On the Contrary

The Democrats like to distinguish themselves from the Republicans because they can tolerate diversity.  The present course of the Republican Party to purge moderates is touted by Democrats as the Republican’s big weakness and they will only appeal to a small minority.  That is true, but it makes them effective legislators because they can stick to message, albeit an unpopular one.  But what the Democrats are missing is that when their tolerance of diversity in public policy gets to large, it is their big weakness.

Right now the largest segment of our voting population are the independents, I being one of them.  I think the reason for that is in some sense the problem with the big tent.  When the tent gets too big, as it has recently with Conservadems (the press likes to call them moderate Democrats and they are anything but that) and Lieberman, it is unclear what Democrats really stand for.  They then loose cohesion and appear, and are, ineffective as legislators.  So why vote for Democrats who are all over the place, and can’t seem to get anything done?  In a word, Democrats are losing their identity and becoming more associated with the status quo in Washington than a populist party that looks out for the little guy.  More about that in a few paragraphs.

If you look at what is happening in Congress right now, the Conservadems are driving the train and defining what Democrats stand for, hence my departure from the Party.  So bills get watered down to be almost ineffective to get passed, and people become more frustrated with Democrats as ineffective and not bringing the change they promised.  It would be better if they decided who they were, then if they lost votes on important legislation it would not be because members of their own party are really Republicans, and it would give voters clear choices.  If Democrats want to be an effective voice for change and their agenda, then these faux-Democrats need to be purged from the party or ignored as a fringe element instead of the final voice on legislation and defining who the party is.

They can still be a medium sized tent, but some things are sacrosanct if they want to be Democrats.  The first and foremost is that you never side with Republicans to support a filibuster against your own party.  The next is that Democrats have always recognized a woman’s right to choose.  We will welcome you into the party if you are against that right, but you must understand that as a Democrat you can never vote to use government to impose your religious belief on others.  Democrats do not believe in inserting religion into politics and government.  The right to chose is just one example.  And here is really a basic tenant of the Democratic Party that this Administration and Democrats in Congress seemed to have forgotten.  Democrats represent the little people, not corporate America.

Now that’s a party I could believe in, and would put forward legislation that support these values instead of watering them down to be a conservative bill that most of us don’t even recognize any more so they can claim success.  But with their own members putting sticks in the wheel of progress, the Democrats have no one to blame for their failures but their own Party.  Sure the Republican all voted against their policies, but so did some of their own brethren and that what the voters will remember.  Dump them.

The other foible is epitomized by an interview I heard on Ed Shultz of MSNBC yesterday.  This is what will be the Democrats demise if they don’t change their tune quickly.  Ed was interviewing Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., about whether the economy would be better with someone other than Timothy Geithner as Treasury Secretary.  Ed basically chastised her when she offered that the GDP was increasing and things were looking up, basically defending the Administrations lack of progress on jobs.  Ed pointed out to her that she sounded like she was defending Wall Street and wondered if Democrats have lost touch with reality out there as the average guy is hurting and nothing is improving.  He pointed out the Republicans were sounding like the defender of the working guy as they lamented the Administration’s failure to create many jobs, and Democrats were sounding like the defenders banks and investment firms as they continue to defend policies that aren’t helping much.

Now the reality is that the Republicans did everything they could to make the stimulus ineffective and if the Democrats could find their backbone and really offered a jobs bill, they would be against that too.  But that is not the point.  The point is that the Democrats defending of the Administration’s refusal to do anything about the jobless numbers while being held responsible for bailing out Wall Street by supporting Geithner and his failed policies is making them be perceived as the defender of the status quo.  If they don’t turn that around quickly, there will be a massacre in 2010.  Some Democrats are stirring and starting to understand their vulnerability, but if they don’t start reasserting who they are and what they believe in, then they will become as irrelevant as the Republicans.  And things couldn’t be any worse than that.

