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We have sufficient data points to indicate to progressives that the Democratic Party under Obama has no interest in viable, sustainable consensus solutions to the problems of unemployment, Afghanistan or Iraq, the financial system, big pharma or the death grip of health insurers, part of the finance sector itself.
When the Democrats have laid out on the table their desperation for a bill, they gave up their negotiating position. And by forfeiting any principle other than a win, they’ve trashed the values upon which they were elected.
Things are bad now, but they can be made worse. If the health insurance welfare act of 2010 is enacted into law, odds are that the Democrats will not be in any position to amend bad law to improve it. To the contrary, cutting Medicare, off loading Medicaid requirements on cash strapped states, and imposing an individual mandate to purchase private insurance cannot be mitigated by the vestigial public options that remain on the table.
Obama has shown his hand in that he privileges his promise that people can keep their current plan over his promise to bend the cost curve. Pelosi ran interference for this when she denied Weiner’s vote on Medicare for All, claiming that it would violate the president’s promise.
In the absence of a viable Republican challenge, the Democrats have taken steps to occupy the vacuum left by their excised, formerly "legitimate" wing. This has meant that the center of gravity within the Democrats is represented by Rahm Emmanuel, and that the party leadership sees themselves as capable of being ensconced as the party of corporate America, picking up the Reagan project of class warfare where the GOP faltered.
If we must choose between providing a partial modicum of burdensome health care to a few tens of millions of people that is predicated on bailing out the health insurance vampires, then my read is that it is better to figure out a way to kill the vampires than to guarantee them a permanent supply of blood, building on Bush II’s Medicare, Part D, as in debacle.
There is not going to be a public option that comes anywhere near close to accomplishing the goals that progressive emotions have invested in it. It will not even be a toe hold towards that. Fewer people will die needlessly if the health insurers are allowed to continue down their current path and literally choke on their own greed by raising prices and denying treatment. As the economy continues to falter, then it will be the business that employ people in what productive capacity is left which will be at the forefront of demanding health reform to preserve their dwindling profits.
Obama must fail on this so that he can be taught a lesson from the left that there will be no free ride, that a third Bush administration will not be tolerated, that bailouts for the corrupt financial sector cannot masquerade as economic policy. Unless progressives can identify a populist challenge to Obama’s inclination to take us for granted, he will continue to service his corporate patrons and will most likely forfeit his majority to the tea baggers.
If we have to choose between offering up crummy health care to tens of millions through artifice, coercion and subterfuge thus giving the store back to the wing nuts, and doing nothing, then the clear choice is to do nothing.
61 Comments
Excellent diary.
My thought, FWIW: Sometimes, it doesn’t matter why you get the right answer.
As in, guessing luckily on a multiple-choice question or on lottery numbers.
The tea baggers may impress no one here with their reasoning power. But they’re ultimately right about what is shaping up to be Obamacare. It sucks for ordinary Americans and should be aborted.
Unfortunately, it is like so much other legislation; it’ll pass with the pronouncement ‘it’s the best we can do at this time and we’ll revisit it as results become clear. But you can enhance our ability to revisit by electing and re-electing Democrats to Congress’.
I hope Sanders and one or two other progressive Senators can be persuaded to put a match to this travesty of reform. I agree that we need to let the private insurance industry choke on their own greed. That’s a perfect analogy, and it’s exactly what will happen eventually. Killing this bill moves their day of reckoning forward a bit, and that’s a good thing.
“But you can enhance our ability to revisit by electing and re-electing Democrats to Congress’.”
I have to vigorously disagree. This is the worst thing we can do.
As this excellent post points out, the current centers of Democratic power are, effectively, the corporatist wing of the Republican Party, now that the American oligarchs have abandoned the wingnut rump that is all that remains of the GOP. I will not vote for Goldman-Sachs, City Group, United Health, and the rest simply because they have rebranded themselves with a cartoon donkey.
We must draw the line. Since at least Carter we have been accepting Democratic “moderates” that concede more and more to the Right, with inevitably disastrous results. No more! I will not vote for ANY Democrat as such. I’ll vote only for professed liberals–regardless of party affiliation–and for incumbents only if they have demonstrated liberal track records. I will actively campaign against ANYONE ELSE. If more crisis is what it takes to bring real change, then so be it. If massive losses, as in Virginia, are the price we pay to get our party back, then so be it.
For too long we have let ourselves be put off with the “half a loaf is better than none” argument. It’s time to reply that our party is a day late and a dollar short.
