The Liberal Elitist

Perhaps the best case ever for universal health care

Uwe Reinhardt of Princeton wrote in the Economix blog in the NY Times:

As a long-time champion of universal health insurance for this country — even at the risk of occasionally being labeled a socialist — I was both stunned and charmed by Senator Hutchison’s statement. She was proposing that women should not have to decide between spending $250 of their own money to get a mammogram or go without it, and that the key here is to get someone else — either public or private health insurance — to pay for it.

I cannot recall a clearer statement of unreserved support for universal and comprehensive health insurance for America and a more straightforward definition of rationing health care. (In this connection, see this earlier post.)

via economix.blogs.nytimes.com

Just when Kay Bailey Hutchison thought she was landing points for her side in the health care debate, she unwittingly made the most persuasive case you can possible make for universal health care.

Can someone explain this to me? Stimulus critiques are contradictory

Criticism of the Obama stimulus package has come from all sides. As the economy languishes with a weak jobs recovery, the program has come under sharper attacks, both from the left and right. 

But here's what I don't get. The plan was widely attacked because it didn't spend its money fast enough. The chorus on this was loud and long--too much money would be pushed into next year and we wouldn't see anything substantive right now, when we needed it. 

Must we always interpret everything?

U.S. stock futures fell, as pessimism surrounding the world economy weighed on markets and mounting risk aversion lifted the dollar.

via online.wsj.com

This is the headline on the WSJ home page under the "Before the Bell" column today.

Look at the interpretation injected into this-all because overnight foreign stocks went down a little bit. Phrase like "pessimism surrounding the world economy" and "risk aversion" are used.

And what happened? The London FTSE was off 0.2% and the dollar rose (even though some in the markets have been moaning about it falling).

Just for one week, I wish the futures markets would go away and we could listen to economic reports without the obligatory comment about what a bunch of clueless economists expected to hear compared to what they actually heard.

Friedman lays out the case for the "Green Hawks"

So, as I said, you don’t believe in global warming? You’re wrong, but I’ll let you enjoy it until your beach house gets washed away. But if you also don’t believe the world is getting more crowded with more aspiring Americans — and that ignoring that will play to the strength of our worst enemies, while responding to it with clean energy will play to the strength of our best technologies — then you’re willfully blind, and you’re hurting America’s future to boot.

via www.nytimes.com

Tom Friedman can sometimes be annoyingly repetitive. But in this column he lays it on the line and exposes the opponents of a carbon tax for what they are: proponents of policies that are damaging to America's security.

He spells out in clear and unambiguous terms how failure to act on global warming plays into the hands of petro-dictators from Venezuela to Russia, and simultaneously cedes power to countries--like India and China--who recognize that green technology is the future.

And yet, the U.S. Senate has tabled the climate bill until spring--a combination of fossilized Republicans and wimpy Democrats.

Krugman on the paranoid GOP right

What all this shows is that the G.O.P. has been taken over by the people it used to exploit.

via www.nytimes.com

To say that these people are nuts doesn't begin to go far enough. And in Obama's desire to placate "the middle," all he has done is enable the wackos.

Krugman's whole piece is well worth the read--he always has such a clear line of thinking that comes across.

Unrecognizable, indeed, Sarah

"We've got to hold on to hope, and we've got to fight hard because Congressional action tonight just put America on a path toward an unrecognizable country."

-- Sarah Palin, on her Facebook page.

via politicalwire.com

No, Sarah Palin and her cohort of wing-nuts won't recognize the America that we will have if the House of Representatives gets its way and restructures health care.

Some of the things Sarah won't recognize:

1. The arbitrary termination of health coverage for someone who is sick because their insurance company doesn't like covering sick people.

2. The end of the "pre-existing condition" as a way to keep you from getting health coverage.

3. The end of millions upon millions of people having to use the emergency room as their doctor's office because they can't get health insurance.

4. Approximately 18,000 people a year who won't die because they were denied access to care by our present system.

And those are just a few things Sarah won't recognize. I'm sure we could all come up with a lot more. Palin and her tribe want to keep America mired in a status quo that bankrupts and kills people who can't get health coverage and enriches those wealthy enough or lucky enough to win America's ridiculous lottery of care.

Years hence, with any luck and with the cooperation of the United States Senate, we'll look back on Sarah and her friends like we do the old segregationists of the pre-Civil Rights era, as obstructionists who fought to protect the privileged and to keep the weak oppressed.

It's a simple issue when you get right down to it

Some time tonight, the House of Representatives will likely pass the most far-reaching health care reform bill since Medicare in 1965. For an issue this big and unwieldy, it's easy to get lost in the details.

But this is a big deal.

Movement conservatism and the most craven corporate interests have done everything they could to defeat this reform. It is  by no means perfect, and the ugliness of making laws has been on its finest display these past few weeks. It's easy to see idiots everywhere.

Democrats, so often hapless and fragmented, at least deserve the credit for sailing into the teeth of  virulent opposition. The barrage of angry town-hallers greeted many Democratic reps when they were on recess in August, and some of these members from swing districts are probably going to lose their jobs next fall.

When you get right down to it, the issue is very simple. Health care in this country is an embarrassment. Insurance companies have reaped billions upon billions in profits as they have called the shots and decided who they covered and who they didn't. For decades they opposed any kind of serious reform, and they were perfectly willing to see an unjust and class-driven system perpetuate itself so they could pay off their stockholders.

Final passage is a long way off. But the House is about to turn a page no one has turned before. People in this country will be a bit closer to being treated with the respect they deserve

What does it really mean to call yourself "conservative"?

Both the mainstream media and the conservative hierarchy made big news out of a Gallup poll in which 40 percent of Americans describe themselves as "conservative."  The drum-beating on this continued even though no other poll has shown this high a number, and--more importantly--no one is saying what "conservative" means in this context. 

And that's a big problem. 

For the last 30 years, the word "liberal" and the very concept of liberalism has been thoroughly trashed in virtually all media channels--including the so-called "liberal" mainstream media.