'But Republicans' on Medicare and Social Security is but bullshit by Team Blue thought leaders

Saw this piece tweeted by Molly Jong-Fast, talking about how a number of House Republicans have already indicated they plan to hold Neoliberal Joe hostage over the debt ceiling being hit again next year, assuming they regain the House, take top spots on major committees, etc. and their price is going to be hiking the age on both Social Security and Medicare, among other things.

First, as an aside yet not an aside, why didn't Dear Leader fix this whole debt ceiling bullshit in his first two years, along with getting the Reproductive Freedom of Choice Act passed, etc.?

Now, to our main story.

First, it's not like Neoliberal Joe hasn't talked about partial privatization before himself. Or cuts. Or other things. He's got a long history. (So did Dear Leader, his boss for eight years.) So, contra Jong-Fast clutching her pearls, and Fancy Nancy Pelosi palavering, this would actually be Jason Smith et al pushing against a semi-open door.

Second, it's not like Dear Leader didn't push Medicare Advantage expansion when he was prez, since he did.

Third, don't say the "first" and "second" are old news. As we speak, Biden is continuing a Trump Admin program that expands the privatization of Medicare. And nominated an American Enterprise Institute staffer who is pro-Social Security privatization to serve on SSA's Advisory Board.

As for Medicare? A good step one would be simplifying it. A better step two would be addressing the whole problem of fee-for-service medicine. That includes, from here, calling out Green Party thought leaders and MDs Jill Stein and Margaret Flowers.

I'll keep a Jong-Fast friended on whichever of my Twitter accounts it is, precisely because it's good to know what a Team Blue thought leader is claiming.

Billions from billionaires, but not one cent for health care

To modernize the slogan from 225 years ago about "millions for defense, not one cent for tribute," that's my take on the latest news about President Joe Biden.

Biden has promised a minimum tax for billionaires, which would actually be for centimillionaires and above, to include taxing at least some of their investment income like ordinary income. The AP has more.

Problem? Well, yes, one biggie.

Like his former boss, Dear Leader Obama, and like the Slickster, Biden is focused on cleaning up Republican budget deficit and national debt messes with the extra income. Addressing national health care, or even a significantly better Obamacare, isn't in the mix. So, Rethuglican rhetoric aside, the idea is "nice."

In fact, as I type this, David Sirota's newest landing pad says that the Biden Admin is forcing more and more Medicare recipients into private market plans without their informed consent! And, it's a plan started by Team Trump, which again shows that on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, there's a thin dime's difference, if not quite the proverbial "not a dime's worth of difference," between the two duopoly parties. Indeed, the Sirota site piece argues that Team Biden has expanded the original Trump program. 

Common Dreams was even on this late last year. And, in some ways, its piece is even harder hitting.

The biggie? The wiggle room to start "pilot programs" like this was in Obamacare. And, with people like "Mod Max" Baucus writing that bill, that language didn't get there by accident.

And, it links to a column by Chronicle columnist and friend Chris Tomlinson which sharply calls out Biden, calling his neoliberal idea that the private sector can run Medicare better "demonstrably untrue."

Why I am likely not voting for Beto — it's personal

Beto O'Rourke is a nice enough guy. Per Shrub Bush, maybe you could have a beer with him more easily than with Al Gore or John Kerry. That said, Barack Obama offered beers to both Henry Louis Gates and a Cambridge, Mass., cop. Solved nothing, and Obama remained a bankster-friendly neoliberal anyway.



I've interviewed, as well as photographed, Beto. (Link is dead, but it was after the primary and in the general election campaign.) Yeah, kind of photogenic. A Texas Kennedy.

And? Today's Congressional Kennedy is a neoliberal who hates national health care.

With that as the entree, let's dive in.

Personal? You bet.

"Access for all" as a "shit in the one hand" option to "Medicare for all" is getting personal for me.

I'm over a certain age. An age at which job discrimination happens. Age discrimination is harder to prove than racial or sexual discrmination, but it happens, and I believe I've been the victim of it before.

I'm also in less than the most stellar career field, even as I try to get out.

