The Morning Joe Rebuttal for March 9th, 2010
Observations:
1) If anything, we are lucky there were features today because of the lack of real news. I’m not a fan of features, but this was necessary today a) to explain away the unbelievable goings on in the Massa case and b) to be honest about the level of catatonic effect the news cycle can bring you.
Think about what the show didn’t talk about today. All that optimism stuff from yesterday: Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq…. It’s like it disappeared. Goldman Sachs, financial reform? It’s like it didn’t exist.
When those subjects are optional, it’s a statement that Morning Joe, the most powerful news show on television currently also feels powerless in the face of Washington reality.
When it is strikingly obvious that reform as Elizabeth Warren would have it is as likely as a Kucinich presidency, and the reform we are getting is double speak empowering the architects of our financial doom, we laugh catatonically.
It doesn’t matter that the laughter was in reference to locker room antics, it’s that we can only laugh at that, and cannot directly confront the less hopeful stuff except by hysterical proxy.
2) New drinking game: we’re so big we are on the television of the person we’re talking about or the place we’re referring to right now. Code name: closed circuit. It might be true, and that watershed moment when Axelrod couldn’t take it anymore last December is a chief proof of that theory, but it’s still the definition of ostentatious.
I know it’s a lot to ask, but try a little more of a glancing strategy than the “Mr. President, I’m Talkin’ To You” histrionics, and watch the effect grow. What you do when you go the closed circuit way, is you become the blogger you're taught to ignore. You become the parasitic attention grabber you’re meant to be superior to on the food chain.
Glancing strategy can be fun. Here’s a thing you could do in a glancing environment that’s equally confrontational and equally educational. Role playing. Ok, Sam Stein, you be the President, Chuck Todd, you be Rahm, Mika, Axelrod, Joe, McConnell, Pat, Boehner, even Willie, Gibbs, and you’ve got yourself a fun introspective analysis without the self serving holiness.
Take on a few subjects, hey, why not start with financial reform? You missed it today.
3) Is it a surprise to anyone that Liz Cheney played herself out? Or that Rahm is at death’s door? We are all so led on this stuff that we are weakest when we think we’ve got it figured out. That’s the nature of a strategy that corrects. Go get in the game, and even if it is not going that well, remember you still get to correct and it’s the post correction strategy that you close with.
Your opponent can only react, or guess.
We are at that spot right now, as the Obama people are absolutely redefining what works and what doesn’t, while the Republicans, as evidenced in John Boehner’s statement today, are really boxed into a more of the same strategy.
I don’t know what the administration or the Pelosi/Reid legislature are going to do to close, but all the prognostication in the last 30 days and going forward seems to me to be grasping at straws, and that includes McConnell, Boehner and Steele.
That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Monday, March 8, 2010
The Precipice Of Victory
The Morning Joe Rebuttal for March 8th, 2010
Observations:
1) Really a great job strengthening the lineup to go without Joe Scarborough today. In a first, Willie Geist moves to the JS chair with Mika still on set, and carefully walks the appropriate line between the features guy and the shows coordinator. Its sort of a role reversal where Mika gives up a lot of the coordination job and goes after the ideological high ground. This culminates in Willie leading the charge when Mika too runs off to other activity. In a word or two, it worked, surprisingly, and the show has even more tools to carry three hours than it did Friday.
This isn’t possible without 3 hours stints from Pat Buchanan and Norah O’Donnell. Mika appears comfortable and cognizant with this reality in that she actually hands off to Norah when she isn’t confident she will launch the best inquiry into a subject. I’m satisfied that will result in less meandering, because while it’s a 3 hour show, those 10 minute Youtube friendly segments can be a disaster without clutch questions early to define the debate.
Still, Pat isn’t Joe, and the show leans left when Joe is gone, but more than one viewpoint gets a consistent entry into most debates.
2) The Bai segment was particularly interesting in that it seems like we are really trying to find consensus on where progress will come from. We have spent time on lobbyists, the management of the Obama administration, and the irrationality of the voting population, but to sum up that it’s still the 535 guys in the legislature responsible for their own votes, legacy, response to voters, response to lobbyist, and behavior is an integration that seems not just appropriate, but next level consensus building.
We don’t often hear this type of guest defending the health industry’s right to affect legislation. Admittedly it was self-contrarian, but it’s still a refreshing bit of lucidity saying in a more advanced world there isn’t a ban on lobbying, just a realistic balance between progress and fairness that incorporates all stakeholders in a debate.
Information is so much more efficiently distributed at this point, that there is less of a threat that a politician can hide in a Berlusconi-esque world of effacing media. This process which drives the Fox News type outlets in our world, doesn’t take into account the Opencongress’ and the Wikipedia’s of the world that are fiercely bringing a C-Span type of information to a Google population.
In that kind of informational society, the voter is the editor. They can choose to listen to their ideology sermonized back to them, or they can seek out a lucid truth. They also are forced more and more to disclose on what basis did they come upon their ideology. Their church? Fox News? Jon Stewart? Rachel Maddow? Their union? Their husband or wife? Their employer? More and more, most of us prefer two or more sources and more and more of us prefer provable consensus. This probably stems from the instinctive knowledge that disinformation lives out in the open now more than ever, and before we invade Iraq again, we want to be sure we have access to our own Mr. X to double check the facts on the ground.
3) At risk of violating a principle that I hold in very high regard, the jinx rule, there has to be a little bit of optimism at this point that we are at the threshold of history. No, not because health care is about to pass, or that the Iraqi election is interesting, or that Pakistan is doing it’s part to turn extremism out, or that Iran is not able to effect trouble around it because of it’s domestic turmoil, or that even Mitt Romney is talking carbon tax. It’s the synthesis. The integration of those facts. Is there another 25 year hiatus from combat deployment coming? Will we have health services come to us? Will a fatwa against use of terrorism bring 96% of Islam into the global fold and progress the principle of an open global society?
Of course, there was some attempt to include financial reform in that today on the show. I’m definitely not there, but those other facts seem to be a drag on the ascent of the perception of the value of the gold Krugerrand today in the face of hollow financial reforms. The Euro isn’t ever going to be the same, the US financial reform is hollow, the Goldman’s of the world appear to have gotten away with it and don’t face any imminent clawback, which they clearly should.
But just using the Goldman example here, 9/11 perversely created a global war profiteer world that might be showing signs of subsiding, the health care bubble that currently artificially siphons money from sick people to Wall Street may be at it’s apex this winter and face a different set of prospects, and carbon emission has been an untaxed free for all for every American business for our entire history. Without those things, Goldman will have to find a new bubble to manipulate it’s proprietary siphon as a net result.
