Sunday, August 16, 2009
Has Obama Sold Out Already?
Louis Proyect here compares present day Democrats, to the old Whig Party: In 1820 a dispute arose over the extension of slavery into Missouri, which was not then yet a state. Henry Clay worked out a compromise in Congress that made Maine free and Missouri slave. This maintained the balance in the Senate, which had included 11 free and 11 slave states. Except for Missouri, it would ban slavery north of Arkansas. The Missouri Compromise sounds exactly like the kind of legislation that the Democrats would come up with nowadays, especially in light of Mukasey’s approval and the continued funding of the war in Iraq. That describes the Democrats on healthcare.
Obama had no mandate to take Universal Health Care (UHC) off the table. Now it looks like even the "ublic option is history. Even if the public option was passed, it only allocated a fixed number of clients.
This time the pendulum will not swing right. The right has no program for the economic or healthcare crisis. No ideas period. It's time for the union movement to break from its main enemy, the Democratic Party.
RENEGADE EYE
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58 comments:
Was Obama ever on our side? ;-)
GO Unions! Woo-Hoo!
You realize that Sebelius' slip was merely to "fire up the base", right? LOL!
To me it was obvious Obama's rhetoric about "change" during his campaign was nothing but a front show to get elected. How can anyone expect change when he is funded by cooperations and wall street. How can anyone expect change when his cabinet is full of ex-Clintonoties.... (I am not sure if that is a word?)
So to expect from Obama or any other "Elected" President not to side with big money is very naive... As Cenk (Young Turks) says, there has to be a political revelation before the system can work for the people.... I can not see big money giving up their power anytime soon.... the public will continue to suffer.... BUT! I wish the public was aware of the fact that they aren't the ones electing their president(s), the system is....
Has Obama Sold Out Already?
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The man picked Larry Summers as his chief economic adviser and we are just getting around to asking this question?
Was everyone cutting school when President Empty Suit didn't pick a single progressive to the cabinet?
Timmy Geithner -- Paulson/Summers cabana boy. Yeah, he's a regular Marxist theorist.
Remember his first pick for Health and Human Services? And we didn't figure out that single payer was off the table then?
An Education secretary that likes No Child Left Behind?
We had to vote for him because the prospect of seeing that mentally ill guy and the pole dancer in office was too much, but anyone who thought that that this guy was progressive was falling for the "he's a minority so he has to be progressive" nonsense.
Clinton Redux and unless you'e on the TARP list you ain't getting crap from these clowns except an extended presence doing dick all in Afghanistan.
WHY ARE WE EVEN ASKING THE QUESTION?
Steeltown: Correct. Now it's open.
FJ: Obama is spitting on the base. I think she had no motive. Obama is an enemy of UHC. His advisors are Milt Friedman students.
Ducky: We have to bring up the question, to deal with people who have illusions about him or his party.
Nevin: The people need a choice. The union movement needs to lead, forming a new party.
I think you're right, Ren. There does need to be an authentic labor party. The more votes you siphon from the Democrats, the sooner we all get to say "President Palin".
I'm from a different country to you, but I've been watching your health care debacle from afar.
I don't think that the radical Left - the socialists, Marxists, anarchists, etc - ever had too many illusions about Obama. Even if we were to take him as genuinely committed to reform, he's always going to be hamstrung by the opposition against him.
I agree that the right has no ideas for things like healthcare. The left owns healthcare, or at least ought to. I understand, however, that rightists have been organising themselves in opposition, and even opposition bereft of ideas can be enough to stifle any reforms. The reforms that Obama initially put on the table were modest by the standards of every developed country in the world.
Coming from a country with a Labor party in power, I think it's important to emphasise that the labor movement is far more important than its political wing, in the long run, at least. All countries with labor parties - Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Israel - end up merely have some mildly left-of-centre party that agrees with its opposition on 99% of key policies. You also run the risk of having the union movement led by officials who are merely cronies of their political pals, and who actually stifle workers' demands, whether deliberately or inadvertantly.
