1 Boring Old Man

Eyes on the Ball: Health Coverage Reform, Not Wilson
DAILY KOS
by Meteor Blades
September 09, 2009

As nearly everyone in the political universe has noted by now, President Barack Obama got disrespected Wednesday night…

So why get hot and bothered by the jackassery of a single Congressman from the Party of No? I think it has to do with the truckloads of lies and despicable slurs dropped on Obama in the past few months, many of them overtly racist. Our fury at Rep. Addison "Joe" Wilson’s blurted "You lie!" is not just a response to him, but to the never-ending feces-throwing by the GOP and a right-wing media engaged in a full-court smear fest of our first African American President…

But whether it’s racist tropes or moronic red-baiting, the right-wing media and way too many supposedly honorable Republicans have done nothing to tone down this rancid display. Plus the fact that if a Democratic Representative had yelled "You lie!" during a Bush speech, she’d still be doing time in a secret prison..h.

Happily, Wilson has already gotten what we can hope is the first round of a well-deserved comeuppance. He got dagger stares from Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden and a lot of boos from that part of the media not (yet) beholden to Rupert Murdoch. Best of all a bunch of money has been raised for his opponent in the next election. That two-word outburst could be the most expensive Wilson ever makes in his life. Welcome to the viral smackdown, Congressman.

But, as diarist Frank wisely says, let’s not let this screamer steal the headlines for the next few days. Because that was not what Wednesday night was about; it’s not what all the wrangling has been about for the past several months. As President Obama pointed out, doing something about our broken health care system is not an issue that just appeared on the scene. Efforts have been made for decades. But because of past obstructionism, uncounted numbers of American have died, gone bankrupt, lived misery-filled lives, all because they were denied medical treatment based solely on their inability to pay for it…

I hope that this Joe Wilson business makes the Republicans rethink their strategy, but as this post points out, things like Wilson’s outburst, or the Fox News harangues, or this offensive email I received [above] aren’t the point. The point is a too long avoided Health Care Crisis in America. I spent 40 years as a physician, and a lot of it was spent trying to find ways to get people the care they needed against a gradient of profiteering. The waste and profit hunger in Medical Care is huge. It was part of my motive for retiring early. Now I volunteer for free, and it’s rewarding just like it was in those salad days of medical school.

"You Lie!"
Talking Points Memo
by Josh Marshall
September 9, 2009

The member of Congress who yelled that the president was a liar during the speech was Rep. Joe Wilson [R] of South Carolina. Here’s his official website. I can’t think of anything like it in recent history. Here’s the video [particularly note Pelosi’s reaction].

South Carolina deserves better than either Mark Sanford or Joe Wilson. The thing Wilson called a lie was Obama’s assertion that illegal aliens are not covered by the plan. This from the Bill itself:

And then there was the ever long-faced moper John Boehner squirming in his seat, one of the many silent Republicans exuding contempt:

GOP Lawmakers Treat President Obama’s Joint Address To Congress Like A Town Hall Protest
By Think Progress
September 9, 2009

Tonight during his joint address to Congress, President Obama attempted to set the record straight on some of the “key controversies” surrounding the health care debate. While it’s normal for members of the opposition party to occasionally not clap at statements with which they disagree, congressional Republicans went further tonight, being outright rude at times.

At one point, President Obama addressed the myth that his health care proposals would insure undocumented immigrants: “This, too, is false – the reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.”

In response, Republicans not only began booing him, but Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) shouted out, “LIE!” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) shot an angry look in his direction, and Vice President Biden shook his head. The rudeness shocked even veteran political observers such as NBC’s Chuck Todd, who wrote on Twitter, “Wow. What’s next a duel?” MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough also wrote, “Whoever shouted out that the president was lying is a dumbass who should show the President respect.” On MSNBC after the speech, Newsweek reporter Howard Fineman said, “The Republicans were mostly stage props in this speech tonight and they behaved like it.”

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) could also be seen wearing a homemade sign — similar to the ones seen at town hall protests — around his neck, which read, “What bill?” Watch it:

Various Republican lawmakers were also holding up draft GOP bills during the speech:

I don’t know whether he moved a single vote with that speech, but he couldn’t have given it a better shot. I liked the plan and thought he presented it clearly. Barack Obama is an remarkable person. We’re just so lucky to have him right now. And he’s a work in progress, learning every day how to weather the absolutely unprecedented attacks that have dogged him from day one. And there is simply no right-thinking reason to oppose his health care plan.

