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Missing Richard Nixon
Many of the retrospectives on Ted Kennedy’s life mention his regret that he didn’t accept Richard Nixon’s offer of a bipartisan health care deal. The moral some commentators take from that regret is that today’s health care reformers should do what Mr. Kennedy balked at doing back then, and reach out to the other side.
But it’s a bad analogy, because today’s political scene is nothing like that of the early 1970s. In fact, surveying current politics, I find myself missing Richard Nixon.
No, I haven’t lost my mind. Nixon was surely the worst person other than Dick Cheney ever to control the executive branch.
But the Nixon era was a time in which leading figures in both parties were capable of speaking rationally about policy, and in which policy decisions weren’t as warped by corporate cash as they are now. America is a better country in many ways than it was 35 years ago, but our political system’s ability to deal with real problems has been degraded to such an extent that I sometimes wonder whether the country is still governable.
As many people have pointed out, Nixon’s proposal for health care reform looks a lot like Democratic proposals today. In fact, in some ways it was stronger. Right now, Republicans are balking at the idea of requiring that large employers offer health insurance to their workers; Nixon proposed requiring that all employers, not just large companies, offer insurance.
Nixon also embraced tighter regulation of insurers, calling on states to “approve specific plans, oversee rates, ensure adequate disclosure, require an annual audit and take other appropriate measures.” No illusions there about how the magic of the marketplace solves all problems.
So what happened to the days when a Republican president could sound so nonideological, and offer such a reasonable proposal?
Part of the answer is that the right-wing fringe, which has always been around — as an article by the historian Rick Perlstein puts it, “crazy is a pre-existing condition” — has now, in effect, taken over one of our two major parties. Moderate Republicans, the sort of people with whom one might have been able to negotiate a health care deal, have either been driven out of the party or intimidated into silence. Whom are Democrats supposed to reach out to, when Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who was supposed to be the linchpin of any deal, helped feed the “death panel” lies?
But there’s another reason health care reform is much harder now than it would have been under Nixon: the vast expansion of corporate influence.
We tend to think of the way things are now, with a huge army of lobbyists permanently camped in the corridors of power, with corporations prepared to unleash misleading ads and organize fake grass-roots protests against any legislation that threatens their bottom line, as the way it always was. But our corporate-cash-dominated system is a relatively recent creation, dating mainly from the late 1970s.
And now that this system exists, reform of any kind has become extremely difficult. That’s especially true for health care, where growing spending has made the vested interests far more powerful than they were in Nixon’s day. The health insurance industry, in particular, saw its premiums go from 1.5 percent of G.D.P. in 1970 to 5.5 percent in 2007, so that a once minor player has become a political behemoth, one that is currently spending $1.4 million a day lobbying Congress.
That spending fuels debates that otherwise seem incomprehensible. Why are “centrist” Democrats like Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota so opposed to letting a public plan, in which Americans can buy their insurance directly from the government, compete with private insurers? Never mind their often incoherent arguments; what it comes down to is the money.
Given the combination of G.O.P. extremism and corporate power, it’s now doubtful whether health reform, even if we get it — which is by no means certain — will be anywhere near as good as Nixon’s proposal, even though Democrats control the White House and have a large Congressional majority.
And what about other challenges? Every desperately needed reform I can think of, from controlling greenhouse gases to restoring fiscal balance, will have to run the same gantlet of lobbying and lies.
I’m not saying that reformers should give up. They do, however, have to realize what they’re up against. There was a lot of talk last year about how Barack Obama would be a “transformational” president — but true transformation, it turns out, requires a lot more than electing one telegenic leader. Actually turning this country around is going to take years of siege warfare against deeply entrenched interests, defending a deeply dysfunctional political system.
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Show AllDo you miss Bush, too?
Actually I think that is mostly meant as more of a "this really sucks" statement. The fact that it can be argued at all that Mr Watergate is more to the left of people today on any topic says a lot more about how bad off we are than how wonderful Nixon was.
Kind of like saying that compared to today, Atilla the Hun was reasonable and civilized.
That was my point in noting the "left of Nixon" thing.
I was reading where the right wing wackjobs may start using the Constitution to fight against government programs, violation of the Tenth Amendment or something like that. "Tenthers."
