Tag Archives: democrats

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Beware of wolves who look like sheep

I may look like a sheep but I am really a wolf

The Democrats are looking a bit like the boy who cried wolf.  They have seen threats to all of the social safety net programs (Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid) in every campaign and Republican proposal.  The real problem is that when someone comes along with a plan that will end these programs, they have less credibility.  The real wolf has finally arrived.

Paul Ryan, you are that wolf.

Congressman Ryan’s plan offers a strange study in contradiction.  It is bold and honest. It is equally timid and dishonest.

This plan shows some bravery in that he does talk about some of the entitlements – the so called “third rail” of politics – Social Security and Medicare – two incredibly popular programs.  These programs are so popular that even members of the Tea Party like it – remember their signs that read “Government stay away from my Medicare!” Granted, these signs miss the point but people like knowing that when they get old they will be cared for.  So yes, Mr. Ryan, kudos for talking about them.

The bravery ends there.  While this ‘Roadmap for America’s future’ goes into detail about how we should deal with all three of these, this plan will dismantle all of them and yet it fails to deal with the fundamental problems with Medicare and Medicaid (I reject his premise that Social Security is insolvent).  He refuses to take on insurance companies and change the real status quo of health care – one person at a town hall meeting with the Congressman put it well when they said “How do you expect seniors to take on the insurance companies when you will not?”

The problem is that the costs associated with our health care system are spiraling out of control.  In this area, Congressman Ryan and I agree but we soon part ways when his plan says “At the heart of this problem is the Federal tax exclusion for employer-provided health coverage.”  His solution is to give people $2,300/year for individuals and $5,700/yr for families in the form of a tax refund – this is not for people who will be enrolled in Medicare or Medicaid but speaks to the point about lowering medical costs – this plan would require people to be responsible for any costs above the tax refund amount.  I challenge anyone to find decent health insurance for that.

There is a great piece on this in the New Yorker.  Basically, our problems can be summed up this way; our current system incentivizes cost and more care does not equal better care.  Dr. Atul Gawande, in the piece above, has this to say about it: “Americans like to believe that more is better.  But research suggests that where medicine is concerned it may actually be worse.”  He describes how we incentivize costs this way:

“Providing health care is like building a house. The task requires experts, expensive equipment and materials, and a huge amount of coördination. Imagine that, instead of paying a contractor to pull a team together and keep them on track, you paid an electrician for every outlet he recommends, a plumber for every faucet, and a carpenter for every cabinet. Would you be surprised if you got a house with a thousand outlets, faucets, and cabinets, at three times the cost you expected, and the whole thing fell apart a couple of years later? Getting the country’s best electrician on the job (he trained at Harvard, somebody tells you) isn’t going to solve this problem. Nor will changing the person who writes him the check.”

The last part of that is particularly important because pointing out that the cost of care will not change if we change the party who pays for it because that is all the Ryan plan does.  It shifts the costs from the government back to the patient.   On this point I turn again to Dr. Gwande, he and Congressman Ryan express the argument for having patients pay the bulk of the expense is that when they do (and this is put the same exact way in the article and the plan itself) they will have some “ skin in the game.”  This will do nothing for the costs of treatment:

“When it comes to making care better and cheaper, changing who pays the doctor will make no more difference than changing who pays the electrician. The lesson of the high-quality, low-cost communities is that someone has to be accountable for the totality of care.”

 

Now would be a good time to point to a different resource for asking – do we get better care in the United States that other countries? – the Congressional Research Service (CRS) found that we do not.  You can read their report here.  In it they assert that we spend more on health care than any other country but do not get better care.  In fact they found “research comparing the quality of care has not found the United States to be superior overall. Nor does the U.S. population have substantially better access to health care resources, even putting aside the issue of the uninsured.”  The people at CRS concur with Dr. Gawande on the point of incentivizing costs, they cite the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD):   “there is no doubt that U.S. prices for medical care commodities and services are significantly higher than in other countries and serve as a key determinant of higher overall spending.”

The cowardice does not end there; there is one entitlement that this plan leaves alone and that is defense spending.  Nowhere in this plan does he mention the military.

