Amen.

1. We must lower the deficit.
2. We must lower taxes.
3. We must not cut Medicare.
4. We must maintain or increase defense spending.

That these are contradictory policies does not seem to register with the GOP.  Reducing the deficit while also further slashing taxes will lead to reduced government revenue, which will result in underfunding of all kinds of things.  I’ll avoid extended commentary on the fact that the GOP are very recent converts to controlled government spending (ignoring 2000-2006) and do not acknowledge their own culpability in the financial situation in which the nation finds itself.  I will say that for the Republicans to simply repeat the above points as some sort of alternative to current policy is ridiculous.  Either they are parroting talking points without understanding what they mean in reality, or they are simply using these as window dressing for obstructionist tactics against Obama and the Democrats, or they enjoy a level of cognitive dissonance that is Orwellian.

As for the Democrats, they’ve been hijacked by corporate-beholden centrists and in-fighting.  Matthew Yglesias makes what seems to me a valid analogy for explaining how Congress (mis)operates here.  Backroom negotiations over health care reform, such as giving Senator Nelson of Nebraska special incentives that are suspiciously similar to outright bribes, have further obscured the potential goodness that can result from governance.

Meanwhile, President Obama tries to negotiate effective policy change.  Say what you want about his ideology (or lack thereof beyond pragmatism, as some have argued), he is seeming more and more like an adult trying to get control of the rowdy day care center that is Capitol Hill.

So where do we go from here?

It appears the opinion of the whole is less than the sum of its parts.

There are several reasons for this.  One is that people who support health care reform don’t like everything in the bill, so the supporters aren’t 100% behind the bill.  The opposition, on the other hand, is 150% against it.  That doesn’t play well in the press.

Another is the legislative process.  Only in the U.S. can we come up with a legislative body that requires 51 votes to pass legislation but at the same time needs 60 votes to shut off debate on that legislation so we can get 51 votes.  Watching the political theater playing out over the past year, and especially over the past several months in the Senate, has been dispiriting.  The fact that a single senator, like Joe Lieberman, can hijack the entire process is ludicrous.  So is the fact that the 41 Republican senators against HCR represent something less than 40% of the U.S. population.  And don’t get me started on the filibuster, which needs serious reform.  (Maybe this is a start.)

Another reason for growing dismay over the bill is the Democrats.  They fussed for months over whether or not Senator Snowe from Maine would join them.  They have drawn out debate for what seems like far too long.  The public reads that they have a virtual supermajority in the Senate, a majority in the House, and control of the White House–why can’t they get their act together?

President Obama owns some of this as well.  He has been measured and reasonable, but he has put far too much trust in Congress to get things done.  Only relatively recently has he been intensely and personally involved, which helped push HCR within inches of success.

But the Republicans have erected a solid wall of resistance to HCR.  Not because they have anything better to offer.  If they did, I’d be all for it.  I’m not against a lot of the ideas the GOP nominally stands for.  What I am against is their utter refusal to govern.  Politics for them has become a bloodsport.  The only way to win is to score more points than the other side.  But the goal of politics shouldn’t be the Rovian tactic of dominating the news cycle and pummeling your opponent.  The goal should be to improve the lives of the people you govern.

But rather than debate the issues, the GOP has declared war on “death panels” and “government takeover of health care.”  Those are canards.  The real agenda is to defeat Obama.  Period.  It’s politics over governance.  And the Republicans have Fox News as their own personal media outlet to ramp up threats of the government coming to kill off your grandmother.

It’s pretty simple.  We need to change the current system.  Change is uncomfortable, especially when you want to change something as big as health care.  But when I took a look at how the current system of health care came about, my sense of caution about changing a decades-old system pretty much vanished.  It’s not a system that grew organically out of the ideas of democracy embedded in our Constitution.  It’s more like an old, used car with four different kinds of tires and an unpainted hood.

The Senate version of the health care bill is far from perfect.  But it is ridiculous for the Dems and Obama to throw up their hands and say, “Oh, well, we tried really, really hard.”

Rep. John Dingell, who has pursued health care reform in Congress for over five decades, puts the matter in pretty clear terms.  Money quote:

“Nobody ever gets exactly what they want. I’ve been legislating for 55 years and I can’t remember a perfect bill. This bill is a hell of a way from what I would’ve done. But I support it. It’s necessary. It will help. And in this system, I’ll have further chances to change it and make it better. In the meantime, people need this.”

Mr. President, Senator Reid, Speaker Pelosi, Democrats, Republicans, Independents: just do it.

Obama’s Substantive First Year II – The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan.

I don’t know who the young man with the microphone is, although I can guess his agenda–pointing out the faulty arguments posed by many of the protesters.  But this clip forced me to ask myself a few questions:

1. How often did I laugh or smirk at the people on the clip, especially when the interviewer calmly explained the faults in their reasoning?
2. How many of these people were actively promoting lies to serve their own agenda?
3. How many of these people were simply confused or ill-informed?
4. How many of these people grew irritated with or became ugly toward the interviewer?

