Monday, March 29, 2010

Steve,

In spite of the veritable minefield of tedious bromides which pepper your latest post, for some reason I found it both interesting and thought provoking. Possibly the reason for this is that I have decided to pay respectful attention to the substance of what you have to say - and this, since I know you to be in real life a most thoughtful and compassionate man (but of course only if we selectively ignore the discomforting puns you post on Facebook...).

However I think perhaps you missed my point. I think what David Frum is trying to say is that even though the HCR bill just passed is not actually the calamitous descent to socialism which the right wing echo chamber is urging us to believe, still, it has an obvious and noticeable flaw, which is this:

Before the whole issue of health care reform reached the floor of congress in the form of proposed legislation, liberals like myself were complaining that the United States spends as much as three times more per capita than all other developed nations spend on health care - and adding to boot that these nations all provide universal health care, whereas we do not.

Yet what has emerged is a bill which undeniably raises taxes. You can paint the whole thing with day-glo, dress it up in bib overalls or a tailored suit, but in the end, you can't escape the fact that it raises taxes to fund it. And this to me is almost inexcusable. If you buy into the argument that this country is already spending too much on health care (I have), how exactly do you conclude that spending more money on it will make things better?

I've said before that I am happy this legislation passed and I meant it. But what I find most dismaying is that it doesn't do nearly enough to attack the bedrock problem of health care costs. To my mind, this is where Republicans could have made a substantial and necessary contribution. They could and should have worked along with Democrats to devise market based incentives to fund this bill entirely out of savings as opposed to new taxes.

Now if they had done this - I mean, if they had offered a plausible approach to reducing overall costs, if they had done this, and then had their ideas shut out of the final draft, I think now I would have been in favor of scrapping the whole bill and starting over.

Steve, you yourself offered some extremely sensible ideas. You said:

"- As stated many times before: I have no objection to government agencies providing optional (*not* mandatory) services ON A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD. But when government programs don't have to make a profit and can dip into the public trough as needed without limit, the field ain't level."

...and you know how much I hate to agree with you, but you definitely have a point.

My take on this whole mess is that Republicans refused to live up to their responsibilities and made a stand, not on principle, but on politics. This left us liberals with no other choice but to craft a plan the only way we know how - which is to ignore the power of the market and simply throw more money at the problem.

In other words you, the (shudder) penultimate libertarian, and I, who have and have read nearly all of Lenin's works, could have jointly come up with a much better bill. Why? Because we are willing to talk to each other.

I'm going to close this with a somewhat tangential anecdote.

A couple of months ago I wrote you separately regarding an article I had read about a town (I think now it was Phoenix) which was going to start closing some city parks because they didn't have the money to maintain them.

Upon reading this article it abruptly occurred to me that these parks really didn't have to be closed - so long as the citizens who lived around them could somehow join together and maintain them on their own. After all, this made all kinds of sense. The existence of the parks themselves not only increased the value of the properties surrounding them, but gave the local population a great place to rest and relax.

So I wondered in that letter why, despite all the advantages, the local citizenry would not just band together and take on the responsibility of mowing the grass, cleaning up and dumping the trash... maybe even conducting regular security patrols to keep the inevitable drug pushers, pimps, gang members and other ne'er-do-wells out.

But then, just as suddenly, it occurred to me that maybe this kind of cooperation and shared responsibility is a social skill which this country no longer has.

Steve, why and how did we ever lose that skill? Conservatives will claim, with ample justification, that we have become a nation which instinctively relies on government to provide us with all sorts of benefits which we should be providing for ourselves. And you are welcome to bask in the satisfying glow of that admission for a moment.

But on the other hand liberals will claim, again with ample justification, there exist those among us those who will stop at nothing to increase their own personal wealth and power. They will point to the Kenneth Lay's and Bernie Madoff's of this world and assert that only government has the necessary authority to hold them in check.

To my mind the answer to all of this lies somewhere in between. Maybe one way of looking at this is that the largest part of our faith in government should be based on government's faith in us. I believe the proper role of government in this regard should be to protect us from the predators both inside and outside of this country.

