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I refer to a post today by Glenn Greenwald, only because his view is a common one held by genuinely well-meaning, intelligent people in our progressive movement, so I believe it needs to be addressed.
In Glenn’s post today:
"corporate control of the Government is one of the most serious problems, if not the single most serious problem, the nation faces…. To pretend that these interests were vanquished or ‘neutralized’ here … is not just deeply misleading but, worse, helps conceal what remains the greatest threat to the democratic process: a threat that is not only stronger than ever, but has been made stronger as a result of the last several months."
I would add, as well, that the bill reeks with gender bias, making women pay more for healthcare that doesn’t even cover their reproductive healthcare needs.
Then Glenn repeats his oft-stated position on the bill:
"I was never opposed to the bill."
The corporations that write the legislation that is dutifully passed by our corrupt Congress, intentionally include enough crumbs for the masses that well-meaning folks like Glenn Greenwald feel duty-bound to remain on the sidelines and not oppose it.
But by remaining agnostic about this bill, because of some hypothetical good it is supposed to deliver to the masses — which, believe me, due to no real cost controls and meaningless enforcement provisions — will not go forward as planned — means that the plutocracy continues apace to put in place it’s peculiarly modern form of feudalism, with the rest of us serfs in the fiefdom, beholden to our corporate overlords.
Robert Reich has said of this bill, which he supported, that it is a political victory, not a substantive one. Why? Because the substantial good this bill will do, in the long run, is negligible.
Howard Fineman in Newsweek, who I am not otherwise a huge fan of, says some sensible things about HRC.
"Most Democrats voted for a version of the bill on the first round without having read, let alone digested, its thousands of pages."
Hmmmm. So we have a bill, written by an Wellpoint executive, that no one has read or understands. Let’s see where that gets us:
"We get not fundamental reform, but rather an expensive set of patches, bypasses, and trusses bolted onto the existing system… The result is a 10-year, trillion-dollar contraption full of political risk and unintended consequences ….Insurance premiums will continue to shoot up for most of us… a project as large and as complex as his health-care ‘fix’ is certain to be more costly and disruptive than anticipated, in ways no one can predict."
We only need to look at Bush’s Medicare Part D, to see its inherent limitations and exploding costs — and this program is relatively small compared to Obama’s bill, and to examine the flawed nature of the benefit provided, to see what is coming down the pike now that we have adopted this Rube Goldberg contraption, Obama’s healthcare bill.
As a liberal, I hate these corporatist bills, not because I don’t want to see people benefit, nor because I have an irrational hatred of corporations as such, but because it is clear these types of bills will end up providing substandard healthcare, along with onerous premiums, co-pays and deductibles to Americans at a deficit-exploding cost, in order to feed an already engorged private sector. This convinces the public that government is not capable of doing anything sensibly, efficiently and in a manner that benefits them personally; this is a huge falsehood, but a popular right-wing meme.
The corporate take-over of government is nearly complete. We are now serfs who must tithe to the corporations to receive our healthcare — we have no choice.
Why any progressive wouldn’t have opposed this bill outright, brought about it’s defeat, then worked to resurrect "Medicare for All," a far less costly approach that truly provides universal healthcare, is a genuine mystery to me.
How will we stand up against the corporations if we continue to cede to them more and more control over our lives, in return for a few scraps from the table? I honestly don’t get it. Do people think that now that the corporations have succeeded in cementing their stranglehold our the U.S. healthcare system, we can force them to provide us with high-quality, affordable healthcare? Really? This is laughable on its face.
Is Glenn’s position, then, an example of group-think in our movement? Perhaps it is because his position is internally inconsistent, it seems to me. And I believe that the position that we must stand by while the corporations take over more and more of our lives it is dangerous and destructive in the extreme. For this reason, I believe this position needs to be seriously examined and argued against whenever possible.
29 Comments
Thanks for turning those assumptions inside-out for a better look at them.
Rec’d, tweeted and facebooked!
Amen
I also find this to be true and it bothers me too. Unfortunately I am at a loss to offer an explanation for it. You are right to say that this inconsistency must be called out and that we must endeavor to understand why it is happening.
Glenn often writes from an outside observational standpoint about others’ hypocritical or contradictory behavior, making broad generalisations which ring true, proven by specific examples, sometimes devastatingly so. However, in his attribution of motive (e.g. the “weakness” of Democrats), I sometimes wonder if, although it has the appearance of being true, it is only due to our inability to see the true intent of the actors that make it seem so. In Obama’s case on HCR, his ability to betray us was actually his political strength. How many Dems were in on the ruse? Greenwald also identified for us the ‘rotating villains’ scheme, the corporation donations motive etc – so why does he attribute ‘weakness’ to ‘the Democrats’?
