Tag Archives: Obama

A Public Option Will Destroy Competition? What Competition?

30 Tuesday Jun 2009

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The next time you hear one of our elected officials in Washington rail against President Obama’s proposed public option on health insurance by saying it will “destroy the marketplace” (Richard Shelby) or that there’s “plenty of competition in the private insurance market” (Joe Lieberman) remember this report from Heath Care for America Now (HCAN).

The only thing in danger of being destroyed is the monopoly the large insurance companies presently hold, and which they are willing to make any amount of campaign contributions (aka bribes) to continue.

Consider the following:

“In the past 13 years, more than 400 corporate mergers have involved health insurers, and a small number of companies now dominate local markets but haven’t delivered on promises of increased efficiency. According to the American Medical Association, 94 percent of insurance markets in the United States are now highly concentrated.”

“Highly concentrated,” according to the U.S. Justice Department means that one company holds more than a 42 % share of the market, a level reached in 31 states.

“In Hawaii, Rhode Island, Alaska, Vermont, Maine, Montana, Wyoming, Arkansas, and Iowa, the two largest health insurers control at least 80% of the statewide market.”

In Senator Shelby’s own state of Alabama, Blue Cross Blue Shield controls 83% of the statewide market, the highest rate in the nation for a single company. Is this what he is intent on preserving? Apparently so.

Right here in Texas, two companies, Blue Cross Blue Shield and Aetna, control 59% of the market. Our own Senator John Cornyn was one of 9 GOP senators who sent a letter to President Obama which said “a federal government takeover of our healthcare system would take decisions out of the hands of doctors and patients and place them in the hands of a Washington bureaucracy.” I suppose placing those decisions in the hands of an insurance company “bureaucracy” is acceptable.

But having a monopoly can be a very profitable enterprise:

“Profits at 10 of the country’s largest publicly traded health insurance companies rose 428 percent from 2000 to 2007. In 2007 alone, the chief executive officers at these companies collected combined total compensation of $118.6 million—an average of $11.9 million each.

That is 468 times more than the $25,434 an average American worker made that year. Moreover, the health insurance industry invests more in buying back its own stock and rewarding its shareholders than in improving system operations, reducing premiums, or in developing ways to pay doctors and hospitals fairly.”

For those of us who pay premiums however, it’s not such a sweetheart deal. They have risen more than 87%, on average, over the past 6 years. From 1999-2007, while the average U. S. wage growth was 29%, the average premium growth was 120%.

This is the status quo that Shelby, Lieberman, Cornyn, the big insurance companies, and their lobbyists want to maintain. It’s up to us to let them know that another 15 years of business as usual is unacceptable.

Good Advice For Senator McCain: “Be Quiet”

24 Wednesday Jun 2009

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TIME’s Joe Klein had some good advice for John McCain in an appearance on Larry King Live Tuesday night. Advice that also applies to Lindsey Graham, Fred Thompson and the rest of the Republican chorus of bluster and bravado urging President Obama to “do more” about the situation in Iran.

“Be quiet.”

Whatever happened to “politics stops at the waters edge?” I recall not too long ago Republicans saying that criticizing the President’s foreign policy in a time of war amounted to treason. Does that only apply when a Republican is in the Oval Office? Apparently so.

Klein added:

“You don’t need to do this…. What you’re doing is a self-indulgence at this point. Senator McCain, if he’s going to talk about this, should also talk about the fact that the United States supported Saddam Hussein in the Iran/Iraq war for eight years. Every one of those protesters out in the streets, every last one of them believes the United States supplied Saddam Hussein with the poison gas that has debilitated tens of thousands of Iranian men…. They blame us for identifying them as part of the Axis of Evil, with two countries that they disdain, the Iraqis and the North Koreans.”

To go back even further, Iranians also know that it was our CIA who overthrew their democratically elected government in 1953 and put the Shah in power. It was also American presidents who supported the Shah for the next 26 years while his secret police brutalized and terrorized the Iranian people leading up to the 1979 revolution.

And try as McCain might to make the situation in Iran analogous to Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, and the fall of the Soviet Union, it just isn’t the same.

“Obama’s shades-of-gray approach rejects comparison to an era when Communist bloc dissidents had virtually no access to the Western media and the world was more neatly divided between a pair of superpowers, not complicated by the set of ambitious regional powers such as Iran that the Obama administration is seeking to manage.”