That one could say Haliburton is a stock that might have seen it’s best days, that Blue Cross will have to accept assigned risk patients at unprofitable premiums, and that Exxon and Sempra can’t cloud our skies while running green themed advertisements, those are the real set of benchmarks to underpin optimism today.
That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.
Observations:
1) Really a great job strengthening the lineup to go without Joe Scarborough today. In a first, Willie Geist moves to the JS chair with Mika still on set, and carefully walks the appropriate line between the features guy and the shows coordinator. Its sort of a role reversal where Mika gives up a lot of the coordination job and goes after the ideological high ground. This culminates in Willie leading the charge when Mika too runs off to other activity. In a word or two, it worked, surprisingly, and the show has even more tools to carry three hours than it did Friday.
This isn’t possible without 3 hours stints from Pat Buchanan and Norah O’Donnell. Mika appears comfortable and cognizant with this reality in that she actually hands off to Norah when she isn’t confident she will launch the best inquiry into a subject. I’m satisfied that will result in less meandering, because while it’s a 3 hour show, those 10 minute Youtube friendly segments can be a disaster without clutch questions early to define the debate.
Still, Pat isn’t Joe, and the show leans left when Joe is gone, but more than one viewpoint gets a consistent entry into most debates.
2) The Bai segment was particularly interesting in that it seems like we are really trying to find consensus on where progress will come from. We have spent time on lobbyists, the management of the Obama administration, and the irrationality of the voting population, but to sum up that it’s still the 535 guys in the legislature responsible for their own votes, legacy, response to voters, response to lobbyist, and behavior is an integration that seems not just appropriate, but next level consensus building.
We don’t often hear this type of guest defending the health industry’s right to affect legislation. Admittedly it was self-contrarian, but it’s still a refreshing bit of lucidity saying in a more advanced world there isn’t a ban on lobbying, just a realistic balance between progress and fairness that incorporates all stakeholders in a debate.
Information is so much more efficiently distributed at this point, that there is less of a threat that a politician can hide in a Berlusconi-esque world of effacing media. This process which drives the Fox News type outlets in our world, doesn’t take into account the Opencongress’ and the Wikipedia’s of the world that are fiercely bringing a C-Span type of information to a Google population.
In that kind of informational society, the voter is the editor. They can choose to listen to their ideology sermonized back to them, or they can seek out a lucid truth. They also are forced more and more to disclose on what basis did they come upon their ideology. Their church? Fox News? Jon Stewart? Rachel Maddow? Their union? Their husband or wife? Their employer? More and more, most of us prefer two or more sources and more and more of us prefer provable consensus. This probably stems from the instinctive knowledge that disinformation lives out in the open now more than ever, and before we invade Iraq again, we want to be sure we have access to our own Mr. X to double check the facts on the ground.
3) At risk of violating a principle that I hold in very high regard, the jinx rule, there has to be a little bit of optimism at this point that we are at the threshold of history. No, not because health care is about to pass, or that the Iraqi election is interesting, or that Pakistan is doing it’s part to turn extremism out, or that Iran is not able to effect trouble around it because of it’s domestic turmoil, or that even Mitt Romney is talking carbon tax. It’s the synthesis. The integration of those facts. Is there another 25 year hiatus from combat deployment coming? Will we have health services come to us? Will a fatwa against use of terrorism bring 96% of Islam into the global fold and progress the principle of an open global society?
Of course, there was some attempt to include financial reform in that today on the show. I’m definitely not there, but those other facts seem to be a drag on the ascent of the perception of the value of the gold Krugerrand today in the face of hollow financial reforms. The Euro isn’t ever going to be the same, the US financial reform is hollow, the Goldman’s of the world appear to have gotten away with it and don’t face any imminent clawback, which they clearly should.
But just using the Goldman example here, 9/11 perversely created a global war profiteer world that might be showing signs of subsiding, the health care bubble that currently artificially siphons money from sick people to Wall Street may be at it’s apex this winter and face a different set of prospects, and carbon emission has been an untaxed free for all for every American business for our entire history. Without those things, Goldman will have to find a new bubble to manipulate it’s proprietary siphon as a net result.
That one could say Haliburton is a stock that might have seen it’s best days, that Blue Cross will have to accept assigned risk patients at unprofitable premiums, and that Exxon and Sempra can’t cloud our skies while running green themed advertisements, those are the real set of benchmarks to underpin optimism today.
That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.
Friday, March 5, 2010
The Big Leftist Apple
The Morning Joe Rebuttal for March 5th, 2010
Observations:
1) It’s OK to agree with Suze Orman about too much time and effort being spent on health care, because it’s a correct assessment. Now, that may seem like a vote against the reform, but it’s not. It’s a vote for:
Just do the damn thing.
This all could’ve been done last June. Obama has grossly mismanaged every single thing on his plate because he has mismanaged this. That’s Suze’s argument, and it’s the correct one. There is an argument out there that if we had gone with the manner that will finally pass the bill this month, a year ago, that the bill a year ago would have been substantially more robust. That the crucial concept is not just sausage-making , but sausage fermenting. Over time, every sort of special interest that has time to reorganize before a thing can pass can dilute the thing, whereas after the fact they can only come to the table with compromise positions that require them to pay for any service to their special agenda somewhere, in order to be heard.
Simply put prevention is less costly than retraction or after the fact revision.
This idea fits neatly into Tom Friedman’s nice conjecture of ‘nation building’ referring for once to the US as opposed to some other place on the map. If we have been consistent on any one thing here it’s that we have watched as this administration has ceded the momentum to the opposition party on virtually every front, due only to mismanagement, not because they have a point anywhere. They don’t have a point anywhere, enter Tom Hanks, even Blanche Lincoln can wear an opposition purity test on her sleeve next to a “D”, how is that possible?
2) The good news in any of this self inflicted crisis is that the Republicans still are as bad as they were in 2008. They have not improved one bit, still read Rove like mantra, still dream of dominating not for good, just because. But bottom line, there is a second bubble and if you want to pop it, let the obstruction continue or worse, aid the obstruction by giving the right a legislative majority. They will prevent any meaningful financial reform, and you will actually get your chance to experience the apocalypse that was narrowly averted last year.
To be fair, I cannot confidently say that any amount of momentum for Obama would have better strengthened his work on financial reform, because he has so distinctly employed the architects of the disaster as his reformers, leaving me guessing as to his true motives. Feel free to check my story with Elizabeth Warren. I’m left to contemplate that it’s not a choice of one side with pro middle class solutions versus one side blindly with commerce, it’s a choice of ‘enemy of the middle class’ and ‘corrupt beyond any ability to efficiently aid the middle class’. The corruption guys appear to be in shaky charge currently.