The “Roadmap for America’s future” is both really honest and really not.  It claims to protect and preserve Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid while simultaneously blaming them for many problems the county faces.  Congressman Ryan blames the New Deal and Great Society programs for causing government to control people’s lives, destroying the American character, removing any incentive for innovation and killing the entrepreneurial spirit that has defined us since our founding.

This is the fundamental difference between Republicans and Democrats – and is the reason the Democrats have been crying wolf for so long.  Republicans have been trying to dismantle these programs since they were enacted.  Congressman Ryan doesn’t beat around the bush on this topic.  He comes right out and blames these programs for destroying America’s character.  This idea is repeated often throughout the introduction.  It would take pages and pages to cite every example of this intent.  In one section he states: “Americans have been lured (emphasis added) into viewing the government – more than themselves, their families, their communities their faith – as their main source of support.”  He says in another section that “More ruinous in the long run in the extent to which the “safety net” has come to enmesh more and more Americans – reaching into middle incomes and higher – so that growing numbers have come to rely on government, not themselves, for growing shares of their income and assets.  By this means, the government increasingly dictates how Americans live their lives.”  That last bit is particularly interesting when you remember that some Republicans in Congress have proposed making welfare recipients take drug tests.  There is a clear irony there.

I welcome the opportunity to have the conversation about what we want our government to do and be.  I believe government exists so that we can do the things collectively that we cannot do individually.  When Congressman Ryan blames the social safety net for destroying our innovative nature, he shows just how vast the ideological gulf is between the right and the left.  When you look at growing economies and societies – Asia, I am looking at you – you see countries investing in their people.  I see a great parallel between what makes employees stay with company (hint: it’s not money) and how countries see their people.  Companies and organizations that see their employees as their greatest asset treat them better – give them the tools and resources to do their job.  Similarly, countries that invest in their children’s education, for example, are going to be the future super powers.

I am a Democrat. I do not want Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid to be turned into voucher programs: that’s the antithesis of what they were meant to be.  However, if Congressman Ryan’s plan leads to a real, productive conversation about these programs and the role the federal government should play, I welcome this as an entrée into that.  If this is the ending point, though I think ending these programs, which are infinitely more popular than any politician right now, it would not show the world that we are recapturing our entrepreneurial spirit but that we are reneging on the promises we made to our own people.

A number of people (Churchill, Ghandi, Truman, others) that “The measure of a society is the way it treats its weakest members.”  We should remember that as we move forward.

 

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My experience with the “birther issue”

No, I am not a member of the Tea Party.  I am not a conspiracy theorist.   Occam’s Razor could be tattooed on my forehead.  I think Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone and we went to the moon.  Anyway, you get the point.

In late 2008, I was working as a freelance writer/PR person.  For a very brief period I wrote for a Sunday morning, political round table television show (won’t say which one but the host is super obnoxious and, for once, I am not talking about David Gregory — hint two: it’s also not Chris Matthews, whom I have never met).

In one morning meeting the host told us (there were two writers and the host in the room) what he wanted the theme of the next show to be.  They then recanted a tale of political intrigue that defied logic.  The then President-elect was planning go go back to Hawaii to retrieve his real birth certificate from Kenya that was cleverly hidden under the left, third drawer of his grandmother’s study (seriously, how would that detail get out?).  The host went on to explain the people who had been hired, sometime earlier in the President’s life, to cover up his real birth place and forge a new birth certificate, which is the one that was released.

To me, this story was/is/will forever be, absurd beyond belief.  My first reaction was to laugh really hard and I said, “THAT’s the story your’re going with?  Really?”  I also pointed out how absurd that was. Being really new to writing for TV, this was probably not my best plan and the host’s reaction backed me up on  that point.  They back peddled a bit and then said, “I didn’t say it was true, I just said people are saying this.”  Right.  I am not saying he’s a liar, I am just saying other people are.”

In a subsequent conversation, we had a back and forth that went like this:

Host, “You, you are obsessed with Obama!”

Me: “No.  No, really, I am not.  If anyone has Obama-fatigue, it is me.”

Host: “Obama fatigue, where did you get that?”

Me: “I just said it.”

