Briefs

Graham-Cassidy
Why do some governors favor block grants even though their states will lose billions?  Given enough "flexibility," it lets them divert federal funds to influence peddling, pork barrel spending, and just plain theft.  The further the funds pass down the ladders from state to regional to local government, the greater the opportunities for corruption and abuse.

Tauntology
In the battle of the schoolyard bullies, "Rocket Man" pulled ahead when he called Our President "the mentally deranged US dotard."  To date, neither has referenced the other's mother.  Watch Twitter for further developments.

Kurdistan
When would be "the proper time" for the Iraqi Kurds to hold a referendum that will start them on the path toward statehood?  While the US might prefer to delay Iraqi, Turkish, and Iranian outrage, the Kurds represent the best chance for a secular state in the Middle East; ideologically, their strongest commitment is to capitalism.

What Happened?
I've heard enough interviews with Hillary so that I feel no need to read the book.  Could things have been done differently?  Maybe.  Would it have made a difference?  Probably not.

Puerto Rico
"Recovery" from Marilyn most likely will consist of privatizing anything that might turn a profit for off-island investors — essentially a vast, neoliberal social experiment.  I suggest that all boricuas left on the island move to Alabama, register to vote, and take over the state, thereby finally achieving the full rights of US citizens.

Extra brief briefs

• The bizarre stream of consciousness Our President delivered to the Boy Scouts this week makes the 25th Amendment seem more and more applicable.

• Tweeting the purge of transgender personnel from the military was both bizarre and absolutely vile — but maybe it's supposed to make up for the impending martyrdom of Jeff Sessions.

• Tr*mp will never find an AG the equal of Jeff Sessions, given that Adolf Eichmann was executed in 1962.

• If the Democrats' "Better Deal" had included single-payer heath care, somebody might have paid attention.

• Popular protest in Poland prompted a veto of "judiciary reform" by Andrzej Duda, demonstrating that marches still can accomplish something, somewhere.

• Sadly, it seems that "somewhere" does not include Turkey.

• Anthony Scaramucci,  Wow.  Anthony Scaramucci.

• We knew that playing football caused brain damage — now we need data on watching football.

The Big Fail

Jerry Moran? Who's Jerry Moran? It wouldn't be very surprising if even Kansans couldn't come up with the name of their Senator — but it was Moran, along with Mike Lee, Susan Collins, and Rand Paul who spared their fellow Republicans the jeopardy of voting on so-called "repeal and replace."  Here's how the New York Times counted the votes:

The "no" group consists of the four named above plus the forty-eight Democrats.  We can be sure that the "no" Republicans were personally selected by Mitch McConnell -- discipline is tight.  Collins is the party's token moderate; Paul and Lee can claim ideological purity and avoid being "primaried" from the right; but what about Jerry Moran?

Moran gained some cover by "teaming up" with Lee in announcing his opposition, and it well could be that fellow Kansans Charles and David Koch (who bankroll primary challenges from the right) preapproved Moran's "defection."  Be that as it may, somebody had to save those thirty-four "unclear" and "concerned" Republicans from the political damage they would have suffered by voting for an extraordinarily unpopular bill.

It's interesting that the three Republicans selected to prevent consideration of a straight repeal, with no replacement, were all women.  As Republicans know, women are allowed to have "soft spots" — they can be forgiven a failure to be unfailingly "tough" on the poor.

Your best argument for Medicaid

The half of all Americans whose employers provide them with health insurance may be far too indifferent to Republican plans to demolish Medicaid. If they have parents, they should be paying more attention.

More than half the residents of nursing homes are supported by Medicaid, which assumes the costs after those residents have spent down their personal wealth. The average annual cost in the US is over $75,000 per year, so personal wealth tends to disappear quite rapidly. Not too far in the future, large numbers of baby boomers will need the level of care nursing homes provide.  What will their children do if Medicaid isn't available?

Essentially, they have three choices:

• Cover the costs themselves.  Ouch!
• Put mom in the spare bedroom, and tend to all her needs.  Eeek!
• Euthanasia.  (Don't get caught!)

When you put it that way, most people will understand why it's a good idea to get on the phone to their representatives in DC and raise a ruckus.  Spread the word, and do it now!

The Theology of Health Care

Back in the 16th century, when European merchants were energetically inventing capitalism, John Calvin arrived to tell them they could forget all that stuff about camels passing through the eyes of needles. God, he assured them, rewards His favorites in this life as well as the next, so their wealth was a sure sign they were saved. It followed that the poor, being congenital sinners, were not deserving of any consideration at all.