When I said “health insurance welfare act,” I meant health insurers welfare act.
It didn’t take Stupak for us to realize that this bill is an abortion that is only going to get worse.
Right now, I’m hoping Lieberman will do us a favor and vote against cloture, as he’s threatening to do. I suspect that’s a vain hope, of course, because there isn’t a lie too big for Joe to tell.
I especially liked this comment:
This whole diary dovetails well with what I was thinking over at Orange…
See you people still think you can influence what happens in Washington by voting. One day maybe you will wake up and find out that all you are doing is switching assholes. You will live by whatever they pass because you have no say over that. Voting Republican next time is just asking for worse problems in the next few years. Voting Democrat is asking for more of the same. You can’t win no matter what you do.
That’s what they said in the Soviet Union in 1989.
Health insurance is NOT “health care”! It’s a financial instrument designed to PAY FOR health care by means of SHARED RISK.
A weak public option will not have the enrolled risk pool large enough to have the ability to negotiate lower costs with health providers.
The government needs to either enlarge MEDICARE for all so that healthier, younger citizens, PAYING INTO THE SYSTEM, grow the risk pool.
Or
Negotiate and regulate all costs between ALL health care providers and insurance companies, public or private. Then, with a level playing field, insurance companies can compete on price and SERVICE.
This is not brain surgery, we couldn’t afford it if it was.
Congressmember Weiner put it best on Rachel Maddow with Howard Dean this evening, conservative Democrats are talking out of both sides of their mouths as they demand cost savings but rule out all significant cost savings measures, namely a vigorous publicly administered health finance program.
Both Weiner and Senator Sanders indicated that the bill’s position might be intractable and that a fall back position might be preferable. Preexisting conditions, excisions and whatever business practice regulations are in place mean nothing so long as there are no cost controls that prevent people being priced out of insurance that was formerly denied them.
We voted for change. We’re NOT getting it. Rep.Alan Grayson has an on-line petition http://www.stopsenatestalling.com which proposes changing filibuster rules to require only 55 votes for cloture,rather than 60.Many bills are being held up by the threat of filibusters, not just so-called Health-Reform.
Totally agree that unless significantly changed, this bill is probably worse than no bill at all & we MUST draw the line. Support only Progressives (Sanders,Grayson,Boxer,Weiner,etc.) No donations to generic Dem. groups like
DSCC. It doesn’t cost The Corporation any more to buy a Repub. “no” vote than it does to buy a Dem. “no public option” vote.
The healthcare bill we are likely to see should be killed. It has overwhelming negatives. The few positives like prohibitions against rescission and prior conditions should be spun off into a much smaller, but better, bill.
“The tea baggers may impress no one here with their reasoning power. But they’re ultimately right about what is shaping up to be Obamacare”
How odd that such unimpressive intellects were right, and the geniuses of the Left wrong.
It seems generally agreed that whatever we get (and certainly what’s on the table now) will make things worse, as was predicted by the people who (unfortunately) were shouted down with shrill cries of “heartless brainwashed corporate serf!” Bummer.
“Voting Republican next time is just asking for worse problems in the next few years. Voting Democrat is asking for more of the same.” Really? In the last Congressional and Presidential elections voting Republican would have got us more of the same: it was voting Democrat that got us worse problems.
“We voted for change. We’re NOT getting it.”
Yeah, you are: things are getting worse. That’s “change.”
You have to stop thinking that there’s a “good” Party and a “bad” Party. iremember54 is right about just “switching assholes.” The fight is not Rep vs. Dem: it’s Citizens vs. Government.
“It seems generally agreed that whatever we get (and certainly what’s on the table now) will make things worse, as was predicted by the people who (unfortunately) were shouted down with shrill cries of “heartless brainwashed corporate serf!” Bummer.”
Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa?
listen you fucking insect, you just blew it, a little cortical flapping there cat-brain?
Speaking as a pro union liberal, kiss my ass.
Not Citizens vs. Government, CITIZENS vs. THE CORPORATIONS (and their corporate-controlled ‘elected’ representatives.)
Under our legal system Corporations have the same rights as people. This should
be #1 on the list of things we need to change.
You sure got that right. For example, one of the main drivers of modern Wall St hyper-malevolence was the broad shift from partnerships to limited liability coporations. Yet fixing that is not even a speck on the horizon.
