Nice Ad

My only criticism is that I wish the ads would explain clearly that the option is an option. The word “option” is not registering with some people. There seems to be a widespread believe that the option will be mandatory.

Just Don’t Call It “Rationing”

I want to say a few words about libertarian logic that says only government can ration; therefore, there is no rationing in a private, for-profit health care system; therefore, in a private system people who aren’t getting the care they need have only themselves to blame.

There’s an article about addressing famine by Frederick Kaufman in the June issue of Harper’s. In “Let Them Eat Cash,” Kaufman explains that ideas about how to address famine have changed from the old CARE package days. But this is the bit that most interested me:

The stories varied in focus and emphasis but employed the same basic plot points: biofuel production, caterpillar plagues, commodity speculation, crop disease, drought, dwindling stockpiles, fear, flood, hoarding, war, and an increasing world appetite for meat and dairy had bubbled into a nasty poison. Every day, another 25,000 people starved to death or died from hunger-related disease: every four seconds, another corpse. Rising prices for corn, cooking oil, rice, soybeans, and wheat had sparked riots in Bangladesh, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, Ethiopia, Haiti, Indonesia, and nineteen other countries. Not to mention Milwaukee, where a food voucher line of nearly 3,000 people descended into chaos. (“They just went crazy down there,” said one witness. “Just totally crazy.”)

Oddly enough, almost none of the food riots had emerged from a lack of food. There was plenty of food. The riots had been generated by the lack of money to buy food, and therein lay what may have distinguished today’s hunger from the hunger of years past.

Kaufman goes on to describe the cast of characters (and I mean that in the fullest sense of the word) who are more or less in charge of getting food to the starving, and how the director of the World Food Program actually bubbled about how starvaion presented a wonderful opportunity. It’s a fascinating read.

But the larger point is — if you’re starving to death, how much does it matter if you lack food because of scarcity or prices?

These various food shortages are caused by myriad factors, but for the most part food is being produced by private agricultural industries, and for the most part private market forces are setting prices. And people starve.

Once again, let’s remember the Famine. In th 1840s most Irish did farm work on land owned by others, and in exchange for farm work the workers were given little huts to live in and little plots of land on which to grow their own food, mostly potatoes. Potatoes are nutrient-rich and keep for a long time, and the Irish depended on them for food, especially in the winter. But then a disease wiped out the potato crop several years in a row. The agricultural workers of Ireland were growing plenty of food for the landowners, but the landowners shipped the food to markets in Britain. The Irish peasants had no money to buy it, so more than a million Irish starved. No government food rationing was involved; that was strictly the work of the privately owned farming industry of Ireland.

And in Parliament, some PMs actually argued that the Famine was a great opportunity, because starvation might force the Irish to start businesses. That the Irish Catholic peasantry were barely educated and had no access to capital did not register.

The fact is, people have been deprived of essential resources all kinds of ways. I’m betting that if you looked at all of history, more people have been deprived of resources by private interests than by governments.

Here’s another little bit from the Kaufman article you might enjoy:

Even the most well-intentioned, well-fed capitalist may fail to recognize that his own actions are causing the very problems he most sincerely wants to solve. After all, it is rational to invest in a commodity when its price rises, even if corn costs do happen to push up feed prices. Chickens eat chicken feed made from that corn, so the price of a dozen organic eggs hits $6.39. “All indications are that soaring feed costs are going to force livestock and poultry producers to raise prices,” said Joel Brandenberger, president of the National Turkey Federation, “or risk going out of business.” Bill Roenigk, chief economist of the National Chicken Council, predicted that “food inflation is poised to begin and continue for many, many months.” All of which impelled Iowa Senator Charles Grassley to wax rabid and liken the American grocery lobby to the Nazi Party. “They have to have an excuse for increasing the price of their food,” said Grassley. “It’s another Adolf Hitler lie.”

Fascinating.

Update: Something I forgot to say before I pushed the “publish” button — the situation in the U.S. regarding health care may be unprecedented. At least, I can’t think of any other time in history when so many people vulnerable to or actually suffering deprivation of resources are passionately supporting the status quo and fighting the very reforms meant to help them. I hope the social psychologists are taking good notes.