Astoundingly, I’m even suspicious that when the legislative elections get truly underway this fall, that the Democrats will even have the wherewithal to call out their opponents. This might even allow the Republicans to get away with a David Copperfield level of illusion where Reps actually say they are more of a friend to the middle class than their opponents.
Is there a more disturbing concept? That the American people might actually recreate their shell game gullibility of 2004 in this legislative election and declare for all the world to see that they are fully capable of voting for the Brooklyn Bridge?
3) I was in Brentwood in the early 90’s driving from a friend’s house when I saw the aftermath of a minor car accident. Brentwood looks like any neighborhood on the nice side of town in any town, but because it’s in LA the $300k houses cost $3 million. Even then it was 5 times what it would be in Peoria. But it was with a great dose of surreality that I looked at the two homeowners who had emerged from their homes to aid the confused driver on her way. Then next door neighbors: Tom Hanks, Jim Belushi. Arms crossed, confused looks on their faces channeling ‘how on earth did you manage to do this at 5 mph?’.
Two guys who came from Normaltown, USA and used modest appeal to make logic defying legends out of themselves, and who even in the face of endless spotlight, brought Peoria with them wherever they were, whatever they were doing.
Most of these guys don’t wind up this way. Most of these guys are crazy. Crazy in the can’t finish a sentence kind of way. Try picturing Akroyd or Walken or Hoffman in the same scene, and I have, it doesn’t exist.
I share the cast’s immortal opinion of Band Of Brothers, I can’t wait for The Pacific, and Tom Hanks has found a new level of communication that is revolutionizing a town normally bent on a race to the bottom. Back in ‘92, I caught a brief glimpse of why.
More of that.
That’s all for today, see you Monday.
Observations:
1) It’s OK to agree with Suze Orman about too much time and effort being spent on health care, because it’s a correct assessment. Now, that may seem like a vote against the reform, but it’s not. It’s a vote for:
Just do the damn thing.
This all could’ve been done last June. Obama has grossly mismanaged every single thing on his plate because he has mismanaged this. That’s Suze’s argument, and it’s the correct one. There is an argument out there that if we had gone with the manner that will finally pass the bill this month, a year ago, that the bill a year ago would have been substantially more robust. That the crucial concept is not just sausage-making , but sausage fermenting. Over time, every sort of special interest that has time to reorganize before a thing can pass can dilute the thing, whereas after the fact they can only come to the table with compromise positions that require them to pay for any service to their special agenda somewhere, in order to be heard.
Simply put prevention is less costly than retraction or after the fact revision.
This idea fits neatly into Tom Friedman’s nice conjecture of ‘nation building’ referring for once to the US as opposed to some other place on the map. If we have been consistent on any one thing here it’s that we have watched as this administration has ceded the momentum to the opposition party on virtually every front, due only to mismanagement, not because they have a point anywhere. They don’t have a point anywhere, enter Tom Hanks, even Blanche Lincoln can wear an opposition purity test on her sleeve next to a “D”, how is that possible?
2) The good news in any of this self inflicted crisis is that the Republicans still are as bad as they were in 2008. They have not improved one bit, still read Rove like mantra, still dream of dominating not for good, just because. But bottom line, there is a second bubble and if you want to pop it, let the obstruction continue or worse, aid the obstruction by giving the right a legislative majority. They will prevent any meaningful financial reform, and you will actually get your chance to experience the apocalypse that was narrowly averted last year.
To be fair, I cannot confidently say that any amount of momentum for Obama would have better strengthened his work on financial reform, because he has so distinctly employed the architects of the disaster as his reformers, leaving me guessing as to his true motives. Feel free to check my story with Elizabeth Warren. I’m left to contemplate that it’s not a choice of one side with pro middle class solutions versus one side blindly with commerce, it’s a choice of ‘enemy of the middle class’ and ‘corrupt beyond any ability to efficiently aid the middle class’. The corruption guys appear to be in shaky charge currently.
Astoundingly, I’m even suspicious that when the legislative elections get truly underway this fall, that the Democrats will even have the wherewithal to call out their opponents. This might even allow the Republicans to get away with a David Copperfield level of illusion where Reps actually say they are more of a friend to the middle class than their opponents.
Is there a more disturbing concept? That the American people might actually recreate their shell game gullibility of 2004 in this legislative election and declare for all the world to see that they are fully capable of voting for the Brooklyn Bridge?
3) I was in Brentwood in the early 90’s driving from a friend’s house when I saw the aftermath of a minor car accident. Brentwood looks like any neighborhood on the nice side of town in any town, but because it’s in LA the $300k houses cost $3 million. Even then it was 5 times what it would be in Peoria. But it was with a great dose of surreality that I looked at the two homeowners who had emerged from their homes to aid the confused driver on her way. Then next door neighbors: Tom Hanks, Jim Belushi. Arms crossed, confused looks on their faces channeling ‘how on earth did you manage to do this at 5 mph?’.
Two guys who came from Normaltown, USA and used modest appeal to make logic defying legends out of themselves, and who even in the face of endless spotlight, brought Peoria with them wherever they were, whatever they were doing.
Most of these guys don’t wind up this way. Most of these guys are crazy. Crazy in the can’t finish a sentence kind of way. Try picturing Akroyd or Walken or Hoffman in the same scene, and I have, it doesn’t exist.
I share the cast’s immortal opinion of Band Of Brothers, I can’t wait for The Pacific, and Tom Hanks has found a new level of communication that is revolutionizing a town normally bent on a race to the bottom. Back in ‘92, I caught a brief glimpse of why.
More of that.
That’s all for today, see you Monday.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Two Parties One Failure
The Morning Joe Rebuttal for March 4th, 2010
Observations:
1) I remember where I was when Mark Foley helped the Democratic party seem like they possessed the high ground, and oh how I long for those days. The entire institution has deteriorated from every angle and amongst all participants precipitously so since then. Today, I thought the fear based cartoons were the least bad of the day’s clown parade. I thought it was actually a worse day for Democrats, as they have ceded morality entirely in this news cycle.
I also found it ironic that it was an appearance day for Tim Kaines. This guy is in charge of the boiled down message for the Democratic party. What is a guy to do? Tell the truth? It certainly seems like his leadership is meant to evoke doublespeak as a mantra. A mantra that flows through the White House. And that’s a problem.
It’s a problem because another simultaneous act was another Obama speech with that forcefulness that used to mean uniting lucidity. Now it seems like it is a tool with an on-off switch. I still feel like the Obama speech made logical single truth based sense, but combined with all of the stuff above, the recipe is for dilution and doublespeak.
2) On health care, I don’t see the hypocritical equivalence of the Obama speech and the McConnell reaction. It seems that McConnell is in fact just plain saying two different things out of convenience, because his point isn’t progress it’s status quo that he has no intention of replacing with any other issue specific progress, new day, new way of saying no.