But maybe government goes too far when it tries to protect us from our own failures and mistakes. Only bold men will embrace risk when the consequences of failure are almost too dire to contemplate - and that is all the motivation they need to succeed. Why then should we ask of government to guarantee that failure is without consequence?

-Chris

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Killing the Golden Goose

I *know* you've been waiting for my pithy response to the situation, so here goes... A few quick notes based on your post...

* * * * *

"This is the death knell of the American Dream!"
- Arguable. Depends on which side of the fence you're on and whether you think America is great because of it's people (when left alone) or its government (when in control).

People are going to lose a lot of sleep over this.
- Correct. On both sides. From the Right: “I can't afford this - what do we do now?” And from the Left: “How do we keep the productive people funneling all their money and efforts into our new vote-buying Ponzi scheme?”

the real loser here is the Republican Party itself.
- Probably. But they have time (a little) to turn this into a dynamic process and return to power. We'll see. (I doubt they have the cojones to do what it will take.)

the gap between this plan and traditional Republican ideas is not very big. The Obama plan has a broad family resemblance to Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts plan. It builds on ideas developed at the Heritage Foundation in the early 1990s that formed the basis for Republican counter-proposals to Clintoncare in 1993-1994.
- That seems like a slight misrepresentation, based on my typically flawed memory. However, the process of “building on ideas” which change the focus of the idea itself (e.g., from a focus on self-reliance to government-reliance) is the creation of a HUGE gap.

Barack Obama badly wanted Republican votes for his plan. Could we have leveraged his desire to align the plan more closely with conservative views?
- Why? At what point do principles become “not for sale at any price?”

...voters have been persuaded to believe wants to murder their grandmother?"
- Hardly. They have, however, been persuaded (and correctly) about WHO intends to be making the ultimate decision on the care that grandma gets.

..Talk radio thrives on confrontation and recrimination...
- This whole diatribe assumes that talk radio hosts *only* have a desire to generate ratings for their own personal gain and do not have legitimate political principles behind their statements. Hogwash. Just because I disagree with you does not mean I don't have a valid political point, even if my career will, as a side point, be impacted positively. Is this any different from claiming (as PROOF) that Al Gore *doesn't* really care about (or believe in) global warming because his business holdings will expressly and directly benefit from the AGW proposals?

...it will come as no shock to you that I am happy we managed to pass this bill. I consider it to be a step in the right direction.
- Just as it will not be a shock to you that I disagree on the direction being taken. Atleast you and I are willing to TALK, even if all we do is agree-to-disagree.

...how much better I believe this bill could have been with Republican input.
Better? For WHO? For those who believe government has a better grasp of what is in *my* best interests than I do?

private enterprise is the engine which harnesses that energy
- And demonizing those who work to provide the fuel driving the economic engine is a morally correct approach?

standing up for their principles and working out compromises which included at least some of the important and necessary market based solutions which health care reform desperately requires.
- Agreed up to the point that there MUST be a line which cannot be crossed. However, in my opinion, there was no true desire or consideration of market-based solutions being offered or that would be accepted by the party in power.

...the real problem at the heart of the health care crisis in this country is supply and demand.
- Agreed. And the demand for a 'free' product or service is infinite. Apparently, that simple economic fact is beyond the authors of the bill.

This bill is going to address some important issues. It has the potential to give government the tools it needs to correct many of the excesses and inflated costs which government itself has been largely responsible for.
- And it has been prevented from making those corrections... how? This bill also has the potential to give government the power to make things MUCH WORSE. All the more reason to more in small, carefully targeted, incremental steps as opposed to the drastic restructing of 18% of the economy. Liberals seem to believe that (effectively) nationalizing health care - which has never functionally worked anywhere else in the world on this scale - will “work” THIS TIME simply because THEY are going to be the ones doing it this time.

Should we not at least expect our representatives to possess the power to read?
- Many on both sides, and IMHO most of the party in power, never read it. We also expect them to LISTEN, and they're not too good at that either.

