Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Category: Barack Obama Page 12 of 13

Meet the New Boss

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On September 15, 2009

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Obama supports extending Patriot Act provisions.

I assume, by this point, no one expected anything else?

If not, forgive me, but you’re the living definition of denial.

The fundamental truth about the Obama administration is that it is the Bush administration run by slightly less incompetent, marginally less evil people:

  • The Iraq occupation will end when Bush wanted it to.
  • The Bush administration’s campaign of eradication of fundamental civil liberties, including the gutting of the 4th amendment and holding people without trial, continues.
  • The Afghan war continues, and is even being escalated.
  • The signature issue of “health care reform” is a scheme which will force citizens to buy private insurance which, because of lack of effective controls, will increase in price faster than wages or inflation.
  • Obama and Geithner have followed the Bush/Paulson financial policies, virtually to the letter, spending trillions bailing out Wall Street and creating a financial sector which has fewer, larger actors with more political power than before.
  • Obama continues to exert pressure primarily on Progressives rather than on Blue Dogs in order to obtain relatively more conservative rather than liberal bills. (This is not an accident.)  The most liberal bill always comes from the House, the conference committee bill is inevitably closer to the more conservative Senate bill.  (This is not an accident.)
  • Unlike Bush Jr, Bush Sr., Clinton, and Reagan, Obama has not replaced the prior administration’s district attorneys wholesale, instead leaving in place the majority of the Bush administration DA’s who had survived Rove’s purges intended to make sure they were loyal Republican apparatchiks.
  • Obama has not cleaned out the administration in general of Bush-era appointees and plants; indeed he has filled less spots than either Clinton or Bush II had by this point in their terms—and no, it’s not because the Senate won’t confirm them.
  • Obama appointees will be forced to resign if the right wing (aka Beck) goes after them hard, but if progressives don’t like them, tough luck.
  • Obama’s economic team is filled with people who created the framework which allowed the financial meltdown to occur, who didn’t see it coming, and whose solution to it is to give money to their friends and colleagues and try and get another bubble started.
  • Etc.

In most meaningful ways, Obama is running a slightly kinder, gentler and very moderately less-stupid version of the Bush constitutional framework.

Plus ça change plus c’est la meme chose.

Obama Explains the “Rules of Reform”

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On September 10, 2009

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Obama in his speech last night:

“I am not the first President to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last.”

“…under my plan, individuals will be required to carry basic health insurance”

“I have no interest in putting insurance companies out of business.”

” we believe that less than 5 percent of Americans would sign up” (for the public option)

“Nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have.”

(editor note: or allows you to, if you have insurance through an employer.)

Clearer Obama:

As Health Secretary Sebelius said, we are determined to create a health system in this country which is designed so it can never become single payer.  My mandate system, forcing you to buy insurance from insurance companies with inadequate subsidies, will preclude that possibility and save the American consumer for the American insurance and pharmaceutical industries.

Rule 1: the best way to make money is to have the government force people to buy your product.

Rule 2: Any major industry with a revenue stream is entitled to that revenue stream forever, no matter how bad the service they provide is, or how much they overcharge.

Rule 3: Any failure of the system will be paid for by forcing ordinary people to pay to bail out the elites who failed.  Making the rich pay for their own mistakes is unacceptable.

Spare Me The Tears: Liberal Activists Aren’t Showing Up For Obama and Democrats Because of Democratic Decisions

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On September 1, 2009

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Robert Reich seems to think left wing activists can’t organize, as evidenced by them not doing really coming out for Obama’s health care “plan” (whatever that is).  Since left wing activists put together massive marches against the Iraq war, for example, it’s nonsense that they can’t do it.  So why haven’t they?

Our real activists, as a group, believe in single payer.  They are not going to march, or even show up at Townhalls in large numbers in order to push some wishy -washy bill that has a public option which sucks wind (and none of the bills have a good public option.)

Obama and Democrats deliberately demotivated the base by telling them that single payer was off the table, arrested them when they dared insist on talking about it, and disrespected them in every way possible.

Of course the activists aren’t showing up.  Who the hell would expect them to?  If Obama or Democrats in general want activists, who by definition are hardcore people who actually believe in liberalism to show up and fight for them, they need to offer liberalism, not warmed over centrist pap.

Republican activists are worked up, and liberal activists are demotivated, and that’s a direct result of Democratic decisions.  I’m tired as hell of hearing activists being blamed for decisions made by craven, triangulating politicians.

Message to Obama and other Democratic leadership: Stand for actual liberalism; for actual workable policy; and activists will stand with you.   Liberals and progressives stand with liberals and progressives.