Should 2 + 2 = the end of decent jobs at some point in the future, it would be a LOT easier to face that before age 65 with national health care than without. Indeed, this is part of why I say single-payer national health care is more important for the working people of America than the basic income Scott Santens touts. (That's doubly true with his favored versions of basic income, which he wants to replace unemployment insurance, replace SSI and SSDI, and partially replace Social Security itself. Pass, Scott; I want no part of libertarian, or even neoliberal, versions of basic income. Hit the tag for it below to get the details.)

Back to our topic, though.

Beto-Bob (since friend Brains never tires of pointing out his given name as Robert) has touted that he is for "access for all" on medical care.

WTF is "access for all"?

Bob, Republicans will tell you we've got "access for all" right now, and they've said that since Reagan's time.

If you're making a bit too much for Medicaid, or have a crappy pewter-level Obamacare program with a deductible so high you can't use it unless you're dying, you've got that same access for all the GOP has been selling for more than 30 years —

Your local hospital's emergency room.

C'mon, Bob, stop peeing on our legs and telling us it's trickle-down health care.

I mean, for fuck's sake, a writer at The American Conservative recently wrote out a conservative case for single payer, either an insurance-driven or a straight government version. (Chase Madar is personally not that conservative, it should be noted, but, BUT ... American Conservative ran it!) Hayek favored it, too. (Yes, libertarians, he did.)

In addition, per The Hill as of Oct. 20, A MAJORITY OF REPUBLICANS want Medicare for All.

Speaking of, Beto either does know or should know that big biz prefers the current system of health insurance "benefits" because it lets them keep their employees as serfs.

Any real liberal, progressive, left-liberal or leftist (I'm one or another of those last two) knows that capitalism is an octopus which has killed equitable, sensible, low-cost health care in this country.

And, it's going to take a single-payer system, at minimum, to fix that.

Actually, I've argued it's going to take an American version of the British NHS to really fix it.

"Access for all"? Please.

As noted in my original post about him this year, he's a squish on health care issues. He has called single-payer "one way to get there" on health care access, stresses "access for all," and never signed on as a co-sponsor of HB 676, the House's "Medicare for All" bill. (See more here on my post about nuancing details of "universal" health care.)

For people who are Big Beto Backers, per that post, I agree that HB 676 had the flaw of not including for-profit hospitals. That said, per the Texas Observer, he said he couldn't support Bernie's bill in the Senate, either. Why? He wants everyone to have both a copay and a premium payment. I might "accept" that as part of a compromise to get something passed, but making that my starting point? No way. And, even then, my finish line would prefer to have only one or the other. (Most countries with national health care operate with no premium, but still having copays.)

This all said, per my "nuancing" post, MediCAID actually covers more than MediCARE.

We haven't even talked about how you're a bankster-loving warmonger.

Now, I know some Democrats will say "but the SCOTUS." Really? When two of the librul justices, Breyer and Kagan, both said cops can continue shooting people with impunity, what Supreme Court justices will a ConservaDem support? And even Ginsberg isn't all she's cracked up by some to be all the time.

Besides, let's look at recent history. Within 90 days of joining the Senate, and three years left until a primary, let alone the general election, Doug Jones had already moved to the right of Joe Manchin.

So blame him. Or Manchin. Or Heidi Heitkamp. Or blame Dear Leader for not campaigning for vulnerable Dems in 2010 after they passed Obamacare.

If "you" want a ConservaDem to tie the Senate at 50-50, assuming all else stays equal, throw former Tennessee gov Phil Bredesen money or other love. He's more likely to win than Beto, though his own chances seem to be fading. Or send some love to Kyrsten Sinema, just to piss off Arizona wingnuts.

Brains offered up one updated round of thoughts a couple of months or so ago. Basically, his thought is similar to what I wrote a month ago — Beto has one foot in the ConservaDem world. And, not only do I not expect him to withdraw that foot, I expect him to continue to plant it more firmly.

He's got something newer now, as of late July, which tees off more, and like me, is skeptical about his actual chances of winning.

Ditto on his staff, or at least his volunteers who keep texting me. They all seem clueless about Beto refusing to ever officially co-sponsor John Conyers' HR 676 "Medicare for All" bill.