I repeat: "What then?".
- It depends on which branch of the Republicans find themselves in power. If
it is the 'Country Club Big Government' bunch that has been running things for the last decade or so, then I agree that they will likely screw things up, too. On the other hand if a truly traditional conservative (e.g., self-reliance focus) power base, then we'll have to see, won't we?

They have not only dismissed the public option (understandable), but also trashed the idea of insurance exchanges (preposterous).
- As stated many times before: I have no objection to government agencies providing optional (*not* mandatory) services ON A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD. But when government programs don't have to make a profit and can dip into the public trough as needed without limit, the field ain't level.

if there isn't anything in the bill worth saving, how exactly do Republicans plan to go about fixing a broken system?
- You start over. Everything - including Social security and medicare and all other entitlements - *must* be on the table. No exceptions. When the hole is getting too deep, you have to stop digging first. That's the difficult (but correct) place to start.

they have gone along with the right wing entertainment media's demonization of Democrats.
- Just as the MSM tame dogs are demonizing Republicans. Both sides are wrong by shifting attention away from the ISSUES to one of personal attacks and personal destruction.

do you actually believe liberals running for office in this country all secretly want to euthanize old people?
- Please. No, not expressly. But I do believe there is a substantial number of liberals who believe THEY (and government as a rule) are better able and better qualified to make decisions directly affecting MY life than I am. And, IMHO, they're the same bunch that are more than willing to say “sacrifices must be made” when grandma's treatment is not considered 'cost effective' to the bottom line (assuming she's still alive after the paperwork winds its way through the system).

We need honest, rational conservatives in government and we just aren't getting them.
- I agree 100%. We need some honest, rational liberals, too. In effect, we need fewer politicians and more statesmen. 'Nuff said!

* * * * *

It is no surprise to you, that I believe this bill is a Huge mistake (or 'wishful thinking' at best). Further, while I desperately HOPE the voting public will toss the Big Government politicians (in *both* parties) out on their ear in November, I fear that will not happen. If the appropriate corective steps (in my learned opinion) are not taken by the voters this fall - I and many others will stop arguing, stop protesting, step back, stop growing the economy, and seek to do as little as possible economically - with the explicit goal of providing for me and mine and nothing more. As succinctly described elsewhere, I will be “Going Galt”. If you prefer to call it 'giving up', so be it. In essence, all those folks clamoring to put THEIR hands into MY wallet for THEIR benefit at MY expense, can go pluck the gifts of freedom and liberty off the tree where they think it grows. And please take note that wishing will not make it so. Bread and Circuses.

Short form: I cannot actively support a government (or a society) that demands the human sacrifice of SOME of its (most able?) members to achieve some arbitrary, and unlimited benefit for OTHER (most demanding?) members. I will not willingly braid the rope that will be used to hang me.

- Steve

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Steve,

Well they passed the bill...

Predictably, the usual wing-nut radio and television personalities are breaking new ground to find ways of expressing their outrage - and in the process further distancing their cadres of devoted followers from any reasonable definition of sanity. "This is the death knell of the American Dream!" People are going to lose a lot of sleep over this.

Lost amid all this loud, bellicose braying are the quiet, conservative voices of reason - who are patiently pointing out that the real loser here is the Republican Party itself. David Frum writes:

"This time, when we (Republicans) went for all the marbles, we ended with none.

Could a deal have been reached? Who knows? But we do know that the gap between this plan and traditional Republican ideas is not very big. The Obama plan has a broad family resemblance to Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts plan. It builds on ideas developed at the Heritage Foundation in the early 1990s that formed the basis for Republican counter-proposals to Clintoncare in 1993-1994.

