Health Care Hoo Haw and Reality

I did something Wednesday that apparently few commentators on President Obama's press conference did: I watched the press conference and listened to what was said. In the comparatively few minutes of television commentary I heard afterwards, I heard at least three statements that suggested the speaker hadn't been listening.

We can sympathize to a degree: these TV folks are trying to get their headlines and video clips, sound bites and opinions together during the press conference, which doubtless interferes with actually attending to it. But only to a degree.

I heard commentators state what President Obama should have said, apparently oblivious to the fact that he had said it. I heard a commentator speculate on a fact which the President stipulated to as part of his answer.

As usual then, President Obama was speaking over the heads of the media to the American people. He again paid them the compliment of not talking down to them, but stated his case clearly and in detail, especially on the subjects of health care and its relation to government spending and debt.

So in case you missed it, here is part of what the President did say:

"This is not just about the 47 million Americans who have no health insurance. Reform is about every American who has ever feared that they may lose their coverage if they become too sick, or lose their job, or change their job. It's about every small business that has been forced to lay off employees or cut back on their coverage because it became too expensive. And it's about the fact that the biggest driving force behind our federal deficit is the skyrocketing cost of Medicare and Medicaid.

So let me be clear: if we do not control these costs, we will not be able to control our deficit. If we do not reform health care, your premiums and out-of-pocket costs will continue to skyrocket. If we do not act, 14,000 Americans will continue to lose their health insurance every single day. These are the consequences of inaction. These are the stakes of the debate we're having right now."

"So let me be clear: This isn't about me. I have great health insurance, and so does every Member of Congress. This debate is about the letters I read when I sit in the Oval Office every day, and the stories I hear at town hall meetings. This is about the woman in Colorado who paid $700 a month to her insurance company only to find out that they wouldn't pay a dime for her cancer treatment - who had to use up her retirement funds to save her own life. This is about the middle-class college graduate from Maryland whose health insurance expired when he changed jobs, and woke up from emergency surgery with $10,000 in debt. This is about every family, every business, and every taxpayer who continues to shoulder the burden of a problem that Washington has failed to solve for decades.

This debate is not a game for these Americans, and they cannot afford to wait for reform any longer. They are counting on us to get this done. They are looking to us for leadership. And we must not let them down. We will pass reform that lowers cost, promotes choice, and provides coverage that every American can count on. And we will do it this year."

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"La salute non si paga":
"Health is not for sale."

attributed to "Italian workers" by Kim Stanley Robinson in Blue Mars.

One Giant Leap

With a lander that looks like an aluminum foil junk sculpture, and using all the computing power now contained in a cell phone, Apollo 11 reached the moon and forty years ago today Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot on ground not on this Earth. I'd spent the day being driven through Colorado hills that looked to me as desolate as the moon, before watching this moment on live TV (I don't recall if it was Cronkite I saw then, though I've seen that footage since.) And as I'll never tire of telling you, a couple of years ago I shook the hand of the first man on the moon, making my personal physical connection to the universe beyond our fragile planet. Here's Wired's guide to other information and events.

California Future's Day of Infamy

Assuming the reported California state budget deal is announced today, July 20 becomes a day that will live in infamy. Robert Cruikshank wrote Sunday at Calitics: "And so the budget drama hurtles toward its inevitable conclusion, perhaps as soon as tomorrow. Democrats have caved and given Arnold Schwarzenegger what he wanted - a cuts-only budget that does massive and lasting damage to the state of California, to the people who live here, and to our collective future. It's taken 31 years, but Howard Jarvis is finally going to get the wholesale destruction of public services he always wanted."

David Dayen followed up at Calitics with a post titled A Complete Blindness to Long-Term Consequences, and I name the class, age and race victims at American Dash.

The irony is that this is happening when we finally have a President who understands the self-destructive stupidity of this course, and is trying to reverse it. Less than ironic is the likelihood that other states will copy this approach in their own budget crises. In the short run, the Terminator's deal may well counteract or at least weaken any economic stimulus in California resulting from federal action. Dayden writes: By siphoning off almost $1 billion in gas tax funds slated for cities and counties, not one pothole in California will get filled this year. With the loss of $1.7 billion in redevlopment funds, not one project like affordable housing will get initiated. And by taking $1.3 billion in local property taxes, lots of city and county employees, particularly in public safety, will end up out of work. It's really robbery on a pretty grand scale, and it will offset any economic recovery through stimulus funding throughout the state. "

It's also going to cause immediate chaos, especially in education. But in the long term, this budget deeply wounds the California future, and thereby the American future.