The twenty-first century version of Calvinism is called "Meritocracy." Meritocrats assume that those who prosper have earned their wealth by being better than the rest: their success is the fruit of their personal "genius" and "grit."  They claim to "make their own luck," and discount the importance of institutional barriers faced by others — like inequality of opportunity or discrimination. Hence, to their minds, those who fail to prosper deserve to fail; and certainly don't deserve any share in the wealth of their betters. It follows that taxing the rich in order to provide health care for their inferiors is nothing less than a crime against nature.

There seem to be some Republican Senators who genuinely believe in the New Calvinism (and some who still believe in the older version.) Many more, though, are just the lazy lackeys of their major donors, content in their safe, Red-State seats, mindlessly voting with their leadership.  A few, though, face more complex political situations -- and there even may be one or two who see a moral choice awaiting them after the Fourth of July.  Let's hope they bring their camels along.

Briefs

Jon Ossoff
A vast majority of the people who voted for Tr*mp also voted for Romney, and the same people voted for Karen Handel. The big winners were the consultants and media outlets in what the Times called "the Lululemon-and-loafer subdivisions of Dunwoody and Roswell."

Otto Warmbier
Warmbier was far from the first young man to lose his life for doing something trivial and stupid, albeit most such deaths do not have geopolitical consequences. Tr*mp now admits his China-North Korea policy is dead. For China (and South Korea), keeping the North stable is more important than restraining its military capability.

The American Health Care Act
It's pretty clear that a lot of Congressional Republicans wish the whole "repeal and replace" controversy would just go away. Fingers crossed, maybe it will.

House Divided

 The Freedom Caucus, by making the thoroughly odious the enemy of the merely malevolent, is said to have nailed shut the coffin of Ryancare.  Impressively, the renegade Republicans stayed ideologically pure, resisting the temptation to give the rich a major tax cut and screw over millions of poorer folk who benefit from the expansion of Medicaid.  One wonders if the Koch brothers and Grover Norquist regret financing Tea Party primary challenges against more "moderate" Republicans.  (John Boehner, deposed by those same ideologues, must be smirking pretty hard today.)

In truth, though, the Ryan bill would have had a hard time even without the Republican schism.  It was pure Reaganomics, and despite compulsory genuflection at the shrine of Saint Ronnie, there are Republicans who understand it's not the 1980s anymore — and everyone can see that Donald is a far cry from Ronald.

Well, on to tax reform!  Sadly for Ryan, he was counting on the tax cuts from the failed health bill to make the numbers look vaguely reasonable in his tax package.  There's also quite a bit of division among his party's corporate contributors over those ideas for boosting exports and making imports more expensive.  There could be more chaos on the Hill forthwith.

Briefly

Health Care
Tr*mp says, "I have to tell you, it's an unbelievably complex subject.  Nobody knew that health care could be so complicated."  Nobody?  Well, duh!

Voter Suppression
Our President had to stock his Cabinet with plutocrats, presumably because he just couldn't find enough wingnut ideologues — but he does have unreconstructed Confederate warrior Jeff Sessions, who has dropped the government's argument that the Texas voter ID law was designed to suppress minority voting.  Can the other plaintiffs win without the backing of the Justice Department?  We'll see.

Federal Budget
Congress never pays much attention to presidential budget proposals, so we can ignore Tr*mp's speech and just wait for Paul Ryan.  We are most likely to see yet another attempt at implementing supply-side economics, and need only look to Kansas to see how well that works.

Military Spending
It is obvious to the simple-minded that more military spending will "make America stronger" — except that it won't.  Fortunately, this particularly dumb idea would have to be funded with cuts to enough programs popular in the various states to ensure it won't happen.

Antisemitism
The cemetery vandalism will turn out to be the work of drunken young men, possibly wearing red caps; and the bomb threats not part of any organized plot, but individual acts inspired on 4chan or by the Daily Stormer.  This doesn't make the problem any less serious: antisemitism is an inevitable accompaniment to any kind of xenophobia, and enough empty threats might inspire some demented individual to attempt a real bombing.

* * *

Update (11PM): Well, he gave the campaign speech again.

