So says Byron York. Replies a skeptical protein wisdom, “from your mouth to God’s ears, Byron…”:
Barack Obama is only halfway through his term, but it’s not too early to ask: What is the biggest whopper he has told as president? So far, the hands-down winner is:
“No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people. If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.”
Obama made that particular pledge in a speech to the American Medical Association in June 2009, but he said the same thing, with slight variations, dozens of times during the health care debate. And now, exactly eight months after he signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law, we’re seeing just how empty the president’s promise was.
The New York Times reports there is a “growing frenzy of mergers” in the health care field in which hospitals and other care providers, pressured by the new law’s provisions, are joining forces to save money. “Consumer advocates fear that the health care law could worsen some of the very problems it was meant to solve,” the paper reports, “by reducing competition, driving up costs and creating incentives for doctors and hospitals to stint on care, in order to retain their cost-saving bonuses.”
The Obama administration’s answer to the problem will undoubtedly be more regulation. But the wave of mergers is just one of many signs of trouble with the new law.
For example, we know that the government’s Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services has found that the new law will increase health care costs, rather than reduce them, in the coming decade. We know that cuts in Medicare, with the money saved going to pay for expanding coverage to the poor, will jeopardize seniors’ access to care. We know the law will make it impossibly expensive for companies that currently offer bare-bones health coverage to low-income employees to keep doing so. We know several corporations are taking giant write-downs because the bill will increase the cost of providing prescription drug coverage to retired employees. And perhaps most important, we know the law offers an enormous incentive for employers who currently provide coverage to workers to stop doing so, sending those workers to buy coverage in government-subsidized health care exchanges.
In sum, what the law means for millions of Americans is: No matter what the president said, if you like the coverage you have now, you can’t keep it.
In Edward Bellamy’s Utopian socialist novel Looking Backward, the socialist state evolves from the capitalist state inevitably (or “organically”) first as the size of corporations increase — with smaller companies being bought up and subsumed into mega-companies — and then finally, by having the government, the biggest of all the “corporations,” simply move to take over those mega corporations. And voila! Paradise, of the single-payer variety.
Putting that in today’s context, we may be witnessing the first few prongs of such an attack on some of our private sector institutions.
What the book didn’t tell us is that it would be the government who would coerce such mergers of businesses (as appears to be the case with health care providers, who can’t survive the onslaught of regulation and government mandate forced through by left-leaning lawmakers and against the will of the electorate) — that in order for us to reach paradise, the progressives would have first themselves to cripple capitalism through the regulatory state and forced compliance (mandates that themselves would only pass constitutional muster once a certain idea of how legal interpretation functions has become comfortably institutionalized).
Which is why it’s hard to tell sometimes whether Obama is truly incompetent, or if his ostensible incompetence is really just part of plan — with Obama either as a martyr or a patsy — to put in place the kinds of laws and regulations that are nearly impossible to roll back, and so lay the next foundational layer for that “organic” conversion from a free-enterprise system to one wherein the state is, in the end, the only corporation.
Corporatism and liberal fascism will come first. But the end game for the true believer is to have control of every last bit of power.
In such a context, what some are calling the “economic populism” of Sarah Palin, eg., — in which she rails against not only the government but against the cozy relationships of big business to the government (and in particular, to its bureaucracies) — could very well sell as the antidote if in fact we come to believe that what we are seeing is part of a planned ideological coup.
Because if we don’t — for fear of looking “conspiratorial” or “unsophisticated” — we’re likely to continue to allow incremental increases to the foundations progressives have been laying for the move to a democratic socialism / liberal fascist state, until one day we wake up and find that the tipping point has been reached, and that even those of us who still desire free enterprise and classical liberalism as the foundations for our society will be perpetually outnumbered by voters who are quiet happy to live as preferred customers in the new client state.
The AARP screwed codgers but good on this deal.
When I say that Obama is turning our country into a bigger version of Greece, I don’t mean only the fiscal nightmares. There are other aspects that are just as significant:
“Various studies have concluded that Greece’s shadow economy represented 20 to 30 percent of its gross domestic product.”
This is what we’re moving toward. I’ll hire an unlicensed contractor to replace my windows. I’ll trade a case of wine for some decent medical care. I’ll do freelance software development and consulting and report only a fraction of my revenue. And you can bet your ass that I’ll have a few well-placed functionaries to assure that I never get inspected, audited, investigated, or otherwise harassed.