In Greenwald’s field, he unfailingly points out our nation’s deviations from the Constitution, but then often asks, is this what the nation wants? His strength (or aim) it seems to me, is not so much to offer solutions, but identify fault lines.
For me, I never find an adequate explanation of WHY, particularly in Obama’s case, he would spend years getting to power, only to betray his campaign promises, even when – as in the case of the public option – it truly was possible to achieve. Maybe this is something only history can address, but it is the major question I remain with when I look at the fault lines.
I myself believe that, politically, an individual will create for society what s/he advocates and, more importantly, votes for. I will not vote for the Democrats again as the LOTEs, as they have purposefully mislead and betrayed us. Maybe another politician will again too, but I will not knowingly have contributed to it. By extension, if one thinks that “corporate control of the Government is one of the most serious problems, if not the single most serious problem, the nation faces” then you must not support a bill that consolidates that control, or you yourself will be creating that corporate control.
Thanks for this post. I have appreciated all your recent comments on HCR and shared your views.
It doesn’t take rocket science to explain Obama’s many betrayals, lies, and active opposition to the left. He was always a corporate Democrat, always an extreme conservative. He was never on our side, not even nominally. But he had to make a show to the peasants so he could get elected to head the executive branch. Power is his only concern. Nothing else matters to him.
Yes. In other words you hate the bill because it won’t work. Moreover it enriches and further empowers the cronies that have an interest in the bill NOT WORKING.
All I can say as to why people who should know better go along with this crap is that some people utterly lack the ability to say no. They value incrementalism over nothing even when the incrementalism is actually going backward. I had no idea Greenwald supported this bill. Astonishing.
Glenn did not support the bill. He just did not condemn it. He took the view that there was enough good that he could see why some would be in favor despite the bad. The feeling I get from reading him is that he personally would not have voted for it if he were in a position to vote, but his official statements are neutral, not in favor.
All the dumb fuckers — Congresscritters as well as their legislative aides — had to do was come on over the FDL for a concise and comprehensive guide to the legislation in all its versions.
When will they learn?
I very reluctantly supported passing the bill, but only because the alternative of failure could have been worse.
Nevertheless, it is painful to see so many progressives get carried away in thinking this reform law is as historic as Social Security, Medicare, and Civil Rights, and your post is one of my all-time faves!
Thanks for saying much of what I was thinking. Robert Reich is a heartbreaker-and Glenn Greenwald-you took on the mighty Glenn-whom my spouse knows is one of the few I respect anymore-and I couldn’t agree more. It takes guts to just say the truth.
It stinks. It ain’t gonna get better. But thanks for the crumbs! We only will have to pay 2-4times as much! They can’t stop us from giving all our money to premiums anymore! No siree, Bob. Win-win! YEAH team.
I thought that this “HCR” Bill was a disaster even before they got it passed, because it does nothing what. so. ever. to rein in healthcare costs, or improve the quality of healthcare. In fact, it’ll result in runaway healthcare costs, because costs will rise so steeply that many people who already bought healthcare prior to this bill will be forced to ratchet down what they’ve got in the way of healthcare. Plus, the bill will leave millions of people still uninsured. Also, even if a person with a pre-existing condition supposedly can’t be denied, that person’s premiums, etc., can and undoubtedly will be ratcheted up to the point where s/he can’t afford to pay them. No, folks, this is not what we had in mind when we wanted badly-needed healthcare reform. As some people are saying, this is a corporatist bill that caters only to the insurance companies and Big Pharma, not the ordinary, everyday American people. Moreover, the fact that abortion rights were hijacked in order to get this stinker of a bill passed is equally, if not more horrible and disgusting. We as a society, and women and girls, will pay for it in a big way.
All I can say is…thanks, Obama, for killing single payer, and thanks, Dennis Kucinich, for capitulating to the rest of the Democrats, including Obama and voting in this toxic piece of legislature.
Obama and Kucinich…if you’re listening; You, the White House and everybody else in Congress could’ve put together a healthcare reform bill that entailed Single Payer with Universal Healthcare, which would’ve been the real way to go. Instead, you guys took the easy way out and decided to hand us this crappy train wreck of an “HCR” bill and told us that it’s better than nothing. The fact that Progressives and Liberals got fooled into thinking that this bill was “better than nothing” or “a start” is mind-boggling. The Liberals and Progressives have been suckered and played for fools once again, and they either cannot or will not face up to that. Shame, shame!