Speaking generally, eradicating the fraud of corporate “personhood” and restoring the proper Constitutional place of corporations as special entities allowed to exist for only limited times for limited purposes, which is perhaps THE most necessary reform, is, to say the least, not “on the table”, even on the wish list of activist progressives.
I understand your anger, fortnight. It must be really galling to see the “dittoheads” proven right.
Truth to tell, it was an easy prediction. Regardless of the merits of some form of universal health care it was a forgone conclusion that Congress would screw it up.
Yeah, too bad your folks on the other side couldn’t see a way to participate constructively. I guess you just loved seeing people forced into bankruptcy because they had the audacity to try to get care when they or a loved one became sick rather than doing something that helped to promote the general welfare.
Marcos and others here are realizing that we are not engaged in a fair fight for change in this country. The corporations, through their puppet government, make the rules, set the agenda and control the message. The behavior of the Democratic establishment and the Obama Administration has been nothing short of despicable. To my chagrin and many others, the two are the same and we should have known it long before the election with the FISA issues and telecom immunity. We would be fools to play their game any further. With health care they have been successful in draining all of the power out of their PO proposals to guarantee failure. This after attempting to placate us with the idea of a robust PO after they took the real threat to the insurance companies (and also the medical industry in general), Single Payer Health Care, off the table. The progressives and liberals in congress, the closest thing we have to an ally, have caved once again for the good of the party. They are still playing the game. I agree with Marcos, we must change the game. We have to be the seed of obstructionism from the left. The machine is well oiled and growing, thanks to the Democratic Party establishment, not in spite of it. We must find ways to sabotage this organized march off the cliff before we loose all vestige of liberty and justice for all. Blocking this health care bill is our first chance to throw a wrench in the works. We need to develop our own game, and if it means shooting the Democratic Establishment down, so be it. One wonders if the trolls that comprise that organization would wise up if they lost a few because of the left. Probably not, but their accelerated extinction could not be a bad thing, in my book. Who knows, if they lost their majorities in congress in 2010, they might just have to start listening to the left in this country. And if they did so, it is probable that a new set of Democrats with the well being of the American people in mind could actually get us the change that we thought we might get with the last guy. Our pathway to real and substantive change in this country is much longer and more tenuous than we thought 10 months ago. But, we need to be “fired up, and ready to go”, to turn on a phrase that a famous man said recently, and we will have to be the change that we want because he doesn’t seem to care that much about what he said.
Marcos! I sure agree with everything you’ve said. I see the looming specter of corporate fascism more every day. If they can’t see their way clear to give the America people a way out of this insurance takeover, which I believe, is an unconstitutional requirement to plump the coffers of big insurance, the bill isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.
Terrible that they wasted all this time on it…oh well. I’ve had to throw away plenty of work in my time…at least they’re compensated for theirs!
Every one of Obama’s bills/laws passed has been too little relief for the American people; or none at all while they pat themselves on the back.
A pattern is emerging here and I don’t like it.
Now comes more war expense on our backs…a war tax. All for the UNOCAL oil pipeline thru Afghanistan…which nobody mentions.
Too bad the righties point fingers only when it’s not THEIR party doing it. If they had twigged to what Bush was doing,we wouldn’t be in this mess. I’m glad we on the left aren’t so blinkered.
The house of Lords or the gods on Mt Olympus are going to crush US under the bootheel of corporate slavery, that much is clearer every day.
US Troops Deployed to Protect Gas Pipeline?
It’s a natural gas pipeline, the configuration of our forces doesn’t really seem to indicate that protecting that pipeline route is all that central to our deployment, and that particular pipeline is of almost no use to the U.S., and significantly more important to Eastern European countries.
Speaking the truth to power only tells them what they already know.
The only thing that politicians understand is being confronted with the likelihood of failure or being voted out of office.
Progressives have lost the ability to play the inside/outside game since the Veal Pen has been groomed to domesticity.
Folks like Jane Hamsher risk the same fate, so long as they only rely on “public option please,” with out the rejoinder of “and make it robust, or else we’ll kill your fucking bill.”
I’ve oft considered that the extension of liability protection by the public trust to corporations should come with a correlated set of operational parameters and restrictions that require the corporation to serve the public trust.
Something like a modified 501(c)(3) type of corporation for all enterprises that want to incorporate; narrow charters, community question, etc. Such that you’re welcome to undertake any enterprise for-profit that you like, to serve whatever purpose you desire, so long as it’s a sole-proprietorship.
