Health care reform: what’s the rush?

The New Neo Posted on by

Health care reform has had so many missed legislative deadlines that it’s difficult to count them.

The first one I can remember was last summer. The goal was to pass this thing before the American people had time to study it and hate it. Since that failed, and the people wised up, the second goal was to pass it before members of Congress did—that is, before they took a break, went home, and got an earful from their angry constituents and realized their jobs might be on the line.

Now it’s almost spring of the next year, and still the push is on. “Pass it before Obama goes to Indonesia.” “Pass if before Congress goes home for a break—again.”

But what’s the rush now? Is it possible that any member of Congress isn’t aware of the views of voters and the fact that, if he or she comes from a state or district that is anything but extremely left-leaning, his/her job may be lost? After the Scott Brown victory in January, that ought to have been crystal clear. And I think it is.

But perhaps the rush is still on because Washington is a pressure cooker, a total environment in which members of Congress bathe, and going home might break the Obama/Pelosi/Reid spell and remind Senators and Representatives of the views of the people they actually represent. But the biggest reason for the push is probably a strategic calculation that the sooner this happens, the more time the public will have to forget about it before the next election.

I don’t think this is going away in the public mind, however. The more the Democrats push it, the more angry those opposed to it become; it’s not for nothing that the phrases “ram” or “cram” have become so popular in connection with the process. Rasumussen reports that in the last four months views on the health care reform legislation have solidified:

In 15 consecutive Rasmussen Reports polls conducted over the past four months, the percentage of Americans that oppose the plan has stayed between 52% and 58%. The number in favor has held steady between 38% and 44%.

The dynamics of the numbers have remained constant as well. Democratic voters strongly support the plan while Republicans and unaffiliated voters oppose it. Senior citizens””the people who use the health-care system more than anybody else and who vote more than anybody else in midterm elections””are more opposed to the plan than younger voters. For every person who strongly favors it, two are strongly opposed.

Has there ever—ever—in American history been a bill that was (a) pushed so hard by a single party with not one vote of support from the other party; (b) so unpopular with the American public; and (c) that would affect people’s daily lives so enormously? This is a rogue party and a rogue government, and I don’t think we’ve ever had such a situation before.

[ADDENDUM: Hey, it’s an objective, not a deadline. And meanwhile, everybody’s focusing like a laser on jobs and the…oh well, never mind.]

Pelosi: does she…

The New Neo Posted on by

…or doesn’t she? Have the votes for HCR, that is?

Even Pelosi doesn’t know for sure. As for me, I would not believe a word that comes out of Pelosi’s mouth. And that includes “and” and “the.”

While it’s true that, if Pelosi did have the votes, she would move the bill to the floor, right now the Democrats are waiting for the CBO to score it and the parliamentarian to rule on it. So there is a possibility she does already have the votes and is telling the truth. But if so, it would be a surprise to Bart Stupak and his anti-abortion-funding colleagues.

Ah, what’s $868 billion…

The New Neo Posted on by

…among friends?:

Obama boasted Monday that Democrats’ health care proposals would cut deficits by $1 trillion “over the next decade,” a flub that inflated the actual estimate by $868 billion.

This did not appear to be an ad lib, either; it was a scripted moment (here’s the text of the speech). So either Obama doesn’t know an extremely important fact about the HCR bill, or he is purposely lying through his teeth. Unfortunately, this is just business as usual for Obama.

The White House explained that the president meant to refer to the CBO estimate for the second decade after HCR reform rather than the first. That doesn’t sound especially convincing. But even if it were, the real CBO estimate is pretty much garbage in, garbage out, since it rests on a bunch of assumptions that are extremely iffy. As the CBO itself says of the second-decade projections, “A detailed year-by-year projection for years beyond 2019 … would not be meaningful, because the uncertainties involved are simply too great.” Well, the same is pretty much true of the first ten years as well.

Here’s another whopper from Obama’s speech:

I know a lot of people view this as a partisan issue, but both parties have found areas where we agree. What we’ve ended up with is a proposal that’s somewhere in the middle — one that incorporates the best from Democrats and Republicans, best ideas.