“If the government is involved, it is screwed up.”  This is the mantra of the government hater.  Now we hear this a lot lately in the health care debate by the Republicans and Conservadems who are against the public option.  But politicians are not real government haters.  They are just gargantuan hypocrites.  They are the government and they love government because it gives them power and employment.  They just mouth the words we hate government to exercise the real government haters so they get their vote and then can then be held in the embrace of that thing they say they hate so much. Try to focus on the fact that they want health care reform if they can insert government into the decision about whether you can have an abortion, but want government out of health care decisions.  Remember Congress is the government at the very seat of power.

So what about that group that they are catering to?  Do they have a point?  The answer to that question is in the micro-sense yes, but no in macro-sense.  My experience with government haters is that they can cite you anecdotal instances where the government has made mistakes or created interference in their lives, but they never think about the big picture.  Here is a prime example:  I have a friend who is a farmer and hates the government and in a micro sense he has a point.  The government, in its interest to insure water quality, healthy employees, and a safe environment, has hung many onerous reporting and tracking requirements on farmers.  In my own case, I have to pay into a water district formed specifically for tracking pesticides in water even though I don’t use pesticides and didn’t cause the problem.  I have to report monthly any use of pesticides or herbicides, get a license every year, and the rules are staggering.  It is a pain.

But what he and others fail to see is the macro achievements of government.  He would not have water to farm if it weren’t for the government.  In California between the State and Federal Government, the projects they have built to supply water massively subsidizes water users.  He ships his fruit around the country and he fails to see that the Department of Transportation and the FAA as the institutions that make that happen, that allow Fedex and UPS to operate efficiently.  He got his degree from the University of California and does not see that without the government subsidizing his education, he could never have afforded it.  He fails to appreciate that regulation of herbicides and pesticides are what keep him from using effective, but deadly chemicals. It is the government that tracks pests around the state and institutes large eradication programs that keep his fruit safe.  He hates land-use restrictions by government and yet bemoans the loss of farmland.  And of course he would be the last to turn down Medicare when he is eligible.

In fact during the health care debate many Americans were saying keep government out of Medicare which was the ultimate example of this myopia about the effectiveness of government.  They have their eyes on their path in front of them, but they are not looking around to see who created that path or where it leads.  Of course government does stupid things, just like any organization.  Would we say those Master’s of the Universe, those paragons of capitalism, who ran the banking industry did not make major blunders?  Nobody is immune.  The problem is not government and regulations, it is stupid regulations which we can fix.

Here is a prime example.  The State of California is concerned about business and tax revenue lost to internet purchases that may have a cost advantage because many of the businesses do not collect or pay California sales tax if they do not operate in California.  So California did a stupid thing.  They decided to put the onus on the consumer to report and pay that tax.   Really?  Each of us is going to set up and auditing system so every time we decide to use Amazon.com, we are going to track that cost and report and send that tax to the State?  That is what is required by current law, and it is patently stupid.  But is all government bad because some misguided representative thought this was a good idea?  Fix the bad stuff and focus on all they do bring us that we need and demand.

The future is not less government, and those that think so have forgotten how we got to be the greatest nation in the world.  But as the world is changing and the role government needs to play becomes more and more important, we really have to start thinking about smart regulation.  We need to look at the interests served in regulation and apply them in a way that has less impact especially on those who can least afford that impact.  Example:  If California wants its sales tax, then guess what?  This is a national problem.  It is called Intra-state commerce and it needs to be regulated at the national level.  Trying to solve this by putting one more unobtainable requirement on its citizens is just stupid, not to mention ineffective.  Government by fear is never going to work.

So come on people.  You have to look at the big picture.  We need to fix government when it does stupid things, but without government to attack our really big problems, we are doomed.  Maybe in your little myopic world you could see how less government would make your life simpler, but then your little myopic world would not have been possible without government.  But government haters will never admit this.  It is too easily find someone else to blame for all their problems.  After all the market place will solve all our problems.  Who needs government?  Hallelujah!

