http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070122/pollitt
The Nation
January 22 Edition
Happy New Year/Think Bigger
By Katha Pollitt
It's only January 2 as I write, and I've already broken my New Year's
resolutions. (Exercise! Keep diary! Be better person! [Start column
earlier!--Ed.]) You'd think I'd learn--these are the same self-improvement
projects I swore fealty to last year, and the year before (and before), with
the same results. But enough about me and my slothful ways--how about
some resolutions for liberals? For example:
1. Think bigger. For decades, we've been chasing the
rightward-drifting center--a k a the "middle class"--by throwing huge chunks
of our agenda overboard like ballast from a leaky ship. Now the Democrats
are, however shakily, back in power, and their program is so modest you need
a microscope to see it. Raise the federal minimum wage in stages to
$7.25--all the way back to its 1979 levels. Restore (some) taxes on the
superrich. Fund cheaper student loans. Let Americans import prescription
drugs from foreign countries. There's something so pathetic about that last
item: The drug companies have us cornered, but maybe you can escape! How
about: Raise the minimum wage to $9 an hour and index it to inflation so it
won't decline in value again. Single-payer healthcare for all. Quality
childcare for all. Decent affordable housing--an issue that's dropped off
the radar screen even as housing costs have skyrocketed. Free or nominal
tuition in public universities--sounds like utopian madness until you
realize that public higher education actually was free, or cheap, until the
1980s. To complaints that these things cost too much, George W. Bush has
provided a simple reply: If the government can pay for the war in Iraq--$355
billion and counting--it can pay for anything.
2. Stop giving the right credit for our ideas. It's nice that David
Kuo, the evangelical Christian who served in the White House office of
faith-based initiatives, wrote a book describing the Bush Administration's
lack of commitment to so-called compassionate conservatism. But honestly,
the man is a nudnik (see Alan Wolfe's devastating review in The New
Republic). The handwriting was on the wall about faith-based funding from
the moment it was devised. It was never anything but a flatly
unconstitutional bribe to Christian conservatives, and many, many
secularists--from People for the American Way and the Freedom From Religion
Foundation down to, yes, me, right here--pointed this out. Why not credit
the ones who were right all along? And PS: If the pastors and priests didn't
get all the money they wanted for their evangelical prisons and
fetal-protection programs, good! Similarly, why heap praise on antiwar
reactionaries like Chuck Hagel or right-wing hacks with a soft spot for the
ACLU like Bob Barr or antichoicers who draw the line at banning stem-cell
research like John Danforth? Every time we give them the spotlight, we are
reinforcing a portrait of the political stage in which right-wingers are the
only players.
3. Stop looking for a savior. If we create a strong movement,
leaders will arise. Probably too many! When a movement is weak, what you get
is men--and I do mean men--on white horses, people with thin records of
accomplishment upon whom wild hopes of rescue are projected. In 2004 it was
Wesley Clark--supposedly electable because he was a general. This year, it's
Barack Obama, with John Edwards coming up the inside. My point is not that
both men are lightweight, inexperienced and less progressive than
advertised. It's that, whatever their merits, if you want the next Democrat
in the White House to feel beholden to you, don't act like a groupie two
years in advance. Concentrate on building a movement he'll need to
court--and satisfy.
4. Don't think your lifestyle can save the world. I love slow
food! I cook slow food! I shop at farmers' markets, I pay extra for organic,
I am always buying cloth bags and forgetting to bring them to the
supermarket. But the world will never be saved by highly educated,
privileged people making different upscale consumer choices. If you have
enough money to buy grass-fed beef or tofu prepared by Tibetan virgins, you
have enough money to give more of it away to people who really need it and
groups that can make real social change.
5. Avoid weasel words. Like "spirituality." It's "religion." And
"faith"--that's "religion" too. And while you're at it, define your terms.
What is a "working family"? What is "the middle class"? Do these phrases
mean anything more than "virtuous people entitled to make a moral claim on
society"--as opposed to those criminals, drug addicts and welfare moms
liberals used to care about? And speaking of liberals, whatever happened to
them? And to leftists? How come we're all "progressives" now?
6. Avoid conscience-salving gimmicks. Wouldn't it be neat if you
could cancel out the noxious clouds of CO2 emitted by your SUV by paying the
eco-capitalists at Terrapass $80 to plant trees or turn cow farts into
electricity? And what if you could provide clean water to the Third World by
buying Ethos, a pricey bottled water from Starbucks? Forget it. There is no
way your SUV does only $80 worth of environmental damage a year--to say
nothing of wasting all that gas, taking up all that parking space and
showing the whole world what a ridiculous person you are. If you really care
about carbon emissions, get a Prius. Better yet, join a green group and
fight the car culture. Similarly, if you want to help the Third World, get a
thermos and fill it from the tap--send the hundreds of dollars you save
annually not buying Ethos to UNFPA, the UN Population Fund. You'll help more
people, and the Earth will thank you for not loading it up with plastic
garbage.