Barack Obama badly wanted Republican votes for his plan. Could we have leveraged his desire to align the plan more closely with conservative views? To finance it without redistributive taxes on productive enterprise – without weighing so heavily on small business – without expanding Medicaid? Too late now. They are all the law..."

and:

"There were leaders who knew better, who would have liked to deal. But they were trapped. Conservative talkers on Fox and talk radio had whipped the Republican voting base into such a frenzy that deal-making was rendered impossible. How do you negotiate with somebody who wants to murder your grandmother? Or – more exactly – with somebody whom your voters have been persuaded to believe wants to murder their grandmother?"

and finally:

"I’ve been on a soapbox for months now about the harm that our overheated talk is doing to us. Yes it mobilizes supporters – but by mobilizing them with hysterical accusations and pseudo-information, overheated talk has made it impossible for representatives to represent and elected leaders to lead. The real leaders are on TV and radio, and they have very different imperatives from people in government. Talk radio thrives on confrontation and recrimination. When Rush Limbaugh said that he wanted President Obama to fail, he was intelligently explaining his own interests. What he omitted to say – but what is equally true – is that he also wants Republicans to fail. If Republicans succeed – if they govern successfully in office and negotiate attractive compromises out of office – Rush’s listeners get less angry. And if they are less angry, they listen to the radio less, and hear fewer ads for Sleepnumber beds.

So today’s defeat for free-market economics and Republican values is a huge win for the conservative entertainment industry. Their listeners and viewers will now be even more enraged, even more frustrated, even more disappointed in everybody except the responsibility-free talkers on television and radio. For them, it’s mission accomplished. For the cause they purport to represent, it’s Waterloo all right: ours."

Steve, it will come as no shock to you that I am happy we managed to pass this bill. I consider it to be a step in the right direction.

But what may come as as shock to you is how much better I believe this bill could have been with Republican input. Now over the next few weeks we're going have to listen, endlessly, to cries of foul play - of how Republicans were "locked out" of the process - and of how Nancy Pelosi perverted the spirit of the Constitution and steam rolled this thing through against the will of the American people. What a crock.

Steve, I'm sure you will have no trouble agreeing with me that this country's ultimate source of energy is the American people themselves - and private enterprise is the engine which harnesses that energy.

What Republicans should have been doing from the very start is standing up for their principles and working out compromises which included at least some of the important and necessary market based solutions which health care reform desperately requires.

I've said before at this very blog that the real problem at the heart of the health care crisis in this country is supply and demand. This bill is going to address some important issues. It has the potential to give government the tools it needs to correct many of the excesses and inflated costs which government itself has been largely responsible for. However it does precious little to address supply and demand. Republicans should have seen to it that the issue of supply and demand at least got a fair hearing. But instead, they wasted their time and ours trying to scare the public with imaginary death panels. Incredibly, they raised as a central objection the fact that the bill itself was over a thousand pages long. Pshah! What incredible chutzpah! I personally read through the bill in an afternoon. Should we not at least expect our representatives to possess the power to read?

And in the end, Republicans simply withdrew from the whole process altogether. Is this going to net them a few more votes this November? Well, possibly. But where to then? I doubt if they will regain a majority in the House. But even if they should, they won't repeal this bill.

But let us consider a reality in which Republicans regain control of both the House and the Senate - then repeal the bill - then the President goes along and signs off on it. I repeat: "What then?".

In order to gain votes, Republicans have signed on to a policy of no cut backs whatsoever on Medicare. They have not only dismissed the public option (understandable), but also trashed the idea of insurance exchanges (preposterous). As a matter of fact, prior to the summit called by the President, they couldn't find anything in the bill worth saving - and so offered as a precondition for their participation that the whole bill be scrapped.

So, if there isn't anything in the bill worth saving, how exactly do Republicans plan to go about fixing a broken system?

You yourself have mentioned "tort reform": a valid talking point perhaps but largly a chimera. I've noted before that Texas already limits malpractice damages to $250,000.00 and this has done virtually nothing to reduce the cost of health care in that state. But I digress...

The real problem here as I see it is that in a misguided effort to present the voters with a clear choice this November, Republicans have simply gone too far. Reluctantly perhaps, but still to a man, they have gone along with the right wing entertainment media's demonization of Democrats.

Now I'm willing to listen to any arguement which posits that American Democrats are stary eyed, tree hugging idealists. But shame on the manipulative hypocrite who tries to paint this sort of idealism as just another conspiracy to rob the American people of their liberties. For Pete's sake Steve, do you actually believe liberals running for office in this country all secretly want to euthanize old people?

I agree with David Frum completely. Republicans are ceding the authority to govern to a bunch of money grubbing media clowns and we can't afford it. We need honest, rational conservatives in government and we just aren't getting them.

