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The Nation magazine has endorsed the health care legislation about to be voted on.
The publication issues the now-boilerplate Orwellian characterization of what is to be gained:
" … What about the legislation itself–what does it accomplish? On a concrete level, it expands health insurance to as many as 30 million Americans who are currently not covered; on a symbolic one, it makes clear that the government–not the market–is responsible for healthcare. Those are no small achievements …"
The language "expands health insurance to as many as 30 million Americans" for example, is simply outrageous. This language should read "it forces everyone in America, no matter how poor, to buy the products of the health insurance cartel".
And then to claim that the government having passed lobbyist-authored and lobbyist-driven legislation is an example of how "the government–not the market–is responsible for health care"?!
The claim should read that the legislation makes clear "that the government passes legislation written by corporate lobbyists primarily".
And then, let’s take a look at this gem:
" … For all these reasons, we support passage of the bill, even as we urge the progressive community to begin the struggle immediately to correct its many flaws and improve its protections. Some of this can be done quickly, via the reconciliation process. Some of it can and should be done with new legislation, such as robust public option bills by Senator Sherrod Brown and Representative Alan Grayson and proposals to expand Medicare and eliminate the health insurance industry’s anti-trust exemption …"
I am so tired of seeing the word "flaw" applied to a public policy disaster I could puke! Every single apologist for this atrocity waves their hands at some fuzzy "flaw" or "flaws". I see red as a result. But more to the point, notice how:
" … Some of this can be done quickly, via the reconciliation process …"
invokes the reconciliation process as if it exists in the future? I had to write a letter to their editor informing them that the Senate parliamentarian has already stripped the only remaining big gain in the reconciliation "sidecar" being considered – the review authority – out of the "sidecar". I had to write in this letter that the reconciliation language will apparently include an increase in the already-egregious excise tax.
These fools couldn’t even address the reality of what "reconciliation" is actually being used for – to make the atrocity even worse!
Instead, they wave the magic want of "reconciliation" to suggest the mythical "public option" will return once again.
Nancy Pelosi has already permanently killed it this week!
My conclusion is that The Nation is a Democratic Party publication and nothing more. They are endorsing the legislation because it is their job to pacify angry leftists and progressives for the Democrats.
I am appalled by The Nation. I am absolutely appalled!
Do they think we are all totally fucking stupid?! Do they think this sad sack piece of shit editorial is going to convince anyone that the act of economic rape being committed against us is somehow the first step in the Brave and Mighty Democrats leading us forward to A Better Future? Are we this totally fucking stupid in their editors’ eyes?!
And what about The Nation and feminism? This ridiculous publication has played host to every angry feminist author on The Planet. The publication, along with its female staff and editor, has paraded itself as the most outspoken place for outspoken women on the issues of rights and reproductive freedoms.
What do they have to say on the anti-abortion language in the legislation they are endorsing?
" … It also encodes restrictions on abortion coverage that are a major setback for the prochoice movement (see Katha Pollitt in this issue) …"
WHAT?! That’s it? A one sentence acknowledge that there is (oh yeah) a major setback for the prochoice movement in the legislation they are endorsing (parenthetical reference to something Katha Pollitt wrote)?
All of their loud, proud feminism and Code Pink-this and NOW-that and NARAL-the-other-thing over the last God knows how many years amounts to solely "the legislation does royally screw women (parenthetical reference to occasionally publishing fluff author)" when they endorse legislation that sets up a challenge to Roe v. Wade?!!
The magazine has disgraced itself. It’s a Party publication now. Don’t subscribe to it if you don’t already, cancel your subscription if you do, and recycle your existing copies.
If only all the serious thinkers and political reform leaders who have published in the pages of that magazine over the last 100 years could all just reach out from the beyond the grave and retract their publications given the status of The Nation as The New New Republic I am sure those figures would.
The Nation magazine: get lost! You’re a bad, sad joke now! And the next time that your loud, somewhat air-headed editor vanden Heuvel goes on TV and starts complaining about the Republicans being the "pale, male, stale party" all a lot of us will think about is how her party just endorsed legislation that sets up a real challenge to Roe v. Wade. Nation magazine: take a long walk off a short pier, do us all a favor.
24 Comments
Bizzaro world. I just don’t know what to think anymore. I am losing blogs,parties and media all over the place. The one thing I despised most about the Bush years was being lied to. It’s actually worse when it’s “your” side. I have learned how great nations fall. Not just during the really bad times with bad leaders.
But also during the fairly good times with mediocre leaders and pawns. Disgusting. I can’t believe this group think that places a win in the column of the Democrats is a win because they are Democrats. Scarier times than the Bush years. Now people I once identified with are taking my rights away. Suddenly the left has become just like Republicans in the loyalty oaths. The only thing that matters is a win for the party/the precious leader. Fucking creeps me out.
100% total agreement and empathy from me. It’s clear now: the Republicans are our enemies who declare themselves as such, and attack us, we working people. The Democrats are our enemies who declare themselves our friends – or “natural allies” as they like to put it – and attack us, we working people.
What I want now is accountability. I want to see some people get ejected in the elections this year. Ejected, rejected if they try to come back, dejected. Accountability is what’s it about.
As for The Nation magazine, well, I was aware that they generally turn into a get-out-the-left-vote operation for the Democrats in every even-numbered year – I’ve been reading that magazine for a very long time – but they have just gotten worse and worse and more naked and transparent and it is rather clear now that class ties and party ties at the top of the publication position it against working people often now.
They author all manner of humanitarian pieces. They claim to advocate for all things progressive.
And then, when the Democrats decide to once again burn the progressives and liberals and leftists because power and money are what the Democrats are about – the prerogatives and entitlements of the plutocracy and the richest members of society – well, then its time for another apologetic endorsement.