That isn’t you.

So quiver alone, until you find the courage to have some convictions.

Update: a friend tried to tell me otherwise, pointing to rallies of 1,000 to 2,000 over the last weekend.  My answer:

Ah, then the majority of people at town halls are and have been supporters of the public option, yes?  You’re out-numbering and out-organizing the right wing, yes?  You don’t need liberal activists who favor single payer.  That’s /so/ good to know.

So very glad to hear it.  Not what I heard from Eric Massa, for one, at NN09 “90% of people at my town halls are against heatlh care reform”, but perhaps since then you’ve turned things around.

And of course, you are having huge rallies, right?

You will excuse me, however, if rallies of 1,000 or 2,000 people don’t impress me.  How many people came out to protest the Iraq war, for example?  (Answer, even in the US, rallies of 100,000 to 200,000.  Even in later years 10 to 20K was not uncommon).

Where are the activists?  Why are the unions having to carry this?  Why are your rallies an order of magnitude or two lower than rallies for another big cause that occurred recently?

So yes, I think I’ll say that the activists are not showing up.

Bloggers et al notice that Republicans can win in 2010 and 2012

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On August 21, 2009

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Image by Admit One

Image by Admit One

Yes, it’s another of my tiresome “I told you so, next time listen” posts.  In January and April I warned that Republicans could use their skill at being in the opposition and Obama’s manifest failings  could lead to a Republican rebound in 2010 and 2012.  His failings were clearly visible back then and indeed in the primary campaign. He didn’t turn into a compromising milquetoast when he got to the White House, he was always one.  He didn’t turn into a conservative Democrat in the White House, he was always one. Likewise, we knew the Repubicans weren’t going to play ball with Obama’s delusional ideas of bipartisanship and the stimulus package told us he wasn’t interesting in passing effective policy.

And, of course, the mockery ensued.  The Republicans, I was told, were such a joke that Obama and the Democrats couldn’t possibly lose, and as for Obama, well, he was a genius with brilliant legislative strategies a dullard like myself couldn’t understand.

Yeah…  I found the kool-aid drinkers sad when they drank Bush’s kool-aid, and I find them pathetic now that they’re drinking Obama’s.  I understand that people need to feel some hope in Obama, because if he screws up, well, it’s Americans who get screwed.  We all want to believe things will get better, but one of the surest ways to not have them get better is to live in some sort of fantasyland.  Obama was very clear even in the primaries that he was a compromiser who believed that with a dose of his charisma the Republican would melt and join Democrats in linking hands and singing kumbaya around the bonfire.  All could be solved if reasonable people got together and just reasoned together.

He later made his fundamental agreement with basic Bush principles of civil rights by voting for warrantless wiretapping after promising to vote against it, then made clear that he’d serve financial interests before ordinary Americans when he forced through TARP.

And yet people believed he was going to be some sort of progressive president?  Granted, even I have been shocked at just how much his administration has violated progressive and liberal principles, but I was only surprised in degree, not kind, because I knew he didn’t believe in them.  This isn’t because I’m brilliant, I’m not.  It’s because I looked at the evidence and didn’t let “hope” and soaring rhetoric distract me from his actions and, to a large extent, what he was actually saying.  Certainly he lied about some things, but he was very honest about his fundamental governing philosophy.  Likewise, who his key advisers were, the fact that he had the right-most policy prescriptions of the late Democratic primary field, the way he fetishized tax cuts and so on, told anyone who was listening without “hope” clogging their ears who he was.

This is why I repeatedly advised people to give money to and work for liberal Congressional candidates rather than Obama.  It was at that level that the left could make a real difference, not at the Presidential level where such donations were drops in an ocean and plenty of volunteers were already available.

America’s problems are not going to get solved before a complete crash out (something which I believe is now more than even odds within the next 20 years) if Americans, and especially progressives and liberals, keep letting themselves be fooled.

The truth won’t make you happy, nor will it set you free, but absent the truth you’re only another sucker who is helping the very people who oppress you.

[See Peter Daou on the possibility of 2010 and 2012 being loss years.]

Miscellania: Healthcare, Unemployment, Resistance and Obama

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On August 8, 2009

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Back from my visit to Victoria, let’s do a quick roundup.

Healthcare: I remain convinced that nothing that will come out of this Congress won’t be pretty awful.  My current belief is that what will be passed will mandate everyone buy insurance but because of inadequate cost controls and subsidies will leave ordinary people forced to buy insurance which will increase in price faster than wages.   The optimistic view would be that once everyone is in the system, pressure will build to make the system actually work.  We’ll see, even if true, there’ll be a lot of pain in between.