Update: The deal was announced late in the day, though not in detail. Meanwhile, another piece on how these cuts will end up costing California more later, and these are just the direct financial costs.

It's Captain Future Day!

Well, sort of. It's actually Edmond Hamilton Day in Kinsman, Ohio. Hamilton was the author of the original Captain Future stories in sci-fi pulp magazines, and as part of the celebration, The Collected Captain Future Vol. 1 is being officially published today.

The Way It Was

Cable news is eulogizing Walter Cronkite, who died today at the age of 92. Cable news is seldom anything Cronkite would have recognized as news, and in hearing Dan Rather and others talk about him as "an honest broker of information," a surrogate for the public who felt his responsibility was to educate the audience, I realize how many of my ideas about journalism came as much from Cronkite (and Huntley-Brinkley) as any newspaper or certainly any class in school. Show biz was always the temptation of TV, and even in his early heyday, while Cronkite was doing hard news series like See It Now, he was also hosting the supremely silly You Are There, where he pretended to interview historical figures like Joan of Arc on her way to the stake. (Although, to be truthful, I was thrilled by those shows as a child. With this strange medium of television, it seemed possible he was actually there.) But Cronkite resisted the incursion of tabloid journalism and infotainment that dominates television now. He set a standard of fact and knowledge. His background in print reporting was typical for his era, and sadly missing now.

For my generation, he was a little late in concluding the Vietnam War was a waste, or in exposing Watergate, but as an establishment figure, he shook the establishment when he did so. He did steer small town, working class, Middle America and his own generation through the tumultuous 60s and 70s, as well as providing some parental or grandparental solidity to my generation.

I didn't see the celebrated moment when he announced that President Kennedy was dead--I was in school at the time--but I do remember that his presence and those of other trusted news figures were essential in getting through that weekend, when the news seemed literally unbelievable, and news that we did not want to accept.

Cronkite was himself one year older than JFK. He didn't quite live to see the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing, with which he remained identified as the most enthusiastic and apparently knowledgeable reporter covering it. I remember when he was more or less forced out of his anchor chair at CBS, which marked for me as the end of legitimate television news. Not that it was always truthful, but it was always serious, and it always paid attention to important matters in detail. I suppose some of my sadness at his passing, which I would not have expected, is that with his death, that era and that kind of news is definitely and definitively over.

Johnny Lujack, star quarterback for Notre Dame in the 1940s and the Chicago Bears, is the analogue on my father's side of the family to Gino Severini on my mother's: a famous if now obscure relative (this photo was on the cover of LIFE magazine), whose relationship is vague and anecdotal. My father said Lujack was a second cousin, although we never met him (at age 81, he's living in Iowa.) Anyway, he's being honored in western PA, prompting a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article that says more than I knew about him--quite a guy, and an amazing athlete in the Jim Thorpe/Jack Armstrong/George Blanda mold. I do recall checking NFL records sometime in the 70s, and he still held a few. Now he's being recognized in his hometown. Congrats, cuz.

Pitching

President Obama throws out the first pitch at the Major League All-Star Game in St. Louis, after pitching the need for healthcare and clean energy legislation in Michigan. For more on this fateful summer, see post below.

A Fateful Summer

This could well be the most important summer of the 21st century so far. It could begin to equip this country and the world to save the future, or it could set us back even farther. President Obama is out there pitching, telling audiences in Michigan on Tuesday that his initiatives to fix health care and address the Climate Crisis through a cap-and-trade program are both essential to economic recovery and future prosperity.

The opposition feeds the media with irrelevancies and lies, and the conflict-addicted media eats it up. But beneath the smoke, and beyond the obvious and very well-funded ploys of delay and obfuscation, there are the facts of these matters.

On healthcare, opponents had to deal with the embarrassing revelations by a former insurance company executive that lefty far out radical filmmaker Michael Moore was essentially correct in his film "Sicko" about how broken and unjust the healthcare so-called system actually is. Those fulminating against gobment bureaucracy taking over healthcare had to once again ignore a scholarly study--this one in the journal Health Affairs--that "compared to people with private insurance, Medicare enrollees have greater access to care, fewer problems with medical bills, and greater satisfaction with their health plans and the quality of care they receive."

