The health-care finals start in Washington today with the Obama home team hosting the all-stars who have made the American medical system one of the most expensive and least effective in the world.
The name of the game is cooperation as insurers, drug makers, hospitals et al come to the White House reportedly to announce "a voluntary plan to hold costs down, which health care industry officials involved in the effort say could save a family of four $2,500 a year in the fifth year, and a total of $2 trillion for the nation over 10 years. But there is no way of ensuring that the providers keep their promises, beyond publicizing their performance."
As a basketball fan, the President should recognize a fakeout when he sees one but, just in case, Paul Krugman has a head's up for him:
"What’s presumably going on here is that key interest groups have realized that health care reform is going to happen no matter what they do, and that aligning themselves with the Party of No will just deny them a seat at the table. (Republicans, after all, still denounce research into which medical procedures are effective and which are not as a dastardly plot to deprive Americans of their freedom to choose.)"
Behind all the trash talk this week will be the crucial contest over whether Congress will enact health-care reform that includes a government-sponsored option (Medicare-for-all) to give consumers a chance to buy care directly and pressure private insurers to improve what they offer.
Without that, they're just playing the same old games.
Showing posts with label Obama Administration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Obama Administration. Show all posts
Monday, May 11, 2009
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Getting Down to Earth Day
Barack Obama escapes the White House again. turning up today at an Iowa wind-turbine plant to tout his energy and climate-change plans while Administration members fan out to announce other initiatives and even the Coast Guard twitters about ways of saving the environment.
A Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee email from Al Gore, who invented the environment, underscores the import of Earth Day:
"I can tell you that President Obama has signaled in the strongest possible terms that he intends to take bold steps and harness innovative resources to solve the climate crisis. Not only that, but Speaker Pelosi has said she will personally shepherd climate legislation through."
Lisa Jackson, new head of the Environmental Protection Agency, says her agency "is back on the job. And that's not meant to say that the employees who were here all along haven't been working hard, but a lot of that work wasn't allowed to come forth for the American people."
Not all is sweetness and light, however, as environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. blasts the President and other politicians as "indentured servants" to the coal industry. "Clean coal is a dirty lie," he says.
Meanwhile. Republicans are in a brown study about how to get into the green act, although House Leader John Boehner made a start Sunday, declaring that worries about carbon dioxide are "almost comical" since human exhalations and cow emissions produce so much of it.
In any case, we can all go out and plant something. Happy Earth Day.
A Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee email from Al Gore, who invented the environment, underscores the import of Earth Day:
"I can tell you that President Obama has signaled in the strongest possible terms that he intends to take bold steps and harness innovative resources to solve the climate crisis. Not only that, but Speaker Pelosi has said she will personally shepherd climate legislation through."
Lisa Jackson, new head of the Environmental Protection Agency, says her agency "is back on the job. And that's not meant to say that the employees who were here all along haven't been working hard, but a lot of that work wasn't allowed to come forth for the American people."
Not all is sweetness and light, however, as environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. blasts the President and other politicians as "indentured servants" to the coal industry. "Clean coal is a dirty lie," he says.
Meanwhile. Republicans are in a brown study about how to get into the green act, although House Leader John Boehner made a start Sunday, declaring that worries about carbon dioxide are "almost comical" since human exhalations and cow emissions produce so much of it.
In any case, we can all go out and plant something. Happy Earth Day.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Reckoning for Rove?
In his last White House days, George W. Bush left him a get-out-of-jail pass, but Karl Rove is still in the sights of the House Judiciary Committee over his role in the firing of the US attorneys.
Chairman John Conyers has issued a subpoena to Rove to appear for a deposition on February 2nd, saying, "Change has come to Washington, and I hope Karl Rove is ready for it."
Previously, citing a letter from the Bush Justice Department, Rove's lawyer claimed he is "constitutionally immune from compelled congressional testimony" but was willing to grant an "informal interview" or answer written questions about the prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, whose ouster Rove is accused of arranging.
Now his lawyer is saying Rove received a renewed privilege assertion from Bush before he left office but that he will consult with Obama's White House counsel about the new Administration's views on the subject.
It will be a test for the new president's future-oriented tolerance (see Lieberman, Joe), but Karl Rove has become a symbol for eight years of lawlessness in seeking political advantage at all costs.
Even the least blood-thirsty of observers will sympathize with Conyers' assertion, "After two years of stonewalling, it's time for him to talk."
Chairman John Conyers has issued a subpoena to Rove to appear for a deposition on February 2nd, saying, "Change has come to Washington, and I hope Karl Rove is ready for it."
