Thanks, Massachusetts

So something has happened to once again jar me out of my blogging slumber. Bear with me, because this isn't going to be pretty.

There was a special election held in the state of Massachusetts this evening, to decide who would take over for the now-deceased Senator Edward Kennedy. Due to the Democratic candidate's inability to tell a Red Sock from a Yankee, and her general lack of campaigning skills, this Senate seat now belongs to some Republican yahoo who looks a lot like a younger Mitt Romney and has posed nude on at least one occasion. But, to his credit, he's a real 'murikan, and has promised to be tough on terrorists and to vote against any and all attempts to reform the healthcare system, which is all you really need to be a Republican senator these days.

Anyway, this will leave the Dems with a 59 vote majority in the Senate, which in any other epoch of American politics would be more than enough to get quite a bit done. After all, Bush never had this type of legislative majority, but nevertheless got nearly everything he wanted during his administration. But given that the Republican party will filibuster any and all legislation coming from Democrats (including declarations that Hitler was a bad person, or that kicking puppies is mean), and also considering that the Dems have been, at best, ineffectual with a 60 vote majority, it's quite likely that they will be entirely useless from now until the likely ass-kicking that they will suffer at the end of this year. The crazies on the Right are smelling blood.

I think the events of the past year (and really, the past decade) amply demonstrate that the US political system is hopelessly ill-equipped to deal with the challenges of our time. You have one party that is weak, torn by ideological divisions, and largely beholden to the concerns of corporations and special interests, while the other party is simply insane. Obama is a huge improvement over the last occupant of the White House, but he hasn't shown the decisive leadership necessary to overcome this sad state of affairs.

Health care is a great example. Without dramatic health care reform, the US will continue to be an embarrassing exception among First World nations that guarantee quality health care to all their citizens. Health care costs will continue to skyrocket, enriching insurance and drug companies while bankrupting ordinary citizens, and eventually, the US government itself. Rather than giving up altogether on health care, the House may still pass the Senate health care reform compromise, but that hardly qualifies as "dramatic", and will do little to solve the larger problems the US faces on this front.

And we can pretty much forget about anything meaningful being done about climate change or regulating the financial sector or restoring civil liberties or transitioning to a greener economy or...I could go on. The one area where Obama will still have some room to maneuver is foreign policy, but that will make little difference when it comes to the long-term fiscal and social stability of our neighbor to the south.

I wish I could come to a more positive conclusion, but unless the Democrats man up and surprise me, or the Republicans finally come to their senses, and stop being so damned crazy and nihilistic, I don't see one. In future histories of the decline of the American empire, 2009 will surely be viewed as a huge missed opportunity to right the wrongs of the "lost decade" of the 2000s. Maybe it will take President Palin, a military dicatorship, and total economic collapse for Americans to finally come to their senses, but by that point it will be too late.

Update:

Yes.

The Democrats in Massachusetts nominated a horrendous candidate who proceeded to run a somnolent campaign (or non-campaign) that presumed victory and excited exactly no one. The Republicans were highly motivated even though Scott Brown is far from great shakes himself. So we're back to the pre-2008 electoral dynamics: Republicans vote, Democrats don't. And why would they? What kind of rallying cry could Coakley have used? "Get out to vote! Protect that watered-down embarrassment of a health care 'reform' bill! You know, the one we let the insurance companies write!" Something tells me that would not have worked. It is plainly obvious that Democratic candidates can't expect success without the voters who showed up in 2008, and they're not going to show up unless they're highly motivated by distaste for the GOP (which they aren't at the moment, given the results from 2006-08) or enthusiasm for the Congressional agenda. What we're seeing is not a schizophrenic electorate giving the GOP eight years to screw things up and expecting the Democrats to fix it all in nine months. We're seeing that nine months is more than enough time for the modern Democratic Party to disgust most of its base.

And this isn't unfair either:

In the end, however, Obama will get exactly what he deserves. He took office with all the enthusiasm in the world behind him and he proceeded to govern like an Eisenhower Republican. Like Clinton, Obama will probably survive re-election in 2012 because of his personal appeal and the pitiful field of challengers. But his brief window of opportunity to seize the initiative and take control of the Congressional agenda has passed.

