Picking And Choosing Villains

To those of us who have never written anything longer than a short story in high school or an undergraduate thesis, it's easy to assume that someone who has written an impressive-sounding book, like, oh, Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream, is not only informed but also logical.

That conclusion would be wrong. I'm not sure what Leonard Zeskind, who wrote that book, or Devin Burghart, who together wrote this post at Talking Point Memo's TPM Cafe, meant when their argument at TPM concluded in a morass of, well, a morass:

Nevertheless, there is another element of this worldview that needs to be understood. Consider, in this regard, the woman who stood up in a Delaware town hall last month and claimed that Obama was a citizen of Kenya. "I want my country back," she told the crowd. Her anger is aimed at restoring a country that no longer exists. In fact, that country never did exist.

If a person believes, like Pat Buchanan has argued, that white people built this country alone, and as whites, it is not a long next step to think that President Barack Obama is not a genuine bona-fide natural born American. Nor is it very far to reach the conclusion that brown-skinned, Spanish speaking immigrants are an enemy force that needs repelling. The psychological, social and political space between conspiracy minded whizbangs outside the beltway, and the anti-immigrant congressmen supporting the Birther Bill then shrinks to invisibility. They are distinct without a difference that matters. The nuttiness of the conspiracy mongers becomes less salient then their search for a brighter, whiter tomorrow.

As easy as has been for some to conclude that dissidents at town-hall meetings hosted by Democratic Congress members are motivated by racism ("their search for a brighter, whiter tomorrow"), it is no more difficult to note that Zeskind and Burkhart have no idea whether the Delawarean (let's call her Pamela, only because it makes things easier and "Pamela" is a fairly traditional, and good, American name) was prompted only by President Obama's race (video below). It seems too easy to point out that other things about the President or his policies also may have played a role.

But really: given the fact that Barack Obama (whom she opposes) was born in Honolulu, island of Oahu, state of Hawaii, U.S.A., do we know Pamela actually connects Barack Obama with the anti-immigrant sentiment they decry? And could she really believe that Obama is characteristic of "brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking immigrants (who) are an enemy force that needs repelling?" (This may be a little confusing, but so is the argument, unsupported, that people who believe whites alone built this country would inevitably doubt Obama's citizenship, causing them to block comprehensive immigration reform.) Admittedly, it's hard to tell what Pamela meant when she said, apparently without explanation, "I want my country back," inasmuch as her country has gone nowhere from which it would need (or not) to return. That, unfortunately, didn't stop Zeskind and Burkhardt from concluding that she longs for a country which "no longer exists" or "never did exist."

This would simply be my potshot against two fellows demonstrating reprehensible elitism were the sentiments not reflective of others expressed by some on the left (though, as I've suggested before, elitism is not the sole, or even primary, province of the left). On August, 21, the Daily Howler's Bob Somersby, hitting on one of his favorite themes, describes (stay with it; it's much more interesting than my discourse) an article written by Kevin Sack of The New York Times:

You see, Sack has found a gang of tea-baggers, holed up in a Florida seniors community. Their names are cited, along with their ages. Let’s skip lifelong Democrat Shirley Scrop, 76. Instead, let’s go straight to Hal Goldman:

SACK (8/21/09): Hal Goldman, 79, who retired 22 years ago from Sears, Roebuck & Company, echoed that sentiment.

“What they’re trying to do—Obama is—is take from the senior citizens and give to the poor and the illegal immigrants,” Mr. Goldman said. “It’s hurting the senior citizens who worked all their lives. Because of their age, like in Canada, you’ll have to wait six months for an M.R.I.”

In fact, the health care bills circulating in Congress would not extend coverage to illegal immigrants...

Sack quotes many tea-baggers saying such things, including lifelong Democrat Scrop. Surely, our leaders will want to get on a plane, go to Florida, and tell these wing-nuts they’re “crazy.” We’ll want them to know that “the crazy tree blooms” in each of their tea-bagging statements. It would be a case of soft bigotry if we declined to do that!