Expect this meme to start showing up in the media until it gains full steam and Amerikans are convinced that their "rights" are being violated by having Social Security, Medicare, and public schools. It won't take too long. Especially with the right wing talking heads pushing it forcefully.
The discourse in this country, if you could even call it that, is right wing.
Agreed re; "left of Nixon" thing.
I do think that right wing wackjobs can only go so far until they run head first into the wall of reality.
At this moment the US as a nation is kept in place by a massive network of convenience. The problem is that this network takes a lot of resources to maintain.
I'd give people in geographical areas about a week without TV before they go nuts. Less during a hot summer days.
I would even go so far as to say that I think that it will be more intense than the 60's because in those days people had more education and so weren't quite so unpredictable.
I'm brushing up on my Spanish. I'd really like to leave this shithole of a country.
As I said in another thread, it's not just the wingers who are fed up with Obama and government. Now that they have given away our treasury and the only jobs for young people are in the military, many more folks are pissed off about the status quo. So what are their choices in looking for leadership? Well, they could look to the "left," where the lib imps are busy defending Obfraud and the Democrats and saying "just give them time." Or they could look to the right, where the lunatics are publicly voicing their opposition and creating the beginning of what could be a larger movement.
Unfortunately, the vacuum on the left is what will increase the fanatical right. That is how these things work. People want to turn *somewhere* that is anti-status quo, but the left isn't offering it. These clueless wankers like "digby" and "daily kos" and Blue Left or whoever the f--- they are support the status quo.
So I expect many more people to be peeled off by the wackos.
That is a big reason we could see more fascism - the huge vacuum on the left.
But you can't leave this country. It is everywhere you go.
Atilla the Hun said famously that "violence never solves anything". Where does that put ol' Shrub et al?
american government pays 3300.00 per person per year right now for healthcare
we do not have national healthcare and we pay multiple times that amount extra for our system
englands goverment pays 2900.00 per person per year right now for healthcare
that is all they pay and they have national healthcare
american government pays 3300.00 per person per year right now for healthcare
we do not have national healthcare and we pay multiple times that amount extra for our system
englands goverment pays 2900.00 per person per year right now for healthcare
that is all they pay and they have national healthcare
djp:
I don't think those figures are what the governments pay; they are what the nation as a whole pays. In the US the amount includes premiums and copays paid by the consumer, salaries and stock options paid to insurance company execs, salaries to all the millions of minions employed to deny people access to the insurance they've paid for, treatments and drugs paid for by the consumers which don't work ("Ask your doctor if arsenic is right for you") and taxes to fund the VA, Medicare, MedicAid and other individual state run programs.
The figure is lower in the UK because there is one system for all and it is entirely funded by taxes--the same taxes that fund roads, schools and so on. In other words the overheads are miniscule compared to ours.
Rainborowe
sorry, but the 3300.00 dollars is absolutely what the government now pays
all those copays, insurance premiums and out of pocket expenses are extra
Considering that Obama isn't very far left of Nixon (if at all)I don't think we can be too harsh on the author.
There isn't anybody left in Washington who is to the left of Richard Nixon. Maybe Sanders in the Senate and Barbara Lee in the House. Obfraud is way more conservative than Nixon.
Unfortunately, Krugman degenerated from "single payer is the only option" to "no public option is necessary and we can have a 'Swiss-like' private system."
This guy is as much in bed with the elitist pundit and political class as the rest of the clueless halfwits "reporting" on health care.
For a cappie economist, I used to think Krugman wasn't bad. But he's gone off the rails in defending an insult of a health care plan.
In Switzerland, the insurance companies are highly regulated and those providing the regular health insurance have to be non-profit. (Those offereing vanity stuff are still regulated but can make a profit, I think. It works very well. Unfortunately this country, since Reagan, thinks "regulation" is a dirty word.