Deporter in Chief vs. "Friend of Latinos"

Barack Obama, whom I have come to sincerely dislike, has presided over more deportations than any previous President — and by a lot.  Latinos in the USofA, who voted overwhelmingly for Our President in 2012, have started to re-evaluate their support, so Our President now is promising Executive Actions to protect, perhaps, five million of the undocumented.  This is the same President, by the way, who told us he didn't think he had legal authority to do so — and not so long ago.

What can we expect of him?  Based on prior experience, we can expect he'll do as little as possible, while spouting as much "inspirational" bullshit as he can.  Will he insist on legal representation for the child immigrants from Central America claiming asylum but already being deported?  Not likely.  Not much matters to him except the "optics."

Okay, maybe now that the Democrats screwed up the midterms, he'll feel "liberated" to take some tough stances against the right wing crazies — but I'm not counting on it.  He spent too much time at the University of Chicago, home of the Hayekian homeboys, and I suspect he was infected.  May the ghost of John Maynard Keynes haunt him, reminding him that he was pretty much a pussy during the financial crisis, and since.  (Is "pussy" politically incorrect?  Sorry. My reference was to a little cat.)

.....

If the Democrats nominate Hillary in 2016, they'll be offering us just more Bill and Barack.  Let's not forget who teamed with Phil Gramm to overturn Glass-Steagle — not to mention who designed the first pro-corporate "health care reform" based on "free market" principles.  Some on the left are talking about nominating Robert Reich, who has a fantastic intellect.  Just the same, I don't think the USofA is quite ready to be led by a dwarf.  Maybe a woman.  Not a dwarf.

Elizabeth Warren, are you waiting for 2020?  I'm an old man, and I need somebody brilliant and articulate and inspiring and (sorry) kind of hot, NOW!  (I have such a crush on Elizabeth Warren!  She's my ideal woman.)

Anyway, I'm not happy — but when am I happy?  I want my new granddaughter to grow up in a caring, ethical environment.  I can't do much, but I'll do what I can.

The Big Surprise

We've become so accustomed to Justice Kennedy being the swing vote on the Supreme Court that just about everybody waiting for the ruling on Obamacare (ACA) was going crazy trying to figure out what he might do.  Personally, I didn't have much confidence that he would uphold the individual mandate — and I turned out to be right.  He didn't.

The real surprise was that the swing vote, this time, came from Chief Justice Roberts.  Mind you, he didn't uphold the mandate based on the Commerce Clause, as the four liberal justices did.  Roberts construed the mandate as a form of a tax, and hence within the powers of Congress to enact.

Actually, it seems only reasonable that one of the conservative justices, at least, would find it possible to approve a plan designed by the Heritage Foundation.  It may be that Roberts, while ideologically conservative, is less political than Thomas, Alito, and Scalia.  It may also be that he wanted to find a way to approve the ACA for the sake of the nation's health.

We know that the Republicans in Congress will try to overturn the law, but as long as there are 41 Democrats in the Senate, it won't happen.  In the meanwhile, some states my try experimenting with public options, which have to bring down insurance costs because they would be non-profit and require no advertising.  We'll see.

Obama on Deficit Reduction

Okay, he threw a hefty wad against the wall. Now we have to wait and see how much of it sticks.

To me, the best part of yesterday's speech was the commitment to let the Bush tax cuts expire — presumably including the possibility that middle class taxes also will increase. Personally, I don't think a middle class tax increase would be all that awful. Granted, there is not quite so much middle class as there once was, but what the hell... most of the people who think of themselves as "middle" wouldn't be out more than a couple of hundred a year. Too bad for McDonalds, WalMart, etc.

The worst part of yesterday's speech was the continued assumption that Obamacare would reduce health care costs. The only sensible way to reduce health care costs is to remove the profits enjoyed by private insurance companies. Given that Obama is an unrepentant Clintonista, we won't be hearing anything from him about Medicare for All.

While Obama's speech was more aggressive than I expected, we won't know what any of the rhetoric — generally seen by the news media as "the first speech of the campaign season" — genuinely means in terms of action for a while.

I would love to be surprised.

Burning down health care — the "free rider" principle

By this time, everybody's heard about that incident a few months back when Tennessee firefighters stood by and watched a family's home burn down because the family had neglected to pay its $75 annual subscription fee for fire protection. As reported by the Times, this led to a bit of a dispute in the conservative wing of the Republican Party, and an interesting dispute it was!