Unemployment: According to the BLS, the economy lost 274,000 jobs, but the unemployment rate dropped from 9.5% to 9.4%.  Welcome to the world of statistics that don’t mean what you think they do.  People who want jobs, but who are convinced they can’t get one and so aren’t looking actively don’t count as unemployed.  So the number of employed people can go down and the unemployment rate can go down.  In other words, we’re a long way from things getting better, they’re just getting worse more slowly.

Resistance: The American right has decided on a policy of resistance to Obama which can be summed up as “thuggery”.  People are being trained and financed to go out and shout down Democrats or intimidate them.  There has already been some violence, there will be more.  The Obama administration thought they could avoid the rise of the refusnik right by refusing to act on most social issues, which is why they abandoned their promises to gays and have generally been unwilling to move on other social issues.  They took the lesson of the Clinton administration to be “don’t inflame the fanatics on the right—avoid social issues, and don’t slash the military”.  They were, of course, wrong: the radical right (and there is hardly a non-radical right left) will oppose Obama no matter what he does and if Obama is unwilling to use to the full might of the administrative apparatus against them, they will simply take advantage of his weakness to escalate.  Tactics which are seen to work, will not be abandoned, to the contrary, they will be used more and more.

Obama: Obama’s active period is about over.  Health care “reform”, if he gets it through, will probably be the last major policy.  While there are rises and falls, his overall popularity is trending down and that will probably continue.  The “honeymoon” is over, and it was used primarily to shove through a lousy stimulus that won’t lead to enough of a recovery, and with luck (for him) a bad global warming bill and health reform that isn’t.  Fortunately, banks and financial firms have been bailed out and are making lots of money, and should be in a position to reward Obama with significant funding in future elections.

Unless they decide that the Republicans will give them everything they want, too.

Add to that Republican weakness, and Obama’s inner circle may think they’re still cruising for reelection.  I’m not so sure.  Counting on your enemy’s weakness is a dangerous tactic, especially when you are doing little to ensure that they remain weak or that you remain strong.

The Compromised President and Congress: Why this health care bill probably won’t reduce costs

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On July 22, 2009

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Ok, I’ve tried to keep an open mind on this. I prefer single payor, but a properly done public option could, indeed, drive down costs and help some people get care.

But I’m no longer sure I can maintain benefit of the doubt.  First it was the AMA endorsement, which was bought by a promise not to reduce medicare rates as much as initially planned.  Now I read from Robert Reich that the price of pharma not killing it is:

  • Not allowing drug reimportation from Canada
  • Not allowing the government to negotiate drug prices

The 80 billion pharma promised last month is a small price to pay for that, and I’ll tell you right now that that 80 billion won’t appear anyway.  As soon as the pharma companies can betray, they will.

The mandate, as Reich points out, can easily lead to insurance companies earning more money than they’ll lose, which since the insurance companies are the problem, means that costs won’t go down much, if at all.

All in all, I don’t think any bill that’s going to come out of this Congress is going to be strong enough to drive down costs or even significantly reduce the growth rate.  The mandates, combined with insufficient subsidies mean that many people are going to be hurt by being forced to buy insurance.  The Massachussets plan, which this is based on, has not worked well.  This isn’t going to either.

This bill is turning into a pork-fest.  Buy-in is being achieved by making it clear that stakeholders will make more money once it’s done, not less.

My biggest weakness this year in doing analysis has been hope.  I have let hope that the Obama administration and a Democratic Congress will do the right thing, and that they aren’t corrupt and incompetent, get in the way of clear thinking.  Enough.  Hope isn’t a plan, and hope isn’t policy.  Hope without good policy is a con-job.

There hasn’t been a good, major, bill come out of this Congress this year.  They have all been fatally compromised, from the stimulus bill (larded up with useless tax cuts and without necessary State relief) to the global warming bill, which is so far from doing enough that it’s a joke.

At this point I see no reason to believe this bill won’t be the same.  Yes, a few people may get health care who wouldn’t otherwise and that matters, but it won’t contain costs to any significant degree and it will put a huge burden on Americans who can’t afford it.  The likelihood that a surtax on the rich to pay for it won’t happen just makes this even more clear.

This is not the Bush administration, but the primary assumption of the Bush years that nothing would get through Congress that wasn’t bought and paid for; that wasn’t fatally compromised at very best still holds in only a mildly mitigated form.  Yes, Obama and the Democrats sometimes try to do the right thing while Bush almost never bothered, but  the bills that come out at the end are still awful.