The day following his remarks on Larry King, Klein posted this at Swampland:

“I’ve been receiving a steady stream of favorable emails from Iranian-Americans regarding my appearance on Larry King last night. They’re delighted that I made it clear that Iran is different from the other countries in the region–better educated, more sophisticated, with far greater rights for women (although not nearly enough). And they also appreciated the fact that when King asked me what John McCain should do right now, I said, “Be quiet.”

I have yet to hear what possible good it would do for the President of the United States to encourage the protesters, except to give the Iranian regime a better excuse for killing more of them. McCain’s bleatings are either for domestic political consumption or self-satisfaction, a form of hip-shooting that demonstrates why he would have been a foreign policy disaster had he been elected.

To put it as simply as possible, McCain–and his cohorts–are trying to score political points against the President in the midst of an international crisis. It is the sort of behavior that Republicans routinely call “unpatriotic” when Democrats are doing it. I would never question John McCain’s patriotism, no matter how misguided his sense of the country’s best interests sometimes seems. His behavior has nothing to do with love of country; it has everything to do with love of self.”

I have some advice of my own for Sen. McCain and his cohorts, join Governor Sanford on the Appalachian Trail. In other words, take a hike.

The Return of the “Social Security is Going Broke” Myth

26 Tuesday May 2009

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As if there wasn’t enough panic coming from the Republicans in D.C. (along with some Democrats like Harry Reid) about detainees from Gitmo being re-located to American suburbia, now comes the obligatory ‘Social Security is going broke’ myth from one of the usual suspects on the right, Robert Samuelson, columnist for the Washington Post.

”The recession had made everything worse…trust funds run dry; promised benefits exceed dedicated payroll taxes…retirees would scream. Hospitals might shut.” Chicken Little Samuelson cries.

Mr. Samuelson’s solution?

“It’s increasingly obvious that Congress and the president (regardless of the party in power) will deal with the political stink bomb of an aging society only if forced. And the most plausible means of compulsion would be for Social Security and Medicare to go bankrupt.”

Good idea, let them both go away, paving the way for another all-time greatest hit from Samuelson and his fellow travelers, privatization. (Note: the preceding contains sarcasm).

Just a couple of problems with the panic scenario. One, Social Security isn’t going broke. Two, the fiscal outlook for Social Security and Medicare are completely different. Of course the privatizers know this, they just like to lump them together to make the numbers bigger and scarier.

“About a decade ago, conservative and libertarian economists who oppose Social Security, Medicare and other entitlements came up with a clever rhetorical strategy. They would calculate the gap between the payroll taxes that pay for these programs and estimated costs over time. But there was one problem: The gap isn’t all that scary, at least in the near future.

So in order to frighten the American people and their elected leaders, deficit hawks cite the sum total of Social Security’s “unfunded liabilities” over 75 years. But even this — a paltry $4.3 trillion over three-quarters of a century, according to the 2008 report — isn’t sufficiently terrifying.  [So they combine Medicare and SS]

[This] produces a suitably spooky 75-year shortfall of $42.9 trillion. And if this is not alarming enough, deficit hawks can cite the truly apocalyptic figure of $101.7 trillion in combined “entitlement” spending over an infinite time horizon.

The anti-Social Security lobby always presents the “unfunded liabilities” of “entitlements” in scary dollar terms, rather than as percentage points of GDP. Here’s why: Over the next 75 years, the Social Security shortfall at most hovers around 1 percent of total U.S. GDP over that same period.”

Samuelson claims that Social Security will run out of money by 2037. Never mind the fact that this projection is based on an annual economic growth rate of 2.6% and the average annual growth rate since the Civil War is  nearly 3 percent.

At a rate of 3%, Social Security is solvent for 75 years, not 28.

Even using the conservative estimates, an increase in the payroll tax from 12.4% to 14.4% would completely eliminate the shortfall.

Medicare is a problem right now. But President Obama’s proposed health care reform would go a long way towards solving it.

“Medicare is entirely different. It’s a monster. But fixing it has everything to do with slowing the rate of growth of medical costs — including, let’s not forget, having a public option when it comes to choosing insurance plans under the emerging universal health insurance bill. With a public option, the government can use its bargaining power with drug companies and suppliers of medical services to reduce prices.”

