The debate is heading for rock bottom.
"If you like your plan," Barack Obama promises for the umpteenth time in the Rose Garden yesterday, "you'll be able to keep it. And each bill provides for a public option that will keep insurance companies honest, ensuring the competition necessary to make coverage affordable."
At tonight's press conference, will someone please ask the President why, half a century after handing over health care to profit-making private insurers, it should be necessary now to keep them "honest"?
Meanwhile, the industry that gave Americans one of the worst medical systems in the world at the highest cost is busy lobbying for more of the same with the legislative watchdogs like Sen. Max Baucus, who are negotiating the details of how to reform their ways.
In the House, we are in Joe the Plumber territory, as Democrats propose to pay premiums for the poor by taxing the very wealthy, couples making $500,000 a year or, as Nancy Pelosi is now hinting, perhaps $1 million.
This would affect only a tiny fraction of the richest Americans but, in their Joe-the-Plumber fantasies, the working class can empathize with Republican outcries. "Tax is a four-letter word" with voters, says conservative Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson, pointing out that even families not in the top 1 percent "hope they're going to be there someday."
In the Wall Street Journal, one of the last rising Republican stars still standing, Bobby Jindal accuses Obama of a "fundamentally dishonest approach to reform," contending that "Democrats disingenuously argue their reforms will not diminish the quality of our health care even as government involvement in the delivery of that health care increases massively.
"For all of us who have seen the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s response to hurricanes, this contention is laughable on its face. When government bureaucracies drive the delivery of services--in this case inserting themselves between health-care providers and their patients--quality degradation will surely come."
When the GOP sinks to using Bush's Heckuva-Job Brownie to beat up on Democratic health care plans, the debate must be nearing low tide.
Showing posts with label Gov. Bobby Jindal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gov. Bobby Jindal. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Saturday, July 04, 2009
Overstimulated Statehouses
"People," Gail Collins asks in today's New York Times, "what is going on with governors in this country? Are we doomed to see them go bonkers one by one, state by state?"
As the President heads for Russia next week, he leaves behind troubled American statehouses, from Schwarzenegger's in California handing out IOUs like a busted riverboat gambler to those of Sanford and Palin, who resisted Washington's stimulus money and are now heading out of office, maundering about higher levels of arousal in Argentina and Alaska.
In New York, the legislature is being held hostage by Gov. David Paterson, who got the job after Eliot Spitzer resigned over professional stimulus, while former Gov. Rod Blagojevich of Illinois, awaiting federal trial for corruption, loses out to Palin for the Sitting Duck Award, granted annually to the most ridiculed newsmaker in the nation.
Affairs of the states have been roiled by collapsing economies and rising pressures on chief executives to manage their way through crises rather than primp for the TV cameras in search of higher office. For some, like Bobby Jindal after his disastrous rebuttal to Obama's address to Congress, that may be a blessing in thin disguise.
Meanwhile, the antics of Palin, Sanford et al are distracting millions of mourners who won't win the lottery for tickets to the Michael Jackson memorial next week. Compared to some governors, the Gloved One was a model of sanity and much more entertaining to boot.
As the President heads for Russia next week, he leaves behind troubled American statehouses, from Schwarzenegger's in California handing out IOUs like a busted riverboat gambler to those of Sanford and Palin, who resisted Washington's stimulus money and are now heading out of office, maundering about higher levels of arousal in Argentina and Alaska.
In New York, the legislature is being held hostage by Gov. David Paterson, who got the job after Eliot Spitzer resigned over professional stimulus, while former Gov. Rod Blagojevich of Illinois, awaiting federal trial for corruption, loses out to Palin for the Sitting Duck Award, granted annually to the most ridiculed newsmaker in the nation.
Affairs of the states have been roiled by collapsing economies and rising pressures on chief executives to manage their way through crises rather than primp for the TV cameras in search of higher office. For some, like Bobby Jindal after his disastrous rebuttal to Obama's address to Congress, that may be a blessing in thin disguise.
Meanwhile, the antics of Palin, Sanford et al are distracting millions of mourners who won't win the lottery for tickets to the Michael Jackson memorial next week. Compared to some governors, the Gloved One was a model of sanity and much more entertaining to boot.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Steele, the Un-Obama
Some divine Anthropologist must be balancing the racial books for America, giving us an African-American as president who is a superbly talented politician and, to lead the opposition, another who can't seem to get out of his own way.