This year is effectively over.  Obama’s ratings are dropping and will continue to drop as the economy doesn’t improve for ordinary people.  In future years he will reap what he has sown: bad policy will lead to bad real results, and Obama and the Democratic Congress will be blamed for that.  They will deserve it.

Hope I’m wrong about this.

But I wouldn’t bet on it.  Even hope wears thin over time.

Obama to blogs: Help!

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On July 21, 2009

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So, Obama had a conference call with bloggers, and urged them to help him pass his health reform bill (a bill most liberal bloggers would have preferred was single payor, something Obama ruled out day one.) I find this… fascinating.

When I was dealing with the various Democratic primary campaigns in 2007 and 8, the one which did the least outreach to bloggers and which was the most closed and insular was the Obama campaign.

When Obama became the nominee, things didn’t change. Well, except once. After the Republican convention, when Obama was behind briefly, suddenly the Obama administration wanted to talk to bloggers. A lot. The moment his numbers improved, the door went back to its prior “one inch open, shout, and maybe someone will ignore you” position.

I found that interesting then. I find it interesting now.

I also do truly hope Obama gets through a bill which includes all his criteria:

the President mentioned his criteria for reform: Does it cover all Americans; Will it drive down costs over the long-term; Will it improve quality; Are prevention and wellness included; Does it contain insurance reforms on issues like pre-existing conditions; does it provide relief to small business; and, is there a serious public option. He warned that the different bills coming from the House and Senate may not have all of those provisions, but the conference committee will be critical.

And I hope it’s not just a pep talk for the gullible troops.  I hope, more, that it’s clear he got all those things in a meaningful form rather than getting a bill through to get a bill through

And hey, last time he stopped talking to us when he didn’t need us.  I’m sure he’ll do the same thing again.  Which, oddly, leaves me hoping that he stops talking to us again soon.

At least he’s still inspiring hope in me.

Senate Finance Committee: We’re Going to Make You Buy Bad Insurance With No Public Option

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On June 19, 2009

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winged_caduceusSeriously, this is just pathetic:

1) Lower the medicaid coverage rate from 150% to 100% of the Federal poverty line, 133% for kids and pregnant women (once you have the baby, too bad for you)
2) Subsidies stop at 300% of the poverty line (was 400%)
3) No Public Option mentioned
4) Insurance exchanges at the State level
5) Must buy insurance unless it costs more than 15% of your income
6) A fine if you don’t buy insurance unless you’re below the Federal poverty line

For the most part, as Walker discusses, this is actually identical to or slightly worse  than the plan put forward by America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP).  Yes, worse than the insurance industry’s plan.  Remarkable.  Baucus is really earning his campaign donations these days.

Of course, this is only one proposal, and in principle others from the House and other Senate committees could be better, and the better ones could be enacted.  Obama has said he wants a public option, and he may whip for it.

But, if something like this is what comes out as the eventual “reform” it is worse than nothing.  Being forced to buy bad insurance, with huge co-pays without a public option to keep prices in check has as its primary value that it is a subsidy for the insurance companies and that it reduces catastrophic healthcare costs for hospitals, because due to forced purchases of bad plans, some of the folks who used to come in at the last minute, after having not gotten care, and then costing the hospital hundreds of thousands of dollars in emergency care, will be partially paid for.  They’ll still come in last minute and not have been properly cared for since the deductibles will mean they didn’t get help, but 70% or 80% of their final death-rattle costs will be paid for.

The problem with this plan is that it won’t control costs.  Without a public option, the insurance companies will have no check on their prices, let alone pressure to actually reduce them.  Because people will be forced to buy bad insurance, they’ll hate the plan, and because “reform” has been passed, we’ll have to wait another 10 or 12 years for another shot.

Obama desperately wants to pass health care “reform”.  The fear is that he may take the easy road, and pass any bill that is “better than nothing”, and that progressives will once again accept the logic that it’s better to get something rather than fight for an actual good bill.

But because Obama does desperately want to pass something, if progressives stand firm in the House or the Senate, and refuse as a bloc to pass anything without a good public option, nothing can pass unless Republicans cross the aisle, which is rather unlikely.

So the answer is to stop being taken for granted.  Stand up for and demand a public option, and refuse to accept a bill which does less.  Don’t let Obama have a cheap victory; a cheap “medicare reform”.  If he wants it, make him whip for a real bill, a good bill, with a public option.  He whipped for money to bail out banks in Eastern Europe.  He whipped for TARP.  He can whip for a good healthcare bill.  And it won’t even cost 700 billion.

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