That wickedly satirical Ambrose Bierce described politics as "the conduct of public affairs for private advantage."
Bierce vanished to Mexico nearly a hundred years ago -- to the relief of the American political class of his day, one assumes -- but in an eerie way he was forecasting America's political culture today. It seems like most efforts to reform a system that's gone awry -- to clean house and make a fresh start -- end up benefiting the very people who wrecked it in the first place.
Which is why Bierce, in his classic little book, The Devil's Dictionary, defined reform as "a thing that mostly satisfies reformers opposed to reformation."
So we got health care reform this week -- but it's a far cry from reformation. You can't blame President Obama for celebrating what he did get -- he and the Democrats needed some political points on the scoreboard. And imagine the mood in the White House if the vote had gone the other way; they would have been cutting wrists instead of cake.
Give the victors their due: the bill Obama signed expands coverage to many more people, stops some very ugly and immoral practices by the health insurance industry that should have been stopped long ago, and offers a framework for more change down the road, if there's any heart or will left to fight for it.
But reformation? Hardly. For all their screaming and gnashing of teeth, the insurance companies still make out like bandits. Millions of new customers, under penalty of law, will be required to buy the companies' policies, feeding the insatiable greed of their CEO's and filling the campaign coffers of the politicians they wine and dine. Profits are secure; they don't have to worry about competition from a public alternative to their cartel, and they can continue to scam us without fear of antitrust action.
The big drug companies bought their protection before the fight even began, when the White House agreed that if they supported Obama's brand of health care reform -- not reformation -- they could hold onto their monopoly. No imports of cheaper drugs from abroad, no prescriptions filled at a lower price by our friendly Canadian neighbors to the north.
And let's not forget another, gigantic health care winner: a new report from the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity says the battle for reform has been "a bonanza" for the lobbying industry. According to the Center's analysis, "About 1,750 businesses and organizations hired about 4,525 lobbyists, total -- eight for each member of Congress -- and spent at least $1.2 billion to influence health care bills and other issues."
But while we're at it, a cheer for the federal student loan overhaul -- Democrats managed to pass that reform with an end run around powerful lobbyists, cleverly nestling it in the health care reconciliation package.
Nonetheless, under pressure from the lending industry, it, too, was watered down from its original intent. The three Democratic senators who voted against -- Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor -- have all received campaign contributions from Nelnet, the student loan company based in Nelson's home state of Nebraska, or its lobbyists.
(And would you be amazed to learn that one of the student loan industry's lobbyists used to be Blanche Lincoln's chief of staff? The Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call described Kelly Bingel as Lincoln's "alter ego," and cited a former colleague saying Bingel was "first on the list of the Senator's callbacks," words that would sound like heaven to any Washington lobbyist's ears.)
Another case of reform gone off track: this week, a year and a half after Wall Street brought us so close to fiscal hell we could smell the brimstone, a crippled little financial regulation bill seems to be hobbling out of the wreckage, but still faces an array of well-armed forces gunning for it.
No wonder. In the 2008 and 2010 election cycles, members of the Senate Banking Committee -- which sent the bill to Congress this week -- received more than $39 million from Wall Street and the banks; members of the House Financial Services Committee raked in more than $21 million -- so far. Just how serious do you think they're going to be about true reform?
Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd of Connecticut has sounded like a champion of reform ever since he announced he will not run for reelection. It's about time. Since 2005, his top ten campaign contributors have included Citigroup, AIG, Merrill Lynch and the now deceased Bear Stearns, all front-line players in bringing on the financial calamity.
Then there are the Republicans, shamelessly hawking their favors en masse to the highest bidder. The website Politico.com reports that the reelection campaign of Tennessee Senator Bob Corker -- who's one of the key negotiators on financial reform -- sent an e-mail to Wall Street lobbyists and others soliciting contributions of up to $10,000 for a chance to meet or grab a meal with the senator.
Informed of the e-mail, Corker was shocked -- shocked! -- saying the e-mail was "grotesque and inappropriate." But did House Republican leader John Boehner think it was inappropriate last week when he advised the American Bankers Association to fight back against the proposed rules and regulations?