Rainborowe
Bill Moyers on Bill Maher's show said, “ I don’t think the problem is the Republicans . . . .The problem is the Democratic Party. This is a party that has told its progressives -- who are the most outspoken champions of health care reform -- to sit down and shut up…the Democratic Party has become like the Republican Party, deeply influenced by corporate money. I think Rahm Emanuel, who is a clever politician, understands that the money for Obama’s re-election will come from the health care industry, from the drug industry, from Wall Street. And so he’s a corporate Democrat who is determined that there won’t be something in this legislation that will turn off these interests. . .money has flooded politics ...Money has flowed in such a flood into both parties that the Democratic Party gets a lot of its support from the very interests that -- when the Republicans are in power -- financially support the Republicans…You really have essentially -- except for the progressives on the left of the Democratic Party – you really have two corporate parties who in their own way and their own time are serving the interests of basically a narrow set of economic interests in the country -- who, as Glenn Greenwald, who is a great analyst and journalist, wrote just this week: these narrow interests seem to win, determine the outcomes, no matter how many Democrats are elected, no matter who has their hands on the levers of powers, these narrow interests determine the outcomes in Washington, even when they have to run roughshod over the interests of ordinary Americans. I’m sad to say that has happened to the Democratic Party…We are a very crippled giant suffering from self-inflicted wounds that if we do not treat and heal, will in fact bring us to our knees and ultimately to our doom. . . .”
That is what we are up against. And, as Paul Krugman said, “turning this country around is going to take years of siege warfare against deeply entrenched interests, defending a deeply dysfunctional political system.”
Moyers concluded, “We can’t say, though, it’s over - we can’t. What makes us great – we’re not smarter than other people, we’re not more intelligent, we’re not wiser – we have that First Amendment – that self-correcting faculty -- that enables people like this to climb up on the ship and say: "that’s an iceberg out there. . ." We wait a long time until almost the ship has sunk . . . We’re close to losing the moral, financial and economic muscle and wisdom that makes a huge nation a great nation, but it’s never too late.”
I hope that he is right.
Moyers is pretty well on the mark. But with the ship of state busy pinballing from one iceberg to the next; the first-class oligarchy hurriedly stocking its private lifeboats with Dom Perignon; and the oblivious masses dancing in steerage while the band plays "God bless the USA", "never too late" rings a bit optimistic.
I no longer possess this book, it was in fact a loner from a close friend, but I looked up the title for you here.
"The Corruption of American Politics" (1999) by ELizabeth Drew, published by Birch Lane Press. She is the long time Washington correspondent for the New Yorker magazine. She writes extensively about the rise of political contributions by big business and their affect on Washington. Her observations are very much in accord with Mr. Moyers on the Bill Maher show.
I wonder myself if our nation is still governable as Mr. Krugman asks. The display of stalling debate, that is in evidence right now, about the Health Care Reform Movement is a very easy pattern of corruption to view. The political process of generating more donations, from business lobbyists, to the cause of re-electing ..... is sickening to watch.
We need to understand the language that our government is speaking right now. The opposition to health care reform is being held up by the political parties for the exact reasons described in this book. The Health care industry is afraid that Health care reform and the removal of their profit percentage $0.33 per dollar spent per year would destroy them. I agree that they would not be as profitable, but when you base your company's profit on 1/3 of a 7 trillion dollar per year business you get a little uncomfortable when the people want their health care reform program manged better.
The demand for negotiating with Pharmaceutical companies for lower prescription drug prices has been taken away by the current administration.
The demand for free choice to choose which health care provider that you wanted access to was never a real free market option, as most health care companies practice a regional monopoly over health care access.
The right to having premium and co-pay prices set at a reasonable rate is a right exercised exclusively by and for the private Health Insurance Industry.
The right to have your health needs taken care of by a team of doctors is quickly vanishing because of the threat of not being able to get compensation for treatment approved by a Health Insurance provider, making doctors reluctant to provide any quality medical care except to patient's that can pay for services in cash.
And last, the ability to demand from our National Government the authority to investigate claims and to hold responsible the crimes of corporate Health Care businesses is disappearing fast from the government's ability to control.
Demand the truth. Write to your legislator's and demand, don't ask, that they sponsor and approve the passage of the John Conyers authored H.R. 676 to provide a National Healthcare system for all Americans.
Obama keeps reaching across the aisle and all it gets him is getting his hand bitten off by the rabid republicans. It’s is long past the time that Obama should quit trying for a bipartisan healthcare bill and lead the democrats in creating true “reform” in the healthcare sector.
Instead of reaching out to the other side it’s time to call them what they are, a small minority of backward looking hacks that are bought and paid for by lobbyists that don’t give a damn about the problems facing most Americans.