Beyond single-payer, probably the biggest thing that cheeses me off is that Beto, by his documented Congressional inaction, doesn't walk the talk on marijuana decriminalization or legalization. Per that link, co-sponsoring a bill to force the DEA to downschedule pot from Schedule 1 to Schedule 3 would seem to be a no-brainer if someone actually cared about the issue.

==

And, while I don't agree with every one of Brains' reasons for voting no, read him too. (He's recently noted that, for this election cycle at least, he's like in being close to a single-issue voter on this.

I've invited, on Twitter, Sema Hernandez, Beto's main primary opponent of two, who was also debate-dodged by him, to also undervote. That would require her changing her mind, as in July she said she'd pull the trigger for him. But, maybe she will change her mind. I think it unlikely, though. I think Sema has buttered her under-40 version of Just.Another.Politician bread already.

Sorry, Sema. I refuse to believe that Beto Claus, after three terms in the House refusing to support HR 676 then going out of his way to attack S 1804, will change his tune next year. If you want to start entering the Just.Another.Politician world by endorsing him, that's your choice. I'll of course look at you with more scrutiny in the 2020 Dem primary, if I'm still in Texas and not taking a pass on that primary to sign a Green ballot access petition.

Speaking of, Michael Lighty, a fellow with the Sanders Institute and a California DSAer, has brought a Medicare for All speaking tour to Texas and Florida. Dates here, though other details are TBD. This is right before early voting starts, which leads to other questions.

1. Was Beto invited to any of these events to speak publicly?
2. If so, did he accept?
3. Dito on 1 and 2 on Sema?

"Medicare PRICES for All" — latest neolib head fake

In a move of health care strategery that the likes of a Beto O'Rourke would surely love, two Obamacare flaks at neoliberal punditry mag Washington Monthly say "we" (who's that mouse in your collective pocket?) don't really need Medicare for All.

We need Medicare PRICES for all.

This is built on such a foundation of sinking bullshit, I don't know where to start.

First, if this does save my late-stage capitalist employer money on health care, he's not passing it on to me. But, you guys know that.

Second, my boss wants to keep me enserfed to health care benefits. "Bennies," so that I still don't want to change jobs. But, you guys know that, too.

And, talk about burying the lede? It's down in the last paragraph of the long piece:

So why not just keep it simple, at least to start? A “Medicare prices for all” plan doesn’t require tax increases or involve transfers paid for by the middle class. It doesn’t require Americans to give up their current health care plans. And it doesn’t repeal or replace the popular features of the Affordable Care Act. But it does directly attack the middle-class affordability crisis using a proven approach that the great majority of Americans might actually support.

In other words, you poor? Keep your state-largesse-dependent Medicaid. Working poor? Keep your CHIP for your kids. 

If you're "working poor" or lower-middle-class in a state that didn't do the Medicaid expansion with Obamacare, or did it, but with restrictions? Oh, so sorry. That "transfers paid for by the middle class" shows the gig is up right there. Because we can attack, or pretend to attack, an abstract health care industry, but we can't tax rich individuals more and more progressively as part of a national health care system.

They even outrightly admit that, two paragraphs up:

Even if the CAP plan was financed in good measure by new taxes on the super-rich, it would still involve large transfers from middle-income people, who will be at least partially financing their own benefits, to people with lower incomes, who would be paying nothing for the health care they receive.

This dreck may not be racist, but it certainly is classist. Beyond that, middle-class taxes already help pay for Medicaid and CHIP. And these neoliberal wingnuts know THAT, too. So, it's classist with a counterfactual pandering element.

And we sure as hell can't have a British-style NHS because that would be an even bigger giveaway to "them" than Medicare for All. (It would also address the increasing monopilization of hospitals that Medicare PRICES for All would not. What's to stop a hospital from going cash-only? Or a cartel of them, if the gummint doesn't investigate?)

Fuck you all. Fuck your Council for Affordable Health Coverage, since it's an insurance industry front group.

#FeelTheBern on #socialism, #BlackLivesMatter, even foreign policy

Bernie Sanders knocked it out of the park, at least in terms of Democrats, in his "socialism" speech at Georgetown today.



Several brief points, mainly taking from stuff I tweeted during the speech.

First, he hearkened back to Franklin D. Roosevelt, not just 1933 or 1937, but the FDR in the middle of war, who still looked to greater economic equality (if but haltingly for minorities) in his 1944 State of the Union address.