Conversely, you could make the point that Obama is guilty of nothing more than strategic correction in the name of progress, knowing his product is the only hope for a move forward on the issue in our lifetime. This is a correction the American people would hope he would make, rather than accept failure at the brink citing parliamentary design flaws as his excuse.
My great hope isn’t to parade around this health bill as a final solution to our need for reform, but that once in place it will be the province of the Al Franken’s and Howard Dean’s of the world as the carrier they can improve over time. There is a laundry list of improvements that can occur with the bill. Those improvements can’t exist without something to ride on.
3) Tort reform is also part of the bill. It isn’t the meaningful tort reform that Joe Scarborough is asking for, but it’s a starting point. I fail to see the cost justification of all the air time devoted to tort reform, which gets really spirited questioning from panelist after panelist, but continues to be JS’s Sally Struthers moment.
When it doesn’t have any equitable merit in the argument, it must be an obstruction or delay tactic. Remember, the Republicans aren’t going to vote for the bill, but the starting point for tort reform was in there anyway. Any further conversation on the matter as it pertains to this bill needs to come with some level of voting participation, otherwise wait until your cycle, and thank the Democrats for getting you started.
That’s right, the Republicans would never initiate health care reform. And, they will never repeal the reform. But if the legislature of the United States becomes Republican this fall, thanks to this bill, the Republicans can employ all of their improvements to the cause. Tort reform, medicare fraud enforcement, repeal the anti trust exemption, state lines, portability, and any other encumbrances to a free open market for national private health coverage.
I sincerely wish that 90% of all money paid to a health care insurer went to health care as opposed to a debatable 70% currently. It’s debatable because it’s a cat and mouse figure with enforcement tantamount to mortgage fraud enforcement in 2005. There are two paths to achieve 90% flow through. One is by government mandate, opening up an enforcement branch of government that would not be self-sustaining and result in inferior results towards the 90% goal.
The other is competition. If you want the last laugh against insurers, make them look at the airline industry, or the cell phone industry. Tell them in a hyper competitive market with multiple producers, and information they cannot collude to adjust, profit (the bellwether of flow through) moves to zero.
The airline industry really has an envy issue with the credit card industry. Man those contract tricks that let the credit card firms bilk customers for fees and fines, if bag charges could be that way, they might get some guaranteed money above the competitive wasteland. But they can’t, because in their business, smart consumers simply boil fees into their ticket price, with some travel sites doing it for you, the result, competition on final price wins.
We now possess the level of information technology to create a personal health profile for our family, to possess our medical records digitally and to shop our health needs to the penny competitively. We can even enforce emergency room and ambulance pricing, by having an alternative ready beforehand as opposed to an unnegotiated bill afterwards.
The Republicans can get a lot of this done, if my party can’t, in their 2 or so years in power starting this fall, if the Democrats continue to Carter themselves like they did today.
That’s all for today, see you Monday.
Observations:
1) I remember where I was when Mark Foley helped the Democratic party seem like they possessed the high ground, and oh how I long for those days. The entire institution has deteriorated from every angle and amongst all participants precipitously so since then. Today, I thought the fear based cartoons were the least bad of the day’s clown parade. I thought it was actually a worse day for Democrats, as they have ceded morality entirely in this news cycle.
I also found it ironic that it was an appearance day for Tim Kaines. This guy is in charge of the boiled down message for the Democratic party. What is a guy to do? Tell the truth? It certainly seems like his leadership is meant to evoke doublespeak as a mantra. A mantra that flows through the White House. And that’s a problem.
It’s a problem because another simultaneous act was another Obama speech with that forcefulness that used to mean uniting lucidity. Now it seems like it is a tool with an on-off switch. I still feel like the Obama speech made logical single truth based sense, but combined with all of the stuff above, the recipe is for dilution and doublespeak.
2) On health care, I don’t see the hypocritical equivalence of the Obama speech and the McConnell reaction. It seems that McConnell is in fact just plain saying two different things out of convenience, because his point isn’t progress it’s status quo that he has no intention of replacing with any other issue specific progress, new day, new way of saying no.
Conversely, you could make the point that Obama is guilty of nothing more than strategic correction in the name of progress, knowing his product is the only hope for a move forward on the issue in our lifetime. This is a correction the American people would hope he would make, rather than accept failure at the brink citing parliamentary design flaws as his excuse.
My great hope isn’t to parade around this health bill as a final solution to our need for reform, but that once in place it will be the province of the Al Franken’s and Howard Dean’s of the world as the carrier they can improve over time. There is a laundry list of improvements that can occur with the bill. Those improvements can’t exist without something to ride on.
3) Tort reform is also part of the bill. It isn’t the meaningful tort reform that Joe Scarborough is asking for, but it’s a starting point. I fail to see the cost justification of all the air time devoted to tort reform, which gets really spirited questioning from panelist after panelist, but continues to be JS’s Sally Struthers moment.
When it doesn’t have any equitable merit in the argument, it must be an obstruction or delay tactic. Remember, the Republicans aren’t going to vote for the bill, but the starting point for tort reform was in there anyway. Any further conversation on the matter as it pertains to this bill needs to come with some level of voting participation, otherwise wait until your cycle, and thank the Democrats for getting you started.
That’s right, the Republicans would never initiate health care reform. And, they will never repeal the reform. But if the legislature of the United States becomes Republican this fall, thanks to this bill, the Republicans can employ all of their improvements to the cause. Tort reform, medicare fraud enforcement, repeal the anti trust exemption, state lines, portability, and any other encumbrances to a free open market for national private health coverage.
I sincerely wish that 90% of all money paid to a health care insurer went to health care as opposed to a debatable 70% currently. It’s debatable because it’s a cat and mouse figure with enforcement tantamount to mortgage fraud enforcement in 2005. There are two paths to achieve 90% flow through. One is by government mandate, opening up an enforcement branch of government that would not be self-sustaining and result in inferior results towards the 90% goal.
The other is competition. If you want the last laugh against insurers, make them look at the airline industry, or the cell phone industry. Tell them in a hyper competitive market with multiple producers, and information they cannot collude to adjust, profit (the bellwether of flow through) moves to zero.
The airline industry really has an envy issue with the credit card industry. Man those contract tricks that let the credit card firms bilk customers for fees and fines, if bag charges could be that way, they might get some guaranteed money above the competitive wasteland. But they can’t, because in their business, smart consumers simply boil fees into their ticket price, with some travel sites doing it for you, the result, competition on final price wins.
We now possess the level of information technology to create a personal health profile for our family, to possess our medical records digitally and to shop our health needs to the penny competitively. We can even enforce emergency room and ambulance pricing, by having an alternative ready beforehand as opposed to an unnegotiated bill afterwards.