It’s easy to point and laugh.  (I did, at least at first.)  It’s also easy to succumb to righteous indignation.  (Ditto.)  The guys with the Second Amendment signs and the not-so-veiled threats upset me particularly.  The comments about how Obama is really a Muslim or isn’t really African-American seem ludicrous, as do the statements about how fascism is a form of socialism and how, really, they’re all intertwined with communism.  Just looking at the Oxford American Dictionary online can tell you they are three distinct systems, but no matter.  And the man going on about how “Barack Obama” can be found in the Bible and is “deciphered” as meaning Antichrist…well, he seems like someone’s crazy uncle who’s had a few too many Scotches at Thanksgiving.

But what surprises me is how, well, nice some of these folks seem–the ones who aren’t shouting, the ones who engage in dialogue with the microphone-holding interviewer.  When confronted with an alternative point of view, they seem more surprised than defensive.  Only one person in this clip really questions the interviewer: “And you heard this where?”  The man with the “Joe Wilson for President” sign even seems apologetic when told that Wilson had himself voted for some level of health care for illegal immigrants; he completely contradicts himself by saying “I’m not supporting Joe Wilson for president” when the sign he is holding supports just that.

The woman in white who appears at around 3:10 in the clip summarizes this entire conundrum quite well.  “I was in health care for twenty years,” she says, following up with the judgment that “Medicare, as it is now, has worked very well for the populous.”  She even says she thinks Medicare could be “expanded to more of the population.”  Then, when questioned by the interviewer about a sign that reads “Bury Obamacare with Kennedy,” she laughs politely and says that, while it might sound sarcastic, “we do need to bury that whole plan.”  The idea of “Obamacare,” of course, is to expand health insurance and health care services to “more of the population.”

These folks are not evil.  They aren’t full of hate.  What they are is anxious–about big, global ideas (the economy, health care, the national debt, the power and efficiency and ethicality of government) and about issues that are more fundamental to their own day-to-day lives (their own health care plans, their own jobs, what kind of world their grandchildren will inherit).  Most of all, they are anxious about change.

This is where the criminality of some right-wing talkshow hosts and pundits comes in.  They have exploited the anxieties and fears of not only the wingnuts with the guns and the racism but also these white, middle-class, middle-aged or older folks who find the world they now live in confusing and unfamiliar.  Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Michelle Malkin, and Sean Hannity and their ilk have put up road signs for these folks to follow.  The fact that these road signs are often based on a cynical manipulation of the truth, and may lead these folks off a cliff, is ignored.

What I am afraid will happen is that these folks will be lumped in with the real wingnuts and demonized by people with a more liberal political bent, which in turn will cause the “nicer” tea baggers to become more radical and intransigent in their beliefs.

That said, I have a real problem with this “rally.”  Not because its backers are conservatives and I’m progressive in my political beliefs.  Not because I think conservatives are stupid or evil.

It’s because the rally was in large part organized by Dick Armey’s Freedom Watch and Glenn Beck, both of whom have cynically manipulated some genuine concerns (and some irrational fears) into a furious mob.  This mob doesn’t know what it stands for–only that it stands against Obama.

Why?

Because he’s a Nazi, a socialist, a communist, or sometimes all of them at once.  (Which doesn’t make logical sense–it’s just an attempt to stick the vilest labels to the man in order to demonize him.)

Because he’s going to “take away our freedoms.”  (Like what?  No matter–he just is, and we’re not going to let him.)

Because he’s going to take over health care.  (Go back and read his speech from last Wednesday, then look at his actions since January 20, and you’ll see he doesn’t want to “take over” health care any more than he wants to take over Mexico–he wants to fix the current system.  Debate all you want about the manner in which he wants to do so, but debate honestly.)

Because our taxes are going to go up.  (Which isn’t true in the short term but will likely be inevitable in the long term as a result of the past 8 years of economic policy which erased a huge surplus, gave substantial tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans, and saddled us with an enormous debt.)

Because he lied to us.  (What did he lie about?  I still haven’t heard anything that doesn’t conflate “I think he’s wrong” with “He’s a liar,” which are two very different things.)

All of these seem to boil down to the following:

Because Barack Obama, a black man, defeated the Republican nominee for president and therefore gets a shot at promoting his agenda rather than a Republican one.

I understand feeling frustrated, even angry, in the context of having my candidate lose and seeing an opposing political ideology take control of Washington.  I’ve felt that way for most of the past eight years.  But this anger goes beyond that.  It taps into some darker aspects of our national psyche–a fear of blacks, for one thing, and of change, fears so strong that they overwhelm rationality and become knee-jerk reactions.

By all means, hold our elected officials responsible, from the president down to your local city councilman or woman.  Enter into a vigorous national debate about these issues.  Exercise your constitutional rights and vote for the candidates you support, and let all elected officials know where you stand.

