If he signs a health care bill into law this month, in his heart of hearts, the President will be haunted by the ancient plaint of King Pyrrhus, "Another such victory, and I am undone."
How did 21st century America fall into Greek tragedy while fighting to spread the benefits of civilization to its people? How did rational debate deteriorate into the ancient ritual of a blood feud?
Rep. Paul Ryan, the GOP's designated voice of reason, writes in an OpEd today, "Should the Democrats' health-care train wreck make it to the president's desk, it will be a pyrrhic victory, and its devastating consequences will take their toll on our health-care system, our budget and our economy."
His argument that the new law is mainly "a range of job-killing tax hikes and controls on all Americans--to fund this new entitlement and to penalize employers and individuals who don't play by Washington's new rules" is as simplistic and misleading as White House claims that the bloated, bargain-marred thing will be an historic achievement for fairness and decency.
Pasting Ryan's handsome young face and wonkish voice over a year of monolithic know-nothing Republican obstruction is undermined by Minority Leader John Boehner's vow to "make it difficult for them, if not impossible, to pass the bill."
But blaming Republicans is too easy, another way of avoiding responsibility by playing their us-against-them game. Democrats would do well to recall a Shakespearian take on the human condition, "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,/But in ourselves, that we are underlings."
That kind of thinking led Romans to conspire against their Caesar just as today's Congressional underlings are threatening to undo their leader with squabbles about abortion and other side issues that will profit them politically.
Yet, with all the good will in the world for his pragmatic idealism, it's hard not to fault Barack Obama for getting himself into this pyrrhic mess.
Instead on analyzing the red-meat issue and formulating a comprehensible plan to deal with its major components, the President stepped back and tossed it into the Congressional boneyard where it could be shredded into scraps.
Instead of emphasizing how the current system is threatening to bankrupt the middle class, Obama chose to reassure them that they could keep their current coverage while appealing to their sense of fairness in bringing 30 million uninsured into it, opening the way for selfish Tea Party demagoguery about socialism.
Instead of recognizing that health insurer "cooperation" was a sham, the President naively embraced it only to find they would be back lobbying against reform at crunch time.
Instead of accepting the hard truth that cost containment was a complex tangle of provider greed and unbridled patient sense of entitlement, Obama persisted in hazy formulations about bending the cost curve.
Now, he is faced with the choice of a pyrrhic victory or an unthinkable defeat while the rest of us find no catharsis in what has become a classic tragedy.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Your Money or Your Life
Traditional highway robbers gave victims a choice of keeping one or the other, but Congress is poised next week to help insurance and financial marauders deprive Americans of both.
Under the radar of the health care mess, financial regulatory reform is being held up as lame duck Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee Chris Dodd fails to find a single Republican to join him in a minimal attempt to control Wall Street's runaway excesses.
"What Mr. Dodd needs to do," the New York Times declares in an editorial, "is to introduce the toughest and smartest legislation he can to revamp the financial system and protect American consumers. And he and President Obama need to twist the arms of Democratic committee members to bring the strongest possible bill to the Senate floor.
"Their rallying cry couldn’t be any clearer: Whose side are you on? The banks or the American people?"
A clue to the answer came last week in a 2200-page report on Lehman Brothers, showing how executives of the fallen firm practiced “materially misleading” accounting and “actionable balance sheet manipulation” to avoid going under in 2008, even as then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson made strenuous efforts to save them.
Sen. Dodd himself is no stranger to the Wall Street-Washington web of scandal that has undermined efforts to protect investors over the years, but he has a chance to atone in a last hurrah by fighting for meaningful new controls.
Or will he give way to Republican efforts to slow up legislation as he gets ready to go into retirement and the waiting period before he can go to work lobbying for Wall Street?
Under the radar of the health care mess, financial regulatory reform is being held up as lame duck Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee Chris Dodd fails to find a single Republican to join him in a minimal attempt to control Wall Street's runaway excesses.
"What Mr. Dodd needs to do," the New York Times declares in an editorial, "is to introduce the toughest and smartest legislation he can to revamp the financial system and protect American consumers. And he and President Obama need to twist the arms of Democratic committee members to bring the strongest possible bill to the Senate floor.
"Their rallying cry couldn’t be any clearer: Whose side are you on? The banks or the American people?"
A clue to the answer came last week in a 2200-page report on Lehman Brothers, showing how executives of the fallen firm practiced “materially misleading” accounting and “actionable balance sheet manipulation” to avoid going under in 2008, even as then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson made strenuous efforts to save them.
Sen. Dodd himself is no stranger to the Wall Street-Washington web of scandal that has undermined efforts to protect investors over the years, but he has a chance to atone in a last hurrah by fighting for meaningful new controls.
Or will he give way to Republican efforts to slow up legislation as he gets ready to go into retirement and the waiting period before he can go to work lobbying for Wall Street?
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Bye-Bye Limbaugh and Beck?
Forty years ago, a line of actors and actresses came out on a Manhattan stage and dropped their robes to face the audience naked. My reaction then was "That's interesting, now what else have you got?"
As it turned out, very little. Despite sketches by Samuel Beckett, John Lennon and other literati, "Oh Calcutta" was deemed "sophomoric and soporific" by a New York Times critic and remains memorable only for crossing a cultural threshold of public nudity.
It comes to mind now as Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, two figures who strip their psyches bare in a new era, seem to be imploding after showing us everything they've got and bumping up against possible boredom with their act.
After a disastrous (in his own word, wasted) hour of bear-baiting Democratic pariah Eric Massa (akin to shooting fish in a barrel and missing), Beck now finds himself under fire from evangelical leaders for equating Christian social justice with Nazism and Communism.
"When Glenn Beck is asking Christians to leave their churches, the Catholic Church, the black churches, Hispanic, evangelical, to leave all our churches," says the head of Sojourners, a Christian networking group, "I'm saying it's time for Christians to leave the Glenn Beck show."
Beck's desperation is echoed in Limbaugh's promise to leave the country if health care reform is passed. With his huge audience and contract, El Rushbo won't be going anywhere soon but his threat is symptomatic of the pressure felt by extreme figures to keep pushing the boundaries of expression.
Their plight brings up another image from the last century. In the early days of TV, a civil-rights leader described a dilemma:
"At dimly-lit open-air rallies each night, the speaker's face lights up in the glare of photofloods during those passages a cameraman thinks most likely to win ten seconds of network time. The lights go off abruptly when the cameraman's interest flags, leaving the speaker blinking in the dark, and fishing for another, even more startling statement to bring the lights back on."
Beck and Limbaugh, like their counterparts on the Left, keep fishing for ever more startling statements to hold our interest, but in a time when politicians say and do the unthinkable daily, it's getting harder to stay in the spotlight.
The only novelty left would be public figures coming on stage fully clothed and speaking with civility, but so far Barack Obama's act is only attracting a bare majority of the audience.
As it turned out, very little. Despite sketches by Samuel Beckett, John Lennon and other literati, "Oh Calcutta" was deemed "sophomoric and soporific" by a New York Times critic and remains memorable only for crossing a cultural threshold of public nudity.
It comes to mind now as Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, two figures who strip their psyches bare in a new era, seem to be imploding after showing us everything they've got and bumping up against possible boredom with their act.
After a disastrous (in his own word, wasted) hour of bear-baiting Democratic pariah Eric Massa (akin to shooting fish in a barrel and missing), Beck now finds himself under fire from evangelical leaders for equating Christian social justice with Nazism and Communism.
"When Glenn Beck is asking Christians to leave their churches, the Catholic Church, the black churches, Hispanic, evangelical, to leave all our churches," says the head of Sojourners, a Christian networking group, "I'm saying it's time for Christians to leave the Glenn Beck show."