Previously, citing a letter from the Bush Justice Department, Rove's lawyer claimed he is "constitutionally immune from compelled congressional testimony" but was willing to grant an "informal interview" or answer written questions about the prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, whose ouster Rove is accused of arranging.
Now his lawyer is saying Rove received a renewed privilege assertion from Bush before he left office but that he will consult with Obama's White House counsel about the new Administration's views on the subject.
It will be a test for the new president's future-oriented tolerance (see Lieberman, Joe), but Karl Rove has become a symbol for eight years of lawlessness in seeking political advantage at all costs.
Even the least blood-thirsty of observers will sympathize with Conyers' assertion, "After two years of stonewalling, it's time for him to talk."
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Obama's Task: Reversing Inertia
Yesterday notwithstanding, social change usually comes slowly in America--reflecting a double-edged inertia that can prolong an unfair status quo while promoting stability. But there are times when all bets are off.
This is one of them. "(O)ur time of standing pat," Barack Obama said yesterday, "of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions--that time has surely passed," echoing JFK (“We’ve got to get this country moving again!”) and FDR ("the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance").
Obama's mandate, as both an advocate and exemplar of change, is to renounce the caution and business-as-usual that got us into a mess.
"I hope Obama really is a closet radical," Tom Friedman writes today. "Not radical left or right, just a radical, because this is a radical moment. It is a moment for radical departures from business as usual in so many areas. We can’t thrive as a country any longer by coasting on our reputation, by postponing solutions to every big problem that might involve some pain and by telling ourselves that dramatic new initiatives--like a gasoline tax, national health care or banking reform--are too hard or 'off the table.' So my most fervent hope about President Obama is that he will be as radical as this moment--that he will put everything on the table. "
Priding himself on bringing people together, Obama will try to reverse the Bush-Cheney imperial presidency by working closely with Congress. But after eight years of White House nay-saying, the new president will have to redefine leadership as bold and active in pushing for new solutions.
No-drama is fine as demeanor but not as policy in a desperate time. If the call for drastic action is unnerving, it would be well to remember that radical is not the same as rash in reversing inertia.
This is one of them. "(O)ur time of standing pat," Barack Obama said yesterday, "of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions--that time has surely passed," echoing JFK (“We’ve got to get this country moving again!”) and FDR ("the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance").
Obama's mandate, as both an advocate and exemplar of change, is to renounce the caution and business-as-usual that got us into a mess.
"I hope Obama really is a closet radical," Tom Friedman writes today. "Not radical left or right, just a radical, because this is a radical moment. It is a moment for radical departures from business as usual in so many areas. We can’t thrive as a country any longer by coasting on our reputation, by postponing solutions to every big problem that might involve some pain and by telling ourselves that dramatic new initiatives--like a gasoline tax, national health care or banking reform--are too hard or 'off the table.' So my most fervent hope about President Obama is that he will be as radical as this moment--that he will put everything on the table. "
Priding himself on bringing people together, Obama will try to reverse the Bush-Cheney imperial presidency by working closely with Congress. But after eight years of White House nay-saying, the new president will have to redefine leadership as bold and active in pushing for new solutions.
No-drama is fine as demeanor but not as policy in a desperate time. If the call for drastic action is unnerving, it would be well to remember that radical is not the same as rash in reversing inertia.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
How Bush Pushed Housing Heroin
If he were still with us, our departed president might be trying to figure out how he made this mess. But as his ghostly presence emanates interviews and speeches about how he stuck to his principles in the face of reality, journalists are piecing together the tale of the Bush housing bubble that has now splattered over the world economy.
"White House Philosophy Stoked Mortgage Bonfire" is the headline in today's New York Times over a 2002 picture of a smiling George W. Bush selling his new plan for minority home ownership against a backdrop of "A Home of Your Own" logos, the domestic equivalent of "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq:
"Eight years after arriving in Washington vowing to spread the dream of homeownership, Mr. Bush is leaving office, as he himself said recently, 'faced with the prospect of a global meltdown' with roots in the housing sector he so ardently championed...
"From his earliest days in office, Mr. Bush paired his belief that Americans do best when they own their own home with his conviction that markets do best when let alone.
"He pushed hard to expand homeownership, especially among minorities, an initiative that dovetailed with his ambition to expand the Republican tent--and with the business interests of some of his biggest donors. But his housing policies and hands-off approach to regulation encouraged lax lending standards."
In effect, the President became the pusher-in-chief for a housing heroin cartel of banks, mortgage brokers and Wall Street sharks that was hooking millions of Americans with nothing-down, low-start variable rate loans that would get them high on home ownership and send them crashing when inflated prices inevitably started falling.