Michael Steele's un-Obama skills were on display at a party luncheon yesterday, and the Washington Post's Dana Milbank reports:
"The RNC chairman has managed to get into trouble with comic regularity during his first few months on the job. His latest brush with trouble had come only minutes before the lunch, when Fox News broadcast an interview with Steele in which he complained that party leaders--the very people he was about to have lunch with--have 'their knives bared' for him."
Milbank catalogues Steele's self-inflicted wounds as head of the Disloyal Opposition:
"He called Rush Limbaugh 'incendiary' and 'ugly.' He described abortion as an individual choice. He spent $18,500 decorating his office, which he had called 'way too male for me.' He offered some 'slum love' to Indian American Bobby Jindal, the Republican governor of Louisiana, and speculated that the GOP base rejected Mitt Romney 'because it had issues with Mormonism.'"
In fairness, it's unlikely that anyone could galvanize today's remnant rabble of what was once the Grand Old Party, but Steele's ineptitude is looking more and more like a grotesque example of the Affirmative Action that Republicans always used to denounce.
The question now is how to depose him without adding accusations of racism to their heavy load of political baggage.
The opportunity may come up today at a meeting of state party heads who, if they curtail his power over funding, will be calling his threat to quit if they do.
Steele ended his rallying of the troops at yesterday's luncheon with "In the best spirit of President Reagan, it's time to saddle up and ride."
Into the sunset perhaps?
Michael Steele's un-Obama skills were on display at a party luncheon yesterday, and the Washington Post's Dana Milbank reports:
"The RNC chairman has managed to get into trouble with comic regularity during his first few months on the job. His latest brush with trouble had come only minutes before the lunch, when Fox News broadcast an interview with Steele in which he complained that party leaders--the very people he was about to have lunch with--have 'their knives bared' for him."
Milbank catalogues Steele's self-inflicted wounds as head of the Disloyal Opposition:
"He called Rush Limbaugh 'incendiary' and 'ugly.' He described abortion as an individual choice. He spent $18,500 decorating his office, which he had called 'way too male for me.' He offered some 'slum love' to Indian American Bobby Jindal, the Republican governor of Louisiana, and speculated that the GOP base rejected Mitt Romney 'because it had issues with Mormonism.'"
In fairness, it's unlikely that anyone could galvanize today's remnant rabble of what was once the Grand Old Party, but Steele's ineptitude is looking more and more like a grotesque example of the Affirmative Action that Republicans always used to denounce.
The question now is how to depose him without adding accusations of racism to their heavy load of political baggage.
The opportunity may come up today at a meeting of state party heads who, if they curtail his power over funding, will be calling his threat to quit if they do.
Steele ended his rallying of the troops at yesterday's luncheon with "In the best spirit of President Reagan, it's time to saddle up and ride."
Into the sunset perhaps?
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Jumping on Jindal
Among other Change that Barack Obama advocates is a return to civility in American politics, but this week the media and the politicians who feed it failed to get the memo in piling on Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal for his rebuttal to the President's Congressional speech.
Ineffectual and lame (my word) as it was, the outpouring of invective over Jindal's effort has prompted both the New York Times and Washington Post today to treat it as an event in itself.
"Governor Jindal, Rising G.O.P. Star, Plummets After Speech" is the Times headline as Howard Kurtz in the Post asks, "How Bad Was Jindal?"
Nobody, except the Republican National Committee, asked the governor to expose himself by following the most gifted orator of our time, but there is a troubling undertone to the personal nature of the barrage of criticism and ridicule.
Chris Matthews, caught by an open mic muttering "Oh God" as Jindal appeared, is now covering his aspirating with the claim that his reaction was to the scene in the Governor's mansion, not over a dark-skinned young man looking like a deer caught in the headlights.
The Jindal-bashing has been bipartisan. "Conservative commentators," the Times notes, "were among the harshest critics, calling Mr. Jindal’s delivery animatronic, his prose 'cheesy' and his message--that federal spending is not the answer to the nation’s economic problems--uninspired."