This will, of course, mean getting well acquainted and staying on good terms with my neighbors, as we rely on each other for barter and undocumented work. It’ll also mean a new respect for the skilled trades, since very few of us are going to beg our neighbors for the newest studies of transgendered lab rats and their effects on global CO2 levels. Which I suppose goes to show that not every unintended consequence of hare-brained Progressive policy is a negative one.
Needs a catchy name, this Cloward-Piveny sort of strategy that’s working from the Corporate side down.
I’ll think on it between destinations.
(I’m currently in White County, TN. RAAAAACIST~! )
Empty promises from an empty suit.
Who’d thunk it?
(Okay, most of the PW commentariat woulda thunk it. And my mom)
Needs a catchy name, this Cloward-Piveny sort of strategy that’s working from the Corporate side down.
Burnhamism or Managerialism from this.
Syndicalism also fits (albeit from a labor side up perspective). And of course, I think Il Duce had his own name for it, but that brings back to where we began.
Keep the Government out of my Government-funded Abortions.
Ernst —
I’ve been suggesting for years that, following Bellamy, we’ll see liberal fascism / corporatism / syndicalism as the preliminary stage before the true believers decide that even the benefits their cronies are getting from the new social makeup is too much — and that they can have that power, too.
At which point we go full-on socialist.
Of course, the appearance will be of democratic socialism. Up until the threat of losing it in a populist uprising occurs, at which point voting will no longer be useful, and will be rationalized away as well.
But then, the idea that any of this can happy is just CRAZY talk! Conspiratorial. Irrational. Paranoid.
I mean, can anyone think of a single country that, once having tasted freedom, was ever dragged into the hell of collectivism or totalitarianism?
No, you can’t. So don’t even try, or SEK will write a long essay detailing how you only believe that because you aren’t quite as sharp as he is, his having taught both journalism and literary theory…
How’d that old joke about how American’s will accept fascism under the guise of “anti-fascism” go again Jeff?
Anti-Socialism is the wave of the future!. Little
BrotherSister isn’t watching you!We sort of heard this sort of thing proposed this time around when Chocolate Jesus was repudiated. It happens all the time in the Courts as well. I think that’s what proggy people mean when they end a debate with SCIENCE! It’s more of a seeping than a single whack. They’d probably still let us vote for things of little or no consequence to keep the appearance that the people have some kind of say in governance though.
for fear of looking “conspiratorial” or “unsophisticated”
I don’t care how I look (which you’d know if you saw me).
See, this is why I almost pray for economic collapse: so that there’s nothing for the Lefties to take control of. We all go hyper-local because the larger infrastructure–especially the parasitic gubmint regulation institutions–has dissolved.
THE MORE THEY TIGHTEN THEIR GRIP, THE MORE
STAR SYSTEMSCITIZENS SLIP THROUGH THEIR FINGERS.Meh. Unfortunately for us, health care lies only become apparent after the 2012 election. So voters will not know how much they have been screwed over.
I did fly yesterday. TSA was surprisingly nice. Lines were short, everyone was exceedingly courteous. I did not get my junk fondled by some middle aged male civil servant. That is always good.
I mean, can anyone think of a single country that, once having tasted freedom, was ever dragged into the hell of collectivism or totalitarianism?
We might end up with a new chapter in American Exceptionalism, though: having experienced such incredible prosperity and liberty, we lose the ability to value or defend it, the way astronauts inevitably lose bone and muscle mass when they spend time in null gravity.
Reagan warned that the generation that loses our liberty will never see it again. It will take the next generation or two to revive it, if ever. I’m afraid he’s right: does our current populace contain a critical mass of classical liberals that can outweigh the brick-stupidity that’s been taught for the past 50 years?
The worst thing we can do is figure that it cannot happen here. The fact that we’ve been different from any other country in the history of the world doesn’t mean we can’t blow it in a totally unique way.
Not without a fight, me hearties. Not without losing tooth and nail to save the Republic. And not without chipping away daily at the stones of any prison they trap us in.
Who’s your avatar, Joe?