The Times takeout is full of head-shaking statements by the "experts" who helped him foster and for years ignore the growing bubble, but it ends with an image that sums it all up:
"With 31 days left in office, Mr. Bush says he will leave it to historians to analyze 'what went right and what went wrong,' as he put it in a speech last week to the American Enterprise Institute.
"Mr. Bush said he was too focused on the present to do much looking back.
“'It turns out,' he said, 'this isn’t one of the presidencies where you ride off into the sunset, you know, kind of waving goodbye.'”
But that is exactly what George W. Bush will be doing next month as he leaves behind a nation in the throes of financial withdrawal and heads, smiling and sober, for the two homes he owns free and clear in Texas
"White House Philosophy Stoked Mortgage Bonfire" is the headline in today's New York Times over a 2002 picture of a smiling George W. Bush selling his new plan for minority home ownership against a backdrop of "A Home of Your Own" logos, the domestic equivalent of "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq:
"Eight years after arriving in Washington vowing to spread the dream of homeownership, Mr. Bush is leaving office, as he himself said recently, 'faced with the prospect of a global meltdown' with roots in the housing sector he so ardently championed...
"From his earliest days in office, Mr. Bush paired his belief that Americans do best when they own their own home with his conviction that markets do best when let alone.
"He pushed hard to expand homeownership, especially among minorities, an initiative that dovetailed with his ambition to expand the Republican tent--and with the business interests of some of his biggest donors. But his housing policies and hands-off approach to regulation encouraged lax lending standards."
In effect, the President became the pusher-in-chief for a housing heroin cartel of banks, mortgage brokers and Wall Street sharks that was hooking millions of Americans with nothing-down, low-start variable rate loans that would get them high on home ownership and send them crashing when inflated prices inevitably started falling.
The Times takeout is full of head-shaking statements by the "experts" who helped him foster and for years ignore the growing bubble, but it ends with an image that sums it all up:
"With 31 days left in office, Mr. Bush says he will leave it to historians to analyze 'what went right and what went wrong,' as he put it in a speech last week to the American Enterprise Institute.
"Mr. Bush said he was too focused on the present to do much looking back.
“'It turns out,' he said, 'this isn’t one of the presidencies where you ride off into the sunset, you know, kind of waving goodbye.'”
But that is exactly what George W. Bush will be doing next month as he leaves behind a nation in the throes of financial withdrawal and heads, smiling and sober, for the two homes he owns free and clear in Texas
Monday, December 15, 2008
Thanks a Trillion
After months of boring billion-dollar bailouts, the Change in Washington will usher in an exciting new time of the trillion for the incoming Congress and Administration:
*Cost estimates of the Obama stimulus plan for the economy are now $1 trillion over two years.
*Politicians will be under pressure to stop the steep drop in the value of American homes, now estimated to have fallen by $2 trillion this year.
*The new people at Treasury and Congressional oversight committees will be busy trying to find out what happened to an estimated $2 trillion shoveled out to banks and other financial houses in the past months. (Bloomberg News is suing under the Freedom of Information Act, but government agencies won't say.)
*When they get a closer look at the books, the Obama people may finally see if the Iraq war cost us only $1 or $2 trillion, as the Congressional Budget Office figures, or closer to the $4 trillion and counting that Nobel economist Joseph Stieglitz has been calculating.
At this rate, it will soon be time to update the folksy wisdom of the 1960s Republican Senate Leader Everett Dirksen: "A trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money."
*Cost estimates of the Obama stimulus plan for the economy are now $1 trillion over two years.
*Politicians will be under pressure to stop the steep drop in the value of American homes, now estimated to have fallen by $2 trillion this year.
*The new people at Treasury and Congressional oversight committees will be busy trying to find out what happened to an estimated $2 trillion shoveled out to banks and other financial houses in the past months. (Bloomberg News is suing under the Freedom of Information Act, but government agencies won't say.)
*When they get a closer look at the books, the Obama people may finally see if the Iraq war cost us only $1 or $2 trillion, as the Congressional Budget Office figures, or closer to the $4 trillion and counting that Nobel economist Joseph Stieglitz has been calculating.
At this rate, it will soon be time to update the folksy wisdom of the 1960s Republican Senate Leader Everett Dirksen: "A trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money."
Saturday, November 22, 2008
The Coming of a Can-Do Government
In the wreckage of this week's news, it's encouraging to watch the Obama Administration taking shape with an emphasis on extreme competence (no heck-of-a-job Brownie in the lot).
Today's New York Times describes it as "tilting toward the center, inviting a clash of ideas," but the left-right analysis seems less to the point than the question of getting things done as transition team members "believe that the new administration will have no time for a learning curve."