The Republicans can get a lot of this done, if my party can’t, in their 2 or so years in power starting this fall, if the Democrats continue to Carter themselves like they did today.
That’s all for today, see you Monday.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Make Romney Talk, Problem Solved
The Morning Joe Rebuttal for March 3rd, 2010
Observations:
1) Panderer in waiting Mitt Romney comes out of his ice cave and shares his memoirs and evolution, and it’s an ammunition dump. I’m sorry this is not going to go well, so in the interest of not leaving a permanent scar, I'll just go issue by issue.
“We are empowering terrorist with our current president’s rhetoric abroad”. Rather than responding, just imagine the alternative, which was the Bush adventurism of two mismanaged unfunded wars, and scorched earth economic globalization to make the transfer of wealth principle we are hurting ourselves with domestically, a global policy.
“Stop spending on the China credit card”. Now would that be before or after you allowed the middle class to enter 25% real unemployment by refusing to use deficits to defeat economic catastrophe? And where in your parties history has this discipline been evident?
“Hold China’s feet to the fire about Iran, with economic consequences”. That’s Romney code, so you better get good at it. China will be given the keys to the premium empowering relationship with the Revolutionary Guard regime, and buy Wal Mart stock, because cheap slave labor products will flood our consumer goods market as a reward.
“Health care should never be free for those with the ability to pay”. You will never get Romney to side with you in your health care in this lifetime. The Massachusetts plan is an unfunded nightmare. Basically, healthcare is a micro tax and another layer to the tax system that feeds more off of the middle class than anywhere else.
Honestly, I did not mind the part of Romney’s speil that the consumer should be empowered at the price point level in his healthcare decisions. But for me, trust will always be an issue with Mitt, and I can’t tell the policy from the carrot in any of his platform.
2) Mort Zuckerman couldn’t talk himself into being a busboy for New York. I just can’t blame him. Who wants the gig, and maybe he just wanted to send his party a message. Although he would have run as an independent, it would have been a ‘Bloomberg’ independent, which is a protest against an undisciplined Republican party.
His message is powerful, Bloomberg is a shining symbol of what our politics should look like, e.g. with the campaign money influence removed. But that’s another issue.
The real issue is that a mayor is an executive, and the Senator is on the varsity football team. The Senate caucus, there are only two, and there was discussion of trying to wedge that issue open, seems like it would outlast any individual in a way dramatically departed from the New York mayor. Thus you move to another city and disrupt your life just to find out that 1 in 100 is nowhere near executive power or effect.
It would be easier for a guy like Mort to effect change in the Senate by fixing the campaign money problem, or reducing the level of bought media distortion by his personal array of levers.
3) Why didn’t Morning Joe ask Richard Haas about Dan Senor? One of my favorite things is getting Richard Haas to riff on domestic issues. He is a human laser, and lines like “breeds populism or worse” cement that view.
Richard seemed to want to point the conversation towards the accurate reflection that the fiscal nightmare of New York and California is the next show to drop. Someone said yesterday that California is the next Greece. That’s cheap commentary, but still indicative that the stimulus effect on the states went unnoticed thus isn’t politically repeatable, when the shortfall next time around will be exponentially higher. Look all around you, and all the signs are that of the double dip, but make no mistake, the states will lead the way down.
Now mix that with Romney’s ‘this stuff should be handled at the state level’ mantra from #1 above. Wait, that doesn’t reconcile. Ever since Clinton’s 100,000 police unfunded national mandate, we have heaped governing, actual governing, on the states, while the federal government spends its time transferring wealth. Go Rick Perry, go Ron Paul, step into the obvious void, but realize it is not a solution. The states cannot do any better than the federal government at provision of services.
In fact, the schools, police, and health care should be re pyramid-ed to be the federal governments responsibility before they spend a penny on contract payments elsewhere. Think about it, and this isn’t limited to the federal government. You see Bunning axe-ing highway workers at the same time you see Arne Duncan saying let’s hire new motivated teachers, yet the opposite of Duncan’s premise is occurring. The younger teachers are paycheck to paycheck and expect to get fired first. In that environment, they lose all of the service career motivation and start their day with Monster.com looking to move into sales, probably in sub prime mortgage, or WeBuyGold.com pawnshops.
This phenomenon is because in the pecking order of expenditures, the people we need the most are the least protected, because all of the transfer of wealth stuff, the privatization contracts, the subsidy to private industry deals, are contract payments that are undelayable and unmanageable and thus not on the chopping block in a fiscal crisis.
Bunning has a valid point, but I don’t see anyone looking to grab that $10 billion for the unemployment extension from clawbacks of $23,000 toilet seats buried in defense contracts. Waste, fraud, abuse and only then teachers and citizens.
That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.
Observations:
1) Panderer in waiting Mitt Romney comes out of his ice cave and shares his memoirs and evolution, and it’s an ammunition dump. I’m sorry this is not going to go well, so in the interest of not leaving a permanent scar, I'll just go issue by issue.
“We are empowering terrorist with our current president’s rhetoric abroad”. Rather than responding, just imagine the alternative, which was the Bush adventurism of two mismanaged unfunded wars, and scorched earth economic globalization to make the transfer of wealth principle we are hurting ourselves with domestically, a global policy.
“Stop spending on the China credit card”. Now would that be before or after you allowed the middle class to enter 25% real unemployment by refusing to use deficits to defeat economic catastrophe? And where in your parties history has this discipline been evident?
“Hold China’s feet to the fire about Iran, with economic consequences”. That’s Romney code, so you better get good at it. China will be given the keys to the premium empowering relationship with the Revolutionary Guard regime, and buy Wal Mart stock, because cheap slave labor products will flood our consumer goods market as a reward.
“Health care should never be free for those with the ability to pay”. You will never get Romney to side with you in your health care in this lifetime. The Massachusetts plan is an unfunded nightmare. Basically, healthcare is a micro tax and another layer to the tax system that feeds more off of the middle class than anywhere else.
Honestly, I did not mind the part of Romney’s speil that the consumer should be empowered at the price point level in his healthcare decisions. But for me, trust will always be an issue with Mitt, and I can’t tell the policy from the carrot in any of his platform.
2) Mort Zuckerman couldn’t talk himself into being a busboy for New York. I just can’t blame him. Who wants the gig, and maybe he just wanted to send his party a message. Although he would have run as an independent, it would have been a ‘Bloomberg’ independent, which is a protest against an undisciplined Republican party.
His message is powerful, Bloomberg is a shining symbol of what our politics should look like, e.g. with the campaign money influence removed. But that’s another issue.
