The Economics Of Peter And Paul

April 9, 2010 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Annals of the Obama Administration, Barack Obama, Economic issues, Europe, Healthcare, Political Philosophy, economy | 4 Comments 

Maybe they’re on to something across the pond. It was announced the other day that the next national election in Great Britain will take place on May 6, and the stakes will be high. A 30-day campaign—can you imagine that?

Of course, the reality over there, as here at home, is that political posturing is a 24/7 proposition—relentless and unmerciful. But just the idea that an actual election can be set for a single month cycle is (pardon the pun) a foreign concept to us. Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his leftist Labor party have been gaining ground on David Cameron’s Conservatives, closing what was once a 20-point gap to single digits—lately around 7 per cent—so the timing seemed right.

And while America is being dragged kicking and screaming to the statist left, our increasingly distant cousins could possibly be on the verge of an ironic power-shift. One that has been described “as potentially the most pivotal since the one in 1979 that brought the conservative Margaret Thatcher to power and recast the fundamentals of British politics and society.”

In other words, the culture that gave us Lloyd George, Churchill, and Lady Thatcher, could soon witness “the fundamental transformation” of their nation. Some are calling the campaign of the Tories a “back to the future” effort. Indeed.

Of course, conservatives in the United Kingdom are nowhere near clones of their nomenclature counterparts in the United States. Tories there would barely qualify as “moderate” Republicans here. But the trend is unmistakable and it is not being sufficiently noticed in our neck of the political woods.

Emerging as the hot button issue in the British election is a Labor-backed planned 1% increase in the National Insurance Tax. The Tories oppose this and have countered with an “efficiency saving” program that would address the chronic financial hemorrhage situation in the National Health Service. The NHS, by the way, remains an object of envy to many in our government. Go figure.

Most Americans—especially the nearly half who will pay no income tax this year—haven’t a clue as to how a single payer system works in places like Great Britain. Over and above already oppressive income tax rates, workers must pay a National Insurance Tax, with exemptions only for those who earn, say around 105 pounds per week, then it increases immediately to 11% of income up to 770 pounds per week. Over that, it costs an additional 1% of each worker’s income. So under the new Labor proposal most British workers would be paying a minimum of 12% of their income to fund their single payer system—in addition to already high income taxes.

Even a cursory examination reveals that this is a tax burden that falls squarely on the middle class—something the Brits have been more honest about than some in the current administration in Washington. Of course, the “official” position of the powers that be here is that a single-payer system is not on the table. But for anyone willing to think this political chess match through a few moves ahead, it is clear that there is gleeful hope in many quarters that the recent “reforms” will so stress our current system as to bring it and the country to its knees, paving the way for our own European-style set up.

What Americans need to note is that for a government to operate here as it does in other places will eventually require a great sacrifice on the part of the middle class. We are being sold a bill of good these days, one that some Americans seem all-too-willing to accept. The big lie du jour is that we can have all the purported “benefits” of socialism without the burdens.

Tax cuts for low and middle income families were expanded when Obama signed the massive economic recovery package last year. As a result, nearly half the country will benefit from everything the government does without paying a dime for it! And it is not just the poorest of the poor. There will be people who made $50,000 or more in 2009 paying no income taxes. In fact, 47% of workers in America will pay nothing.

And this is, in many ways, a cancer eating away at our national character. We are almost at the place of critical mass where those who derive a benefit from the government outnumber those who pay the bills. And as the old saying goes: “If you rob Peter to pay Paul, you can always count on the support of Paul!”

The irony is that this house of cards will ultimately collapse. Americans who think it’s all a pretty cool deal today—the idea of getting a free ride paid for by someone else—need to look closely at places like Great Britain. Yes, they have exemptions for some in their tax system, but you have to earn less than 6,000 pounds to qualify (roughly 12K in U.S. dollars, give or take). Everybody else pays. In fact, that family making the equivalent of 50K in U.S. dollars over there will pay heavy income taxes plus an 11% National Health Insurance tax for all that “free” stuff.

The other day, the New York Times wrote about the “growing power of the state in British life” noting that “more than half of all those in employment have government jobs, and just over half of the economy is accounted for by government activity.” Is this really what we want for America?

The truth of the matter is that the programs being touted today as to be paid for by the very rich will soon start costing all of us. In fact, it will be a rude awakening one day—if current trends persist—when a worker making an income that had long kept him below a tax-paying threshold sees a big chunk of change taken out of his paycheck.

Yes, they plan to soak the rich right now. But one day, they’ll come for everyone else needing dollars to feed the big entitlement machine. Saul Alinsky, in “Rules For Radicals” talked about the struggle between the “haves” and the “have nots.” And this became the basis for the kind of political energy that brought Barack Obama to the White House. People were trying to get their perceived “fair share.” Social Justice is now all the rage—let’s reshuffle the deck and give everyone a New Deal.

But the problem is that eventually the “have nots” will get all they can extort from the “haves.” Then the “pay nots”—those who have grown accustomed to someone else paying the tab—will have to become “pays.”

The other day, I was listening to BBC America on satellite radio and I heard a round table discussion bemoaning the fact that America has so much more entrepreneurial activity per capita than the U.K. These bright bulbs pondered the reasons and never seemed to have an “A-Ha!” moment. They talked about how maybe if the government gave more “grants” to those who wanted to start businesses.

Clueless.

Years ago, I heard a quote, I don’t remember where—or from whom—to the effect that if you want to see what the U.S. will be like in 40 years, look at the UK now.

Come to think of it, I heard that said just about 40 years ago.

A Canadian View Of David Frum

March 30, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Canada, Healthcare, News media, Republican Party | Leave a Comment 

Part of the political fallout resulting from the recently passed health-care legislation has been the alienation of David Frum from the conservative movement. Frum is a 49-year-old native of Toronto who, in the twenty-odd years since settling in New York after attending Yale and Harvard Law, has developed a reputation as an able writer and provocative, and sometimes contrarian thinker.

After publishing a book about 1970s America, How We Got Here (notable for many pages analyzing the impact of Richard Nixon’s presidency on the culture of the era), Frum became a speechwriter for George W. Bush, and, in that President’s first term, gained fame for coining the phrase “axis of evil.” (Although his original wording was “axis of hatred,” with the last word changed by Bush.)

In 2005, Frum left the Bush Administration to become a fellow at the America Enterprise Institute and a regular contributor to National Review. But in 2008, differences started to become apparent between Frum’s views and those of many conservatives when he published one blogpost and column after another criticizing Gov. Sarah Palin’s selection as the Republican vice-presidential nominee.

Although Frum declared his support for Sen. John McCain that fall, with the inauguration of President Obama (preceded by the journalist’s departure from National Review) it became evident that Frum’s thinking was closer to the accomodationism exemplified by Sam Tanenhaus’s The Death Of Conservatism that to that of the Republican establishment.

The debate over the health-care bill made it clear just how far Frum had moved from the GOP consensus. The bill’s passage by a handful of votes was taken by most Republicans as an encouraging sign. Frum wrote that he viewed the result as a Waterloo for the minority party. Soon thereafter, he parted ways with AEI.

However, he does have his defenders – notably in the land of his birth. In the Canadian magazine The Tyee, Crawford Kilian, an American who’s lived in British Columbia for almost a half-century, argues:

Rather than viewing the victory of Obama as the inevitable arrival of the Antichrist, Frum has respected Obama’s political skills and tried to draw lessons from his success — just as Nixon drew lessons from Jack Kennedy’s use of television. ([Rick] Perlstein [in Nixonland] tells us Nixon got his first training in this field from a young TV producer named Roger Ailes, now the head of Fox News.)