This is, of course, the same John Boehner who in the summer of 1995 walked around the floor of the House of Representatives handing out checks to his fellow Republicans -- checks from a tobacco company. And the same John Boehner who was the grateful recipient of campaign contributions from the four Native American tribes represented by Jack Abramoff, the corrupt lobbyist currently cooling his heels in a Federal corrections facility.
So wouldn't it have been fascinating to have been a fly on the wall earlier this year when Boehner sat down for drinks with Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase? Reportedly, he invited Dimon and the rest of the financial community to pony up the cash and see what good things follow.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Republicans already were receiving an increasing share of campaign contributions from the Street. In the game of reform, it's the political version of loading the dice.
We can't know for sure what Ambrose Bierce would have made of all this; what The Devil's Dictionary author would say about the current DC scams. But he might have agreed that the only answer to organized money is organized people. That would be one hell of a reformation.
Bill Moyers is managing editor and Michael Winship is senior writer of the weekly public affairs program Bill Moyers Journal, which airs Friday night on PBS. Check local airtimes or comment at The Moyers Blog at www.pbs.org/moyers.
Simon Johnson: Jamie Dimon: The Most Dangerous Man In America
There are two kinds of bankers to fear. The first is incompetent and runs a big bank. The second type of banker is much more dangerous. This person runs a big bank and -- here's the danger -- makes it even bigger.
Robert Kuttner: Next, Banking Reform
It was a pleasure to see President Obama exercise some leadership and muscle towards health reform. Now, we need to see a similar display of presidential leadership on financial reform.
Francine Hardaway: Don't Stop Fighting for Finance Reform
Many thousands of five-year adjustable mortgages will reset this year, and 25 percent of homeowners are still underwater in their mortgages even as these resets continue to occur.
you do Mr. Moyers. You are one of
my "american heroes".
Thank you sir for all you have done.
It's a mandate to purchase a private product from a company, simply because you exist as a human being.
WAY different from car insurance - you're not born with a car and have to be licensed to drive by the state.
"Should the United States someday suffer a budget crisis, it will be hard not to conclude that Obama and his allies sowed the seeds, because they ignored conspicuous warnings. "
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/03/29/planting_the_seeds_of_disaster_104952.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/28/AR2010032802354.html
I'm Canadian so I can't do much for American politics, but you Progressives need to start rallying together. The Tea Baggers have turned the Republicans to be even more radical (Mitt Romney, McCain and other Moderate Republicans have shifted to the right recently).
Progressives need to make the Democrats more radical as well, by shifting them to the left. We need less Centrists and more FDRS and Lyndon B Johnsons.
In the next phase of fundamental change, all Americans would be confronted with choosing between empire and imperial ways (wars, more wars, and corporatocracy), or renew the American People's Republic, the way it was intended and founded in 1776. The choice between the 2 forms of national development is becoming ever more clearly and sharply defined.
So what would you call a movement to reconstitute a new American Republic?
This generation of Americans must reclaim sovereignty of the PEOPLE over the affairs of this nation. A new national party convention must be convened to lay out the new foundation of a new people's republic. New principles must be formulated and laid out. The old corporate hegemony is anti-human, amoral, dysfunctional and destructive of human society. The American people must rise from their somnulent state of complicity, reassert and reclaim their sovereignty. Current scattered organized activities by teabaggers reveal an amorphous assembly of "frontier individualists", racists, religious fundamentalists, nihilists, neo-fascists, and a few other protest groups. None of them seem to display much social vision, social consciousness or leadership. They uniformly display revulsion against the old regime, but no accord on what new vision should replace it. Such is the recruiting raw material for unscrupulous corporate neo-fascist politicians to emerge. Socially conscious Americans must come together and act, and not let that happen.
A new core principle of successful socioeconomic organizing principle has been demonstrated by the leadership of Nobel Laureate Dr. Muhammad Yunus. His proven vision of "social business" should be a core theme for a keynote address by Dr. Yunus for a new socially oriented new party convention of hundreds of leading thinkers and leaders. This will not be easy. But it will be the right beginning.