Host: “I cannot figure you out.”

There would be few more of these pleasant exchanges as soon after, I was informed my services would no longer be needed at the program.

I am not saying I was fired for not supporting this birther nonsense.  I am just saying some people are.

(Note:  I am a Obama supporter.  I voted for him in 2008 and will do so again in 2012.  On the morning of the above conversation, I had seen two disturbing pieces of memorabilia — a toilet seat with the First Family on it and some sort of random OTC medication that claimed to be “Obama’s favorite.”  My fatigue was more attributable to that than any thoughts I had about the now President.)

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So much going on and so little time to write about it.

1. Wikileaks; as a liberal, what is the party line I am supposed to follow here?

It seems there is one thing Americans of all political stripes have found something they can agree on; Julian Assange.  Politicians and pundits hate him.  My personal views are more nuanced.  Few ideas reside closer to my heart than freedom of the press.  I may not like that these documents were published but Mr. Assange is not the bad guy here.  Neither is the New York Times.  There is a villain here and that’s the guy who pretended to be downloading Lady Gaga and was really trolling for secrets to share with world.  A secondary villain is the piss poor security that let this guy access all these cables in the first place.

Mr. Assange seems to be a bit of a douchebag; arrogant and possibly delusional.  I do not share his worldview but that does not invalidate his right to have it.  US politicians have no business calling an Australian citizen that he is a traitor for leaking anti-US documents.  I also find it ironic that some people who fear the coming of a ‘one world government’ are under the impression that non-US citizens who don’t live in this country can possibly commit treason against us.  I have no idea if he is guilty of the crimes Sweeden has charged him with but see no reason for him not to face them.  It would not make sense for any court on the planet to send him to this country.  It is pretty clear that he would never receive anything close to a fair hearing here. We are just pissed off that we are embarrassed.

The New York Times also seems to have tried to be as responsible as possible when it came to what documents they released and what information was redacted.  Our system of government relies on the ability of the press to print the information they receive.  Again, it is not their job to keep US government secrets hidden away.  That’s the government’s job.

I read today that someone leaked tons of credit cards as a protest against any action against Mr. Assange.  Again, I am all about the freedom of the press but leave my personal credit information out of your protest, please.  That’s identity theft and your outrage does not justify this.

2. Tax cuts for everyone!

I think President Obama is doing pretty good job.  I feel like when he took office he faced what I like to call a Himalayan array of problems; each is gigantic when looked at independently but not so much when compared with each other.

My final verdict on the tax cut plan that the White House has worked out with some in Congress is both the best deal he was going to get and a little too far.  Well, not too far but too far, too fast.  I think the deal on the tax cuts for the uber-wealthy might have been a necessary evil but I would have liked him to publicly fight it.  I think Joe Scarborough has been dead on about this.  I would have liked to have heard him use the term hostage a week ago.  Truthfully, I would like to have heard that before the election.  Here’s the exact wording I would have liked to hear, “As a candidate for president, I said that I oppose the tax cuts for people making over $250,000 a year.  I understand that the definition of wealthy differs in areas of the country where the cost of living is high.  I have asked the Republicans to consider extending all the tax cuts but those on individuals making more than $1 million a year.  They have refused to even discuss this and are threatening to hold tax cuts for the middle class hostage.  We cannot let them.”

That would not have guaranteed anything but would have made the lefties among us feel like he remembers who elected him.  It also may have made if this package was the best they could do, that the lefties in Congress could support this.

This is a minor point, really in the overall scheme of things.  Even more minor is one problem I did have with President Obama’s press statement.  He said “if they are (wondering) if I am itching for a fight I suspect they will find that I am.”  You suspect.  YOU don’t know if YOU are ready for a fight?  Seriously.  You should have a clearer idea of what is going on in own head.

3. Can we all agree that we all want the economy to create more jobs?  Can we get our politicians to skip to the part where they tell us what they propose we DO to make that happen?

Mayor Michael Bloomberg is considering running for president.  Today he gave a speech in which he railed against Washington gridlock, partisan bickering and reiterated his desire to see the economy grow.  He was short on specifics and long on rhetoric.  It may not be fair to signal him out for something all candidates or would be candidates do but something about this speech got under my skin.  I wish we could just stipulate that we all want the economy to improve, kittens are cute and all humans are mammals and just get on with our lives.