I have no idea what the way forward is for US leftists. From what I've read, unionists in the rust belt are seriously undermined by regressive working conditions in the red states (not to mention the exploitation at the centre of globalised capital). Fighting for some minimal universal standards in public health care may be a good first step. Some of the macro factors underlying the GFC are still well and truly at play, and another shock to the system could be on its way. The Ponzi money could run out, and then you'll have a pretty important fight on your hands.
Yes, it's long past the time for the Labour Wing of the DNC to assert itself and demand the Public Option.
Pagan: There was a poll done this week, that 20% of Republicans, would vote for Obama, if Palin ran against him.
The Democratic Party needs to be weakened, for this country to have any changes.
THR: I know the various labor parties, are sellout formations. They are where the workers turn to first, not "movement" based parties like RESPECT in the UK.
The problem with the Democrats, is that it is a bourgeoise party. Labor parties, no matter how bad, are based on unions. You can't reform the Dems from inside. If you don't join mass parties, you are outside the workers movement politically.
In the US the alliance between union bureaucrats and Dems, go back to Stalinist WWII popular front policies.
I agree with you about Obama.
FJ: I agree.
Is Farmer supporting a public option? What's happening here?
I think Obama needs to do another prime time press conference and a town hall meeting every day! Kathleen Sibilius, Henry Waxman and Barney Frank shouldn't sit on the sidelines either. When they, Pelosi and Reid stump for something, they know how to galvanize support!
After all, with great examples like Canada http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5jbjzPEY0Y3bvRD335rGu_Z3KXoQw NHS's NICE board (what an ironic acronym, Medicare, which was supposed to be self sustaining and today has a $41 trillion unfunded liability, Hawaii, Oregon and Massachusetts, how many more terrific examples do we need?
Isn't it evident that government involvement does wonders? Barry even cited the post office but how about FNMA and FHLMC? Public schools! Social Security! All of these programs and others work as advertised, why wouldn't you entrust your health to your government?
This is Bardo by the way . . . . don't ask.
Gotta love the National Health. It's the gift that keeps on giving...
Ren-
What that poll probably never bothered to mention is exactly how many conservative Democrats might vote for Palin. Then there are the independents. Three and a half years is an eternity in politics, and Barry has his work cut out for him. It doesn't seem to be going too well right now. If he crashes and burns, Americans aren't going to be in the mood for another John McCain RINO type Republican (otherwise known to conservatives as Democrat Lite). Nope, they are going to want a real conservative, like Palin or somebody like her.
Have you ever heard that saying, "it takes a Jimmy Carter to bring about the election of a Ronald Reagan"?
When you and others here talk about Obama like he's another bourgeois reactionary politico, you make yourself sound like you're trying to run a satire site here.
Just like you justifiably complain that most Americans don't understand certain leftist concepts, you don't understand the position of most Americans who refer to Obama as leftist. When they say that, they are talking about the tendency to increase the size and scope of the federal government. That is the real objection. Even higher taxes, while important, are not as important to them as that.
It doesn't take too much of increased government intrusions in Americans lives before they are ready to go in the complete opposite direction, and will do so without hesitation.
The idea of the government involved in something as big as the nation's health care, to the point of exercising regulatory control over almost every aspect of it, is something that is more unprecedented and intrusive than the New Deal and the Great Society rolled into one.
If he does it, it had god damned better work, and it had better work damn good or he is fucking done for.
If it works like I think its probably going to work, your "labor party" will stand about as much chance of gaining widespread support as those guys who dress in tuxedos and march up and down the streets carrying cocktails and signs protesting taxes on the rich as a joke. No one will take you seriously, including most rank and file union members. You know, the guys and gals who helped elect Reagan.
Ducky: FJ was out of character, until his latest comment.
FJ: It's not the viagra that is the problem. The article didn't even try to connect cause.
Pagan: Her climb is uphill.
Craig: What is called "the public option," is like Medicare. What liberals don't realize, is only a certain number of people will get it.
Obama is sending out 10,000 different messages.
If drug companies get $20,000 per yr/person, on AIDS medication, why cure it?
Who knows how many potential cures for not just AIDS but other things have been developed, and then shelved? It could have been cured a decade ago, probably.