He then transitioned to Lyndon Baines Johnson and Medicare. This was good, which then led to a pivot to calling for a "Medicare for all" single-payer national health care system.

However, if Bernie wants to really go for the long bomb, he could have thrown deeper.

First, I still contend that the only good way to control costs in American health care, a single payer system isn't enough. Medicare being tight on reimbursement rates might help, but it might not be enough. I still say we need to look at nationalizing chunks of the hospital/clinic/doctor health care provider system.

(Update, Nov. 24: I have now written a broader blog post specifically defending corporate socialism, which Sanders did himself back in his salad days.)

Second, he didn't touch all of LBJ's Great Society. That's despite quoting Martin Luther King Jr.:

"This country has socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for the poor."

Let's remember that LBJ riffed on this in relation to African-Americans.

More, far more, than the New Deal, the Great Society was focused on racial as well as socioeconomic issues. Hence LBJ at Howard University’s 1965 commencement:

You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: 'now, you are free to go where you want, do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please.' You do not take a man who for years has been hobbled by chains, liberate him, bring him to the starting line of a race, saying, "you are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe you have been completely fair... This is the next and more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity—not just legal equity but human ability—not just equality as a right and a theory, but equality as a fact and as a result.

Exactly.

Heck, LBJ might even had said #BlackLivesMatter today, per this from 1968 and riots:

When you put your foot on a man's neck and hold him down for three hundred years, and then you let him up, what's he going to do? He's going to knock your block off.

More of his Great Society and other quotes are at Wikiquote.

But, this must be balanced with socioeconomic concerns, too, both in the ivied towers of the Ivy League and the crumbling curbs of Main Street.

Speaking of, while he did make more than one allusion to unionism, I wish he had spoken more directly about the issue. Unfortunately, many unions, like the oily SEIU, have already lined up to endorse Clinton. And, per Sanders and social democracy, the American non-parliamentary two-party system is part of why Democrats co-opt unions without having a Labor or Social Democratic party.

On the other hand, organized labor could withhold endorsements before we get further into the primary system. And, just one — a truly liberal one like the Longshoremen — maybe could do a Greens endorsement in the general.

But, Sanders did touch on other issues today, even if family and maternity leave doesn't help the underclass if it's not paid leave.

He did note that climate change is a moral issue.

And, he did touch on foreign policy. Including calling a racist spade a spade, from Donald Trump or whomever.

No, he did more than that.

He covered foreign policy in far more depth than at the second Democratic debate, and did well.

Arbenz. Mossadegh. And many others the CIA overthrew all got mentioned. Vis-a-vis the GOP's Benghazi fixation, let's remember what Benghazi was — a spook shack.

He then called out Gulf oil states for not accepting refugees from their own corner of the world. Saudi Arabia has a tent city that can hold up to 1 million people and is only used for pilgrims at the hajj. It sits empty as I type. He also said the Gulf states need to join in the fight against Daesh. Related to that, he forswore an endless "War on Terror."

And, wingnuts will call him "earnest" or whatever while doing their own pontificating, but he focused on the moral angle of many of these issues.

Finally, in a lighter vein, and throwing Hillary Clinton under the bus, he said he wasn't running because it was his "turn." More seriously, besides the bright lines he continues to draw with her over things like Wall Street regulation, he threw her under the bus on the War on Drugs, calling for a lot less incarceration, especially on things like minor drug crimes. Given that Clinton gets significant campaign funds from private prison companies, this is important.

For a few more text pullouts, see Mother Jones. And, the NYT gave him a respectable read — on its First Draft blog. Let's see how the main page plays it. And, a Paul Krugman. Or others.

"Others" including a "real socialist" like Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant, who is not yet highly impressed by Sanders.

And, per PDiddle in comments below, I'm at least some sort of semi-pacifist myself. And, I have blogged extensively about Bernie sucking too much at the military teat. PD's got more on his take at his blog. And, Sanders' website has full speech text.

Too bad he already co-opted himself by (on paper, at least) forswearing a third-party run.

Harry Truman and national health care

A lot of people know that business organizations and the American Medical Association opposed Truman's national health care push. They don't realize that organized labor did as well .