In effect, Frum was treating Obama intellectually, not morally. Hence his “Waterloo” rant, and the resulting uproar.

His onetime allies, however, are aggressively anti-intellectual, and enjoy moralizing about their enemies. Their world is clearly divided into good and evil, and only they are good. Apostates and heretics are doubly evil, deserving nothing but very loud contempt.

This may be as much fun as screaming at Emmanuel Goldstein during the Two-Minute Hate, as Winston Smith does in Nineteen Eighty-Four. But it is no way to build and maintain a coherent framework for a revived conservatism.

Barack Obama–Administrator: A Story Of Tomorrow

March 5, 2010 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Annals of the Obama Administration, Barack Obama, Healthcare, History, Political Philosophy, Politics, Presidents, Public Opinion, U.S. History, White House | 1 Comment 

Did you know that the word, “manufacture” is from the Latin and literally means: “to make by hand?” Of course, the term has long since been connected with things made by machines. The word no longer means what it meant.

Language—any language—is like that. “Brave” used to mean “cowardly.” Really. And “nice?” Well, it originally meant, “not to know,” or another way to say someone was ignorant.

Nice.

Etymologists—those who study word origins and meanings—tell us that words change for several reasons: generalization—specialization—degeneration, to name a few. Now, apparently, we must add politicization to the list of word-changers. Most of the time, such linguistic morphing is subtle and hardly noticed. But right now before our eyes, a very good word is becoming something quite unlike what it originally meant.

Reconciliation—a word rich in nuance, meaning, and historic impact; a term that has for centuries indicated the removal of barriers and the restoration of relationship—may be rendered virtually meaningless soon. What is now being planned for the whole health care fix in this country, all other avenues having failed those who just know they know better than the rest of us, will likely come to pass in some form via a political process now known famously as Reconciliation.

George Orwell would be proud. What once meant the end of hostility and all parties coming together in good will, soon will likely stand for the raw exercise of party and power politics. And in the process it will leave in its wake anything but the fruit of real reconciliation. In fact, all indications are that we are on the verge of entering a fierce period of vituperative political conflict—one even worse than what we have recently seen.

Yes, I understand that, in this case, the word is being used in an accounting sense. But when you “reconcile” your bank statement, isn’t that also called “balancing?” Where’s the balance in such a political maneuver?

Of course, the idea—and in fact, the practice—of reconciliation in matters of legislation has been around for more than 35 years. And the process was used in the past by Republicans, giving some credence to the charge of hypocrisy now being hurled by the Democrats. But a closer look at matters handled in the past via the Byrd-rule suggests that nothing prior even comes close to comparing to what is being suggested and orchestrated now—a takeover of one-sixth of the U.S. economy.

It’s all part of that “fundamental transformation of America” that was being talked about in 2008.

In the past, the opposite of reconciliation—in fact, a key reason for the term’s existence in language—was alienation. Now, however, reconciliation will not be healing alienation, rather it will be exacerbating it. And what is striking and enduringly frustrating about the whole thing is that at every turn Americans have been sending not-so-subtle signals to those breathing the rarified air inside the Beltway. The message has been consistent and persistent: Read our lips—no new Health Care. The things that are weak in our current system can be fixed, not by moving away from market-based economics, but by creating incentives for the market to fix itself.

One particular thing that makes my skin crawl every time I hear it is this idea that under Obamacare all Americans who are happy with their current health care can keep things as they are. While theoretically (i.e., outside the actual real world) this may sound reasonable and reassuring, the facts speak otherwise.

Most Americans did not choose their current coverage—their employers did—or, at least, some entity within the business, corporation, or union organizational structure. That means that decisions about future coverage will not be in the hands of employees, but rather such decision makers. And if a business owner or CEO sees a better deal, or feels pressure to alter the plan—does anyone really think a mere employee has much of a say?

Why, then, the big push in the face of overwhelming political ill will? The only reasonable answer is that those pushing the Obamacare agenda have made up their minds that they know best and that those opposing the measures are simply ignorant. In other words—it’s arrogance.

And when political arrogance meets perceived public ignorance, it can only mean one thing: The spirit of Woodrow Wilson is back at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Like the professor who knew better way back then, Mr. Obama and company honestly feel that if this thing can be passed, even by the thinnest of razor margins, Americans will ultimately like enough of the plan once implemented that they’ll tend to embarrassingly forget what all the fuss was about. They are also banking on the fact that once a generation grows accustomed to a certain entitlement, it is almost impossible to reverse it.

But Woodrow Wilson learned a thing or two the hard way about the folly of political arrogance. Self-assurance, crusader-zeal, and personal charisma can only carry a politician so far. History shows that leaders who rely on such traits long-term are eventually devoured by them. One day the cheering actually does stop.

Interestingly, such arrogance also smacks of something out of a work of fiction that flew close to the flame of fact nearly 100 years ago. Published anonymously in 1912, the year Mr. Wilson was elected as the 28th President of the United States, was the novel “Philip Dru—Administrator: A Story of Tomorrow, 1920-1935.” The author was actually Edward House (he was referred to by the purely honorific “Colonel” House), a man who became Woodrow Wilson’s alter ego—he was the Rahm Emanuel of the day, only much better at it.

The book tells the story of a man, Philip Dru, who becomes the dictator of America—but as a despot he was of the benevolent sort (I told you it was fiction). He was a leader who took unprecedented power, only doing so for the good of the people. Father knows best. In the book’s dedication, House wrote:

“This book is dedicated to the unhappy many who have lived and died lacking opportunity, because, in the starting, the world-wide social structure was wrongly begun.”

One gets the feeling that the ghosts of Philip Dru, Edward House, not to mention Woodrow Wilson are not merely haunting the halls of the White House these days.

In fact, they’re part of the team.

The Price We Pay

February 28, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Healthcare, Richard Nixon | 1 Comment 

Writing at Psychology Today, Ira Rosofsky — a Connecticut psychologist — says that RN’s plan for health reform would have saved the American people $1 trillion per year:

And the Commonwealth Fund points to the price we are currently paying for not enacting comprehensive health care in the past. Richard Nixon had a plan for health care in the 1970s, and Bill Clinton in the 1990s. If we had enacted the Nixon plan-based on a cost reduction of 1.5 annually in costs-we could be spending $1 trillion less a year. Clinton’s plan would have saved us $500 billion annually.

Nixon, Obama, and Health Insurance Price Controls

February 25, 2010 by admin | Filed Under Annals of the Obama Administration, Healthcare, History, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

Steve Chapman writes of the president’s proposal to control health insurance premiums:

Barack Obama has often modeled his policies on Franklin Roosevelt. Lately, though, he’s been coming across more as Richard Nixon Lite.

In 1971, fed up with the steady rise of wages and prices, Nixon had a big idea: Attack inflation by imposing strict controls on wages and prices. A federal board was created to establish guidelines and enforce compliance, on the assumption that government officials were wise enough to decide the correct price for millions of products and the right wage for millions of workers.

This analogy is not encouraging.  As mentioned here last year, RN  cknowledged in his memoirs that price controls had been a mistake:

What did America reap from its brief fling with economic controls?  The August 15, 1971 decision to impose them was politically necessary and immensely popular in the short run.  But in the long run I believe that it was wrong.  The piper must always be paid, and there was an unquestionably high price for tampering with the orthodox economic mechanisms.