The government shares in the responsibility as well. Their intrusive regulatory regime has made it impossible for smaller companies to compete with big pharma, and those are precisely the kinds of companies that would be more than likely to develop a cure. Unfortunately, they don't have the ability to compete, or for that matter get off the ground.
When you are dealing with companies who rake in profits to the tune of billions of dollars annually, its no skin off their nose to have to pay more than a twenty percent tax rate, or for that matter, even more than a thirty percent, or even forty.
What they can't write off as a justifiable expense of doing business or for conducting research, they just pass on to the consumer, and can easily hire a battalion of attorneys to navigate their way through the reams of red tape. A smaller company doesn't have those kinds of resources.
The Democratic Party is the best friend big business and multi-national corporations ever had. It's the small and mid-sized business person they end up royally screwing.
The current health care bill, with its increased regulatory effects, is just more or less building on the current system, with the caveat of increasing health care coverage to some degree. Which, yes that is good to a point, but one shouldn't expect any massive improvements in the overall quality of health care and related expenses.
It's not the viagra that is the problem. The article didn't even try to connect cause.
I'm sure that the British people are very pleased to subsidize Viagra for paedophiles and are thereby enable geriatric paedophiles to continue to abuse young children. Like Barack Obama recently stated, universal healthcare is a moral imperative.
Pagan: You can't regulate, what you don't own.
Worse than regulations, in research there is the problems of research not shared, and patents. Everyone wants to be a superstar scientist, or the first one.
FJ: THE NHS doesn't have a legal order, not to give him Viagra.
Guns don't kill people, people do. Viagra doesn't make paedophiles.
The problem of research and patents is chiefly that the companies paying for the research are the ones who own the patents. The individual researchers involved in the projects do not. It is the companies who pay the salaries who decide what they want to do with the research, and if they decide its better for their bottom line to shelve a project, it more than likely will never see the light of day.
As for this idea that you can't regulate what you don't own, that's news to me and Bill Gates.
THE NHS doesn't have a legal order, not to give him Viagra.
But they don't even have a medical one... you approve of the fact that incompetent NHS doctors can now prescribe Viagra as a treatment for diabetes, instead of insulin... but ONLY if they're known convicted child molesters???
FJ: There must be a legal reason not to serve a medication. In the US, Viagra is a prescription medication.
The Tories put a muzzle on that anti-NHS guy on Fox.
Pagan: Capitalism is an unregulated system. It is so unregulated, it doesn't matter if the government is a dictatorship or democratic. You can make laws against excesses.
There must be a legal reason not to serve a medication.
Being on probation for child molestation isn't a good legal reason?
Good grief, the level of debate here is mindblowingly bad. It's pointless, it really is, so blinkered is the idiot that thinks that linking to a story about a man who get's viagra because he has numerous health issues that means he can, who also happens to be a sex offender somehow makes the NHS, a service that bests the US system at every turn, evil. Thankfully the quality of the arguement is so poor, so desperate, it could stand alone and be seen as ridiculous. In a civilised society, even criminals are given healthcare. Deal with it.
Yeah, back in the days when Britain was civilized, criminals were given the exact level of health care they deserved. They were executed. Of course, that was during a very small window of civilization of roughly twenty years-after the times they were hung for stealing a loaf of bread and before the times when child molesters were given light spankings with cricket bats.
But seriously folks. I can see the point of giving a pedophile Viagra for his diabetes. Really, I mean that, I can understand it. What I can't understand is why he is out in public, apparently unmonitored, to begin with. That is the problem with giving him Viagra. If he were locked in and monitored while he was taking his treatments, well, you know, I guess he can be allowed to masturbate. Who cares what he's fantasizing about as long as he isn't around any children.
Otherwise, I don't know that much about the NHS, so I won't comment on it. I just know I don't want the US government controlling health care in the US.
As much as Ren's European readers seem to despise the US government, I would think they'd be the first to agree, but evidently their suspicion of the US government is highly selective, to say the least.
Don't worry, Danny... we're not gonna stop you from getting your operation on the public dime.
