Health Care Redux

I've been playing with this one too long, especially considering there is nothing complicated about the current health care "debate." The Obama presidency may come down to whether he can once again confound the forces of reaction and install an efficient, equitable, economical in the truest sense, and universal health insurance system. By now the only people who don't understand that such a program must operate under a broad public mandate--indeed, will ultimately have to take the form of a single payer plan--are, sadly, the antediluvian eejits who run the Congress and benefit largely from the largess of health insurance companies. Witness the Democratic Senator from Montana, Max Baucus, who boldly and forcefully told the advocates of a single-payer plan that he was wrong not to include them in hearings on health care reform but not to get in a huff about it because it is now to late in the legislative process to even consider such a novel idea, according the Dan Eggen in today's Washington Post.

This position is ultimately pinned to the Obama, who is said to have ruled out pushing for single-payer on the grounds that it is politically impossible. The Obama being the Obama continues to push for a public insurance plan that would compete against private insurers. They know full well that in an equal competition with a solid, well designed public health plan, they would soon go under or transform themselves into boutique additional insurers for the rich. That's why they were in Congress a month ago, when I started this blog, claiming that they needed a "level playing field." Well, you have to admire their corporate cajones, but really, does anyone other than a member of Congress or a distempered Republican believe for even a nanosecond that private insurers serve their clients and are good in any way, shape, form, or fantasy for health care?

This non-debate is being carried out against GD2 [Great Depression Due], wth thousands of people a day losing jobs and what pathetic insurance they did have. Had Congress the courage to act for the good of he nation and its citizens rather than the profit of insurers--the most significant figures are the 60 to 70 percent hhe current insurance driven health care bureaucracy keeps for itself, meaning that no more than 40 cents of every health dollar actually goes to patient care, and that is probably optimistic--it would immediately vote for a single payer plan, recognizing that currently overtaxed Medicare keeps only 2 to 3 cents of every dollar for administration. We can't afford not to go down that road, but here we are, clinging to the hope that the Obama can get a good public option on the playing field, knowing that if he does there will be no contest.

Torture for What End

The floodgates appear to have opened on the torture chamber that was the Bush Administration's war on "terrior"--and not to the pleasure of the Bushies and their minions. The news reports pouring out on an hourly basis are disgraceful, disturbing, and sometimes insanely surreal, not to mention thoroughly contradictory. If waterboarding drew from case hardened "terriorists" such stellar information, why did it have to be repeated 183 times in March 2003, on Kahlid Shaikh Mohammad, and 83 times in August 2003 on Abu Zubaydah--(is there something magical in the number 83?) The number of repetitions hardly bespeaks a successful technique; rather, it suggests something deeply punitive, vengeful, and sadistic, born of fear approaching utter panic that "terriorists" might once again successfully attack the U.S., the 'homeland." Filled with guilt for failing to connect large and abundant "dots" that effectively forewarned them of an impending attack prior to September 11, 2001, the Bushies demanded complete plans and plots. They believed that among their captives were "evildoers" with full knowledge of impending attacks, who were taunting them by refusing to provide imformation through standard interrogation. The Bushies wanted the dots connected by their captives, even if they were imaginary dots. Indeed, the Bushies repeatedly say the tortures provided information that helped them thwart planned attacks, without offering details.

I accept the arguments of dozens of people, including former interrogators for the FBI, that the tortures produced nothing of merit that could not have been, and often had not already been, obtained through standard interrogation. But that argument misses the point--just for one example, by traditional intelligence methods, the feds had by the August of 2001 obtained enough information, including the partial name and cell phone number of one of the 9/11 conspirators, to know that something was coming down sooner than later. The attack succeeded not because American officials lacked information or the ability to gain more quickly through friendly governments but because those officials lacked the ability to digest and act upon what was before them. That could be considered harsh and unfair were 9/11 an aberration, but it was merely the first of a string of failures of leadership in the run-up to disasters and in response to those disasters, most notably Hurricane Katrina and the global financial meltdown. Viewed through this prism, the torture of prisoners appears motivated by guilt and fear not only of another attack but also of their failures prior to the first attack being fully disclosed.

But debates over the value of the information and the motivations of the leaders who ordered torture are irrelevant, as are moral condemnations of the acts. What trumps them all is the Law. The "rule of law" is a bedrock principle of this nation that cannot be ignored because it is temporarily inconvenient. By nearly all accounts but their own, the Bushies violated the law and their oaths of office when they ordered the torture of prisoners. They must be investigated, indicted, if that's where the evidence leads, tried and if convicted sentenced to hard time befitting their crimes.

The Bushies and their minions who claim their actions were legal and justified should welcome such an investigation as a way to clear their names and reputations. Why fear the truth?