Of course, it doesn't help that some Democrats are already falling all over themselves in declaring defeat. So typical .

T-minus 3 days...

Only three more days, kids! I'm going to take a cue from Atrios and recommend a news blackout and heavy drinking.

1. Great discussion on Real Time last night, ranging from McCain's "hero and role model", Joe the Plumber, to creepy Evangelical Jew-love, to this week's Exit Strategy, Russia:



Maher himself was on fire too, with a great election-retrospective New Rules segment:



"By the grace of Allah, Comrade Obama and his Nubian army will usher in a new era of socialism and gay marriage. So vote early and vote often, and if you're not registered, just ask one of the nice people at ACORN for a form."

Hee.

2. From Open Left:

(1) Social Security is not in crisis, and may not even ever have a shortfall. The projections used to show a shortfall are based on worst-case, GWB-style economic "growth", not on anything seen in our historical record over a similar multi-decade period. Furthermore, even with such miserable, precedented economic performance, we could fill most of the shortfall simply by raising the SS/Medicare taxes on those whose taxes are currently capped.

(2) Medicare costs are skyrocketing because our entire medical system is far more costly than that of other countries. From my diary from last April, "Medicare Myths--Don't Blame The Boomers":

Treating medicine as a commodity in our economy has caused it to become far more costly than in any other country, but with poorer overall health outcomes than all other advanced industrial nations. Thus the solution to exploding Medicare costs is not to abandon or try to replace Medicare, but to universalize it--the exact opposite direction of change from that suggested by the generational warfare meme.

Good points. Especially the latter. How many times have I said it now? The US health care system is a complete disgrace, and what is even more of a disgrace is the way that Americans cannot have an honest debate about health care reform.

3. I can't help but be entertained by Stephen Harper's revolving door of Foreign Affairs Ministers. The posting has been treated with utter unseriousness by the last few governments, and the latest selection, Lawrence Cannon, who seems not to even want the job (great start), will be the eighth in eight years.

This is part of the reason why Canada's influence in the world has diminished. Sure, we've taken on a greater military role in Afghanistan, but in many ways, Canada used to be the world's elder statesman, a grownup in a club of adolescents. That seems like a long time ago.

4. Watch as Lawrence Eagleburger falls all over himself apologizing for criticizing Sarah Palin's qualifications for office:



Wow. Josh Marshall has it about right; this is more than a little evocative of coerced public apologies in Communist countries. From the party running against "socialism".

Health care shennenigans

Last night, McCain once again claimed that Obama's health care plan would require mandates, in the tried and true tradition of right-wingers demagoguing "socialized medicine".

Let's go right to the source.

The Obama-Biden plan provides affordable, accessible health care for all Americans, builds on the existing health care system, and uses existing providers, doctors and plans to implement the plan. Under the Obama-Biden plan, patients will be able to make health care decisions with their doctors, instead of being blocked by insurance company bureaucrats.

Under the plan, if you like your current health insurance, nothing changes, except your costs will go down by as much as $2,500 per year.

If you don’t have health insurance, you will have a choice of new, affordable health insurance options.

Clear enough for everyone?

The major thrust of this is to say that insurance companies can no longer deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions or risk factors. The plan will also include tax credits, measures to increase competition in the industry, measures to decrease the cost of prescription drugs, expansions of SCHIP and Medicaid, and make the public insurance available to members of Congress also available to its financiers, the public.

It's a good plan, but as far as I'm concerned, the entire HMO system should be scrapped. There is no reason that what works so well in the rest of the industrialized world cannot work in the US. None at all.

The only thing holding it back is this utterly dishonest and self-interested misrepresentation of universal health care by right-wing politicians. And the Democrats, helpless against such an entrenched meme, can only offer half-way solutions that will treat the symptoms, but not the disease.

Grumpy McCain

It's probably obvious at this point that I've lost whatever respect I once held for John McCain. The way he has run this campaign has been simply disgraceful. Nearly every sane position that he once held has been dropped in order to appeal to the Republican party's nutjob base. He has proven to be ignorant of economic policy and highly overrated on his understanding of foreign affairs. And his choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate has shown him to be a deeply unserious and desperate candidate who cares about nothing other than winning the Presidency.

