The clock is ticking on healthcare

            Although President Obama has learned from the health care debacle of the Clinton years by tasking the House and Senate committees with drafting a health care overhaul (placating the egotists in the world’s most deliberative body), the fact is that in order to win enough GOP and moderate votes, the plan will unfortunately not be as strong as it should be due to the numerous competing interests—doctors, insurers, neo-socialists, laissez faire-ists, unions, small businesses, etc.

            That having been said, the number of questions that Congress has to answer is staggering.  First, how far should health care be stretched?  Forty-six million people are uninsured, and millions more are doubtless underinsured (such as being denied coverage for preexisting conditions).  To close the gap would require $1.6 over the next ten years—not a huge sum considering that we spend $2.5 trillion annually on health care.  But given the bailout fatigue of Congress and the American public, ensuring that the plan hovers around $1 trillion is a key way to win the votes of moderate lawmakers.

            Second, how should the system be structured?  Should we mandate private coverage for every citizen and have the federal government subsidize those who cannot afford it?  Can a government-run system be created that will still allow insurers to compete?  Or can non-profit insurance cooperatives be formed in areas where there is not sufficient competition between insurers, wherein the policyholders own the corporation?  And what about the dreaded single-payer option—should we legislate insurance companies out of existence?

            Lastly, how will we pay for it?  The least aggressive option would be to tax sugary drinks, alcohol, and limit charitable deductions for the rich.  Another option would be to tax employees’ health care benefits above a certain level (in the $15,000-$20,000 range).  Or a national sales tax (Value-Added Tax) on all goods and services could be implemented—if the tax were high enough, millions of new families could even be exempted from paying income taxes.

            Naturally, Republicans do not want the government to run any aspect of health care, since they think a government-run system will be inefficient, incompetent, ration care, and augment the size of the federal bureaucracy.  Yet, they also seem to think that a single-payer system will edge out private insurers by somehow being more competitive.  It’s a seeming contradiction, but a demagogical sticking point.

            Part of the problem is envisioning what kind of monster will be in existence fifteen years down the road.  Obviously the government is able to run some programs well—it would be impossible to privatize our military, even though the Bush administration used an astronomical number of private security contractors in Iraq.  Other programs, like the Department of Motor Vehicles (which is run by the states) are demonized for being slow and inefficient.

            But then there are creations like Amtrak, which separated the social goal of providing passenger train service throughout the country from the economic goal of eliminating the burden of freight railroads having to operate money-losing, noncompetitive passenger trains by shifting operations to the government.  And the Postal Service is a government corporation which has competition from the private sector in the form of FedEx and UPS.  And then there are just plain old subsidies—like the kind the government gives to the airlines, without the government actually having to operate one.

            But the issue of funding a new system is even more problematic because someone must disproportionately bear the burden of new expenditures.  Taxing the benefits of workers would be unfair to unions, which have fought for greater benefits at the expense of higher wages—and not to mention it would break the spirit of President Obama’s promise to avoid raising taxes on the middle class.  It would also be unfair to northern states, whose citizens have a higher percentage of health coverage.  A national sales tax would impact poor people the most, while a limitation on charitable deductions would affect the wealthy.

            In short, for every American to agree to a revamped healthcare system, the government must prove that reform is superior to the status quo.  If everyone is to share the burden, everyone must benefit—either from improved care, increased productivity, or near-term reduction of the debt.

            Check back tomorrow for more comprehensive thoughts about health care.

Ending the era of firsts?

            Americans take comfort in thinking that we live in a society of equal opportunity—where if you work hard, you are rewarded in life (and if you cause an economic meltdown, you are still rewarded, but that’s beside the point).  There is a certain sense of pride in commemorating social achievements based on the “pioneering” credentials of race and gender.  At an ever increasing pace, we are seeing barriers broken down left and right.

            The first female Speaker of the House. The first black Attorney General. The first First Lady as Cabinet secretary.  The first openly gay man and woman to be elected in Congress.  The first non-male and non-white Justices on the Supreme Court.  And, of course, the first black man elected to the White House.  In the late nineteenth century on into the twentieth century, there was a slow trickle of people who were neither white nor male attaining positions of power.  The push for civil rights and women’s rights after World War II and the destruction of roles—women played the role of homemaker, minorities were subservient under white prejudice—opened the spigot on the era of firsts.