I am sitting here with my leg in a brace, up on a footstool, looking at my medical bills and I can’t help thinking how this minor little incident could ruin someone without medical insurance.  I also am looking at the billing, paid for by my health maintenance organization (Kaiser), and marvel at how inefficient this whole system is. My little scrap with emergency medical care woke me up to why we need a single payer system. But let’s start from the beginning.

As many of you know, I am a small vineyard owner and there are always things to do in the vineyard.  Well about 5 weeks ago on a Monday, I went to play golf.  My plan was that a major storm (first of the year) was coming in, and although the cover crop (grass and clover) was well established to prevent erosion in the steep areas of the vineyard, there were some bare spots and I wanted to rake in some grass seed and straw.  So when I got home about 4 pm from my golf round with the storm moving in, I jumped on my ATV loaded with 50 pounds of grass and clover seed and went to work.  I was spreading and raking in seed and straw, and working my way up a particular steep area, when I turned and started to walk back down to my ATV, I slipped on the steep slope, and then the fun began.

When I hit the ground in a particularly violent way, I heard a loud pop and then I was kind of focused on pain in my knee for the next minute or two until it subsided.  I did not know it at the time, but this little slip resulted in a ruptured patellar tendon.  For those of you who are not anatomy majors, the patella tendon connects your lower leg (tibia) to the patella which is in turn connected to the quadriceps muscle through the quadriceps tendon.  In other words once it is ruptured (ruptured means either torn in two or completely torn off the bone), you have no way to extend your lower leg.  But after the pain had subsided I decided to try it and found that to be a very stupid idea.  So here I am sitting up now in my vineyard, my leg useless, it is starting to get dark, the rain is moving in, and I am immobile.  Now I tell you all this because I want you to understand that there was no way for me to get myself out of my vineyard.  So let the costs begin.

After a failed attempt to somehow get on my ATV after scooting down to it, I realized I had my cell phone, and for once in the vineyard I had reception so I called my wife who called 911.  I cannot say enough kind words about the fire and rescue team that showed up to get me out of there and to the hospital.  When they got there, they put me on a board, cut off my pant leg, pointed out that my knee cap (patella) was now up in my thigh, started an IV, and then pushed some morphine because as they said, I am going to need it when the shock wears off.  Then six of them carried me down to the ambulance and delivered me to the nearest hospital about 6 miles away. $593.78 ka-ching! And since these guys were county workers, I am sure that cost was heavily subsidized already.

I was delivered to the local hospital emergency room (Marshal Hospital in Placerville) where my knee was evaluated, x-rays taken, saline solution started along with something to control the pain.  They put my leg in a brace to stabilize it.  I was there about 4 hours until my primary provider (Kaiser) could send an ambulance there to transfer me to their main hospital in Roseville, about 45 miles away.  Cost for the emergency room care:  $6,055.20, ka-ching! Note costs are still rolling in with the latest being the radiology clinic so I am not sure this is the final number.

I should mention that it is common to send one home in a brace and then have surgery a few days later when it can be scheduled.  The nurse at Marshal said that this might be the case and went to get some crutches.  But when Kaiser decided to accept me and perform the surgery that evening, she took the crutches back and said that is good thing because they would be billed at $600.  I was looking to see where the DVD player must be installed on the crutches for that price.  As an aside, both my crutches and cane were manufactured in China.  Oh yeah, when these costs were billed, they were listed under OB/GYN.  I called Kaiser to make sure this billing to them was correct and they seemed unconcerned.  I wanted to confirm that my insurance wasn’t paying for somebody else’s baby, but I never did get a warm and fuzzy that they cared.  The cost were definitely billed to me and I had an accident on that day so it must be right.  Okay the ambulance showed up and they loaded me for the trip to Kaiser in Roseville, about 45 miles away.  $1532 ka-ching! I am being billed $50 for this as a co-pay which I think is a steal.