Sanford’s ‘Secret-Agent Mission’

The Daily Beast
by Will Cathcart
September 8, 2009

…

^{Sanford has been a loner his entire political life; it was not at all out of character when he sought to turn back the Obama administration’s offer of federal stimulus money for his state—a fight he lost with the state General Assembly. Saving his scalp—with the legislature as well as the rank-and-file voters—will require him to do something he’s never been comfortable doing: slap backs, trade stories, and get on with the good ole boys.}

^{It won’t be easy. He knows his brand of extreme fiscal conservatism is suddenly very much in fashion, as the Obama administration runs up the deficit. And he knows he’s shot himself in the foot, big time. “I’m a wounded soldier; I took myself off the battlefield,” he says. “It’s not until you lose something in life that you appreciate some of your blessings. If I ever had the chance to get back on the playing field, it would be a great honor and a privilege and a blessing.”}

^{“You know,” the South Carolina governor continues, “everybody is assigned their own secret-agent mission in life. And at times the tricky part, the hard part, is finding out what that secret-agent mission is. Some of us do it early, some of us do it later in life.” Simply put, nobody else in the Palmetto State’s political class talks like that.}

^{It’s tempting, Sanford admits, to go “hide under a rock, go down to the farm and never see another television camera again.” That temptation must have only grown last week, when Lieutenant Governor Andre Bauer wrote a letter calling for Sanford’s resignation and offered to take over the job. But, as Sanford puts it, “you gotta stay around for the second half of the show”…}

^{As he enters what may well be the home stretch of his political career, Sanford sounds weary, but determined to push on through.}

^{“I’m going to keep doing the business that the people of South Carolina really care about,” Sanford says. “I can’t tell you how many people come up to me and say ‘this has got to be a three-ring circus; this has got to be a witch hunt. This is about David Thomas trying to run for Congress, and thinking he can build his name by having these ‘investigations’ that are little about investigation and a whole lot about making papers … What we are going to continue to try to do is, one, get back to business. At the end of the day, the subtleties of my relationship with Jenny are not going to impact one way or another somebody who lives in Sumter who is struggling to make it.”}

But the thing that makes his interviews of interest is the quasi-supernatural stuff – his destiny to rule. He says it in one way or another every time he talks, "everybody is assigned their own secret-agent mission in life. And at times the tricky part, the hard part, is finding out what that secret-agent mission is. Some of us do it early, some of us do it later in life." I’ve been trying to think of other people that evoke destiny or being chosen as a reason for staying in office. He’s said it so often, it must be something he believes – a strong "C Street" line of thinking. Putting aside the arrogance of such a position is hard. He both believes he is destined [chosen] to lead [pretty special], and he seems to think that this belief he holds should bind others to let him [real special].

^{I have been doing a lot of soul searching on that front. What I find interesting is the story of David, and the way in which he fell mightily, he fell in very very significant ways. But then picked up the pieces and built from there.}

mav⋅er⋅ick [mav-er-ik mav-rik]
–noun

1. Southwestern U.S. – an unbranded calf, cow, or steer, esp. an unbranded calf that is separated from its mother.
2. a lone dissenter, as an intellectual, an artist, or a politician, who takes an independent stand apart from his or her associates.

---

Origin: 1865–70, Americanism; after Samuel A. Maverick [1803–70], Texas pioneer who left his calves unbranded

Synonyms: nonconformist, independent, loner.

Obama’s symbolism here
The State
By MARK SANFORD – Guest columnist
Jan. 11, 2008

^{I won’t be voting for Barack Obama for president. There are too many vital issues — from taxes and spending, to immigration and national security, to traditional values — on which we have fundamentally different points of view about the right direction for our country. However, as the presidential campaign trail now makes its turn toward this state, and as South Carolinians make their final decisions on whom to vote for, it’s worth pausing to take notice of something important that the Obama candidacy means for our corner of America.}

^{South Carolinians are rightly proud of our state’s rich heritage and history, dating from the earliest Colonial times and our ancestors’ heroic efforts in the Revolutionary War right up to the present day. I say this because we’re a state that loves history, and one of the nicest parts of my job lies in constantly being exposed to the extraordinary achievements of South Carolinians past and present. In the Obama candidacy, there is a potentially history-making quality that we should reflect on. It is one that is especially relevant on the sensitive topic of race — because South Carolina and the South as a whole bear a heavier historical burden than the rest of our country on that front.}