THE MORE THEY TIGHTEN THEIR GRIP, THE MORE
STAR SYSTEMSCITIZENS SLIP THROUGH THEIR FINGERS.That worked out real swell for the Alderaan(-ians?), didn’t it?
The left will be happy to rule the ruins like Odoacer living it up in Ravenna after packing “the little Emperor” Romulus off to honorable obscurity in some country villa.
When Uncle Sugar can’t manage the handouts anymore, classical liberalism is going to have quite a renaissance. Reality bites, hard.
When Uncle Sugar can’t manage the handouts anymore, classical liberalism is going to have quite a renaissance.
Hopefully the classical fascists won’t be there to abort it.
It’s always a good read right up to this point.
When Uncle Sugar can’t manage the handouts anymore, classical liberalism is going to have quite a renaissance. Reality bites, hard.
I’m more pessimistic than that.
The natural outgrowth of economic chaos isn’t classical liberalism, it’s anarchy, where roving bands of thieves take from the weak, then the weak band together to defend themselves in tribes and clans.
In other words, Afghanistan.
However, given our history and memory of self-governance, given our libraries of knowledge of how that works, we wouldn’t need to be Afghanistan forever. Some parts of the country would no doubt return to Republic governance, but other parts?
I have my doubts. Can you see Hollywood develop a sane government from scratch? The Bay Area? Detroit?
I fear that we’re about to be taught a very hard lesson, but not everyone will learn it.
That’s Barry Goldwater, I believe.
Sure. Because Obama’s socialism studies, his attendance at Cooper Union conferences, his tutelage under the Rev Wright, his friendships with Ayers and others, and his affinity for Alinsky and Piven — these are all just figments of the paranoid right wing imagination. Stanley Kurtz, the Harvard-trained social anthropologist, he’s just made up all sort of shit and pumped out a collection of lies in the form of a book filled with meaningless citations, right? Or, even if Kurtz found some stuff from the eighties, Obama’s actual past cannot be used to suss out his current ideology. Because OMG, IRONY METER LOL! THAT’S SO STUPID!!!1eleventy!
Obama’s really a pragmatist. You’ll see. Just elect him and watch him heal the world from the center.
Again: no one is forcing you to read here. If you have a complaint with what I argue, offer a counter. Waving your hand dismissively at the crazy rightwing mob ain’t gonna cut it with the people here, because many of us used to be one of you. Though not in the supercilious way you’ve taken it.
Incidentally, this recent increase in airline security — the aggressiveness, I mean — has anyone asked why now? I mean, the underwear bomber was what, nearly a year ago? Napolitano says the scanners weren’t ready — but if the danger existed anyway, why not just make these pat downs (which the Atlantic discovered are intended to “persuade” people to use the scans) the order of the day 11 months ago, in advance of the scanners?
Or is the proximate cause something else…?
Oh. And here’s more crazed paranoia from the right wing knuckledraggers: if these methods serve to bankrupt an already decimated airline industry, does anyone think the government might step in and take over? They can simply give the unions partial ownership of the new “government airlines,” and we could be well on our way to becoming a Utopia. Like, say, Venezuala!
FOR FREEDOM!
Stanley Kurtz is a sociologist I believe.
And
Raymond ShawBarak Obama is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being you’ll ever know. Just ask his friends.Well, Kurtz has a degree in social anthropology, but part of that is historical research. But point taken, and I’ll make the correction.
You know what the difference between a historian and a sociologist is, Jeff?
A historian follows the evidence to a conclusion. A sociologist takes his conclusion and goes in search of some evidence to support it.
That’s not a knock on Kurts, by the way, merely a tweak at the soft sciences. As a Humanist, I’m entitled.
Kurtz actually went the other way on this, as he makes clear in the intro to his book. When he was attacked and prevented from accessing Annenberg material, he grew suspicious, and the book is a result of the subsequent research. Which is why I believe his book is the work of an historian rather than that of a sociologist.
He is, after all, conservative. I think most conservative social anthropologists are just historians who didn’t realize they were conservatives back when they were declaring their majors.
For instance, I’m no longer an English major. I’m “a guy with an interest in books and language.”
Two things. First, chaos is temporary. Battle lines will be drawn and when it happens you’ll find classical liberals on one side and the moocher/thief class on the other. I’ll leave it to your imagination as to which side would best be considered weak and/or well armed and well stocked. At some point, that war will be decided and I suspect that those who can support themselves will turn out to be better at defending themselves then those who can’t.