So you see, no need to panic, Republicans. Resume focusing on KSM being your next door neighbor.

If We Sink to the Level of the Terrorists, Haven’t They Won?

22 Wednesday Apr 2009

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There are a couple of articles in the news this morning that are bringing cries of ‘See, we told you so’ from the defenders of the so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

One is from CNS News, which says that the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed yielded information that prevented a terrorist attack on Los Angeles.

The other is from the New York Times, which contains this quote from a memo sent by national intelligence director Admiral Dennis Blair to his staff:

“High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qa’ida organization that was attacking this country.”

Those are headlines you are likely to see from those who seek to justify the use of torture. What you aren’t likely to read in those same places is this quote, also from Admiral Blair, also in the NYT article:

“The information gained from these techniques was valuable in some instances, but there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means. The bottom line is these techniques have hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security.”

So I’ll ask you, should the policy of the United States of America regarding interrogation be ‘whatever it takes?’ Do we adopt the tactics, such as waterboarding, used by Imperial Japan in WWII, tactics which were later prosecuted as war crimes, and which were common in Pol Pot’s Cambodia?

Personally, I’ll side with President Obama, who said this in his remarks to the CIA:

“What makes the United States special, and what makes you special, is precisely the fact that we are willing to uphold our values and ideals even when it’s hard — not just when it’s easy; even when we are afraid and under threat — not just when it’s expedient to do so. That’s what makes us different.”

One more question. If we sink to the level of Osama bin Laden and his followers who seek to do us harm, haven’t they won?

Prosecute The Torturers

19 Sunday Apr 2009

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To prosecute or not to prosecute, that is the question. With the release of the Justice Department memos last week detailing the so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” (aka torture) used by the CIA, the debate has begun over what to do to those who were involved.

I fully understand the desire of the administration to, as the President said, “look forward and not backward.” We are facing the most serious economic crisis since the Great Depression and the President wants the focus to be on getting our economy back on a solid footing. I get that.

But at the same time I believe that the people responsible for the despicable acts described in those memos need to be held accountable. Not only the people who carried out those acts but those who approved and condoned their use.

The reason being that if we don’t hold them accountable it seems to me we are setting a dangerous precedent for (God forbid) a future administration with a vice-president like the Marquis de Cheney.

A vice-president who would have this to say about waterboarding:

“I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared, as the agency in effect came in and wanted to know what they could and couldn’t do. And they talked to me, as well as others, to explain what they wanted to do. And I supported it. ”

And this:

“We proceeded very cautiously; we checked, we had the Justice Department issue the requisite opinions in order to know where the bright lines were that you could not cross. The professionals involved in that program were very, very cautious, very careful, wouldn’t do anything without making certain it was authorized and that it was legal. And any suggestion to the contrary is just wrong.”

“Very cautiously” and knowing “where the lines were that you could not cross.” Really? See if you think this sounds cautious and does not cross any lines.

“According to the May 30, 2005 Bradbury memo, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in March 2003 and Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in August 2002″.

That’s 6 times a day, every day for a month for Mohammed. That’s cautious and not crossing lines?

A couple of conclusions with which I agree. First from Donklephant:

“The point isn’t whether or not Mohammed is a bad man. There’s no doubt he is. The point is that we can’t allow ourselves to act just as despicable as him. I mean, Bush said they hate our freedoms, right? Well what happens when we compromise our values to mirror theirs? Doesn’t that make us less free?”
And this from Emptywheel:
“The CIA wants you to believe waterboarding is effective. Yet somehow, it took them 183 applications of the waterboard in a one month period to get what they claimed was cooperation out of KSM.

That doesn’t sound very effective to me.”

So back to the question, to prosecute or not to prosecute?

Despite the possible loss of focus on economic issues, I see the option of not prosecuting having far greater repercussions than that of going forward with prosecution.

The President and the Teleprompter

26 Thursday Mar 2009

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A recurring theme among the detractors of President Obama has been his reliance on a teleprompter. Anyone who spends time on the internet has seen it on an almost daily basis.

In the minds of some this apparently is an indicator of a lack of intelligence, as ridiculous as that is when speaking about a Harvard graduate, editor of The Law Review, and author of 2 books.

One of the bloggers on the far-right, John Hinderaker, who writes for Power Line, said this about a recent speech by President Obama in which he mis-pronounced the word “Orion.”

