I am proud of my service in the US Army as an infantryman, a paratrooper, and a pathfinder. Thanks guys!
Harold's Left:
Sometimes I sit back and wonder what the rest of the world thinks about our great nation in light of our nearly eight month debate on the future of the health care insurance system. On the one hand, every other country in the industrialized world has adopted some form of universality in their coverage, many of them using Medicare type plans while others rely on a private insurance system that is regulated in a way that Americans could only dream of. Subsequently back in the States, we have a system that is twice as expensive as any other industrialized country and significantly less efficient and effective. However, rather than take heed when Obama implies that there is indeed a link between universality and low cost, as exemplified by the rest of the word having costs that are less than half of ours on average, the Right freaks out that because of reform America will have a 'broken ' system like Europe. Which is odd because not only are European systems categorically better than ours on cost, the belief that somehow they are less efficient because of their government influence is also false. So how did we get here and what does all of this say about who we are as a people?
Although some of us on the Left would love to move to a system that looks more like Japan or Europe, the one important caveat we must remember is that Americans are a much different group of people culturally than the rest of the world. A special distrust of government has been intrinsic in the fabric of this nation since it's inception. Not only that, on the international political spectrum America is much further right than others in the G20. So, keeping those things in mind, this is part of what has made reform become "reform". The other part is a series of missteps by the Obama administration and a blatant misinformation campaign by the right-wing (which is their strategy for nearly everything).
The Obama administration made two crucial mistakes. The first is that they made the public option the liberal position from the get-go when the liberal position should have been a single-payer system. The reason this is a mistake is because if we would have spent the last eight months arguing about whether a single-payer system is plausible, perhaps a public option would have ended up being the compromise instead of the left position. The second mistake is that the administration let the summer recess fester with no clear bill on the table. This in turn allowed the misinformation gurus like Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and Sarah Palin feed their followers with bundles and bundles of manure that they goggle up like hogs.
Currently, we have a bill that has been gutted to a level that should indeed be sickening for most Americans. Public Option? Gone. Trigger? Gone. Medicare Buy-in? Nope. Anti-Trust Exemption? Still there. Does this bill cover more people than ever before? Sure. However, it covers more people than ever by forcing them into a broken, for-profit private insurance system then should be an embarrassment to this country.
This bill went from reform in the House to "reform" in the Senate. Which may have more to do with how the Senate has become a nearly defunct institution (which I will expand on tomorrow) than the political boxing round that has shaped this bill. More importantly though, this year has exposed who we have become as a people. Just 12 months ago we were a nation on a high of emotion. A nation who believed again that we could come together in even the toughest of times. Yet, a year latter we are as divided as ever, which both sides spewing contempt for the other. 2009 seemed to be rock-bottom on the scale of partisan disagreement, let's see if 2010 can be any better.
Harold's Left:
I have been on a wonderful three week hiatus as I am officially out-processed from the military and now a civilian. In that time I have been paying attention to the two major things that have happened over the past weeks; Afghanistan and Health Care reform's perilous death. Here are some initial thoughts on each, and in the coming weeks I hope we can follow these topics a bit more closely.
Afghanistan:
As most of you already know, I am just weeks removed from spending nearly a year as an army airborne infantryman on the Pakistani border. While this does not make me an expert on all things Afghanistan, it does give me a unique perspective on what the ground fight there is (and is not). It is brutal. It is hot. It is dangerous and lethal. It is not a fight with Al-Qeada. It's not the "epicenter of Muslim extremism", nor is it a place that will change at all with the addition of 30,000 troops. I went to obscure villages tucked in remote valleys all over the Pesh and Korengal that had literally never seen American troops. We are talking eight years into the war folks. Afghanistan is a congregation of nightmarish mountains passes, obscure villages, and traditional tribes. There is little to no inter-connectivity between these villages, and almost no connection or affiliation with the Afghan central government. The notion that 30,000 more troops, most of whom will be support soldiers that will never leave the base, can somehow turn around one of the five poorest countries in the world in 24 months is silly. Actually, it's more than silly, it asinine. However, given all this I do understand that this was Obama's only real viable political play and I also know that he campaigned on Afghanistan (which also seemed more politically motivated than ideologically convicted). Yet, my assumption that Obama would make bold new decisions based on new sets of facts seems premature.
Health Care Reform:
Is anyone else as depressed as I am over health care reform? Here's what we know. The public option is all but dead. The Medicare buy-in has been essentially killed by Joe "I seriously hate you so much" Lieberman and even with this watered down bill, Sen. Ben Nelson is still holding out as the 60th vote. Remember a month ago when progressives (including myself) were ecstatic over the House's passage of health care reform? While aware that the Senate has always been a more conservative institution, I was initially encouraged by Sen. Reid's commitment to meaningful reform. However, the realities of our big tent have come to bite us in the ass. What's even worse is that if we don't get this done before the summer election season we may have to wait another generation to ever get anything done. That's the sad reality to American politics at this point. We have a completely failed health insurance system and we can't even fix it because there are simply too many people out there who are beholden to the fear tactics of Fox News and the conservative movement. More to come on all of this.
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