I doubt that one American in ten knows that the healthcare industry is bribing our elected members of congress with 1.2 million dollars a day to see to it that the status quo remains intact, a healthcare system that kills hundreds of Americans each week because they don’t have insurance. The rabid right-wingers pay lip service to the sanctity of human life yet given the choice between improving our healthcare system and the lives of the voters that elected them or being bribed by the healthcare lobbyists the dollar always comes out on top.
The evidence that Obama is little more than another politician that’s owned by corporate America is getting hard to deny, frankly I don’t see one damned bit of change I can believe in.
"Obama keeps reaching across the aisle and all it gets him is getting his hand "
That is all theatrics and make believe bullshitting. Obama is in bed with the people across the aisle. They all serve the the same master, big money/business.
I thought it was a good article. And it is nice to see a mainstream writer call these corporate lies the lies they really are and not use milk toast words like, "difference of opinion" or "misguided" or my favorite, "myths". These people are liars and should be called as such.
rich: matt taibi at rolling stone, who did a devastating article on goldman sachs and their revolving door into the whitehouse, also said recently that the health care debate was a case of a deeply failed system being repaired by another deeply failed system
the corporate media cannot be honest - at least we know that - and the american people are just beginning to wake up to realize how rotten the ship of state truly is
thank you coporate media, they couldn't have done it without you....
What's to miss of Nixon? If it weren't for him, Raygun and the Bush Dynasty wouldn't have emerged.
Despite what Krugman says about corporate influence then and now, I have a feeling that it has actually been steady ever since Jack Kennedy reduced the corporate tax rates too far.
jennifer: raygun, as you call him was elected by jimmy cartter who ran one of the worst presidencies of all time. he was seen both at home and abroad as nervous, incompetent and ineffective. the nation turned to the b-movier actor who channelled positivity and confidence.
nixon on the other hand almost destroyed the gop
the corporations have always been around true enough, , nick said that, but their influence exploded as nick says during the 70's and that would be, once again, during the carter administration.
let us spill no tears for nixon, i think nick was making a point about the gop and more generally the state of chaos that is politics today in the corporate us of a
On your first paragraph, I have mixed feelings about Carter and I'll need to get back to learning more about him. I can see where Raygun was the "perfect" Hollywood kid in 1980. My conservative parents used to always lionize Ronnie like crazy. I don't see how Nixon destroyed the GOP aside from the Watergate scandal. He had a lot of conservatism in him but was hideous about it. Also, RichM points out that Nixon's appointment of Lewis Powell paved the way for corporate takeover of our schools, communities, and government.
jimmy carter has reserructed himself over the years, as many ex-prez do, but having lived through his time in office i can tell you that he did not seem at the time to be as resolute as he does now. he was seen as a wimp - fair or not
but he did come up with the carter doctrine: whereby the united states (the corporations really) reserved the right to use military force against any and all who stood in the way of american right to other countries' resources
in the end, though, all the presidents come off as a series of clowns
i think of them as miss usa candidates who get to prance around the stage in their best evening gowns and who dedicate themselves to the cause of righteousness, with wide eyed solemnnity...thank god there is no swim suit competition.
both contests - miss america and the prez are about as serious as the other.
except, as prez, you get to kill all the brown and yellow folks you want to
that's the big differnce
good stuff rich
RichM, thanks for explaining the "Powell Memo". I had once heard of Lewis Powell and his being famous for building the blueprint to conservative takeover. If only there was a counter Lewis Powell to do the same but that's wishful thinking at this point. These days, when it comes to appointing justices, it's always about abortion, same sex, religion, and other social issues while the economic justice issues are ignored.