Mr. Cranick, the owner of the home, offered to pay for his subscription — which he had paid in previous years — if only the firefighters would come over and save his house, but it was too late. The fee was due when it was due, and that was that. They came to protect a fee paying neighbor's house, but Mr. Cranick was on his own.

More recently, Fourth District Court Judge Henry Hudson ruled the Obamacare mandate that individuals purchase health insurance unconstitutional — an overbroad interpretation of the Commerce Clause. I am inclined to agree with Judge Hudson. I was unhappy with the mandate when it was first announced. I don't see why, for the sake of my health, I should be required to buy, for example, a gym membership; nor, for the sake of my moral health, a copy of Why Good People Do Bad Things.

The root of the problem, of course, was Obama's typical bargaining strategy — start out by giving the opposition half of what it wants, and then "compromise" by giving it most of the rest. What could be better for private health insurers than forcing young, healthy people to pay them? Since the only way to make private insurance affordable for sick people is to enroll healthy people, the mandate is the linchpin of the whole, complex, schizophrenic policy.

So let's get back to the Tennessee firefighters, who refused to "treat the uninsured." Unlike the vast majority of public hospital emergency rooms, they were allowed to do that. Because of the 1986 Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA), any hospital that accepts Medicare has to provide treatment to every patient, regardless of ability to pay. Offering free treatment to the uninsured guarantees free-ridership — people who take advantage of the "fares" paid by others to benefit themselves.

If the Supreme Court upholds the decision of Judge Hudson, it makes perfect sense to repeal EMTALA. Is your leg broken, otherwise healthy young man? Set it yourself, or pay the hospital, say, $17,000. Need a liver transplant, oh rugged, self-sufficient libertarian? That will be $329,ooo please.

I would hope that children whose parents failed to buy them a heavily subsidized CHIP insurance plan would receive treatment at public expense, but their parents should be charged with gross neglect, lose custody, and spend a little time in jail. I can't see why that would be unconstitutional.

Of course, the real answer is a single payer system funded through taxation. I can't see any court ruling that one need not pay taxes for goods or services one does not want. Hell, I don't want the taxes I pay to fund the war in Afghanistan, farm price supports, faith based initiatives, and scores of other things they pay for now — but I still have to pay.

The truth is, Obamacare won't put nearly as big a dent in our health care spending as is needed, even if the Supreme Court upholds the Administration's point of view. We have to start viewing health care as a public good — something government should provide for everybody — and strip the profit motive out of our health insurance.

Health Care Politics

Any health care bill, I suppose, is better than none — and any small amount of courage displayed by Democrats is a lot better than the total lack of balls they displayed up to this point. It's a shame that by enshrining private insurance in the law, Congress probably has permanently blocked the possibility of a Canadian style, single payer system.

It was nice, though, to see the president finally step down from his pedestal of aloof, superior non-confrontation and twist a few arms. If he'd been willing to do that from the beginning, we might have ended up with a better law — not much better, of course, because in a corporatist plutocracy the interests of corporate plutocrats always must come first — but possibly a law that provided for a public option, at least, and provision for nationwide insurance exchanges instead of a vague mandate that they be established by the individual states.

Personally, I don't think the passage of the law will hurt the Democrats at all in the next cycle of elections — Americans like winners, and the Democrats won this one. If they go on to push through some substantive financial reform, unperturbed by irate Republicans jumping up and down like Yosemite Sam (and the occasional death threat), they can demonstrate the kind of strength Americans genuinely admire.

How successful they can be depends, to a great extent, on Obama. Health care shows us that if he provides real, aggressive leadership, things can get done — and Republicans have been behaving like such assholes of late, even Fox is having a hard time making them look good. (Fox also must bear quite a bit of the responsibility for unleashing the crazies, including the militias and neo-Nazis as well as the dopes in the tricornered hats.)

Speaking of crazies and death threats, I seem to recall that the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan didn't hurt him at all, politically. It's wishful thinking, but I think a failed assassin who says his attempt on Obama's life was inspired by Glenn Beck would be just about perfect.

Here's to your health...

Needless to say, nobody expected today's "bipartisan health care summit" to accomplish anything resembling bipartisanship. The advantage was in the Democrats' court for this one — Republicans would have been much happier to avoid direct interaction and just continue to snipe from the sidelines. Who won, of course, varies based on the news outlets individuals chose to get a report of the proceedings. I suspect that even members of the press couldn't force themselves to witness all six hours of partisan bullshit redux.