But it did. As discussed in the great new book "The Age of Acquiescence," per my review, the New Deal "settlement" between labor and management-ownership in America was that organized labor would accept the financial settlement of wage gains and benefits offerings (which became more important during World War II with wages generally frozen or nearly so), in exchange for eschewing German-type unionism of sitting on corporate boards (see Volkswagen of America today) and other broader attempts to alter the labor-management power relationship.

So, in Truman's time, the bennies, including good private health insurance, that came with a union job, as well as the pay itself, were a recruiting incentive, and one that organized labor wasn't going to surrender, not even if this helped change the labor-management power relationship to the working man's benefit in general.

Even with LBJ's moves, and without formally stated opposition by organized labor, surely this is why he settled for Medicare and Medicaid. Senior citizens normally are retired and therefore not candidates for union job recruitment. Poor people are working in low-paying non-union jobs, if working at all; also, therefore, not part of organized labor's orbit.

That said, Truman was proposing something more than just national health care. He wanted a federal hospital oversight agency, and a federal form of workmen's compensation for work time lost due to medical treatment. That said, the Truman Library claims that organized labor was in support, but this is the first time I've seen such a claim. I've generally read elsewhere that, if not opposed, it was no more than neutral.

Anyway, the combination of ideas in the bill might have been better than just single-payer health care.

Why?

First, Truman probably could have said that, if surgery were needed, it would only be compensated for if performed at an accredited hospital. That, in turn, would have opened the door to federal pricing controls, including saying "no" with a capital "N" to outrageous pricing by Big Pharma.

(Today, the JCAHO only partially performs the accreditation idea, and as a private agency, doesn't have the same teeth that a federal regulatory board would.)

JFK: First #neoliberal? First #neocon?

People who don't wear the blinders, or rose-colored glasses of Camelot know that Jack Kennedy wasn't all that liberal. That said, Ira Stoll's "JFK, Conservative" may overstate the case a bit.

But, what if there's threads, albeit tenuous, tying Jack Kennedy to the later rise of neoliberalism? (A rise that doesn't start with Bill Clinton; Jimmy Carter is arguably the first neoliberal president.) 

I think that any further civil rights initiatives Kennedy might have pushed for, had he not been shot, would have been more market-oriented than LBJ's. Certainly, from what we know of his version of Medicare, that's true there.

As for the realities for Camelot, I suggest JFK adorers start with Robert Dallek's new book, "Camelot's Court."

Or, maybe due to the mix of being a Cold Warrior and a nation-builder in his foreign policy, we should instead wonder if Jack was the first neoconservative, or at least the first non-Jewish one.

Debt deal revitalizes the Catfood Commission; nothing "clean" here

Or, some sort of surrogate for it.

As part of the deal on the Senate's bill that ended the federal government shutdown and pushed back the debt ceiling limit, Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell agreed to fast track discussions on  what sure sounds like it will lead to "entitlement reforms:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said on the Senate floor Wednesday that under his agreement with Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell, the two leaders would name members to a bicameral budget conference committee “that will set our country on a long-term path to fiscal sustainability.” ...

The ultimate deal may end up looking like the one that House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., proposed last week in a Wall Street Journal op-ed: “We could provide relief from the discretionary spending levels in the Budget Control Act in exchange for structural reforms to entitlement programs.”

So, while the Democratic Party may have gotten a "clean" win in yesterday's votes, we the non-neoliberal people did not. Cue up the Catfood Commission theme music.

And, it will be harder for non-neoliberals to slow this down in the Senate:

“Probably the most important part of budget reconciliation is that a reconciliation bill can approve policy reforms with only 51 votes in the Senate,” said Loren Adler, the research director at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. This fast-track process “could be critical in increasing the chances for tax reform” and reform of entitlement programs to succeed.

Wunderbar. 

That's even though the Gipper himself knew that entitlements (theoretically, per Al Gore's "lockbox") weren't connected to the deficit:



Beyond that, some economists say the deficit is being reduced too quickly right now.

Another alleged liberal sellout on entitlements - Cong Progressives

About 70 percent of the Congressional Progressive Caucus refused to sign a letter pledging to oppose cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Yes, you read that right. Refused to sign.