The latest attack on cap and trade came this morning from none other than Sarah Palin in the Washington Post, quickly dismantled for both what it said and what it didn't say. But there are also misgivings on the left and by environmentalists, which were addressed by Robert Stavins, director of the Harvard Environmental Economics program in a Salon interview.

For critics that consider cap-and-trade a corporate giveaway, Stavins analysis shows that approximately 20 percent of the allowance value is given to private entities that have to comply, and 80 percent of that value of the allowances accrues to consumers, to small businesses and then for various public purposes.

For those who see the bill as too limited and compromised, Stavins maintains that the bill's method, created partly to get the support necessary to pass it, "does not degrade its environmental performance, or drive up its cost. Otherwise I wouldn't support it. I'm an environmental economist. I care about environmental performance, and I care about the cost of achieving it. That's the remarkable property of a cap-and-trade system."

He defends the relatively low goals for the near term as necessary to make as smooth a transition as possible to an energy system that is mostly clean. That means what is most important is the 2050 target of 80 percent below 2005 levels. That's the key one. For 2050, this legislation is very aggressive."

There are still twists and turns both bills will take in the next several weeks. But instituting a health care system that covers 97% or more of Americans, with a public plan to choose from, would be a monumental achievement. It wouldn't by itself solve all healthcare problems, but it is necessary to the other solutions.

The same applies to cap-and-trade. It won't stop the Climate Crisis, but it can begin to address the problems that are on track to wreck the future to an extent that most people so far can't imagine. It won't magically install a clean energy economy overnight, but it will start us in the right direction, for present renewal and public health, and for the future where our children, grandchildren and their descendants will live.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"'You are on your tariqat,' Dhy el-Nun said to Nirgal. This was one's spiritual path, he explained, one's road to reality. Nirgal nodded, struck by the aptness of the description--it was just how his life had always felt to him. 'You must feel lucky,' Dhu said. 'You must pay attention.'"

Kim Stanley Robinson
Green Mars

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

“We look for stories in everything. If stones are thrown on the ground, they make a story. The stars, entrails, tea leaves. Neuroscientists and philosophers seem to be edging toward this notion of the human brain as being hardwired for narrative. Consciousness is a story. It is a condensing of the world’s details into narrative.”
Brian Kitely

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"Life is not a series of triumphs."
--Robert Bly

Who Are We

The other side of celebrating our liberty is to contemplate the liberty we have so recently and so easily given up, and why. "A nation may lose its liberties in a day," observed Montesquieu, "and not miss them for a century." Or not understand their import until an outsider puts them in context, as Alberto Manguel does when he writes about the centuries of suppressions and destructions, the book-burnings and censorships, that we may feel are relics of the past and disreputable habits of other nations and their systems that don't cherish and protect free expression and knowledge. Sure, there are isolated incidents in certain school districts, but these are not the norm, and certainly not national policy.

But in The Library at Night, Manguel reminds us of "Section 215 of the U.S.A. Patriot Act, allowing federal agents to obtain records of books borrowed at any public library or bought at any private bookstore," without offering a reason, and forbidding the library or bookstore to disclose the request or the giving of this information, including to the person targeted.

The other side of celebrating our national identity and the values at its center is to notice where we violate those values and that identity. Manguel provides an example of this as well, for in his descriptions of libraries and legacies destroyed over the centuries--from the burning of the libraries of Alexandria and of the thousands of books containing the cultural legacy of the Mayans and Aztecs, to the Nazis and various Communist governments, he adds the days in 2003 when in the chaos created by the Anglo-American invasion, and with their troops standing by and doing nothing, "the National Archives, the Archeological Museum and the National Library of Baghdad were ransacked and looted. In a few hours, much of the earliest recorded history of humankind was lost to oblivion."

