as they try to figure out how to profit from the 2700 page bill that has not even been released online yet as far as I can find (I can only see the “original” 2074 page version of the bill).

I understand the urgency of meeting an artificial deadline on Christmas day for a bill that won’t take effect for another 4 years but I wonder why this could not have waited another 6 or 8 hours until a decent time for a vote. I’m always distrustful of a fast moving legislative body but more than any other rushed vote this move is reminiscent of some other midnight political proceedings that were driven by a desire for power.

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GOP Sheep with No Shepherd

Posted on 2009-12-21 by David

Yet Another Fire Dog Lake post led me to this Progressive Change Campaign Committee poll. My interest in the poll focused on the results of two questions:

Would you favor or oppose a health care bill that does NOT include a public health insurance option and does NOT expand Medicare, but DOES require all Americans to get health insurance?

and

Would you favor or oppose a health care bill that does NOT include a public health insurance option and does NOT expand Medicare and does NOT require all Americans to buy health insurance — but DOES provide significant subsidies to low- and middle-income families to help them buy insurance?

I was specifically interested to compare the Republican responses to these two questions. The first question offers essentially what the health care bill has been boiling down to – a mandate with no public option or alternative. The second offers no mandate, no public option or alternative, but offers subsidies for those who cannot afford insurance. Republican leaders have been fighting against the first option openly without really talking about the second possibility. The results in the republican response are interesting. Those opposed to either option were virtually identical (61% and 60% respectively). Those who were undecided nearly doubled from the first question to the second because they had not been told what to think, had never considered the possibility themselves, and could not think on their feet. Because of that, the number who favored the first question – which is clearly the worst of the two – was 5 points higher than those who favored the second.

This party needs shepherds who know where to lead rather than goats who know only to oppose.

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Missing the Boat

Posted on 2009-12-18 by David

In a comment over at KVNU’s For The People blog Craig concluded that if I was right in my position about health care it would mean that basically everyone had been missing the boat on this issue. My response to Craig was that I honestly believe that this current reform debate is missing the boat on what reforms we need.

Meanwhile, over at Fire Dog Lake (again) I find another insightful post from a staunch liberal, this time it’s from Jane Hamsher (yesterday it was Jon Walker) who is talking about what she calls the left/right populist wrap around.

There is an enormous, rising tide of populism that crosses party lines in objection to the Senate bill. We opposed the bank bailouts, the AIG bonuses, the lack of transparency about the Federal Reserve, “bailout” Ben Bernanke, and the way the Democrats have used their power to sell the country’s resources to secure their own personal advantage, just as the libertarians have. In fact, we’ve worked together with them to oppose these things. What we agree on: both parties are working against the interests of the public, the only difference is in the messaging. (emphasis added)

This is another example of the media missing the boat. They play everything as Left vs Right. They promote the notion that anything which angers both the radical right and the radical left must be pretty good policy – that’s their definition of centrist. In contrast, Ms. Hamsher pits the left/right populist wrap around against the beltway insiders – or as some of my commenters have called them, the corporatists.

Being able to unite the left wing and the right wing in opposition to a policy does not make that a good policy. After all, the German Fascists were able to unite the American Capitalists and the Soviet Communists in opposition against them, but you won’t here anyone (except neo-nazis) arguing that the German Fascists were good because of that.

We’ve had a perfect example of that here recently. I consider myself to be more conservative than the “conservatives” in Congress. Charles considers himself to be more liberal than the “liberals” in Congress. We disagree on many issues, but we’d both like to see a government that represented the people of the United States. I don’t see how it can be argued that Congress is getting it right when I want to see my Republican senator defeated and have him replaced with a real Conservative and Charles want to see his Democratic senator defeated and have her replaced with a real Liberal. (Excuse me for putting words into your mouth Charles.)

There is a disconnect between the roots of representative government and the tree of elected officers. Anyone who thinks that is a positive sign or healthy in any way is definitely missing the boat.