So by the time I had arrived at Kaiser’s emergency room at 1130 pm that night, about 6 hours after the initial little slip in the vineyard, I had incurred costs of a little over $8,180.98.  The rest of the real costs I will never see.  This included my surgery early the next morning, the full time recovery nurse they assigned to me in recovery, the drugs prescribed for pain, the crutches they gave me, the new flexible brace when they removed the staples, the physical therapy, the cane they issued me (I actually had a $4 co-pay on this one), or the follow-up visits with the surgeon.  Oh, I also had to pay a co-pay of $50 for my ambulatory surgery, and every time I show up for an office visit a co-pay of $15, and some similar fee for drugs, but the real costs are hidden from me and covered by Kaiser.

The final piece was a letter notification to call Kaiser’s Health Recovery office to see if someone is liable and they can recover their costs.  I wonder what this costs in administration costs and lawyer’s fees.  I was thinking they could sue the golf course since if I had done this earlier in the day, maybe I would have worn my work boots, and not have slipped.  Golf is a terrible addiction and someone ought to be responsible.

So what are the lessons learned here to be pondered while one has his leg elevated?  First, if you don’t have insurance, get somebody to drive you to the hospital.  That is a sad lesson isn’t it? I can imagine how painful it would have been to get into the car assuming my wife could have carried me there.  Second how much of all these costs were attributable to covering people that they have to treat in emergency rooms that don’t have insurance?  Third, what is the cost of all that cost accounting and billing?  Fourth, if we are not worrying about who is responsible, but getting good care, could not those costs pay for more people to be covered?  Finally, what would have the impact of these costs been on a typical vineyard worker who doesn’t have insurance and also probably can’t work for 12 weeks?  And that is assuming he could find someone to do the surgery for free.

I am very lucky.  I had excellent care every step of the way, and the kind of work I do can be done from home.  It was just a little speed bump in our very comfortable life.  But this minor little scrape in the vineyard could have ruined a less fortunate family.  Is this any way to run a railroad?

Let’s see if I have all this right:  We can’t close Guantanamo because if we move these dangerous criminals to our shores, they will escape and wreck havoc.  We can’t try the Guantanamo held terrorists in federal courts because they might get off and be walking around eyeing your kids.  And don’t forget that they will make those courts terror targets.

Then we could start on health care reform.  Don’t allow people to have end of life care counseling because it is really death panels.  Grandma will be denied care.  Costs will balloon out of sight.  Medicare will be gutted.  The government will be between you and your doctor (as opposed to an insurance executive).  Socialized medicine, Canada, Europe, be afraid, be afraid, be afraid.

Next is cap and trade, a bill to control greenhouse gases and start us down the road to clean, green, energy.  It will be a tax on every person.  It will ruin business and make us uncompetitive.  It will make the recession worse.

Let me not leave out the recent Stimulus bill and banking reform.  The Stimulus bill is just a big government giveaway that will make things worse.  The deficit will balloon out of control and we are all doomed.  It will make us all dependent on government when the only real job creator is the market.  On banking reform bill, it is a new world and passing of this will restrict our banks ability to compete.  Government is taking over everything.  Even though the private sector has almost destroyed our economy, put the reins of recovery bank into the same hands that caused problem, because government is bad and taking over everything.

Sooner or later the average American has to wakeup and recognize that we are facing problems that yesterday’s solutions caused.  Unleashing the market place was like releasing a bull in a china shop.  Clearly the market place is our engine of prosperity, but the old less rules, less taxes caused a catastrophe.  So we are looking for ways to move forward and what you read above is what the opposition party is putting forward as ideas.  Be afraid and be paralyzed into inaction so that those that have keep.  No solutions, just change nothing.

We have a two party system for a very good reason.  Nobody has the one true solution.  It is the synergy of discussion and criticism that results in a way forward that is carefully weighed against the pro and cons of that approach.  Every issue is complex and there is always a darkside so every choice.  There will be winners and losers as we select our way forward.  But we no longer have a two party system and rational dialogue has died a painful death.  The Republican Party is a party of fear.  That is all they have to offer.  Oh, I know, they say lets approach this in a bipartisan manner.  But the reality is they want to once again impose the old failed solutions on our problems and expect a different outcome next time.