Be that as it may, the Palinization of Bobby Jindal is both premature and unhealthy for the body politic. Wrong as he may be, Jindal is no airhead. On "Meet the Press" recently, the former Rhodes scholar came off as a serious man and, in the climate that Barack Obama is trying to recreate in American political discourse, dumping on him does not advance the cause.
Ineffectual and lame (my word) as it was, the outpouring of invective over Jindal's effort has prompted both the New York Times and Washington Post today to treat it as an event in itself.
"Governor Jindal, Rising G.O.P. Star, Plummets After Speech" is the Times headline as Howard Kurtz in the Post asks, "How Bad Was Jindal?"
Nobody, except the Republican National Committee, asked the governor to expose himself by following the most gifted orator of our time, but there is a troubling undertone to the personal nature of the barrage of criticism and ridicule.
Chris Matthews, caught by an open mic muttering "Oh God" as Jindal appeared, is now covering his aspirating with the claim that his reaction was to the scene in the Governor's mansion, not over a dark-skinned young man looking like a deer caught in the headlights.
The Jindal-bashing has been bipartisan. "Conservative commentators," the Times notes, "were among the harshest critics, calling Mr. Jindal’s delivery animatronic, his prose 'cheesy' and his message--that federal spending is not the answer to the nation’s economic problems--uninspired."
Be that as it may, the Palinization of Bobby Jindal is both premature and unhealthy for the body politic. Wrong as he may be, Jindal is no airhead. On "Meet the Press" recently, the former Rhodes scholar came off as a serious man and, in the climate that Barack Obama is trying to recreate in American political discourse, dumping on him does not advance the cause.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
The Speech: "Yes We Will"
In Barack Obama style, optimism is not cheerleading but understanding the situation, finding the best answers and getting to work on them without delay. Tonight, we saw that approach, expressed with more assertion than we have seen before from the President in charge of saving the American economy.
“While our economy may be weakened and our confidence shaken, though we are living through difficult and uncertain times, tonight I want every American to know this,” he said in his address to Congress. “We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before.”
If there is a word that means the opposite of "demagogue," Obama defined it tonight by devoting his speech to detailing the difficulties without minimizing them while stressing the steps needed to save jobs, save homes and get the banking system working again.
He told us "we have lived through an era where too often, short-term gains were prized over long-term prosperity; where we failed to look beyond the next payment, the next quarter, or the next election. A surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy instead of an opportunity to invest in our future. Regulations were gutted for the sake of a quick profit at the expense of a healthy market. People bought homes they knew they couldn't afford from banks and lenders who pushed those bad loans anyway. And all the while, critical debates and difficult decisions were put off for some other time on some other day."
In his even-handed way, the President emphasized his desire "not to lay blame or look backwards," but added that "it is only by understanding how we arrived at this moment that we'll be able to lift ourselves out of this predicament."
He acknowledged widespread resentment over the bank bailouts but made it clear that "we cannot afford to govern out of anger, or yield to the politics of the moment. My job--our job--is to solve the problem" and promised "I will not spend a single penny for the purpose of rewarding a single Wall Street executive, but I will do whatever it takes to help the small business that can't pay its workers or the family that has saved and still can't get a mortgage."
Beyond the immediate crisis, the President laid out long-range answers to energy independence, health care reform and improved education, insisting that they can't be delayed, because "to fully restore America's economic strength is to make the long-term investments that will lead to new jobs, new industries, and a renewed ability to compete with the rest of the world."
It was not called a State of the Union address, but the Congress and the country got a good look at what political leadership should be that was underscored, for comic relief, by a lame Republican rebuttal from Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, full of stale platitudes about what government shouldn't do at a moment in American history when only government can stop the bleeding that free enterprise has inflicted on the country.
“While our economy may be weakened and our confidence shaken, though we are living through difficult and uncertain times, tonight I want every American to know this,” he said in his address to Congress. “We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before.”
If there is a word that means the opposite of "demagogue," Obama defined it tonight by devoting his speech to detailing the difficulties without minimizing them while stressing the steps needed to save jobs, save homes and get the banking system working again.