P.S. Having two hits in two days means I will now be following Fire Dog Lake rather than waiting for others to point out their latest articles.

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No Public Option, No Mandate

Posted on 2009-12-17 by David

Over at Fire Dog Lake, Jon Walker challenges those with the “we can fix it later” mentality (which may or may not include enough senators to pass this bill) to hold the individual mandate out of the bill as a hostage to ensure that Congress will have leverage to come back and replace all the things they have compromised away in this bill already.

Progressives should make the rallying cry of “no public option, no mandate” an unmovable demand, now and in the future. Progressives in Congress should refuse to support the individual mandate until it is accompanied by the government guarantee of a decent, cost-effective public health insurance option.

To me that sounds like killing two birds with one stone – we could get a bill without a public option as the Republicans have worked so hard to remove already and we could get a bill without an individual mandate which is the most serious infraction contained in the bill (more serious than the public option ever was).

I would be perfectly content, if the bill passes now without either of those provisions, to never come back and “fix the bill” (at least the way he is thinking of it). But I’d rather gain a temporary victory against the individual mandate and have to come fight against it again in the future, than have the individual mandate pass and face the prospect of having to try and reverse it later.

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Howard Dean is Right

Posted on 2009-12-16 by David

Few people would predict that I would agree with Howard Dean as often as I do, fewer still should be at all surprised that I agree with him when he says of the Health Care Bill:

This is essentially the collapse of health care reform in the United States Senate. Honestly, the best thing to do right now is kill the Senate bill.

Then again, I also agree with President Obama when he said:

the federal government “will go bankrupt” if Congress does not pass a health care bill

Of course we begin to disagree from there because I’m confident that we will go bankrupt at least as fast with his health care bill (any version of it) as we will if we do nothing. We need reform, but we don’t need this reform. Once again I agree with Howard Dean’s take on the cost issue:

He said he also doesn’t see cost-control measures but, rather “a whole bunch of bureaucracies and a lot of promises.”

While we disagree with what health care reform this nation needs I was dismayed by the truth pointed out by Chris Cillizza as he explained why he feels confident that despite all the wrangling, Congress will pass a health reform bill:

The broad strategy adopted by the White House toward health care is based on a single fundamental belief: coming out of this extended fight with nothing to show for it amounts to a political disaster not just for the President but for congressional Democrats as well.

“It’s a huge problem if nothing gets passed,” said one senior Democratic strategist. “Huge.”

Howard Dean is right about the dangers of that strategy:

We’ve gotten to this stage … in Washington where passing any bill is a victory, and that’s the problem. Decisions are being about the long-term future of this country for short-term political reasons, and that’s never a good sign.

I even agree with Howard Dean that there are some good elements in the current Health Care Reform bill. At least, I agree with him if Section 9002 is still in the bill. (As an aside, when did they return to the term “health care reform” from the more accurate “health insurance reform” that they had begun using earlier this year?)

I still contend that the only proper way forward on health care reform (and the only possible way forward when debate over this bill finally ends – regardless of the outcome) is to stop trying for some sweeping omnibus overhaul bill and pass individual pieces of legislation to take baby steps forward. If this bill passes the very first baby step forward will have to be the repeal of the individual mandate.

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Your Employer: Competitor or Collaborator?

Posted on 2009-12-15 by David

photo credit: Trypode

This question is framed in terms of employer sponsored health care benefits, but it really applies to any employer/employee interaction. Are you working with your employer, or are you competing with your employer? To put it another way, is your employer working with you, or simply working you?

I ask this because in the health care debate there are two groups of people who have opposing views on this. One group argues that employer sponsored health care as the dominant source of health insurance coverage is destructive because it distorts the health insurance market by locking people into few if any options for insurance and locks them out of the economic decisions about what plans they want. They also argue that everything your employer spends sponsoring health care coverage is money out of the employees paycheck. The other group argues that employer sponsored health care is a good thing because that is the only way most people can afford coverage and if the employer were to drop coverage the money they save would not go back into paychecks, but would simply pad their bottom line.