Like the rest of America, all I could bear was an occasional sampling — enough to assure me that I really wasn't missing anything significant. Just the same, I feel safe when I say that the biggest problem affecting health care costs — the problem of "freeriding" — was not addressed. Freeriders are those who use a system without paying their way. Good examples are those who benefit from a union contract without paying union dues. In the context of health care, the freeriders are those who go to the emergency room when their injuries or illnesses are bad enough, but pay neither for insurance nor the costs of their care.

Mind you, I have considerable sympathy for health care freeriders. Many would buy insurance if they thought they could afford it without significantly impairing their lifestyle choices — and they are inclined to wait until they are very sick before they head for the emergency room. Unfortunately, the very sick cost a great deal more to treat than those whose illnesses are diagnosed and treated early. Health care freeriders are a lot more expensive to carry than union contract freeriders, who can collect union negotiated salaries and benefits without necessarily breaking the bank.

And so, in the absence of a single payer plan financed by genuinely progressive taxation, I suppose forcing the young and healthy to buy coverage — bringing down average per-person health insurance costs — currently is the only viable option. The question remains, though: did today's "summit" give candy-assed Democrats enough political cover to dare going with reconciliation?

I suspect that a health care bill passed by reconciliation is quite likely. Sadly, it is likely to drive quite a few young, uninsured former Obama supporters into the arms of the Republicans, since money spent on health insurance cannot be spent on the latest and most fashionable clothing, drugs, and hair styles.

Was Obama really serious when he said he'd rather be a successful one-term president than a two-term president who failed to accomplish his goals? We'll see.

Jobless "recovery"

Now that the senatorial election in Massachusetts has tossed Obama's lame-ass health care bill into the toilet, nothing will help the Democrats but some aggressive action against the bankers. How can that be done, considering that Wall Street is a major funder of candidates of both parties?

Beats me. Frankly, I see the plutocracy remaining firmly in control. As you may have noticed, I tend to be bearish on America.

Shit.

Here's why the recovery is jobless:

1. Productivity — When employers figure out that they can get more work out of decreasing numbers of desperate workers, that's exactly what they do. In case you haven't noticed, that's exactly what they're doing now. Why hire more?
   
2. Low Interest Rates — The low rates now being maintained by the Fed are supposedly going to make it easier for businesses to borrow, expand, and hire more workers. Nope, not quite. Low interest rates make it easier for businesses to afford the machines that replace workers. Why spend money on some smelly, angry guy who wants health insurance when you can have a machine that demands nothing?
3. That Whole Globalization Thing — Maybe you can train an out-of-work factory worker to be a telephone customer service representative, but cost-benefit analysis still will send the business to Mumbai or Calcutta. The whole argument that better education will improve the American economy is crap, because, whatever it is, we can't do it for less then they can.

So where do the jobs come from in this "recovery?" Beats me — and if the jobs are scarce and pay minimum wage, who has money to buy the services (we can pretty much forget about goods, except for export) the alleged recovery will produce? The Chinese? Maybe we could retrain unemployed Midwest factory workers to speak Chinese, so they can work the telephones for Chinese collection agencies.

Nah. The Indians will get those jobs.

So what is a cafe au lait president who promised change and so far has delivered just more and more of the same to do?

Me, I'd start by firing Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, and anybody else who ever was attached to Robert Rubin's teats. I'd replace Summers with Joseph Stiglitz. As for Treasury, Paul O'Neill would be a pretty amusing choice, and could help Our President continue his idiotic pretense of seeking bipartisanship.

Frankly, I don't think the Democrats have the guts to enact health care reform via reconciliation, so unless one of those oddball Republican women from Maine crosses over to the "dark" side, health care reform is as good as dead. All that's left to rescue Democratic candidates in 2011 is a really hard, stinging slap at Big Finance — accompanied by a lot of rhetoric about Republicans sucking Wall Street's balls. Since the Republicans will be sucking Wall Street's balls, the only obstruction to using this approach will be the difficulty Democrats will have disentangling Wall Street's balls from their own tonsils.

If you're looking for work — good luck. If you need health care and don't have insurance — good luck. What the hell — if you're living in contemporary America, good luck! You'll need it.

The Naughts

Everybody seems to agree that the past decade has been pretty crappy. Some like to blame the Bush administration, but I don't. Granted, Bush and his cronies were incompetent and corrupt, but they were just the culmination (I hope) of a process that started with Reagan in 1981.

