Junk by Design

The health care plan that is wending its way through Congress is junk. It will do nothing to stop the ungodly ascent of health care prices. In fact, it is likely to to accelerate this upward trend. The reason is simple. It contains virtually no incentives for exercising downward pressure on costs.

As soon as it passes, we will be showered with the predictable apologetics from the Obama camp and its generally mindless minions. "You've got to start somewhere" "Change is incremental, we can make it better later", "There you go again, rigidly insisting on your own (read: wildly and out of touch and ultra- liberal) version of good in what is inevitably a messy legislative process". Every other democrat interviewed, will repeat some version of the phrase allegedly uttered by the now-departed Ted Kennedy "We must not let the perfect become the enemy of the possible".

This would all great except for one salient fact: the perfect (single payer) was never given the opportunity to be the enemy of the possible. It was taken off the table before the entire process of negotiation began. And this was done as a result of cold calculations taken at the very highest policy-making levels of the White House. They got into bed with the insurance industry and big Pharma way back in the late winter and assured them that the money machine they currently operate would not be substantially affected by Obama's "reform" plans. In return, the White House gained the tacit assurance that a) industry money would continue flowing to the Democrats and b) Harry and Louise would not be brought out of mothballs to frighten and befog the minds of the "low information" voters in the general populace.

Should you have any doubts about the ironclad, ""til death do us part" nature of the deal, consider the following. Until late last week the congressional version of the bill which passed on Saturday contained an amendment that would have shielded those states interested in setting up single-payer programs of their own from anti-trust lawsuits brought by insurance companies. The provision was stricken from the bill at the last moment after heavy lobbying pressure from .....none other than the White House itself.

When this White House makes pledges to big industry its word is truly its bond. That a bunch so evidently craven in its dedication to corporate interests is often successfully labeled as "socialist" speaks to the truly delusional nature of much of our public discourse.

This is not an isolated incident. Rather, this way of operating is deeply encoded in the D.N.A. of the post-Clinton Democratic party in general, and the Obama White House in particular. These are the Placebo Politics of a Placebo Presidency. The unquestioned master of all this is Rahm Emanuel. For Rahm and his proteges practicing what the media consistently, if wholly fallaciously, portrays as the school of "sharp-elbowed partisan politics", winning elections is the only thing that matters. Actually doing something substantial about the balance of social and economic powers that so heavily determine the rhythms and stark realities of day-to-day life for millions of Americans once in office is absolutely beside the point. Indeed, he and gang know quite well that actually doing so will threaten the pipeline of campaign donations they see, rightly or wrongly, as being the key to winning more elections.

This is why they give us legislative "Junk by Design". Why we accept it as readily as we do, I do not understand.

NSA Announces the Launch of New Personal Transcription Program (PTP)

Responding to Congressional pressures to develop new revenue streams for an increasingly debt-ridden Federal Government, the NSA (National Security Administration) yesterday launched its Personal Transcription Program (PTP). The program is designed to provide US consumers, for a fee, with on-demand transcriptions of any and all of their personal phone conversations within 48 hours of their occurrence. According to the NSA spokesman Don Weber, “Our target demographic for the program is the 45-65 age group, people with active lives and nothing to hide who find that their ability to recall important interactions just isn’t what it used to be”.

He went on to explain that the Agency believed it was time to make better use of the vast stores of data they currently have on the personal lives of ordinary Americans. “In the wake of the recently released Inspector General’s report on President Bush’s (and now President Obama’s) Surveillance program http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/psp.pdf, showing that this massive data gathering effort could not be linked to the interruption any terrorist plots against the Homeland, we thought it was time to begin re-branding the program. In the long-run, we know the American people will not stand for seeing billions of dollars of their own money spent to provide Washington insiders with the ability gather dirt on their opponents or to have the TSA (Transportation Safety Administration) and ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) put millions of completely innocent people on ‘no fly’ and terrorist ‘watch’ lists”. Weber would not speculate on just how much revenue the agency hoped to recoup from the program. “That is strictly classified information”. he said.

When asked her opinion of the new program, Senate Intelligence Chairwoman Diane Feinstein called it a “Neat idea.”. She continued, “We came to realize that in budgetary times like these, we need to look into every possible source of revenue. This is information about the personal lives of American citizens. They should have every right to buy it back from the government at the right price. We view it as a win-win situation” She would not, however, comment on whether she favored selling the same transcripts to third party marketing firms.

Slap on the Cuffs!

As Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, and subsequently, President Obama have made clear, there can be no denying the unfair and frequently brutal treatment men of color have long faced in the realm of “law enforcement” in the U.S. It would be a shame, however, if this very necessary discussion of police actions and race were to short circuit what is arguably an even larger and more universal problem: America’s (or at least prosperous America’s) increasing acquiescence to a “slap on the cuffs first, ask questions later” brand of authoritarianism.

I grew up in an America where there was still a healthy skepticism about the motives of people who chose to spend their life in blue uniforms. We knew and acknowledged there were a lot of good and law-abiding cops. But we also knew that there was a considerable number of them for whom wearing the badge was mostly about belonging to a fraternity that gives them the right to capriciously lord their will over others.

This skepticism has largely disappeared in the wake of 9-11, supplanted by a media-fueled idolatry of all things having to do with the military and law enforcement (“our brave men and women in uniform”). Emblematic of this new civic religion is the practice of wearing of NYPD and FBI caps and t-shirts.

This public cult of cop worship has had the effect of further emboldening the cohort of power-trippers in uniform as they go about their daily business. They know a public weaned on a steady diet of their supposedly universal virtuousness (and with it, the supposed omnipresence of readily identifiable “bad guys”) will almost always give them the benefit of the doubt. So why hold back?

A middle-aged black guy in Cambridge gives you more rhetoric and vocabulary than you feel like hearing on call, “Slap on the cuffs!” and write a police report painting him as “unreasonable”. A kid videotapes the police roughly arresting one his classmates in the school cafeteria after a completely non-violent senior prank (as happened not long ago in these parts), confiscate his camera, “Slap on the cuffs!” and press charges on him that prevent him from graduating and that imperil his college career. Protesting citizens making politicians and patricians of business feel uncomfortable by gathering outside the site of a board meeting or convention? Trump up a pretext about a “security perimeter” (don’t recall seeing any mention of such a thing in the Constitution) and “Slap on the cuffs!”. A few people wearing anti-Bush t-shirts at a presidential speech in 2004? Follow the directives of White House operatives and “Slap on the cuffs!”. And on and on…

The problem police mistreatment of minorities, especially males of color, is all-too-real in today’s America. It must, however, be seen in the broader context of our consumption of simple moralizing storylines, and the enormous sense of license these narratives give to the fallible and often power hungry people (in this sense, they are no different than the rest of us) we have charged with the patently unattainable goal of “insuring our safety”.