^{As governor, I try to keep that historical burden in mind, because being sensitive to race has both policy and symbolic implications. I strongly believe that policies such as school choice and reforms to allow Medicaid recipients additional health care options will have a disproportionately positive impact on African-Americans in our state. Others disagree, favoring a larger role for government than the private sector, and those legitimate policy disagreements will always be with us in the political arena.}

^{On the symbolic front: Having a more diversified Cabinet, issuing the first formal apology for the Orangeburg Massacre and traveling across the state line to Georgia to address the South Carolina NAACP convention have all represented small steps aimed at building bridges across waters that have divided us for too long as South Carolinians. In short, just like hundreds before me and scores of others trying in their own ways, I try to build bridges where I can — but I write because it all pales in comparison to the change that may be before us.}

^{Sen. Obama is not running for president on the basis of his race, and no one should cast their ballot for or against him on that basis. Nonetheless, what is happening in the initial success of his candidacy should not escape us. Within many of our own lifetimes, a man who looked like Barack Obama had a difficult time even using the public restrooms in our state. What is happening may well say a lot about America, and I do think as an early primary state we should earnestly shoulder our responsibility in determining how this part of history is ultimately written.}

I propose that the reason Mark Sanford expects us to "understand" is because his unresolved ambivalence is not a ruse. It’s a curse. There is a gulf between his thoughts and his emotions that rules his life. He acts on his feelings, but genuinely doesn’t know it. Likewise, I expect that he actually doesn’t know what he feels most of the time and relies on formulae – like "conservative principles" or "Christian principles" or the last crazy sermon he heard at C Street.

Likewise, though he speaks in vague, abstract terms, his ability to think abstractly is impaired. In this op-ed, he uses the term "symbolism," but all he can see in Obama is a black American. He sees Obama’s policies [Medicaid, School Choice] as "black." You don’t "build bridges" if things aren’t separated. I interpret his comment, "everybody is assigned their own secret-agent mission in life. And at times the tricky part, the hard part, is finding out what that secret-agent mission is" as being about his own relationship with his internal experience – it’s a secret. What’s tricky for Mark Sanford is knowing what he feels [if it’s not overwhelming].

^{And he knows he’s shot himself in the foot, big time. “I’m a wounded soldier; I took myself off the battlefield,” he says. “It’s not until you lose something in life that you appreciate some of your blessings. If I ever had the chance to get back on the playing field, it would be a great honor and a privilege and a blessing.”}

^{Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone…}

^{Joni Mitchell}

Seldom-Heard Compliment for Atlanta’s Mayor: ‘You Were Right’
New York Times
By SHAILA DEWAN
September 7, 2009

ATLANTA — Over the last 18 months, it has seemed as if the recession is foreclosing on yet another victim: the legacy of Mayor Shirley Franklin of Atlanta, the first black woman to lead a major city in the South. Mayor Shirley Franklin, right, said of being criticized: “I have a bull’s-eye on my chest. I ran for mayor. I knew that when I ran.”

Mayor Shirley Franklin, nearing the end of her tenure, was criticized in January 2008 when she warned of a financial crisis. Forgotten were the plaudits in Time and Newsweek. Standing ovations were replaced by boos and shouts. City tax revenues sank, exposing a barnacled mess of poor accounting and multimillion-dollar errors that stretched back years. After four rounds of layoffs, the mayor, nearing the end of her second and final term, imposed furloughs on city employees and presided as garbage went uncollected.

Critics sneered that Ms. Franklin, for all her accolades as an efficient leader, would leave Atlanta as broke as she had found it. Television reporters asked her if she had “checked out.” It was as if someone had taken a metal spatula to the mayor’s Teflon. But Ms. Franklin, a tiny, unflappable woman who always wears a giant flower pinned to her lapel, is beginning to seem more a prophet than a has-been. Some of her fiercest opponents on the City Council have admitted that they should have listened when she warned, months before Wall Street collapsed, that the city’s economy was grinding to a halt.