So from my perspective, his interview today with the Des Moines Register (I'm really not sure why he's wasting his time in Iowa; Obama's got it sewn up) was very interesting. But in a morbidly fascinating kind of way.

Here is an angry McCain getting confronted with his sleazy lies about Obama, particularly the "kindergarten sex-ed" thing:



First, it's funny that he needs to ask for "examples". And then it's just downright scary to see him fully stand by all his vile bullshit, and bizarrely claim that he has "documentation" and information on his website that proves his case. This man is a sociopath.

Here he is defending his demagoguery on government health care even though he's been well served by government health care his entire fucking life:



His answer is downright bizarre. The transcript:

"You know that's an interesting statement, isn't it? And I have never been an astronaut, but I think I know the challenges of space. And I have never done a lot of things in my life that I think I am familiar with. I've always been a free enterprise person who thinks that families make the best decisions for themselves and their future...so the answer is that most of my life, in serving my country I have had health care. I did go a period of time where the health care wasn't very good."

First off, POW!

Second, his analogy is backwards. McCain, having had government subsidized health care his entire life, has had first hand experience seeing how well it works. To throw his silly analogy back at him, he is the astronaut, and his knowledge of the challenges of space is second to no one's. Government health care has served him pretty well apparently, since he could have certainly opted out and purchased the most expensive insurance available in the private sector. But he didn't.

Anyway, enough about Johnny Drama, I'm off to watch the French language debate since I'll be missing the English one tomorrow in favor of the American VP debate.

What's responsible for the middle class squeeze?

Not just gas:

(graph retrieved from here)

As always, health care is the elephant in the room that no American politician wants to tackle honestly. While John McCain lies about Obama wanting to bring about "socialized medicine", tens of thousands of Americans are going bankrupt because of their health care expenses. Thousands more are dying needlessly because their HMOs deny them coverage, or because they actively avoid care that they cannot afford. And some 50 million don't have any insurance coverage at all.

Conservative misinformation and misdirection on health care, fueled by money from HMO and drug lobbyists, is one of the most shameful aspects of the current political situation in the US.

Moving forward...

My initial reaction to McCain's speech was that it wasn't nearly as bad as most of his efforts. Damning with faint praise, perhaps, but there weren't the usual awkward laughs, flubbed lines, and just generally poor stagecraft that we're used to seeing from McCain. I guess that makes sense, given that it was the goddamn convention afterall. And also, only catching bits and pieces of it, I thought that it was remarkably light on hate and dishonesty, at least compared to the other speakers who "graced" the arena in St. Paul.

Guess I was wrong:

Last night, in his speech, John McCain said, "My health care plan will make it
easier for more Americans to find and keep good health care insurance. His plan
will force small businesses to cut jobs, reduce wages, and force families into a
government run health care system where a bureaucrat stands between you and your
doctor."

This is so incredibly, blatantly dishonest, I don't even know where to start.

Government run health care system? From Obama ? Obama got hammered in the primaries precisely because his plan wasn't a mandated universal health care system. Obama's plan does nothing but subsidize private health insurance. There's no "bureaucrat" standing between you and your doctor.

Conservative demagoguery on universal health care drives me absolutely nuts. John McCain, for his part, has had "government run health insurance" every day of his damn life, and there he is shamelessly lying about Obama's plan to make private health insurance more affordable. Ezra Klein has a good proposition :

I should say, of course, that not only isn't this true, but it's nonsensical. Where exactly is the bureaucrat supposed to stand? In the waiting room? Outside your car? Obama's health care plan is basically a way to subsidize private insurance. There's a regulator involved, but he has nothing to do with you or your doctor. Instead, he stands behind your insurer, tapping his foot, and warning against denying you coverage on grounds of ill health or bad luck.

That said, here's the question I'd love to see John McCain asked: "Senator McCain, can you describe how Senator Obama's health care plan works?" And if he gets it wrong, I'd like to see the moderator correct him and ask what he thinks of the actual plan.

