"A relationship, I think, is like a shark. You know? It has to constantly move forward or it dies. And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark." - Woody Allen as Alvy Singer in 1977’s “Annie Hall”
1. Dead Shark
2. Your Idea Finds Support from… The Economist?
3. Your Ideas: An Amendment
4. Historical Perspective
5. Tomorrow: Plain English Pitfalls
1. Dead Shark
Unlike organizations that are sustained by cash donations instead of cups of coffee, The Feinstein 1200 is not obliged to maintain the fiction that health care reform is somehow magically alive. That doesn’t make us right, nor those organizations wrong – as you know, I have frequently featured their efforts in this very newsletter.
But their scramble for fundraising dollars means that long after it is clear to everyone else that what we have on our hands is a dead shark, some organizations will find themselves obliged to say that you need only make more phone calls to “Revive the Fish!”
And for all I know, they are right to do so.
But in the last week, various HCR groups and advocates have strained particularly hard to parse the increasingly vague statements from Congress and the administration on the future of health care reform legislation. Perhaps the most ludicrous parsing came from Jonathan Chait in The New Republic, who desperately interpreted President Obama’s clear statement that health care reform would be scaled back, as an indication that:
… he wants to sit down with both parties, and health care experts, and walk through the details in a methodical way. I'd guess he's imagining a process that might look a little like his back-and-forth with House Republicans -- they present him with wild claims about a government takeover, and he calmly responds. They insist that their ideas are better, and he gets to show that they're not. Then you vote. In other words, a debate in which he gets to take center stage, on top of the kabuki theater of a House debate. That way Obama gets to demonstrate that the plan he has is the product of having considered all the alternatives and arriving at the best way to solve the problem, not just cooking up a backroom deal. The idea seems to be to use his wonky, technocratic style to counteract the process-based objections and sell the bill.
Now, if you believe that, you may well be right, and I hope you are. (A classical skeptic doesn’t maintain that nothing is possible, but that anything is possible.) But it would seem to many of us who have read the statements that President Obama and Nancy Pelosi have made in the past week that it is simply too impolitic to point out that the shark that once energetically flopped over from K Street and into the Senate is no longer moving. (Even during this past week, when Anthem Blue Cross announced a 39% increase in premiums for 800,000 holders of individual policies.)
I am not among those who believe that if the Senate bill fails it will “doom” the Obama presidency to a single term. (I actually feel the opposite is true – the passage of the Senate bill, even with reconciliation, which we now know from Pelosi will not include a public option, may doom the President’s chances for a second term.)
Perhaps it is best that our young President learns from this early failure. Perhaps it is right to let him come back to health care when unemployment is not threatening the country’s stability and the banks aren’t taking even higher risks than before the crash – with the taxpayer and the country’s fiscal future on the hook. In the meantime, I’ll have to take my own lumps as a middle-aged uninsured American.
2. Your Pie-In-The-Sky Idea Finds Support from… The Economist?
If you heard Terry Gross’ interview with journalist Jeff Goodell, you heard a great primer on the distinction of cap-and-trade v. cap-and-dividend, the latter being a particular passion of one of our East Bay docs, as discussed in the “Your Five Big Ideas” newsletter. (And if you’re confused about these issues, I strongly recommend listening to the podcast.) Goodell was realistic about the challenges confronting cap-and-dividend, but now The Economist has thrown its support behind cap-and-dividend – and the woman senator who has been its chief proponent.
3. Your Ideas: One More
I haven’t yet received permission to use this person’s name, but since they sent it in response to your five big ideas, I think I have permission to share the idea at least, which seems to be made in response to the recent SCOTUS decision on Citizens United:
Those are great. I'd add one more: a Constitutional Amendment to clarify that all civil rights enumerated in the Constitution and elsewhere, apply only to NATURAL PERSONS-- real people-- and not to corporations or other legal fictions. Passing that would take years, but getting ratified by at least one state might not take that long.
That last sentence is interesting.
4. Historical Perspective:
Apparently unable to obtain insurance for actual psychotherapy, a number of my classically-bent friends have been gathering in a smoke-filled basement speakeasy (in absence of actual cigars, I’m counting the diffusion of ersatz floral air freshener as smoke), to pore over ancient Greek and Roman texts. (Sadly, there are no drinks and the leg space is beyond cramped, otherwise I’d invite you.)
This month we’re reading Sallust’s The Jugurthine War and The Catiline Conspiracy. There are a number of interesting parallels with modern U.S. politics, particularly the corruption of the senate, and the willingness of certain patricians to whip up the rabble, and how that “tea party-ish” activity might then have influenced larger decisions about policy.
There are many great reasons to read Sallust, not least among them is the fact that in a recession economy, classical texts can be read free online at Project Gutenberg, or easily obtained at your local library, (provided they did not burn all the Greek and Roman texts in some 1970’s-inspired fit of political correctness.) As well, Sallust does not mince words – from the Edmund-like rise of Jugurtha to senatorial intrigue, this text is fast-paced and action-packed. And you’ll never look at Baucus and Lieberman in quite the same way after reading Sallust.
Don’t let the neocons claim the classics for their arguments. Make like Abbie Hoffman and steal this book.
5. Tomorrow: Plain English Pitfalls
Too voluminous for one newsletter…
Happy reading,
Eva
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