The second group obviously views the employer and employee as competitors. These are the people who favor unions because the employee’s need to band together in order to stand up to their employers. This adversarial relationship dampens production and hampers progress. Before anyone gets too upset with this analysis let me just say that there have been situations where unions were necessary but they are no panacea.

Let me explain why I think the first perspective is more accurate based on my own experience.

Continue reading →

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Questions of Legitimacy

Posted on 2009-12-14 by David

I found Power, Authority, Legitimacy at Electric Politics to be a very interesting article. It talks about these three important elements to effectively government and how they interact with each other. The focus is on legitimacy, but George Kenney also explains how power and authority can be in place without bestowing any legitimacy.

As I started reading, before Kenney began speaking about the United States government, my thought was that our government is suffering from issues of legitimacy not unlike Mexico or Iran. There is no doubt about the authority or the power associated with our government, but legitimacy is definitely a question.

Nowhere do we see intelligent discussion regarding whether the government of the United States is legitimate or, if not, to what degree it is not, how it got that way, and what should be done about it.

Despite that claim in the article I think that the discussion has been happening on a small scale for some time although I’m not sure the discussion has been framed with the term “legitimacy.” I also think that it is being discussed more broadly and more openly. Kenney also makes this claim which might explain why I see the discussion differently than he does:

American voters have done their job: they’ve elected politicians who promised to satisfy their preferences. But politicians haven’t delivered. Should we blame the voters? That’s one approach . . . Another approach is to blame our leaders. . . All such complaints, though, have to do with either power or authority.

I am among those who has talked about whether the federal government has the authority to do what they are doing and what they propose to do going forward. When Mr. Kenney talks about authority he is not talking about theoretical authority, which is what I am questioning. Instead he is talking about functional authority, which is not in doubt. As the only government operating in the entire United States and with no state governments putting up any real challenge to their mandates, the federal government unquestionably has the functional authority to do what it is doing.

Continue reading →

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Personal Independence

Posted on 2009-12-11 by David

I have been wanting to talk about the meaning of personal or individual independence for a while, especially in light of recent discussions – that was even before I got this comment from Charles that captured the debate in a nutshell:

If you are a collection of random individuals each committed to making your own decisions independent of others, then society doesn’t really exist. There is a great deal of distance between radical individualism and a centrally planned society.

The second half of that statement is very true and everyone should keep that in mind as they read my thoughts along with the fact that only and exceptionally small minority of people will be found at either of the extreme positions.

I believe that what Charles had in mind when he spoke about radical individualism could clearly be called anarchy. It is the rule of force, in other words anything I can enforce is a legitimate choice for me to make. If I can drive 120 miles per hour then so be it. If I can afford a car that drives 200 mph then my speed limit just went up significantly. This is the ultimate expression of moral relativism.

A centrally planned society, where individuals do not make choices is tyranny even when it is benevolent;  is the antithesis of liberty. It does not matter if the planning is done by a monarch, a panel of experts (oligarchy), or the will of the majority (generally called democracy, but accurately described as mobocracy).

In contrast to those options, I believe in the rule of law where individuals are free to make decisions within a relatively static set of universal rules (meaning rules that apply to everyone in the system). You may be asking yourself what that has to do with personal independence. The answer is that in a centrally planned society an individual cannot be truly independent. In a non-society ruled by anarchy some people might try to argue that every person is independent, but the fact is that only those who are strong enough to enforce their own independence are independent.

Personal independence can only be achieved in a society ruled by law for people who act in accordance with established law and who choose to be stand on their own. In a society ruled by law there will be those who choose to make themselves dependent on others (the government, their neighbors, their employer) but at least they have the option to be independent which they would not have under other circumstances.

What does personal independence mean? First off, it does not mean ignoring the needs and desires of other people. Instead it means having the opportunity within the parameters set by established law to set personal goals regarding what is important to you and to work for those in a way that abides by the rules of society.