Though this was a direct consequence of American ignorance and arrogance,
it was set in motion ultimately for the same reason as the Patriot Act: fear, both disproportionate and all too easily manipulated. It was this unreasoning fear, which in the end looks a lot like national cowardice, that permitted other outrages. We know what they are, but sometimes the so-called "debate" over them is exposed as baseless and phony, in the form of simple, direct statement, as provided by Gareth Peirce in the London Review of Books:

Seven years ago now, in January 2002, came the first shocking images of human beings in rows in aircraft, hooded and shackled for transportation across the Atlantic, much as other human beings had been carried in slave ships four hundred years earlier. The captor’s humiliation of these anonymous beings – unloaded at Guantánamo Bay, crouched in open cages in orange jumpsuits – was deliberately displayed. The watching world needed no knowledge of international humanitarian conventions to understand that what it was seeing was unlawful, since what is in fact the law precisely mirrors instinctive moral revulsion. The definitions of crimes against humanity, and war crimes, are not complex: ‘Grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949’, including ‘torture or inhuman treatment’; ‘wilfully causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or health’; ‘wilfully depriving a prisoner of war or other protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial; unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement.’ What the world could instantly see for itself in those images was that this was the trafficking of human beings."

Once again the ultimate culprit is fear, and how easily our liberties and identity falls to it. We may find solace in the changes made since: the U.S. no longer officially permits torture, but torture was officially committed, libraries and booksellers were monitored, and as a society we have not yet fully acknowledged and condemned these acts, which might go a long way towards making it less likely they will recur. Those who opposed these acts were called unpatriotic, when it was especially dangerous to be so accused. Until these acts are themselves condemned as unpatriotic, we have not affirmed these liberties and identity.

Besides which, these threats are not all in the past. We know someone who in the past week was pulled out of his seat on a commercial aircraft by federal marshals, despite passing through security, showing his boarding pass, etc. Even though the airline quickly acknowledged its error, he was forced to miss his flight and all connecting flights, more than doubling his travel time to nearly 24 hours. There is no escaping the likelihood that this happened to him because he has dark hair and a dark complexion. That he's an Italian-American only makes this outrage a clear echo of a similiar situation, another acquaintance, also Italian American but as well the son of a prominent political figure in Washington, who was also pulled out of line for no other discernable reason. That was in 2002. This is 2009, and it is still happening.

Happy Birthday, USA

Horseshoe Curve Museum grounds, western Pennsylvania. Click photo to enlarge.

The Dreaming Up Daily Birthday Quote

The Way It Is
"There's a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn't change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can't get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time's unfolding.
You don't ever let go of the thread."
--William Stafford

Here Comes the Sun (Maybe)

Positive analysis and consequences are following the House passage of the climate and energy bill. The President, his chief of staff, Speaker Pelosi are all getting political credits for getting it through. That it happened while German Chancellor Merkel was in Washington in itself has helped move forward the international process for a new climate treaty, just by being both surprising and encouraging. "The fact that with the United States we stand where we stand today is an enormous success, which I would not have thought possible a year ago -- let me be very serious," Merkel said. The EU needs the US to assert leadership by example, if the crucial cooperation of China, India and third world countries is to be obtained.

As for provisions of the bill itself, Joseph Hebert of AP wrote: "Congress has taken its first step toward an energy revolution, with the prospect of profound change for every household, business, industry and farm in the decades ahead." President Obama dismissed Republican charges that the bill would cost too much and cripple business and the economy. "He recalled similar warnings that the Clean Air Act and a national effort to combat acid rain would send costs soaring and kill jobs -- warnings, he said, that turned out to be false.He castigated opponents for "lying" about cost projections and "scaring the bejeezus" out of voters, and accused Republicans of being stuck in a 1990s-era debate on energy when the American people "have moved forward" with concerns about climate change and hope for renewable power."

He also noted that "What seems contentious now is going to seem like common sense in hindsight" and predicted the measure would "change the political conversation and the incentive structure for businesses in this country."

Just how much and how fast things could change was also suggested by an executive move announced by Secretary of Interior Salazar designating some 670,000 acres in six western states for a study to determine locations for solar power development. As the president of the Solar Energies Industries Association noted, there are some 7,000 permits for oil and gas drilling on public lands, but so far none for solar. Salazar expects construction on some 13 commercial-scale solar projects there by next year.

But the climate and energy bill itself must pass the Senate, and then survive conference committee to craft a final bill for the President's signature. That's likely to take months, while the momentous health care bill is being crafted and considered. But that there are other important issues, and always lots of momentary distractions, does not diminish the paramount importance of advancing clean energy and addressing the Climate Crisis.