Sorry! In our view, that’s what Goofus would probably do! Gallant looks for ways to correct their misapprehensions without calling them long strings of names. Because guess what? This is exactly what people are like! This country is full of voters who have inaccurate beliefs. Except among their “elitist liberal betters,” this is known as the human condition.

Goofus wants to name-call Goldman, thereby “kicking down.” By way of contrast, Gallant wants to name-call Robert Pear today, for his deeply unfortunate companion piece to Sack’s front-page report.

Pear has been a major scribe at the Times for quite a long time. He’s a major, big-deal, much-admired reporter. But today’s report is truly appalling. Here’s the headline and opening paragraph:

PEAR (8/21/09): A Basis Is Seen for Some Health Plan Fears Among the Elderly

WASHINGTON—White House officials and Democrats in Congress say the fears of older Americans about possible rationing of health care are based on myths and falsehoods. But Medicare beneficiaries and insurance counselors say the concerns are not entirely irrational.

Huh! According to that opening paragraph, “insurance counselors” (whoever they are) say that fears about possible rationing of health care “are not entirely irrational.” Read literally, that’s an extremely narrow claim—but in the current environment, the claim packs quite a wallop. But uh-oh! In his entire report, Pear quotes lots of average-Joe “Medicare beneficiaries” voicing lots of fears—but he seems to cite only one person with professional expertise! That lonely figure appears in paragraph 22 of his 26-graf report:

PEAR: Medicare officials recently proposed changes that could increase payments for some primary care services but reduce payments to many specialists. Cardiologists would be especially hard hit, with cuts of more than 20 percent in payments for electrocardiograms and 12 percent for heart stent procedures.

“Cuts of this magnitude could cripple cardiology practices and threaten access to services for millions of patients,” said Dr. John C. Lewin, chief executive of the American College of Cardiology.

Is Lewin right? He certainly could be. (Lewin donated to Obama last year, to Kerry in 2004. Not part of the Lewin Group.) But Pear’s headline and opening claim are amazingly poorly supported. Under that headline, he lists many fears of average-Joe seniors—and only one statement from an expert. Apparently, when Pear referred to “insurance counselors,” he meant people like this:

PEAR: Carol H. Carter, a spokeswoman for LIFE Senior Services in Tulsa, Okla., a nonprofit group, said she and her colleagues had been deluged with questions from Medicare beneficiaries.

Much of the concern results from “fear of the unknown,” Ms. Carter said, adding: “Getting specific information about the proposals and what they mean is really hard. Seniors don’t trust the government to carry it off.”

Is that the logic of this piece? These seniors’ fears “are not entirely irrational” because “getting specific information about the proposals is really hard?”

Pear’s report is shockingly lazy. This is extremely bad work.

Back to our choices. Gallant might kick up, at Pear. Goofus might choose to kick down, at those seniors. After all, Goofus may have his career to consider. When leaders kick up at people like Pear, their viability in the system can dissipate.

"Kick up" rather than "kick down." This is presumably what individuals- usually on the left"- mean when they impress themselves with invocation of the phrase "talk truth to power." That is too infrequently practiced, as Zeskind and Burghart demonstrate. They refer to the House Immigration Reform Caucus, which would represent "power" if the political party to which most of the members belonged actually held the power in Washington- and then only if that party were more than a mouthpiece for corporate interests. (Sure, that's a generalization, but not by much.) But they reserve most of their contempt, even most of their venom, for "conspiracy minded whizbangs outside the beltway."

It doesn't help, of course, that the "kicking down" has a demographic component, most commonly targeting people of one race, notwithstanding that pigmentation is no barrier to ignorance; but also individuals of a particular age cohort. NBC Political Director Chuck Todd, in an appearance I otherwise excoriated, bravely noted what others in the mainstream media and blogosphere have completely ignored (emphasis mine):

Well, no, and we worded it—we did not use the word “death panel” because I think “death panel” is a charged term, at this point. We said that the government—the way we worded it to voters, that the government would make the ultimate decision of when to stop giving medical care to the elderly. So we did not use a charged political term. Forty-five percent believe this. This was among—and for what it‘s worth, by the way, seniors actually believed it less than the overall public. So this—you know, there has been this idea that somehow this was a scare tactic with seniors...