Win One for Ted

The Right did its best to whip up fake outrage over the way Democrats conducted themselves at Senator Edward Kennedy’s funeral. Allahpundit attempted a creative conflation of the Graeme Frost fake outrage campaign with the Paul Wellstone fake outrage campaign and came up with a post bristling with fake outrage that one of the senator’s grandsons said a prayer at the funeral that mentioned health care.

I didn’t watch the funeral and can’t find a transcript of the prayer, so I don’t personally know what the grandson said. However, I find myself unable to work up much outrage that we, the living, would be asked to carry on the Senator’s life’s work.

Since the etiquette of expressing “win one for the Gipper”-type sentiments (ah-HEM) at funerals seems to be in question, let me go on record as saying that I want my funeral to be a rally for whatever cause I’m caught up in when I’m done. Not that I expect a big turnout, but anyone who does show up should be wearing the proper message T-shirt and be prepared to donate money to the Cause. Instead of a eulogy, I want people to discuss an action plan. Then just dump my ashes in a nice flower bed somewhere and go out to fight the good fight. You could do me no greater honor.

And if we want to talk about child exploitation, look no further than this kid.

My sense of the thing is that most of the country is ignoring the fake outrage this time. Most folks are either noting the end of an era, or not, but the fact that speakers at the Senator’s funeral urged people to carry on his work doesn’t seem to be bothering anyone but the wingnuts.

Allahpundit also asked, “I’m unfamiliar with the sermon where Jesus called for Caesar to create a public fund to heal the sick. Can any Bible aficionados help?” I’d rather know where Jesus taught us to shut our eyes to suffering if there’s no way private industry can make a profit from it.

Libertarian Logic

According to Reason magazine’s Ronald Bailey, If people are denied needed resources by government, it’s rationing. If people are denied needed resources by private companies, it’s their own fault.

See, all that stuff about people being priced out of the insurance market, being sold junk insurance policies, being denied coverage for pre-existing conditions, or being dropped by their insurers because, well, because? It’s their own fault. Markets are perfect.

Bailey concludes,

But through the usual lack leftwing lack of imagination and a truly touching and naive faith in the efficacy of top/down government “solutions,” Klein ends up advocating for government rationing and for imposing a government monopoly on health care, instead of for more competition and choice.

Let us reflect on Bailey’s truly touching and naive faith in private markets. It’s one thing to have faith in a theory or proposition that hasn’t been tried before. But when the thing you have placed your faith in is sinking like the Titanic right in front of your eyes, that’s not faith. That’s delusion.

See also: Ezra Klein

Out of Control

Sorry I’ve been away — my back is not letting me sit in a chair for very long, which makes keyboarding a bit tricky. Ice packs are helping, though.

Anyway — Attaturk has a video of a man at a Senator Charles Grassley townhall meeting who is saying,

The president of the United States, that’s who you should be concerned about. Because he’s acting like a little Hitler, I’d take a gun to Washington if enough of you would go with me.

Grassley is silent. Attaturk links to similar incidents with other Republican politicians. He also documents some Republicans who not-too-implicitly encouraged constituents to use violence to enforce their political will.

Last night, Rachel Maddow showed us that extremist anti-reproductive rights groups are encouraging people to assassinate more abortion doctors.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

American popular culture long has promoted an almost romantic ideal of the little guy picking up a gun and taking on some evil that is either being protected by the establishment or is the establishment itself. Think of Charles Bronson’s ” Death Wish” films, for example, or most westerns, or “Dirty Harry” and its many clones. Indeed, American gun culture has invested guns and gun ownership with powerful symbolic meaning. Add to that decades of demagoguery and manipulation of public opinon by right-wing forces that respect democracy only as long as they control it. And what you’ve got is a significant number of people who are primed to become domestic terrorists.

Grassley is silent, and I say he is silent because he is intimidated. The anger is out of his control. If he were to tell people to put their guns away and rely on the democratic process, they’d turn on him. It’s not lost on Republicans, I suspect, that when John McCain attempted to calm down his audiences during last year’s presidential campaign, the audience tuned him out. It was Sarah Palin who fed them all the red meat they wanted, so she became their champion.