Beck's desperation is echoed in Limbaugh's promise to leave the country if health care reform is passed. With his huge audience and contract, El Rushbo won't be going anywhere soon but his threat is symptomatic of the pressure felt by extreme figures to keep pushing the boundaries of expression.
Their plight brings up another image from the last century. In the early days of TV, a civil-rights leader described a dilemma:
"At dimly-lit open-air rallies each night, the speaker's face lights up in the glare of photofloods during those passages a cameraman thinks most likely to win ten seconds of network time. The lights go off abruptly when the cameraman's interest flags, leaving the speaker blinking in the dark, and fishing for another, even more startling statement to bring the lights back on."
Beck and Limbaugh, like their counterparts on the Left, keep fishing for ever more startling statements to hold our interest, but in a time when politicians say and do the unthinkable daily, it's getting harder to stay in the spotlight.
The only novelty left would be public figures coming on stage fully clothed and speaking with civility, but so far Barack Obama's act is only attracting a bare majority of the audience.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Getting Jumpy Over Jihad Jane
The media hall of mirrors is manufacturing a "terrorism-case trend" out of an iffy indictment of a clearly disturbed Pennsylvania woman's e-mails, YouTube postings and MySpace page.
Interviewing a Washington Post reporter on the PBS News Hour, Gwen Ifill wonders if "she could have easily just been someone noodling around on the Internet" but is assured that Colleen LaRose, arrested last October for stealing her boyfriend's passport and taking it overseas, was a true terrorist threat, conspiring to assassinate a Danish cartoonist who had offended Muslims.
If so, Ms. LaRose has taken the tactic of "hiding in plain sight" to a new level by launching a plot that could be monitored online by anyone with Internet access, including the Feds.
In a time of shoe bombers and body bombers, it would be foolish to dismiss any bizarre threats, but this week's relatively fact-free indictment raises questions about going public to arouse so much anxiety based on so little.
Jihad Jane stands accused of attempting "to wage violent jihad in South Asia and Europe" and that she "recruited women on the Internet who had passports and the ability to travel to and around Europe in support of violent jihad."
What the legal document omits is that Ms. LaRose, a 46-year-old convert to Islam, has a disordered personal history, culminating in a suicide attempt after her father's death and that her electronic rantings, including fantasies about a Muslim marriage, were amplified by the same sites that encouraged Maj. Nidal Hassan, the psychiatrically impaired Fort Hood shooter.
All good reasons to monitor her activities, but a questionable basis for setting off a public uproar over a new trend involving European-looking women plotting to blow us all up.
Interviewing a Washington Post reporter on the PBS News Hour, Gwen Ifill wonders if "she could have easily just been someone noodling around on the Internet" but is assured that Colleen LaRose, arrested last October for stealing her boyfriend's passport and taking it overseas, was a true terrorist threat, conspiring to assassinate a Danish cartoonist who had offended Muslims.
If so, Ms. LaRose has taken the tactic of "hiding in plain sight" to a new level by launching a plot that could be monitored online by anyone with Internet access, including the Feds.
In a time of shoe bombers and body bombers, it would be foolish to dismiss any bizarre threats, but this week's relatively fact-free indictment raises questions about going public to arouse so much anxiety based on so little.
Jihad Jane stands accused of attempting "to wage violent jihad in South Asia and Europe" and that she "recruited women on the Internet who had passports and the ability to travel to and around Europe in support of violent jihad."
What the legal document omits is that Ms. LaRose, a 46-year-old convert to Islam, has a disordered personal history, culminating in a suicide attempt after her father's death and that her electronic rantings, including fantasies about a Muslim marriage, were amplified by the same sites that encouraged Maj. Nidal Hassan, the psychiatrically impaired Fort Hood shooter.
All good reasons to monitor her activities, but a questionable basis for setting off a public uproar over a new trend involving European-looking women plotting to blow us all up.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Entitlement Derangement
"Ask not," JFK urged at his inaugural, "what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country."
Half a century later, making sacrifices, large or small, has vanished from most Americans' vocabularies, replaced by a raging sense of disappointed entitlement that leads them to blame everyone but themselves for what's wrong with their country.
In bipartisan disgust, only 22 percent now approve of Congress, a 10 percent decline in two months and, in a reversal of precedent, fewer than half want to reelect their own representatives. Barack Obama, the avatar of Hope little more than a year ago, is holding on to a bare majority of support.
Such dissatisfaction is understandable in the light of Congress' miserable performance, but something deeper seems to be involved--a grotesque growth of selfishness in the society from top to bottom.
The newest poll on health care, for example, shows only a minority of a minority supporting reform as a moral obligation to the uninsured with the majority, even though dissatisfied with the system, opposed in response to fears that have been aroused that they will have to pay more or get less.
"We pay for most of our health care indirectly, through taxes or paycheck deductions," says a New York Times analysis, "which lulls us into thinking that the care is somehow free. As the Stanford economist Victor Fuchs notes, many Americans say they want to control costs--but oppose just about any policy to do so. It should be no surprise that politicians do the same."
The Tea Party movement, fueled by fears that someone else in the society could benefit at their expense, may be only the tip of an iceberg of discontent that has been growing since JFK's time.
Back then, wars were fought by young people drafted from every stratum of society rather than the mostly poor who volunteer now as much out of economic need and the hope of upward social mobility as patriotism.
Back then, home ownership was hard-earned by saving for a substantial down payment rather than promoted as an automatic right by uncontrolled easy-buck middlemen who created a bubble that has almost wrecked the economy.
On all sides, the traditional American work ethic is being eroded by a Me Generation's sense of automatic entitlement, even as many members complain about such government safety nets as Social Security and Medicare for those who have gone before them and earned what they are now getting.
"Finally," Kennedy concluded in his inaugural speech, "whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you."
Amid all the scandals about politicians' corruption today, are they acting with any more greed and self-regard than many of us who put them into power?
Half a century later, making sacrifices, large or small, has vanished from most Americans' vocabularies, replaced by a raging sense of disappointed entitlement that leads them to blame everyone but themselves for what's wrong with their country.
In bipartisan disgust, only 22 percent now approve of Congress, a 10 percent decline in two months and, in a reversal of precedent, fewer than half want to reelect their own representatives. Barack Obama, the avatar of Hope little more than a year ago, is holding on to a bare majority of support.
Such dissatisfaction is understandable in the light of Congress' miserable performance, but something deeper seems to be involved--a grotesque growth of selfishness in the society from top to bottom.
The newest poll on health care, for example, shows only a minority of a minority supporting reform as a moral obligation to the uninsured with the majority, even though dissatisfied with the system, opposed in response to fears that have been aroused that they will have to pay more or get less.
"We pay for most of our health care indirectly, through taxes or paycheck deductions," says a New York Times analysis, "which lulls us into thinking that the care is somehow free. As the Stanford economist Victor Fuchs notes, many Americans say they want to control costs--but oppose just about any policy to do so. It should be no surprise that politicians do the same."
The Tea Party movement, fueled by fears that someone else in the society could benefit at their expense, may be only the tip of an iceberg of discontent that has been growing since JFK's time.
Back then, wars were fought by young people drafted from every stratum of society rather than the mostly poor who volunteer now as much out of economic need and the hope of upward social mobility as patriotism.
Back then, home ownership was hard-earned by saving for a substantial down payment rather than promoted as an automatic right by uncontrolled easy-buck middlemen who created a bubble that has almost wrecked the economy.
On all sides, the traditional American work ethic is being eroded by a Me Generation's sense of automatic entitlement, even as many members complain about such government safety nets as Social Security and Medicare for those who have gone before them and earned what they are now getting.
"Finally," Kennedy concluded in his inaugural speech, "whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you."