So what is going on here?  They are using fear to paralyze action.  They don’t want solutions, they want the Democrats to fail.  Then the unruly masses will put them back in power because the Democrats weren’t able to affect change, and we are on the same merry-go-round that we have been on.  Look at what has happened in Congress.  They have stymied every attempt at reform or change because if it works, they are gone.  And it appears to be working.  The electorate are unhappy with the Democrats and may “throw the bums out” if the economy doesn’t get better even though they will be electing those that brought us this mess, that is what they will do.

So here is a suggestion that maybe could get us off this political merry-go-round.  We should be asking about policies.  When someone launches with be afraid, go back to the root issue, and ask what is your plan forward and how would it address those problems. How is that different from what we did before and why would it work this time?  It is called critical thinking.  We should be electing people based upon their policies to solve our problems, not by party, or their inability to institute their policies because the other party has become the party of no.  We need to get rid of the party of no so we can find out if these solutions would really work.

That doesn’t translate to re-elect Democrats, but to re-elect those that will really bring us change, not false hope.  There are just as many Democrats as Republicans bought by corporate America.  But if we as voters don’t take a critical look at policies, not just the fickled state of the economy at any particular time and decide by its health, who should be in charge, we might finally get off this treadmill of changes parties, but never changing ideas.  I can hope.  Right now the Republicans are getting away with be afraid, and we have no one blame but ourselves for cowering in the corner and refusing to try change.

If the last couple of days do not tell you how fragile democracy is then you are really asleep.  I happen to think that our Constitution is one of the most significant documents of political thought in all of history.  Its impact should far outstrip even the Bible.  It tells us who we are and includes everyone with equal rights.  It is the greatest document against tyranny and injustice produced and implemented on our small world.  And what really amazes me is those Constitution thumping conservatives and hawks have so little understanding of what it really means.

What I am referring to is the shock and dismay shown by these “true Americans” that we are going to allow the 9/11 terrorists at Guantanamo to be tried in our court system instead of some kangaroo court in Guantanamo:

It is “inconceivable” that the U.S. would bring the alleged terrorist masterminds of the Sept. 11 attacks to New York for trial, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) said Friday.

“Yesterday’s decision sends a mixed message about America’s resolve in the fight against terrorism,” said Senator John McCain, “We must bring terrorists to justice in a manner consistent with the horrific acts of war they have committed,” he said in a statement.

John Boehner said, “This decision is further evidence that the White House is reverting to a dangerous pre-9/11 mentality – treating terrorism as a law enforcement issue and hoping for the best.”

Of course it is a law enforcement issue John.  Our military campaign has been a futile exercise in attacking countries when Al Qaeda and terrorism has no country.  All we have done with your stupid simple minded military approach to terrorism is to create more terrorists.  If only the way you saw the world were that simple.

Here is what you need to focus on.  The Founders were fighting mostly political tyranny, but they also recognize religious tyranny (it was the Enlightenment after all).  What they wanted was a government that treated everyone equal.  Justice demanded that all parties be on a level footing.  They established due process and the rule of law so that governments could not decide that some people were special and did not have to worry about following the law, while others were less special in that they did not receive the rights and privileges of the anointed.  They had seen the British class system and the privileged nobility.  They had seen how religious affiliation could affect how you were treated and they attempt to form a government where, “All Men are created equal with certain unalienable rights….”.

So when you start to decide who our Constitution applies and who it doesn’t, then you are denying it’s most basic tenant.  Where do you draw the line.  It starts off simply, with foreign terrorists, but then you start the slippery slide of what to do with American terrorists, which by the way, we have already done.  What is basic to our political beliefs and the democracy we have as a result of the Constitution is that power cannot arbitrarily make these decisions.  The founders were well aware that if you start carving out exceptions, you no longer have those rights.  They are no longer “self-evident”.  Who decides who gets exceptions?