He told us "we have lived through an era where too often, short-term gains were prized over long-term prosperity; where we failed to look beyond the next payment, the next quarter, or the next election. A surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy instead of an opportunity to invest in our future. Regulations were gutted for the sake of a quick profit at the expense of a healthy market. People bought homes they knew they couldn't afford from banks and lenders who pushed those bad loans anyway. And all the while, critical debates and difficult decisions were put off for some other time on some other day."
In his even-handed way, the President emphasized his desire "not to lay blame or look backwards," but added that "it is only by understanding how we arrived at this moment that we'll be able to lift ourselves out of this predicament."
He acknowledged widespread resentment over the bank bailouts but made it clear that "we cannot afford to govern out of anger, or yield to the politics of the moment. My job--our job--is to solve the problem" and promised "I will not spend a single penny for the purpose of rewarding a single Wall Street executive, but I will do whatever it takes to help the small business that can't pay its workers or the family that has saved and still can't get a mortgage."
Beyond the immediate crisis, the President laid out long-range answers to energy independence, health care reform and improved education, insisting that they can't be delayed, because "to fully restore America's economic strength is to make the long-term investments that will lead to new jobs, new industries, and a renewed ability to compete with the rest of the world."
It was not called a State of the Union address, but the Congress and the country got a good look at what political leadership should be that was underscored, for comic relief, by a lame Republican rebuttal from Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, full of stale platitudes about what government shouldn't do at a moment in American history when only government can stop the bleeding that free enterprise has inflicted on the country.
Jindal-Palin, Obama-Hillary for 2012?
Tonight's spotlight on Bobby Jindal to rebut Obama's speech to Congress shows Republican reverting to the finest traditions of show business, type casting, in the wake of last year's election disaster.
Just as Marilyn Monroe begot Jayne Mansfield and Mamie Van Doren and one TV reality show spawned dozens more, the GOP now has an African-American chairman and is pushing forward Jindal and Sarah Palin to duke it out in the 2012 primaries--a plot twist with two demographically appealing young governors of different genders to repeat last year's electoral success of the Democratic senators.
Like all type casting and knockoffs, the problem is a severe drop in quality of the product. Sarah Palin, it is amply clear, is no Hillary Clinton, and the Indian-American Louisiana governor is showing some of Barack Obama's rhetorical style but little of the substance.
Nonetheless, GOP hopes are high. "Gov. Jindal," says the director of the Republican Governors Association, "provides the outside-the-beltway, not D.C., perspective. And he's one of the smartest policy minds in the country. He's not perceived as an overtly political person."
Say what? Spouting conservative platitudes, Jindal is refusing stimulus money for the unemployed on the flimsiest grounds, leading the New York Times to observe in an editorial:
"Governors like Mr. Jindal should be worrying about how to end this recession while helping constituents feed and house their families--not about finding ways to revive tired election-year arguments about big spending versus small government."
It's encouraging to see Republicans trying to get into the 21st century, but they may want to take a closer look at show business' dismal record with sequels, retreads and reruns.
Just as Marilyn Monroe begot Jayne Mansfield and Mamie Van Doren and one TV reality show spawned dozens more, the GOP now has an African-American chairman and is pushing forward Jindal and Sarah Palin to duke it out in the 2012 primaries--a plot twist with two demographically appealing young governors of different genders to repeat last year's electoral success of the Democratic senators.
Like all type casting and knockoffs, the problem is a severe drop in quality of the product. Sarah Palin, it is amply clear, is no Hillary Clinton, and the Indian-American Louisiana governor is showing some of Barack Obama's rhetorical style but little of the substance.
Nonetheless, GOP hopes are high. "Gov. Jindal," says the director of the Republican Governors Association, "provides the outside-the-beltway, not D.C., perspective. And he's one of the smartest policy minds in the country. He's not perceived as an overtly political person."
Say what? Spouting conservative platitudes, Jindal is refusing stimulus money for the unemployed on the flimsiest grounds, leading the New York Times to observe in an editorial:
"Governors like Mr. Jindal should be worrying about how to end this recession while helping constituents feed and house their families--not about finding ways to revive tired election-year arguments about big spending versus small government."
It's encouraging to see Republicans trying to get into the 21st century, but they may want to take a closer look at show business' dismal record with sequels, retreads and reruns.
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