Letter to Va. Sens. on healthcare

To Sens. Jim Webb and Mark Warner

Re: Healthcare

Gentlemen,

         First and foremost, I believe two things.  One, that my health, your health, and the health of our fellow Virginians should not merely be a line item to a for-profit industry.  Operating for profit always creates an “in-group” and an “out-group”, in which the corporation need only respond minimally enough to the needs of the in-group to retain them as investors or customers.  For the healthcare industry, this not only means that rationing of care takes place (i.e. preexisting conditions) where unprofitable, but people themselves are rationed when they are ineligible for health insurance.  No one should be relegated to the out-group simply because of accident, circumstance of birth or wealth, or an economic downturn.

         Along those lines, my second belief is that at this stage in our country’s history, it is a disservice for our government, which is constitutionally tasked with promoting the general welfare of society, to tolerate a system in which the richest nation in the world either cannot provide care to its hardest working citizens or provides inadequate care vis-à-vis other industrialized nations.

         Franklin Roosevelt in 1944 outlined an “Economic Bill of Rights,” saying “true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence,” naming the rights one has to competition among businesses, an adequate industrial job, a home, and protection from accident, illness, or debility.  Indeed, how can we be expected to fully exercise our constitutional freedoms if we are too infirm to participate productively in society?

         To me, the key to healthcare reform is to ensure choice: choice of doctor, choice of insurer, and even the choice to purchase care from the government if the private sector is too expensive or inadequate.  I am in favor of a mandate for employers to provide coverage for their employees, or else pay them the monthly minimum amount to purchase the least expensive regional form of coverage.  The government’s plan, rather than edging out all private competition, could be the insurer of last resort for millions of families, albeit one whose quality of care and whose ease of enrollment would preclude stigmatization.

         To pay for this, new revenues must be raised.  Some conservatives are arguing that we should cut spending, and I cannot disagree with that in principle.  But the actual act of reducing spending is nearly impossible for this Congress.  The singular question is: what do we cut?  As a Virginian, I enjoy being able to ride Metrorail into the nation’s capital, as I’m sure Marylanders do as well.  But if funding for Metro were put before representatives of the other 48 states, they would unflinchingly exorcise it from the budget as pork spending.  Repeat that process for federally-funded projects all around the country and the critics will clash with the defenders in such a way that nothing ever really is eliminated, no matter how small a constituency it serves.

         I do, however, advocate the implementation of pay-as-you-go legislation to limit the soaring deficit.  Although it may preclude valuable projects from being supported by Uncle Sam’s pocketbook, it would also force lawmakers to prioritize budget items at the national level.  In the interim, though, taxes must ultimately be raised to pay for this expansion and the aftereffects of a $787 billion bailout and years of deficits under the Bush administration. 

         I would argue that the best target is the federal gas tax, currently at 18.4 cents per gallon.  Raising this tax gradually and substantially would not only increase revenues for this particular undertaking, but would promote numerous agenda items of the Obama administration: reducing dependence on oil (foreign oil particularly), providing down payments on new renewable energy and mass transit projects, replenishing the Highway Trust Fund, and encouraging people to drive less frequently and thus reduce carbon emissions.

         There is no obvious solution to fixing health care and there are many pitfalls to each approach.  What I hope you will support is a plan that reduces the discretion of insurers to extort those who need care the most and that covers every individual from cradle to grave without indebting the nation further.  Expanding freedom of choice is key way to ensure quality of care over profitability, and a dedicated funding mechanism that cuts across legislative priorities will be both efficient and effective.  This momentous foray into reform need not be perfect, but it must be better than where we are today.

The Inadequacy of Hope: DNC Redux

      Never before in modern history have the essential differences between the two major American parties stood out in such striking contrast as they do today. Republican leaders not only have failed in material things, they have failed in national vision, because in disaster they have held out no hope, they have pointed out no path for the people below to climb back to places of security and of safety in our American life.

      Throughout the Nation, men and women, forgotten in the political philosophy of the Government of the last years look to us here for guidance and for more equitable opportunity to share in the distribution of national wealth.

      On the farms, in the large metropolitan areas, in the smaller cities and in the villages, millions of our citizens cherish the hope that their old standards of living and of thought have not gone forever. Those millions cannot and shall not hope in vain.

            Those words, tone, and appeal to the working man could easily be attributed to Barack Obama.  Except the line that followed, “I pledge myself to a new deal for the American people,” gives away its true provenance: Franklin Roosevelt’s acceptance speech at the 1928 Democratic election.

            In an uncanny portent of today’s “message discipline,” Roosevelt physically encapsulated hope and change during the Depression: in an era before the stories of well-coached women, minorities, and blue collar men would take the stage to courageously recount their difficult lives, the Democrats had Roosevelt.  Crippled from polio, many Americans thought he had fully recovered the strength to walk; this was just an illusion, but it helped endear him to those who saw him as elitist.  Furthermore, Roosevelt flew in an airplane from New York to Chicago to accept the nomination at the close of the convention the day after it had been given to him—an unprecedented shirking of tradition in favor of the symbolism of getting lucid and getting down to business.