On your last paragraph, I used to believe that all these assassinations were just coincidental but the more I read and learned, the more I realized that the assassinations of JFK and RFK along with the deaths of Mel Carnahan, who would have been elected Senator in 2000 instead of his wife, and Paul Wellstone, both of whom were killed in plane crashes and similar all add up to the glaring truth that anyone who dared be a genuine progressive leader is bound to risk his or her life. I can only hope and pray that Feingold, Kucinich, Sanders, etc ... are safe despite their bold progressive spirit.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
John F. Kennedy never reduced income taxes on the wealthiest 1 percent below 63%. By historical standards then that was still considered high. They started gradually ticking up again until Reagan took them below 75% and they've been generally heading downwards ever since. Bush II was the first major leader in world history to enact tax cuts for the richest 1% during wartime--not during just one war, but multiple wars. Even in the current dire (for the poorest bottom third of the population) economic situation President Obumble won't dare raise taxes on the super rich. He has deigned to allow the Bush II tax cuts to expire in 2011 when they were originally set to expire. This is sheer political stupidity and cowardice on his part--the same he displays towards the Fed and the big banks & insurance firms. He is failing to present to the dysinformed general public the arguments against crooked plutocracy that he needs for them to understand in order for him to have the public support he will need later as the crisis deepens and unemployment and foreclosures turn millions more out into the street.
Those two years Obama is forcing the nation to wait for that legitimate revenue stream--smack in the middle of the worst economic crisis in over 70 years--are the two years the nation will have needed that money the most. Especially now that China is reining in her purchases of American Treasury bills. The amplified fiscal train wreck that will now occur when Obumble goes, as he must, hat in hand back to the ideologically fried Congress for more big spending--may prolong any "economic recovery" for a hundred million of our citizens for a period longer than the Great Depression.
But for me the cruelest dividing line between "mainstream" corporatist Dims and authentic progressives is between the corporatists who still blindly support the anti-regulatory "free trade" regime and true progressives (and populists) who recognize the severe damage it has done and is still doing to our middle- and lower-classes and the overall economy; who know enough economic history to understand that the great industrial powerhouse economies of the world were built on selective protectionism, and who recognize the urgent need to globalize enforceable labor and environmental protections. [One method to do this would be to implement a phased-in, sector by sector moratorium on the "free trade" treaties until they can be rewritten to include such protections and the effective means to enforce them.]
It was a real eye opener to tune into the McGlaughlin Group on "Public" Broadcasting yesterday. I hadn't been a regular watcher for over 15 years, but occasionally tuned in to hear the death snorts of the paleo-conservatives and the electric nose hair crackles of the DLC shills. The performance yesterday was astounding. Eleanor Clift (DLC shill) and Big Media token Clarence Page (DLC culture smoother) were yelling at the top of their lungs in support of the current "free trade" regime while paleo-McGlaughlin and bigoted Nixon speech writer & confused populist Pat Buchanan were shouting out what were originally PROGRESSIVE, LABOR UNION critiques of the "free trade" treaties: The urgent need for global labor and environmental protections and the economic attrition that "free trade" has exacted on America's Walmart-dependent poverty shoppers. Clift snidely mocked mention of Ross Perot's salutary pressure on Bush I and Clinton to balance the budget--blithely ignoring the fact that the Democratic Party is walking an Obama branded tightrope over an economic abyss much of its own making.
Measured by their officially approved political spectrum I'm so far to the left of Bill Clinton I consider him a fascist-lite traitor to the working classes. But I understand enough about history and economics to have agreed with Pat Buchanan regarding both illegal immigration and the need for globalized labor and environmental protections regarding "free trade."
Buchanan was right when he acknowledged that America was a nation of immigrants but that no modern industrial economy could withstand an influx of tens of millions of unskilled workers over so short a period of time without enormous negative consequences for the middle- and lower-classes in terms of soaring under-employment and unemployment and downward pressure on wages. This has been combined with the calculated corporatist "free trade" offshoring of tens of millions of high paying middle-class industrial jobs and insufficient creation of low paying service wage jobs; the deregulation of the financial markets and a decade of artificially low interest rates fueling the housing bonfire and the inevitable transition of the U.S. from the world's biggest creditor to the world's biggest debtor.
Where Buchanan was wrong was in failing to link the drive of illegal immigration across the southern border of the U.S. to the effects of the NAFTA and WTO "free trade" agreements on subsistence farmers and fishermen in Mexico and other Latin America countries. The U.S. created the impetus for the over 15 year growth in illegal immigration itself.
Quoting metal; “Buchanan was right when he acknowledged that America was a nation of immigrants but that no modern industrial economy could withstand an influx of tens of millions of unskilled workers over so short a period of time without enormous negative consequences for the middle- and lower-classes in terms of soaring under-employment and unemployment and downward pressure on wages.”
