Krugman

Yep . . . it's a priority:

Let’s talk about the magnitude of the looming health care disaster.

Just about all economic forecasts, including those of the Obama administration’s own economists, say that we’re in for a prolonged period of very high unemployment. And high unemployment means a sharp rise in the number of Americans without health insurance.

After the economy slumped at the beginning of this decade, five million people joined the ranks of the uninsured — and that was with the unemployment rate peaking at only 6.3 percent. This time the Obama administration says that even with its stimulus plan, unemployment will reach 8 percent, and that it will stay above 6 percent until 2012. Many independent forecasts are even more pessimistic.

Why, then, aren’t we hearing more about ensuring health care access?

Now, it’s possible that those of us who care about this issue are reading too much into the administration’s silence. But let me address three arguments that I suspect Mr. Obama is hearing against moving on health care, and explain why they’re wrong.

First, some people are arguing that a major expansion of health care access would just be too expensive right now, given the vast sums we’re about to spend trying to rescue the economy.

But research sponsored by the Commonwealth Fund shows that achieving universal coverage with a plan similar to Mr. Obama’s campaign proposals would add “only” about $104 billion to federal spending in 2010 — not a small sum, of course, but not large compared with, say, the tax cuts in the Obama stimulus plan.

It’s true that the cost of universal health care will be a continuing expense, reaching far into the future. But that has always been true, and Mr. Obama has always claimed that his health care plan was affordable. The temporary expenses of his stimulus plan shouldn’t change that calculation.

Second, some people in Mr. Obama’s circle may be arguing that health care reform isn’t a priority right now, in the face of economic crisis.

But helping families purchase health insurance as part of a universal coverage plan would be at least as effective a way of boosting the economy as the tax breaks that make up roughly a third of the stimulus plan — and it would have the added benefit of directly helping families get through the crisis, ending one of the major sources of Americans’ current anxiety.

Finally — and this is, I suspect, the real reason for the administration’s health care silence — there’s the political argument that this is a bad time to be pushing fundamental health care reform, because the nation’s attention is focused on the economic crisis. But if history is any guide, this argument is precisely wrong.

[...] One more thing. There’s a populist rage building in this country, as Americans see bankers getting huge bailouts while ordinary citizens suffer.

I agree with administration officials who argue that these financial bailouts are necessary (though I have problems with the specifics). But I also agree with Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, who argues that — as a matter of political necessity as well as social justice — aid to bankers has to be linked to a strengthening of the social safety net, so that Americans can see that the government is ready to help everyone, not just the rich and powerful.

The bottom line, then, is that this is no time to let campaign promises of guaranteed health care be quietly forgotten. It is, instead, a time to put the push for universal care front and center. Health care now!

Just my opinion

Promise me we won't go to a nightclub 

I really think that it's obscene  

What kind of people go to meet people  

In a place you can't be heard or seen  

- The Be Good Tanyas

Yes, the Damage can be undone . . .

. . . but, my oh my, how hard it's looking:

During his eight years in office – fat ones, for the most part, from a fiscal point of view – President George W. Bush moved the budget balance from surplus to structural deficit. Demographic and other pressures will worsen the position over the next decade or two. Now comes a fiscal expansion that will be only partly counter-cyclical: some of the new president’s spending will not reverse automatically as the economy recovers. A structural deficit of the sort taking shape is unsustainable and will be corrected one way or the other – if not by a timely change in policy, then by a new and potentially even worse financial calamity.

So, Happy Inauguration Day!  Eat, Drink and be Merry, for tomorrow we have a hell of a mess to clean up . . .

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5665f224-e568-11dd-afe4-0000779fd2ac.html

 

And, as twilight fades to black for the glory that has been the Cheney/Bush years . . .

. . . we need to send a big Shout! out to the man who made it all possible . . .

To honor this great jurist and his incredible contribution in giving us the Cheney/Bush legacy, here is a link to one of my fave speeches of all time, given in 2002 in Chicago:

http://pewforum.org/deathpenalty

You need to link through the Pew website to get to the speech and then scroll down a bit in the speech itself for the money quote (it's one among many, actually), but I re-print it here in case you'd rather not bother with all of that -- it really is priceless:

It seems to me that the reaction of people of faith to this tendency of democracy to obscure the divine authority behind government should be not resignation to it but resolution to combat it as effectively as possible, and a principal way of combating it, in my view, is constant public reminder that – in the words of one of the Supreme Court’s religion cases in the days when we understood the religion clauses better than I think we now do – "we are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a supreme being".

Got that?  "People of faith" (who, presumably, count for more than people whose faith do not measure up to Justice Scalia's standards, as I assume he, or the Pope perhaps, might choose to define them) must "combat . . . as effectively as possible" democracy's "tendency to obscure the divine authority behind government".  Got it?

This, from a sitting United States Supreme Court Justice.  I had to read it a few times before I could believe what the good Justice was actually saying - not implying - but literally saying.  

I don't recollect many examples of guardians of the republic using the word "combating" and "democracy" in the same sentence, unless they were referring to combating somebody else in defense of democracy.  I don't know about you but I'm having a really hard time imagining any circumstances under which citizens would justifiably "combat" their own democratic form of government.  Remember: Justice Scalia is issuing a call to arms not to combat corruption in government, or a particular political party he doesn't like, or even the government itself: he is stating clearly and unequivocally that there is something inherent in our form of government - a democracy - which is inimical to something else that he believes is more important: the "divine authority behind government".  

This isn't just about semantics: don't all Americans have a pressing interest in understanding exactly how Justice Scalia proposes to combat an inherent "tendency" of democracy without combating democracy itself?  

There are other equally outrageous statements in this particular speech that betray a quite candidly unapologetic contempt for democracy -- mostly as a justification for the death penalty, of all things.  You gotta hand it to him: you could never accuse Justice Scalia of trying to pull the wool over anyone's eyes.  The statements in his Chicago speech and myriad other statements (see posts further below) have been practically screaming at us for years just what he thinks of the sanctity (triviality) of the vote and the importance (irrelevance) of the Establishment clause, not to mention the Great Mistake that was the Enlightenment.   Bush vs Gore should not have come as a surprise. 

The Obama cavalry arrived in the nick of time -- with people so focused on the economy, the wars and the various other Cheney/Bush-set brush fires and lapses requiring immediate attention, I'm not too sure they are aware of what a bullet we've dodged in the Supreme Court.  Now Justice Stevens can retire with some semblance of peace of mind.

Uh . . . duh . . .

From Josh Marshall: 

"No U.S. president can justify a policy that fails to achieve its intended results by pointing to the purity and rectitude of his intentions," - Paul Wolfowitz, "Statesmanship in the New Century," in Kagan, R. and Kristol, W, eds.

I guess what's notable is seeing Paul Wolfowitz saying something sensible, in a book edited by Robert Kagan and William "the bloody" Kristol, no less . . .  doesn't quite make up for the mess they've made . . . but every little, I guess.