There’s just too big a gap right now in the negotiation over that liability protection, the public trust gives up too much, and doesn’t get enough in return to stave off exploitation of that trust.
It was instructive that Justice Sotomayor, in her first case, Citizens United, mused that perhaps the Supreme Court erred in granting corporations personhood as pertains to the Bill of Rights. That says to me that the mainstream of the Democrat Party might have issues with that concept.
The right wing was wrong about the health care bill for many of the wrong reasons, but there is a kernel of veracity under all of the hokum. Strangely enough, the issue of the individual mandate has not been raised on the right. Why might that be? Does the GOP expect that the IM would be the hammer of jackbooted guvmint thugs arresting people for not buying a product to use against the Dems?
Remember that the two party system only survives when we follow their lead and allow them to play us off against one another. Difficult as it might seem, there is a populist common ground between our two positions. If we can put aside that which divides us in favor of that which unites us, then there is fertile ground between tea baggers and progressives to take the government away from the corporations and unions that dominate on the right and left respectively.
I like unions but would trade them in a heartbeat for the right wingers relinquishing their allegiance to corporations which have stripped the economy out from under us all.
Ah but voting did’nt bring down the Soviet Union, did it?
What did bring down the Soviet Union?
Good post.
Too fine a point.
It all relates.
The Soviet Union was abolished by Boris Yeltsin. Its elites simply switched sides, and became rulers of private capitalism instead of state capitalism. This switch was made before the Soviet Union’s abolition: see Boris Kagarlitsky’s book “The Disintegration of the Monolith.”
I made this exact same case a week ago when the Grayson-Paul amendment was being passed. A few Paul supporters came over to FDL and it was encouraging to see that camps with often divergent views can appreciate that views CAN overlap. Let’s not miss a rare chance to ally with people who sometimes oppose us in order to fight those who ALWAYS oppress us.
Jane Hamsher knows full well she’s fighting for next to nothing; what keeps her going, I’d imagine, is the felt need to appear consistent in the symbolism of her initiative before Congress. “Whipping the public option” uses the same four words whether it’s whipping the self-defeating public option in the House and Senate bills, or whether it’s whipping Jacob Hacker’s public option.
The “progressive bloc” in Congress has been well-trained in cowardice; the big question at this point is whether there will be enough of a movement left after this bill is passed to dispel the notion that this bill has actually accomplished anything of substance. We will, in any outcome, have to start all over again.
It doesn’t make any sense at all, even from a purely cynical financial, or resource security, perspective. It would require believing that the U.S. would engage in a land war in Afghanistan for the sole purpose of ensuring that old Eastern-bloc countries can get access to natural gas without relying on Russia.
It’s possible that we’re doing something to protect that pipeline route, but if so, then it’s likely incidental; not initiative.
Voting can take place outside the polling place. People can vote with their money, their feet or with their bodies.
The Soviet Union fell because the algebra of the Cold War had Reagan drink it under the table economically. 20 years later, we are now suffering that hangover, and what we are seeing transpire now is the other shoe dropping that signifies with finality the end of the era of superpowers.
To quote the immortal words of America’s political philosopher, Kenny Rogers:
You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em
Know when to fold ‘em
Know when to walk away
And know when to run
Come on. The whole process started long before Yeltsin finally wiped the table. A seriously malfunctioning Soviet Union saw the rise of Gorbachev. His policies of glasnost and perestroika effectively cracked the lid on the pressure cooker that was the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact nations. CIVIL UNREST led by union strikes in Poland, massive street protests in Czechoslovakia, East Germany and other nations gave rise to new, revolutionary leaders such as Lech Walensa in Poland and Vaclav Havel in Czechoslovakia. This tested Gorbachev’s glasnost and, eventually, he flinched. As the Warsaw Pact crumbled it was only a matter of time when those in the SU would demand the rights now available to people in their former vassal states.
My point, whch I thought you would get from my earlier comment, is that all these dominoes didn’t start falling because people trundled off to voting booths. Nobody patiently waited “for the vagueries of the political process to work themselves out.” People took to the streets. They went on strike. They challenged the police and won them over. They found leaders who were truly revolutionary given the context of the existing system.
We now see in this health debate where waiting on “the vagueries ” has gotten us. Worse than nowhere.
Slowly, grudgingly, inchingly more and more people are realizing that there is nothing democratic about any of this. The elite powers must be forced to come to the conclusion that they had better start tossing the people a few bones, or risk losing it all.