You are right to point out that the Health Insurance bill is no more than a symptom of the greater calamity of corporatocracy that is gradually putting the Middle Class in a death grip. I don’t think the Dems have fully appreciated our complaint, but I recommend we continue to complain and throw counterpoints at them with every opportunity. I enjoyed the read and I agree full heartedly, we should not let the progressives off the hook for their part in bringing this (HIR) and other pieces of dung to life. I have written the Dems off completely.
Yes, you are right to point out that Glenn did not say anywhere that he supported the bill. He also would not come out against it.
In a later post today, he reiterated some of the pros and cons, as he saw them and said, \”Weighing those factors is difficult and, at least for me, produces ambivalence.\”
This has been his position all along, and I understand that there is a conflict for some people between the several plausibly good things in the bill vs the fact that it ensures that we will never have any choice other than private, for-profit healthcare, continuing a dysfunctional, venal and heartless system.
I still don\’t understand his indecisiveness about this legislation, however, because no one understands better than Glenn that Big Money now controls our political system, and ordinary people are being bled dry by the big corporations and their army of lobbyists with fistfuls of cash. This bill increases this outcome exponentially.
That Glenn remained agnostic about this bill, because he quite clearly sees this, is a mystery to me. I know he is not in any way implicated in the type of opinions put forth by the Salonista\’s, his blog only inhabiting some space over at Salon, but to not have an opinion when the page surrounding your blog is filled with articles touting the great features of the bill, the wrong-headedness of its opponents, in addition to the editor\’s ringing endorsement, to me, anyway, is strange.
Glenn likes to remain agnostic on some issues that he has no strong opinion about, but this bill was something that he himself stated would be of enormous import. Yet he had no opinion. Very curious.
With regard to twocents question: ” WHY, particularly in Obama’s case, he would spend years getting to power, only to betray his campaign promises…?”
The answer, in my opinion, is that the guy was a three dollar bill from the start. He’s not in fact a Democrat; look at his admiration of Reagan, his agnosticism on Social Security, his closeness to Cass Sunstein, his willingness to trash the teachers’ union … the list goes on. For me the early warning signs were his folding on telecom immunity, and also (looking further back in time) the sleazy tactics he used to eliminate his primary opponents so he could run unopposed for state senate in Illinois. (And don’t try to tell me about Chicago politics; I lived there for six years.)
He has accomplished what he always meant to accomplish, giving scope to his ‘inner Republican,’ and we are all the losers thereby.
I don’t know what damage can be repaired in the near term; only this: watch out for Social Security and Medicare! I am sure in his mind he is turning over a ‘judgement of history’ to the effect that “Just as only Republican Nixon could have opened China, only Democrat Obama could have undone the social contract embodied in the great New Deal and Great Society programs ….”
That’s how he wants to be remembered by History. Depend on it.
Nixon earned his right wing chops when he persecuted American ‘communists’. Obama has no liberal track record to give him immunity if he attacks Social Security. He may not need it. Anyone notice the recent cave by Democrats & the left over HRC?
My guess is that the poobahs at salon reminded Glenn Greenwald how the obamabots nearly brought buzzflash to its knees for some perceived criticism of then-candidate obama. the astroturfing operation that they have built since then is quite formidable (see kos, daily) and my guess is that no one who’s trying to make a buck wants to risk drawing their fire.
I won’t name them, but there are some pretty obvious astro-turfers over there, it seems. I can’t visit the place any more; it just makes me ill. Someone here used the term ‘koslings’ instead of ‘kossacks’ a few days ago; seems about right to me.
Sadly, I don’t see any other possible answer either. But the implications of this orchestrated swindle are horrific to contemplate.
Sadly, I agree.
No, because by definition, groupthink would have required Greenwald to display (or feign) ignorance of all the problems with the legislation before it passed, which he did not.
What is going on now, my friends, is the assimilation of dissenting voices back into the DEMOCRATIC PARTY to ensure that the passage of something, anything, labeled “reform” translates into victory – or at least minimal losses – in November.
I wrote about it yesterday; the media show must go on, and we’re now watching Act One: the “winning” side (Dems) trumpet victory in order to bring the disillusioned back into the fold. The “losing” side (GOP) attacks the process, the results, the weight of the paper on which the legislation was printed – you name it – to rile and perhaps bring back those in their ranks who were smart enough to see that obstruction wouldn’t get us – as a nation – anywhere.
In short, in the aftermath of this legislation’s passage, we are now learning who the real progressives and GOP reformers are, and who remain in thrall of the failed political calculations that brought us to this place.