Starting with the choice of Rahm Emanuel, a can-do guy if there ever was one, the new President clearly intends to surround himself with brains and real-world experience rather than like-mindedness and loyalty.
That was reflected in the leak yesterday about the new Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, a pragmatist with deep experience, whose choice sent the stock market into euphoria. As America's face to the financial world, he will represent steady resolve compared to former Treasury chief Lawrence Summers, a bombastic figure Obama considered putting back into the job, who will likely end up in the White House as a senior economic adviser.
After such choices as the new Attorney General Eric Holder, Peter Orszag as Budget Director and Greg Craig as White House Counsel, conservative David Brooks calls the new Obama team "more impressive than any other in recent memory...open-minded individuals who are persuadable by evidence...admired professionals" who are "not excessively partisan" and "not ideological."
How does Hillary Clinton fit into this picture? She certainly would not blend into the Obama woodwork, but there is something more at stake in her choice as Secretary of State. For those who have become unsure about American values, she would make the Bush-Cheney worldview look like the aberration it has been and reassure continuity of our good intentions and good sense.
As with all of Obama's other choices, personal loyalty would be beside the point.
Today's New York Times describes it as "tilting toward the center, inviting a clash of ideas," but the left-right analysis seems less to the point than the question of getting things done as transition team members "believe that the new administration will have no time for a learning curve."
Starting with the choice of Rahm Emanuel, a can-do guy if there ever was one, the new President clearly intends to surround himself with brains and real-world experience rather than like-mindedness and loyalty.
That was reflected in the leak yesterday about the new Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, a pragmatist with deep experience, whose choice sent the stock market into euphoria. As America's face to the financial world, he will represent steady resolve compared to former Treasury chief Lawrence Summers, a bombastic figure Obama considered putting back into the job, who will likely end up in the White House as a senior economic adviser.
After such choices as the new Attorney General Eric Holder, Peter Orszag as Budget Director and Greg Craig as White House Counsel, conservative David Brooks calls the new Obama team "more impressive than any other in recent memory...open-minded individuals who are persuadable by evidence...admired professionals" who are "not excessively partisan" and "not ideological."
How does Hillary Clinton fit into this picture? She certainly would not blend into the Obama woodwork, but there is something more at stake in her choice as Secretary of State. For those who have become unsure about American values, she would make the Bush-Cheney worldview look like the aberration it has been and reassure continuity of our good intentions and good sense.
As with all of Obama's other choices, personal loyalty would be beside the point.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Kissing Hillary
An editor who didn't get an expected promotion once cabled Henry Luce of Time Inc, "If you didn't intend to kiss me, why did you keep me standing on my tippy toes?"
The image comes back as days stretch out over the possible appointment of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, creating the first tiny crisis of the Obama Administration in the making.
As in all matters Clinton, the stumbling block is the former President and possible conflicts of interest created by his current activities, donors, backers and business associates in the complex corporation of Bill Inc.
Symbolically, he enthused this weekend, “I think she’ll be really great as a secretary of state” while in Kuwait for a paid speech at a symposium sponsored by the National Bank of Kuwait to “share with a select audience his perspective on the issues likely to shape the future prospects of the region.”
The media frenzy, set off by the face-to-face meeting of Obama and Hillary Clinton last Thursday, raises the question of why the vetting could not have done before that event, which was sure to start a furor of speculation.
Now there are reports of rising anger and unhappiness among Obama supporters as the process drags on with no confirmation or denial.
For someone who was almost uniformly sure-handed during the campaign, the President-to-be has let things get out of hand on this possible appointment. Or did he intend to create such venting of emotion before making the announcement? There will be no shortage of opinions both ways.
The image comes back as days stretch out over the possible appointment of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, creating the first tiny crisis of the Obama Administration in the making.
As in all matters Clinton, the stumbling block is the former President and possible conflicts of interest created by his current activities, donors, backers and business associates in the complex corporation of Bill Inc.
Symbolically, he enthused this weekend, “I think she’ll be really great as a secretary of state” while in Kuwait for a paid speech at a symposium sponsored by the National Bank of Kuwait to “share with a select audience his perspective on the issues likely to shape the future prospects of the region.”
The media frenzy, set off by the face-to-face meeting of Obama and Hillary Clinton last Thursday, raises the question of why the vetting could not have done before that event, which was sure to start a furor of speculation.
Now there are reports of rising anger and unhappiness among Obama supporters as the process drags on with no confirmation or denial.
For someone who was almost uniformly sure-handed during the campaign, the President-to-be has let things get out of hand on this possible appointment. Or did he intend to create such venting of emotion before making the announcement? There will be no shortage of opinions both ways.
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