As of today, after many weeks of progressive lobbying and pleading and petitioning nationwide, 47 members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus have refused to sign the letter, initiated by Congressmen Alan Grayson and Mark Takano, pledging to “vote against any and every cut to Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security benefits -- including raising the retirement age or cutting the cost of living adjustments that our constituents earned and need.”

List of refusniks here.

Howqver, just two short months ago, the same CPC sent a letter to Dear Leader proposing to fight Social Security cuts.

So, is Medicare, or Medicaid, the deal-breaker for the 47 pseudoprogressives?

In that case, is this an issue of "old people vote, but poor people don't"?

Just.Wow.

I'd like to think there's some other reason involved. Sheila Jackson Lee is about as liberal as you can be and still be inside today's Democratic Party, and she's a refusnik. John Lewis is a veteran of all sorts of progressive causes.

Stay tuned.

BIG Medicare fraud in my old stomping grounds

Were Dr. Jacques Roy or Teri Sivils members of the DeSoto (Texas) Chamber of Commerce? Because, $375 million would go a long way. Here's the details;

Under the alleged fraud scheme, the doctor and his office manager in DeSoto, Texas, Teri Sivils, who was also charged, allegedly sent healthcare “recruiters” door-to-door asking residents to sign forms that contained the doctor’s electronic signature and stated that he had seen the residents professionally for medical services he never provided.

They also allegedly dispatched more “recruiters” to a homeless shelter in Dallas, paying $50 to every street person they coaxed from a nearby parking lot and signed him up on the bogus forms.

Next question: Did the shelter get any kickback?


If a bunch of home health agencies are being suspended from Medicare for alleged conspiracy, who's to say what a homeless shelter might do?

Where's our articulate prez on the safety net?

In his latest column, Paul Krugman asks why so many red-state voters are so fervently that way, even when it's against their economic self interest.

He first mentions Thomas Frank's idea, that they've been seduced by social conservativism talk. Second is taking social influences the other way, using this to explain why the rich in blue states are at least quasi-liberal, being repelled by that same social conservativism.

And, third is, well, denialism!

When 44 percent of those on Social Security, 43 percent on unemployment benefits, and 40 percent of Medicare users say "they've not used a government program," it's no wonder tea party-type wingnuts keep attacking the government.

Needed? Far beyond George Lakoff, an articulate president explaining these things. Allegedly, the country elected one. (Soft bigotry of low expectations strikes again, I guess.)

That said, it's not just Dear Leader. It was only the 2010 midterms that really brought this to the surface. On the other hand, that was nearly two years ago. And, where is Obama? Or other top Dems, for that matter?

Dear Obama; Instead of cutting Medicare

Which you clearly want to do, and which both your Catfood Commission and the debt supercommission want to do even more of ...

Revisit Obamacare. Cut out a variety of corporate tax deductions in the medical world. Raise the maximum income subject to FICA tax. Do something to prove you're even close to actually being liberal.

And, this news from California shows that Obamacare, as well as the health care system it purports to fix, is broken.

And that's the bottom line. When a car has a blown engine, you don't pour new oil in that engine and crank it up again. You replace the engine.


Unless you're a neoliberal currying favor with Valvoline, to extend the analogy. And, that's exactly what Obama did with Obamacare. He bought a bunch of Valvoline from Big Pharma and poured it into a broken engine.

If necessary, you do so to forestall more radical action, like people saying the entire car needs to be replaced instead of just the engine. FDR knew that. He was able to double-deal in California in 1934 to undercut Sinclair Lewis, but knew that Huey Long and Charles Coughlin (pre-Nazi shark jumping) were a different matter. (I'm setting aside conspiracy theories about who "really" killed Huey Long.)

FDR knew that, for all the reservations he had about it (and he had a LOT, including forcing it to have a separate tax rather than coming out of general income taxes; take him off the pedestal here), that he needed to approve some form of Social Security or a Huey Long would indeed "primary" him in 9136.

Meanwhile, readers here: Get off the fence. Stop even thinking of voting for Dear Leader.