Richard Nixon On Health Care in ‘74, ‘94, And Today

February 22, 2010 by admin | Filed Under Domestic issues, Healthcare, New Media, Richard Nixon | 24 Comments 

Looking to secure a veneer of bipartisanship for their health care plans, Democrats have reached into the grave, exhuming the alleged endorsement of Richard Nixon. They claim that the health care legislation he proposed in 1971 and 1974 is a model for their own proposals today.

For instance, the Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan wrote last month that President Obama’s plan “remains more moderate than those once proposed by Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton.” A St. Louis Post Dispatch editorial at the end of January makes the same point, saying that the Obama plan relies more on free market mechanisms than Nixon’s proposal.

“Missing Richard Nixon” blared the headline atop an August 2009 Paul Krugman column in the New York Times. His pen pines for the good old days under Nixon: “As many people have pointed out, Nixon’s proposal for health care reform looks a lot like Democratic proposals today. . . . So what happened to the days when a Republican president could sound so nonideological, and offer such a reasonable proposal?” In fact, positive comparisons between the Democrats’ plans and those of Nixon were made even before Obama took office!

Thus far, no one has made reference to President Nixon’s staunch opposition to President Bill Clinton’s health care proposal in the early 1990s. In his tenth and final book Beyond Peace, which may have reflected a stronger commitment to limited government than at other points in his public life, Nixon issued a stinging critique of the Clinton plan. He began, “The 1994 debate over health care will be a crucial testing ground for our faith in freedom, which, if it means anything, must mean free markets and free choice.” Certainly, we face the same test today.

He continued, “The Clinton plan, all 1,342 impenetrable pages of it, is less a prescription for better health care than a blueprint for the takeover by the federal government of one seventh of our nation’s economy. If enacted, it would represent the ultimate revenge of the 1960s generation. The plan epitomizes the discredited notion that taking action against a problem requires introducing a massive network of new compulsions, bureaucracies, and government controls.” Elsewhere in the essay, he wrote, “For a thousand years, whenever price controls have been tried, they have failed.” Particularly when we speak of the public option and the House bill, we could say all the same things, only today it would mean nationalizing one sixth, not one seventh, of our nation’s economy.

President Nixon not only argued against the bureaucratic statism inherent in the Clinton plan – he also articulated a patient-centered vision similar to the one delivered by Sen. Tom Coburn and Rep. Paul Ryan in recent days. “Any sensible reform of the nation’s health care system must start with the patient, not with the government. The most powerful force inflating health care costs has been a system of insurance that removes the patient’s own incentive to shop for value.” In other words, Nixon today would be much more likely to support health savings accounts than a public option. He also called for tort reform, a great emphasis on wellness and preventative care, and greater competition among insurance providers, all key elements of Republican alternatives.

Nixon sought to repudiate the suggestion, floating then as well, that his plans from the 1970s inspired the Democrats plan at present. Rebutting those who implied his support for the Clinton scheme from his time in office, Nixon wrote, “I most emphatically did not, and would not, endorse a wholesale federal takeover of the nation’s health care system.” Those equating the Obama plan with the Nixon plan are missing the fundamental difference between the two, something Nixon himself noted in his opposition to the 1994 plan: “Employers would have been required to help pay only for their own employees, not for all the indigent in the entire community.” He concluded that the Clinton plan “focuses less on improving health care delivery than it does on centralizing health care control. Our program was about health. The Clinton program gives every indication of being about power.” Could we not deliver the same indictment today against the Obama plan?

President Nixon spent his entire life fighting against the central planning and nationalized industries of the Soviets. Though not all his domestic policies reflected the same distrust of centralized bureaucracies, Republicans should not allow liberals to claim Nixon’s imprimatur on their health care scheme.

Daniel R. Suhr is an attorney in Washington, D.C., and a Washington Fellow of the National Review Institute.

Nixon and Obesity

February 11, 2010 by admin | Filed Under Healthcare, Michelle Obama, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

As the First Lady wages a campaign against obesity, the Associated Press reminds us that the fight has been underway for more than half a century.  President Eisenhower created President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, and tapped RN to head it.  In 1971, he looked back and pondered the issue:

In 1956, President Eisenhower called me into his office. You may recall this was the year after he had his heart attack. He had just read a very disturbing article with regard to the health of young Americans of high school age as compared with young people in Japan and European countries. And he said that it was essential that we develop a physical fitness program, one in which our young people would be more interested in physical fitness, more interested in it–recognize its importance to raise the standards.

I, as Vice President, was given the assignment of attempting to put some emphasis on this program. During the period that I was Vice President we made some progress in creating interest on the program…

[We} need to alert the people of this country, and particularly the young people of this country, that they can do something about their future to make them develop the health patterns which will avoid physical illness and very serious physical illness in the years ahead.

President Nixon, Doctor Letton And The War On Cancer

January 21, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Domestic issues, Healthcare, Richard Nixon | 1 Comment 

The former President of the American Cancer Society, Dr. Alva Hamblin Letton died last week at the age of 93. He was present and gave remarks at President Nixon’s signing of the National Cancer Act on December 23, 1971.

Dr. James Cavanaugh spoke about RN’s early efforts at health care reform at the Nixon Library earlier this month. His presentation was part of a panel of key White House officials who helped spearhead the President’s domestic policy initiatives, the first topic in a year long series of Richard Nixon Legacy Forums.

“I think for people who follow health issues, who follow health policy, who follow the history of healthcare programs in this country,” RN’s legacy “will be fairly good.” Cavanaugh said. “People who realistically look at what his program had look at it favorably.”

One of those people was Dr. Alva Hamblin Letton, who passed away last week at 93.

As President of the American Cancer Society, he was present at the White House on December 23, 1971 when RN signed the National Cancer Act.

Dr. Letton called the legislation “the greatest thing ever done by the United States,” and expressed his deepest appreciation that the President made the fight against cancer a national priority.

“That was an important piece of legislation because it established regional cancer centers,” current ACS CEO Dr. John Seffrin says, “In 1971, there were none; now there are more than 40, and Emory will have the first one in the state of Georgia.”

Here is the video of the signing followed by Dr. Letton’s remarks:

The New Nixon Healthcare Plan?

January 4, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Healthcare, Richard Nixon | 1 Comment 

At the Arkansas Time, Ernest Dumas says that the House and Senate healthcare bills strike a strong resemblance to what RN and his cabinet were trying to accomplish in 1971 and 1974:

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy scuttled the Nixon plan because his own health-insurance bill was going nowhere, the fellow continued, and though he was pretty liberal himself he had never forgiven the senator. He exhibited so much feeling and just enough knowledge of the events — Kennedy did help kill the Nixon initiative, alongside the insurance companies, the medical establishment and the business community — that I was inclined to believe that he had indeed been present at the birthing. Maybe his formative role in Woody Allen’s career was not imaginary either.

But he might have given Nixon, and, yes, his real or imaginary self, more credit for the solution that seems now likely to emerge as law. Both the Senate and House bills, especially the Senate’s, are close imitations of Nixon’s plan in their broad outlines. (Actually, there were two Nixon plans, in 1971 and a second one in 1974 when he tried to change the subject from Watergate to avoid impeachment.) The first one mandated the purchase of a minimum-benefit policy for all workers through their employers, a system of government subsidies for employers, an insurance exchange (pool was the word then) for small employers, expanded Medicaid or an alternative for the unemployed and others not eligible for employer coverage, and some restrictions on medical underwriting. It would be financed by payroll taxes and general revenues. That is pretty much the Harry Reid plan the Senate approved Christmas Eve.