Could this be one of the reasons Pamela imagines that her country has been taken from her? That many people, including some on the left, are implying that the non-wealthy, white, and elderly, are by nature ignorant and the barrier to progress? I can't tell for sure, but neither can Zeskind, Burkhart, or others who claim psychic abilities.

Public Option, Three Views

Republicans and conservatives opposing a public plan in a health care plan typiclly argue that the option would interfere with the private insurance industry, destroying their viability, and eventually run them out of business. Which apparently is supposed to be a bad thing. The Roanoke Times reports in a town hall meeting in Virginia on August 18, a Democrat, U.S. Representative Rick Boucher, made the argument more explicitly, contending

I have a problem with this government option plan. I'm troubled that the government option plan could become very popular and if it became sufficiently popular it could begin to crowd out the other (private insurance companies).

There you have it. A public health care option would be wrong for America because the American people would like it, and choose it in preference to private insurance.

In contrast, Senator Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.), a supporter of single-payer, understands the trouble a health care reform bill lacking a public option would bring. In a brief video (below) produced by Brave New Studios, he responds to a question about a public option by describing the Senate Finance Committee bill, in which the federal government would be

subsidizing the private insurance companies which are giving low and moderate income consumers coverage but there would be no cost containment element.... Without the competition of a public option the private insurance companies could raise their rates 5% one year, 7% the next year, and they would not be forced to compete with a more efficient operation which might only go up 1% or 2% and without a public option I feel very much that the costs of health care, which today are enormous, would simply go through the roof.



The danger for small business inherent in mandating insurance without a public option was highlighted in a meeting held on August 18 by Senate Finance Committee Olympia Snow (R.-Me.) with business representatives and lobbyists from Maine. Sam Stein of The Huffington Post explains

Small business representatives told Snowe that they were opposed to any mandates that came without a public option and that such an alternative was desperately needed for small business, which can't afford the rising cost of health insurance for their employees. The costs make them unable to compete on a level playing field with bigger companies, which can use their size to leverage lower prices. Lobbyists representing larger corporations took the opposite position.

The opposition of conservatives to a public option also stands in contrast to the interests of small business, generally a Republican constituency. Here, the GOP can conveniently march in lockstep with big business while maintaining resistance to government as the GOP's raison d'etre. A pretty good two-fer.

Health Care Without A Public Option

Of all the things we can disagree with Pat Buchanan with, this might seem minor. Still, Buchanan's opinion about the strategy of Democrats toward health care reform is characteristic of that of the mainstream media. On Hardball on Monday, August 17 Buchanan asked "how liberal Democrats," faced with the loss of a public option,

are going to vote against something like that, which does 60 percent of what they want done. How can you vote against this?

Why would someone oppose a bil which "does 60 percent of what they want done?"

Hopefully, you're tired, even aggravated, at sports analogies. So here is another one:

The offensive coordinator of the Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers, Bruce Arians, calls for a long pass from quarterback Ben Roethlisberger to Santonio Holmes, Super Bowl MVP. The offensive line does its job marvelously, keeping a great Indianapolis Colts pass rush from getting close to the quarterback. Holmes runs a great pattern, somehow getting ten yards of separation between himself and the Colts' cornerback. And then Roethlisberger's pass falls.... ten yards short.

Theoretically, it was the right call in the situation, the Colts' defense sufficiently surprised that little pass rush was mounted and the lone defender (Holmes would have been double-teamed if the defense expected the ball to go that way) not getting near the receiver. The receiver got open, way open, making him an easy target for the quarterback. Several things were done right.... except that the quarterback made a bad pass, which thereupon was intercepted. The offense got almost everything it wanted- and the play severely backfired.

