What is going on with the Public Option?

Dear Friends,

I must admit that politics sometimes mystifies me.  Here is what I do not understand right at the moment.

Polls consistently show that the American public supports a public option for health insurance.  That means that generally speaking politicians would find it easy to vote for it.

The public option is a way to control health insurance costs.  Again, a fact that should make it easy for politicians to vote for it.

The most recent count of Senators that have indicated support for including a public option in reconciliation bill indicates that it is likely that there are more than 50 votes, especially if you include Vice President Biden.  The most recent count at whipcongress.com reports that 24 have signed Senator Bennet's letter, 19 have given public statements in support, 4 have given statements on video and 4 more are very likely based on their previous support for a public option.  The count by Senator is here.  It is important to remember that this push for the public option has been done without any help from the Democratic leadership in the House or Senate or from President Obama.  I look at this push for a public option as grass roots politics at work.  If your Senator has not indicated her or his support for a public option through reconciliation, call or write them now.

Joe Shoemaker, a spokesman for Senator Durban (a Democrat from Illinois but more importantly the majority whip, the person that gets the votes for the majority caucus), has said,

I want to be crystal clear: Sen. Durbin and the rest of the Senate Leadership will be aggressively whipping FOR the public option if it is included in the reconciliation bill the House sends over.

So unless the Senators who have indicated support for the public option through reconciliation were lying about that support, it seems like almost a certainty that with some arm twisting and support from President Obama and Vice President Biden, including his vote, that the Senate would have 51 votes to pass the public option through reconciliation.  All that needs to happen is for the House reconciliation bill to have a public option in it.

It would be easy for the House reconciliation bill to have a public option in it.  It is popular with the American people, it saves money, it was passed by the House before and the House Democratic leadership has been supportive of the public option.  The problem is here is what Speaker Pelosi said yesterday:

I'm quite sad that a public option isn't in there. But it isn't a case of it's not in there because the Senate is whipping against it. It's not in there because they don't have the votes to have it in there.

She is sad that the public option isn't in the House reconciliation bill.  She can solve that problem.  She is the Speaker of the House, and she has the votes in the House to pass it.  So it does not have to be "sad that it isn't in there".  The Speaker tries to explain why the public option is not in the House reconciliation bill.  She blames the lack of votes in the Senate.  Perhaps if she reads this post, she will understand that there are the votes and the Senate Majority Whip is ready to whip for it and be sure that there are the votes for it.

What are the possible explanations?

1. Some deal has been cut with somebody to keep the public option out by the President or the Speaker or Senator Reid or all of them or some other people in the Democratic leadership.  I hope that is not the case.
2. The Democratic Senators that have indicated their support for including a public option through reconciliation are lying about that support.  I hope that is not the case.
3. The Democratic leadership is totally incompetent.  I hope that is not the case.

Let me know if you have other explanations, because I do not like any of the ones that I have come up with.

Thanks for reading and please comment,

The Unabashed Liberal

How much spin is OK?

Dear Friends,

There is an article circulating on the internet entitled "Fiction of Marjah as City Was Misinformation" by Gareth Porter.  I read it first at Anti-war.com (here).  Here are a couple of paragraphs that give a good feel for the thrust of the article:

For weeks, the U.S. public followed the biggest offensive of the Afghanistan War against what it was told was a "city of 80,000 people" as well as the logistical hub of the Taliban in that part of Helmand. That idea was a central element in the overall impression built up in February that Marjah was a major strategic objective, more important than other district centers in Helmand.
It turns out, however, that the picture of Marjah presented by military officials and obediently reported by major news media is one of the clearest and most dramatic pieces of misinformation of the entire war, apparently aimed at hyping the offensive as a historic turning point in the conflict.
"It’s not urban at all," an official of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), who asked not to be identified, admitted to IPS Sunday. He called Marjah a "rural community."
"It’s a collection of village farms, with typical family compounds," said the official, adding that the homes are reasonably prosperous by Afghan standards.
Richard B. Scott, who worked in Marjah as an adviser on irrigation for the U.S. Agency for International Development as recently as 2005, agrees that Marjah has nothing that could be mistaken as being urban. It is an "agricultural district" with a "scattered series of farmers’ markets," Scott told IPS in a telephone interview.
The ISAF official said the only population numbering tens of thousands associated with Marjah is spread across many villages and almost 200 square kilometers, or about 125 square miles.

There is a similar article at ForeignPolicy.com (here). 

I was rather apprehensive about believing these articles since it seems that the press that were embedded with the troops or independent observers would not let the wrong impression stand.  So I decided that I would see what Google Maps could tell me about this place.  Google Maps is amazing.  The satellite images are clear that the entire area is rural and those parts that are not desert are farm land with individual farms.  See for yourself (here). 

I am not surprised that our government is spinning things, but how much spin is OK?  Both of the cited articles are contending that the hype for "Operation Moshtarak" was to make the American public believe that the Afghanistan War was going well and that all the deaths and terrible injuries and dollars spent were working.

The Gareth Porter article continues:

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, commander of ISAF, was clearly preparing to wage such a war in advance of the Marjah operation. In remarks made just before the offensive began, McChrystal invoked the language of the counterinsurgency manual, saying, "This is all a war of perceptions."
The Washington Post reported Feb. 22 that the decision to launch the offensive against Marjah was intended largely to impress U.S. public opinion with the effectiveness of the U.S. military in Afghanistan by showing that it could achieve a "large and loud victory." The false impression that Marjah was a significant city was an essential part of that message.