How anybody ever managed to believe in supply-side economics and monetarism is beyond me, but when you consider how many people believe the world is less than 6,000 years old, I guess making the jump to supply-side is not that difficult. Anyway, I don't think that political leaders ever bothered to believe any economic theory at all. Starting with Reagan, they were just corporatists — dancing at the ends of strings in the hands of lobbyists and bankers.

The result is our current plutocracy — a system that neither the Obama administration nor any significant portion of Congress seems at all inclined to unwind. The fact that the events of the past 10 years have demonstrated, over and over, that the "magic of the market" is entirely mythical makes no difference to those in power. They feel obliged to keep spouting the same anti-regulatory, anti-tax nonsense — and for good reason.

They're bought and paid for.

Don't expect much to change. Health reform won't be allowed to infringe on the profit margins of hospitals, insurance companies, or pharmaceutical manufacturers. If our troops ever are withdrawn from Afghanistan (or even Iraq), there will be new places to invade for the benefit of military contractors. Somewhere on Wall Street, the next bubble is taking shape, and nothing will be done to break up the banks that are "too big to fail."

I'm guessing the "naughts" will go on a while longer. There's nothing in sight to bring them to an end.

Reinhold Niebuhr?

Yes. Reinhold Niebuhr. Evil exists, and sometimes we have to respond in ways we might not like. Okay — but what does that have to do with escalation in Afghanistan, especially when there are other alternatives? True, Obama is not Bush — but who the hell is, except Bush (or somebody else with Cheney's arm up his ass)? Nobel Peace Prize. Bah!

When a country is as corrupt as Afghanistan, the best way to bring peace is to buy it — not with troops and blood, but with money. Nobody can convince me we can't buy every last warlord and Karzai relative for a hell of a lot less — not even including lives — than we're currently spending on goddamned "nation building." Someday, perhaps, Afghan girls will be able to go to school, choose abortion, and belittle their husbands' dick size — but it won't be a result of anything American troops do in Afghanistan over the next ten years or so.

In the meanwhile, I couldn't care less that the Senate looks ready to kill the so-called "public option." The CBO has reported, as anybody with half an economic brain could have predicted, that the House version of the public option probably would cost more than private plans. The only way a public option can make a difference is if it is available to large employers, or others who can guarantee large numbers of plan participants.

The idea of people in the 55 to 64 age bracket being able to buy into Medicare is a lot more interesting. If the employers of people in the 55 to 64 age bracket are allowed to buy them Medicare instead of whatever they're buying for the rest of their employees, there could be some real savings. That, of course, won't happen.

Debt Burdens

I graduated from Queens College of the City University of New York in 1967. My instructors all were either tenured or in tenure-track positions — I was never taught by an adjunct. Except for very nominal registration fees, the cost to me was zero.

Queens College still is a bargain. In-state, full time students pay about $5000 a year in tuition, and many qualify for some sort of financial aid. If they're living with their parents, it's manageable — less so for those who must be self-supporting. What I'm wondering, though, is why we no longer can afford to provide free post-secondary education?

Two thirds of those attending college depend on loans to pay their way through, and the average debt upon graduation is over $23,000. Starting out in a job that pays $35,000 a year, such a level of debt is an incredible burden. Starting out in an economy that might not provide any job at all makes the burden far greater. Graduates in bad financial straights may defer payment, but interest continues to accrue.

The result is young people putting their lives on hold. Student debt is one reason for delaying marriage and children. It's also a reason to hang onto essentially crappy jobs — just to keep up with the loan payments. Taking a risk means risking bankruptcy — a bankruptcy where student loans and credit card debt are not forgiven.

We are wasting a hell of a lot of talent by strangling it with debt. If I could get my hands on the throat of a bank that has been collecting government subsidies for offering high interest student loans, I would squeeze. Hard.

I don't have solutions. We are at a point where the evil rich should be hammered into pulp by the collective (Yes! Collective!) baseball bats of virtually everybody else, but don't expect anything from Timmy Geithner, whose asshole is open to the fucking of anybody with sufficient assets.

The New Deal wasn't about economics. It wasn't about socialism. It was about morality. It was about doing the right thing. Now, all of that is lost. Had Roosevelt been able to push through a national health care program, you can bet nobody would be trying to dig up the money to pay for coverage so as to avoid paying fines. Frankly, I think the whole "compromise" with single payer is sickening.