At the Washington Monthly, Steve Benen asks (reasonably)
,

But reading over these specific lies, and thinking about them in relation to the other insane attacks we’ve seen as part of the health care reform “debate,” it occurs to me to ask right-wing opponents of reform a simple question: “Why would Dems want that?”

And by “that,” I mean any of the various nightmares that insurance companies and GOP hacks have come up with. Why would Democrats want “death panels”? Why would they support widespread “rationing”? Why would they try to force bureaucrats between patients and their doctors? What possible incentive could they have?

They’re politicians. They want to do well, but they also want to keep their jobs (i.e., win re-election). It’s in their interests to pass legislation that would benefit the country, and which voters will like. Does it make any sense to think Democrats would take this rare opportunity to approve legislation that would kill off seniors, while making things drastically worse for tens of millions of people? Why would Dems want that?

But this is a line of reasoning that was lost a long time ago. To many, liberals by definition are people with an insane plan to raise taxes for the sake of raising taxes, who encourage people to go on welfare, who get off on throwing money out the window in buckets, who burn Bibles, and of course want to take their guns away. And it’s thought liberals/Democrats want to do these things because they “believe in” doing them. One picks one’s tribe by faith, not reason.

So here we are. The politicians and pundits who feed the beast don’t control it. Or, to use another metaphor, they’ve played with fire, and now the fire is out of control. We’re going to be very, very fortunate if there aren’t more assassinations and mass shootings.

The Struggle Continues

This morning, bloggers across the liberal blogosphere thought of memorializing Senator Kennedy by naming the health care bill after him. This is fitting and natural, since health care reform was the Senator’s premier issue. Moreover, he continued to work toward its passage this year, as he was dying, as long as his body allowed him to work.

Ezra Klein wrote,

There is an impulse to honor the dead by erasing the sharp edges of their life. To ensure they belong to all of us, and in doing, deprive them of the dignity conferred by their actual choices, their lonely stands, and their long work. But Ted Kennedy didn’t belong to all of us. He didn’t even belong to all Democrats. He was not of the party that voted for more than a trillion in unfunded tax cuts but cannot bring itself to pay for health-care reform. He was not of the party that fears the next election more than the next failure to help America;s needy. Rather, he belonged to the party of Medicare and Medicaid, the Americans With Disabilities Act and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, the Civil Rights Act and immigration reform. He belonged to the party that sought to advance the conditions and opportunities of the least among us. He was, as Harold Meyerson says, “the senior senator from Massachusetts and for all the excluded in American life.”

And he still is.

Be sure to read all of Ezra’s post, and also this one, which includes links and videos.

A few hours ago the Right began a pre-emptive strike to prevent the passing of Senator Edward Kennedy from impacting the health care debate. The meme going around is that we liberals are shamelessly using Edward Kennedy’s death to push our agenda. There was a trackback, now deleted, to a prominent rightie site attached to my last post. I’m being slammed for writing,

I had hoped Senator Kennedy would live to see a health care reform bill signed. If Congress does pass a decent bill, I hope they name it after the Senator.

… as if wishing to memorialize the senator is somehow out of bounds, just a cheap ploy to score a legislative win.

I’m not going to link to any of the hate posts out today. Just know that few of them are holding back or making any pretense of respecting the dead. Then ignore them.

A National “March for Healthcare” is being organized for September 13. I’d like to see a big turnout. See also Steven Pearlstein’s column today.

Republicans seem determined to preserve the uniquely American system under which health care is rationed today — on the basis of employment status and ability to pay. According to the respected Institute of Medicine, this market-based approach to rationing has held the number of untimely deaths each year to a mere 18,000 uninsured souls. Thanks to Medicare, all of those victims are younger than 65, but apparently that is the kind of age-based rationing that real Republicans can embrace.

The struggle continues.

All Gone

Thank you, Senator Kennedy.

I hope the young folks will forgive us geezers for thinking of all the Kennedy boys today. They were a huge part of our lives.

I had hoped Senator Kennedy would live to see a health care reform bill signed. If Congress does pass a decent bill, I hope they name it after the Senator.

Requiem eternam dona eis, Domine,
et lux perpetua luceat eis.