Amid all the scandals about politicians' corruption today, are they acting with any more greed and self-regard than many of us who put them into power?
Tuesday, March 09, 2010
Obama's Moby Dick
Relentlessly pursuing health care reform, the President is looking more and more like a modern Ahab, wounded by but determined to nail what he sees as the killer whale of the American economy at all costs.
Yet, as he keeps harpooning health insurers, even Obama admirers are warning that he risks capsizing the ship of state by, as Bob Herbert puts it, not concentrating on job creation that would ease "the frightening economic insecurity that has put a chokehold on millions of American families" rather than "an obsessive quest to pass a health care bill."
Another New York Times liberal, Frank Rich, warns: "The rise in credit-card rates, as well as the drop in consumer confidence, home sales and bank lending, all foretell more suffering ahead for those who don’t work on Wall Street. But on these issues the president, too timid to confront the financial industry backers of his own campaign (or their tribunes in his own administration) and too fearful of sounding like a vulgar partisan populist, has taken to repeating his health care performance."
The most unlikely political figure to emulate the wild-eyed captain of the Pequod, Obama is out on the hustings calling for "a final, up or down vote on health care," while Congressional action on otherwise healing the economy is hopelessly stalled.
FDIC Chair Sheila Bair is urging borrowers to pressure banks that are not lending to small businesses and consumers by calling them out in public, but from the White House, there is only health care, health care, health care as the Congressional Budget Office raises the projected ten-year budget shortfall to $9.7 billion.
For this President, there is now no turning back on his righteous quest, but there is a growing feeling that he is chasing the wrong whale.
Yet, as he keeps harpooning health insurers, even Obama admirers are warning that he risks capsizing the ship of state by, as Bob Herbert puts it, not concentrating on job creation that would ease "the frightening economic insecurity that has put a chokehold on millions of American families" rather than "an obsessive quest to pass a health care bill."
Another New York Times liberal, Frank Rich, warns: "The rise in credit-card rates, as well as the drop in consumer confidence, home sales and bank lending, all foretell more suffering ahead for those who don’t work on Wall Street. But on these issues the president, too timid to confront the financial industry backers of his own campaign (or their tribunes in his own administration) and too fearful of sounding like a vulgar partisan populist, has taken to repeating his health care performance."
The most unlikely political figure to emulate the wild-eyed captain of the Pequod, Obama is out on the hustings calling for "a final, up or down vote on health care," while Congressional action on otherwise healing the economy is hopelessly stalled.
FDIC Chair Sheila Bair is urging borrowers to pressure banks that are not lending to small businesses and consumers by calling them out in public, but from the White House, there is only health care, health care, health care as the Congressional Budget Office raises the projected ten-year budget shortfall to $9.7 billion.
For this President, there is now no turning back on his righteous quest, but there is a growing feeling that he is chasing the wrong whale.
Monday, March 08, 2010
Tea Party, Hollywood Style
James Cameron was not king of the world this time as his former wife took custody of all the Oscars for an explosive low-budget howl of pain in this time of American rage.
Symbolically, millions of metropolitan New Yorkers were blinded to it all by a clash between two Goliaths of greed, ABC and Cablevision, acting out for the night in their living rooms what Wall Street has been doing to them everywhere for years.
What they missed was the usual Hollywood display of self-congratulatory pseudo-sensitivity with a few new wrinkles in the age of Obama. Oprah was on hand to celebrate African-American suffering in shape of the obese "Precious," but there was a nod to equal-opportunity insipidity in a cameo by Tyler Perry as a presenter and a loony interracial squabble over the award to a documentary about an African singer.
Pop sociology was also served by the performance of Barbra Streisand, who has been kvetching for decades over not being the first woman to get an Oscar for "Yentl," as the presenter to Kathryn Bigelow, who broke the barrier with her smashmouth movie about Iraq. "The time has finally come," Streisand emoted.
Instead of the usual Bob Hope-ish gagfest, MCs Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin did a minimalist turn, starting with a low-heat roast of Meryl Streep, George Clooney and all the icons in the front rows, who seemed to be struggling to keep smiling.
Toward the end, in this era of reality, even the losers' obligatory pasted-on smiles were slipping off after they had endured long valentines from other stars before coming up empty-handed.
For someone who has watched "The Fabulous Baker Boys" with pleasure over a dozen times, the highlight was Michelle Pfeiffer's love note to an older, hairier Jeff Bridges, who should have been rewarded back then for his turn as a bitterly depressed romantic but finally got one last night for playing a musical survivor.
The Academy's snub of the innovative and wildly lucrative "Avatar" will no doubt be parsed by pundits in coming days, but for the moment, put it down as a Tea-Partyish protest against the powers-that-be in Tinseltown.
Symbolically, millions of metropolitan New Yorkers were blinded to it all by a clash between two Goliaths of greed, ABC and Cablevision, acting out for the night in their living rooms what Wall Street has been doing to them everywhere for years.
What they missed was the usual Hollywood display of self-congratulatory pseudo-sensitivity with a few new wrinkles in the age of Obama. Oprah was on hand to celebrate African-American suffering in shape of the obese "Precious," but there was a nod to equal-opportunity insipidity in a cameo by Tyler Perry as a presenter and a loony interracial squabble over the award to a documentary about an African singer.
Pop sociology was also served by the performance of Barbra Streisand, who has been kvetching for decades over not being the first woman to get an Oscar for "Yentl," as the presenter to Kathryn Bigelow, who broke the barrier with her smashmouth movie about Iraq. "The time has finally come," Streisand emoted.
Instead of the usual Bob Hope-ish gagfest, MCs Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin did a minimalist turn, starting with a low-heat roast of Meryl Streep, George Clooney and all the icons in the front rows, who seemed to be struggling to keep smiling.
Toward the end, in this era of reality, even the losers' obligatory pasted-on smiles were slipping off after they had endured long valentines from other stars before coming up empty-handed.
For someone who has watched "The Fabulous Baker Boys" with pleasure over a dozen times, the highlight was Michelle Pfeiffer's love note to an older, hairier Jeff Bridges, who should have been rewarded back then for his turn as a bitterly depressed romantic but finally got one last night for playing a musical survivor.
The Academy's snub of the innovative and wildly lucrative "Avatar" will no doubt be parsed by pundits in coming days, but for the moment, put it down as a Tea-Partyish protest against the powers-that-be in Tinseltown.
Thursday, March 04, 2010
A Death in the Family
The blogger who wrote under the name Jon Swift with a wit worthy of his namesake has died at the age of 46, leaving an ache in those of us who not only enjoyed his high style but benefited from his uncommon warmth and generosity.
In a world of so much me-me-me with links, the man whose real name was Al Weisel presided over Blog Amnesty Day to call attention to the work of those who were, as I was three-plus years ago, just getting started and had few readers beyond their friends and relatives.
His quasi-Conservative style, which has been compared to that of Stephen Colbert, often left me laughing out loud, so perhaps the most appropriate tribute is to direct attention to one of my favorite posts of his--about steroids and guns.
His gifts for both satire and friendship will be missed in a time when the supply of both is dwindling.
In a world of so much me-me-me with links, the man whose real name was Al Weisel presided over Blog Amnesty Day to call attention to the work of those who were, as I was three-plus years ago, just getting started and had few readers beyond their friends and relatives.
His quasi-Conservative style, which has been compared to that of Stephen Colbert, often left me laughing out loud, so perhaps the most appropriate tribute is to direct attention to one of my favorite posts of his--about steroids and guns.
His gifts for both satire and friendship will be missed in a time when the supply of both is dwindling.
The Americanization of Me
Age and ego conspire on an 86th birthday to see my life as a metaphor for America over the past century.