Welcome back to the 19th century. Bend over, working people. There's a lovely assortment of shafts all ready to fuck you — hard.

Public option? Who cares?

Okay, the Senate Finance Committee has turned down the "public option" in its health care bill — to which I say, "So what?" If people actually were paying attention, they'd know that any real public option — to wit, one that actually could lower the cost of health care — never even was considered by either the Senate or the House.

The alleged public option was always nothing more than a choice for individuals forced to buy their insurance via local or regional "exchanges." It never was an option for employers, and employer funded health insurance is where the money is.

So, some paranoid Republicans possibly think such tiny and limited public options might be a "first step" towards SOCIALIZED MEDICINE (gasp, wheeze, urinate fresh white tennis trousers) and some not especially bright liberal Democrats think public options can successfully compete with private plans even under enormous constraints. Nothing ever has prevented the American Public from electing individuals who are enormously stupid.

If there's no public option for employers to buy into, there is no real competition. The so-called public option now under consideration is just a straw horse, set up so as to be knocked down — or not — but it doesn't matter to any real extent. It serves only to differentiate "liberal" Democrats, "moderate" Democrats, and Republicans — and if that's all that matters, we may as well roll over and go back to sleep.

Obamacare: Devils in the Details

Many have proclaimed the President's health care address to the joint session of Congress a success. Okay, nobody expected him to convince the average FOX listener. Unfortunately, he hasn't exactly convinced me either.

I read the speech several times, and I kept getting hung up on one very basic promise: "it will be against the law for insurance companies to deny you coverage because of a preexisting condition." Okay, how can you argue with that? That's one of the biggest problems, right?

Here's what I didn't hear: will insurers be entitled to charge a higher rate to people with preexisting conditions? How about higher rates for people who smoke, or who are obese, or who, say, race motorcycles? I didn't hear anything about rate structures based on experience ratings.

Without experience ratings – projections of the costs the insurance company may incur by taking on particular individuals or groups – there is no logical way to set rates. If individuals with known health problems cannot be charged more than the healthy, then everybody in the group must be charged more.

Here's an example from the current, employer based system: a small business buys health coverage for its 250 workers. One of those workers unexpectedly develops a serious illness, incurring medical costs of $500,000. Since it is a group policy, those costs average out to $2,000 per enrollee. The insurer will get it money back – the group rate will go up, substantially. The increase may be amortized over several years, but still it will be substantial.

Anxious to control health costs, businesses already discriminate against potential employees with known health problems, who are obese, or who appear to be smokers. The practice will not appear in the personnel office's policy manual, but it still will be quietly enforced. Although that may "help," there still will be surprises – and under the proposed health care reforms, a business that encounters such unanticipated health costs may find it cheaper to pay into the proposed public insurance fund rather than continue to buy its own coverage. Granted, this is preferable to dropping coverage and paying nothing, but it is far from optimal.

Individual policies, we expect, will fade away, replaced by groups formed to participate in the new insurance exchanges. Those groups, of course, also will be assigned experience ratings, and those ratings will help determine the rates they are able to negotiate with the insurance companies. The lowest rates will go to those which, one way or another, wind up with the healthiest enrollees in the lowest cost parts of the country. No longer able to cherrypick individual clients, the insurance companies will cherrypick groups.

Inevitably, some groups will be made up of lower income individuals and families not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid, but entitled to government subsidies to make their insurance "affordable." Demographically, those groups will include more smokers; more of the obese; more who have, for years, neglected basic preventive health care. Making their insurance "affordable" will require substantial funding, and the insurance companies can be expected to drive hard bargains. To make "reform" revenue neutral, contributions to the public fund must necessarily go up.

I could go on, but I won't. In brief, the chief competition among insurance providers is not to provide the lowest rates and so garner the largest share of the market, but to enroll the healthiest clients, and so be responsible for the smallest possible payouts. As long as this "competition" exists, the sickest must pay more – unless government pays it for them – and overall health care costs will not go down.

There is only one answer to the problem of competitive experience ratings. There must be just one pool of enrollees, sharing the expenses of health care for all; just one insurer, responsible to all the people rather than a small group of shareholders, and capable of negotiating with health care providers out of strength.

Yes, I know, it's impossible to achieve, here in the steaming rectum of plutocracy – but, if that's true, we may as well give up now. Are you giving up? Am I?

Maybe.