            But equality is not simply a series of firsts.  A barrier can be broken down, but if no one is willing to follow you through, it is as if the barrier were still there.  A fine example is the racially-tinged debacle in early 2009 when the Senate refused to seat Sen. Roland Burris, even though he would be the single representative of the black community in that body.  Burris was not the first black senator (perhaps he’s the first black senator to be denied recognition in the Senate, but that is not a favorable distinction) and certainly will not be the last.  The point of this episode is that the formal barriers to equal opportunity are long gone, but norms and attitudes have taken longer to adjust.  The ability of to be fully represented in government is still hampered by the “veil” which DuBois hoped would be lifted, allowing blacks to escape their legacy of discrimination or poverty and assert their equal station in society.

       The current generation of middle aged professionals has been raised with the belief that any opportunity is within reach by dreaming big and believing in one’s own abilities.  They have passed those values onto their children—the Chelsea Clintons and Malia and Sasha Obamas who are inheriting an unstable yet immensely prosperous world.  It is so important that no matter what type of family, in whichever level of the class structure, and with whatever level of hardship, that parents help their children not to become firsts or seconds, but to become equal partners in the leadership of tomorrow’s world.  Then it will be all the more easy to have a government that is not only a representation of who we are, but a reflection of shared experiences and with a sense of group identity.

       Still, there are a few firsts that we have yet to see.  There Supreme Court has not even made its first ruling on gay marriage, let alone has a gay judge been considered for a seat on the Court.  Even though a growing number of Americans claim to have no religion, the stigma of atheism will continue to erode the trust that must exist between politicians and the public, precluding the chance to elect an atheistic president.  And there are no fewer than three interracial marriages in the Senate, but it will probably take another generation before we could see an interracial First Family.

       The firsts have been extraordinarily important in showing how traditional minorities can move into positions of power in this country.  But unless there is significantly greater representation of women and other racial groups in our government, that says more about a handful of outstanding individuals with ambitions, rather than a society that truly enables equality.

The ‘08 Bunch

    Although countless hours of news network time have been spent speculating on who the vice presidential picks will be for each candidate, there remain only a few weeks until the conventions and thus it is about time to find out for sure.  Here is a selective version of what the field looks like:

 

 

      As you can see, there is an unprecedented amount of estrogen and color among this year’s possibilities.  Let’s walk through what each person may bring to the ticket.

 

Democratic:

 

Hillary Clinton:

-pro: woman; has 35 years experience in politics; will mollify alienated “Hillary Dems”

-con: may overshadow Obama; brings a lot of baggage (Bill); Republicans hate her

 

Jim Webb:

-pro: Navy vet; cabinet official under Reagan; supports our troops; is a Southerner

-con: likes the job he already has

 

John Edwards:

-pro: wife’s cancer may endear him to voters; champions the working man

-con: may be too suave for the “rock star” Obama; possibly bangs women who aren’t his wife

 

Republican:

 

Condi Rice:

-pro: woman; black; experience in Washington; knowledge of state and foreign affairs

-con: may be “unpopular by association,” given her boss’s approval ratings

 

Mitt Romney:

-pro: New Englander; youthful and handsome; ran for president; fixed Massachusetts budget

-con: sucked at aforementioned presidential running; viewed as elitist and potentially not conservative enough

 

Bobby Jindal:

-pro: parents were immigrants; one of precious few non-white, ultra-conservative Republicans

-con: likes his job as governor

 

Up for grabs:

 

Ann B. Davis as “Alice”:

-pro: witty; can keep the White House kitchen spotless

-con: no discernable experience; soft on terrorism

 

7/28

Lights, Camera, Reaction

What makes the news?  Is it what gives you the blues?  Does someone choose what is news?  Whose views does news use?  Some say that it skews or that it’s all just a ruse.  News can amuse by talking about taboos; it can excuse or accuse and even confuse.  You can peruse the news for facts you can use.  But muse this if you choose: who gives the cues?  