Second, we’re largely beyond the ancient tribal scheme, with the exception of the victim class that segregates itself into grievance groups. They’re going to land on one side of the aforementioned battle lines. When the fit hits the shan, outrage as social currency is going to collapse. It has to. Whining is not a very effective weapon, nor is it a means to survival in a cold, hard world.
You answered your own question. Refer to the “11 months” part. The threat of a terrorist attack is higher around the holidays. No matter how much heat the administration takes, it’s nothing compared to an airline being brought down around Christmas. Don’t expect any policy change until January at the soonest.
My biggest problem with your overall logic that that the government isn’t some entity – all sithlord style – going “Muwahaha, the 50 year plan is right on schedule.” It’s a bunch of individual craven politicians looking out for their own self interests. Ideology, schmideology – just watch them flip flop to get reelected. They care almost entirely about what happens during their term. There is one prime directive for each party: majority. Because with majority comes the everflowing teat of special interest money and crony favors that set you up for life. But the problem with having majority is that you get the blame. Eventually, the public takes the keys away from the party that just drove us into the ditch, and gives them to the party that drove us into the ditch the time before.
Nothing will get solved because from the perspective of political incentive, nothing needs to. The politicians aren’t personally better off by restoring America to actual greatness. There’s also no big incentive in your socialize everything / one world government mantra. Maybe for your kids – if they go into politics, but not for you. Not when you can pork-barrel a highway/military/green energy bill today and make ka-ching noises.
And this explains the decision to pass ObamaCare over the objections of the majority of the people how exactly? Cause I’m not seeing the democrat majority in the House from here.
Because if you ask “does this water feel like it’s getting warmer?” well, you’re just a wacko.
What, Easter, or the Fourth of July, or 911 — these don’t work just as well for terrorists? Sorry, not buying it. I think the more determinative proximate date is Nov 2.
This is true of the craven political class, the establishment class. It isn’t true of the True Believers. In response to a mid-term election drubbing, what is Obama’s reaction? My messaging was bad, screw your compromises, and lets use the lame duck session to push through the DREAM act.
Clinton is a politician. Obama is an ideologue. And he’s being run by people who were ideologues back when he was just a kid looking for something to cling too — some cause that accepted him, and that he in turn would fight for. The government need not be a singular entity working in unison. It simply need put certain policies or bureaucratic agencies in place and let what happens next occur organically.
Again, had you read this site for any length of time you’d know that I believe how we’ve been told language works leads inexorably to identity politics, and reinforces a leftist epistemology.
I understand that you wish to suggest that there’s something shallow in my thinking, that postulates about “the government” which make it sound like a singularly-minded monolith with its own will and cognition is, well, unsophisticated.
But of course, that’s only were you to take the usage literally, as you either do or pretend to. Others recognize that it’s being used as shorthand for a very complex intermingling of powers.
Again, were you talking to me about Bill Clinton or Lindsay Graham we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
But the blue dog Dems who gave the leftists cover are gone. What remains has been distilled to its essence. And those who are rising to fight it aren’t part of the political class; in fact, they are railing against it. Politicians may not be better off personally; so it’s time to replace the political class with citizen legislators.
That’s the American spirit right there. Can do!
When Obama begins triangulating and dialing back what he wants to get institutionalized, we can say he found his inner pragmatic. Until then, he is what he’s always been — and no reflexive “a pox on both their houses” talk is going to change the fact that, sometimes in politics, the true believers do arise.
Plenty of erstwhile cosmopolitan countries now poor and degraded and living under miserable collectivism would surely tell you so. Were they allowed to speak freely, that is.
Would I be correct in guessing that the Kurtz book effectively marshals the evidence to show Obama as a true believing, “crash the system to change the system”-type, Jeff?
In a meticulously documented and cited way, bh.
Remember, Kurtz began in the camp that told us talk of Obama’s socialist past was unhelpful. He’s move on from there.
If the statists really had a long-range plan in mind, they’d have spent the last few generations taking over the information infrastructure in this country: the schools and universities, the news media, the entertainment industry. Then they’d work to change the political platforms of the leading parties such that each one was mostly about extending the reach of the government, and the only debates would be about how fast this power would grow, and in what areas.