"Good grief, the level of debate here is mindblowingly bad"
Bit better and more civilised then "debates" that involve insulting peoples dead mothers, joking about rape, asking people if they want to be raped and calling people "subhuman c*nts" all the same, do you not think?
"who also happens to be a sex offender"
Just happens to be as sex offender. No big deal. Just happens to be a 71 old sex offender with a 30 year old conviction history who molested an 11 year old girl whilst on probation for another pedophile offence being issued Viagra and on the taxpayers dime. What could possibly be the problem here?
"the NHS, a service that bests the US system at every turn"
That absurd argument was thoroughly trounced a couple of threads ago. The current NHS under Labour is a disgusting shambles.
Dirty NHS hospitals kill more people with its infections such as MRSA then are killed in the whole of the UK by road accidents.
Whereas a parallel private health scheme called Benenden that costs £1.50 per week per member has never had one case of MRSA or similar in its hospitals. Why? Because they clean them twice a day.
Asides from that basic collapse of the most basic principles of healthcare, the NHS has starved thousands of patients to death since Labour took over; leaves people on trolleys in corridors for days; doctors in some hospitals having to treat patients in carparks; "health tourists" have taken at least £62m of NHS money and the £600m - £700m NHS deficit...
"Thankfully the quality of the arguement is so poor, so desperate, it could stand alone and be seen as ridiculous"
As ridiculous as your 'hetrophobic' contention that AIDS is primarily a heterosexual spread disease and their liability?
All based on absolutely nothing in reality. Nada.
And contrary to the figures you choose to use as an initial source.
And contrary to your absurd application of Occam's razor to the question of:
"27 million Africans have AIDS/HIV, are you suggesting that they are all gay men?" - when it was quickly, and exposed for its quite obvious absurdity by this:
"There are around 955 million people in Africa and you say that 27 million are infected with AIDS/HIV and so that places the figure at round 3% of the entire population!!
The current estimation of the gay percentage of the UK population is around 5%, although globally I have read 10% to be the estimate.
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-408.html
So the truth is far from your contention that 3% of Africans with HIV/AIDS "would squew all known figures on levels of homosexuality in society"
Is that the kind of poor, desperate and ridiculous quality of argument you are referring to?
"In a civilised society, even criminals are given healthcare"
If it were my 11 year old daughter he had molested I would have given him all the treatment he would have ever have needed.
As would any decent parent with even one testicle.
Pagan:
If you feel that criminals should not receive any healthcare that is of course fine but that kind of brutality is not what we practice in the UK, hence getting rid of the death penalty.
As for the pervert in question, he has been charged and is engaged in a program as well as other punishments.
I suppose the difference is, child molesters in the US buy their Viagra on the free market?
Finally Pagan, you confuse a dislike of the US healthcare system with a dislike of the US as a whole, this is wrong. I do not presume that all the tedious NHS bashing equals a dislike of the UK (although it might) but rather a dislike of the NHS.
FJ:
You never debate the point because you don't have one, you just carry on attempting to smear a health service that is better than America's. I'll not be giving your silly responses any more time.
Also your smears are merely a sad reflection of your moral values; where people who are trapped in the wrong body must remain so. And if you read the article only 1,000 people over 10 years in the entire UK have had the procedure carried out, even you could do the maths on that.
Idiot.
Wonderfully deluded Sentinel:
What surprise that when I comment you turn up, although previously silent for such a time?
What do you bring I wonder? On topic debate or more of your vile views?
As I said to Pagan, if your moral values are such that criminals are to not be allowed medication or treatment, that's fine but thankfully, that is a minority view.
As for the idea that my argument was trounched, HA! I never read that Sentinel because on all measures, life expectency, infant mortality, value for money, efficency, number of doctors, nurses and beds, the NHS bests the American system.
You can't argue with that you sad idiot, although no doubt you will but I won't be reading your deluded flailings.
And that you drag out your backwards AIDS/HIV nonsense that I didn't read the first time, good grief, you have no intelligence but are merely a sad, deluded, little liar who pretends to be so many things but is none of them, aside from a monstrous bore.
Bye now!
I'll not be giving your silly responses any more time.
Also your smears...
LOL! Hypocrite much?