7. Be honest. Withdrawing from Iraq may be the right thing to
do, but it won't mean peace, at least not for the Iraqis.
8. Stop treating race and gender and sexual orientation as
annoying distractions from the big manly task of uniting America behind
class politics. Like it or not, women, gays and people of color make up
something like 80 percent of the population. Get used to it!
Discrimination--whether it's racial resegregation or denial of reproductive
healthcare or antigay legislation--is not some touchy-feely issue of
"identity politics." It's a central feature of the social injustice we all
claim to be fighting.
9. Have some fun. Party like it's 2007!
***
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/01/22/opinion/22krugman.html?th&emc=th
Gold-Plated Indifference
By Paul Krugman
NY Times Op-Ed: Monday 22 January 2007
President Bush's Saturday radio address was devoted to health care, and
officials have put out the word that the subject will be a major theme in
tomorrow's State of the Union address. Mr. Bush's proposal won't go
anywhere. But it's still worth looking at his remarks, because of what they
say about him and his advisers.
On the radio, Mr. Bush suggested that we should "treat health insurance
more like home ownership." He went on to say that "the current tax code
encourages home ownership by allowing you to deduct the interest on your
mortgage from your taxes. We can reform the tax code, so that it provides a
similar incentive for you to buy health insurance."
Wow. Those are the words of someone with no sense of what it's li ke to
be uninsured.
Going without health insurance isn't like deciding to rent an apartment
instead of buying a house. It's a terrifying experience, which most people
endure only if they have no alternative. The uninsured don't need an
"incentive" to buy insurance; they need something that makes getting
insurance possible.
Most people without health insurance have low incomes, and just can't
afford the premiums. And making premiums tax-deductible is almost worthless
to workers whose income puts them in a low tax bracket.
Of those uninsured who aren't low-income, many can't get coverage
because of pre-existing conditions - everything from diabetes to a long-ago
case of jock itch. Again, tax deductions won't solve their problem.
The only people the Bush plan might move out of the ranks of the
uninsured are the people we're least concerned about - affluent, healthy
Americans who choose voluntarily not to be insured. At most, the Bush plan
might induce some of those people to buy insurance, while in the process -
whaddya know - giving many other high-income individuals yet another tax
break.
While proposing this high-end tax break, Mr. Bush is also proposing a
tax increase - not on the wealthy, but on workers who, he thinks, have too
much health insurance. The tax code, he said, "unwisely encourages workers
to choose overly expensive, gold-plated plans. The result is that insurance
premiums rise, and many Americans cannot afford the coverage they need."
Again, wow. No economic analysis I'm aware of says that when Peter
chooses a good health plan, he raises Paul's premiums. And look at the
condescension. Will all those who think they have "gold plated" health
coverage please raise their hands?
According to press reports, the actual plan is to penalize workers with
relatively generous insurance coverage. Just to be clear, we're not talking
about the wealthy; we're talking about ordinary workers who have managed to
negotiate better-than-average health plans.
What's driving all this is the theory, popular in conservative circles
but utterly at odds with the evidence, that the big problem with U.S. health
care is that people have too much insurance - that there would be large cost
savings if people were forced to pay more of their medical expenses out of
pocket.
The administration also believes, for some reason, that people should be
pushed out of employment-based health insurance - admittedly a deeply flawed
system - into the individual insurance market, which is a disaster on all
fronts. Insurance companies try to avoid selling policies to people who are
likely to use them, so a large fraction of premiums in the individual market
goes not to paying medical bills but to bureaucracies dedicated to weeding
out "high risk" applicants - and keeping them uninsured.
I'm somewhat skeptical about health care plans, like that proposed by
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, that propose covering gaps in the health
insurance market with a series of patches, such as requiring that insurers
offer policies to everyone at the same rate. But at least the authors of
these plans are trying to help those most in need, and recognize that the
market needs fixing.
Mr. Bush, on the other hand, is still peddling the fantasy that the free
market, with a little help from tax cuts, solves all problems.
What's really striking about Mr. Bush's remarks, however, is the tone.
The stuff about providing "incentives" to buy insurance, the sneering
description of good coverage as "gold plated," is right-wing think-tank
jargon. In the past Mr. Bush's speechwriters might have found less offensive
language; now, they're not even trying to hide his fundamental indifference
to the plight of less-fortunate Americans.
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