The Fight Against ObamaCare

This NYT article about the money funding the fight against ObamaCare indicates to me that the fight is more than just against ObamaCare.  I think it is a coalition of white conservative groups who oppose Obama and the America he represents.  Part of it is whites against blacks.  Fox rounds up some black Tea Party hacks, but there are not many of them.  But the rebellion is not just whites against blacks, it is conservative, southern, rural men whose families have lived in America for many generations, and who used to lead America or have a large voice in running America, against the new darker hued, liberal, more recent immigrants to America who have become increasingly powerful, especially in the highly urbanized states on both coasts.  The less urbanized South, non-coastal West and Midwest are losing out.

It's ironic that the group representing the smaller population is making its stand in the House of Representatives, in which is representation is based on population.  It looks like they have just enough safe seats to be able to block legislation they oppose, although they don't have enough seats to pass legislation, which has brought the Congress to a deadlock. Part of the problem is gerrymandering, which has created too many safe seats, making Republican party primaries more important than the actual election.  However, many of these Congressmen and women come from states that are so Republican that redistricting would not make much difference, although more equitable redistricting would remove some of the obstreperous Republicans.

These are my guys.  I grew up in the South.  The first politician I ever supported enthusiastically was Barry Goldwater.  But the other side of the issue is, "What about the country."  These guys seem willing to destroy the country if they don't get their way.  I suppose Ted Cruz can go home to Canada or Cuba if he doesn't get his way, but a lot of the other leaders of the rebellion come from families who have lived in America for generations.  Do they think America is finished?  Are these the same guys who decided in Vietnam that they had to destroy the village to save it?  It didn't work in Vietnam, and I don't think it will work in America.

I think something needs to be done about government spending, and about ObamaCare.  The Republicans insisted on making ObamaCare into something like the plan proposed by the Heritage Foundation and enacted by Romney in Massachusetts.  It uses the existing insurance framework to expand the percentage of the population covered by healthcare.  By using that insurance framework, however, it gave up many opportunities to save money.  One of the main problems with American healthcare now is that it is not a marketplace.  The insurance industry massively overpays the medical industry because the insurance companies rake their profits off the top, and the bigger the pot is, the bigger their share is.  They have little incentive to hold down costs, and both the insurance executives and the medical executives paid Congress well to maintain the existing structure while expanding it to more people.  Most Democrats wanted a single payer system (the government) that would be something like Medicare for all.  In that case, the government could in theory reign in medical costs, and the HHS bureaucracy is probably more honest that either Congress or the health insurance industry.

Shutdown Is Bad

Just for the record, I'm am against a government shutdown.  I basically quit the government by retiring from the Foreign Service after the 1995-6 government shutdown.  I blame the Republicans.  I blamed Newt Gingrich and his Republican followers for the first shutdown, and I blame the Tea Party Republicans for this shutdown, if it happens.  The government should go about its business in a business-like way.  People say one test of a business is whether it can meet a payroll.  The Republicans can't do it.  For all of Boehner's talk about growing up as a small businessman in his father's bar, he is on the brink of being a failure as a businessman on a much bigger stage.

The government should honor its commitments.  If it is over committed, which it is, then it should have a debate about how to revise its commitments, but it should do that prospectively, not by refusing to pay people who have relied on it.  Presumably, the failure to raise the debt ceiling in about two weeks might be worse financially, but morally the two failures are more or less equivalent.  The US has lost its integrity.

I think that Newt consigned the US to the status of a second (or third) class country when he shut the government down.  These are not serious people, and if they run the government, this is not a serious government.  In the Foreign Service, I felt that the government abandoned me in Warsaw, Poland.  It seems possible that it may now abandon troops in the field.  In my opinion, the Republicans are largely unpatriotic cowards.  Most of them never served in the military, never fought for this country, although they are quick to send other people off to die for America.  John McCain is more or less the exception that proves the rule.

Right now, I hear former Republican Senator Fred Thomson selling reverse mortgages to old people on the TV.  What a disgrace!  He is typical of the low class of people who have become politicians in America, and who are now on the verge of shutting down the government and showing the world what a laughingstock America is.

Syria Did It

The UN report on the use of chemical weapons on Syria seems to pretty clearly link the weapons' use to Assad's Syrian government.  The rocket delivery system in particular seems to rule out the rebels.  While it might not clearly link the attack to Assad himself, if someone else initiated the attack, it is an even stronger argument for getting rid of all chemical weapons in Syria.

Bankers Are the Welfare Queens

It turns out that the big bankers are Reagan's real welfare queens driving their Cadillacs or more likely their BMWs or Mercedes.  When Larry Summers dropped out of the Fed Chair race, the stock market went up, because they thought that he would not be as likely to follow Bernanke's stimulative QE policies as Janet Yellen would.  I think that Bernanke is truly targeting high unemployment, which is being largely ignored by Congress (particularly Republicans) and the administration, which seems to have given up on any meaningful economic agenda.  The indirect effect of the Fed's trying to reduce unemployment, however, is low interest rates, essentially giving away money to the hanks and rich people on Wall Street.  This is partly because the Fed is an imperfect tool to reduce unemployment, especially when Congress is often working at cross purposes with it, which it is by enacting the sequester.

In addition, the banks have a huge, expensive lobbying effort to keep interest rates low and regulation to a minimum.  Corrupt Congressmen and Senators are happy to get their payoffs from the banks.  It's a dirty business, but the bankers are getting rich chowing down at the government table of free goodies.