Paul Krugman's strong column today accuses climate crisis deniers of treason. But it's not just the denying that's the problem--it's the distraction, the failure in the present moment to understand the priority for the future.

Joseph Romm of the Center for American Progress suggests what the stakes really are: "If we fail to stop catastrophic global warming, future generations will not care what we have done on issues like health care, the deficit and Iraq. If we fail to stop massive sea level rise, widespread desertification, and 10-degrees-Fahrenheit warming over much of the inland U.S. -- all of which we face on our current emissions path -- then every person who voted against this bill will be vilified by history. "

This is a pivotal moment, and we can't afford to let philandering governors and celebrity demises take our eye off the ball.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?"

--Jean Jacques Rousseau. Painting by Paul Klee.

Starting to Address the Climate Crisis

The U.S. House of Representatives passed the cap-and-trade climate and energy bill on Thursday, in a relatively close vote of 219-212. Passage seemed uncertain until well into the afternoon.

In its description, TIME's Swampland blog called it "sweeping." The Huffpost story calls it "historic." (Both stories have good information on the bill and the politics, plus prospects for passage in the Senate.) But for some environmentalists, the bill was a disappointment. Some enviro organizations were lobbying hard to strengthen it or vote against it. Some climate scientists agree that the mandated targets for reducing greenhouse gases are too low to forestall disastrous climate change.

But others see it as an important precedent, a foot in the door, and a structure for change, as well as materially contributing to lessening the Climate Crisis. I found myself instinctively assessing it pretty much as David Roberts does at Grist , though he does so with more information. He agrees that it is inadequate by itself, but writes that it contributes to a solution, and that there are other ways to address the crisis as well:

There is no reason to think that this bill is going to be Obama’s only legacy on energy. Already there’s been the stimulus bill, which will probably do more for clean energy in the next five years than Waxman-Markey, the new mileage standards, and the big climate impacts report. And there is plenty more to come.
• States and cities won’t stop. Waxman-Markey may set national standards at relatively weak levels, but plenty of states have tougher renewable electricity standards. A few are experimenting with feed-in tariffs (see here and here) and producing extraordinary results. You can’t throw a rock without hitting a mayor who wants to revitalize his or her city by establishing a reputation as green (see Grist’s list of 15 green mayors).

Read his other reasons, but to those I add these thoughts: of all we know of the future, the ongoing and accelerating reality of the Climate Crisis is probably the most certain element. It's the baseline. But what we're going to do about it, what we can do about it, will evolve in real time. And in the fullness of that time.

For instance: people are debating how much this legislation will cost an American family in, say, 2020. This is such a futile exercise that it begs to be laughed away. First of all, any purported cost--even if such a price could be reasonably estimated--may be dwarfed by costs associated with effects of the Climate Crisis itself---costs in energy, health, infrastructure etc.

Second, who the hell can forecast anything economic more than a decade in the future? How are those 1999 forecasts holding up? Costs relative to incomes going up or down, the impact of technologies, a thousand unknowns. While we naturally evaluate future spending in terms of current income, income is going to change. Projections say upward, but who knows? And these are averages, which mean they apply to pretty much nobody in particular.

Third, the meaning of any sum will depend on lots of other circumstances. A hundred or two hundred dollars may be the least of anyone's worries. Or it may by then be clearly the future bought cheap.

But just because I believe on balance that passing this bill was a good and important thing, I'm not buying into the inflated claims for it. "Historic" it certainly is. We've finally admitted the problem. We've selected a framework for one important way to address it. That's not nothing. But it's not enough.

Are we as a people really facing the likely realities of the Climate Crisis? We are not. But maybe with this bill we are beginning to. And we've got to start somewhere. But we know there will be many battles to come.

Update: Salon has a good piece by Joseph Romm of Climate Progress summarizing what the bill provides, what the controversy is about concerning greenhouse gases targets, and about "clean coal." Note these graphs: "The bill would transform the U.S. economy in four decades, replacing the vast majority of American's carbon dioxide emissions and fossil fuel consumption with a clean energy economy built around energy efficiency and renewable energy.
ACES would push tremendous amounts of low-carbon energy into the electric sector. Obama's stimulus bill had already directed $90 billion toward clean energy, dramatically boosting projections of wind and solar and biomass energy penetration in the near term.
This bill requires a 20 percent CO2 cut by 2020 compared to 2005 levels, a 42 percent cut by 2030 and a whopping 83 percent cut by 2050. On top of that, the bill devotes significant resources to a major global effort to stop deforestation that would add yet more CO2 savings in 2020 equal to 10 percent of current U.S. emissions.