How is personal independence manifest? It is manifest in the ability and willingness to shoulder the responsibility for meeting your own need and goals. It is manifest in the ability to be sufficiently independent of employer, family, friends, and government to make your own determination of where your time, energy, and goods will be put to use.

Why is personal independence important? Obviously for those who do not desire it it is not important but for those who value their independence it is important because it means that others have little if any ability to allocate your resources in ways that contradict the goals you have. It also means that when others make choices that oppose your goals and interests their choices do not have the power to cause you to fail.

As a nation it was the lack of independence from our major financial institutions that brought about the threat that the failure of certain corporations would collapse our entire economy. This dependence put them in a position where they could demand billions of dollars in aid. Similarly because so many financial institutions were utterly dependent on favorable government regulations many of them could not refuse to participate in the bailout scam – all they could do was take their billions and later pay them back with interest despite the fact that some of them knew that they would be better off weathering the financial storm without government intervention.

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The Health Care Issue as a Catalyst for Debate

Posted on 2009-12-10 by David

photo credit: the queen of subtle

When I saw that Jim DeMint had written an article titled Our Health Care Mess Is a Symptom of a Much Bigger Problem my interest was piqued partly because I like DeMint as a senator and partly because I had just been saying the same thing in a series of comments with a reader from New York. It was exactly as DeMint predicted in his final paragraph:

The current debate over health care reform is a symptom of a bigger problem in Washington. But it can be the catalyst for a wider debate about the proper role of government in our lives.

The comments I was receiving demonstrated exactly what DeMint was talking about when he said:

All of these things have happened because we’ve stopped asking, “Should government attempt to solve this problem?” Instead, we start by asking, “How should government fix the problem?” It’s now considered a sign of admirable restraint to occasionally ask, “How much should we spend?” And somehow we started thinking that anything less than a trillion dollars is a bargain. (emphasis mine)

We can’t expect to come up with the right answer when we start by asking the wrong question. For too long we have been asking only how the government should fix our problems and not if the government has any business fixing those problems. Obviously there are some problems that the government should fix, but there are many that it should not address.

Because er have been asking ourselves the wrong question we find ourselves as a nation in this situation:

There’s not a word in the Constitution about the government deciding what medical tests private health insurers should pay for. Nothing about the government deciding how much executives on Wall Street should earn, or what kind of light bulbs and cars we should buy. There’s nothing about the thousands of parochial earmarks that fund local bridges to nowhere, golf courses, bike paths, sewer plants, and tea pot museums.

There’s nothing about these or many other things in the Constitution because they have nothing to do with the proper role of a federal government in a free society. But these are exactly the kinds of things our government spends its time and money on, and we don’t even question anymore why that is.

As the length of that list indicates we have had many opportunities to ask the right question. Hopefully health care will be the issue where we finally step back and ask the right question. Once we ask the right question we will begin to understand the truth that:

It matters because every time we give a job to the government, we take away some control that people have over their lives, and we take away a little bit more of their freedom. In return for letting government try its hand at solving a problem, we as citizens cede our ability to try for ourselves to find a better way.

It’s awkward to admit it, but my colleagues in Congress have led this country into the woods despite our oath of office. We swore to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States and to bear true faith and allegiance to it. The Constitution prescribes a very limited role for the federal government. There is not a word in our oath, or in the Constitution, about most of what we do. As we’ve wandered off the path of liberty, there are few crumbs left of the Constitution in the halls of Congress to lead us out of the woods. (emphasis mine)

If we honestly ask the right question we will undoubtedly reach some uncomfortable conclusions such as the fact that the government has already overstepped its bounds with things we would rather not alter, like Social Security and Medicaid/Medicare, but if we continue to shut our eyes to that primary question there will be no way to reverse our downward spiral, the best we could ever manage to do is quit digging the hole deeper.

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