In 1921, “The Americanization of Edward Bok” appeared. Bok was, as I am, the child of immigrants who became, as I would, editor of a large magazine and took part, as I did, in public life. His book won a Pulitzer Prize and is still read, an artifact of those Horatio Alger days when a poor kid could pursue material success without introspection or doubt about its desirability above all else.
My experiences, much more modest, reflect how such immigrant striving was part of what Henry Luce called the American century of wealth and power, which devolved into moral and social complexity and, eventually, the divisions and doubts of this new one.
Back then, our parents escaped a nightmare, and we inherited a dream. Hungry ghetto kids before us showed the way. Herman Mankiewicz, who would later write "Citizen Kane," had sent a telegram to Ben Hecht from Hollywood: "Millions are to be grabbed out here, and the only competition is idiots. Don't let this get around."
And oh how they grabbed! Movies had started to talk soon after I did, and the children of immigrants gave them words. They showed us the way to earn a living with our brains, not with their backs as our parents did.
We all wanted to be writers. Between the 1920s Lost Generation and the Silent Generation of the 1950s, we were on the rim of the Melting Pot and, if we tried hard enough, could hoist ourselves over and splash around in the splendor.
Woody Allen mocked our ambition in “Zelig,” who wills himself into becoming like the people he sees in newsreels. In pseudo-documentary style, Irving Howe, a scholar of the immigrant experience, explains the fictional chameleon: “He wanted to assimilate like crazy.”
So did we all. High-school classmates Paddy Chayevsky, James Baldwin, Neil Simon, Bruce Jay Friedman and Richard Avedon went on to make art out of the world we inhabited and the shinier one we wanted to enter.
We fought in a war and barriers came down--ethnic, racial, gender--and some of us played a small part in that, never doubting that the world would keep getting better. My working life brought encounters with iconic figures--John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Marilyn Monroe, Truman Capote--and their early deaths inevitably evoked sadness about how making good in America was infinitely more complicated than Edward Bok ever dreamed.
Now all that experience has to confront a national mood that has turned sour after a brief flicker of hope last year that is being overwhelmed by bitterness, cynicism about community and a distrust that is rampant.
If age teaches anything, it is that in time everything passes. If last year's hope has faded, this year's despair will, too. For better or worse, we never stop reinventing ourselves
As JFK said, "Life is unfair," but Americans are very good at making the most of it.
Bring out the cake and candles.
In 1921, “The Americanization of Edward Bok” appeared. Bok was, as I am, the child of immigrants who became, as I would, editor of a large magazine and took part, as I did, in public life. His book won a Pulitzer Prize and is still read, an artifact of those Horatio Alger days when a poor kid could pursue material success without introspection or doubt about its desirability above all else.
My experiences, much more modest, reflect how such immigrant striving was part of what Henry Luce called the American century of wealth and power, which devolved into moral and social complexity and, eventually, the divisions and doubts of this new one.
Back then, our parents escaped a nightmare, and we inherited a dream. Hungry ghetto kids before us showed the way. Herman Mankiewicz, who would later write "Citizen Kane," had sent a telegram to Ben Hecht from Hollywood: "Millions are to be grabbed out here, and the only competition is idiots. Don't let this get around."
And oh how they grabbed! Movies had started to talk soon after I did, and the children of immigrants gave them words. They showed us the way to earn a living with our brains, not with their backs as our parents did.
We all wanted to be writers. Between the 1920s Lost Generation and the Silent Generation of the 1950s, we were on the rim of the Melting Pot and, if we tried hard enough, could hoist ourselves over and splash around in the splendor.
Woody Allen mocked our ambition in “Zelig,” who wills himself into becoming like the people he sees in newsreels. In pseudo-documentary style, Irving Howe, a scholar of the immigrant experience, explains the fictional chameleon: “He wanted to assimilate like crazy.”
So did we all. High-school classmates Paddy Chayevsky, James Baldwin, Neil Simon, Bruce Jay Friedman and Richard Avedon went on to make art out of the world we inhabited and the shinier one we wanted to enter.
We fought in a war and barriers came down--ethnic, racial, gender--and some of us played a small part in that, never doubting that the world would keep getting better. My working life brought encounters with iconic figures--John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Marilyn Monroe, Truman Capote--and their early deaths inevitably evoked sadness about how making good in America was infinitely more complicated than Edward Bok ever dreamed.
Now all that experience has to confront a national mood that has turned sour after a brief flicker of hope last year that is being overwhelmed by bitterness, cynicism about community and a distrust that is rampant.
If age teaches anything, it is that in time everything passes. If last year's hope has faded, this year's despair will, too. For better or worse, we never stop reinventing ourselves
As JFK said, "Life is unfair," but Americans are very good at making the most of it.
Bring out the cake and candles.
Wednesday, March 03, 2010
"No" Country for Old Men
Jim Bunning and Charles Rangel, with nothing in common but well-styled silver hair, took over the Congressional spotlight this week by refusing to "go gentle into that night."
The 79-year-old Bunning, called one of America's Five Worst Senators by Time Magazine and described by Bill Clinton as "so mean-spirited he repulsed even fellow know-nothings," made his last hurrah by single-handedly holding up for five days a bipartisan temporary extension of funding for unemployment benefits, doctors' Medicare payments and highway workers' salaries, among other uncontroversial purposes.
If Bunning dominated the media with his cantankerous, Tea Party-friendly display in the Senate before finally shutting up and sitting down yesterday, in the House another politician of his age, Charles Rangel, is about to be stripped of power after four decades of flamboyant service extending from the Watergate hearings through publicly questioning the mental status of Dick Cheney and Sarah Palin.
He is about to lose his job as chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee after being found guilty by the House Ethics Committee of taking corporate-sponsored trips, just the tip of an iceberg of corruption charges still ahead of him.
Bunning, who parlayed All-Star baseball fame into a political career, is the polar opposite of Rangel, a Korean War veteran who became a Harlem wheeler-dealer of the kind that dominated African-American representation in Washington during the pre-Obama era.
As late as last week, at the Blair House health care summit, Rangel was making an earnest plea for the poor while standing out from other attendees in the attire of an opulent pimp.
Stepping down "temporarily," he is still holding on by his polished fingernails, but the writing is on Nancy Pelosi's wall that Rangel is about to become a lame duck just as surely as Jim Bunning is a dead duck in Washington.
Other, more modernly bland types will take their places but, at heart, will they be morally superior to the near-octogenarians who are saying their final no's in the Capitol this week?
The 79-year-old Bunning, called one of America's Five Worst Senators by Time Magazine and described by Bill Clinton as "so mean-spirited he repulsed even fellow know-nothings," made his last hurrah by single-handedly holding up for five days a bipartisan temporary extension of funding for unemployment benefits, doctors' Medicare payments and highway workers' salaries, among other uncontroversial purposes.
If Bunning dominated the media with his cantankerous, Tea Party-friendly display in the Senate before finally shutting up and sitting down yesterday, in the House another politician of his age, Charles Rangel, is about to be stripped of power after four decades of flamboyant service extending from the Watergate hearings through publicly questioning the mental status of Dick Cheney and Sarah Palin.
He is about to lose his job as chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee after being found guilty by the House Ethics Committee of taking corporate-sponsored trips, just the tip of an iceberg of corruption charges still ahead of him.
Bunning, who parlayed All-Star baseball fame into a political career, is the polar opposite of Rangel, a Korean War veteran who became a Harlem wheeler-dealer of the kind that dominated African-American representation in Washington during the pre-Obama era.
As late as last week, at the Blair House health care summit, Rangel was making an earnest plea for the poor while standing out from other attendees in the attire of an opulent pimp.
Stepping down "temporarily," he is still holding on by his polished fingernails, but the writing is on Nancy Pelosi's wall that Rangel is about to become a lame duck just as surely as Jim Bunning is a dead duck in Washington.