OK. You apparently have a lot more invested in this than I do. My only questions, asked in an exploratory spirit are: What are the corporate entities involved in the construction of the pipeline? American? European? Or a combination? Is a nation or nations paying a company to build it, thereby making it a lucrative endeavor? Are there residual future monies to be gained by corp’s from delivering the gas? If there is money to be made by corp’s would it not be very important to keep that critical pipeline out of the hands of the Taliban?
And finally, “It would require believing that the U.S. would engage in a land war in Afghanistan for the sole purpose of ensuring that old Eastern-bloc countries can get access to natural gas without relying on Russia.” I have decided to put nothing past America in justifying going to war with someone. As I said, I’m not so invested in this as you so I am willing to enlarge on the issue.
I wish this mythology would die. The ramp up of the U.S. in an arms-race, or whatever you want to call it, had next to nothing to do with the fall of the U.S.S.R. Several years prior to Reagan even running for office the U.S.S.R. had been drawing down their military expenditures as a % of GDP, because their domestic economy was failing.
The U.S.S.R. collapsed because a centrally-planned economy, especially with a sufficiently corrupt state, is completely untenable.
In order for there to have been an arms-race, there has to be more than one competitor, in this case by the time the late-70′s/early-80′s came around the U.S. was the only one participating.
I just reread your post and realized that it is essentially the “let it fester, lester,” strategy that I have been advocating for at least a month and a half- ever since it became obvious that the political process was serving up a perfectly neutered turkey of a bill.
Yeah! And here’s what’s scary. We are RAMPING UP our military expenditures WHILE our domestic economy is failing. I know that our economy is far larger than the USSR’s ever was and more resilient. Still . . . could the end be similar? Heck, our Congressional apparatchiks are looking every bit as ossified as the old Soviet Politburo!
And nobody expected the Soviet Union to fall as far and as fast as it did.
Agreed. It’s really quite pathetic. Eisenhower was no idiot.
They don’t call Afghanistan the graveyard of empires for nothing.
Not invested, just a preference for valid criticism; especially when there’s plenty of it to go around without resorting to plausible contrivances.
The pipeline is a joint project, but the bulk of its funding is coming from the Asian Development Bank, as I understand it.
And I think you missed my point, which was in fact to take exception to your example. There may be a story, somewhere, of the people winning power away from an authoritarian government, but the abolition of the Soviet Union is not that story.
The Soviet Union may have been “seriously malfunctioning,” but it was nowhere near being close to economic collapse. The decline in Soviet economy certainly didn’t justify the wholesale Thatcherism of many of Gorbachev’s advisers (e.g. Yegor Gaidar).
One of the things which made the “revolutions” of 1989 possible, btw, was Gorbachev’s promise that he wasn’t going to send in Soviet tanks to crush the Czech uprising, as Brezhnev did in 1968.
The Russian economy’s further tanking under Yeltsin, btw, inspired no “velvet revolution” against his regime, which pretty much gave away its economic power to a small elite of oligarchs.
Several issues here. The CCCP would not have fallen had the Russian people not assented to that. To claim that the Russian people prevailed when Gorbaschev was replaced by Yeltsin is to claim that the Americans prevailed with Obama’s election. In both instances, the people assented and the elites prevailed.
The fall of the CCCP was sudden and unexpected. That means that most anything can happen in short notice, especially when there is political and economic uncertainty. The Soviet economy was in no position to support continued repression to preserve the regime.
Thanks for this. Signed it.
If Grayson’s reduction of the majority needed to onvoke cloture to 55 makes sense, why not just go the whole way and do away with the filibuster entirely? We have a much chance of doing that as we have of lowering the majority needed to 55, so we may as well go the whole way. The constitution says majority rule in the Senate. It’s time we had what the constitution says back.
Folks, I certainly agree. I’ve been talking about getting rid of the filibuster and also killing this bill for weeks now. Check our various links here. Readers here may be particularly interested in “Kill It It’s the Enemy of the Good,” and “What Might have been; What Still Might Be.”
And, don’t forget “Yes, we Can,” either.
I’m afraid she’s still whipping for the PO, because she formed a non-profit with nyceve and Marcy Wheeler called Public Option Please. That is, whatever the outcome of this round, Jane seems to be committed to go down the line with the PO.
Exactly.