            Eighty years later, Barack Obama will accept the nomination under the auspices of his own success story; he will speak at a stadium in front of tens of thousands of people—an exercise in transparency and inclusion.  Throughout this campaign and especially the convention, we have been pressed to look toward the future for answers.  Mark Warner, the keynote speaker, thankfully chose not to constantly assail McCain and Bush for digging us into a hole, but used his credentials as a cell phone entrepreneur to reduce the issues to economic terms.  He extolled the virtues of bringing technology-based business to small towns, acknowledged the threat that China faces to the American economy, and linked affordable education and affordable healthcare to an increase in American productivity.  In fact, he referenced no less an authority on forward-thinking, technologically-driven improvement than Thomas Jefferson, himself governor of Virginia, who wrote,

      What, but education, has advanced us beyond the condition of our indigenous neighbors?  And what chains them to their present state of barbarism and wretchedness, but a bigoted veneration for the supposed superlative wisdom of their fathers, and the preposterous idea that they are to look backward for better things, and not forward, longing, as it should seem, to return to the days of eating acorns and roots, rather than indulge in the degeneracies of civilization?

            In other words, the same tune has been trumpeted for centuries: progress, hope, change…whatever you want to call it, reality trumps nostalgia.  But along the way, liberal outlook in realistically dealing with predicaments has been stigmatized by elites.  Conservatives smear notions of social progress as naïve and dangerous—dangerous because of cost and unknown consequences.  How exactly do they get away with this?  Especially once you consider that no act of government can have greater costs or unknown consequences than war, of which the current conservative administration has initiated two.

            By measure of common sense, any non-partisan observer should agree that this year ought to be one in which a Democratic candidate wins the presidency.  Not necessarily because the Democrats are that much better, but because Americans are worse off now than they were eight years ago.  Why, then, are the polls so close, and why are Republican fear tactics so effective?  Why is progress so imperative yet so frightening?

            It is somewhat baffling and shameful that liberalism—which at its core hopes to extend liberty and freedom to greater numbers of people—is regarded as something radical and unattainable.  Cynics might say that the elites who control the country would never endanger their economic interests by changing.  Sociologists might point out that the status quo as an institution is difficult to change in complex societies.  Physicists might muse that for every action there is an opposite reaction, and since America has historically operated with two parties, the liberal one must be countered by a conservative element.

            Still, if this convention has shown America anything thus far, it is that hope alone a President does not make.  The rabid supporters of Obama and Hillary will not win over the working man by cheerleading alone.  Rather than try to prove that change is good, the Dems need to make people fearful of not changing; that is to say, that the status quo will harm us as a nation.  Roosevelt did it in executing the New Deal; Jefferson did it by declaring independence from Britain.  Obama and the Democrats should vigorously make voters aware of the economic consequences of adopting an illiberal energy policy and the social chaos that would result from an unhealthy population.    Barack Obama has done well by not assassinating the character of John McCain as the Republicans have done to him; but fear as a tactic is still on the table, and conservatives have been using it effectively for years.

8/27

Obama’s Candid Camera

          I know the media is supposed to be the governmental watchdog, but my goodness, this clip from CNN is downright voyeuristic:

            This just in: Barack Obama is normal guy.  Full story coming up in the Situation Room.

Why on Earth would CNN dedicate a camera crew to just follow Obama around?  Is it so hard to believe that when he is not giving speeches, meeting with foreign leaders, and giving people hope that he is just regular, wealthy American father and husband? 

I can only think of two reasons why Obama walking into a barber shop would merit Michael Jackson-courtroom-level coverage.  The cynical explanation: those people would love to be the first ones on the scene if Obama makes a gaffe—such as if he accidentally gets caught praying to Allah or Michelle calls someone “whitey” or something.  Or the “Animal Planet” explanation: they are trying to catch the candidate in his natural habitat, getting him so used to the media’s presence as to provide a glimpse into his everyday life; it’s similar to a human interest story, if the “storytelling” were reduced to “stalking.”

It is true that politicians are expected to be increasingly open to the public as cameras and new means of communication proliferate.  From 1896 when William Jennings Bryan started the revolution of presidential candidates physically campaigning for office; to FDR’s Fireside Chats over the radio; to the Nixon-Kennedy television debates; and now the discussion over whether the Supreme Court may be the next target for C-SPAN’s cameras.  Government officials find it either mandatory or beneficial to submit to the media’s probes (and often are able to control the terms of engagement).  But following the guy to his daughter’s soccer game and videotaping him yawning, using his Blackberry, and cheering on his daughter?  The guy can’t even scratch his balls without Soledad O’Brien checking in “on the eights.”  Take five, CNN; there’s probably a cat stuck in a tree somewhere that needs to be covered.

By the way, my favorite part of the video is at 1:40, where Michelle Obama starts playfully slapping her husband around and you can hear the gasp of the correspondent.  If a few fake bitchslaps can momentarily shock an intrepid reporter, perhaps she hadn’t noticed the daily “parade of horribles” of death and violence that comprises CNN programming.