The Malcontent
Greenwald is usually quite open about his motives for taking any particular position. In this case, he claims “ambivalence” about this bill because he appears to believe the party hype — expanded coverage, outlawing rejection due to pre-existing conditions — both of which have more holes than a slice of Swiss cheese.
That Greenwald must know that these concessions by the industry are not going to go forward as advertised, ie, they both are designed to allow the industry to play the system in their favor, I still don’t get his refusal to speak out against this travesty of a bill.
I just don’t get it, unless Glenn unconsciously can’t stomach being “Jane-Hamshered” by the sell-outs in the media and the blogosphere. That doesn’t sound like him though. The man has guts; I’ve seen it time and again.
So I’m simply mystified.
Here is an e-mail exchange I had with Glenn Greenwald which was instructive to me that he has little problem with standing firm on absurdity:
It was basically an exercise in evasion, condescension, non-sequiturs, and jousting with strawmen. If anyone can parse where my questions were answered, I’d love to have it explained to me, because as it stands I still can’t make any practical sense out of his position on the issue; other than to pretend like personhood and Rights aren’t inextricably linked.
Perhaps living out of the country has some influence on his perception of the high stakes for the people who really need health CARE reform, not health insurance reform?
Like you, however, I have no idea why Greenwald takes this stance on this issue.
I believe this is a great source of our troubles. Political calculation necessarily means gaging one’s actions on the the assumed actions of another. At its basic level, this is a re-active mode to a theoretical assumption, leading to many negative consequences. One is never actively engaged in the pursuit of a positively intended goal. For the most part, I thought during the campaign that Obama was engaged in the latter. He was not. He asked for our faith, then abused our hope and gave faith a bad name. But regardless, I feel we must find a new path to remain positively focused on the goal without the detours of political compromise of the magnitude that has gone on with HCR, not to mention Obama’s wars, prisons and more. Perhaps this will lead to lost elections in the short term, but I feel it is the only way that leads to (and I can barely say the word)… change.
Greenwald is very articulate, probing and has gained much influence during his (relatively) short career blogging. I also wish he had been more on our side in this debate. I certainly wasn’t happy with his take on the Citizen’s United ruling, either. But it’s healthier to listen to different opinions as long as they are reasonable. No one is ever going to be in total agreement with any other person all of the time. I’m a bit more disappointed in the way Paul Krugman has been acting. He seems to be morphing into a beltway darling in front of our very eyes. Frankly, I don’t care what the view is from whatever exotic clime he’s typing from. I notice though that hit pieces like the Newsweek article and the unsourced admin quotes about him have dissipated. Probably a cause and effect. And he was one of the (few) heroes in the very dark years of the last decade.
Yeah, I didn’t agree on Glenn’s support for the decision on Citizen’s United either, but he based it on his understanding of the intent of the framers and the wording of the Constitution and I respect him for standing by his principles, even though I don’t agree.
As far as civil liberties are concerned, he is not afraid to stake out an unpopular position and stick with it, come hell or high water. I respect that. The man has great intelligence along with a big heart. But, like everybody else, he has his blind spots, and I think his refusal to call bullshit on this bill, when he understands the damage it will do, is one of them.
Quite right, El Dude. Back during the primary, the rap on Hillary was that she was too much a corporatist; but I honestly believe that both she and Bill still hold in a corner of their hearts a genuine concern for the average people in this country, and a desire to serve same. Yes they both want power; yes Bill did some terrible things (GATT and NAFTA loom large); but their interest in power was at some level to use it for good.
As you so correctly point out, Obama cares only for power.
Quite right, El Dude. Back during the primary, the rap on Hillary was that she was too much a corporatist; but I honestly believe that both she and Bill still hold in a corner of their hearts a genuine concern for the average people in this country, and a desire to serve same. Yes they both want power; yes Bill did some terrible things (GATT and NAFTA loom large); but their interest in power was at some level to use it for good.
As you so correctly point out, Obama cares only for power.
Of course he was evasive. He has his spot on Morning Joe and his status on MSNBC to protect. Actually getting into a debate with you instead of just having a position might danger his precious “access”
While I’m disappointed that Greenwald didn’t come out against the health care bill, his was, as people have pointed out, a pretty neutral statement. If he hadn’t taken time to delve into the particulars of the bill and how it is likely to affect different groups of Americans, it’s quite possible he doesn’t have a strong opinion. What’s more, he may, in contrast to a whole lot of folks, be reluctant to shoot his mouth off when he doesn’t know anywhere near enough to have an opinion worth writing about. He is very knowledgeable about the things he does write about, which suggests to me that he wants to do his homework before expressing an opinion.