At least Jane is not echoing this crap about how Congress will avoid health care issues for the next fifteen years because that’s what they did last time: see my diary here…
“Repression to preserve the regime” wasn’t Gorbachev’s intent — what he wanted, or so he declared, was something that looked a bit like Sweden. If he’d been interested in “repression to preserve the regime,” he wouldn’t have instituted perestroika. Gorbachev, however, had overestimated the loyalty of his ruling cabal, and so what he got was the coup, the switching-sides of the Army, and the devolution of power unto the republics.
I suppose repression is much easier to institute when the economy is in a full-blown depression, as the Russian economy was throughout the Yeltsin decade.
Agreed she’s not doing that. But she’s fixing to make the same fundamental mistake made this time around. You know, the pattern I identified here.
It’s hard to say what Jane will do after this bill does its thing. I think the pattern you identified in your last diary is an integral facet of progressive ideology. The pattern of capitulation you identified dates back to the Dukakis candidacy, if not before, and it runs through progressive support for Clinton, Gore, Kerry, and Obama. The sort of nihilist “realism” you identified hit bottom twenty years ago, and it’s stayed there ever since.
Progressives may believe, in this willful-suspension-of-disbelief way, in a world of peace, freedom, and equality, but this is probably because it makes a better cultural politics than the militaristic white nationalism of the Republican Party. However, none of them will argue for, much less organize for, the replacement of the existing system of political economy, nor for the resumption of the class struggle on behalf of working people. Yet this is precisely what has to happen in an America which is coming apart at the seams. Being in the “veal pen” is what it means to be a progressive in America today.
Thank goodness I’m not a progressive.
marcos, please go to KarenM’s diary here (where you commented on insourcing of work). Please note the info in my # 21-25 on the big $100 Million contract to the China State Construction and Engineering Corp. for the ventilation system on the NY City subway. (to be paid out of the stimulus funds). I found some rather interesing info (bid-rigging on a Phillipines project in 2002) on that corp.
I do not have the skills required to do justice to these subjects, and they do need looking into. Will you please write the diary on it? Thank you.
It looks more and more like it to me, too. This health insurance bill is shaping up to be the setup for another round of disaster capitalism. What we are getting is a repackaging and redefinition of the health care crisis that has been ongoing for decades. Whatever vestigial “public option” survives will be designed to have no market power to restrain costs, and will be the dumping ground for the folks deemed by private insurers to be unprofitable.
The “public option” will be expensive, but lose money, by deliberate design. When “reform” fails to expand coverage or contain costs, the public option will be ready, prepackaged and prepositioned, to take the blame. The crisis will be defined as the fault of too much government, and the public option as an egregious example of government incompetence.
“Reform” will be a failure, and the preferred solution will be to get the government out of the way and off the backs of corporations. Single-payer will be set back even further, for even more decades.
Yes, kill the bill. It’s worse than status quo.
At the very least, we need to eliminate any imitation of a public option. There is no chance of a real public option any more, only a fake one. A fake public option will never be strengthened, it will never be a first step to genuine reform. A fake public option will only be morphed into a weapon to discredit government action; attack and further weaken the value of our common well-being as citizens; and further entrench corporate power.
marcos, after further research I retract my request to you. It is deep, deep politics (hence the secrecy). It is indeed a Chinese Dragon.
Live by the Veal Pen, die by the Veal Pen.
Of course! Anyone who disagrees with you is, by definition, an evil, sadistic, callous oppressor existing for the sole purpose of bringing misery. Isn’t that Chapter Two in the Lib Handbook (Chapter One being devoted to ego-stoking)?
I would write more, but it’s time to go flog the peasants…
Grumpy, please dispense with the collective assertions, it does little to advance the policy discussion or to identify common ground.
Progressives and conservatives can find common cause on occasion. Let’s focus on what we can agree on, like wresting democracy in the US from powerful, unaccountable interests and into the hands of the voters.
I’m sure that you all had a moment when the free market economy froze last year. Others are having their moments realizing that Obama’s sold us out to Wall Street on health reform.
I think we all want a legitimate democracy and an economy that creates good jobs at home. Let’s leave the discussion of health care until we can get a system in place where voters can have that conversation without being manipulated by powerful vested interests, like the health insurance industry that is fighting like hell to keep control of 1/35 of the US economy that is their profit.
“Grumpy, please dispense with the collective assertions…”
You mean like the one I was replying to?
“does little to advance the policy discussion or to identify common ground.”
When the starting point is “you just loved seeing people forced into bankruptcy” my suspicion is that “common ground” will be about as hard to find as Shangri-La.