“Everyone knows that Barack Obama is lost without his teleprompter, but his latest blunder, courtesy of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, via the Corner, suggests that the teleprompter may not be enough unless it includes phonetic spellings.

So evidently we have to add astronomy to history and economics as subjects of which Obama is remarkably ignorant. I’m beginning to fear that our President has below-average knowledge of the world. Not for a President, but for a middle-aged American.”

 

Just as a point of reference, this is the same Mr. Hinderaker who wrote this shortly after last year’s election:

“Obama thinks he is a good talker, but he is often undisciplined when he speaks. He needs to understand that as President, his words will be scrutinized and will have impact whether he intends it or not. In this regard, President Bush is an excellent model; Obama should take a lesson from his example. Bush never gets sloppy when he is speaking publicly. He chooses his words with care and precision, which is why his style sometimes seems halting. In the eight years he has been President, it is remarkable how few gaffes or verbal blunders he has committed. If Obama doesn’t raise his standards, he will exceed Bush’s total before he is inaugurated.”

 

But you know, the more I think about it, the more I tend to agree with Hinderaker and others. Only a complete idiot would have to rely on a teleprompter when speaking to the country. Right, Senator McCain?

 mccaitele

 

Right, Governor Palin?

 palintele

 

Right, Sean?

hannitytele 

 

Oh no, say it ain’t so.

 reaganteleprompter

 

Oh well, I guess it’s back to the birth certificate nonsense.

Brevity Is The Soul of Wit

24 Saturday Jan 2009

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“Brevity is the soul of wit.”

President Obama yesterday confirmed these words, spoken by Lord Polonius in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, in this two word retort to would-be Republican obstructionists and heel-draggers who are question the size and scope of his proposed economic stimulus package.

“I won.”

From Politico:

“President Obama listened to Republican gripes about his stimulus package during a meeting with congressional leaders Friday morning – but he also left no doubt about who’s in charge of these negotiations. “I won,” Obama noted matter-of-factly, according to sources familiar with the conversation.

The exchange arose as top House and Senate Republicans expressed concern to the president about the amount of spending in the package.”

More from the New York Post:

“Not that Obama was gloating. He was just explaining that he aims to get his way on stimulus package and all other legislation, sources said, noting his unrivaled one-party control of both congressional chambers.

“We are experiencing an unprecedented economic crisis that has to be dealt with and dealt with rapidly,” Obama said during the meeting.”

But the Republicans, whose symbol of an elephant needs to be replaced by an ostrich, apparently don’t think economic stimulus is necessary. According to the National Republican Congressional Committee web site:

“Thanks to Republican economic policies, the U.S. economy is robust and job creation is strong.”

As someone commented here earlier this week, I wonder what color the sky is in the Republican’s world.

But President Obama wasn’t finished with Republicans, adding this:

“You can’t just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done,” he told top GOP leaders, whom he had invited to the White House to discuss his nearly $1 trillion stimulus package.”

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been sleeping better at night since January 20th. My country is once again in good hands.

Memo to Democrats: No Guts, No Glory

05 Monday Jan 2009

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The details of President-elect Barack Obama’s proposed economic stimulus package are starting to emerge, and to be frank, I am less than impressed by what I have seen so far. From the New York Times:

“President-elect Barack Obama plans to include about $300 billion in tax cuts for workers and businesses in his economic recovery program, advisers said Sunday, as his team seeks to win over Congressional skeptics worried that he was too focused on government spending.

The legislation Mr. Obama is developing with Congressional Democrats will devote about 40 percent of the cost to tax cuts, including his centerpiece campaign promise to provide credits up to $500 for most workers, costing roughly $150 billion. The package will also include more than $100 billion in tax incentives for businesses to create jobs and invest in equipment or factories.”

I understand the need to fulfill the campaign promise of a middle-class tax cut, and giving businesses incentives for creating jobs, but it seems to me that devoting 40% of the stimulus package to tax cuts is too much.

Here’s a chart from Moody’s that shows “bang for the buck” when it comes to tax cuts vs. government spending. The figures are dollars added to the GDP in relation to dollars spent.

bang-for-the-buck

As you can see, the greater boost to the GDP comes from the last four spending increases rather than tax cuts or rebates.