Unfortunately, this middle class was built on the blood, sweat, and tears of the natives and the blacks, so what is currently happening to that class of people should not be surprising.
http://truecostblog.com/2009/08/09/countries-with-universal-healthcare-by-date/
The held belief by some progressives that the only way to achieve universal healthcare is through single-payer system is incomplete information.
There is another held myth that cost control on healthcare can only be achieved through single-payer system. Please review the link below.
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0934556.html
The current healthcare reform bill signed into law has put US on the trajectory of universal healthcare through insurance mandate by 2014.
US is more or less following the German model.
Healthcare expenditure per capita.
Germany (insurance mandate) – $ 3,171
Belgium (insurance mandate) - $ 3,133
Austria (insurance mandate) -$3,418
Canada (single-payer) - $3,173
Norway (single-payer) - $4,080
Sweden (single-payer) - $2,828
Apparently not so, as Germany seems to have a public-private hybrid system.
Wiki based on a WHO report: Currently 85% of the population is covered by a basic health insurance plan provided by statute, which provides a standard level of coverage. The remainder opt for private health insurance, which frequently offers additional benefits. According to the World Health Organization, Germany's health care system was 77% government-funded and 23% privately funded as of 2004. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_in_Germany
That's why we need public plan options in the US as wel. Democrats should pass Medicare buy-in for all and set stage for effective reductions in costs and premiums. Mandated insurance without government provided plans and options will sink the system, and we could be worse off than status quo before the industry written HIR that has been passed into law.
The current signed healthcare bill into law has public exchange. The public exchange is fashioned like Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. That is the public plan.
German universal healthcare started in 1883 and evolved to its current status. The universal healthcare signed into law by President Obama is the foundation for its future evolution.
How each country finances its healthcare system is a matter of public record that is available to all and sundry. It only requires to Google “universal healthcare + country + finance” and the answer is right there.
When a party can depend on a vote no matter what it does, it does not create an environment for an effective democracy, but rather sows the ground for an ever-growing plutocracy- which many of us are beginning to see happening (especially given the recent Supreme Court decision). More and more every day the lines are becoming blurred between the branches that were originally formed to create checks and balances. In addition, though there is an illusion of discourse, both parties fight very much for the same ends- corporate financing for re-election (or for the continuation of power).
Financial reform needs to begin in our government- even before wall street. Money needs to be removed from politics, and until it is, it will continue to muffle the voice of the people, and without a doubt destroy this last withering rose of democracy completely.
Remove yourself from your party. Vote instead on issues, and when corporate interests are chosen over your own, fight- no matter which party is to blame.
From another post:
Oh just found this on the Huffington Post on how the Goldman Sachs backed thirdway.org apparently had lobbyists for CIGNA and other insurance agencies do its write-up on healthcare (recommending they do away with the public option).
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/08/third-ways-anti-public-he_n_212816.html
That is just what they did on healthcare. How do you think these organizations led by prominent bankers from GS (their co-chair and writer of 100k checks to them) are going to “advise” 15 lawmakers and cabinet members on their board, on reform?
Google Heller’s and the other financial cartel thirdway.org “trustees’”donations to the democratic party including Obama. Their trustees are listed on the website and include 12 lawmakers and three cabinet members. People who are supposed to regulate GS.
Any tea partiers around who want to look at this organization? The moderate and progressive press doesn’t seem to want to. This time around it won’t be about watering down healthcare but the financial reforms.
Thirdway.org another public service brought to you by Goldman Sachs!
Their motto should be: Who owns your country baby?
However, as long as I'm comfortable, I think I will continue to read Moyers, tsk, tsk, at the shame of it all, post an occasional comment about how ignorant we (including me) are, and, after suffering a momentary bout of guilt, watch or read an advertisement or commercial that will successfully coax my urge to buy the latest technological toy, and have a cup of coffee.
After that I will mow my monoculture lawn that replaced Nature's paradise ( I'm told it was ugly before it was destroyed) and check then my bank balance to see how I can leverage it satisfy my consumer urges, and then buy it while figuring out how to get rid of the still-working but relatively new junk that no helps me maintain my status with my neighbors.
Gee, isn't life grand. I'm glad Moyers allows me to feel guilty every now and then. It makes me feel like a well-rounded human. What about you?