The misunderstand of our fundamental beliefs is epitomized by Rep. Pete Hoekstra of Michigan, and ranking member on the intelligence committee when he said, “These people don’t deserve the protections of our Constitution.  Right Pete.  Let’s string them up.  Oh, I forgot, that is what a trial in Guantanamo would do.

So here is what these foolish Americans are saying.  Our system only applies to those we think deserve it.  Since we have already decided these guys are guilty, lets have a kangaroo court in Guantanamo and then string them up.  More importantly, what they are afraid of is the world learning how we violated our own beliefs in treating these people and how far morally we have fallen.  But the problem is, to regain who we are, we have to quit acting like them.  The Constitution is the very document that defines us as different from any other country or people that have come before.  If we reject it now, regardless of the outcome, we are no longer a guiding light in the world or for mankind.  If we follow what these foolish little men want to do, we have lost our Constitution forever.

Word out of the White House is that President Obama rejected the four plans the military were offering for our way forward in Afghanistan.  And we got that on top of the news that the Ambassador to that backward nation, Karl W. Eikenberry, said don’t send more troops basically because the government is dysfunctional (New York Times).  Now Ambassadors could be considered effete Yale or Harvard snobs, but this one was the general in charge in Afghanistan prior to becoming Ambassador.  It might also be said that the four plans were simply four different troop level increases.  That is real change isn’t it?

Maybe President Obama is showing some backbone on this subject.  If the way forward is a commitment of more troops and no light at the end of the tunnel, why do it?  The Republicans, of course, say do whatever your generals want.  Remember President Lincoln and General McClellan?  Had Lincoln listened to that moron, the Civil War would still be going on and we would still have the Union Army in the Virginia peninsula awaiting more troops.  I never can figure out why people think generals have some special way of understanding a situation that should be given more consideration than others.  These guys have careers that are about winning (mission accomplishment).  There is no other strategy.  It is mission accomplishment or retire as a light Colonel.  Cost benefit ratios are for the weak minded.  McChrystal was given a mission and it is not in his DNA to give up on a mission no matter what the cost.  There won’t be any failures in their record.  Are the fighting the Vietnam war again to in their mind right the record (John McCain)?  Do I hear the strains of “Charge of the Light Brigade”?

Here is the real issue that I think our President is wrestling with:  With a government that is corrupt and dysfunctional, and a war that will take at least 10 years or more to even begin to make progress, is this really in our national interest?  Republicans think in simple rather childish ways, so they will attack the President on “not supporting the troops”.  But like Vietnam, we may look back after the death of almost 60,000 and wonder why.  Oh I know, the fate of Pakistan and Al Qaeda will get conflated with the fate of Afghanistan, but remember the domino effect in Vietnam, or the conflation of 9/11 of Iraq.  It is the same hysterical, irrational thinking.

So what President Obama wants to see is a plan that gets us out of there, and what he is getting is more open-ended commitments.  That is the reality of the situation.  If you demand a win and you define winning as a stable democracy, well we are in for a 20-50 year war.  But if reality is allowed to creep in, then our real strategic interests in Afghanistan are minor.  A plan to let Afghanistan continue their civil war, let the chips fall where they may, and just control any incursion of Al Qaeda or any real threats to our national interests, is probably what we should be doing.  I don’t know if the military mind can wrap their mind around that.  It would mean abandoning grand plans for victory and a fifth star.  But a victory at what cost?  Not their problem.

But it is our President’s problem and with the real challenges that face us, the money could so much be better spent returning us to a prosperous nation.  And that’s not the real issue.  Go gaze on the Wall in Washington where almost 60,000, some of them my friends, are listed.  What is left of their lives is some letters engraved into hard cold granite.  And for what?  This is not an argument about winning.  This is an argument about waste, hubris, ego, and understanding real strategic interests.  A never-ending war in Afghanistan is futile and is all about the former and nothing about the later.  President Obama is starting to show a glimmer of political backbone.  We can hope.