Kennedy insisted in 1971 on a single-payer system, Medicare for all, which the United Auto Workers and the AFL-CIO said was the only way to treat American workers fairly. But in 1974 he and our own Rep. Wilbur D. Mills of Kensett agreed to work with Nixon and his health and human services secretary, Caspar Weinberger (later Ronald Reagan’s defense secretary), on universal employment-based insurance. They never reached full agreement. Kennedy and Mills wanted a compulsory plan, Nixon thought by then that it should be mostly voluntary, but they agreed that employers should pay three-fourths of the premiums and workers a fourth. Mills began hearings in April 1974 on the Nixon plan and the Mills-Kennedy plan. National health insurance seemed a certainty by the year’s end.

and:

Kennedy in a few years would regret that he had not seized the chance and reached an agreement around the Nixon plan. Even by 1974 he had given up on the ideal of a single-payer system because the insurance industry was already too powerful and the medical establishment even after Medicare’s fantastic popularity was still resistant.

So we are about to get the Nixon-Cap Weinberger plan (let’s credit my friend at the Tivoli with a dubious assist) with one further perfection that seems to have been anticipated by at least some of the big players in 1974: the end of the insurance industry’s role as medical underwriters — evaluating the risks of people of different ages and health conditions and fixing premiums accordingly or else denying coverage. That essentially is an insurer’s only differential role. Otherwise, its function is supplemental to the government’s. It pays the bills and takes a profit.

The current bills embroider on the Nixon plan by telling insurance companies they cannot cut people off for getting sick or having pre-existing ailments and they can’t charge people different premiums for their health conditions — the one aspect of the plan that nearly all the Republicans embrace, too. Insurance companies will be able to set different premiums based only on age, region of the country and whether people smoke.

RN, A Man Before His Time On Healthcare

November 23, 2009 by Alex Tallarida | Filed Under Healthcare, Richard Nixon | 5 Comments 

During his second term, RN made expanding health coverage to all Americans a centerpiece of his domestic agenda.

“If the Government pays all the medical bills, then only the Government has a stake in holding down medical costs. This means that Government officials would have to approve hospital budgets and set fee schedules and take other steps that would eventually lead to the complete Federal domination of American medicine. I think this is the wrong road for America. It is the road that has been taken by so many countries abroad to their regret.” (Richard Nixon Radio Address November 3, 1972)

The Obama administration has taken on the issue of health care reform today in the United States, but this type of reform is not new. Richard Nixon had a significant role in healthcare during his presidency and if unimpeded could have helped prevent the current health care crisis in the United States. Specifically, in 1973, Nixon passed two important pieces of legislation that changed health care in the country. The Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973 required employers with traditional health plans to also provide the option of choosing an HMO for its employees. The act also made it mandatory for employers to contribute as much to the HMO as they did to their regular plans. The Veterans Health Care Expansion Act of 1973 substantially expanded the health benefits available to our nation’s veterans and their families.

These two bills were only a piece of Nixon influence on health care during his presidency. Nixon’s most controversial and far reaching policy proposal was the Comprehensive Health Insurance Plan. This plan had seven key principles. First, it offered every American an opportunity to obtain a balanced, comprehensive range of health insurance benefits. Second, it would cost no American more than he can afford to pay. Third, it built on the strength and diversity of the existing public and private systems of health care financing and harmonized them into an overall system. Fourth, it used public funds only where needed and required no new federal taxes. Fifth, it would maintain freedom of choice by patients and ensure that doctors work for their patient, not for the federal government. Sixth, it encouraged more effective use of our health care resources. Seventh, it was organized so that all parties would have a direct stake in making the system work: consumer, provider, insurer, state governments and the federal government.

The most crucial part of Nixon’s plan was the employer mandate. Under this plan, every employer would be required to offer all full-time employees the Comprehensive Health Insurance Plan. Additional benefits could then be added by mutual agreement. The insurance plan would be jointly financed, with employers paying 65 percent of the premium for the first three years of the plan, and 75 percent thereafter. Employees would pay the balance of the premiums. Temporary federal subsidies would be used to ease the initial burden on employers who face significant cost increases.

In a unique moment of bi-partisan cooperation, in early 1974 Nixon’s political opponent in the Senate, Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy, agreed to a compromised deal of the Comprehensive Health Insurance Program and together they prepared to get the health care legislation passed through Congress. Unfortunately, the brewing Watergate scandal which soon took over the headlines, coupled with the subsequent lack of cooperation from Kennedy, prevented the President from pushing through with this initiative. With the President unable to continue to rally support, the efforts of labor unions, who hoped for a better deal under a new presidential administration, succeeded in derailing the Nixon-Kennedy health care bill.

If this bill were to have passed, would there be a health care crisis today? President Obama is currently facing criticism from some on the right of setting the stage for a socialist dictatorship under the appearance of health care reform. However, President Obama seems to be steering clear of a proposal for a mandate calling for all employers to provide health insurance, as was ventured by Nixon and Kennedy in 1974. Every employer, under Nixon’s plan, would have been required to offer all full-time employees the Comprehensive Health Insurance Plan. The rumor of Obama’s health insurance program is that it is a plan that would be modeled after the Medicare program that Americans are familiar with today. It would be available to those Americans who didn’t have good coverage from their employer. It would also be available to workers who worked in the smallest firms. And it would be made available through some kind of new insurance-purchasing exchange, through which people could get access to both private health insurance plans and this new public plan.

For his part, Nixon emphasized that his Comprehensive Health Insurance would not lead to an extreme program that would place the entire health care system under the dominion of social planners in Washington. Nixon wanted to continue to have doctors to work for their patients, not for the federal government. He believed that one of the most cherished goals of our democracy is to assure every American an equal opportunity to lead a full and productive life. Nixon saw his Comprehensive Health Insurance as an idea whose time had come in America. He saw a need to assure every American financial access to high quality health care.

“Let us build upon the strengths of the medical system we have now, not destroy it.” — RN, 1974

“Seeing The Writing On The Wall”

October 17, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under China, Healthcare, Nixon family, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

Tony Panaccio at postchronicle.com has an article about Ed Nixon, the last of the five brothers that included the 37th President. and author of The Nixons: A Family Portrait. In the article Ed speaks of RN’s visionary health-care plan:

“My brother’s offer to address healthcare was genuine, and it stemmed from his feeling that we needed tighter regulation on the insurance industry [...] He knew back then what was on the horizon, seeing the writing on the wall three decades before the storm.”

Ed also points out that the concerns of the People’s Republic of China concerning the increased Soviet military presence in the Pacific helped make possible his brother’s groundbreaking trip to the PRC in 1972:

“While President Reagan is largely credited for ending the Cold War, the seeds were planted during the Nixon administration. This issue was of significant strategic interest to both China and the U.S. at the time, and working together to keep the Soviets in check was a key element that led to the fall of the Soviet republic. If they couldn’t expand, they would not have the economic base to support their massive military budget. When their expansion ceased, it helped hasten their fate.”

The Plan That Would Have Saved Healthcare

October 8, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Healthcare, Richard Nixon | 8 Comments 

President Nixon proposed a sweeping national health plan that would have covered the millions uninsured. Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy summarily rejected it, a decision he later came to regret.

