The Followspot

Time to roll the hard six

I watched Obama's online town hall this morning. It was a good performance that probably added to his considerable store of political capital. There's one issue, though, where I am extremely angry and pessimistic: health care reform.

Obama tried to make the case for "reform" that still reserves a place for "legacy interests," i.e., private insurance companies and employer-based insurance. Why? Supposedly because people are "familiar" and "comfortable" with that framework. Right. It couldn't possibly be because the insurance lobby has most of frakking Congress in its pocket. Yes, the single-payer system as it exists in Canada and Europe is just too radical and controversial for us American rubes.

It's bullshit, pure and simple. There is no way to make a case for reform, for saving money and getting the most health care delivery on the dollar as long as some of those dollars are being siphoned off for shareholder profit and executive bonuses -- profits and bonuses based on the denial of health care.

Instead, Obama kept peddling those same old bogus cure-alls: electronic medical records and preventive care, blah, blah, blah. I don't know about you, but I'm not wild about the idea of my entire medical history in online databases given the state of electronic security and the pattern of corporate abuse of private information. It's also just another thing for private companies to sell at exorbitant rates.

Obama revealed that in the administration's health care roundtables, the insurance companies (bless their hearts!) are "coming around." How are they coming around? They're willing to stop cherry-picking and excluding people with pre-existing conditions from coverage. Their price for doing the right thing? They demand universal coverage be mandated and bought from them. Nice, eh? It's like a license to print money. What business wouldn't want everyone to be forced to buy their product?

When is somebody in Washington going to come out and say it: There is no reform or affordability until health insurance companies are cut out of the mix. Obama must know this -- after all, he's no dope. But, as Admiral Adama would say, he's got to be willing to roll the hard six.

Later came a question about affordable higher education and Obama seemed unaware of the total logical disconnect between his answer on student loans and his line on health care affordability.

He made the case (an easy one to make) that the student loan system as provided by banks and other financial firms results in graduates burdened right out of the gate with payments that keep them from pursuing careers that are socially important but not lucrative or from starting families and buying houses. In other words, debt service on the student loans harm the larger economy as well as the individual graduates.

And so -- now get this -- Obama proposes that student loans should be provided primarily by the government to cut out the middleman profits ("billions of dollars") that would otherwise go to the banks. That's billions of dollars that could go toward more loans that are more affordable. As for the banks themselves, Obama said there are plenty of other places for them to make profits; they don't need to profit from students just starting out in life.

I agree. And here I would add that there are plenty of other places for insurance companies to make profits. They don't need to suck our lifeblood by profiting on health care. That would be billions of dollars that could be used to deliver more and better care rather than lining the pockets of frakking bloodsuckers. Insurance companies already have guaranteed customers for mandated car insurance. They have home and property insurance, travel insurance, life insurance and insurance on insurance. Enough. Frak 'em all. That's the one thing I'd like to see government do before I croak: Cut the insurance companies out of health insurance altogether.

Here's the transcript of the web town meeting Q&A.

Hey, Paul Krugman, your country needs you now

Found this on DKos, and I can't tell you how happy it makes me feel:

It makes the world go round...

...or stops it in its orbit (as now).

Money, money, money.

Money. And how it works (or doesn't), in the psyche, in the markets, in our lives, in New York and Nepal and Nairobi. It's the overriding object of our attention these days. (Odd, isn't it, to think that the Iraq war was our cohort's principal obsession during the years and years and years of the 2008 presidential election. How quaint.)

If the world is no longer spinning, at least our heads are.

During the day I read stuff online. From The Economist to Bloomberg to the inevitable Digby.

Too much of it is scary. (Follow Digby's links if you don't believe me.)

At night, when I settle my sorry self into bed, I read books for pleasure -- and think, pleasurably, that tomorrow I'll write here about things in those books that have captured my fancy. (Recent volumes include Christopher Plummer's memoir and Noël Coward's correspondence. Juicy, very very juicy.)

I've been thinking -- for quite some time now -- about writing my own memoir, working title Fringe Benefits. (I've actually had a pretty interesting life...and can drop a lot of names -- x degrees of separation, etc. -- including names of people who went to jail for investment fraud!) Those "pleasure" books I've been reading feed into that desire. Tonight I'll be revisiting William Goldman's terrific book about the way things work in Hollywood, Adventures in the Screen Trade. We knew a bunch of the people he writes about when we lived in London in the late 60s and early 70s.

Then tomorrow will come, and in the clear light of day the Dow meter on CNN and a quick check of e-mail will bring me back to the fateful reality. Damn. I really want to say something about the great days of transatlantic liners. I really really do. I was lucky enough in this life to sail across the ocean six times, in various classes, on some really beautiful boats. I'd like to write about that.

But, before I can stop myself, I'll be in thrall again to the news of the day.

And so it goes.

(The illustration is of the Holland-America Line's Nieuw Amsterdam. My first crossing, the summer of 1955, when I was 16.)

Jon Stewart says just about all there is to say about Wall St. and its carnival barkers

H/t to Frank Rich.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

CNBC Gives Financial Advice

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Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

Digging out of the rubble, instantly

President Obama has told us he will be truthful with us -- and apparently, when it comes to the economy, that's not change we want to believe in. Remember, T.S. Eliot told us that "Humankind cannot stand very much reality" and so did Jack Nicholson. After thirty years of being told we could have something for nothing, and could have it NOW!, we don't want to hear that we can't...and never really could.