Sixty percent? The offense got more than sixty percent what it wanted, and it would have been better off doing almost anything else.

Now consider health care reform those in the know believe the left should roll over and accept. Mandatory health coverage- check. No discrimination against anyone with a pre-existing health condition- check. But a public option, being very controversial, is dropped. What do we have?

A vastly increased demand, probably around 40 million souls, would be covered by health care. Individuals with a pre-existing health condition now would gain health insurance. Pretty good so far.

These people would be very expensive to insure, which is why health insurance companies assiduously avoid them now. But under the reform plan which Buchanan, and so many others inside the Beltway, believe liberals should be thankful for, they would be covered. By health insurance companies which would pass some of the individual cost off on the relatively healthy segment of the population. (Otherwise, those with the pre-existing condition likely could not afford the coverage; hence, contrary to law, would not be covered.) And there are a lot more people the private companies get to insure. Vastly increased demand in a health insurance market with little competition in any one geographical area. Demand up, supply flat. You know the rest.

Load up on those health insurance stocks!

Chuck Todd, Misleading

Sometimes the line between analyst and pundit, journalist and advocate is blurred, as Chuck Todd demonstrated on Hardball on August 18, 2009 when NBC News' Political Director argued about health care reform:

When you actually give them the president‘s plan, a majority approve of it, when you lay it out.

Except that the President himself doesn't have a plan, which Todd nearly acknowledges- indirectly- when he suggests a moment later that the White House is arguing "maybe the co-ops is going to be able to...." (emphasis mine).

This was prefaced by a remarkable comment:

This fight over the public option. And I‘ll tell you where the White House‘s head is. They‘re frustrated because they believe, actually, the left—the people that are most up in arms on the public option don‘t understand what they‘re even for when it comes to the public—every—when you ask some groups on the left, What‘s the public option, they each give you a different definition.

Does Todd actually believe that some unnamed people on "the left- the people that are most up in arms on the public option don't understand what they're even for when it comes to the public (option)?" Or is that his perspective?

Todd seems to be pulling a fast one. He prefaces his remark by appearing to attribute the criticism to the White House- "I'll tell you where the White House's head is." He concludes by claiming what is clearly his own opinion- "so the White House is trying to preach patience here and saying, "Hey, hold on a minute. Maybe the co-ops is going to be able to..." (at which time he's cut off by Matthews).

Todd contends also "the White House is trying to preach patience here." Preaching patience, as we all know, is what serious, mature adults do toward children. However, Todd seemingly is unaware, as CNN reported on July 23:

The announcement by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada goes against President Obama's stated timetable for the House and Senate to turn out bills by the August break.

In response, a senior administration official said Reid's announcement does not change Obama's timetable, with the president still wanting House and Senate votes before the upcoming recess.

It's easy to attribute this as a biased approach in favor of the President and against the Democratic House or the left blogosphere (Todd is sufficiently vague so as to leave uncertain whom he is slamming by inference.) Or, perhaps, it's just irresponsible reporting. Or maybe both.

Health Care Intent

A Gallup survey taken August 6-9, 2009 indicates that 25% of respondents believe "poor healthcare/hospitals; high cost of health care" is the biggest issue facing the country, significantly higher than the 16% who said the same in its survey only four weeks earlier, on July 10-12, 2009.

That's the good news. The bad news comes by way of statements by top Democrats on Sunday's interview programs about the public option. Health and Human Sevices Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on CNN's State of the Union remarked "I think what's important is choice and competition, and I'm convinced that at the end of the day the plan will have both of those -- but that is not the essential element." Presidential Press Secretary Robert Gibbs explained "the president believes the option of a government plan is the best way to provide competition. The bottom line again is do individuals looking for health insurance in the private market have choice and competition? If we have that the president will be satisfied.