The latest AARP Bulletin features the debate between RN and the late Senator Edward Kennedy on their respective proposals for healthcare reform in the early Seventies.

According to the bulletin’s editor Jim Toedtman, RN introduced a bold national plan that — if passed — would have expanded private coverage to almost all Americans:

Nixon’s plan required employers to provide health care insurance for their employees. It provided federal subsidies for the poor and created rural health clinics and a network of state committees to set industry standards, guarantee basic coverage and coordinate insurance for the self-employed. In the process, it would have extended health care coverage to almost all Americans.

Toedtman goes on to say that Senator Kennedy’s opposition to the plan was a missed chance, a stance which he later came to regret.

In short, if Senator Kennedy hadn’t been afflicted by the proverbial ideological blinders, the millions uninsured would have benefited from the “sweeping plan”  before the partisan divide widened and the political waters became more toxic:

That was then. On reflection, Kennedy came to view the Nixon proposal as a missed opportunity. “We should have jumped on that,” he told the Boston Globe earlier this year. In the years since Democrats rejected Nixon’s “sweeping new program,” battle lines have hardened and the partisan breach has widened. And costs have soared. When Nixon proposed his plan, health care spending accounted for less than $100 billion, 7 percent of the $1.4 trillion U.S. economy. Today, it accounts for $2.3 trillion, approximately 17 percent of the economy. And the number of uninsured has nearly doubled—to 46.7 million last year.

Republicans have championed the free market as the key to reform. They stymied the last major overhaul effort 16 years ago. With the help of the drug industry and AARP, they expanded Medicare with a prescription drug plan. They created tax-free health savings accounts (and named them after Republican chairmen of the House Ways and Means Committee). As recently as April, House Republicans voted overwhelmingly to convert Medicare into a system of vouchers that future retirees could use to purchase private insurance. And they seem to have set their sights on scuttling President Obama’s health care initiative.

Democrats, just as stridently, have pursued successive iterations of Kennedy’s original, federally funded and regulated plan. The Clinton administration’s public and private plan, hatched in private and in suffocating detail, collapsed.

Today, with control of Congress and the White House, Democrats are advancing Obama’s plan, a combination of private, employer-provided and individual-based coverage and care. It’s striking how closely that resembles the plan outlined by Nixon four decades ago.

There’s a lesson here, and an important one that Kennedy learned four decades too late: Don’t allow partisanship and ideology to blind you to opportunity. But who in the nation’s all but dysfunctional capital has learned Kennedy’s lesson? Who has the common sense and the willingness to listen? Who will set aside the partisanship that has paralyzed the health care debate? Who will step forward and seize the opportunity before them?

Bob Greene, Richard Nixon, Civility, And Mystique

September 21, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Congress, Democratic Party, Election 2008, Healthcare, Hillary Clinton, Interviews, News media, Nixon Administration, Nixon in the News, Obama administration, Presidents, Public Opinion, Republican Party, Richard Nixon, TV News, U.S. History, Vietnam | 3 Comments 

Yesterday, Bob Greene – the veteran journalist, not Oprah’s trainer – wrote a column for CNN.com about the nation’s winter of partisan discontent. (Well, yes, it is September, but the air did get perceptively colder this morning.)

For decades, Greene’s column at the Chicago Sun-Times, then the Chicago Tribune, was syndicated across the country, and many of his two dozen books were bestsellers. Seven years ago this week, a scandalous incident from 1988 involving a female high-school reporter surfaced and resulted in Greene’s dismissal from the Tribune. Since then he has maintained a much lower profile, but from time to time he still has unexpected and fairly perceptive things to say.

Sunday’s column opens with a reference to high-school “chicken” races. As longtime readers of Greene know, the days of his adolescence in the early 1960s, and his childhood memories of the 1950s, are never far away from his mind, so the allusion to Rebel Without A Cause is not unexpected. Then he draws a comparison between teenagers frantically racing toward a collision, and the intensity of the current debate over health care and “big government.” Greene expresses the view that when compared to the feelings generated in the last few months, even the arguments surrounding the 2008 election seem to evoke a vanishing atmosphere of civility.

To prove this point, he tells of traveling the country last fall, asking various ordinary Joes (plumbers or not) and Janes whether they planned to vote for then-Senator Barack Obama or Senator John McCain – and then asking them what they found to admire in the man they did not plan to vote for. He quotes an Obama voter who, not unexpectedly, admired McCain’s fortitude as a POW in Vietnam, and a McCain voter who observed that Obama was energetic, charismatic, intelligent. “People seemed to welcome this exercise,” says Greene, but then he glumly muses: “Somehow, it feels that a similar experiment would be doomed to failure now,” and that “it feels like we’re all in one of those old hot-rod movies[....], speeding straight toward each other’s headlights.” And then he wonders what can be done about it:

One answer may be found in an unlikely place — in words spoken by the most divisive political figure of his era.

Richard Nixon, in his first inaugural address during a time of widespread public rage in the United States, talked about “reaching with magnificent precision for the moon, but falling into raucous discord on earth.”

Nixon’s presidency would end in shambles. But on its first day, here is what he said about how to soothe the anger that was consuming the nation:

“To find that answer, we need only look within ourselves. … To lower our voices would be a simple thing.”

Some people’s feelings about Nixon undoubtedly cloud their opinion of everything he ever did. Yet what he said as he took office in a time of nonstop partisan conflict is worth considering as we pass through similar days:

“In these difficult years, America has suffered from a fever of words; from inflated rhetoric that promises more than it can deliver; from angry rhetoric that fans discontents into hatreds; from bombastic rhetoric that postures instead of persuading.

“We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another — until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices.”

Bob Greene has thought about RN’s life, and the lessons to be learned from it, for a long time. Indeed, in his mid-twenties he covered the 1972 campaign and wrote a book about it, Running. a decade later, he scored a one-on-one interview with the ex-President, which stretched over several of his columns and is included in his 1985 book Cheeseburgers, and extensively excerpted in his 2004 book Fraternity: A Journey In Search Of Five Presidents.

In that interview, Nixon reflected at some length about how a President should be perceived by the public. He told Greene: “A president must not be one of the crowd. He must maintain a certain figure. People want him to be that way. They don’t want him to be down there saying, `Look, I’m the same as you.’ . . .In all the years I was in the White House, I never recall running around in a sport shirt, let alone a T-shirt. Or sneakers and the rest.”

When RN said this, he had in mind leaders he greatly admired like Charles De Gaulle of France, Konrad Adenauer of West Germany, or Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore – men whose rather austere and remote personal style nonetheless commanded enormous respect and admiration from their countrymen (or, as would be said now, countrypersons). While this sort of political style has generally been less admired by American voters, as the careers of John Quincy Adams – or Richard Nixon – demonstrate, there’s no doubt that most Americans do want their Presidents not to be too folksy or too accessible to the public. Dwight Eisenhower certainly struck the right balance. He was from middle-class, heartland America – but he was not “the same as” the ordinary voter. Ronald Reagan, as “down-home” as he could be, was always meticulous about keeping a certain mystique around his personality.

In the case of Barack Obama, the mystique has started to fall away, in a rapid and, for many of his followers, disillusioning manner. Twelve days ago he delivered a speech before Congress on health care which, in itself, was a good effort at rallying the nation to his cause, though far from a grand slam or a home run – more like a double. Then the Congressional leadership became preoccupied with punishing Rep. Joe Wilson for shouting “You lie!” during the address, and forced a vote on the matter which seemed to many Americans like an exercise in pointless overkill. Obama’s latter-day Brain Trust seemed aware of this, but no one in the Capitol Hill Democratic leadership was bothering to take heed of their concerns.