But again, do it honestly.  Calling attention to the fact that our deficit is enormous and arguing that too much government regulation may be stifling to innovation and efficiency is one thing.  Engaging in fear-stoking rhetoric, and shouting “You lie!” at the President during a Congressional address, and comparing President Obama with the Joker is another.

If you want an example of the kind of honest debate I’m talking about, look here:

Granted, the “angry mob” title is probably misplaced rhetoric: this looks like less of an angry mob than it does a gaggle of concerned citizens.  But this is what political discourse should be in our country.  Instead, we get this:

And this.  And this.  And this.  And especially this.

Rachel Maddow got it right when she spoke about this kind of rhetoric:

Part 1

Part 2

There’s no question that the federal government is not the most efficient body on the earth.  And there are lots of examples of government waste–look at some of the contracts given to companies like KBR in Iraq, for example, or the cost of a toilet if purchased by the Pentagon.

But I find the notion that the government “can’t do anything right” to be pretty simplistic and incorrect.  It’s an expression of ideology rather than reality.

For nearly thirty years, we’ve heard how government is the problem.  Ronald Reagan famously said that, and like many people alive when Reagan was president, I believed him because I liked him.  Now that I’m older I’m rethinking a lot of what I once believed.  The current GOP, especially the anti-tax Grover Norquist wing, insists again and again that the federal government cannot do things well except in the area of defense.  It’s a default position that is a bit dishonest.  Instead of explaining a belief that the federal government should be restricted in its power due to a reading of the Constitution, for example, many people just declare government to be bad.

The problem is, if a political party that expresses as one of its core beliefs the limited value of the federal government comes into power for a length of time (say, the past eight years), then this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Why would we want people who think government doesn’t work well–indeed, express a fervent belief that government shouldn’t work well–to run the government?

I believe there are GOP senators and representatives who want to make government work.  But many GOP members, including their leaders and the right-wing talking heads in the media, continue to beat the drum of “government can’t do anything right.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell spoke disdainfully about the “cash for clunkers” program recently, which has proven so popular and successful that it is about to run out of money.  Instead of seeing how this initiative is actually working and stimulating a widespread purchase of automobiles–an industry that recently had to close large numbers of dealerships, prompting howls of indignation from the Republicans, among others–McConnell and other GOPers call the program poorly-managed because it’s run out of money.  But if it ran out of money because the widespread demand was far, far higher than anyone anticipated, and the program is doing what it was planned to do, is this the same thing as poor management?

Another argument I’ve heard is, “Do you want the same people who run the DMV to be the same people that run health care?”  Considering the DMV where I live, in north metro Atlanta, my response would be, Well, yes.  I don’t have to go to the DMV very often.  When I do, I’ve waited in line no longer than 15 minutes, I’ve found the people there to be courteous and helpful, and it’s no more of a hassle than when I visit the local branch office of my bank, or the grocery store.  The post office can be a hassle, but that’s more about waiting in line, something Americans really don’t like.  And of all the thousands of pieces of mail I’ve sent through that system in my lifetime, I can only think of one or two instances when mail was lost or delivered very late.

Okay, but those are isolated examples, you might say.  Fine.  How about the military?  The federal government seems to run that pretty well.  And the health care system our military has is a public plan and delivers much better quality care than private insurance plans.  Don’t believe me?  See Bill Kristol admit as much to Jon Stewart here.  Ask seniors how they feel about Medicare and Medicaid.  Think about who builds and maintains our roads, our public libraries, our police and fire stations.  I’ll even add our schools…and while many public schools are bad, imagine if tomorrow all of our public schools closed, permanently.

The fact is that government can do a lot of good.  It should not do everything, by any means.  The historic examples of governments that run everything are not encouraging–fascism and communism are not viable options in the 21st century.  But government can, in fact, do things well, if we the public pay attention to what government is doing, elect officials who work for us and not corporate interests, and intelligently debate the issues.

1. We need to talk about transitioning to a single-payer INSURANCE system.
2. You would be covered 100% for medical, dental, vision, etc.
3. You would no longer pay insurance premiums.
4. You would no longer pay deductibles.
5. You could see whoever you want, whenever you want, wherever you want (subject, of course, to the doctor’s availability…but no outside agency would be determining who you could or could see–no “in-network” or “0ut-of-network” issues).
6. You and your doctor would make all of your medical decisions.  The single-payer system would make no medical decisions–they would only handle payments.
7. You would have insurance regardless of whether or not you were sick or well, employed or not.
8. Your taxes would rise to pay for this.  However, this would be offset (and in many cases more than offset) by the lack of deductibles, premiums, and other out-of-pocket medical expenses.

Is this too wacky to even consider?

I realize that the devil you know may be more desirable than the devil you don’t, but the devil we know that is the current health insurance system doesn’t work like it should.  Tinkering around the edges of health insurance won’t work.  If the engine of your car is broken, replacing the tires doesn’t really help.