This particular distortion has two parts. The first is that Obama talks about “a proposal” rather than “a bill.” Most likely, he is referencing his own health care reform proposals made after the big “bipartisan summit.” But these are not included in the bill he’s pushing; they have nothing to do with any legislation in the hopper. Then there’s the fact that even those irrelevant and unincluded proposals of his represent only a very minor effort at incorporating very reduced versions of a couple of Republican ideas. “Somewhere in the middle?” Hardly.

And in the same speech Obama repeats his favorite lie of all, ” If you like your plan, you can keep your plan.” Maybe for about five minutes you can. But not for long.

[NOTE: This post was supposed to be published yesterday. Actually, it was published yesterday—as you can see by the date of the first comment. But then for some reason it went into a mode where it looks published to me but is actually private (i.e. only I can see it). I’ll try to be more aware of this phenomenon in the future and catch it; I think I’ve figured out what caused it.]

More Rahm: he’s no LBJ, except for the naked intimidation part

The New Neo Posted on by

Still another piece on Rahm Emanuel, this one by Peter Baker and appearing in the NY Times Magazine.

Reading it made me think once again that it’s a good thing Obama has been too full of himself and his own legendary powers to listen to the advice of Emanuel the gradualist. Obama wanted to make the bigger gestures rather than the incremental ones that probably would have had more chance of achieving his goals, albeit more gradually. In other words, Obama turned up the heat on the boiling frog too quickly, and the frog (the American public) is trying to jump out—although unfortunately it may be too late.

Here’s a nice summary of Rahm’s point of view:

Emanuel counseled the new president as he set out his original agenda more than a year ago to think about moving more strategically and incrementally, according to White House insiders and key Democrats. Bite off what can be done now and keep making forward progress. Obama disagreed and insisted on pushing for a comprehensive plan…

Rahm thinks bipartisanship is a way to get what you want ”” to fake bipartisanship to get what you want,” a senior administration official told me. “He understands that’s a better way to get things done than to be nakedly partisan.

Many Democrats are angry that Emanuel, the veteran of Congress and noted hard-ball player, hasn’t been the equivalent of an LBJ. An unnamed Democrat is quoted in the Baker article as saying of Rahm:

We need a little less ballerina and a little more L.B.J.. For all the reputation of being able to bust knee caps, we haven’t seen nos turned to yeses.

I’m no Rahm fan, but this comparison and expectation of LBJ-like success seems both unfair and naive. LBJ had an unusually strong Congressional resume. He held lengthy tenures in both House (twelve years) and Senate (twelve years) before becoming VP and then President, and his Senate career featured leadership positions nearly the entire time. He became Senate Majority Whip only two years after he arrived there, and then advanced to Minority Leader for two years and then Majority Leader for six.

Poor Rahm (and most other members or former members of Congress) can’t begin to compare. Emanuel may be a grizzled old legislative veteran compared to Obama (who isn’t?), but not compared to Johnson or even many current members of Congress. Rahm’s entire tenure was in the House, and it lasted a total of six years. His leadership there included only the roles of head of the DCCC and then Democratic Caucus Chairman. It was well-known that he aspired to ultimately replace Pelosi as Speaker, and he was instrumental in the campaign to get more blue dog Democrats into Congress and obtain a majority for the Party, but in terms of knowledge of how House and Senate work, the interrlationships between them, and having the goods on every single member he couldn’t possibly compare to someone like LBJ.

But in one respect they do seem similar, if the wild and wooly Eric Massa’s (D-NY) description can be believed. Here’s Massa on his encounter with a naked Emanuel in the Congressional shower:

I’m sitting there showering, naked as a jaybird, and here comes Rahm Emanuel, not even with a towel wrapped around his tush, poking his finger in my chest, yelling at me because I wasn’t gonna vote for the president’s budget. Do you know how awkward it is to have a political argument with a naked man? … It’s ridiculous.