On Monday, Gibbs tried to (cliche alert) dial back on his remarks and quiet the storm he helped to create by letting the cat out of the bag, claiming

I got to tell you, this is one of the more curious things I've ever seen in my life.... I was on a Sunday show; I said the same thing about a public option that I've said for I don't know how many weeks....[Sebelius] reiterated what the president said the day before, and you'd think there was some new policy.

A sheltered life that Mr. Gibbs has lived, that reaction to his explanation of the president's thinking is "one of the more curious things I've ever seen in my life." He really has to get out a little more. After all, the Big Guy himself, President Obama, had stated at a town hall meeting on Saturday in Grand Junction, California

All I'm saying is, though, that the public option, whether we have it or we don't have it, is not the entirety of health care reform. This is just one sliver of it, one aspect of it.

Not a surprise, really. The suspicion all along was that President Obama (unlike, say, Senator and candidate Obama) wants something to call "health care reform." The Politico's Roger Simon, generally an admirer of Obama, notes today that the President really does prefer a health care option and is hopeful he ultimately will insist on it. However, he asks whether presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, criticizing the eventual nominee, "could"

have been right when she said that he was the candidate of lofty promises —“the skies will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing and everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect” — and not the candidate of real leadership?

In her former life as a presidential candidate, Clinton warned voters that Obama would let them down. She warned them that when the going got tough, he would fold up.

She said it was not just a matter of Obama lacking experience — that was the least of it — but that he lacked the strength, the toughness, the will to get the job done.

Simon concludes "Sometimes it is not enough to have just your heart and your head in the right place. You have to have your guts there, too." And with a substantial majority of the President's party in the U.S. House of Representatives, 60 of his party in the United States Senate, and a progressive blogosphere aggressively promoting meaningful change, an issue considered most important by fully one-quarter of the American people in the midst of a severe economic turndown is the perfect place to demonstrate backbone.

Mischievous

Senator Chuck Grassley (R.- IA.) held a town meeting in Winterset, Iowa on Wednesday, August 13. Radio Iowa reports "Audience members occasionally quarreled with one another, but none shouted Grassley down."

And why would they, when the host is in full pander mode?

The ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee has taken the lead role in negotiating with committee Democrats on the shape of the health care bill the committee would report out, and President Obama has spoken kindly of the Iowa senator, as recently as August 11 saying

Now, I think that there are some of my Republican friends on Capitol Hill who are sincerely trying to figure out if they can find a health care bill that works — Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Mike Enzi of Wyoming, Olympia Snowe from Maine have been — yes, I got to admit I like Olympia, too. They are diligently working to see if they can come up with a plan that could get both Republican and Democratic support.

But in Winterset the following day, Grassley showed his gratitude by claiming

You shouldn't have counseling at the end of life. You ought to have it done 20 years before you're going to die. You ought to plan these things out. I don't have any problem with things like living wills, but they ought to be done within the family. We should not have a government program that determines you're going to pull the plug on grandma.

Grassley wasn't lying- he didn't actually say the federal government is considering "pulling the plug on grandma." But of course Grassley strongly implied, intentionally, that Democrats are trying to pull the plug, a scurrilous rumor thoroughly debunked.

This is no ordinary Senator, but one who may know as much about health care negotiations as anyone in the United States Senate. And there is another clue Grassley knew he was making things up.

Note the Senator's language- "to pull the plug on grandma." At the President's town hall meeting in Portsmouth, N.H. the day before, Obama noted "The rumor that's been circulating a lot lately is this idea that somehow the House of Representatives voted for ‘death panels' that will basically pull the plug on grandma because we've decided that we don't--it's too expensive to let her live anymore. (Laughter.)"

Decrying the right's effort to scare the elderly, Obama and others left of center have sometimes used the phrase "pulling the plug" and consistently used the term "grandma." It is telling, then, that the Iowa Senator would not try to make a reasoned argument about end-of-life care, but rather employ the phrase "going to pull the plug on grandma."