Bill Clinton says Obama should be doing more cheerleading on the economy. (Compare and contrast John McCain, jerking around his pom-poms while telling us the "fundamentals are sound." ) And vying for the title of cable news' #1 Neanderthal -- see Chris Matthews, below -- Lou Dobbs calls Obama a fearmonger.

Does a tornedo spinning toward a house on the desolate plain monger fear? Or does it signal an event, indeed a frightening one, that one would be wise to acknowledge?

By not minimizing the peril we're in, Obama has become a whipping boy. The stock market's ongoing slide is his fault. What is with that?

During the campaign and since, Obama has told us that he'd keep working to find solutions to our pressing problems -- of which he gives full evidence of having a secure grasp -- and that if one thing didn't work, he'd try something else. I heard him say that. But I guess the Villagers didn't. They're yelping that he hasn't fixed things yet! Gee, he's already been in the White House for a month -- whaddya mean, the market hasn't gone all bullish? (Couldn't have anything to do with the deafening naysaying of the wingnuts, could it? Doesn't seem to occur to them.)

Chris Matthews has even suggested that Obama looks as though he doesn't know what he's doing because he's setting up study panels. Matthews suggests that Obama would inspire more confidence (in whom? in the instant-gratification gnomes of Wall Street?) if he went into hiding somewhere and studied these things for himself. Yup, he actually said that, just now on Hardball. Yup. Chris, you might consider spending some time to learn a thing or two yourself. At the least, how not to foam at the mouth as you spew your incoherence on the rest of us.

Back to that tornado. It had been growing and growing, part of a massive storm system heading our way for a long time. Why did nobody warn us, at the very least give us time to get to the storm cellar? When the funnel finally touched down it took only a moment to reduce our house to rubble.

Where oh where were the weathermen? Lou? Chris?

---

Update: Nate Silver says

One of the more unapologetically idiotic notions being advanced by certain conservative commentators is the idea that the poor performance of the stock markets represents a negative reaction to Barack Obama's stimulus package.

I love his title: "Sun rises, market falls" --

Ronald Reagan's stock market drop -- and fascinating DJIA history

Did you know that the DJIA dropped significantly immediately after Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, and didn't return to its Inauguration Day level for twenty months?!!

When I heard that a little while ago on CNN, I thought it might be interesting to dig a bit deeper into the relationship of the Inauguration Day Dow to the end-of-term Dow. (The Dow isn't the way most stock analysts judge market health -- they more normally refer to the S & P -- but it is the popular and familiar metric out here among us ordinary folk.)

These are the most valuable pages I found:

Here is the single most informative guide to DJIA activity over the years: The niftiest, most information-rich graph -- with milestones, presidential terms, sidebar articles -- intelligently designed interactivity

Greatest gains and losses, in point and percentage terms

Graph of Dow and presidential terms

It should come as no surprise that Republican presidents aren't the best stewards!

A bargain

I don't take particularly good care of myself -- I smoke, and I hate exercise. Somehow, in spite of those failures and of the fact that I'm nearly 70 now (you don't know how little sense that number makes to me) I've never been a hospital patient overnight except when I had my two babies. I do eat a pretty healthy diet, because (as faithful readers will know) I prefer the "Mediterranean" style of dining, with particular emphasis on the grand foodstuffs of Italy. But using olive oil in cooking instead of butter and eating salads instead of Big Macs can only take you so far. Luck and genes, I suspect, are more responsible than anything I do or don't do. Thanks, Mom. Thanks, Daddy. And all the begats.

There is, however, one pesky problem that I've had for years -- with my back. A muscle on the lower left side gets knotted, and then I can't sit or stand straight, which means that all the rest of me gets progressively twisted and tortured. I can usually fix things up with a couple of days of bedrest, a heating pad and Advil. When those remedies don't work -- and in the last week they hadn't -- there is a chiropractor in town who offers deliverance.

Dr. Adams is one terrific lady. She doesn't seem to have aged a day since I first met her, nearly twenty years ago. She and her husband, who are in practice together, have raised five children. They both are -- there's no other word for it -- merry. They have a positive attitude about life that they convey, simply, with their own body language. It's a delight to know them. Best of all, they are completely non-judgmental, even with people like me who cavalierly break all the rules of a holistically healthful lifestyle that they themselves cherish. 

What a relief it was yesterday to receive Maria's tender ministrations. When she was finished, I fairly hopped off the table, filled with the bliss of being pain-free. I then had another pleasurable moment. Instead of the usual $50 fee, I needed to fork over only $6.42. 

Now...I pay something over $3,000 in annual premiums for Medicare and the Part J supplement -- the latter is known as "Medigap," for you young 'uns out there who aren't yet ripe for the program, and covers a significant portion of the fees that basic Medicare doesn't. In light of the hefty premiums, $6.42 may not seem like that much of a bargain. But I think it is, if only to remind me of how fortunate I have been, of how a government program can soften what otherwise would be a hard financial landing if indeed something more catastrophic than a sore back strikes. And to remind me, in a visceral way, of what a rocky road this life is for so many people who have inadequate health insurance or none at all.