McCain certainly talks Obama's plan down plenty, and fair enough. But I'd bet good money, and a fair amount of it, that there's no way he could describe it. And I wouldn't mind seeing the same question put to Obama. The two of them should be forced to display some rudimentary understanding of what this debate is actually about, and if either can't, that should say a lot about the salvos that have been unleashed thus far.

But the media will NEVER do this, because they don't give two shits about the issues. To them, this election is all some inane personality contest. To read the poll numbers today, it seems Americans have a more favorable rating of Sarah Palin than Barack Obama or John McCain. And Obama has only a slight edge in the question of experience.

To which I would ask: are American voters completely retarded? I won't go through everything all over again, but I will ask this:

Are we going to even see Sarah Palin again until October? Will she do any interviews? Field questions from reporters that aren't softballs?

Apparently not .

This is still a farce, despite the best efforts of partisan blowhards on the Right to convince us otherwise. What kind of VP candidate needs to be kept in complete seclusion from the media? But never fear, the McCain campaign assures us that we'll learn all we need to know about her from carefully choreographed speeches and campaign ads:



Great days for democracy, eh?

The more I think about it, the more insulting this is. McCain thinks that all he needs to do is dangle a pro-life evangelical in front of social conservatives for a few days, and he'll have them in the tank. Never mind Palin actually campaigning for him, or taking the time to introduce herself to the public (and even to evangelicals, many of whom are not single issue voters, and who do not know her well at all). It's a remarkably cynical strategy.

And then there's this:

If she goes out and makes a mistake, that is something that [voters will] care
about, and that's something that will haunt [McCain] for awhile, so I think this
is a smart move.

I need a drink.

Too damn hot

Well, the heat is stifling this Thursday evening, even here in Halifax. So I don't have much energy for blogging.

I'll direct you to this excellent post on ginandtacos, satirizing the McCain campaign:

My fellow Americans,

Now that I’m making up a little ground in the polls I think we should talk about what I am doing. Frankly you all are starting to worry me a bit. Some of you are seriously considering voting for me. Do you have any idea how ridiculous that is?

Listen. This entire campaign is just an elaborate piece of performance art. An experiment, if you will. We are seriously just fucking around with you - seeing how blatantly we can give you the finger without losing your support. I had Phil Gramm (remember when he ran for President and finished behind Lamar Alexander?!?!) go on TV and call you a bunch of whiners for complaining about the economy. Read that again - my multimillionaire surrogate mocked your economic difficulties! I also promised to stay in Iraq (you know, that war you fucking hate!) for 100 years while all but guaranteeing a new war in Iran. It’s like Marcel Duchamp crawled from the grave and ran for President.

I’m publicly dropping hints that Mitt Romney will be my running mate. Mitt Fucking Romney!!! I mean, come on. I can barely even talk about it with a straight face, and you retards just keep applauding! Next I’ll roast a live panda over a bonfire while my campaign staff steal medicine from pediatric cancer patients. And my supporters will send more checks! Ha ha!

Even when I act senile - trying to provoke a reaction like “Oh my God, this demented fossil can’t possibly have his finger on the button” - you’re unfazed! I just gave a goddamn speech about Czechoslovakia (and did it again after I got called on it!) That hasn’t been a country for, what, 20 years? Your response: crown me a foreign policy “expert!” You gotta be shitting me.

Click the link for more.

What else?

Well, it seems Canada is a good place to live if you have cancer. That's good to hear, but our stats on colorectal cancer aren't so great. I don't even know what colorectal cancer is, but it sounds bad.

Anyway, go see The Dark Knight tomorrow! I sure as hell am; I've got my tickets for IMAX, and am just bubbling over with excitement.

UPDATE: Okay, this is just classic. Larry Craig: "we won't let them jerk us around by the gas nozzle"



Oh my god. I'm just about LOL'd out when it comes to Larry Craig. Lest we forget, there was also this gem from our favorite toilet paper challenged Senator:

More evidence for universal health care

Taiwan introduced a single-payer health insurance system in 1995. Since then, they've gone from 60% insured to 100% insured. But at what cost?