I'll stop talking now...

-Chris

Monday, March 8, 2010

Steve,

Last night I watched the movie "Surrogates". I don't mind telling you it was a bomb of the first water. It had all the hallmarks of the classic, sci-fi fiasco: an "idiot plot" (a term coined by Damon Knight to describe a plot which only progresses because all the characters act like idiots), a hopelessly incoherent sense of morality, and above all (for me at least), really cheesy special effects. On that last point, because I am such a sucker for CGI, I will happily pay to watch any film with good special effects. That should give you some idea of how worthless this movie was cinematicaly.

However there was one scene which, despite all the movie's ground breaking failures, elevated it to something worth watching.

The premise of the movie was that sometime in the near future, average people could buy and link to robotic "surrogates". I'm sure you and I both have seen variations of this plot device many times before. Naturally, the surrogate bodies everyone chose all looked like super models.

The one scene which really made me think was that where the character played by Bruce Willis was running down a crowded sidewalk, trying to get past all the surrogates. All the ladies looked absolutely beautiful, all the men were handsome. It was almost eerie. And it made me think.

What if we could all change our own bodies to reflect the physical image of who we think we are, as opposed to whatever God gave us? I'm sure a lot of us would say, no, we'll stick with the form God intended. ...which sounds noble indeed, and easy to say, considering that we don't actually have that choice. But let's face it - if given the choice, just about all of us would change ourselves to look like something right out of the pages of "Cosmo". Which brings me to why I am writing this post.

Maybe ten years ago I sold a car to a guy and his wife. She was young, he was old. She was thin, he was a little overweight. She was extremely attractive, he was, well, not very. I immediately assumed she had married this guy for his money. But when we sat down to do the loan application, it turned out she was in fact a medical professional who made substantially more than he did. Over the years I sold them several more cars and each time it became more and more apparent these two people deeply cared for each other. It turned out they had three great kids - all of whom any parent would be delighted to have. They all graduated from college - one of them served in the military - another has now entered the same field as her mom.

I think about that couple a lot, especially when I see young people in the process of choosing who they will spend their lives with. A friend of mine got divorced a couple of years ago and now spends a little time reviewing profiles of prospective dates on a couple of "matchmaker" sites. I think he wants to hook up with someone he can spend some quality time with. But inevitably, the girls he decides he likes are the most attractive ones.

Now I don't want to turn this into some kind of sermon. But it seems to me the ascendancy of form over substance - which has always been an elemental feature of human nature - has reached a new level in this modern society of ours. We haven't abolished poverty, but even the poorest among us are privileged to live like virtual royalty when compared to conditions most everywhere else around the globe.

We've gotten so far from the ordinary, day to day struggle to merely survive, that we have come to make choices based on a temporary fascination with appearances. We are beguiled by what pleases the eye - and must constantly re-learn the essential truth that what really endures and sustains is the nature of whatever lies below the surface. If this recession has taught me anything, it is that the days of artificial, purposeless standards are rapidly coming to a close. One way or another, most of us are going to have to learn how to make choices based on needs rather than wants.

Sure, it would be great if everyone looked beautiful, everyone had two cars, a nice home and steak on the table. And Steve, if you think about it, what we expect from politicians these days is that they tell us this is the way things will be if only we vote for them. But that isn't really how the world works, is it? I've said before and I'll say it again: show me the man with the courage to tell people the truth, and I'll show you a man you can't elect to dog catcher.

Several years ago I was in the middle of a personal financial crisis and found myself so depressed I often wondered how I would go on. On that occassion I remember my own son (of all people) telling me something which eventually pulled me through. We were sitting on the back porch of his crumby appartment and I happened to remark how nice a willow tree in the back yard looked. My son said: "Happiness is the ability to get pleasure from ordinary things.". It took a while for this to sink in, but once it did, I began to realize what was depressing me was the loss of things which really don't matter in the long run.

Sorry for the length of this post. Like most of the stuff we put up here, I probably enjoyed writing it far more than you will enjoy reading it...

Peace!

-Chris