Ms. Franklin’s remedies, including a property tax increase, have generated bitterness and hostility among constituents. But some who take the long view say she will be better remembered for her major accomplishments, like fixing the city’s medieval sewers, developing an ambitious ring of new parks and trails known as the Beltline and saving the papers of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. from the auction block…

Ms. Franklin squeaked to victory in 2001, vowing to restore confidence in City Hall after an administration that a federal prosecutor called a “cesspool of corruption.” Her openness and lack of racial animosity, a notable trait in Atlanta politics, quickly won admiration from skeptics, including the largely white downtown business community. Ms. Franklin won voter approval for a sales tax increase to pay for a court-ordered $3.4 billion sewer repair project long resisted by the city. In 2005, she won re-election with more than 90 percent of the vote…

But in January 2008, Ms. Franklin went to the Council with bad news. The city had a projected budget gap of $70 million, she said, from a slowing economy, faulty estimates and growing pension and health insurance costs. Longstanding bad accounting practices, which the administration had been taking steps to fix, had helped mask the city’s true financial condition. After a round of layoffs and cuts, Ms. Franklin said a small tax increase was needed to prevent public safety cuts. The Council, which had rarely bucked the mayor, voted unanimously to cut taxes instead…

But even as headlines suggested that the mayor’s reputation was permanently scarred, things began to turn around. Ms. Franklin beat back the Beltline threat. She persuaded the Council to use tax money earmarked for the civil rights museum to pay off the King papers, in the hope that the museum would replace the money with private finances when the economy improved. A new sewer bond issue brought $150 million more than the city hoped.

And in June, the Council, besieged by complaints over the police furloughs, was forced to pass a tax increase more than six times higher than the one the mayor recommended in 2008 — in an election year. In late August, the mayor announced that the city was back in the black. But she did not revel in the news, or dwell on posterity. “If you have to worry about your legacy,” she said, “you don’t have one.” But she added something that had little to do with sewage treatment or parks. “I would hope,” she said, “my legacy would be that a woman was up to the job.”

I first met Shirley Franklin in a Virginia-Highland backyard at a party. She’s a snaggle-toothed black lady with short blond hair and a gravelly voice. She’s got a "spring in her step" even when she’s not walking. I knew I’d vote for her before I even knew who else was running. In Atlanta, we’d had a number of black Mayors – pretty classy people – but they’d ignored the nitty-gritty, the sewers and roads. It fell to Shirley to make up for their inattentiveness. She was personally on the street shoveling asphalt into pot holes in her first few months. She fought with everyone who needed fighting with and pissed off somebody from every angle of Atlanta’s varied pantheon. And she got the job done.

Shirley Franklin did what needed doing whether it made her popular or not. She was a perfect choice for the Atlanta she was elected to serve. In her two terms, she focused us on sewers and sinkholes, on trimming City Personnel, on raising taxes to fit the need. No-glitz Shirley will be a bronze statue somewhere, some day.

Only graph nuts will care about this, but here goes anyway

If you look at this graph of the Federal Reserve’s Interest Rates – before Greenspan, lowering the rate in response to a downturn worked and afterwards the rate could be gotten back up to where it had been or higher. That means that there was a good buffer available for the next downturn.

After the early 1980’s, that was no longer true. What happened in the early 1980’s? Reagan [omics]; Deficit Spending; Tax Cuts; Deregulation; Greenspan. It’s pretty striking that the graph looks like a Christmas Tree. So, either Reaganomics changed the playing field OR Greenspan kept Interest Rates too low to have the tool available for the next downturn. I wonder if he thought he was doing something good – keeping the credit flowing as part of the Reaganite/Republican easy-money meme that almost buried us. Whatever he thought he was doing, he was wrong as rain…

When Greenspan took over in 1987, the Federal Reserve Rate was low for the time [first red mark] in response to the Recession during Reagan’s tenure. As the economy improved, Greenspan raised the Federal Reserve’s Rate [first green mark]. Towards the end of George H.W. Bush’s term, we had another recession. His first rate drop didn’t work, so he lowered it even further [second red mark], and then brought it back up as things improved [second green mark]. Note that he had to go lower that time, and never got the rate back up to its previous value. In 2001, the dotcom "bubble" burst and he had to lower rates dramatically [down to approximately 1%].  We didn’t really know it then, but there was a new malignant bubble forming – the "housing bubble." Certainly, Dr. Robert Shiller began to warn us about the "housing bubble." At first Greenspan denied it, but then felt the economy could "handle" the "housing bubble." In January 2006, he retired. Recall how his retirement was timed with the "housing bubble:"

Looking at the stairstep downward as Greenspan manipulated the Federal Reserve Interest Rates, it’s clear that each time, he has to go lower than the last. And he never gets it back up to its previous level. It was just a matter of time. Here’s what happened after his retirement:

His replacement, Ben Bernanke,  had nowhere to go – no reserve. He took interest rates to zero, but that just wasn’t enough. Looking at that graph, it’s completely clear that Greenspan was simply wrong. His method "worked," but each application got closer to the inevitable – a time when lowering the rate was a non-option.