And this comment on the political realities: "It is worth noting that the original Clean Air Act -- first passed in 1963 -- also didn't do enough and was subsequently strengthened many times."

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"To think!... To think! It is to lose the thread."

--Paul Valery. Photo: stormclouds over western Pennsylvania, near Altoona.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"A thought is a tremendous mode of excitement."

--Alfred North Whitehead. Painting by Magritte.

Health Care: The Turning Point

The debate over "healthcare" is a complex one, because the topic is. The problems with the health of Americans go beyond medical care or medical care insurance. For example, someone we know consulted a doctor about his son's allergies, and the doctor told him that because of the environment--chemicals, air pollutions and interactions with natural phenomena--four out of five children now have significant allergies. We know of the immense increase in asthma. And the epidemic in obesity, addressed today by the First Lady.

But the primary topic in Washington is the legislation now being crafted to address medical care insurance. It is widely recognized that costs are too high and coverage is too low. There are rabid injustices in the system that are causing real suffering and even death.

The ongoing debate over how to reform the medical care insurance system is inevitably caught up in the usual Washington political games, as "covered" by an attention-deficit media. The real issues and the real human consequences are often overlooked, as for example in the non-coverage of testimony on the tragedies being suffered because of the current medical insurance system.

Coverage and politics are responding to money--very big money. Nate Silver dissects the influence of insurance company lobbying and campaign contribution bucks on Members of Congress, especially centrist Democrats.

That's because the stakes are very high--higher than most people are willing to admit. It's hard for anyone to dispute that medical insurance costs are bankrupting businesses large and small, and government on every level (they are a major cost for schools, for example.) It's hard for anyone with a pulse to deny that the medical insurance industry, which has become utterly dominant since the last attempt to deal with the issue in the 90s, has instituted all kinds of inequities and perpetrated all manner of injustices. The old argument-- that government medical insurance would mean your doctor doesn't decide on your appropriate treatment and you lose choice--can't be taken seriously after decades in which private insurance companies have made those decisions, driving both patients and doctors crazy.

But the argument--which centers on a government medical insurance plan, similar to what Congress itself enjoys, co-existing with private plans-- is even more fundamental. The argument is about whether companies ought to be in the business of making profits, when their business is providing medical insurance. And that argument can be extended to other approaches to the public good. It represents a practical and philosophical switch from the move towards privatization since the 1980s.

It's important to say just what "profit-making" means. Profit isn't about a business bringing in enough money to pay its employees well, and to run its business, including research and development. What "profit-making" means is running the business to primarily make corporate profits above and beyond the costs of the business, to increase stock value and quarterly reports, to use to acquire other businesses for the purpose of larger profits and paper power, and to spend lavishly on advertising, marketing, lobbying and political contributions, to further enhance and guarantee profits, and big bucks for the few at the top.

Since the age of Reagan, running something "like a business" was sold as a way to increase efficiency and service, and foster innovation. All that makes sense, but it isn't what happens in the real world. If the primary purpose is to create profits, then services aren't made more efficient--they are cut. Employees are not well-paid, they are exploited. Corners are cut. Money goes into selling the illusion of good products and services rather than making and providing them. That's partly why Detroit's commercials were so much better than their cars.

We've seen what happens when products and services crucial to the public good traditionally provided by government entities or as public utilities were privatized: with few and usually temporary exceptions, the results were higher costs, more waste and abuses, all for profit, not for purpose.

No one involved in the medical insurance debate wants to address this point so directly. Proponents of a public option don't make the argument, but assume that people see health and medical care as a special case. For example, Paul Krugman summarizes the objection to the public plan in a recent column: Thus Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska initially declared that the public option — which, remember, has overwhelming popular support — was a “deal-breaker.” Why? Because he didn’t think private insurers could compete: “At the end of the day, the public plan wins the day.” Um, isn’t the purpose of health care reform to protect American citizens, not insurance companies?

By constructing that question in that way, Krugman rhetorically assumes agreement on the answer. But for some, protecting corporations and their profits is the overriding concern. It is more important than life or death. It is more important than health. For other people, and for the society as a whole.