Obama jobs speech blogging - hypocrisy's bad moon on rise

1. Hypocrisy in infrastructure, in talking about Chinese building bridges for America. (In case you don't know the reference, large parts of the refurbished Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge were built in China.) In the parallel case of "green jobs," the Obama Administration refuses to do anything about China subsidizing such jobs itself, even as his own administration touts Chinese job creation:

Last week, for instance, the White House's U.S. trade representative, Ron Kirk, said we shouldn't be concerned with jobs that are about "making things that, frankly, we don't want to make in America -- you know, cheaper products, low-skill jobs."

Just a few short grafs show how much of a disconnect there is between Obama the myth and Obama the reality.

The hypocrisy is repeated later, with "corporate tax breaks for creating jobs in America" even as the administration promotes new free trade treaties ("strangely" not mentioned tonight), treaties with claimed job gains without mention of job losses, or average wages of either added or lost jobs.

Add to the hypocrisy with Obama's "made in America."

He later says we don't need to cut collective bargaining rights, cut pollution protections, etc. as part of a "race to the bottom," but doesn't tell us how that squares with neolib outsourcing of jobs, etc.

2. "Cutting red tape"? Small businesses say they're not worried about that. Reality? Big biz members of the U.S. Chamber don't like them, especially any that regulate pollution. (Actually, failure to better regulate finance-based big biz, including insurers, hurt small companies) True, Dear Leader may have to pander to outside-the-Beltway stereotypes a bit, but ... he did this on the smog regs too. (And, no, they weren't that legally indefensible, as California Sen. Barbara Boxer showed by her call for somebody to sue the administration.

3. The tax credit for long-term unemployed? A good one. But ... combine it, behind the scenes, with the "stick" of hinted-at Department of Labor investigations of companies that run the "no unemployed need apply" ads. The hint of likely age discrimination lawsuits would get some attention.

4. Calling the GOP out on the FICA tax "holiday" continuing or not? Brilliant politically, but Social Security/Medicare taxes should never have been cut in the first place. The Earned Income Tax Credit should have been expanded instead.

5. What are "modest adjustments" to Medicare and Medicaid? Not mentioned. That said, cue up the Catfood Commission. Such "modest adjustments" will include raising the eligibility age for Medicare, which will have more looking at using Medicaid more.

6. What is a "fair share" of taxation for the rich, other than finally getting the Bush Obama tax cuts to expire? No details.

7. "We're all rugged individualists"? No, we're not. Many of the original 13 colonies were founded as royal colonies, or else royal land grants to pay debts. We've not been rugged individualists since then.

OK, a few pundits. Paul Krugman likes it, on paper at least, for politics as well as job help. David Brooks is skeptical of most of the hiring tax credits, saying they'll more likely go for people already employed moving to a new job. (That's why the credit for hiring the long-term unemployed was a bright spot.) The Atlantic's James Fallows likes the rhetoric of the "pass this jobs bill."

Summary, on a 10-star scale:
Political side NNNNNNN 
Content side NNNN

The time for emails to Obama is long gone

First, on issues like Social Security and Medicare, he is NOT Bill Clinton "triangulating" in the mid-1990s. He actually wants these cuts. That's one reason he has squeezed House Democrats out of the picture. (Take note, David Brookses of the world who critique his leadership style.)

More proof that he wants these cuts? Remember, the "Catfood Commission" was HIS commission and he has never disavowed its recommendations. Second, his knifing in the back single-payer national health care.

The health care issue also shows not just that Obama lied when he talked about how "open" his administration would be, but the degree of brazenness with which he lied.

And, yet, many people think that clicking a link from MoveOn will magically inspire Obama to "save Social Security."

Wrong.

Get it through your thick heads, people who still have Obama love affairs, bromances, unreturned infatuations. Grover Cleveland Obama doesn't care how you feel, unless you finally get a clue and tell him you're voting Green.

And, that you make that a reality, not just an idle threat.

The only things you accomplish by clicking a MoveOn link are encouraging online slacktivism and encouraging MoveOn to try to hit you up for money.

WHAT 'debt problem'? There isn't one in the mid-term future

Type your summary here Type rest of the post here

All we have to do, per the top graphic, is let the Bush Obama tax cuts expire.

Hat tip Talking Points Memo, except for it continuing to call the Obama tax cuts the Bush tax cuts.