 

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It’s all about expectations

Our national pastime is not baseball, though I wish it was. Our national pastime is building people up to bring them back down. As Jon Stewart said on his iconic Crossfire appearance, “I don’t know much about democracy, I have only lived in this country” I don’t know if this is something other cultures do. We love it.

Britney Spears. Lindsay Lohan. Barack Obama. Even DC Mayor Adrian Fenty.

1. Mayor Fenty – possibly a victim of his own success, was a phenom. The youngest mayor in DC history, he was the post-racial symbol of how far the city had come. From several decades ago when there was no ‘home rule’ to Marion Barry, this has been a wild ride. And Marion Barry had a tagline before ‘the bitch set me up.’ Before he said that, he was popular for creating jobs. His later mantra was one of redemption; a message too many people here can relate to. And then we got Anthony Williams. Maybe Adrian Fenty is as much a victim of Anthony Williams’ competence as his own. It should be noted that Mr. Williams was not perfect either – he had to be write in candidate when his campaign workers could not procure enough legal signatures – but he was a good mayor. “At least he’s not a crack head,” was no longer good enough. And then we all met Adrian Fenty. Sporting three blackberries he seemed really interested in a dialogue with the city. I was moving when he approached me. I was impressed and went out of my way to vote for him. My expectations were too high. He was a good mayor and yet I voted for Vincent Grey because, as I told WJLA, Mayor Fenty was not the person I expected him to be. Despite the fact that the schools got better, crime went down and the city has a great new bike program. I just didn’t like him. Sorry.

2. President Barack Obama faces a similar dilemma. He promised ‘change you can believe in’ and people expected monumental things. He has actually delivered. Remember, when he entered the White House he had a series of what I like to call ‘Himalayan problems’ – each one is gigantic alone but seen with the others, they appear smaller. The worst economy since the Depression. Two wars. Global warming. The Gulf spill. And he got heath care reform passed. He got financial reform passed. He may have saved the economy with stimulus that was a third tax cuts, not that anyone knows that. He may be able to blame Bill Clinton for his problems. I always said Bill Clinton may have been Al Gore’s biggest problem; and not for the reasons you are thinking. Bill Clinton is brilliant. Absolutely, amazingly brilliant. The problem he is also ‘Bubba’ — the guy who feels your pain and you want to have a beer with. Do not, even for a millisecond, this that is criticism, I would jump in front of a bullet for Bill Clinton. The problem is that many voters in 2000 saw Al Gore and George W. Bush as Bill Clinton split in two; you had the nerd who knew everything and the normal guy you wanted to hang with. We all know how that movie ended. And so as our nation faces this great dilemma, one of the worst crises since our inception, we don’t want a professor – though we need one – we want a guy who gets us. We expected an inspirational figure and we got an intellectual.

3. George W. Bush may have been the best thing to happen for people on the right. I made fun of him as much as anyone, it was easy. At the end of the day, George W. Bush is not the idiot the left made him out to be. Did you know he got better grades at Yale than Senator Kerry? Look it up. He is so smart because he maybe the political equivalent of Keyser Soze, whose greatest gift (or it was the devil) was ‘convincing the world he didn’t exist.’ He made us all believe that if he showed up somewhere and didn’t drool on himself, he had done good that day. And what has that legacy been? Sarah Palin, Christine O’Donnell and Rand Paul. Oh, and Sharon Angle. There are others but it makes me to depressed to think about it. The left dismisses these candidates at our peril.

And so it’s all about building people up to tear them down. I both love that and hate it. Being human, and one of the snarkiest people I know, I kind of like it when some arrogant person gets what they deserve. Being someone who supports competency in government, it bothers me because President Obama has done some amazing things and gotten no real credit while George W. Bush sent us to a war we didn’t need and destroyed the economy but rather than going grey with worry like Obama, he gets to play golf all day. It’s not fair.