Today, Newsweek.com has a blogpost about the latest poll data. It turns out that most of the surveys do find an increase in Obama’s favorability ratings following the speech – but by one or two or, in CNN.com’s survey, five points, from 53 to 58. Compare this to the polls following Richard Nixon’s November 3, 1969 speech on Vietnam, when 77 percent of Americans expressed support for his policies – a spectacular rise from the President’s numbers before the speech. Even Jimmy Carter’s notorious “malaise” speech in 1979 temporarily lifted his approval rating from 25 to 37 percent, before the Iranian hostage crisis lowered it for good.

Last weekend President Obama, evidently wishing to build on what small momentum his speech generated, took the unprecedented step – for a President, anyway – of appearing on five Sunday-morning talk shows on the same day: NBC’s Meet The Press, CBS’s Face The Nation, ABC’s This Week, CNN’s State Of The Union (formerly Late Edition) and Univision’s Al Punto.

This garnered the President the distinction of having achieved something approaching what media folk call a “full Ginsburg.” Back in 1998, in the first frenzied Sunday after the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, that ex-intern’s attorney, William Ginsburg, appeared on the first four of the aforementioned shows as well as Fox News Sunday. This achievement remained unique for about five years, then Vice President Cheney duplicated it, to be followed by then-Senator John Edwards (during his weeks as Sen. John Kerry’s running-mate) and then-DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff. The last to manage it was then-Senator Hillary Clinton in the fall of 2007 when she was still the Democratic presidential nominee-apparent (and, in the minds of many in the media, virtually the President-elect).

But it’s one thing for even a Vice-President to undertake such a feat – and another for a President to think he has to make the rounds of the talking-heads programs. (Or, for that matter, the talk shows – if the Chief Executive feels he needs to make his case on The Late Show With David Letterman as I write this, can Carson Daly or Chelsea Handler be that far behind?) When that President pointedly declines to appear on Fox News Sunday, apparently because the network decided not to broadcast his speech to Congress, the semblance of a mystique certainly diminishes, and some, like Dwight Schwab of examiner.com, are even ready to compare Obama’s quarrel with Fox to Nixon’s difficult relationship with the networks. (For me, another analogy comes more readily to mind – former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura’s honeymoon with the media in 1998 that so rapidly turned sour. But that’s a subject for another post.)

So it makes sense for President Obama to try to follow in the path RN outlined in that first inaugural – a path RN himself found difficult to follow, because of the polarization that he inherited – and also to maintain an image befitting a President instead of a Sunday-morning regular. The right approach for him is not to start thinking about going on Olbermann, Matthews, King and Maddow – or Conan, Colin, and the two Jimmies – on the same night, but instead to focus on the effectiveness of getting his message across on the stage that only a President can command.

Healthcare Reform, Then And Now

September 17, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Barack Obama, Healthcare, Richard Nixon | 2 Comments 

Jason Schafrin, a young economist trained at UCSD, breaks down RN’s 1974 message to Congress and proposal for a comprehensive health insurance plan, and compares it to President Obama’s current plan:

• “Today the need [for reform] is even more pressing because of the higher costs of medical care.”  Obama echoes this sentiment.
• “…the 25 million Americans who remain uninsured.”  Nixon hoped to expand coverage for the 25 million Americans who, in 1974 who did not have health insurance.  He planned to do this using with the creation of “Assisted Health Insurance, covering low-income persons.”  In 2009, there are 46 million uninsured Americans.  Obama also proposes using tax credits to help poor and middle class individuals afford private insurance.  Obama also proposes a public option.
• “Americans who do carry health insurance often lack coverage which is balanced, comprehensive and fully protective.”  Health insurance was originally created as protection against serious illnesses and hospital stays.  Routine physician visits were not covered.  This often meant that check-up and preventive care was not covered and Nixon wanted to expand the scope of insurance coverage.  In the present day, most individuals who have insurance have relatively comprehensive health insurance.  In fact, as a reaction to the expanding scope of present day health insurance, Republicans support HSAs which use high deductibles to transfer more of the cost of care towards the individual patient.
• Comprehensive Health Insurance Plan (CHIP).  This was Nixon’s solution to the problem that many individuals who had insurance had only partial insurance.  It basically expands the scope of insurance coverage. In the present day, most individuals who do have insurance have relatively comprehensive coverage.
• “Third, it builds on the strength and diversity of our existing public and private systems of health financing and harmonizes them into an overall system.”  Nixon’s CHIP plan aims to provide subsidies for health insurance and aims to reform health care, but will not overhaul the system (à la a single payer system or the elimination of Medicare in exchange for all private insurance).  Obama’s currently proposes reforms to the current system that also builds on the existing healthcare infrastructure.
• “Fourth, it uses public funds only where needed and requires no new Federal taxes.”  Nixon claims that his plan will not use any new taxes.  Obama did not claim he would not raise taxes, but did assert that “I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits.”  However, the government’s spending on health care as a share of GDP has accelerated over time.  This was true in Nixon’s time, is true now, and most expert believe it will continue into the future.
• “Sixth, it encourages more effective use of our health care resources.”  Obama wants to “eliminate is the hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud” as well as “create an independent commission of doctors and medical experts charged with identifying more waste in the years ahead.”  More effective use of health care resources was, is and will continue to be a laudable goal; actually realizing these efficiency gains in practice, however, is more difficult.
• “No family would ever have annual out-of-pocket expenses for covered health services in excess of $1,500, and low-income families would face substantially smaller expenses.”  Nixon planned a cap on patient annual out-of-pocket costs.  Currently, Nixon’s proposal has become commonplace.  Most group health insurance plans offer an out-of-pocket cap as does Medicare and Medicaid.  However, for non-group health insurance, these caps are often not available.  Obama proposed that health insurance companies “…will no longer be able to place some arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year or a lifetime.”
• “Medicare, however, does not cover outpatient drugs, nor does it limit total out-of-pocket costs.”  Nixon believed that Medicare should cover drug costs and limit out-of-pocket costs.  Medicare does limit out-of-pocket costs and, with the creation of Medicare Part D, most prescription drug costs are covered for seniors.
• COST: “the total new costs…would be about $6.9 billion.” Obama’s plan would cost “$900 billion over ten years.”
• Nixon wanted to “increase the supply of physicians.” Nixon believed that increasing the supply of physicians will drive down costs as competition increases.  With patient paying less and less money out of pocket, this may no longer hold.  If supplier-induced demand exists, an increase in the supply of physicians will increase demand and costs and not necessarily decrease prices.  Obama did not discuss physician shortages in his speech.
• “On December 29, 1973, I signed into law legislation designed to stimulate, through Federal aid, the establishment of prepaid comprehensive care organizations.”  HMOs now control a significant portion of the health insurance market.
• “I also contemplate in my proposal a provision that would place health services provided under CHIP under the review of Professional Standards Review Organizations. These PSRO’s would be charged with maintaining high standards of care and reducing needless hospitalization.“ This is similar to Obama’s “independent commission of doctors and medical experts charged with identifying more waste in the years ahead.”