I’ve had it with this publication. It has a high-brow, high-level readership, a long-standing history of a great sort, and it is being used to accomplish … election of Democrats.
Whatever.
I decided against renewing my long-standing subscription to The Nation when they chose to virtually ignore Dennis Kucinich and endorsed Obama instead.
At least I still have “The Progressive Populist” to turn to…sigh
Well, I guess you safely ignore Dennis Kucinich now, too! This vote was probably the one time in his entire career where he had a real chance to impact on a very big national issue, in a near-singular and important way …
… and he capitulated.
At least, unlike the other turncoat “firedogs”, he had the decency to return the donation money. Even in failure, the guy has better character than most of the craven politicians of Washington, DC.
Seymour, the only good thing to come out of this? The fake progressives have shown their colours. From fake progressive blogs (we all know them) to fake Dems, they have shown their true colours. As for DK, after much thought, I wonder what exactly they have on him or threatened him with. Sorry, but I refuse to believe this man folded for normal political bribery. He does not strike me as that type of person. So if the truth is ever known, it would be very interesting. Great post!
This is predictable given The Nations continuing slide into confusion and irrelevancy. Sad, because the magazine has an illustrious history.
And their investigative reporters do such good work documenting the atrocities of the Obama administration. (in-depth articles on Blackwater, ICE detention centers, corruption in the green energy movement, Geithner and Summers’ pro-Wall Street policies, etc.)
Katrina is a Beltway Leftie, and the group-think is something fierce this week among that crowd.
I hope you’re right about D-K! It could just be that too much was expected of him, that he couldn’t have won much, and that he had a lot to lose. Nonetheless, a lot of us were counting on him.
I think its important that none of us forgets this moment in history, with the health care disaster, the recession, etc. Right now it is as clear as it ever has been just exactly who our friends aren’t. A lot of the non-friends, frenemies, and outright enemies are in supposed “left” publications like The Nation, others are in regular mass media … almost the entire plutocracy is against us.
The two parties? Good Lord!
We working people can see where we stand right now in the eyes of the political ruling class. To borrow Jane Hamsher’s term, we’re all veal. All of us. Veal for the slaughter.
I do believe there is a difference between the editorial “leadership” and muckety-mucks (including financial backers) at the publication and a number of their rank-and-file contributors. By-and-large, however, the editors and the publication should be viewed as one and the same.
The publication just can’t keep editorializing against working people, the progressive vision, etc., the moment that Democratic politicians have their offices at stake. There is more to having a value system than having class ties with a political party at the high level.
The Nation was a great magazine many years ago.
Well, not exactly veal, but an endless ATM for all these schemes. A trillion here, a trillion there, adds up after awhile.
Oh that dreadful Katrina woman. Someone please give her a haircut.
The result of Dennis’ change today is that no one will believe anything he says in the future. He may as well retire. Obama’s ruined him too.
Medicare and Social Security are coming up soon courtesy of the Democrats. The Dems will get away with things like that where the Republicans wouldn’t touch it.
Obama needs to be impeached.
Actually, when he runs for President again in 2011/12, expect The Nation magazine to do their obligatory endorsement of his primary candidacy, followed by their obligatory endorsement of whatever corporate fatcat whore it is who gets the nomination.
I just wish there were lemon laws applying to politicians!!!!
They are always shelling out aid for a little juice. *s*
Eureka! The truth Springs forth!
This surprises people?
Chris Hayes goes on countdown nightly and preaches how wonderful this crappile is.
The Nation sold out over a decade ago.
I never read The Nation magazine anyhow, but this has strengthened my resolve not to.
History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
NEVER GIVE UP, NEVER SHUT UP and we will succeed.
I remember talking to some conservative libertarian nutcase a few years ago. He said I was one of those liberals who probably read the Nation. This was about as far left as his imagination stretched. I had to laugh and told him I was way to the left of it. He looked stunned, that there could be any such creature and that I would admit, even be proud, of it.
A lot of traditional liberal institutions became part of the Establishment a long time ago. Those in them like vanden Heuvel can’t conceive of a world outside of Establishment boundaries. They are just as insulated by their privileges and sense of entitlement as any Wall Street bankster. The anger, desperation, and fears that most Americans have never pierce the bubble that surrounds them. Their world is safe. It why it is always business as usual for them, because they never have anything really at stake. So of course they can back a crappy President and his crappy healthcare bill because it is not going to affect them, precisely because it is not going to affect them. They are not going to seek to contest the very Establishment to which they belong, or the security it affords them. For their sense of self-respect and to re-affirm their intellectual honesty, they may have a few qualms from time to time. They may speak about “flaws” to be fixed, but these are people who will never man the barricades. Forget the danger, it would be uncomfortable.
Why would you write that? You can state your case, but how do sexist and ignorant comments like this advance the debate?
Ha ha that’s right Seymour. Throw the baby fully out with the bathwater, on this one issue. Nevermind that The Nation has been brutal to the Obama admin all year (did you read the Obama at one forum or the Lessig piece, which was everywhere …) and nevermind the merit of their investigative stuff like Jeremy Scahill’s blackwater reporting. Katrina, who doesn’t live in DC, never shows up on the DC “circuit” like Arianna, edits a magazine that the DNC and White House ignore and won’t even talk to, is taking her talking points right from Rahm (who’s firing she called for several times on TV) and screwing us over.
Looking forward to your next knee-jerk post.
Apparently you have never seen vanden Heuvel on cable news carrying water for this Administration. And nothing you say really addresses the issue of why such a “fire-breathing” liberal publication like the Nation would back an Obama healthcare plan that is a sellout to corporations and is predicated on slashing Medicare.