Via Ezra Klein, this article from Health Affairs:

Taiwan established a compulsory national health insurance program that provided universal coverage and a comprehensive benefit package to all of its residents. Besides providing more equal access to health care and financial risk protection, the single-payer NHI also provides tools to manage health spending increases. Our data show that Taiwan was able to adopt the NHI without using measurably more resources than what it would have spent without the program. It seems that the additional resources that had to be spent to cover the uninsured were largely offset by the savings resulting from reduced overcharges, duplication and overuse of health services and tests, transaction costs, and other costs. The total increase in national health spending between 1995 and 2000 was not more than the amount that Taiwan would have spent, based on historical trends.

Imagine that. Klein summarizes:

In other words, Taiwan was able to move from 60 percent insured to nearly 100 percent insured (a tiny number of folks are overseas or off the grid) without increasing costs at all. Reducing administrative costs, transaction fees, cost shifting, overuse, and so forth paid for the expansion. Since then, they've been able to keep their cost growth low. In addition, "Taiwan did not experience any reported increase in queues or waiting time under the NHI. Meanwhile, the government has taken regular public opinion polls every three months to gauge the public’s satisfaction with the NHI. It continuously enjoys a public satisfaction rate of around 70 percent, one of the highest for Taiwanese public programs." And they accomplished all this by moving to one of those awful, inefficient, government-controlled single payer programs.

I would really like to see the free market ideologues try to explain away the success of Taiwan's single payer system. More people served for less cost, little to no queuing or rationing of services, and most importantly, broad public satisfaction. Compare that with the polls that show four out of five Americans favor fundamental changes or a complete overhaul of their health care system.

It's absolutely stunning how support for universal health care remains a fringe position in US politics even when the evidence in favor of it is so incredibly overwhelming.

Americans hate their health care

Via Ezra Klein and TNR:

If you've heard John McCain talk about health care lately, then you've heard him suggest that Democratic plans for universal health insurance would lead to long waits, higher costs, inferior care, etc.--since that's what they get in Europe.

As I've mentioned before, one of the many, many flaws with this argument is that the people in those countries don't seem to agree. Their systems have problems--some more than others--but overall people in the larger, more advanced European countries seem more content with their health insurance arrangements than most Americans are with theirs.

Today's news brings yet more evidence of this. On behalf of the International Herald Tribune and France 24 television, Harris Interactive surveyed people in the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. The findings? Four out of five Americans say the system needs fundamental changes or a complete overhaul--the highest of all the countries surveyed.

As I said earlier, I plan to blog about health care from time to time. It really is amazing how much of a disgrace the US health care system is, and how little is being done about it.

All of the arguments being attributed to John McCain above are resoundingly false. Most European health care systems have lesser wait times, much lower costs, and lead to equal or superior health outcomes for their citizens. This applies to Canada as well, although I take issue with a few things that we do here as well (I'll take a whack at that in the future).

The US is the only First World country to lack universal health care. It is the only First World country to leave a large percentage of its population without health insurance. Yet, amazingly, it spends more than any other country on health care as a percentage of GDP (graph from the Commonwealth Fund):






What is wrong with this picture? As counter-intuitive as it is to many libertarian minded folk, a government administered health insurance scheme leads to a more efficient economic outcome than dozens of competing HMOs. It's that simple. A mountain of administrative costs plus inherent difficulties with assymetrical information between patient and provider make it difficult to reach a cost-effective arrangement within the private sector.

There has been much whining about the soaring costs of Medicare south of the border, and how it will eventually become insolvent. But look at this CBO graph:








The major increases in health care costs are projected to fall outside of the government system. This is also a moral issue:

So why has this situation been allowed to persist? The reason is that there has been an ongoing campaign of disinformation in US politics that uses key words like "socialized medicine" to scare a populace that instinctively distrusts government involvement in the economy. This campaign has been promoted by those who have a financial stake in the existing system, such as the HMO and drug companies. The Democratic candidates this time around are promising "universal healthcare", but in truth, neither Obama's or Clinton's plans go far enough. The disinformation campaign has been so effective that true reform may take a backseat for years to come. And it's a travesty.