Over time, they would push independent types out of the bureaucracy, making the environment so uninviting that anyone with classical liberal tendencies would move into the private sector, leaving an open field on the public side. Then they’d use this unfettered machinery to hem in and minimize the freedom allowed to those in the private sector, through taxation and regulation and licensing and permitting. In the end, there would be very little that the statists did not control.
At least, that’s how I’d go about it, if such were my plan. Thank goodness nothing like that could happen here!
Bravo.
— I mean, THAT’S JUST SILLY LULZ OMG!! IRONY METER EXPLODING!
It’s an odd thing to realize how much you had really been hoping the President was just an incredibly incompetent bumbler.
Somebody ought to get around to finally writing a new forward to this book.
But… this is a nice neighborhood. We didn’t think anything like that could happen here.
Words on the TV that get regurgitated daily. Apply as needed. Ignore at your peril.
You want conspiratorial? I have conspiratorial for ya.
Obama isn’t crashing the system to change the system into what he thinks the country needs. He’s amassing global power despite America’s interests.
To the far leftist ideologue, America is just a another piece on the chessboard.
On the contrary Jeff. No one does conspiracy with your depth and flair. I don’t think you’re simple, I just think you’re wrong.
You can put all the good apples you want into the bad barrel of Washington, but that septic tank seems to have a quick and negative impact on its new additions. And FWIW, I see no evidence that we’re sending in great apples.
A POX ON BOTH THEIR HOUSES!
You’d also let limitless cash flow, so that fundraising could fill the void once occupied by courage.
Well, all I have on my side is Obama’s life story, his books, and now the way he governs. Whereas you have…well, the hope that a narcissist who has never been told he’s wrong wishes to be just like every other politician.
If they turn out to be bad, they get removed. Repeat as necessary.
Alex is just another twat, airily dismissing that which does not conform to it’s leftist worldview.
Well, then, fuck it. You should just go fellate a .410.
You know, it’s really true that there’s a person who’s killed a bear bare-handed.
Things can be true even if they’re unbelievable. “Incredible” is a deficiency of the incredder.
Regards,
Ric
Burnhamism, Managerialism, Syndicalism … none of those are catchy enough to correctly define Obama’s possibly elaborate scheme, if scheme it is and not simply an accidental bumblefuckaroo turned to 11.
How’s about New Stealism ? Fits in well with the active players, the Looters and the Moochers.
Did Burnham ever interact with Ayn Rand, I wonder? I’d’ve enjoyed being a fly on the wall at their first meeting. I’ll check.
I wish, unlike Alex Walter, we could a troll that was less intellectually lazy. Jeff offers a most excellent forum to discuss ideas, language and power, intentionalism, originalism, etc. And we get smary and lazy comments from those that cannot bother to marshal evidence, argue backed by citation to fact and past records…
Well, Colonel, he’d think about arguing with you if you were someone worth arguing with. I mean, your like stuk in Affganeestan, so how intulleckchewallee challenging can an argument with you be?
[snark offered with deepest respect and gratitude for your service, sir.]
Sarcasm aside, I am on the verge of losing two primary doctors – (both are of retirement age, and can’t fight the system anymore). It’s funny that I never see stories about this on the news. Where is Katie and her crack CBS news team? — Ah-, another colon party at katie’s house. I guess they can’t cover every story.
You’d also let limitless cash flow, so that fundraising could fill the void once occupied by courage.
Actually, I’d set it up so that the media companies, universities and public sector unions could do limitless contributions of cash and in-kind services, while private citizens and private-sector entities were strictly limited in the types and amount of support they could offer.
Simultaneously, I’d encourage get-out-the-vote efforts that brought in low-information voters by the busload, while discouraging any sort of voter identification scheme that might serve to minimize vote fraud. This would be easy, since my control of the information distribution network would make it easy to paint any such efforts as attempts to deny the vote to minorities or poor people.
You can call me paranoid, alex, and to some extent you’d be correct. But that doesn’t mean that 50 years of KGB efforts to weaken the U.S. and subvert its institutions never happened.
C’mon, squid! You know those KGB programs only ever existed in right-wing paranoid fantasies, the daily planners of KGB and allied intelligence services, and the funding of the left-wing!