Change You Can Believe In Only Too Well

September 15, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Congress, Healthcare | Leave a Comment 

Manu Raju reports in Politico on the “Revolving door for health care aides”:

Some of the most influential aides in the closed-door Senate Finance Committee negotiations over health care reform have ties to interests that would be directly affected by the legislation.

Before she was hired last year as senior counsel to Finance Committee Chairman  Max Baucus (D-Mont.), Liz Fowler worked as a highly paid public policy adviser for WellPoint Inc., the nation’s largest publicly traded health benefits company.

Mark Hayes, health policy director and chief health counsel for Finance Committee ranking member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), is married to a registered lobbyist for a firm that represents drug companies and hospital groups, although the couple says she doesn’t lobby Grassley’s office.

Frederick Isasi, a health policy adviser to Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), was a registered lobbyist at Powell Goldstein, where his clients included public hospitals and the American Stroke Association.

Kate Spaziani, senior health policy aide to Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), was also a registered lobbyist at Powell Goldstein, although Conrad’s office says she worked as a lawyer — not as a lobbyist — for public hospitals on Medicare issues.

There’s no evidence that the aides’ ties have shaped the bill that Baucus hopes to release Tuesday, and the ultimate decisions over its provisions rest with the senators themselves. But critics say the involvement of such well-connected insiders could lead to dangerous conflicts.

“It raises the concerns about the revolving door that have always been present,” said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, a group that tracks influence in politics. “This just brings it into the fore because it’s such a far-reaching bill.”

The revolving door swings both ways in the health care debate — and the Finance Committee isn’t the only place where it stops.

All across Capitol Hill, a number of former lobbyists, consultants and advisers for firms that represent consumers, patients, hospitals, insurers, pharmaceutical companies and medical device makers are now in key positions in the House and Senate, according to a review of public records.

Only RN Had The Silent Majority

September 15, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Barack Obama, Healthcare, Richard Nixon, Vietnam | 1 Comment 

When RN gave the “Silent Majority” speech in November 1969, 64 percent of Americans approved of his handling of the Vietnam War.

The Democrats are channeling RN’s famous “Silent Majority” speech in which he asserted that the anti-war left who crowded the streets of Washington to protest the Vietnam War in the late Sixties represented a rowdy and cacophonous few.

In response to last weekend’s “Tea Party” demonstrations against healthcare reform, President Obama’s senior adviser David Axelrod was quick to echo these sentiments:

“I don’t think it’s indicative of the nation’s mood,” senior adviser David Axelrod said Sunday when asked about the weekend demonstrations, suggesting that the “tea party” protesters are not in the mainstream and not in the majority.

A majority of Americans may not be taking their grievances to the streets, but nor are they pledging support for President Obama’s and the Democrats’ plan to overhaul the healthcare system.

While confidence in the President still remains relatively high, the newest Gallup polling data shows  Americans deeply divided on the healthcare issue with 39 percent saying that they would advise their representative to “vote against” healthcare reform, 36 percent saying that they would advise to “vote for,” and 24 percent saying that they had “no opinion” on the matter.

RN garnered much larger numbers in his favor in his response to the Vietnam War. A March 1969 Gallup poll showed that more than one-third of Americans wanted an all out military victory in Vietnam, along with 26 percent approving of a strategy akin to Vietnamization, and another 19 percent wanted the current policy to continue. Just 19 percent wanted to end the war “as soon as possible.”

Between July 1969 through March 1969, RN averaged a 54 percent approval rating for his handling of the Vietnam War. By November 1969 — at the time of his famous “Silent Majority” speech — that number rose to 64 percent.

By the end of RN’s first term in January 1973, that number spiked up to 75 percent.

It Aint Over Til It’s Over

September 11, 2009 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under Healthcare, History, Intelligence, National Security, Terrorism, U.S. History, War on Terror | Leave a Comment 

By the autumn of 1944, and in the wake of the very successful landings in Normandy the previous June, Allied troops and commanders in the field, and civilian authorities in Washington, D.C. and London, were confident of victory in Europe.

It was just a matter of time.

In fact, as our forces moved like a juggernaut across France and into Belgium en route to the Rhine and Germany itself, the Nazis were in full-scale retreat, ceding back territory they had aggressively devoured four years earlier. There was even some talk – and it was surely well received – that some of our boys might be home by Christmas. People had been crooning about it in a popular song for more than a year.

But all that changed when the Germans launched a massive, unexpected winter offensive that December, and a fierce conflict known famously to us as the Battle of the Bulge disabused the Allies of the notion of an expeditious victory. The war was by no means over and the enemy not at all vanquished. This brings to mind a musing from the mind of the great philosopher Yogi Berra, when he said: “It aint over til it’s over!”

You see, while many were prematurely preoccupied with postwar dreams, the good guys were given a brutal, bloody, and costly reminder that the ravages of war are ever possible until an enemy has actually been completely defeated. Eight years after the attack on Pearl Harbor, it was pretty easy for Americans to remember what had happened without fear, because the threat was no longer there.

Eight years after the attacks on Sept. 11th, we have no such luxury. We must remember with resolve. We must remember through vigilance.

Have you ever watched a movie where the bad guy gets away at the end or enough loose ends are left hanging that you just know the producers are going to make a sequel? Well, our enemies have been longing for just that. Whether or not they can do it, or will, is, of course, a fair and open question. But for anyone to suggest that such a thing can never happen again is not only ludicrous; it is perilous.

I certainly think that this eighth anniversary of that horrific day in 2001 should be remembered – but not as a long ago, of a different time and place, event. It must be remembered in the way a Marine on Guadalcanal would have remembered Pearl Harbor in late 1942, or as an Army Ranger would have while scaling the cliff at Ponte Du Hoc, two years later.

It’s a holy day in the sense of bearing witness to the terrible loss of life and the noble and heroic actions of so many in their diligent response. But there should be a fervency attached to it all. The armor of war should not be put away abroad, nor should the home front be lulled into ominous complacency by political distractions or naïve pronouncements.

The threat is still there. It will not go away by ignoring it anymore than a cancer in the body will. It will not go away by giving it a new name – or no name. It will not go away because we have smarter people in charge who supposedly never overreact to crises and keep their heads when all others are losing theirs.

The threat is still there in spite of the fact that there is a systematic undermining of our intelligence capacities in the nation, born of a petty and cynical desire for political gain. We are tying the hands of people who are charged with helping to keep us safe.

The chief role of government is to protect us and keep us free. Instead we live in a time when all the energy in the executive and legislative branches seems to be directed at creating a society of dependent sheep. We’ll be fed, burped, bandaged, and entertained – until we wake up one day and face the sad news that something bad has happened again via the hands of an enemy we have ignored for too long.

There is still a war on. It is a terror war, driven by Islamism – a pernicious ideology that uses religion as a pretext for world domination. There are very bad people out there – and here at home; people who despise us, our constitution, and our way of life. They must smile and roll their eyes as they watch us try to wrestle with issues such as healthcare reform; anything just as long as we don’t look too closely at what they’re doing.

But we hear less and less about it. Oh, occasionally a great communicator makes an offhand remark related to such a conflict, but usually only in the context of reminding us how sad it is to have wasted all that money “over there” when we could have used it to make everyone healthy and happy here at home.

In a time of war, you don’t make your side safe by marginalizing the conflict, minimizing the threat, or demoralizing those who are charged with crucial responsibilities.

In the century before the birth of Jesus Christ, a Syrian man named Publilius Syrus, who became popular in the days of Julius Caesar as a mime and actor, was known for his maxims and many survive to this day. Among the best is this:

“He is most free from danger, who, even when safe, is on his guard.”