 

            In the media there is a loose formula for determining which news is reported by considering factors such as the timeliness, the consequence, and the proximity of the story.  For example, in the wake of unprecedented gas prices, a report on a local government’s plan to implement a light rail system to alleviate road congestion and provide alternate means of transportation would be timely, consequential, and proximate.  The other important element to weigh is the entertainment value of news.  Now more than ever, with corporations vying to catch our eyes and ears in an increasingly congested and busy world, media need to make every story seem sensational or imperative so that we will watch.  They know that a House Subcommittee Hearing on Infrastructure is more important than a recap of American Idol, but darned if more people didn’t tune into FOX than C-SPAN.

            But do the media solely present what is inherently ”news”?  For such a function to occur, the media would need to gauge what the people want to know and what they ought to know.  Treatment of Guantánamo prisoners, the Chinese earthquake, effects of Mexican immigration, climate change, etc. are newsworthy because they appeal to the country’s traditional values: civil rights, empathy, accommodation, and activism.  Obviously not all news coverage is treated equally, so the process might seem pretty arbitrary and opaque, but also understandable, given Americans’ preferences for “infotainment.”  However, what happens if you get an instance of two talking heads screaming at each other over whether Hillary Clinton should drop out of the presidential race?  Which value does that appeal to?  Is it even news?  Outside of the media, would anyone else be talking about it if it didn’t matter so much to journalists?  Of the last question in particular viewers must be mindful—we need to wonder about whether, when we read or watch the media, we are learning about current events more so than learning about the views of journalists on current events.

            Take the recent incident of columnist and commentator Michelle Malkin creating controversy over a Dunkin Donuts commercial featuring their spokesperson, Rachael Ray, wearing a Middle Eastern-looking scarf.  To make matters worse, the company actually pulled the commercial because of all the Internet attention.  The media created their own news!  If they had just written off Malkin as using the kind of conspiracy-mongering, racist, and inconsequential rhetoric indicative of the style of the crazy homeless guy in the park, we would not be left over with such useless messages as “Dunkin Donuts supports terrorism” or “Michelle Malkin is an ultra-conservative hack” (not that we didn’t already know at least one of those to be truths).  In 1898 yellow journalists blamed the sinking of the Maine on the Spanish; in 2008 they blame terrorism on a doughnut company.

            Another example of a manufactured controversy comes from the ample coverage of the 2008 election.  Anchors and correspondents have salivated over trying to predict which states Hillary will win, which states Obama will when, when Hillary will bow out, if Obama will ask her to be his vice president, etc., etc.  I heard an NPR correspondent today give a synopsis of what Barack Obama will announce after the last two primaries end, and punctuated his remarks by saying, “But I don’t want to give too much away.”  What are you giving away?  The man hasn’t said anything yet!  It seems that the media’s penchant for being in a perpetual state of preview (“coming up at eleven o’clock…stay tuned for a special consumer report…the full story is straight ahead”) is being applied not only to what they do, but now what others say and do.  If we want predictions of the future, there is an adequate number of fortune tellers, tarot card readers, soothsayers, etc. throughout the country.  If the media spend their time telling the public that blue collar workers are voting for Clinton, those people will perceive her to be representative of them and will indeed vote for her; voila, the media have created a self-fulfilling prophecy.

            So, let’s say the media were to stop predicting the news and simply be reactionary in their coverage and analysis.  How could they mess that simple job up?  Well, in 1996 President Clinton gave a State of the Union Address that lasted nearly an hour-and-a-half in which he laid out his policy goals.  The media attacked Clinton for not sticking to his message and as being lengthy and boring.  Yet, the media soon found out that 80 percent of Americans approved of the speech, 74 percent had a “clear idea” of the president’s agenda, and that more people tuned in to watch as the speech progressed.  In other words, the media’s news was news to us.  The public supported the substance while the media were critical of the style.  Apparently since the media have gotten us addicted to sound bites, it makes their job too difficult when legitimate discourse comes into play.