Other, more modernly bland types will take their places but, at heart, will they be morally superior to the near-octogenarians who are saying their final no's in the Capitol this week?
Tuesday, March 02, 2010
How Obama Misread America
Unlike JFK, Barack Obama's defining moment has arrived, not in the clarity of going eyeball-to-eyeball with a foreign power over nuclear weapons but head to head with Congress in a muddled confrontation he failed to anticipate sufficiently or control.
No matter how incredibly unfair it may be to compare the Cuban Missile Crisis to today's impasse over health care, presidents don't get to choose what will test them. The nature of their response is what counts.
Both Kennedy and Obama came into office with youthful energy and promises of change. In a calmer time, JFK immediately tripped over the Bay of Pigs disaster, took full responsibility and learned the limits of presidential power and the need to prepare the public for decisive actions.
Obama, on the other hand, beset by multiple crises, has not had the luxury of such on-the-job training. He has been forced into finger-in-the dike actions of economic stimulus, auto industry rescues and bank bailouts in the face of solid opposition from Congressional Republicans, using his trademark eloquence to paper over differences as well as he can.
What can be counted against him is the failure to learn from all this that mounting a massive overhaul of health care, no matter how urgently needed, would require a well-defined proposal and a period of public education to have any success against the inevitable lobbying of health insurers, providers and their legislative lackeys.
In this, Obama failed to benefit not only from the experience of John F. Kennedy but Bill Clinton, whose 1990s failure predicted what would happen. Instead of offering firm leadership, this President unwisely deferred to Congress, courted an intransigent GOP and allowed reform to balloon into an unholy mess of compromises, side deals and sellouts.
Now, he is in crisis, at least partly of his own making, as he prepares yet another speech tomorrow on "the way forward" to reconciling and passing what never should have arrived at his desk in the grotesque form that it inevitably will, no matter how many fixes are negotiated between now and then.
It is too late now to start from scratch, so the President will have to take the advice of Warren Buffett, who has a bigger financial stake in America than anyone else, and "get rid of the nonsense" in the Senate and House versions and retain what will stop feeding "the tapeworm that's eating at American competitiveness."
As a transformative figure, Barack Obama is at a crossroads where he will have to show us what he has learned about leadership.
No matter how incredibly unfair it may be to compare the Cuban Missile Crisis to today's impasse over health care, presidents don't get to choose what will test them. The nature of their response is what counts.
Both Kennedy and Obama came into office with youthful energy and promises of change. In a calmer time, JFK immediately tripped over the Bay of Pigs disaster, took full responsibility and learned the limits of presidential power and the need to prepare the public for decisive actions.
Obama, on the other hand, beset by multiple crises, has not had the luxury of such on-the-job training. He has been forced into finger-in-the dike actions of economic stimulus, auto industry rescues and bank bailouts in the face of solid opposition from Congressional Republicans, using his trademark eloquence to paper over differences as well as he can.
What can be counted against him is the failure to learn from all this that mounting a massive overhaul of health care, no matter how urgently needed, would require a well-defined proposal and a period of public education to have any success against the inevitable lobbying of health insurers, providers and their legislative lackeys.
In this, Obama failed to benefit not only from the experience of John F. Kennedy but Bill Clinton, whose 1990s failure predicted what would happen. Instead of offering firm leadership, this President unwisely deferred to Congress, courted an intransigent GOP and allowed reform to balloon into an unholy mess of compromises, side deals and sellouts.
Now, he is in crisis, at least partly of his own making, as he prepares yet another speech tomorrow on "the way forward" to reconciling and passing what never should have arrived at his desk in the grotesque form that it inevitably will, no matter how many fixes are negotiated between now and then.
It is too late now to start from scratch, so the President will have to take the advice of Warren Buffett, who has a bigger financial stake in America than anyone else, and "get rid of the nonsense" in the Senate and House versions and retain what will stop feeding "the tapeworm that's eating at American competitiveness."
As a transformative figure, Barack Obama is at a crossroads where he will have to show us what he has learned about leadership.
Monday, March 01, 2010
Coffee, Tea or Hemlock
Beverage metaphors abound as liberal Coffee Party activists rise up to counter the Tea Party Movement while Nancy Pelosi suggests that some House Democrats may have to drink hemlock to pass health care reform.
"We're not here just to self-perpetuate our service in Congress," she said yesterday, pointing out Congressional opposition to Social Security and Medicare decades ago. "We're here to do the job for the American people."
Pelosi's followers face possible political suicide in November if they turn up the heat, as she urges, to produce "in a matter of days" final legislation to serve up, but the Speaker is undeterred.
"When we have a bill," she says, "you can bake the pie, you can sell the pie. But you have to have a pie to sell."
Whether voters are ready to swallow anything from Congressional ovens these days is iffy, even as public reaction to Tea Party conservatism arises in the form of Facebook exchanges and face-to-face organizing of Coffee Party chapters to channel discontent into another direction.
"You're dealing with a nation that's jaded, paranoid, distrustful, broke, angry," says an organizer, "it's like they just woke up from an eight-year meth binge. We've become so polarized. Once we say our political affiliations, everyone goes to their corner and then comes out swinging."
Coffee Partyers propose to offset with energetic civility what Frank Rich decries as "The Axis of the Obsessed and Deranged" that leads a Republican Congressman, fruitcake Steve King of Iowa, to celebrate the murder-suicide of a "tax protester" flying a plane into a Texas office building of the Internal Revenue Service, "an agency that is unnecessary," exulting that "when we abolish the I.R.S., it’s going to be a happy day for America.”
Whatever their beverage of choice, Americans going through this over-caffeinated time may want to look back at the Depression when Irving Berlin, who later wrote "God Bless America," offered up a cheerful anthem with a potable theme:
"Just around the corner/There's a rainbow in the sky/So let's have another cup o' coffee/And let's have another piece o' pie."
With the way things are going, some of us may prefer stronger libations, but let's get back to drinking stuff together rather than throwing it overboard.
"We're not here just to self-perpetuate our service in Congress," she said yesterday, pointing out Congressional opposition to Social Security and Medicare decades ago. "We're here to do the job for the American people."
Pelosi's followers face possible political suicide in November if they turn up the heat, as she urges, to produce "in a matter of days" final legislation to serve up, but the Speaker is undeterred.
"When we have a bill," she says, "you can bake the pie, you can sell the pie. But you have to have a pie to sell."
Whether voters are ready to swallow anything from Congressional ovens these days is iffy, even as public reaction to Tea Party conservatism arises in the form of Facebook exchanges and face-to-face organizing of Coffee Party chapters to channel discontent into another direction.
"You're dealing with a nation that's jaded, paranoid, distrustful, broke, angry," says an organizer, "it's like they just woke up from an eight-year meth binge. We've become so polarized. Once we say our political affiliations, everyone goes to their corner and then comes out swinging."
Coffee Partyers propose to offset with energetic civility what Frank Rich decries as "The Axis of the Obsessed and Deranged" that leads a Republican Congressman, fruitcake Steve King of Iowa, to celebrate the murder-suicide of a "tax protester" flying a plane into a Texas office building of the Internal Revenue Service, "an agency that is unnecessary," exulting that "when we abolish the I.R.S., it’s going to be a happy day for America.”
Whatever their beverage of choice, Americans going through this over-caffeinated time may want to look back at the Depression when Irving Berlin, who later wrote "God Bless America," offered up a cheerful anthem with a potable theme:
"Just around the corner/There's a rainbow in the sky/So let's have another cup o' coffee/And let's have another piece o' pie."