Of course, neither is life and that’s why I don’t regret my vote for Vincent Grey. Hope my expectations for him are low enough for me not to be disappointed.

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I hate Arianna

Everybody loves Arianna Huffington.  Except for me.  For some reason, writing that makes me think of the Flanders song on The Simpsons:

“Hens love roosters.  Geese love ganders.  Everyone else loves Ned Flanders.

Not me. (Homer)

Everyone who counts loves Ned Flanders.”

I don’t like Arianna, and have a really hard time reading the insufferable Huffington Post, because I don’t trust her.  Sure, she seems like a good liberal/progressive today.  Today, on September 20th, 2010, Arianna was on Hardball dutifully playing a reasonable person.  One might totally forget her history – most seem to have – but I am not in that group.  I remember her history.

My personal history with her is long.  No, I have never met her but she was a big part of the start of my career.  And yes, I apparently hold grudges.  My experience with her started in 1994 but to get a full picture you need to go back further than that.

Arianna Huffington (née Stassinopoulos) was born in Greece.  In 1960, she moved to the United States.  One of the first things she was known for (here, she hosted a show in Britain before moving here) was dating Jerry Brown.  You know, the liberal.

Mrs. Huffington later married Michael Huffington, a Republican.  The couple moved to Santa Barbara in 1992 so that he could run for the House of Representatives.  He won.  She not only campaigned for her husband but she debated his opponent in his place.  In 1994, the duo ran one of the most expensive campaigns in US history (at the time) to unseat Senator Dianne Feinstein.  Almost $32 million later ($28 million of his own), Michael Huffington almost became a Senator.  That was the year I got my first job in politics.  I was  a press intern for Senator Feinstein.  Most of the time I love elections because they have outcomes that are pretty quick and decisive.  You know (usually, the country learned the lesson I learned that year in 2000 when hanging chads entered our collective vernacular) on election night if you won or lost.  Not in 1994, that election was so close that it was determined by absentee ballots.  This was a painful time for Senator Feinstein because she lost the California gubernatorial race in 1990 because of the same thing.

This was also a painful month for Senator Feinstein’s staff.  The Huffingtons made this worse.  I do not fault either of them for fighting the election night outcome; that’s normal.  I fault them for the incredibly poor sportsmanship they showed in the months between that night and when they finally gave up –I believe it was January when they did.  I could look it up but I want this account to be as much from memory as possible.  Congressman Huffington positioned himself in the path between where Senator Feinstein was sworn in to her office; he was giving a press interview (I was there, I saw it).  He was seen riding the “Senators Only” elevators (not as elitist as they seem, it’s to allow them to get to the Capitol in time for votes).  Arianna was seen measuring offices and picking out furniture.  At least once (when I was there anyway), they walked by our office and waved.  Classy.

The Huffingtons split up because he is gay.  There is nothing wrong with being gay.  Arianna is an immigrant.  There is nothing wrong with being an immigrant.  It is, however, incredibly hypocritical to run a campaign based on discriminating against homosexuals and immigrants when you are both.  It is pretty inexcusable if you aren’t but there I cannot forgive Arianna for supporting Proposition 187 (the anti immigration ballot initiative that would have prevented the children of immigrants from attending public schools).  Yes, Arianna, I kind of wished that had passed.  If only we could have made it retroactive to the day before you got here.  Do I sound bitter?  Kind of.

Once she was on her own, Arianna went on a crusade against the media.  She became a conservative columnist/panelist.  She wanted to start a show Beat the Press.  She hosted a show with Al Franken where she was the conservative and he was the liberal.  I think it was called Strange Bedfellows.  I still haven’t forgiven Franken for that.

And then it gets interesting.  Arianna started the Huffington Post. To whom did she turn for help?  Andrew Breitbart.  You may remember him.  He’s the rabid, Tea Bagger whose web site ‘broke’ the Acorn scandal last year.  He’s a peach.  And yet, I have fewer problems with him than Arianna.  Say what you want about Breitbart; he’s honest about his agenda and position.

So I don’t like Arianna.  It bothers me to no end that her web site is given so much weight and influence. I don’t trust the liberal turned conservative turned liberal.  No self-respecting progressive should.