If this is true, perhaps Emanuel took to heart all those exhortations that he be more like LBJ—although Johnson outdid him even in the somewhat narrower realm of the naked political discussion. LBJ was well-known (although the stories only came out publicly some time after his presidency was over) for insisting that aides accompany him to the toilet, where he continued to talk to them. It was a sort of test:

Johnson also upset aides with his habit of adjourning a conversation to the bathroom when the need arose. Those who were reluctant to follow him to the toilet were a source of great amusement to him. He frequently recounted a story about “one of the delicate Kennedyites who came into the bathroom with me and then found it utterly impossible to look at me while I sat there on the toilet. You’d think he had never seen those parts of the body before. For there he was, standing as far away from me as he possibly could, keeping his back toward me the whole time, trying to carry on a conversation. I could barely hear a word he said. I kept straining my ears and then finally I asked him to come a little closer to me. Then began the most ludicrous scene I had ever witnessed. Instead of simply turning around and walking over to me, he kept his face away from me and walked backward, one rickety step at a time. For a moment there I thought he was going to run right into me. It certainly made me wonder how that man had made it so far in the world.”

So, which is more intimidating: Rahm in the shower, or LBJ on the toilet? I know who would get my vote.

Tamoxifen decisions

The New Neo Posted on by

Is it at all surprising that, given these odds, many women who are judged to have a higher risk of getting breast cancer are refusing to take tamoxifen as a preventative? The only surprising thing is that anyone would find it surprising.

Here are the stats:

..[A]mong 1,000 similar women [judged to be at slightly higher risk than average of developing breast cancer], 19 would be expected to develop breast cancer over the next five years.

If those women all took tamoxifen, however, 9 of those women would avoid breast cancer ”” and, as a bonus, 13 would avoid broken bones from osteoporosis.

It is true that tamoxifen can have side effects, some of them serious. Among 1,000 similar 52-year-old women, the drug would be expected to cause 21 additional cases of endometrial cancer, a cancer of the uterine lining that is typically treatable when caught early. An additional 21 would develop blood clots, 31 would develop cataracts and 12 would develop sexual problems. And while more than half of the 1,000 women would naturally develop hormonal symptoms like hot flashes, changes in vaginal discharge or irregular periods, tamoxifen would cause those symptoms in about an additional 120 women.

So, there would be a significantly higher risk of developing another cancer (albeit one easier to successfully treat) and potentially fatal blood clots, as well as a much higher risk of developing a host of other symptoms that would impact negatively on quality of life. All to reduce a breast cancer risk from 19 per thousand to 10 per thousand. And the study doesn’t even say how many of these breast cancer cases would likely be treatable and survivable. Nor does it compare death rates in the groups; I wonder why, since that fact seems extremely relevant.

I’m not knocking the recommendation. I just think the correct decision is hardly a slam-dunk. Both prospects sound pretty dreadful, especially for women who are relatively young.

The Obama administration: who’s weeping now?

The New Neo Posted on by

Simon Heffer remarks on the apparent fracture of the Obama in-crowd, and sees it as a sign that things are going very badly indeed for the administration:

The descent of Barack Obama’s regime, characterised now by factionalism in the Democratic Party and talk of his being set to emulate Jimmy Carter as a one-term president, has been swift and precipitate. It was just 16 months ago that weeping men and women celebrated his victory over John McCain in the American presidential election. If they weep now, a year and six weeks into his rule, it is for different reasons.

I have noticed that the post-2008-election British press has seemed quicker to notice Obama’s flaws and to call him on them. Perhaps distance yields perspective. I have also noticed that the British press—even the leftist Guardian—has been relatively fair in covering Climategate, perhaps because Britain was the epicenter.

Our press, on the other hand, has been asleep at the switch on a huge scientific debacle, so much so that the vast majority of Americans have probably never even heard of it. Most of my friends certainly have not; I drew unanimous blank stares when I mentioned it the other day to a group of them.

This, again, is by design of the MSM. If a climate science falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?

All Oscared out

The New Neo Posted on by

In brief (although little about the Oscars is ever brief): it was a long-winded self-congratulatory bore. But that’s what I’ve come to expect. I watch the Oscars for the fashions. That’s just how shallow a person I am.

Oscar observations:

Pale pinkish-ivory dresses on pale white women make the wearers resemble wraiths. (Say that five times fast and I’ll give you a gold star.)