With the way things are going, some of us may prefer stronger libations, but let's get back to drinking stuff together rather than throwing it overboard.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Health Care Holocaust
People, real people by the thousands every year, are dying for lack of medical treatment in the world's richest nation, and after a week of politicians posturing over piles of paper, policy wonks are stunning us with this truth.
A new study shows 68 Americans under age 65 die every day because they don’t have health care, a number that will rise to 84 by 2019--a total of 275,000 needless deaths in a decade.
The numbers from an advocacy group, Families USA, comport with earlier estimates by the Urban Institute and the Institute of Medicine, dry statistics that conceal mass murder by indifference without concentration camps or gas chambers.
Sophisticates who consider such statements overwrought should explain how their cost-benefit analyses make such an outcome inevitable as they advocate, in Sen. Tom Coburn's response to the President's weekly address today, that we "scrap the current bills, which will lead to a government takeover of health care, and we should start over."
Along with this prescription for indifference, a leading GOP presidential hopeful for 2012, Tim Pawlenty, wants to change federal law to allow emergency rooms to turn away patients--"do a little triage," even for those who come in with what Fox's Greta Van Susteren described as "horrible chest pains." (Pace Sarah Palin and her Democratic death panels!)
At the Health Care Summit Thursday, several Democrats tried to focus the discussion on what their constituents are suffering under the current system, but the Republican response was typified by smug Eric Cantor tapping his pile of papers and insisting that "we Republicans care just as much about health care as the Democrats do," while questioning the legality of forcing all Americans to buy health insurance.
At the end of the day, Cantor and his cohorts made it clear that they "simply don’t want to pass comprehensive health-care reform," while the President said of the uninsured, “We can debate whether we can afford to help them. We can’t say they don’t need help.”
As GOP numbers crunchers press their argument with dollar figures, their constituents should take a look at the costs in human lives which, in a time when catastrophic illness can overwhelm middle-class families as readily as the poor, is a threat across the economic and political spectrum.
Making health care reform an us-against-them issue is insane.
A new study shows 68 Americans under age 65 die every day because they don’t have health care, a number that will rise to 84 by 2019--a total of 275,000 needless deaths in a decade.
The numbers from an advocacy group, Families USA, comport with earlier estimates by the Urban Institute and the Institute of Medicine, dry statistics that conceal mass murder by indifference without concentration camps or gas chambers.
Sophisticates who consider such statements overwrought should explain how their cost-benefit analyses make such an outcome inevitable as they advocate, in Sen. Tom Coburn's response to the President's weekly address today, that we "scrap the current bills, which will lead to a government takeover of health care, and we should start over."
Along with this prescription for indifference, a leading GOP presidential hopeful for 2012, Tim Pawlenty, wants to change federal law to allow emergency rooms to turn away patients--"do a little triage," even for those who come in with what Fox's Greta Van Susteren described as "horrible chest pains." (Pace Sarah Palin and her Democratic death panels!)
At the Health Care Summit Thursday, several Democrats tried to focus the discussion on what their constituents are suffering under the current system, but the Republican response was typified by smug Eric Cantor tapping his pile of papers and insisting that "we Republicans care just as much about health care as the Democrats do," while questioning the legality of forcing all Americans to buy health insurance.
At the end of the day, Cantor and his cohorts made it clear that they "simply don’t want to pass comprehensive health-care reform," while the President said of the uninsured, “We can debate whether we can afford to help them. We can’t say they don’t need help.”
As GOP numbers crunchers press their argument with dollar figures, their constituents should take a look at the costs in human lives which, in a time when catastrophic illness can overwhelm middle-class families as readily as the poor, is a threat across the economic and political spectrum.
Making health care reform an us-against-them issue is insane.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
How Bully the Pulpit?
Not very, although John Boehner left the Summit looking like he had been in the dentist's chair all day. Nancy Pelosi zinged as "not factual" his remarks about abortion in the House bill after the President had politely brushed off his robotalk with the observation, “Every time we get somewhere, we go back to the standard talking points.”
Mitch McConnell was reduced to harping on the obvious, that Republican opposition had muddled enough Americans to turn them against the Democrats' bill while the President insisted that, when asked about specifics in it, most voters were positive. “I hear from constituents in every one of your districts and every one of your states,” he pointed out.
The two GOP leaders came off as petulant schoolboys in the presence of a master teacher, but politics being politics, that won't count for much.
In this dialogue of the deaf, there were few surprises, one of them Sen./Dr. Tom Coburn, of the extreme right, effectively making the case for eliminating waste and fraud that became one of the rare points on which all sides could agree.
Even coverage of the event reflected some of its ultimate futility, as MSNBC cut away for Olympics in the afternoon, while CNN and Fox interrupted for commercials and blather by their own talking heads. The only way to see it all was on C-Span3, if you could find it.
The subtext of this unprecedented attempt to bring the public into a multi-hour policy discussion was that, for the most part, politics trumps serious engagement on the issues.
The bottom line is that the President tried but must realize that he succeeded only in revealing his own total grasp of the subject against the emptiness behind most of the Republican rhetoric for a minority of Americans willing to watch for hours.
That ultimately may be the best Obama could hope for, as he ended with a clear warning that, if there is no sign of GOP engagement in the next month, Democrats in both Houses will move ahead without them.
“The concern of a lot of colleagues," he said, "after a year and half or more appropriately after five decades of dealing with this issue, starting over they suspect means not doing much.”
Barack Obama used the bully pulpit well today, but he was preaching to two irreconcilable flocks.
Mitch McConnell was reduced to harping on the obvious, that Republican opposition had muddled enough Americans to turn them against the Democrats' bill while the President insisted that, when asked about specifics in it, most voters were positive. “I hear from constituents in every one of your districts and every one of your states,” he pointed out.
The two GOP leaders came off as petulant schoolboys in the presence of a master teacher, but politics being politics, that won't count for much.
In this dialogue of the deaf, there were few surprises, one of them Sen./Dr. Tom Coburn, of the extreme right, effectively making the case for eliminating waste and fraud that became one of the rare points on which all sides could agree.
Even coverage of the event reflected some of its ultimate futility, as MSNBC cut away for Olympics in the afternoon, while CNN and Fox interrupted for commercials and blather by their own talking heads. The only way to see it all was on C-Span3, if you could find it.
The subtext of this unprecedented attempt to bring the public into a multi-hour policy discussion was that, for the most part, politics trumps serious engagement on the issues.
The bottom line is that the President tried but must realize that he succeeded only in revealing his own total grasp of the subject against the emptiness behind most of the Republican rhetoric for a minority of Americans willing to watch for hours.
That ultimately may be the best Obama could hope for, as he ended with a clear warning that, if there is no sign of GOP engagement in the next month, Democrats in both Houses will move ahead without them.
“The concern of a lot of colleagues," he said, "after a year and half or more appropriately after five decades of dealing with this issue, starting over they suspect means not doing much.”
Barack Obama used the bully pulpit well today, but he was preaching to two irreconcilable flocks.
The Shrinking of John McCain
A Senator from Arizona engaged the President this morning on the virtues of scrapping the health care bill and starting over, but it was John Kyl, not his senior colleague who ran for President in 2008.
When his turn came, John McCain spent his time in a peevish rehash of the Louisiana, Nebraska and other special deals made to get enough Senate votes last year, sounding more like a crank at a Tea Party town hall than the man who might be sitting in the Oval Office today.
McCain's point, although already moot in the case of Nebraska, is that the American people should know "that geography does not dictate what kind of health care they will receive."
The President, clearly annoyed, nevertheless practiced his trademark forbearance by limiting himself to saying, "Let me just make this point, John, because we're not campaigning anymore. The election is over."
"I'm reminded of that every day," McCain responded.
It's sad to see the once-vaunted maverick reduced to an incumbent who is running scared against a conservative challenge and, unlike Obama, "campaigning" on every occasion to hold it.