I suppose that it could be unrelated, and I do not want to be deemed a conspiracy theorist, but yesterday Secretary of Defense Gates is quoted as saying that some troops in Afghanistan could leave before the July 2011 date previously announced for the commencement of troop withdrawals.  Here is the AP report.

None of this makes me feel any better about the Afghanistan War, and none of this makes me feel any better about President Obama's promises to bring transparency to the United States government.  Unfortunately, these reports make me feel like in this regard there is no change from the Bush Administration.

So we are not doing very well today.

Thanks for reading and please comment,

The Unabashed Liberal

President Obama's Campaign Mode versus Aloof Professorial Mode

Dear Friends,

I was struck by an article in The New York Times today entitled "Obama Turns Up the Volume in Health Care Bid" by Helene Cooper and David M. Herszenhorn (here).  Here are just a few paragraphs from the article:

In a high-octane appearance that harked back to his “yes we can” campaign days, Mr. Obama jettisoned the professorial demeanor that has cloaked many of his public pronouncements on the issue, instead making an emotional pitch for public support as he tries to push the legislation through a final series of votes in Congress in the next several weeks.
With the fate of his signature initiative on the line, and Republicans eager to portray Democrats as out of step with the country and incapable of governing, Mr. Obama seemed to relish the opportunity to cut loose and make his case on his terms, as he often has at pivotal moments.
And, with his back to the wall, the president appeared intent on reassuring his party that he was as confident as ever in his powers to explain, persuade and capture the politics of the moment...

President Obama struck a populist tone, setting up the health insurance industry as his main target.
“We can’t have a system that works better for the insurance companies than it does for the American people,” he said.

So where has candidate Obama been?  As President he seems to wax and wane between campaign mode and aloof professorial mode.  He gets nowhere with anybody with the professorial mode.  He is capable of motivating people to support his positions and act when he is in campaign mode.  The real problem is his complete lack of consistency.  Campaign mode today and professor tomorrow fails to get any momentum. 

President Obama inherited an unbelievably bad situation with an incredible scope of problems that needed to be addressed and needed to be addressed quickly.  He made some really good moves.  We needed to continue the policy of preventing major bank failures, and he did that although he should have put real strings on the money.  He needed to get a stimulus passed, and he did that although it was too small and there were too many tax breaks and not enough infrastructure spending.

President Obama wanted to reform the health insurance industry, and it is badly in need of reform.  But instead of leading the way the candidate Obama would have with great inspiring rhetoric, lofty principles and real reform that he sold the American people on so that Congress would have to act.  He let Congress take the lead, he never made it clear what his plan was, he wanted bipartisanship so badly he threw his base under the bus and never really pushed single payer or a real public option.  He blew it big time.  If President Obama had gone on the campaign trail railing against the insurance companies and assuring people every day that if they liked their insurance, they would be able to keep it, we would have meaningful health care reform already.  But he didn't.  He would do go into campaign mode sporadically but not consistently.  At the same time the right wing lie machine was at work loudly every day.  It is no wonder we are where we are now on health care reform.

He is making the same mistake on financial regulatory reform.  The big banks and Wall Street institutions are about the only targets that are easier to hate than the health insurance companies.  They are arrogant, and they have no grass roots support.  All they have going for them is the huge amounts of money that they contribute to the political campaigns of both major parties.  An article in The New York Times on January 22, 2010 (here) includes the following paragraph:

Mr. Obama has signaled that he intends to take a more populist stance on financial regulation legislation in Congress, seeking to position Democrats as defenders of the people against Wall Street, and to cast Republicans as defenders of bonus-laden bankers. To that end, he proposed legislation on Jan. 21 to limit the scope and size of large financial institutions, declaring that huge banks had nearly brought down the economy by taking "huge, reckless risks in pursuit of profits...

So did he do that?  I have not seen President Obama out campaigning for financial regulatory reform.  We need this reform and with every passing day it is more likely that there will be little or no meaningful reform.  The House passed a bill in January but of course the Senate has not acted.  President Obama is once again trying to attract some Republican votes by negotiating against himself and watering down the bill to nothingness.  What he should be doing is going around the country demanding that the Senate act and that true financial regulatory reform be passed.  It should be an easy sell, but President Obama isn't even trying. 

I do not want to believe that he is not trying because of all the money that he and other Democrats get from Wall Street and the financial industry.  Nor do I want to believe that President Obama is not smart enough to learn from his mistakes on the health care bill.  But what is the reason?

As long as I am on financial and economic issues,  President Obama is failing to truly stimulate the economy with infrastructure spending.  It creates good jobs quickly, and those jobs create other jobs.  Of course, the conservatives in his own party and the Republicans have suddenly become deficit hawks at just the wrong moment in time.  But again, what could be an easier sell for President Obama than to go around the country pointing to the specific jobs that have been restored and created by the first stimulus and saying we can put more of you to work in good jobs and then people will have money to spend on going out for dinner or buying something at the local store.  With Presient Obama's skills, he could get the country to force even the Republicans to pass a strong stimulus bill. 

Where is candidate Obama when we need him?  We need him to be on the campaign trail every day.  I hope the event described in the first article I mentioned above is the start of a consistent push by President Obama to sell his policies and programs to the American people. He can do it.

Thanks for reading and please comment,

The Unabashed Liberal