All Life Is Problem Solving

Bernie Sanders’ appearance on The Ed Show, was a sad one for me to see, because he tried to explain his joining the Democrats in voting for cloture on the Senate’s health care reform bill in two ways. First, of course, he waxes enthusiastic about the tremendous good that the measly $10 billion (about 0.1 of one percent of total expenditures under the bill) he secured for funding community health centers would do for the uninsured, clearly implying that it would have a substantial effect on the 45,000 annual fatalities we now see. But second, then he moves right to the false Democratic Party talking points we’ve been seeing from so many Party functionaries this week, and even much earlier in relation to supporting the stronger, but still pathetic House bill.

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Here are nine reasons the Senate health care reform bill should be killed:

1) The bill gives almost no real help ’til 2014. In the short term, the bill does nothing about the fatalities, bankruptcies, and foreclosures that come from lack of insurance. Therefore, the very title of the bill — “The Affordable Health Choices Act” –is a lie, despite band-aids for children and young adults, because the bill doesn’t get people care in the short run at an affordable price that will protect them from financial ruin.

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Bill Moyers hosted an interesting conversation the other day among Robert Kuttner, Matt Taibbi, and himself about health care reform, the performance of the Administration to this point, and the relations of progressives with the President. The conversation focused in part on how Taibbi and Kuttner would vote on the Senate’s pending legislation, if it were up to them. Even though they both agreed very closely on the shortcomings of the Senate’s bill thus far, and also on how far from what’s needed this bill is, they disagreed about what should be done. Matt would vote against the bill, thinks that President Obama, would learn from the defeat, and believes that it ought to be killed; and Bob thinks that progressives ought to hold their noses and vote for it, because the political damage the Administration would suffer if it were defeated is so great, that the Democrats and the President would both be set up for defeat in the next elections, and any opportunity for the President to change direction, and for progressive legislation to succeed in the future, would be gone for many years. So, in short, Bob would support this legislation out of fear of the consequences for the larger political context in which progressive efforts to transform the political system are embedded. [Read more →]

This is an appeal to all Progressive Senators, whom I, perhaps mistakenly, list as including: Bernie Sanders, Sherrod Brown, Russ Feingold, Pat Leahy, Al Franken, Sheldon Whitehouse, Tom Harkin, Ron Wyden, Patty Murray, Dick Durbin, Barbra Boxer, Byron Dorgan, Barbara Mikulski, Ben Cardin, Jay Rockefeller, Chuck Schumer, and Paul Kirk. My apologies to Amy Klobuchar, Maria Cantwell, Carl Levin, Debbie Stabenow, Michael Bennett, Jon Tester, John Kerry, and Jack Reed, if I’ve done one or more of you an injustice by not including you in this first list. And if I have, I wish you’d consider this post as an appeal to you too.

Briefly, I appeal to each of you to tell Harry Reid that you will vote “no” on any Senate health care reform bill that has individual mandates without a public option, or a Medicare buy-in option for people under 65, lifetime limits on insurance coverage, doesn’t outlaw: denials of coverage based on preconditions, rescissions, and price discrimination based on previous illness, or preconditions, or socio-economic grouping, doesn’t require medical loss ratios of 90% or more, and doesn’t take full effect by early fall of 2010. [Read more →]

The solid front of Democratic Party progressives supporting the Senate’s health care form bill, has now cracked wide open with Howard Dean’s call to kill the Senate bill and start over in the House with reconciliation. Dean’s call hasn’t cracked open the floodgates among the Senate and House Democrats and in recent days people like Bernie Sanders and Anthony Weiner have indicated that even though they’re sympathetic, they’re not with Howard yet, while others like Ben Cardin, Jay Rockefeller, and a veritable hallelujah chorus of other Democratic Senators have registered strong disagreement with him, insisting that the bill should still be supported. Meanwhile, Harry Reid continues to oppose using reconciliation to pass a bill. Why? [Read more →]

When I was young the United States had some liberals of courage in the Senate. People like Estes Kefauver, Paul Douglas, Hubert H. Humphrey, Herbert Lehman, Wayne Morse, Richard L. Neuberger, Maurine B. Neuberger, Eugene McCarthy, Mike Mansfield, Ernest Gruening, Pat McNamara, Phil Hart, Frank Church, George McGovern, Albert Gore, Sr., Ralph Yarborough, Warren Magnuson, and William Proxmire. These liberals could be counted on to go to the mat for most liberal causes. They said what they meant, and meant what they said. They compromised. But they never pre-compromised, and they never folded. They were never afraid to walk away from negotiations that were producing bad bills. They passed a lot of good bills, a lot of regulatory bills, a lot of consumer protection bills. I could and was proud of them. I looked up to them, and frankly, loved them for what they did for America.