In the 2008 election, the issue of McCain's temperament and his judgment in picking Sarah Palin as a running mate were cited against a background of his longtime tendency to shoot from the hip.
In what for the most part has been a substantive bipartisan conversation thus far today, it's even sadder to see the man who might have been president looking less serious than the likes of Eric Cantor and John Boehner.
When his turn came, John McCain spent his time in a peevish rehash of the Louisiana, Nebraska and other special deals made to get enough Senate votes last year, sounding more like a crank at a Tea Party town hall than the man who might be sitting in the Oval Office today.
McCain's point, although already moot in the case of Nebraska, is that the American people should know "that geography does not dictate what kind of health care they will receive."
The President, clearly annoyed, nevertheless practiced his trademark forbearance by limiting himself to saying, "Let me just make this point, John, because we're not campaigning anymore. The election is over."
"I'm reminded of that every day," McCain responded.
It's sad to see the once-vaunted maverick reduced to an incumbent who is running scared against a conservative challenge and, unlike Obama, "campaigning" on every occasion to hold it.
In the 2008 election, the issue of McCain's temperament and his judgment in picking Sarah Palin as a running mate were cited against a background of his longtime tendency to shoot from the hip.
In what for the most part has been a substantive bipartisan conversation thus far today, it's even sadder to see the man who might have been president looking less serious than the likes of Eric Cantor and John Boehner.
Health Care: The TV Show
Big breakthrough for bipartisanship: The table for the health summit has been changed from U-shaped to O, allowing more Republican face time for TV cameras.
Such symbolism typifies an encounter in which the White House will try to put back together a bill that was blown apart last fall by hand grenades from monolithically opposed Republicans and nakedly greedy Democratic swing Senators.
In the rubble of public disgust and Tea Party rage, the effort to start over is being dismissed as "political theater" by GOP legislators while being promoted as significant by the President's Congressional supporters.
Max Baucus, who kept making backdoor deals with "moderate" Senate Democrats, is now an outspoken believer in "the disinfectant of the sunshine. The more we have got questions on both sides, gradually the American people are going to see more and more and more that we really do need health care reform.”
Maybe so, but behind the scenes of a dog-and-pony show to placate highly vexed voters, the President is reportedly picking up pieces of the demolished reform to settle for covering half of 30 million uninsured Americans at one-quarter of the cost.
This would be accomplished by requiring that insurers let people up to 26 to stay on parents' health plans and by expanding Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program, rather than a broader effort with an estimated price tag of $950 billion over 10 years.
As the talkathon starts, the President's hopes for progress, already compromised by dropping the public option and limiting real controls over greedy insurers, providers more oriented to bill than cure and patients who consume health care like a free lunch, keep receding.
But the sound bites will be as abundant as drug manufacturers' samples and other goodies for doctors' offices.
Such symbolism typifies an encounter in which the White House will try to put back together a bill that was blown apart last fall by hand grenades from monolithically opposed Republicans and nakedly greedy Democratic swing Senators.
In the rubble of public disgust and Tea Party rage, the effort to start over is being dismissed as "political theater" by GOP legislators while being promoted as significant by the President's Congressional supporters.
Max Baucus, who kept making backdoor deals with "moderate" Senate Democrats, is now an outspoken believer in "the disinfectant of the sunshine. The more we have got questions on both sides, gradually the American people are going to see more and more and more that we really do need health care reform.”
Maybe so, but behind the scenes of a dog-and-pony show to placate highly vexed voters, the President is reportedly picking up pieces of the demolished reform to settle for covering half of 30 million uninsured Americans at one-quarter of the cost.
This would be accomplished by requiring that insurers let people up to 26 to stay on parents' health plans and by expanding Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program, rather than a broader effort with an estimated price tag of $950 billion over 10 years.
As the talkathon starts, the President's hopes for progress, already compromised by dropping the public option and limiting real controls over greedy insurers, providers more oriented to bill than cure and patients who consume health care like a free lunch, keep receding.
But the sound bites will be as abundant as drug manufacturers' samples and other goodies for doctors' offices.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
The Buyer-Beware Society
"All Toyota vehicles bear my name," the president and grandson of the founder writes today. "When cars are damaged, it is as though I am as well...I, more than anyone, want Toyota's cars to be safe."
A heartfelt OpEd, written by the best hired gun money can buy, and in tomorrow's testimony before Congress, Akio Toyoda will no doubt amplify that regret and sincerity.
Yet a criminal investigation of the car maker's problems is showing "too cozy a relationship" between the company and government regulators, with Toyota negotiating down the scope of safety recalls over the years.
On his second day in the job last July, Mr. Toyoda was given a presentation by his Washington lobbyists, bragging about "a series of examples where the government didn't force the company to do as much as some would have liked, specifically on sudden-acceleration complaints, where they only recalled about 55,000 floor mats, rather than a more comprehensive mechanical fix."
So much for family pride, but Toyota hypocrisy is not unusual in a society where trust has eroded everywhere in relations between individuals and the corporate and government institutions that control their lives.
In every transaction now, the rule is read the fine print or take the consequences. "Let the buyer beware" has expanded from good advice to an imperative.
Yesterday the President did some bragging of his own, about new credit rules that went into effect to limit "deceptive, unfair tactics that hit responsible consumers with unreasonable costs. But today, we are shifting the balance of power back to the consumer and we are holding the credit card companies accountable."
Such hyperbole is not surprising, but consumer advocates point out that card issuers can still impose annual fees, inactivity fees and other kinds of obscure charges, as well as "new fees we've never even heard of yet." The double-digit milking of card holders will certainly go on unabated.
The sad truth is that we live in a fine-print society, and there is no reason to believe that trust will be making a comeback any time soon.
A heartfelt OpEd, written by the best hired gun money can buy, and in tomorrow's testimony before Congress, Akio Toyoda will no doubt amplify that regret and sincerity.
Yet a criminal investigation of the car maker's problems is showing "too cozy a relationship" between the company and government regulators, with Toyota negotiating down the scope of safety recalls over the years.
On his second day in the job last July, Mr. Toyoda was given a presentation by his Washington lobbyists, bragging about "a series of examples where the government didn't force the company to do as much as some would have liked, specifically on sudden-acceleration complaints, where they only recalled about 55,000 floor mats, rather than a more comprehensive mechanical fix."
So much for family pride, but Toyota hypocrisy is not unusual in a society where trust has eroded everywhere in relations between individuals and the corporate and government institutions that control their lives.
In every transaction now, the rule is read the fine print or take the consequences. "Let the buyer beware" has expanded from good advice to an imperative.
Yesterday the President did some bragging of his own, about new credit rules that went into effect to limit "deceptive, unfair tactics that hit responsible consumers with unreasonable costs. But today, we are shifting the balance of power back to the consumer and we are holding the credit card companies accountable."
Such hyperbole is not surprising, but consumer advocates point out that card issuers can still impose annual fees, inactivity fees and other kinds of obscure charges, as well as "new fees we've never even heard of yet." The double-digit milking of card holders will certainly go on unabated.
The sad truth is that we live in a fine-print society, and there is no reason to believe that trust will be making a comeback any time soon.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Which Beast to Starve?
Today brings a sharp contrast in political philosophies and economic reality. As Paul Krugman discourses on three decades of Republican attempts to shrink government and "drown it in the bathtub," President Obama discloses his intention to stop feeding the free-market monster that has devoured American health care.
In advance of Thursday's summit, the White House leaks a proposal to oversee and limit double-digit health insurance rate increases such as those the President denounced in his weekly address Saturday.