Well, we eliminate the mid-term future deficit if we let the Obama tax cuts expire AND actually enforce cuts in Medicare reimbursement to doctors that Congress passed 15 years ago.

That's actually a huge "if," since future Congresses have continually given one- or two-year waivers on implementing those fee cuts.

Paul Ryan kidnaps Joe Nocera's brain

How else to explain Nocera's paean to Ryan, even with caveats, about his wisdom on Medicare in light of the NY-26 Congressional special election?

Nocera buries his nutgraf as the last one:

It would be nice if we could treat the Ryan plan not as an object of derision but as a launching off point for a serious debate. That way, maybe for once we could avert a crisis instead of acting shocked when it finally arrives.

Nice? Even if the cost savings of Obamacare are overrated, Ryan's opposed those savings. Ryan would shit bricks on Nocera's desk over the idea of national health insurance regulation, complete with a Washington bureau or agency.

Nocera then refuses to consider Ryan's idea within the larger context of Ryan's Randian political philosophy. And, that's why it is NOT and cannot be, the "launching off point for a serious debate."

Well, so far, Nocera's yet to measure up to the moderate but not too high standards of his NYT columnist predecessor, Frank Rich.

Charles Blow, his colleague, gets it much more nearly right, when he says:

This is not to say that Medicare isn’t in crisis. It is. But, we don’t have to gut it to save it.

But, Ryan wants to gut it. After sucking the brains out of people like Nocera.

Newt hearts oldsters, not poor — especially not sick ones

That's the bottom line behind Newt Gingrich slamming Paul Ryan's Medicare revamp.

Senor citizens vote, and often vote Republican.

But, Ryan's plan to revamp Medicaid?

Newt's totally down with that.

The poor don't vote as often (and nursing-home bound seniors pretty much don't vote at all), and when the poor DO vote, they don't vote GOP as often.

So, to call Ryan's Medicare plan "right-wing social engineering" is just another right-wing lie inside the small tent.

Obamacare probably won't save what it claims

I saw a good article on this a day or two ago and forgot to link it, let alone blog about it immediately.

Anyway, the article or column was not some red-state reflexively anti-Obama piece. But it pointed out a key issue at the heart of Obamacare, a key assumption/issue, is exactly why it likely won't save that much money.

And, that is the Medicare-like cost-containment measures for doctors.

The article noted that similar such measures in Medicare itself get waived, year after year, by Congress. (Medicare itself would surely be on sounder footing if Congress would actually get some cojones on this.)

So, what's to prevent something similar from happening with Obamacare?

Bupkis.

As I reflected on this, I realized the problem was, in part ...

American exceptionalism.

Americans expect healthcare dollars to magically materialize, just like they do new reserves of cheap oil, cheap food and other things.

In fact, to pick up on my last post about American exceptionalism, many Americans, even if not explicitly religious themselves, think they have a divine right to such cheap resources, I thin.

In a word? Wrong.

And, as the American Empire continues a slow decline, that belief will be part of what fuels the decline.

GOP wants to privatize Medicare

The LA Times story's headline doesn't tell you that. But, the body of the story does, loud and clear:

The proposal would rework Medicare by offering seniors a menu of private plans and restructure Medicaid funding into block grants distributed to the states.

True, it wouldn't apply to current recipients. And why not?

If privatization is so good, why not start it immediately?

You know the answer to that rhetorical question.

Because it would greatly hurt seniors. And, we can't have today's seniors voting on their pain.

And, David Brooks (surprise!) seems to have read a different story on Ryan's plans. All that's missing from the column is two under-55 Boboes and a line on Pop Ev Psych.

One way Social Security IS in trouble

I had no idea, until reading this, that Medicare recipients had a "make good" payment from Social Security if the change in Social Security's COLA was not enough, by itself, to cover the annual rise in Medicare Part B premiums, which cover doctor visits and are paid for out of Social Security benefits.

First, this is obviously a robbing Peter to pay Paul issue, so it's dumb on that grounds.

Second, by shuffling off part of Medicare's problems onto Social Security, it hides some of Medicare's problems.

Third, it increases the likelihood politicians of BOTH parties will wrongly handle both Medicare and Social Security.