Necklaces are out, although strapless gowns are in. That leaves a very large, undecorated, and lonely-looking expanse of flesh between head and gown.

Whatever happened to long gloves? They were nice.

Middle-aged women with long black hair should not wear floor-length black dresses. Makes them look like witches. Although, if that’s the look you’re aiming for—

Miley Cyrus has terrible posture.

Barbara Walters (glimpsed briefly by me at the end of the pre-game show) has finally crossed a line into much too much cosmetic surgery. Something extraordinarily weird has happened to her eyes as a result.

I heart Jeff Bridges.

“Avatar” got dissed—perhaps because it turns out that director James Cameron might just be the most hated man in Hollywood.

There was a blessed absence of political remarks. It seems even the Hollywood crowd is tired of hope and change and blaming Bush for everything.

Notes from the circular firing squad

The New Neo Posted on by

Representative Eric Massa (D-NY) accuses the Democratic leadership of forcing him out to save health care reform. He says the target has actually been on his back since he voted against cap and trade:

“When I voted against the cap and trade bill, the phone rang and it was the chief of staff to the president of the United States of America, Rahm Emanuel, and he started swearing at me in terms and words that I hadn’t heard since that crossing the line ceremony on the USS New Jersey in 1983,” Massa said. “And I gave it right back to him, in terms and words that I know are physically impossible.”…

Massa slammed House Maj. Leader Steny Hoyer for discussing a House ethics committee inquiry, accusing Hoyer of lying in an effort to eliminate an opponent of health care. Hoyer said last week he heard in early Feb. about allegations against Massa, and that he told Massa’s office to report the allegations to the ethics committee.

“Steny Hoyer has never said a single word to me at all, never, not once,” Massa said. “Never before in the history of the House of Representatives has a sitting leader of the Democratic Party discussed allegations of House investigations publicly, before findings of fact. Ever.”

“I was set up for this from the very, very beginning,” he added. “The leadership of the Democratic Party have become exactly what they said they were running against.”

Apparently, however, Massa is no blue dog: he didn’t vote for health care reform because it wasn’t liberal enough (the link has more on Massa, and on the incident that got him into hot water).

As they say, politics ain’t beanbag. Although I’ve heard that some beanbag games can be mighty rough.

[NOTE: And here Massa actually calls Rahm Enanuel “the devil’s spawn.”]

Liberals and “it’s not fair!”

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday in the thead about the deficit there appeared this thought-provoking comment by Geoffrey Britain, in which he described the prevailing liberal/left mindset. Here’s an excerpt

We’re not really dealing with Machiavellian malevolence, we’re dealing with immature, arrested emotional development and with narcissism.

ALL points of view which spring from the left are, at base, centered in issues of ”˜fairness’.

Dig deeply enough and all leftist ”˜ism’s’ boil down to the child’s eternal cry of “it’s not fair!” and just as logic and reason are totally ineffective when dealing with a toddler’s temper tantrum, just so with trying to reason with liberals using facts and logic.

There’s some truth there. Yes, much liberalism is based on a sort of childish although natural human desire on the part of many poorer liberal Democrats to be given more stuff. But many liberals are the ones with more stuff. In fact, liberals (and Obama voters) tend to be the ones on the very bottom and the very top of the income ladder; it’s a somewhat U-shaped curve:

In 2008, the Democratic Party blossomed into a successful alliance of the upscale and the downscale—wealthy and needy marching hand in hand…The extent to which Democrats are relying on the far extremes of the income spectrum is striking. Democrats have generally performed well among low-income voters in the past, but now, the phenomenon has become more pronounced…Democratic gains among the rich have been even more dramatic and, given the party’s history, surprising…Obama…carried those making $200,000 or more by 6 points. True, these very affluent voters make up only 6 percent of the electorate, but Obama fared well in other upper-income categories too. Among non-Southern white voters–that is, voters living in states a Democrat must carry or have a shot at carrying to win an election–Obama claimed a majority of those making $80,000 or more…

Obama needed this strong showing at opposite ends of the income spectrum because he was far weaker in the middle.