"Wonderfully deluded Sentinel"
Yes, projectionist hoffman-gill?
"What surprise that when I comment you turn up, although previously silent for such a time?"
Or, as usual, is the truth far from your absurdities and closer to a couple of of days of no comments?
"What do you bring I wonder? On topic debate or more of your vile views?"
My vile views?
Wonderfully twisted as usual!
You are the one who loves to call people that disagree with you "subhuman c*nts", taunt people abut their dead mothers, laugh about incest and offer to rape people as well putting forward ludicrous 'hetrophobic' lies that are contrary to all the evidence and even from the brief of leading independent AIDS charities, you are the one that likes to use causl racist terms like "coon" and "pikey" and entertains a resident racist on your blog who fantasises about shooting "coons" dead, and laments on "jungle bunnies" "darkies" and "wogs"...
"As I said to Pagan, if your moral values are such that criminals are to not be allowed medication or treatment, that's fine but thankfully, that is a minority view."
And as I said to you:
"Just happens to be as sex offender. No big deal. Just happens to be a 71 old sex offender with a 30 year old conviction history who molested an 11 year old girl whilst on probation for another pedophile offence being issued Viagra and on the taxpayers dime. What could possibly be the problem here?"
So why not admit that you are using your favourite strawman tactic?
"As for the idea that my argument was trounched, HA! I never read that Sentinel because on all measures, life expectency, infant mortality, value for money, efficency, number of doctors, nurses and beds, the NHS bests the American system."
You posted unsourced figures.
And besides the fact that most of those figures are obtained through governments that have vastly differing statistical accuracy capabilities as well as vastly varying issues of honesty (WMD's anyone?) these figures do not show the realities of the situation on the ground.
And the realities in the UK are that dirty NHS hospitals kill more people with its infections such as MRSA then are killed in the whole of the UK by road accidents, the NHS has starved thousands of patients to death since Labour took over; leaves people on trolleys in corridors for days; doctors in some hospitals having to treat patients in carparks; "health tourists" have taken at least £62m of NHS money and the £600m - £700m NHS deficit...
And all garned from real figures, mostly that the NHS and the government has tried to hide.
Whereas a £1.50 a week UK non-profit parallel alternative provides healthcare far superior to anything the NHS can now muster, and with not even one case of MRSA or similar ever in its hospital.
You were trounced.
"You can't argue with that you sad idiot, although no doubt you will but I won't be reading your deluded flailings."
I just did.
And why not go the full hog and call me a "subhuman c*nt" - you hysterical village-people moustachioed muppet?
We can all resort to the playground gill. Just that most of us left it behind, where it should have stayed.
"And that you drag out your backwards AIDS/HIV nonsense that I didn't read the first time, good grief"
Oh you read it, and of course you realised that it fully exposed your contentions for the idiotic hetrophobic drivel they are.
"you have no intelligence but are merely a sad, deluded, little liar"
Is this what you meant by "Good grief, the level of debate here is mindblowingly bad"?!!
Like I said gil, why not just get straight to the bit where I am a "subhuman c*nt"?
But all the infantile insults aside, everytime you touch a keyboard I througly trounce you and your absurd PC world. Not because I am a genius, but because the truth is not on your side.
And that is why we have the little hissy fits.
"who pretends to be so many things but is none of them"
For a man who looks so much older then his years, one side benefit should at least have been maturity. Alas no.
You pretend to be a professional actor and a director and a writer and all of the rest of the of the luvvy stuff, but still have to draw a wage from taxpayers to live.
btw - How much longer will the British people fund the genocide against their minority citizens? It seems that eugenics fell into disrepute everywhere but with supporters of the NHS in England after WWII. Margaret Sanger would be proud! But then racial purity and racial genetic improvement has always been the unspoken goal of the Progressive Left's agenda.
90% of the UK's residents are white, yet 25% of abortions are performed on ethnic minorities.
I mean, I can understand wanting to encourage the Irish Catholics to get abortions... but what is it that Labour has against brown people?
Daniel-
I thought you were an atheist. At least, that was the impression I got. You always seemed to strike me as the kind of person who thinks that any belief in God borders on superstitious nonsense.