Of course, when Hubert Humphrey left the Senate, he didn’t act as he had before, and appeared to be overwhelmed by Lyndon Johnson. And some might argue that others, such as John, Robert and Teddy Kennedy, J. William Fulbright, and Lyndon Johnson, or even some Republicans like Jack Javits, ought to be part of this group for their championing of certain liberal causes. But I never viewed them as among the most liberal and unequivocally courageous politicians, but more as pragmatists occasionally motivated by principle.

In any case, the point I’m making is that this long list of courageous liberals is not matched by any group we have in the Senate today. We have Bernie Sanders, and sometimes Russ Feingold now to stand on principle, and Al Franken showing some promise, and everyone else seems to be a “caver,” dedicated to the idea that “the perfect is the enemy of the good,” and ignoring that both the timid, and the path of least resistance, are also, and equally, the enemies of the good. [Read more →]

In the previous two posts in this series I’ve examined four ideas that Warren Mosler has called “deadly innocent frauds,” (difs) and that others have variously referred to as myths, scares, and lies. Three of the difs — that Government deficits create a debt burden for future generations, take away non-governmental sector saving, and that social security is broken are all “deadly innocent frauds,” supporting the idea that deficits must be avoided, even if we have to suffer through extreme economic downturns to avoid them. These frauds, like the fourth dif that Government spending is operationally limited by the need to tax and borrow, all serve to reinforce the idea that Government can’t do anything about a bad economy without doing more harm than good. The contrapuntal ideas that Government can create money, and is not operationally limited by the need to tax and borrow, there is no debt burden on future generations that limits production or consumption, deficits don’t subtract from, but add to non-governmental savings, and Government checks including Social Security checks don’t bounce, all reinforce the idea that Government deficit spending is not to be avoided, but, on the contrary is something we can and need to do to avoid the economic and human waste of unnecessary economic recessions and depressions. In this part of the series, I’ll review more of Mosler’s difs and discuss their political implications. [Read more →]

In my last post I introduced Warren Mosler’s notion of “deadly innocent frauds,” (difs) and discussed the idea of fiat monetary systems and its implications for the first dif: “in order to spend money, the Government must first raise it through taxation, or borrow it.” In fiat monetary systems, that idea is false, which is why it is a dif. The true principle instead is: “Government Spending is NOT operationally limited or in any way constrained by taxing or borrowing.” In the course of discussing the first dif, I emphasized its role as a belief underlying the current orientation of the Obama Administration toward planning for deficit reduction and deficit neutrality. Concerns that are wholly inappropriate, foolhardy, and even suicidal, in view of all we need to do to reinvent America, and the fact that we have a fiat monetary system. In this installment I’ll move on to Mosler’s other difs and discuss their political and economic implications. [Read more →]

One characteristic of modern political and economic discourse is frequent asserting of beliefs about economics and money that have been variously described by some observers as ‘myths’, ‘scares‘, ‘lies’, ‘innocent frauds’, and ‘deadly innocent frauds’. ‘Innocent frauds’ was the courteous labeling of such beliefs by John Kenneth Galbraith in his last book, The Economics of Innocent Fraud. Warren Mosler, an economist, presidential candidate, and sometime co-author of James Galbraith, has added the modifier “deadly” to Galbraith the elder’s name for this belief. Mosler’s label is particularly relevant today because, given the various problems and crises currently faced by the United States, acceptance of these beliefs or “deadly innocent frauds,” could well doom the United States and its people to a bleak future of economic, political, social, and cultural instability. The once proud land of opportunity could well be reduced to a gray land of despair and submergence of most of its people in a wholly unnecessary age of lost hope and increasing despair for American parents as well as their children. America and its dreams could well be sacrificed to a harsh fiscal and economic discipline based wholly on deadly innocent frauds, scares, myths, and outright lies. I’ll now, following Mosler’s treatment, examine some of the most influential of these, and also rely in part on the earlier work of Cavanaugh, Boettger, and Eisner. [Read more →]

This is an update on my previous diary trying to identify members of the Medicare for All sub-community at Firedog Lake. Again, I’m not sure how many bloggers and commenters are in it, but I think it includes at least: [Read more →]