The real issue is that a mayor is an executive, and the Senator is on the varsity football team. The Senate caucus, there are only two, and there was discussion of trying to wedge that issue open, seems like it would outlast any individual in a way dramatically departed from the New York mayor. Thus you move to another city and disrupt your life just to find out that 1 in 100 is nowhere near executive power or effect.
It would be easier for a guy like Mort to effect change in the Senate by fixing the campaign money problem, or reducing the level of bought media distortion by his personal array of levers.
3) Why didn’t Morning Joe ask Richard Haas about Dan Senor? One of my favorite things is getting Richard Haas to riff on domestic issues. He is a human laser, and lines like “breeds populism or worse” cement that view.
Richard seemed to want to point the conversation towards the accurate reflection that the fiscal nightmare of New York and California is the next show to drop. Someone said yesterday that California is the next Greece. That’s cheap commentary, but still indicative that the stimulus effect on the states went unnoticed thus isn’t politically repeatable, when the shortfall next time around will be exponentially higher. Look all around you, and all the signs are that of the double dip, but make no mistake, the states will lead the way down.
Now mix that with Romney’s ‘this stuff should be handled at the state level’ mantra from #1 above. Wait, that doesn’t reconcile. Ever since Clinton’s 100,000 police unfunded national mandate, we have heaped governing, actual governing, on the states, while the federal government spends its time transferring wealth. Go Rick Perry, go Ron Paul, step into the obvious void, but realize it is not a solution. The states cannot do any better than the federal government at provision of services.
In fact, the schools, police, and health care should be re pyramid-ed to be the federal governments responsibility before they spend a penny on contract payments elsewhere. Think about it, and this isn’t limited to the federal government. You see Bunning axe-ing highway workers at the same time you see Arne Duncan saying let’s hire new motivated teachers, yet the opposite of Duncan’s premise is occurring. The younger teachers are paycheck to paycheck and expect to get fired first. In that environment, they lose all of the service career motivation and start their day with Monster.com looking to move into sales, probably in sub prime mortgage, or WeBuyGold.com pawnshops.
This phenomenon is because in the pecking order of expenditures, the people we need the most are the least protected, because all of the transfer of wealth stuff, the privatization contracts, the subsidy to private industry deals, are contract payments that are undelayable and unmanageable and thus not on the chopping block in a fiscal crisis.
Bunning has a valid point, but I don’t see anyone looking to grab that $10 billion for the unemployment extension from clawbacks of $23,000 toilet seats buried in defense contracts. Waste, fraud, abuse and only then teachers and citizens.
That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Populism Takes A Fall
The Morning Joe Rebuttal for March 2nd, 2010
Observations:
1) Bravo for Harold Ford Jr. He could have been another in a long line of New York enigmas, but saw that as his fate in time to not have it unfold that way. It’s not a clean break, as is evidenced in the tough worded Gillibrand campaign reaction, but a break nonetheless, and possibly accomplished something for the people in the process. If there is any merit to the competitive force creating a necessary edge in the Gillibrand camp theory, her camp has really run with it.
It doesn’t get any easier, with Mort Zuckerman attempting to be Mike Bloomberg II, ‘this time the US Senate is toast’. That message has some merit. I think the way to Mort’s achillies heel is his prone-ness to distractions like the perpetual Israel crusade. It might show that Mort is human and subject to having complexities dilute functionality like the rest of us.
But Harold, although he was still in that bad guy Robocop mode this morning, is back and has a bright future probably in Washington as part of the inevitable revamping of the Obama administration. That seems like an obvious move, but don’t take that as any support from the middle for such a move, as he would represent the wrong side in the Wall Street checks and balances conversation. And didn’t the wrong side just win another battle against the people’s business yesterday with the poaching of another senior Treasury executive by the lobby community. And didn’t exultant lobbyists issue a press release about how they own that much more of the White House as a result?
4 straight administrations poached by Cypress?
2) Melissa Harris-Lacewell will need to learn that it’s not nice to use those pesky articulate facts and comprehensive strategies of popular division to unseat Joe Scarborough as the people’s non wedge Republican. I mean cat’s in Utah reacted like an earthquake was imminent as the defensiveness bubbled out of Scarborough’s every pore.
Lets line this up so the record is straight.
Mr. Scarborough trots out a populist friendly concept that wedge issues get in the way of vetting leadership qualities. That people use a person’s stance on Abortion to decide their vote rather than whether they might be effective at the complex business of running government.
Melissa comes back with the national strategy by the Republican party in the south spanning 3 decades to use those issues to separate middle class southern whites from their own economic well being using the church and abortion as the chisel.
Mr. Scarborough at this point annexes the conversation like the US annexed Hawaii, claiming even a gay couple would prioritize the economy over their equality, oops. I couldn’t have shone a light on the hypocrisy better myself. But wait there's more, Mr. Scarborough pressed forward that too much focus on social issues is the likely cause of the Post-Katrina governmental failure. That’s a nice way of saying it’s your own fault, you victims with convictions.
Let’s not mince words here, I agree with the premise of Mr. Scarborough’s argument, that we should look past wedge issues and choose the leader most capable of governing, a task beyond the complexity comprehension of most Americans. However, trust is an issue. Whether it’s Senate versus the House or Joe Scarborough and Mitt Romney making campaign promises, there is not enough faith in words to believe that the resultant action won’t be erosion of Roe v. Wade and an ignoring of American women’s strong support of the principles of the Supreme Court decision, once the pols are in office and drunk with power. So unless you want to make a legally enforceable written contract with the women of the United States, or the gay married couples of the United States or with Charles Darwin, forgive the American people for not believing in your ability to separate yourself from this issue. Forgive the American people for deciphering the code of “it’s not a federal issue” as a mantra of repeal Roe v. Wade.
And that jab by Harold about Melissa’s support of the health care bill being in contradiction of women’s reproductive rights is all the proof you need that unless it’s in writing, governing in spite of the wedge issue becomes impossible.
3) Senator Jim Bunning is doing the Democratic party a favor. He is poster-izing hypocrisy, obstructionism, and by the fact that he follows Alabama Senator Shelby so closely in a transparently self serving move, he shows the entire Republican party as lockstep in opposing progress or governing, all for political gain.
There is no doubt that the fundamental point that Bunning is opportuning upon is relevant. We can't afford to keep charging things on the governments credit card. But you need to have decided that when you were in power to be valid. And the fact that dime store pundits across the country can name 5 points of outright playing both sides of an issue out of political convenience just can’t bode well for a party trying to represent itself as a better manager.
Although early on, it was a watershed moment for Morning Joe. Joe Scarborough came out on the right side of this issue, but left little doubt that he knew there were repercussions of joining the chorus of loud bipartisan criticisms of what is essentially the current central strategy of the Republican party. You will look great in the next "Don't Obey" poster, sir.