President Obama is being cagey on the public option. He argues forcefully for it, but refuses to say it is necessary to a law he will accept. This possibly has helped him get concessions from corporations, such as the huge deal he made with drug companies to cut drug costs for seniors. But his arguments for the public plan are compelling, and they go to the heart of the issue, as in his press conference today, when he warned that companies can't continue to make maximum profits by not providing good services. So it seems very unlikely he will support legislation that doesn't include a public plan option.

Recent polls show that an overwhelming percentage of Americans favor a public plan. But a public plan was all but a foregone conclusion in the Clinton administration, until the corporations and their political allies turned the tide. The fight is just beginning, but if reforms that include a public option really happen, it is a turning point in our ability to deal with not only current challenges, but the challenges of the future. It would not mean government runs everything, but that some sense of public good and service may return to important enterprises, and profit-making will no longer be the only value, or the last word in every argument.

Happy Solstice

Revelation

For a veteran of the 60s, who was a happy witness to Solidarity in Poland, the Velvet Revolution, South Africa, all the liberation movements in Eastern Europe as the Wall fell, the Iranian revolutionaries--because after today, that's what they are--exert a powerful and emotional pull. Their choice of the peace sign itself is powerful and irresistible. My barely informed impression is that this is very much a youth movement as well, and most particularly, a movement of women. This photo and others like it collected by Al Rodgers at Kos (who admittedly has an eye for the ladies) make a definite impression, but other reporting support this notion. Roger Cohen in the New York Times--one of the few professionals reporting, along with the citizen reporters on YouTube and Twitter, etc.--makes this point as well: "I also know that Iran’s women stand in the vanguard. For days now, I’ve seen them urging less courageous men on. I’ve seen them get beaten and return to the fray. “Why are you sitting there?” one shouted at a couple of men perched on the sidewalk on Saturday. “Get up! Get up!”

This revolution by women and the young comes as a revelation to the rest of the world, and a shock to our simplistic media cliches, but it obviously has been building for quite awhile. It's also noteworthy that Iranians now living in cities in the U.S. and all over the world were quick to take to the streets in support of those marching in Tehran.

Exactly what happened in Iran on Saturday is not yet fully known, except the significance of defying the nation's official spiritual as well as political leader. As Andrew Sullivan wrote on his blog: "Whatever happens, the Iranian people have already shown the world what a love of freedom means. Their spirituality, tenacity, wit, and compassion have shone through every moment. Whatever happens, they have proven a heroic nation for the 21st Century. We should honor them for this moment. And stay with them in the days ahead."

Update on Hate

Bob Herbert has a column on the growing extremism and violence of the rabid right (apropos a previous post here), and links it to guns and the need for gun control--one issue that unfortunately the Obama administration is avoiding.

Meanwhile, a front page post at Kos catalogues the latest ugly and incendiary rhetoric from Republicans--officials within the party organization and/or public officials--including more examples of overt racism regarding President Obama.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"The opposite of a fact is a falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may well be another profound truth."
Niels Bohr

Two Crises

While the world watches the unfolding Iran crisis--and monitors tweets in what may become the first social networking political revolution--a combined report by 13 U.S. government agencies warns of the slowly unfolding Climate Crisis, which is likely to be even more consequential, but lacks the visible drama that media connects to the cause, which is global heating.

According to the New York Times story: " Even if the nation takes significant steps to slow emissions of heat-trapping gases, the impact of global warming is expected to become more severe in coming years, the report says, affecting farms and forests, coastlines and floodplains, water and energy supplies, transportation and human health."

Dealing with the inevitable effects of climate change is going to cost money and demand attention in increasing quantities. This is the other Climate Crisis that no one is talking about. Among the many conceptual challenges posed by the Climate Crisis is the time lag between cause and effect. The effects we are feeling--even if we don't acknowledge the causes--and the effects we will feel increasingly in the coming decade, according to this report and many other indicators, were caused by greenhouse gases emitted in the past.

But the truly devastating changes that are likely in the farther future are being caused by today's emissions, and tomorrow's. So we have to deal with two crises at the same time, one of which is invisible, and the other at the moment is not widely understood as consequences of greenhouse gas pollution. Our challenge will be--our challenge now is--to deal with both causes and effects simultaneously. It's probably the greatest challenge humanity will face for the forseeable future.