Remember this influx of workers happened as technological advances greatly increased worker productivity. Advances in computers and business software replaced tons of “Middle Managers” as business functions like inventory control, pricing, job routing, purchasing, and payroll were preformed by computers instead of middle managers. Bar code scanners, the fax machine, the Internet, e-mail, and cell phones streamlined business communications. Technological advances in the workplace with advances like skid loaders, laser technologies, computer aided design, battery powered hand tools and dozens of other improvements have provided tremendous advances in worker productivity.
The double whammies of the influx of foreign workers and the tremendous growth in worker productivity have destroyed many of the jobs that created the classic middle class of the post W. W. II generation. Couple this with the outsourcing of both unskilled and skilled jobs to low wage third world countries while at the same time the political agenda of the ultra-wealthy in enacted into law and you have the recipe destroy America’s Middle Class.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
Yours is a point well taken that Ralph Nader has for over a decade tried to get the Fawning Corporate Media to examine: Why did working Americans who were part of the enormous technological increase in workers productivity of the 1990s see only a negligible commensurate increase in wages while the profits of the senior executive class soared? Easy access usurious lending was used by our laissez-faire capitalists in lieu of any significant increase in wages to mask the fact that there was so little increase in wages. The objective of our economic and political elites is to diminish the middle-class and hammer the lower-classes to deny them the time and economic resources necessary to participate in government (and the inevitable reallocation of resources) along with the upper-class.
The class of people that Madhoosier describes, mostly middle managers and administrative assistants, were not immediately affected by the influx of illegal workers (mostly agricultural, construction & hotel workers) so much as by technology making their jobs redundant enough to be easily eliminated. But over the years those post-middle-class American workers and their children have been placed more and more in direct competition for fewer service wage jobs of all types with illegals.
Thanks for the info on Kennedy. My apologies for the misunderstanding.
On China, I'm already scared of what they're bound to do the minute she stops allowing the USA from endless borrowing.
The rest you mentioned on the Demos is part of why I rarely vote for them either.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
Miss Bedingfield, there was no need to apologize. We should all be engaged (with the probable exceptions of personalities like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck) in a learning process that requires us to periodically reevaluate and recast our viewpoints. I'm constantly learning new things about historical periods I thought I knew pretty well and I am particularly amazed to learn more about the incredible amount of historical change that took place between 1946 and 1972. There is always the perceived history vs. insider baseball accounts of what was taking place behind the scenes. Much of what was conventional wisdom on that period for decades was significantly altered by the slow release of presidential and other records--including Soviet archives.
I gambled and voted for Obama and I increasingly regret that vote. I should have known him for the malleable opportunist he was when he flipped and supported warrantless surveillance and granting the telecomms immunity. I did it mainly because I found it incomprehensible that the Democratic Party's leaders--even as corrupt as they were by 2008--would waste a once-in-40-years golden opportunity to plaster the Republican agenda. But the Democratic Party is obviously too corporately co-opted and debauched to reform and the public too divided and ignorant to press for its reform--or even to press Obama to do the right thing with majorities in both Houses of Congress. My family, except for one Newtzi uncle, have voted Democratic for over 150 years. But I now support the creation of an umbrella Third Party to unite all true American progressives and to reclaim from Big Media, the right-wing and DLC traitors the original meaning of American Progressivism. The push is really on right now from the Establishment to blur the meaning of the term "progressive" as much as they can--because it's the ONLY real remedy for their crimes--and it's up to all of us authentic progressives to push back.
Remember this moment, and this feeling, and
Take the pledge:
I, your name here, pledge to not be fooled again.
I pledge to begin now to find, work for, vote for and support to the end of the election in question candidates and a party who truly believe as I do.
I pledge to support candidates at every level who have and will continue to speak for, vote for, and work for the true progressive principles I believe in. I pledge to look at voting records, all statements, positions and party and individual platforms and ignore vague and contradictory promises. I pledge that no matter what promises or threats the Democrats make, no matter what radical right wing loony Neanderthal Republican may win, I will hold firm to my belief in and support for the candidate who will support me and believes in what I believe in, rather than choose the evil of 2 lessers. I recognize that only by holding firm against comfortable mediocrity will our rapid death by climate catastrophe, impoverization, war and disease and shortage, abetted by authoritarian and corporate rule, be avoided.