8/7

Obama Ready For His Close Up

Last week the Prince of Peace, Barack Obama, breezed through Europe and the Middle East on a fact-finding/public relations tour. His message was simple enough—the need for cooperation among all citizens of the world to confront the struggles of the twenty-first century, such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and global warming. But after Obama finished addressing heads of state and crowds of 200,000, the media turned the lens on themselves—wondering if they were too enamored with the affable and worldly Illinois Senator and too dismissive of the golf-cart-riding, supermarket-shopping, German Sausage Haus-patronizing Republican nominee.

            One could make the argument that yes, the media lionizes Barack Obama far more than an unbiased institution should.  Or it could be pointed out that through the demonization of Jeremiah Wright, the Michelle Obama “really proud” controversy, and the insinuation of fear about Obama’s madrasa education, the media is opportunistic at best and hyperemotional at worst. (Of course, that could never, ever be true in the blogosphere, right?)  But I think the issue, if framed historically, might not seem so unprecedented and openly partisan.  Let me take you back in the election cycle to 1932, in the midst of the Great Depression.

Herbert Hoover, the reconstruction guru of WWI (and later WWII), inherited the seeds of the Depression through the freewheeling credit policies of banks in the Roaring Twenties. Though his humanitarian efforts abroad were laudable, his advocacy of volunteerism and rugged individualism in the face of job loss and bank failure were mortifying. Not to mention his reputation was sunk by allowing the United States Army, under the suggestion of Douglas MacArthur, to run the Bonus Army of veterans out of Washington, D.C., rather than negotiate their pretty simple demands.

Enter Franklin Roosevelt. The New York state senator, governor, and undersecretary of the Navy was not an intellectual, not politically-savvy, and in general, not an impressive individual. His schoolmates derided him for being snobby, effete and “too English” (which is easy to understand if you have heard his speaking style), not to mention he gave up on being a lawyer and was a failed business entrepreneur. He was elected to state offices largely because of his spunk and charm with the electorate—not to mention that his polio seemed to cure him of snobbery (though not of his forceful personality). He descended onto the Washington scene as the “anyone but Hoover” mentality had sunk in (similar to the “anyone but Bush” and “vote for change” attitude of today). FDR’s people lambasted the incumbent by throwing out phrases like “Hooverville” and “Hoovercar” to denote a failed administration.

But FDR’s mandate to lead was not just a product of luck and timing. After the 1932 Democratic Convention, he flew into Chicago the next day to deliver his acceptance speech—two practices which heretofore were unprecedented and showed an enthusiasm to break with the past and to usher in an administration of “liberal thought, of planned action, of enlightened international outlook, and of the greatest good to the greatest number of our citizens.” By showing the strength to stand up and excruciatingly execute his special walk on stage, he gave the (wrongful) impression that he had conquered his polio, a disease which everyone knew afflicted him. The event which clinched FDR’s worth in the minds of citizens, though, came a month before his inauguration when he survived an assassination attempt and was viewed to have been spared by Providence, as if God had given his holy stamp of approval on the president-elect. 

Once in the White House, Roosevelt once again broke precedent by distancing himself from the stony and secluded Presidents Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover by letting the press actually ask questions of him in person during nearly one thousand press briefings over his twelve years in office. Journalists, unquestionably disarmed by the president’s charm (and undoubtedly unsure how best to exploit this new power) even helped FDR by not pressing him when he had to be corrected by his press secretary or by warning him that certain pieces of information should be labeled as off the record. Coupled with the Fireside Chats, this was an exercise in candidness, transparency, and goodwill that endeared him to the common man—much more than the joyless Hoover—if not to the elites (who still saw him as a brainless, crafty, socialist snob).

Today it could be argued that as gas and food prices rise, flooding in the Midwest has wrecked crops, the war in Iraq is costing us billions of dollars each month, mortgages are falling through and banks are failing, George W. Bush is certainly the worst president since Hoover and Americans want to break from his administration as quickly as possible. As a candidate, Barack Obama is amiable, says all the right things, and not only seeks to mobilize but has already mobilized old and new voters to improve the standard of living for the downtrodden of America and also spread the message of cooperation throughout the world. In this new and unusual spirit of hopefulness, the media have unwittingly traded accuracy for access in their reporting, as was the case with Roosevelt.

Saying that Obama has a rock star aura may certainly describe his personal appeal, but he is simply a larger-than-life politician who is gifted with the ability to give feeling to what he says. He can proclaim “People of Berlin—people of the world—this is our moment. This is our time” and mean it. By contrast, whenever McCain addresses a crowd with “my friends” (an FDR verbal cue, by the way), it sounds hollow and unimpressive. Thus, since Obama possesses a media-friendly persona—i.e. he stages world tours, gives landmark speeches on race, rallies hundreds of thousands of people—while McCain remains aloof, the media appear to be cooperating more with him (though certainly not on the level as the White House reporters under Roosevelt) because Obama gives them access to newsworthy events.