So Alan Greenspan’s belief in the resiliency of the American Market was wrong. He was wrong in his active efforts to thwart Brooksley Born’s regulation of the Derivitives Market. Derivatives were little more than a Casino, exploited to build the credit default swaps that fueled the "housing bubble." And he was wrong that manipulating the Federal Interest Rate was a powerful enough tool to prevent a Recession/Depression. What’s worse, this graph shows that he should’ve known that this stairstep[ down was headed for disaster. And Brooksley Born made it very clear where the Derivative Market [unregulated] would take us.

UPDATE [full data]:

With all the wet noodles thrown at the wall, the one that is sticking best is the charge that the Democrats [Obama] are big spenders. And, for the moment, that is true – absolutely and relatively. What follows is a State of the Debt retrospective beginning with Reagan [when deficit spending became the Republican norm]. Here’s the graph I usually post about the National Debt:

Expressing the debt value corrected by the GDP is a way of correcting for the inflationary forces that are part of our Market Capitalism. The next few graphs in this post are uncorrected – the raw numbers. Here’s the "Budget" [Quarterly] since Reagan [from the Bureau of Economic Analysis – http://www.bea.gov].

To me, it tells a sad tale – a shortsighted tale. You recall that, like Obama, Reagan started [and ended] with a Recession.

His way way of stimulating the economy was not a Stimulus Package but rather some massive tax cuts. The effect on the economy is pretty much the same – but Presidents and Congress usually pick the one that most fits their other agendae. Looking at the graph below, Reagan did little to change spending. If anything Clinton underspent Reagan or the Bushes. Since spending increases yearly, this graph shows the increase/year for the period under examination. Obviously, the big news here is the spending under the war-mongering Bushes.

Now let’s hone in on the data from the George W. Bush years. Reagan had used a modified Keynesian approach to the Recession that met him as he came into office. He cut taxes ["trickle down economics"]. But neither he nor George H.W. Bush ever dealt with the fact that they were running up the debt at a rate unseen since World War II. That’s the problem with the tax-cut solution to a Recession. There’s no pay-as-you-go built in. The fall in revenue that accompanies any Recession is amplified by the lost revenue from the tax-cuts. The people get needed relief at the expense of accelerating debt.

Bush started his term with a Recession [the "dot com bubble"] and 9/11, but in his case, the tax-cuts had little to do with those things. He cut taxes because his elite base didn’t want to pay them. It didn’t take long for him to eat up Clinton’s surplus and reconvene us on a path to bankruptcy.  His tax cuts kept us in a state of deficit financing throughout his terms of office, and the deficits [the green line] really added up [the purple line]. Like Reagan and his father, he never even got back to zero. This has always confused me. In spite of all their talk of fiscal responsibility and small government, neither George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, nor Ronald Reagan ever balanced the budget.

Now, about Health Care costs. This graph shows the problem there:

^{from: Growth in Health Care Costs, Committee on the Budget United States Senate}

The extrapolation in red is my own as their data stopped at 2005 [I believe we are actually at 17%]. Health care costs are rising much faster than inflation, tripling in the last 45 years, even when corrected for inflation. That can’t keep happening, thus the push to regulate health care costs and to make health care available to all people. This isn’t an optional task, it’s an essential task. Discussions of why these costs have soared are interesting but irrelevant. No argument about the wonderful new technology and advanced drugs in medicine matters if it’s only available for the few. I think of it as the medical bubble, hiding behind science. We’re living longer by tiny increments, not by anything that would explain the inflation of costs.

The Problem: Obama couldn’t cut taxes to deal with the current Recession/Depression if he wanted too. His Republican predecessors have used up that option. In fact, he has to increase government spending [the Stimulus] and, sooner or later, he will have to raise taxes. Second, Obama has to pass a Health Care Package to insure Health Care for all and to get control of Health Care costs. In neither case does he have a choice – no choice at all – nada. So, there’s nothing he can say to counter the accusations of his being a big spender or of raising taxes or of wanting to control health care – those accusations are true. But the cause isn’t just that he is populist and a caring guy. It’s also because of the irresponsible behavior of his predecessors and the lobbying of the health care industry.

The only alternative is … there is no alternative.