But the thing that bothers me most about the proposed package is the reason for making tax cuts such a large part. From the Wall Street Journal:

“The size of the proposed tax cuts — which would account for about 40% of a stimulus package that could reach $775 billion over two years — is greater than many on both sides of the aisle in Congress had anticipated. It may make it easier to win over Republicans who have stressed that any initiative should rely more heavily on tax cuts rather than spending.”

I respect President-elect Obama’s desire for bi-partisanship, but isn’t it the suddenly fiscally conservative Republicans, whose policies of big tax cuts, un-regulated markets, and laissez-faire capitalism, have put us into the economic ditch in which we now find ourselves?

Also, the President-elect, and virtually every economist worthy of the title has said that our current economic predicament calls for unprecedented, bold actions. I don’t see kowtowing to Republicans as either unprecedented or bold. It reeks of same old, same old to me.

I realize that Democrats passing a stimulus package by a straight party line vote in the House, and by picking off one or two moderate Republicans in the Senate, is a big gamble. If it works, Democrats get all the credit, if it doesn’t they get all the blame.

But to bring it down to simple terms that I can understand, every gym that I have ever walked into in my 52 years has a sign with some variation of the theme, “No guts, no glory.” I think that’s what the majority of us voted for in November, and that’s what we expect, a different way of how business is done in D.C. Isn’t that what “change” is all about?

More Knee-Jerk Republican Reaction

16 Sunday Nov 2008

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Speaking of knee-jerk Republican reaction to the election of Barack Obama, there’s this from the desk of Michael Reagan (bold letters, caps and underlines are Reagan’s, not mine):

“Dear Conservative Friend,

It’s official: America has its first truly Socialist president…

 

As bad as the election results were, I believe there IS “light at the end of the tunnel” — I believe we now have the opportunity to finally turn out these fake “leaders” that have betrayed conservatism and given us Barack Obama. We have the opportunity to bring back the Reagan wing of the Republican Party, to slow down the socialist legislation from Pelosi and Reid, and to restore this great Republic to its original ideals of basic self-evident truths: our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

This is our chance, friend. It may be our ONLY chance to save our Party — and it may be our LAST chance to save our country.

 

You can be sure that President Obama (oh, how that phrase terrifies me!) will get right to work on Day One, issuing Executive Orders that will make your skin crawl: repealing pro-life presidential directives, ordering agencies to fund far-left groups like ACORN and the ACLU, signing over American sovereignty to the United Nations and the European Union… he’s got a long list! But for every liberal (and usually unconstitutional) Executive Order that Barack Obama issues, we’ll alert our Activists to BARRAGE the White House with even MORE phone calls, faxes, emails and even hand-delivered letters and petitions, DEMANDING that he “reverse course” on those Orders or face a Republican Congress in 2010!

With the Democrats back in power in both Congress and the White House, you KNOW that they’ll be falling right back into their habits of taking lobbyists’ money under the table, trading votes for campaign contributions, spying on and sabotaging Republican legislative plans, covering up their leaders’ sexual “flings,” and spending taxpayer money on personal expenses like never before. But this time, YOU AND I will be there every step of the way, making sure that no stone is left unturned, every dark corner is filled with light, and every illegal act is paid for with censure, impeachment, recalls, investigations, and jail time for every criminal we expose in Washington, D.C.

My father wasn’t afraid to call evil what it was — and neither am I. He defeated the “Evil Empire” called the Soviet Union — but now we face a new “Evil Empire.” It’s called Socialism, and it’s taken over our once-free nation through the victories of Obama, Pelosi and Reid.”

 

Nice job Michael, now that your Party is in that hole, just keep digging.

McCain Mailer Evokes Images of 9/11

23 Thursday Oct 2008

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As the McCain campaign sinks lower and lower in the polls, the level of their desperation grows greater and greater. Case in point, a mailer they are sending out in Virginia and Missouri which evokes memories of 9/11 and makes shameless accusations against Barack Obama.

This is the front of the mailer:

Inside is this. Notice the statement at the bottom:“Islamic extremists want our laws changed, our culture destroyed and our families converted. We don’t. What is there to talk about?” The implication being that either Barack Obama wants to do the same, or is sympathetic to those that do.

And what did Senator McCain say when asked if he was proud of this piece of garbage? “Absolutely.”

Just more of the “respectful” campaign we have come to expect from the Republican nominee.