Additional perspectives on this report from the SF Chronicle, and more details with link on effects in specific parts of the U.S. in CS Monitor.

Stop Coddling These Extremists

I'm currently still out here on the fringe of the City of Champions, Pittsburgh, PA, and because of circumstances too boring to relate, my Internet access and blogtime have been spotty. But if I had blogged here last week, it would have looked a lot like Frank Rich's column in the NY Times on Sunday, about the atmosphere of hate being exploited and inflated by Rabid Right politicians and media bloviators.

As Rich points out, even a FOX News anchor is warning of the extreme and violent email he is seeing, particularly aimed at President Obama. I would add a few thoughts to Rich's links and commentary:

First, the racism that I call recessive racism is usually repressed because it is societally taboo. But when established, highly paid megaphones legitimize it, it can come out with frenzied force. There is nothing rational about it at that point.

Second, the motivation for enabling violent extremism may seem like something else to those doing it, or the reasons may seem principled, but clearly a great deal of it is about cynical politics, about ego and power and especially it is about money and power. This is especially true for the media mouths who incite it. The commercial culture as well as the political culture has some responsibility to place limits of legitimacy, because the bottom line in society is not corporate profit or personal greed.

The additional temptation is that in this noisy, attention-deficit atmosphere, the extreme and borderline violent commands attention. But other societies have learned to their great sorrow just how dangerous it is to let things get so extreme that the violent unhinged feel justified in behavior they can't understand or control.

When an attempt is made on the President's life, it will be too late to be sorry that this is going on, and that this society enables the enablers, particularly by admiring anything anybody does that results in riches and celebrity.

Whenever there is a hate crime in a given neighborhood or city, the marchers come out to show that the community won't stand for it. I don't know if that's the approach that has to happen on a larger scale, but something has to more effectively communicate the larger society's belief that this hate and violence is unacceptable, repugnant and to be condemned, and those that engage it in, encourage and enable it, are to be condemned and cast outside legitimate societal roles, not given international media forums, huge contracts, or public office. It's time for zero tolerance for media and political incitement of perhaps the most momentous hate crime imaginable.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"Anyway, that's in large part what economics is--people arbitrarily, or as a matter of taste, assigning numerical values to non-numerical things. And then pretending that they haven't just made the numbers up, which they have. Economics is like astrology in that sense, except that economics serves to justify the current power structure, and so it has a lot of fervent believers among the powerful."

A character in Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

Transformational

Even though I'm traveling and not monitoring hailing or other frequencies in the usual profusion, I am happy to take note of President Obama's speech in Cairo--a daring, risky, straightforward text, which Richard Engels of NBC News, who heard it in Arabic, said was well crafted for that language and culture.

The primary audience was the 1.5 billion people in the Muslim world, and reporters say a lot were listening. First reactions were very positive. Engel said people were listening with their mouths hanging open--they'd never heard an American President speak this way. Andrea Mitchell said the speech was potentially transformational in terms of U.S. relations to the Muslim world, and transforming the Obama presidency.

But the transformational aspect began not with the words but with the sight--if for a moment westerners saw Barack Obama through Muslim eyes, they might get a hint of that. Barack Hussein Obama, President of the United States.

His speech sought conciliation based on equal respect and treatment--he called for an end of stereotyping Muslims, and also the stereotyping in the Muslim world of America and Americans. He made pronouncements that offended some Israelis, some Arabs (particularly governments and powers that be) and some in the west, but he set a new agenda and a new tone. The largest paper in Egypt proclaimed, he is the one we have been waiting for. A citizen proclaimed to a reporter, Yes we can!

A speech of course is not everything, but everything may depend on it. It's another necessary if not sufficient piece of the puzzle that may fit together to make a better future.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"The word 'gratitude' has equivalents in every language and in each tongue the range of meanings is abundant. In the Romance languages this breadth spans the spiritual and the physical, from the divine grace conceded to men to save them from error and death, to the bodily grace of the dancing girl or the feline leaping through undergrowth. Grace means pardon, forgiveness, favor, benefice, inspiration; it is a form of address, a pleasing style of speaking or painting, a gesture expressing politeness, and, in short, an act that reveals spiritual goodness. Grace is gratuitous; it is a gift. The person who receives it, the favored one, is grateful for it; if he is not base, he expresses gratitude."

Octavio Paz