If that is right, how do you contend it possible a person can be "born in the wrong body"?
It seems to me that would require a belief in a soul. Otherwise, if you are born into whatever body you have, then there is no way it could be the "wrong body". There can only, under the best possible scenario, a mental and/or emotional disorder that might cause one to believe he was born into the "wrong body".
Which, it would take a pretty severe mental disorder to cause a person to want to have his penis flayed open and folds of skin wrapped around it, so that it then becomes in effect a clitoris, following rounds of profoundly intense psychological therapy and hormone treatments.
Finally, I never said Europeans hated America, the country, I said they distrusted and possibly hated the American government. There is a very big difference in the two, but I understand how you made that mistake. Almost everybody does, including by the way far too many Americans.
The American government, just to clue you in, is not America. They are the public servants of America, hired by the votes of American voters or hired or appointed, to be just that. Not lords and barons, but public servants.
You know, sort of like the people that cleans the public toilets. We don't have lords and ladies here to the manor born. They have just unfortunately gotten to the point over the last few decades that they think they are.
It's wonderful that the NHS supplies Viagra to geriatric paedophiles. Now, if they could only figure out how to supply food to their hospital patients, they might have a reasonable health care system one day.
I think I should also add that I don't have a problem with providing health care to prisoners. That even includes the ones I think should eventually be quickly and mercifully executed.
If you can call what the NHS provides "healthcare", that is. Since when were NHS executioners-in-training authorized to practice on non-prisoners?
They kill 3,600 people a year. That's a higher annual death rate than the Texas prison system.
...but then, nobody enters the medical profession in the UK anymore. It's a wonder that any NHS doctors can speak English.
I wonder what it is about working for the NHS that makes it's employee's sicker than their private sector equivalents.
Oh, now I remember. Private sector employee's aren't entitled to "mental health days".
fj is cunt
At least this cunt has health care... for now anyway.
In the UK they perform "psychic sugeries" instead of the real thing.
I think what 'anonymous' really wanted to say was FJ is a "subhuman c*nt"!!
Good God, how childishly see through can it get?
To a socialist, hypocrisy is a virtue; it's only the "appearance" of exhibiting hypocrisy one need guard against.
I wonder if "Anonymous" might have an opinion as to how an atheist might think it possible for a person to be born into the "wrong body".
A vision of universal health care, as seen from the UK.
"hypocrisy is a virtue"
It sure is, and lying is habitual too, it comes just as normal and regular as breathing for some people.
Take this from above:
-- "And that you drag out your backwards AIDS/HIV nonsense that I didn't read the first time..." --
And compare it to this from the horse mouth:
-- "Also, I've withdrawn from the healthcare debate, my points have been made, they have no rebuttals...it is just that it takes a lot of discipline to withdraw and to leave them posting lies and offensive ones at that, I mean wouldn't you class the denial of AIDS/HIV as homophobia?" --
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=11185137&postID=104470375666828216&isPopup=true
FJ is still a big fucking cunt.
...and you're still just a little cowardly pussy.
fj sucks at the teet of the devil and likes to eat children
What an immodest proposal, last worder!
nope
Hoffman-Gill,
You have conclusively proved what we all already knew: You are just a troll. A foul mouthed, incest and rape obsessed troll with no opinion of your own, no interest in debate and no backbone, spine or courage.
You are a disgrace, with the mindset of a pedophile.
The NHS is deliberately killing off their patients now... the death panels in action.
Do you love Jews FJ because if so this love affiar will have to end?
Hoffman-gill,
What kind of a deranged coward demands rules on a blog that he doesn’t have on his own, then breaks those rules consistently, but tries to get around it by posting under different ID’s, including attempting to spoof my ID, whilst calling for these rules to be applied to someone who hasn’t even broken any of these rules, all the time peppering the thread with profanity and insults like “cunt”?
Well, clearly you.
Hoffman-gill you are a just a deranged, idiotic, foul mouthed, rape and incest obsessed lying spoofing troll.
And a coward into the bargain.
Good luck Eva Jane.
And also may I add I hate non-whites.
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