You know that the RNC is furious with Bunning (and Shelby). This is the equivalent of the Harry Reid quote factory from a few months ago. It gives people with some momentum a pause. But there is a problem here that these guys want to retire, some of them are already starting their great twilight, and the RNC has zero ability to control the Decemberist Senators, and there are a lot of them.
Thats all for today, see you tomorrow.
Observations:
1) Bravo for Harold Ford Jr. He could have been another in a long line of New York enigmas, but saw that as his fate in time to not have it unfold that way. It’s not a clean break, as is evidenced in the tough worded Gillibrand campaign reaction, but a break nonetheless, and possibly accomplished something for the people in the process. If there is any merit to the competitive force creating a necessary edge in the Gillibrand camp theory, her camp has really run with it.
It doesn’t get any easier, with Mort Zuckerman attempting to be Mike Bloomberg II, ‘this time the US Senate is toast’. That message has some merit. I think the way to Mort’s achillies heel is his prone-ness to distractions like the perpetual Israel crusade. It might show that Mort is human and subject to having complexities dilute functionality like the rest of us.
But Harold, although he was still in that bad guy Robocop mode this morning, is back and has a bright future probably in Washington as part of the inevitable revamping of the Obama administration. That seems like an obvious move, but don’t take that as any support from the middle for such a move, as he would represent the wrong side in the Wall Street checks and balances conversation. And didn’t the wrong side just win another battle against the people’s business yesterday with the poaching of another senior Treasury executive by the lobby community. And didn’t exultant lobbyists issue a press release about how they own that much more of the White House as a result?
4 straight administrations poached by Cypress?
2) Melissa Harris-Lacewell will need to learn that it’s not nice to use those pesky articulate facts and comprehensive strategies of popular division to unseat Joe Scarborough as the people’s non wedge Republican. I mean cat’s in Utah reacted like an earthquake was imminent as the defensiveness bubbled out of Scarborough’s every pore.
Lets line this up so the record is straight.
Mr. Scarborough trots out a populist friendly concept that wedge issues get in the way of vetting leadership qualities. That people use a person’s stance on Abortion to decide their vote rather than whether they might be effective at the complex business of running government.
Melissa comes back with the national strategy by the Republican party in the south spanning 3 decades to use those issues to separate middle class southern whites from their own economic well being using the church and abortion as the chisel.
Mr. Scarborough at this point annexes the conversation like the US annexed Hawaii, claiming even a gay couple would prioritize the economy over their equality, oops. I couldn’t have shone a light on the hypocrisy better myself. But wait there's more, Mr. Scarborough pressed forward that too much focus on social issues is the likely cause of the Post-Katrina governmental failure. That’s a nice way of saying it’s your own fault, you victims with convictions.
Let’s not mince words here, I agree with the premise of Mr. Scarborough’s argument, that we should look past wedge issues and choose the leader most capable of governing, a task beyond the complexity comprehension of most Americans. However, trust is an issue. Whether it’s Senate versus the House or Joe Scarborough and Mitt Romney making campaign promises, there is not enough faith in words to believe that the resultant action won’t be erosion of Roe v. Wade and an ignoring of American women’s strong support of the principles of the Supreme Court decision, once the pols are in office and drunk with power. So unless you want to make a legally enforceable written contract with the women of the United States, or the gay married couples of the United States or with Charles Darwin, forgive the American people for not believing in your ability to separate yourself from this issue. Forgive the American people for deciphering the code of “it’s not a federal issue” as a mantra of repeal Roe v. Wade.
And that jab by Harold about Melissa’s support of the health care bill being in contradiction of women’s reproductive rights is all the proof you need that unless it’s in writing, governing in spite of the wedge issue becomes impossible.
3) Senator Jim Bunning is doing the Democratic party a favor. He is poster-izing hypocrisy, obstructionism, and by the fact that he follows Alabama Senator Shelby so closely in a transparently self serving move, he shows the entire Republican party as lockstep in opposing progress or governing, all for political gain.
There is no doubt that the fundamental point that Bunning is opportuning upon is relevant. We can't afford to keep charging things on the governments credit card. But you need to have decided that when you were in power to be valid. And the fact that dime store pundits across the country can name 5 points of outright playing both sides of an issue out of political convenience just can’t bode well for a party trying to represent itself as a better manager.
Although early on, it was a watershed moment for Morning Joe. Joe Scarborough came out on the right side of this issue, but left little doubt that he knew there were repercussions of joining the chorus of loud bipartisan criticisms of what is essentially the current central strategy of the Republican party. You will look great in the next "Don't Obey" poster, sir.
You know that the RNC is furious with Bunning (and Shelby). This is the equivalent of the Harry Reid quote factory from a few months ago. It gives people with some momentum a pause. But there is a problem here that these guys want to retire, some of them are already starting their great twilight, and the RNC has zero ability to control the Decemberist Senators, and there are a lot of them.
Thats all for today, see you tomorrow.
Monday, March 1, 2010
New Month, Same Madness
The Morning Joe Rebuttal for March 1, 2010
Observations:
1) This whole situation with Charlie Rengel stinks, but the judge, jury and executioner take by the Morning Joe show seems like a hatchet job, even if they wind up being right on all of their analysis and predictions. An analysis that it looks bad is one thing, but not affording a person due process ultimately dilutes your punitive options. If your ultimate goal is to remove Mr. Rengel from the House Ways and Means Committee, you might want to rethink your strategy, before you create the technicality or the opposite reaction sympathy that prolongs his tenure.
The other part of this story that seems to have gone uncovered in the land of anecdotal evidence is just when Mr. Rengel and Mrs. Pelosi should be hiding, they’re not. Charlie Rengel made an announced ‘perp walk’ on Friday to give opportunity to the entire House press corps for their stories about him. Nancy Pelosi did not back away from any appearances knowing she would be dogged by this sort of meandering justice.
Here, I’ll do it too, he probably does need to look for new work or retire. But, I’m on his side of the aisle and it comes from a different place than a group of individuals hatcheting out their frustrations prematurely by about three processes.
2) Second in the gratuitous hatchet Morning Joe show, was the John McCain hack fest. By the 8:30 segment, the show decided it was more important to skip a financial segment to get a 5th hack at the ‘duped’ line by McCain. Again, I don’t disagree with the assessment that anybody of reasonable intelligence should have been adequately able to predict the money flow here. But you have missed an opportunity for ascension on this and that is the danger of three hours of instinct and anecdote where the in depth analysis should be.
Over the weekend George Soros joined the latest Matt Taibbi take which has centered around the Swedish treatment of it’s 1992 banking situation as superior based on forensically available information, to what we wound up doing at the behest of Paulson and Geithner.