            The effect of the media can be powerful—they brought us pictures of the carnage in Vietnam, showed the unfair treatment of 1960s protestors in Birmingham, and lost communist-hunter Joseph McCarthy much of his support—but it also needs to be responsible.  There are still problems that need fixing which could easily fill up twenty-four hours if the television networks preferred to cover it.  But when they stop telling the stories of others and become the newsmakers themselves, those in the media augment their influence and are able to make their own stories—however unneeded—part of our discourse.

 

6/3

L33tism

        When Barack Obama lost heavily to Hillary Clinton in the West Virginia primary, the question was raised of whether the senator from Illinois is able to connect with the working class of America and whether he is, in the words of the media, an elitist.  Adding to Obama’s previous description of “un-American,” this latest label is supposed to strike fear and distrust into the minds of voters who know little about his character or policies—which largely means those in poor regions who have reason to be skeptical about someone with a funny-sounding name who preaches to a hope of changing the system.  Why should we shrug off “elite” as we have done to “un-American”?

            Perhaps you have noticed who it is calling Obama an elitist—mainly those in the media who spend hours each day controlling the one-way flow of information and opinions to millions of Americans.  A common depiction of the media operates under what is called the agenda-setting model.  As its name implies, the media are said to control not what we think, but what we think about.  This works well in cases of moral outrage, when you have a Rodney King or Walter Reed incident to account for.  But in the age of twenty-four hour news networks, when there are no mountains to cross, molehills will be just fine.  From flag pins to bowling scores, reporters have shouted across desks at each other to debate how this will affect Obama’s candidacy instead of investigating why, for example, in the words of the campaign’s sacrificial lamb Jeremiah Wright, Jr., Wright’s congregation “feeds over 5,000 homeless and needy families every year while our government cuts food stamps and spends billions fighting” in Iraq.  It would seem that the media’s agenda here is to sensationalize trivial topics.  And who decides which news gets sensationalized?  The media also.  Some would call it circular; but in describing small group of unelected talking heads who attempt to control the mindset of America, others may call it elitist.

            Media yammering aside, the main point here is this: what is so bad about being elite and being in charge?  Americans today, as products of affirmative action and the civil rights movement, like to think that our society operates as a meritocracy where working hard gets you ahead.  We disdain the idea of class and privilege (hence the contempt for Paris Hilton whenever she pops up in the news) and equally despise the poor for not finding a job—any job—quitting drug habits, and getting off the streets.  Just as some people are born into perpetual wealth, some spend their entire lives in poverty (and occasionally vice versa).  Obama should be an example of a happy medium: now a rich man who attended elite universities but once lived in the third world and was involved with urban politics.  It seems odd to call him out of touch with the working man simply when he referred to small town Pennsylvanians as bitter.  He was referring to the feelings of nativism and antipathy that can arise when blue collar jobs disappear, although if the interviews given by West Virginians who said they would never vote for a black man as president are any indication, those people have more than bitterness brewing inside.

            Looking back over our presidents of the past two hundred-odd years, the office has included lawyers, generals, businessmen, and a professor—all positions of prestige and wealth.  Prior the founding period of America, the Baron de Montesquieu, an eighteenth century French nobleman and philosopher whose writings influenced the thinking of James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, wrote that the idea of a democracy is not that everyone should be equal; rather we should obey and be commanded by our equals.  Some people are more able to lead but in the end everyone has to follow the laws of the republic and the laws of nature.  The structure of our government was made to recognize that inequality: although the Senate was intended to be the wise and steady branch of the legislature in order for the landed few to guard against the tyranny of the landless majority, checks and balances would prevent the unconditional domination of the wealthy.

            So if “elite” for our Founders meant being educated, experienced, and wise, I do not see how being labeled as an elitist is a smear, especially if the job includes knowing the formalities of international relations, inspiring the American people to get behind government initiatives, and appreciating the need to serve socioeconomic justice to the working class while ensuring the prosperity of the middle and upper classes.  Whatever explanation is suitable for his lack of support among poor, rural whites, it is unfortunate that whatever these people cling to is not the candidacy of Barack Obama.

 

5/20