In July of 1927, the New York Yankees were on the road and well on their way to one of the greatest seasons ever experienced by a baseball team. The biggest crowd drawn that month at their famous stadium, however, had nothing to do with baseball. It was the scene of a boxing match between two contenders for the heavyweight title: Jack Dempsey and Jack Sharkey.

Dempsey, of course, had already been a legendary champ, only beaten the year before by savvy boxer and bookworm, Gene Tunney – the smartest guy ever to hold the title. This fight was to see who would face Tunney next. And by all accounts Sharkey took the battle to Dempsey for several rounds, cutting him up and beating him to the punch.

So Dempsey went to work on the body and some of the punches strayed low – Okay several of the punches were south of the border. And at one point Sharkey turned to the referee to complain. At that moment, while Sharkey was looking at the official, Dempsey hit him with what he later referred to as the best punch he’d ever thrown.

It was over.

When in a fight, never drop your guard.

Is It Something In The Okra?

September 9, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Congress, Healthcare, Presidents, Senate, U.S. History | 1 Comment 

Many were shocked tonight when Rep. Joe Wilson, a Republican from South Carolina, shouted “you lie” at President Obama during the latter’s speech on health care before Congress. Wilson promptly apologized. But it certainly is the case that the demeanor of Congressmen from South Carolina, when their ire is provoked, has improved substantially over the years. Below, an excerpt from the Wikipedia entry for Preston Brooks, a (Democratic) Representative from the Palmetto State in the years before the Civil War:

On May 22, 1856, Brooks beat Senator Charles Sumner [of Massachusetts] with his gutta-percha wood walking cane in the Senate chamber because of a speech Sumner had made three days earlier, criticizing President Franklin Pierce and Southerners who sympathized with the pro-slavery violence in Kansas (“Bleeding Kansas”). In particular, Sumner lambasted Brooks’ kinsman, Senator Andrew Butler, who was not in attendance when the speech was read, describing slavery as a harlot, comparing Butler with Don Quixote for embracing it, and mocking Butler for a physical handicap. Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois, who was also a subject of abuse during the speech, suggested to a colleague while Sumner was orating that “this damn fool [Sumner] is going to get himself shot by some other damn fool.”

At first intending to challenge Sumner to a duel, Brooks consulted with fellow South Carolina Rep. Laurence M. Keitt on dueling etiquette. Keitt instructed him that dueling was for gentlemen of equal social standing, and suggested that Sumner occupied a lower social status comparable to a drunkard due to the supposedly coarse language he had used during his speech. Brooks thus decided to attack Sumner with a cane.

Two days after the speech, on the afternoon of May 22, Brooks confronted Sumner as he sat writing at his desk in the almost empty Senate chamber. Brooks was accompanied by Keitt and Henry A. Edmundson of Virginia. Brooks said, “Mr. Sumner, I have read your speech twice over carefully. It is a libel on South Carolina, and Mr. Butler, who is a relative of mine.” As Sumner began to stand up, Brooks began beating Sumner on the head with his thick gutta-percha cane with a gold head. Sumner was trapped under the heavy desk (which was bolted to the floor), but Brooks continued to bash Sumner until he ripped the desk from the floor. By this time, Sumner was blinded by his own blood, and he staggered up the aisle and collapsed, lapsing into unconsciousness. Brooks continued to beat Sumner until he broke his cane, then quietly left the chamber. Several other senators attempted to help Sumner, but were blocked by Keitt who was holding a pistol and shouting “Let them be!” (Keitt would be censured for his actions and later died of wounds in 1864 during the US Civil War.)

Sumner was unable to return to his Senate duties for more than three years while he recovered.

As for Brooks, he died of “the croup” seven months after the attack.

Health Care at Morton’s Fork

September 9, 2009 by David Emig | Filed Under American Politics, Annals of the Obama Administration, Barack Obama, Healthcare, Obama administration, Presidents, Republican Party, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

As defined by Wikipedia, a Morton’s Fork is “a choice between two equally unpleasant alternatives.” In the health care debate, this is the choice between government run health care, or corporate run health care.  We progressives like to call this choice — reform or the status quo.

You know, I always laugh at those conservative politicians that decry socialized medicine — while enjoying the benefits of government run health care themselves.  Let them put their health where their mouth is.  Cancel their socialized medicine, and go into the “free” market like everyone else.

As usual, those who oppose reform are using the tried and true fear card.  They tell us that government run health care will lead to socialized medicine, rationing care, and the infamous “death panels”, among other things.

The truth of the matter is: the system that the critics fear is already in place.  It is called corporate health care.  Large insurance companies already ration care by denying claims and coverage.  In California, PacificCare has denied 40% of their claims, while HealthNet has denied 30% of theirs.  Lose necessary tests in a mountain of red tape.  Cancel your policy when you reach a monetary limit.  Never offer insurance at all to those with pre-existing conditions.  Allow the ‘free market’ to raise premiums until a business or individual cannot pay them anymore — and the policy lapses.

For those who have no health insurance, and have a catastrophic illness or injury…aren’t all of these inactions by the corporate insurance companies infamous “death panels?”  Is it easier for the critics to have these death panels consisting of corporate health clerks, rather than government bureaucrats?

Currently, the momentum seems to be away from true reform, and towards reinforcing the corporate health care system.  Proposals such as mandatory health insurance for individuals would only really benefit the corporate insurance market.  It gives them 40 million new customers that must buy their product.  It gives people that are already struggling, another bill.

Any proposed health care system without a public option, a type of Medicare for all, isn’t reform at all.  It is the codification of the status quo, and creation of a windfall comparable to the windfall enjoyed by the oil companies.  This kind of reform doesn’t benefit the majority of American people.  Consider that mother in the news who was trying to feed her family and keep a roof over her head.  She needs real reform, not a Republican congresswoman telling her to “grow up” and get health insurance.

True health care reform doesn’t mean a total government takeover.  Tonight the President needs to return to his original proposal for health care.  If you have health insurance you like, you can keep it.  A strong public option in place for people who cannot afford health care, and foster competition (one of the facets of capitalism I thought).  Outlining pre-existing conditions.  Making the best health care system a right for all American, and not just a privilege for those who can afford it.  While we in America have the greatest health care system in the world – really it’s of limited benefit for people that can’t afford it.

It should be noted that RN in 1971 proposed a similar system of employer mandated health insurance.  The recent book, “The Heart of Power” credits RN with forming the parameters of the future debates of 1994 and 2009 about health care.  The failure of RNs proposal didn’t affect his legacy as president.  There were bigger issues that did.  Watergate.  Vietnam.  China.

In sharp contrast, health care will affect this president’s legacy.  There is also a good chance that it will affect President Obama’s future success and failure as well.  Also the country’s as well…

Laughing Matters

September 8, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Healthcare, Humor | 2 Comments 

Here’s a clever bit of editing by Nick Dorazio, a citizen frusted because his Congressman wouldn’t hold a real time town hall on the subject of health care.

So he took the raw material of an old episode of Dragnet, in which Jack Webb (as Sgt. Joe Friday) and Harry Andrews (as Officer Bill Gannon) impart some noble (if leadenly expressed) sentiments to some wayward teens (you can tell by their surly affect and curious attire) intent on setting up their own country.

The video appears to be developing some viral legs.  It was posted on Saturday (of a holiday weekend) and is already closing in on 100K hits.

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