That Swedish plan had the banks briefly nationalized to ensure banking stability, while renegotiating a path back toward privatization with the necessary alterations to the regulatory system and a simultaneous interactivity with the middle class occurring alongside.
The chief point anyone could make here in the US is that we got taken by a 3 page bailout with no terms leaving the term sheet entirely in the possession of the banks we were rescuing. The results are obvious that as they earned their way out of crisis, the US financial industry supported no other segment of the economy except by the virtue of their not being closed.
Where this gets back to Joe, Mika and guests is that you have again reduced an important, horrible situation like the choices faced by John McCain in 2008 to unrealistic algebra. His remorse is less about the bait and switch by Hank Paulson and Tim Geithner, than about the fact that many believe there was a better option, just not better for Citibank and Goldman Sachs, and he feels duped because some conflicts of interest at the highest level prevented the government from taking the right path at a crucial moment. You have missed that zeppelin in the pursuit of a cheap canned analysis, and you need to do better.
3) Third is the health care debate that deservedly permeates everything at this point. Again, same as points 1 and 2 above, I agree with all of the points made: the junk in the bill is awful, shameful and a direct result of Obama doing what we hated about Republicans, there are great small fixes coming from the Republican side (although JS mentioning tort reform first is grossly out of order), and Democrats have mismanaged their opportunities to a historic extent.
But where the show goes fatally off the track is it’s misinterpretation, or misrepresentation of opportunity. When a Republican implies that they want to start over with a blank page, they are lying because they historically have never initiated nor will they ever initiate health care reform. Only a Democratic majority will option health care to it’s agenda. It’s the way of the world.
When the Democrats get health care done, it will be the true beginning of the incrementalist approach. We wont get any meaningfully incremental health care concepts done stand-alone, they have to be improvements to or reactions to an omnibus bill. And as I laid out for Joe Scarborough months ago, now is the time for our generation, because it takes 15-30 years to get the stars aligned to put such a sweeping measure on an agenda in this country.
So when I hear incremental, when I hear start over, when I hear better off without the bill (my own take on the Senate version as is), I do so knowing full well that fatal is the right word above, because it’s a generationally permanent death to health care reform. This is our only real chance to get the long necessary process started. Look at it from all walks of life, Warren Buffet called our broken health system a tapeworm on American business trying to compete internationally, the middle class is on its way from having it to not having it at all, and the lower class is a cold away from bankruptcy.
Who doesn’t need reform, despite wickedly irrational calls from the populace otherwise?
That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.
Observations:
1) This whole situation with Charlie Rengel stinks, but the judge, jury and executioner take by the Morning Joe show seems like a hatchet job, even if they wind up being right on all of their analysis and predictions. An analysis that it looks bad is one thing, but not affording a person due process ultimately dilutes your punitive options. If your ultimate goal is to remove Mr. Rengel from the House Ways and Means Committee, you might want to rethink your strategy, before you create the technicality or the opposite reaction sympathy that prolongs his tenure.
The other part of this story that seems to have gone uncovered in the land of anecdotal evidence is just when Mr. Rengel and Mrs. Pelosi should be hiding, they’re not. Charlie Rengel made an announced ‘perp walk’ on Friday to give opportunity to the entire House press corps for their stories about him. Nancy Pelosi did not back away from any appearances knowing she would be dogged by this sort of meandering justice.
Here, I’ll do it too, he probably does need to look for new work or retire. But, I’m on his side of the aisle and it comes from a different place than a group of individuals hatcheting out their frustrations prematurely by about three processes.
2) Second in the gratuitous hatchet Morning Joe show, was the John McCain hack fest. By the 8:30 segment, the show decided it was more important to skip a financial segment to get a 5th hack at the ‘duped’ line by McCain. Again, I don’t disagree with the assessment that anybody of reasonable intelligence should have been adequately able to predict the money flow here. But you have missed an opportunity for ascension on this and that is the danger of three hours of instinct and anecdote where the in depth analysis should be.
Over the weekend George Soros joined the latest Matt Taibbi take which has centered around the Swedish treatment of it’s 1992 banking situation as superior based on forensically available information, to what we wound up doing at the behest of Paulson and Geithner.
That Swedish plan had the banks briefly nationalized to ensure banking stability, while renegotiating a path back toward privatization with the necessary alterations to the regulatory system and a simultaneous interactivity with the middle class occurring alongside.
The chief point anyone could make here in the US is that we got taken by a 3 page bailout with no terms leaving the term sheet entirely in the possession of the banks we were rescuing. The results are obvious that as they earned their way out of crisis, the US financial industry supported no other segment of the economy except by the virtue of their not being closed.
Where this gets back to Joe, Mika and guests is that you have again reduced an important, horrible situation like the choices faced by John McCain in 2008 to unrealistic algebra. His remorse is less about the bait and switch by Hank Paulson and Tim Geithner, than about the fact that many believe there was a better option, just not better for Citibank and Goldman Sachs, and he feels duped because some conflicts of interest at the highest level prevented the government from taking the right path at a crucial moment. You have missed that zeppelin in the pursuit of a cheap canned analysis, and you need to do better.
3) Third is the health care debate that deservedly permeates everything at this point. Again, same as points 1 and 2 above, I agree with all of the points made: the junk in the bill is awful, shameful and a direct result of Obama doing what we hated about Republicans, there are great small fixes coming from the Republican side (although JS mentioning tort reform first is grossly out of order), and Democrats have mismanaged their opportunities to a historic extent.
But where the show goes fatally off the track is it’s misinterpretation, or misrepresentation of opportunity. When a Republican implies that they want to start over with a blank page, they are lying because they historically have never initiated nor will they ever initiate health care reform. Only a Democratic majority will option health care to it’s agenda. It’s the way of the world.
When the Democrats get health care done, it will be the true beginning of the incrementalist approach. We wont get any meaningfully incremental health care concepts done stand-alone, they have to be improvements to or reactions to an omnibus bill. And as I laid out for Joe Scarborough months ago, now is the time for our generation, because it takes 15-30 years to get the stars aligned to put such a sweeping measure on an agenda in this country.
So when I hear incremental, when I hear start over, when I hear better off without the bill (my own take on the Senate version as is), I do so knowing full well that fatal is the right word above, because it’s a generationally permanent death to health care reform. This is our only real chance to get the long necessary process started. Look at it from all walks of life, Warren Buffet called our broken health system a tapeworm on American business trying to compete internationally, the middle class is on its way from having it to not having it at all, and the lower class is a cold away from bankruptcy.
Who doesn’t need reform, despite wickedly irrational calls from the populace otherwise?
That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.
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