Torture My Waterboard

The New York Times posted the .pdf of the Justice Department Torture Memos from the years following the September 11, 2001, attacks, laying out chapter and verse what the CIA planned to do and did to select prisoners. What is interesting about them are the gyrations government lawyers go through to justify torture, to defend what is indefensible. The Obama's decision to release the memos is laudable, his attempt to pardon the CIA torturers before the fact of their trials lamentable. Shield torturers at home and lose the international prestige and moral authority you need to run to ground torturers from other countries.

Granted, politically, the Obama probably could not pursue a prosecution of anyone without risking violent reaction, so convinced are many people that the tortured prisoners had vital information they would have divulged no other way, and obtaining that information allowed the government to thwart new attacks on the Homeland Uber Alles...oops, that's a no-no in America. It is still acceptable to trash someone up and down as a communist, a leftist pinko coward but absolutely do not call a Nazi fruitcake a Nazi fruitcake. Call him a right leaning Republican, as if there were any other kind--or ignore the prohibitions and call him a Nazi and listen to the sound of late 20th century market capitalism deflating. Order the investigations and approve the war crimes trials of everyone through George W. Bush. That is the only way to begin to establish globally the rule of law.

The business about global terrior communications matching or exceeding pre 9/11 levels stricks me as particularly self-serving, trotted out to justify the request for and issuing of the memos. It's a bureaucratic dodge that has the added benefit of shielding the Bush from his full responsibility for the tragic fiasco of that dayl

The Obama Road Show

A quick prediction, which I made months ago but am only now recording: The Arab capital the Obama plans to visit for his major speech is Damascus, and I don't think that's much of a secret. We'll see.

Bail,Bail, Bail Me Out..

It should be clear to even the dimmest bulb by now that sizable chunks of corporate America are using the financial crisis to line their own pockets. From banks to insolvent car companies, executives and money managers discovered the bounty of the bailout and they want more and more and their investors want more and more; meanwhile, their institutions hurtle toward oblivion. The situation has become so deranged that the government must seize the banks--take them from current management and investors--stabilize them, break them up and sell them back to the public under strict supervision or keep them, as the case may be. As to the rest--protect the workers and grant microloans to people with ideas and drive and products that work and that people need. You can only do that if you recognize that at this juncture in the world's history what is good for General Motors is bad for the country and the world. They are going down no matter how much money is slung at them, so let them go and save the money for more useful things, like health care reform, which will help more people than any mortgage bailout. I should say it will help only if it is a properly designed single-payer health care plan.

Is there hope, someone asked me recently. A week ago I couldn't guess. Now I think it is clear that the Obama is, as I said during the election, a moderate Democrat, and thus incapable of bold moves--whether seizing banks or fixing health care. We're going to end up in an economic hole with a mountain of debt.

Incredible

"This country does not torture!"  The Obama and full cry and you sit there muttering, yeah, bring it, Baby, bring it on!  Fight the power!   But wait, he is the power, and for now he's basking the adulation of people hungry for the kind of leadership he is displaying.  

I'll back up  to the beginning and say that I just finished the Obama's speech to Congress, and all crusty me can say is 'fucking A."  The man might not walk on water--and it's not clear that he gets health care, but he sure as hell knows how to speak and inspire, and the way he lasooed, hogtied, duct-taped and trivialized the remnants of the Republican party was masterful--beyond Muhammed Ali at his best.  He neutralized the opposition becaause he conveyed to people his understanding of the situation--financial, emotional, physical, existential, you name it--and his desire to get done what needs to get done.  If the Obama walks his talk then what follows in this post is rendered foolish.  I run it because  miracle that the Obama is, I've still not seen him master health care, which is tougher than walking on water. 

Here it is:  This post one has been in the works for over a month, while I've finished my book, started teaching a graduate course in scientific writing, and taught my intensive week long seminar on Dogs of the World in Santa Rosa, California, at what is now Bergin University of Canine Studies.  Among the things I think I know for sure are that the interwebs are changing forever the way information and most art are created and delivered, that no one has a viable economic model for dealing with that change in such a way that the creators can earn a living---well, maybe they can declare themselves banks and request bailouts--that the current economic situation is a fiasco that is fast beccoming a disaster, and that the Obama, for all of his brilliance and genuine humanity, does not have a clue about the health care crisis in this country.  If he did understand, he would move immediately to create a single-payer national health plan, with Medicare at its base, and in the processs he would repair the nearly mortal damage the Bushies did to Medicare itself.  That would go a very long way to restoring American vitality.  

Before my hiatus, I swore off keeping an anachronism, a blog, as just another of my wastes of time that produced no money.  But rather than tweeting or flashing mirrors at the sun or twittering dithering docking digital haikus or video self-mashes about the ways of my days, I continue in large measure because I know full well that were I to make such a switch I would disappoint the dwindling band of readers of this blog.  I know that continuing simply proves that I am what I keep--an eccentric anachronim wihout even the brains to take advertising to add a few pennies to my negative income.  Then I thought, sheet, why not just declare myself a financial institution--the First National Bank of Me--too small too fail and get me some of that free-bail out money.  That was when I started his blog in early January, before the Obama's inauguration and little has changed since in terms of the free falling economy.