So it’s not just narcissistic have-nots wanting their share of the pie, and willing to take it—if necessary by government force—from others who have more. It’s also many of the haves themselves shouting, “take mine, please; I’ve got too much!” This latter phenomenon may be a lot of things, but it’s not a “toddler’s temper tantrum.”

One of the things involved for many in this upper portion of the liberal socioeconomic curve is the opposite of wanting a bigger piece of the pie. It’s guilt—for having too much stuff when others lack it. But instead of doing the individual and voluntary thing—giving away their goods and becoming poor (that’s the path of the saint who takes a vow of poverty—or the follower of a leftist cult leader such as Jim Jones who required that members donate their personal property to the church), most well-off liberals who happen to feel the pangs of this sort of guilt take the less extreme route of supporting government taking a certain amount of their money (not enough to be too painful for them) and redistributing it to the poor.

This offers the multiple benefits of relieving them of their guilt and establishing them as good and generous people, all without having to take the initiative themselves as individuals, and without going so far as to make them markedly financially uncomfortable. And just to make sure there’s strength in numbers, the liberal/leftist wants to spread the responsibility around and take away the element of choice (and the individual soul-searching involved) by making such giving compulsory and universal above a certain income level.

In summary, liberalism and/or leftism promise to relieve the liberal have-nots of the twin burdens of envy and initiative, and the liberal haves of the twin burdens of guilt and choice. This latter phenomenon has long been one of the major attractions liberalism and leftism have had for the intelligentsia and/or the wealthy. Anguish over the unfairness of life can deeply affect those on both ends of the spectrum, and the simplistic solutions offered by leftism and/or socialism can appeal greatly to people who have not noticed or cared about the repeated failures of the leftist/socialist methods, their tendency to lower all boats and sink entire economies, and the heavy sacrifices of liberty that they inevitably require.

David Axelrod: again with the message

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s not the message, stupid!

But the New York Times, a goodly portion of Obama’s remaining supporters, and the Obama administration itself seem to continue to think (or to pretend?) that it is.

This Times piece focuses on how David Axelrod has somehow failed to help the great communicator Obama get his message across. It also draws a portrait of the Obama aide as a beleaguered and long-suffering idealist who’s too soft for the rough and tumble world of Washington.

This is rather humorous, actually, to anyone who knows much about the tough-minded Chicago-based Mr. Axelrod. But it’s not the only unintentionally funny thing in the article. Here are a few choice items:

In a lengthy interview in his office on Wednesday, Mr. Axelrod was often defiant, saying he did not give a “flying” expletive “about what the peanut gallery thinks” and did not live for the approval “of the political community.”…

“Have I succeeded in reversing a 30-year trend of skepticism and cynicism about government? I confess that I have not. Maybe next year.”

There’s another mildly comic but strange bit in the middle of the piece that includes what appears to be a gaffe by President Obama, unremarked upon by either Axelrod or the article’s author, Mark Leibovich. First, here’s Axelrod, making an intentional funny:

Sitting at his desk next door to the Oval Office last week, he was tearing into a five-inch corned beef sandwich on rye with a Flintstone-size turkey drumstick waiting on deck. “I am the poster child for the president’s obesity program,” he said.

Then Obama enters and tries another witticism:

Mr. Obama surveyed the spread on Mr. Axelrod’s desk with a slight smirk.

“What is this, King Arthur’s court?” he asked, then pulled Mr. Axelrod aside to talk about a health care speech he was about to deliver.

King Arthur’s court? I believe Obama must have meant to refer to King Henry VIII, who was often pictured as a glutton holding a drumstick:

henryviii2.jpg

This is a small matter, but it’s another example of the peculiar lacunae in Obama’s experience. The reference—Henry VIII chomping on a drumstick—is a fairly common one, not an arcane association. King Arthur’s court (correct me if I’m wrong) doesn’t conjure up any epicurean associations of the culinary sort; it’s about idealism and chivalry and courtly love, as well as a bit of sexual fooling-around.

The fact that Obama got it wrong is more evidence of his disconnect. And speaking of disconnect, take the end of that same sentence—Obama and overeating gourmand (not that there’s anything wrong with that) Axelrod are about to consult on the president’s health care speech, in promotion of a policy that, among other things, is supposed to stress preventative medicine and good health habits.