(Fill in your nom de net and repost this here; feel free to change the wording however you want.)
Sioux Rose
METAL: Thank you for sharing this information-packed post, and adding analysis to it. Good job!
I think it's fascinating that we can talk about "illegal immigrants" but "extrajudicial execution", for one example of our ignoring of the law, rhetorically condemning one while excusing the other through over-intellectual euphemizing. Why do we allow natural, and human-modified natural materials, jobs, "intellectual properties" (whatever that means) and apparently armies to flow freely across borders while people must remain confined in their boxes of origin or be rhetorically disappeared as "illegal" people?
Check out NPR's Talk of the Nation blog for responses to Charlotte Allen's remarks revealing her racism and ignorance of connections between our actions and their consequences. Hands off my Haagen-Dazs...
www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112412412&ft=1&f=5
And...Carter certainly had his faults. But on energy, and a response to acts of violence, his actions were an offer of a patient, thoughtful and wise response the country was not mature enough to accept, and so still ridicules it and him. That has colored every judgment about every act of his, and is unfair to him and us.
Agreed, the former president had a lot of distractions with the economy and an embittered Republican party that challenged his every word. The Democrats that he refused to do business with on everyday issues distrusted him and refused to vote on his key issues. The only issue that he asked the Congress to send to him and actually got was the ratification of the FEMA department. All others died in committee. Time has been much kinder to former President Carter, but not because of his changing positions, we have learned through the years that his lack of enthusiasm for government cash-cow programs showed him to be a wise leader even if he wasn't a popular one.
After the Republican Party lost power in the general election of 1976, the Democratic leadership used their narrow victory to choose not to lead. There were so many issues that were left off of the table that by 1979 the loud cries for a change in leadership had found a voice for a country that wanted the national debt reduced, treaties with Russia changed and economic programs for stimulus spending. Enter the Repubs with a fairy tale story spoken by a pretty bad actor and a horrible California governor, promising to make America (wave the Flag, rattle the Sword) great again. That was former President Carters stage, he was left by himself and deserted by his own party's leaders for the romance of an America that was drowning in debt and still broke from war spending.
american government pays 3300.00 per person per year right now for healthcare
we do not have national healthcare and we pay multiple times that amount extra for our system
englands goverment pays 2900.00 per person per year right now for healthcare
that is all they pay and they have national healthcare
Our failure to control greenhouse gases is our undoing. CommonDreams posts numerous reports on the unravelling of the biosphere from abandoned farms in Australia to starving Ethopians to dying forests in Canada and the U.S., and drought and heat waves in the U.S. Where is the columnist that calls us on this failure? Whatever we do about controlling runaway health insurance extortion is nothing compared to the expanding disaster of runaway greenhouse gases. No amount of bribing of our elected leaders will stop the course we are on. Nature cannot be bribed. Nature does not compromise.
Krugman, another Lesser Evilist hypocrite who knew way before the election that Obama and the Democrats were not to be trusted, yet rabidly supported them.
Now it's too late, Mr. Krugman, to point out that Democrats are worse than Nixon. You've known it for years, haven't you, you're an intelligent man.
With Democrats now controlling the White House, the House of Representatives and having 60 votes in the Senate, with the progressive agenda still being pissed on, in fact congress is turning to right faster than ever, what else do you need me to list, Mr. Krugman, for you to finally admit that you've been a propagandist for corporate criminals in sheep's clothing?
Do you want me to point out that Democrats had at least 40 senators during every second of the Bush White House and refused to filibuster a single one of his crimes?
Do you want me to point out that Democrats not only authorized Bush to engage in illegal wars but also gave him more money than even he had asked to keep them funded?
Do you want me to point out that Democrats authorized Bush to spy on Americans, torture foreigners, squander the treasury in obscene bailouts?
Do you want me to point out that Obama's committing each and every Bush crime as I type these words?
I find myself missing Richard Nixon.