Logic has never been my strong suite, but I do know that economics is called the "dismal science" because when it comes to predictive success--the chief measure for science is whether a  theory accurately predicts an event or events consistently--"dismal" is too kind a descriptive --the imprimatur of the Nobel committee not withstanding; indeed, the Nobel Prize in Economics should be renamed the the Nobel Inanity. That is being demonstrated again in the current financial crisis, which has produced near unanimity among economists that massive government intervention is necessary to shore up the financial system and thereby avert a full-blown global depression that will make the Great Depression look like a period of great weallth.  Well they don' go quite that far--most of them.

The US government alone has already shelled out more than one-trillion dollars to arrest the financial free fall to no avail. The financial sector is resolute in wanting to be bailed out and out and out again, riding this new bailout bubble for as long as it can, falling back when necessaryon the mantra that its major components are each too big too fail, so you better keep that money coming. But if something is too big too fail, the opposite must also be true, especially if it is failing--it is "too big to succeed." In effect the financial system is collapsing under the weight of its monstrous international, under-regulated banks, and their energetics are too screwed up for them to survive. They are evolutionary dead ends, with no where to go but extinction.

But if extinction, failure, is not an option because obsolete though they are, corrupt though they are, they are too crucial to the world economy to be allowed to fail, then sound business logic would dictate that the government of a particular nation or the governments of all nations so deciding would assume control of the megabanks, since their current leaders clearly are incapable of keeping them from failure. The last thing you do is throw money at the same gang of corporate pillagers who got us here in the first place.. That's not even sane enough to be irrational. It's simply creating a bubble of free coin from the realm. For proof consider that $18.4 billion the captains of larceny awarded themselves in early January along with the $3 or $4 billion executives of the disaster known as Merrill Lynch had previously awarded themselves or the hundreds of millions more, they've paid themselves in salaries just for the past several years. I'm not even touching for now GM and Chrysler threatening to go under and force all of these workers out of jobs unless they receive tens of billions of dollars and then using that money to fire workers.  Say what?  No wonder people are pissed?

But what's incredible is the faith that people have in the Obama--faith based on his rhetoric, his integrity and intelligence--and the sheer improbability that his success represents. The odds he beat to become president were deemed by most people so astronomical as to be incalculable--the odds of bookmakers not withstanding--not only because he was African-American but also because he was an intellectual and, according to one Wall Street Journal writer, too thin to be president. Now, polls are showing that 80 percent of the populace believes--and even skeptics among us hope--that the Obama is right, that the mess can be cleaned up and sanely fixed. The only way I see to do that is to recognize that late 20th century market capitalism is bankrupt in nearly all regards and then to nationalize financial institutions and all other corporations too "big to fail" and transform them into multiple, smaller, more efficient and directed corporations. Then, create civilian versions of DARPA and the Office of Naval Research, beef up NIH, NASA, and other civilian agencies , including those for domestic development, for issuing grants and micro-loans to promote promising technologies and developments in specific fields. Implement a single-payer national health plan through Medicare as envisioned in the beginning--that Medicare would be the first step toward national health care--the only thing that will cure the current crisis, brought on and exccerbated by insurance companies and the medical structure to support them that togetgher care--i.e insurance crisis--we have made the risks inherent in life so expensive to guard against that we have rendered life unaffordable. That's why deflation--the horror of horror to econonists is welcome to nonexperts as a proper corrective.  This country was living a fiction clothed in cheap goods.  It was the throw away culture that has now stuck itself in the garbage as well and the question now is whether it can pull itelf out before it hits the compressor.

I'll quit now and post the bloody thing, errors and all, so at least you'll know I'm still kicking and screaming--and doing lefthand double typing

Great Plunder Plunges US into Great Depression II

Ever the optimist, Paul Krugman, frets in his column in today's New York Times that Congressional delay in passing the Obama stimulus package will pretty much guarantee that the economy will bottom out in Great Depression II. It's hard to argue with the man on that score. What's appalling, given that scenario, is the blundering of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who 'hopes' to have something before he and his colleagues take a break in mid-February--hopes? You don't need to be a Nobel-prize winning economist to know the economy is in free fall and gathering momentum rapidly enough that the laws of inertia will soon decree that only a direct splat at bottom will arrest it. Forget about a reversal, no matter how much money is thrown into the attempt. Given the situation, how can Congress refuse to take dramaatic action now? Perhaps, House and Senate travel and living allowances should be cut until they take care of business. Or, put another way, why is Harry Reid Senate Majority Leader, if he's not working hard on the Obama's agenda? It's past time for Congress to act.