… OBAMA’S FALSE BELIEFS: A naive faith in the concept of “stakeholders.” He thinks getting all the “stakeholders” in a room together will produce a satisfactory deal. And in his mind the most important stakeholders, the ones who could break any deal, are the health insurers and pharmas. So he needs to make a deal with them and then sell it to Congress. Which is what he did. But he forgot that he also had to sell/educate the public. Instead, nobody understands what this “reform” is all about. Too complicated, too policy geeky. He acts m,ore like an “advising” corporate lawyer than an executive charged with producing something for the common good. He surrenders his power, so why should anyone be afraid of him?

… OBAMA’S MISLEADING EXPERIENCE. Community organizer. His job was to help people “all get along together,” by helping poor communities get “the best they could” out of the corporate powers while giving the corporate powers what they wanted. Doesn’t this make everybody happy? He thinks so.

… BETTER SOLUTION? … Perhaps the only way for health care improvement (a better term than reform) would be best accomplished one bill/one improvement at a time. Then the Republicans would have to argue a specific issue, instead of smearing everything as a “government takeover.” First bill, health insurance for the unemployed. Permanent if the unemployed person does not get a job comparable to the one he/she lost. This might actually get some bipartisan support. It would certainly be easier for the public to understand what the bill is all about.

Mike in Nola Says: “Gee, Bill Gates dropped out of college; I’d rather listen to his opinions than many a Ph.D”

I remember Bill giving a speech that essentially said …”the internet is going nowhere”

The year was something like 1993, Bill’s prognostications …are…how shall we say…overrated. He was a wealthy kid who had enough dough to “borrow” some software which he then sold to IBM [who were fools], he then bought the software without telling the guy and the rest is history. There were thousands of kids who knew software was going to bloom, but they didn’t have Bills money.

“My feeling on it is just looking more concretely at the health care problem, this is a bill that to me doesn’t address the two biggest problems with the health care crisis. One is the inefficiency and the bureaucracy and the paperwork which it doesn’t address at all.”

That was already begun, using stimulus money.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123785277722019609.html

“The $787 billion stimulus package Congress approved in February promises more than $20 billion in outlays for health-information technology, coming mostly between 2011 and 2015, according to an estimate from the Congressional Budget Office”

Or here: “MATT TAIBBI: This is the fundamental question. Is there a way that we can have a politician get elected without the sponsorship of special interests? Can we get somebody in the White House who’s independent of the special interests that are in the way of real reform? And that’s the problem. We haven’t been able to have that happen. And we need to find a way to have that happen.”

He starts off well saying “politician” but then oversimplifies by focusing in on the White House. Congress, the White House, and politicians from the lowest local elected official to the top can be corrupted by special interest money, and fundamentally this is a problem with electoral politics in the US and is not specific to the White House or the Democratic Party. His statement starts off neutral but drifts into hostile towards the current administration. If that’s the fundamental question why waste time writing about health care and goldman sachs? Write about campaign finance reform!

Or look at this exchange:

“BILL MOYERS: So you had the Treasury and the White House chief of staff arguing on behalf of the banking industry?

ROBERT KUTTNER: Right. Right. And so here’s the president two days later giving a tough speech. Why wasn’t he working the phones to toughen up that bill and, you know, walk the talk?

BILL MOYERS: Get on the phone with the Chairman of the Committee and say, if you want that dam in your district, I want your vote on this.

ROBERT KUTTNER: Right.

MATT TAIBBI: Right.

BILL MOYERS: And that’s what you mean?

ROBERT KUTTNER: Yeah.

BILL MOYERS: You might praise them in public, but you threaten them in private, right?

MATT TAIBBI: Exactly, yeah. They have–

BILL MOYERS: Nobody’s afraid of Obama, you know. You go to Washington as you do, report from Washington. Nobody’s afraid of him.

MATT TAIBBI: Right.”

Where are the FACTS in that? It’s a load of crap. Where does Moyers get his info that “nobody’s afraid of Obama, you know”. That’s just liberal Hannity. Oh, progressive. It may even be true but it’s known as hearsay, and is decidedly not fact. When Moyers says “you might praise them in public, but you threaten them in private” – is he saying Obama is praising the bankers in public? He hasn’t done that; it’s nonsense. In addition, if congress goes too far and overregulates something (as the right has been warning they will do) he will crucified, and the left won’t have his back. And I’m sure Barney Frank needs a dam in his district, Bill.

My personal opinion is: Obama was elected to change things, but the democratic party is essentially a coalition, and obviously NO part of the Obama agenda will happen without congress. There are bound to be skirmishes as the various sub-groups decide what is acceptable for them. With Republicans signing off on affecting any change whatsoever the question is whether proposed legislation is acceptable to the factions of democrats, not congress as a whole, and Republicans hope to ride the infighting all the way to the next election.

But I also think the political atmosphere will be a lot different when democrats can point to healthcare reform, financial services reform, a new consumer protection agency, TBTF in the hands of some agency or another, no tarmac waits of more than 3 hours! and, with any luck, an improved economy to boot. If we’re really lucky Obama will be able to steer our energy sector away from oil and coal and towards renewable energy and we can start breathing cleaner air (I dream of not seeing the brown haze that surrounds NYC).

Anyway, someone wanted specifics on whether Tiabbi knew wtf he was talking about, regardless of his degrees or whatever. Sorry for the mini-novel.

This bill has everything Republicans were asking for minus meaningful tort reform. But there are SOME cost control measures still in there. And hopefully at least some of those will actually work…

Liberals are just bummed they didn’t get a full fledged public option (but rather a close 2nd and 3rd)

There are at least three assumptions Moyers, Kuttner, Tiabbi and most readers here share that should be surfaced: 1) that economic expansion can be restarted if we get the right politicians to do the right things, 2) therefore, the political/economic system is not working properly but not the problem itself, and, 3) there is no awareness that our fundamental problem is ecological sustainability. The right tends to thoroughly discount any appeals to the earth’s biosystems and resources because their cosmology has man controlling nature. The left is a bit more appreciative of our place in the natural world, but still heavily discounts ecological thinking. For example, climate change is more a political brickbat than a sign of reaching the limits to grwoth. And energy, peak oil, is for most on the right an opportunity to cash- in and for those on the left grossly misunderstood or, in some cases, seen as an oil industry plot to raise prices. In short, most of Americans do not understand our totally dependent economic relationship on the earth’s systems, energy and matter (resources).

Therefore, the healthcare system is unsustainable and what is going on in DC epitomizes a broken system unable to both recognize and respond to this threat. This “historic reform” is one more step towards collapse -and then the (slim) possibility of sustainability.

Standard operating procedure to attack the messenger, in this case Taibbi. So lift the smokescreen and tell me what you really want to say. Or do you have anything worth saying?