How does it feel to live in a nation that is controlled by a small radical, religious minority?  Welcome to California ladies and gentlemen.  We can’t govern in this state because a super majority is required to do anything important.  So a small radical conservative minority controls everything.  And now the same effect is occurring in our national government because a minority of Democrats (Republicans just vote no) demands their pound of flesh.  So every important piece of legislation has to accommodate this small minority and that legislation becomes so watered down, it loses its original purpose.

Look at health care.  Since the Republicans aren’t playing, this has to be carried on the backs of Democrats.  The real meat of health care reform is access to a public option.  All of the rest is certainly noble, but without real cost control of a public option, this bill will not be able to control the spiraling cost of private health care insurance and will ultimately fail.  So what does the small minority demand? Gut the public option.  Oh we will let you have it, but at such a small sliver it will be ineffective to control costs.  Did I forget the opt-out option?  You don’t have to play if you don’t want too.  Both of these pieces of the health care reform demanded by the minority are designed to gut health care reform and leave the private insurance companies in the drivers seat.

Oh but it gets better.  Evangelicals and Catholics in the House with behind the scenes help from Republicans in both Houses, decided that they could legislate their religious beliefs by crafting a “compromise” that prevents health insurance from covering abortion.  The effect of this language is to make abortion throughout the nation unreimburesable and therefore inaccessible to most even if it results from rape, incest, or is a medical necessity.  We already have the Hyde Amendment which is bad enough, that prohibits public funds from being used for abortions, but this goes way further to say if you receive any federal funds, you can’t perform them.  That is way different.  It basically says that no insurance company in this country can offer insurance for abortion.   This even applies to the public option which is totally funded by premiums.

Now think about this a minute.  Here truly is a religious belief, that life begins at conception, being codified into federal law.  Second it puts the government in the driver’s seat to decide what medical procedures are appropriate.    For those conservatives who are afraid of big government, apparently they only fear it if they don’t agree with it.  But if it is accordance with their religious beliefs, then government should force it on the rest of us.

So the state of the state is getting worse and worse.  The majority can see the way forward, but what they want is negated by a minority because we have instituted minority rule in our Congress.  Then of course we have the God syndrome best evidenced by Joe Lieberman when, this weekend on FOX noise, he explained that he would have to block (read filibuster) health care reform if it contains a public option.  He said he could not in good conscience allow a program to go forward that would bankrupt our children.  Two problems here with this thinking:  The Congressional Budget Office says it will save money and he is playing God.  Americans want a public option but he is so important he has decided to decide for us.  Another good American who has no understanding of Democracy and has let his ego grow to unbounded proportions.

I would be the first to protect minorities from the tyranny of the majority.  So we don’t legislate laws that say you must have an abortion.  That would be tyranny of the majority.  But when the minority forces its views on the rest of us, Democracy no longer works.

So what does all this bode?  No real reform for years to come.  If people were awake they would understand that if we want to really have change and move forward, the makeup of the House and Senate must change.  And in the next election that probably will happen, but if the jobless rate doesn’t get better, that makeup may shift to those who are holding us back.  I can’t wait to see what they do with the Climate Bill.  Have a nice day.

I listened to the Sunday talk shows and I was getting somewhat bored.  Same old arguments that are irrational, failure to challenge them by the media because they have been repeated so many times, and letting the guest drive the argument, instead of penetrating questions to both sides.  Here is how the conventional wisdom of the timid goes:

“ President Obama is moving too fast on too many issues and the American people are uncomfortable with these big changes.  The real problem is jobs so why try to fix health care or pass climate legislation?  Government is getting involved in too many things”

Note this is just a very mild form of the tea party paranoia that says the government is taking over everything, we are losing our freedoms, and we are being turned into a socialist/communist state.  The people who are pushing this agenda are really anti-democracy forces made up mostly of not very bright white people who are afraid of the future.  I say this because our system of government is well and functioning.  We had an election, they lost, and their idea of democracy is my way or revolution.  They don’t believe in majority rule if it threatens their perceived status quo.  They truly are a fringe group that does not need to be addressed here.