You're being facetious, aren't you, Mr. Krugman? Richard Deathouse Nixon is the political biological father of George Wanker Bush and Cheesedick Cheney. He once dressed the White House guards in shakos and white Napoleonic uniforms. He was paranoid. He hated nearly everything and everyone. He was a human cauldron of seething anger and resentment and may have hated himself most of all. With that infamous five o'clock shadow and perspiring upper lip he perpetually looked like an oil stain on your garage floor. He murdered hundreds of thousands, possibly millions. He was not a crook and his mother was a saint. After seeing the film "Patton" numerous times, he secretly invaded Cambodia. He was the virulent cancer that drives American imperialism with its lust for murder and looting. In short, FUCK RICHARD DEATHOUSE NIXON and may his poisoned, rotten soul continue to be utterly lost in Hell.
I would think Goldwater and Ronald Reagan and the like are the immediate forbearers of GWB. Nixon gained national prominence through Eisenhower, a man tied to Roosevelt, the New Deal, and WW2. An America which was slipping away in the fifties. Though for his time Eisenhower appeared conservative - or do-nothing - today he appears sane and sensible compared to who's prominent in his party. I can't see Eisenhower and Palin together, can you? Nixon was an opportunist. He reflected his times. Were he around today he would still be awful. But times have changed, and as Krugman says, corporate power has increased enormously since then. The loosest of fantasies take hold in the national debate today. While much of that has always gone on, with know nothings and like making a great deal of noise, all that seems to characterize our current politics. Nixon himself got a great deal of mileage out of red bating.
Miss Nixon? I'm starting to miss GWB. At least he did not pander to the Dumbocrats and I knew I was screwed, rather than the broken promises by the silvery forked tongue of the present president.
wtf: when you think for a moment how quickly obama has screwed up his mandate, or rather, how quickly he threw us into the abyss, and then reflect on how much bushbaby has been "forgotten" it does boggle the mind don't it.
6 months into the obama pysop and we are already thinking of pining for the old days...
Yes, the guy was a jerk but you knew where he stood. If Bush didn't like a bill, he vetoed it and sent it back for a rewrite. And he did that until he got what he wanted. He and his party rammed through this shit without any regard to what the Democrats may or may not have thought about it.
As it turns out, the Democrats loved all of it anyway.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
You are forgetting the record smashing 700 presidential signing statements that Bush personally affixed to bills that allowed his fellow neo-conservatives in Congress to publicly posture in support of legislation that neither they nor Bush ever actually supported--in order to con their semi-literate and illiterate local constituencies mostly out on the sub-suburban & rural side. The public did not know where Bush stood on a host of related issues and unless you carefully tracked those signing statements, neither did you. Moreover, Bush's handers acted as and used other administration storm troopers like Collin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, Condileeza Rice, George Tenet and Dick Cheney as public and media heat shields regarding everything from Valerie Plame to WMD in Iraq to torture in order to deliberately keep the public from clearly knowing where Bush stood on critical details of those issues. There are tens of thousands of questions that have remained unasked of George W. Bush about critical Constitutional and international legal matters that go to the core of our concept of America. THAT is largely the fault of cowardly DLC Democrats and the "mainstream" corporate press.
The Republicans rammed through legislation while they were in the majority in Congress; their financiers have coopted the Democrats not to do the same. If the economic crisis intensifies enough to scare the crap out of the DLC--as it may sooner than most people think--that situation could still change.
You knew where Bush stood?
We are still asking. And what did the American people think when he enthusiastically, energetically, relentlessly lied our country into war? Let's not begin to be nostalgic for Bush, fer God'sakes.
and o has not lied our country into war?
I'm not certain how that's relevant to Bush. But before we pronounce "the judgement of history," and become sentimental for the good old days when Bush was president, let's at least wait for his memoirs (well ghosted, I'm sure) to come out. There, we can confidently say, the truth will truly shine.
By the way....Why pick a nom de plume like "Guernica." I can assure you, having some personal knowledge of the matter, the Spanish Loyalists would have little use for Bush. Unless, of course, you like what the Luftwaffe did there. Though somehow I think you would be more on the pro Republican side. Curious.
I'm not certain, but my remembrance is that Bush went years without a veto.
Krugman's closing is worth pondering:
"turning this country around is going to take years of siege warfare against deeply entrenched interests, defending a deeply dysfunctional political system."
This statement is essentially a call for a progressive revolution. And coming from a Nobel-Prize-winning NYT columnist, it is worthy of not only praise and cheer, but also deep reflection about how to accomplish Krugman's call . . .