This charge was originally cooked up by Betsy McCaughey, a former board member of biotechnology company Genta and current board member of Cantel Medical, a device company from which she recently received 750 shares of stock options worth approximately $11,250.00. Grassley is a member of Congress frightened by his base.

On Sunday's Meet The Press, three days prior to Grassley's meeting, a tape of Rush Limbaugh was played in which the talk show host claimed "There are far more similarities between Nancy Pelosi and Adolph Hitler than between these people showing up at town halls to protest a Hitler-like policy." Though conceding "I hadn't seen the Rush Limbaugh thing," New York Times columnist David Brooks commented "That is insane. What he's saying is insane."

No, what Rush Limbaugh says is no more insane than what Betsy McCaughey or Chuck Grassley say. It is all rather calculated- financial gain for McCaughey, political survival for Grassley, audience share and political influence for Limbaugh. They are not "insane," crazy, demented, ignorant, or stupid. It is at once patronizing and overly generous to view them, and others similarly rhetorically inclined, as somehow lacking the mental or emotional stability of those who have at least a passing concern for the public interest. They ought not to be underestimated; their radical claims are merely a part of a broader strategy, harmful to the interests of the broad spectrum of the American people.

Article Of The Week

A commentary entitled "Health care debate turns vile with Nazi analogy" by the director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, Art Caplan, was posted today on MSNBC's website. Mr. Caplan also was interviewed this morning by Philadelphia-based talk-show host Michael Smerconish, who placed the item on the "must read" section of his website.

And for good reason. Terming "the contemptible introduction of references, direct or oblique, to Nazi Germany" examples of "the vile evil of Holocaust denial," Caplan explains

Racism was at the core of Nazi medicine. Racism and a bizarre form of genetics that saw all manner of human frailty and weakness from prostitution to alcohol abuse to petty theft as highly heritable. When Hitler set out to kill the handicapped and the mentally ill he did it to protect the genetic future of Germany. When the "useless eaters" were targeted for euthanasia it was because of the threat they posed to the genetic health of future generations. When Nazi doctors mandated abortion it was to eliminate "mongrel" babies. When Nazi doctors analyzed how many of your ancestors had to be Jewish for you to be a Jew or when they killed all manner of Slavs, it was to remove these dangers from undermining the public health of the Reich.

Limbaugh, Beck, Palin and other Holocaust deniers ignore the core racist evil of Nazism. They reach for preposterous analogies between counseling people about living wills and the forced, involuntary mass murder carried out in the name of racism in concentration camps.

When the right wing, in their distaste for the President's push to reform a heath care system that even the American Medical Association and the pharmaceutical industry recognize has to be fixed, suggest that the disabled will be targeted, or that the elderly will be killed or find themselves without health care due to rationing by government bureaucrats as happened in Nazi Germany, they marginalize the gross evil that was the racial bigotry that fueled Nazi programs to euthanize, sterilize, experiment upon and torture people in places that were in no way connected to hospitals, clinics or nursing homes.

Describing the experience of his father in late April, 1945, Caplan writes "as a Jewish American soldier, he found himself staring at the few emaciated survivors of the Dachau concentration camp." This bit of family history adds a personal element, which both adds context and informs the reader of his personal stake in an argument, which is compelling on more than one. A petty complaint, perhaps, though maybe not so: Caplan refers to his "Jewish American" father. I'll buy that once I hear of "Catholic-American" and "Protestant-American" soldiers. Though with facets of ethnicity, Judaism is, like Catholicism, Protestant, and Islam (and Eastern faiths), at base a religion, as should be acknowledged by a bioethicist decrying the Nazi urge "to protect their 'race,' a concept that itself made little biological sense (so as) to prohibit reproduction with inferior people and, ultimately, to destroy them."

I had realized the flagrant allusion to things Nazi was a trivialization, intentional or otherwise, of the Holocaust. But Art Caplan, in recognizing the gross distortion of history inherent in the right's effort to block health care reform, gives cause to believe there is something blatantly dishonest and malicious in comparisons between Nazi Germany and President Obama.