This conventional wisdom has an element of truth in it.  People are very unhappy and afraid because the recession drags on and things for the average American are not getting better.  Where this logic of too much change breaks down is that President Obama really hasn’t changed very much.  In fact, as Frank Rich pointed out in his column Sunday, The Night They Drove the Tea Partiers Down, he has become the protector of the status quo with banks, which may be his real Achilles Heel.  His one big accomplishment was the stimulus package that most economists, if they are not blinded by ideology, will admit helped but wasn’t big enough.

And that in a nutshell, that is the problem and the logical failure of the Republican conventional wisdom.  People are not uncomfortable because he is making big changes.  They are uncomfortable because things are not improving.  Congress dithers (the word of the month) and it is business as usual, and people thought they had voted for change.  Half measures are not changing anything.  Republicans are using fear by claiming that the Obama Administration is gutting the American way of life and you can see it doesn’t work, when the reality is they have offered no alternatives except lower taxes and smaller government, and have had a major hand in preventing any real change.

So, unless things change radically, here is what we have.  President Obama promised change but has been too timid and the result has been to right the ship, but not turn it toward a brighter future.  As Frank Rich pointed out, his protecting of the banks and failure to follow Greenspan and Voickers advise on reforming Wall Street and the Banks while backing Treasury Secretary Geithner, who everyone sees is Wall Street’s boy, makes the average American suffering from the recession see business as usual.  We have Republicans leveraging this as disaffection with change that in reality hasn’t really been enough change, but offering absolutely nothing in policy proposals for solving our problems.  And of course, we have a failed media that doesn’t really challenge the Republicans to offer an alternative and examine whether it really addresses the problem.  Their claim that a public option will destroy America or that their recently proposed alternative to health care reform will address our problems is barely examined except by the opposition.  Their cries sound like Ronald Reagan in the 60’s fighting Medicare.  Media asleep at the wheel once again.

The real issue for all of us is that we are facing some major problems.  There is an element of truth to the conventional wisdom that people don’t care about anything but jobs.  The story that has not been adequately sold is that you cannot solve one problem without the other.  All of these issues are interrelated.  So this idea that we are attacking too many problems is a failure to understand that all of these issues are interconnected.

More important is to asked those who push this, just exactly how would they solve these growing problems.  Then challenge their basic assumptions like the market place will pull us out.  My fear is that the Democrats will be too timid, and the voters will return those whose philosophy has brought to our knees to office as the perceive Democrats as more of the same and punish them by throwing them out of office.  Then we will have a much harder time fixing our problems as the Republicans make them worse until they are thrown out of office again as we fall further behind the rest of the industrialized world.

I been thinking which is always a dangerous thing.  Every time some nut job goes off on a shooting spree, the national media goes berserk covering mindless speculation and rumor the rest of the day, and news that is important to our future gets totally pushed off the airwaves.  Since the Republicans certainly don’t want us discussing our real problems because they don’t have any solutions, could this not be some conservative plot to distract us from the real issues of the day?  They certainly have enough nut jobs and guns across the country to pull this off.  I can hear it now, “Today in podunk  city a crazed shooter shouting ‘Bring back my country,” shot and wounded x bystanders at Chunky Cheese.  In a related story Michelle Bachmann said this was a real measure of the unrest in this country over the loss of the election to the Democrats.”

I don’t mean to demean those who have been killed or injured in these senseless attacks, but these kinds of news stories are kind of like rubber necking at a car wreck scene.  There is very little to be learned except to see carnage, and when this distracts us from our primary task, in this case driving the car, it leads to us to rear end the car in front of us because we are not paying attention to where we are going.  You get the analogy.  I am sure the press doesn’t.  If it bleeds, it leads.  If it is outrageous, repeat it over and over.

I see we have another killing spree in Orlando, Florida.  What we need is more guns so more people can shoot themselves in the crossfire.  More continuous coverage where nobody knows anything and speculation will masquerade as news.