Legislation introduced last week by Sen. Dianne Feinstein would create a seven-member rate board, the Health Insurance Rate Authority--consumer, industry and medical representatives and experts in health economics--to determine which increases are justifiable and which are unconscionable by insurers who are siphoning off one out of every three dollars spent for "overhead" and profit.
This attempt, finally, to rein in a greedy industry, along with restrictions on denying care to policy holders, should become the centerpiece of streamlined reform legislation to replace last year's fiasco of a bill.
Its thrust, to protect Americans from private greed, is revealing in the light of GOP efforts to "protect" them from their own government, starting in the Reagan era.
The starve-the-beast strategy, Krugman writes, was "a game of bait and switch. Rather than proposing unpopular spending cuts, Republicans would push through popular tax cuts, with the deliberate intention of worsening the government’s fiscal position. Spending cuts could then be sold as a necessity rather than a choice, the only way to eliminate an unsustainable budget deficit."
They did just that in the Bush II years, but his tax cuts for the wealthy and unfunded wars ballooned the deficit, even as Congress couldn't muster the courage to cut popular programs like Social Security and Medicare.
Now both messes, budget deficits and health care, have been inherited by a Change president who is struggling to deal with them over the adamant opposition of those who played the biggest part in creating them.
This week will show how far he can get in trying to slim down the private beast, but it will take his new budget deficit commission a long time to start putting government on a subsistence diet.
In advance of Thursday's summit, the White House leaks a proposal to oversee and limit double-digit health insurance rate increases such as those the President denounced in his weekly address Saturday.
Legislation introduced last week by Sen. Dianne Feinstein would create a seven-member rate board, the Health Insurance Rate Authority--consumer, industry and medical representatives and experts in health economics--to determine which increases are justifiable and which are unconscionable by insurers who are siphoning off one out of every three dollars spent for "overhead" and profit.
This attempt, finally, to rein in a greedy industry, along with restrictions on denying care to policy holders, should become the centerpiece of streamlined reform legislation to replace last year's fiasco of a bill.
Its thrust, to protect Americans from private greed, is revealing in the light of GOP efforts to "protect" them from their own government, starting in the Reagan era.
The starve-the-beast strategy, Krugman writes, was "a game of bait and switch. Rather than proposing unpopular spending cuts, Republicans would push through popular tax cuts, with the deliberate intention of worsening the government’s fiscal position. Spending cuts could then be sold as a necessity rather than a choice, the only way to eliminate an unsustainable budget deficit."
They did just that in the Bush II years, but his tax cuts for the wealthy and unfunded wars ballooned the deficit, even as Congress couldn't muster the courage to cut popular programs like Social Security and Medicare.
Now both messes, budget deficits and health care, have been inherited by a Change president who is struggling to deal with them over the adamant opposition of those who played the biggest part in creating them.
This week will show how far he can get in trying to slim down the private beast, but it will take his new budget deficit commission a long time to start putting government on a subsistence diet.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
U-Turn on Health Care (and More)
Democrats are rediscovering the old saying, "just as well to be hung for a sheep as a lamb," as they edge toward passing health care by a simple majority in the face of Republican roadblocks that have aroused public outrage.
"I've had many conversations this week with the president, his chief of staff, and Speaker Pelosi," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Friday. "And we're really trying to move forward on this."
Such an effort would call the GOP bipartisan bluff and make a bet that voters, after being flummoxed by thousands of gobbledegook pages with tradeoffs and sellouts, would respond favorably to a stripped-down bill with the main elements of reform that opinion polls show they want. Even the public option is poised to make a comeback.
In his weekly address yesterday, the President railed against recent double-digit premium hikes: "The bottom line is that the status quo is good for the insurance industry and bad for America. Over the past year...as millions of Americans lost their coverage, the five largest insurers made record profits of over $12 billion."
In the days before a much-vaunted bipartisan summit on health care, the White House finally seems ready to engage the GOP monolith of misrepresentation that has been winning elections and blocking progress on the President's agenda.
Republicans, says the White House Communications Director, "have a role to play in solving problems in this country, or be accountable to the electorate for choosing not to."
Peace-loving as he may be, the President would do well at this crucial point to consult some relatively obscure Shakespearian wisdom:
"To whom do lions cast their gentle looks?/Not to the beast that would usurp their den./The smallest worm will turn being trodden on,/And doves will peck in safeguard of their brood."
Barack Obama has to get his Congressional worms to start making a U-turn on health care--and more.
"I've had many conversations this week with the president, his chief of staff, and Speaker Pelosi," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Friday. "And we're really trying to move forward on this."
Such an effort would call the GOP bipartisan bluff and make a bet that voters, after being flummoxed by thousands of gobbledegook pages with tradeoffs and sellouts, would respond favorably to a stripped-down bill with the main elements of reform that opinion polls show they want. Even the public option is poised to make a comeback.
In his weekly address yesterday, the President railed against recent double-digit premium hikes: "The bottom line is that the status quo is good for the insurance industry and bad for America. Over the past year...as millions of Americans lost their coverage, the five largest insurers made record profits of over $12 billion."
In the days before a much-vaunted bipartisan summit on health care, the White House finally seems ready to engage the GOP monolith of misrepresentation that has been winning elections and blocking progress on the President's agenda.
Republicans, says the White House Communications Director, "have a role to play in solving problems in this country, or be accountable to the electorate for choosing not to."
Peace-loving as he may be, the President would do well at this crucial point to consult some relatively obscure Shakespearian wisdom:
"To whom do lions cast their gentle looks?/Not to the beast that would usurp their den./The smallest worm will turn being trodden on,/And doves will peck in safeguard of their brood."
Barack Obama has to get his Congressional worms to start making a U-turn on health care--and more.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Tiger's Scarlet Letter
His pillory a golf-clubhouse lectern, America's most famous athlete staged his own public humiliation yesterday for a TV camera, the 21st century equivalent of donning the scarlet "A" for a bloodthirsty Puritan crowd.
"I had affairs,” Tiger Woods confessed. “I was unfaithful. I cheated...I was wrong. I was foolish. I don’t get to play by different rules.”
Even so, he is being criticized for controlling his appearance, for not taking questions, for scheduling it on the eve of a tournament sponsored by a corporation that has dropped him...in short, for a deficiency of groveling in operatic pain for the cameras.
The sad event tells us more about celebrity in our time than about Tiger Woods. After elevating a gifted golfer into a folk hero and role model, the excess of adulation has to be balanced by an equivalence of media punishment.
Yet his appearance yesterday, sad and bloated with dead eyes, tells more about Woods' downfall than any dramatic acting out of contrition. His apparent depression was painful to watch.
The wildly rewarded famous forfeit their much of their privacy, but can't there be limits to what they are required to endure? Tiger Woods will play golf again for our pleasure to watch. Until then, doesn't he deserve time out of the spotlight to work out the psychological damage he has inflicted on his family and himself?
"I had affairs,” Tiger Woods confessed. “I was unfaithful. I cheated...I was wrong. I was foolish. I don’t get to play by different rules.”
Even so, he is being criticized for controlling his appearance, for not taking questions, for scheduling it on the eve of a tournament sponsored by a corporation that has dropped him...in short, for a deficiency of groveling in operatic pain for the cameras.
The sad event tells us more about celebrity in our time than about Tiger Woods. After elevating a gifted golfer into a folk hero and role model, the excess of adulation has to be balanced by an equivalence of media punishment.
Yet his appearance yesterday, sad and bloated with dead eyes, tells more about Woods' downfall than any dramatic acting out of contrition. His apparent depression was painful to watch.
The wildly rewarded famous forfeit their much of their privacy, but can't there be limits to what they are required to endure? Tiger Woods will play golf again for our pleasure to watch. Until then, doesn't he deserve time out of the spotlight to work out the psychological damage he has inflicted on his family and himself?
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