The Health Care Reform Debate In Perspective

As everyone paying attention has seen, I've done a lot of writing about health care. A lot of it has been in much the same vein as every other liberal-to-socialist blogger on the blogosphere: criticism and polemic on the debate itself. As I've noted before, there's a lack of excellent writing on the substance of the debate. I've decided to try to address the substance again, partially because new readers who find me 'more liberal than radical' may not have seen my earlier commentary on the substance of the debate and partially because I'm still not terribly satisfied with the final form health care reform is taking despite my pleasure that it looks like some basic problems will be addressed.

First and foremost is the substance of the reform actually being discussed in Congress. The right-wing advocates of market reform and the left-wing advocates of national health care policy have both been excluded from the debate. As I (and others) have said before, what is being debated in Congress now is insurance reform. Insurance reform is better than no reform at all. It certainly addresses the real problems of health care in America better than market reform as advocated by the right.

Those problems, which I have also written about before, are basically three-fold:

1.) High consumer costs generated by the inefficient pooling of costs in multiple payment pools. This means multiple partially funded systems of payment and no single fully-funded pool of shared costs. This is entirely opposite to the principle of shared cost. Whereas other insurance can survive this way because it covers against the unexpected, everyone will need medical care at some point in their lives. Thus the inefficiency of the cost-sharing method has a mushroom effect on consumer costs. When one adds to this the cut the insurance companies must take from the consumer to make a profit it only gets higher. So while medical costs really do rise as technology changes, the consumer costs created by our insurance system are the biggest cost problem.

2.) Access to proper care is restricted in a variety of ways. The uninsured frequently forego all but the most urgent care (which is much more expensive) for financial reasons. Insurance companies frequently make their customers jump through hoops to make full use of their benefits, or deny payment entirely if it suits them to do so. Medicaid is difficult to receive (indeed, many of the people who need it are ineligible because of the family requirements) and offers inferior service. Medicare and the Veterans Administration only serve specialized portions of the economy. Thus many people cannot afford to see a doctor, believe they cannot afford to see a doctor, or choose not to see a doctor because they prioritize other financial needs before medical care. Even when one has coverage, there is no guarantee the insurance company will provide full access to necessary care under the current system.

3.) The current health care system puts a tremendous burden on American business. The majority of people with insurance who are not covered by Medicare or Medicaid receive health insurance benefits through their workplace. This infringes their economic freedoms (because their benefits tie them to their job) and it also shifts much of the cost of health care onto the business sector as a de facto tax burden. This latter aspect is worth taking into account among the many problems with American economic policy. I'm no friend of corporate culture, as anyone who reads my stuff knows, but forcing the corporate sector to underwrite what most of the world considers a national issue and a government responsibility is... of questionable capitalist virtue.

The current health care reform proposals in Congress primarily address problem #2. They would require insurance companies to open access to more care to their customers and restrict them from simply dropping their customers or refusing to pay for a variety of reasons. This is a huge improvement not to be ignored. However, it is key to remember that the first and third problems with our current system are only addressed tangentially if at all.

The focus on costs is on medical costs, not consumer costs. While medical costs are a real issue, they are secondary. A better system for paying consumer costs would lower them dramatically without the need to focus on medical costs that can probably not be cut to the degree believed by the advocates of insurance reform. The creation of a competitive, national insurance exchange will probably lower consumer costs somewhat... but it is difficult to say how much and it is possible it won't have a real impact because of the increased standards of quality may keep consumer costs higher than desired. A competitive, robust public option might help to drive costs down somewhat... but it is again very difficult to say how much this will help the guy who already can't afford to buy private insurance.

The economic problem is ignored entirely. First (and perhaps worst) it is assumed that everyone with employer-paid insurance is happy with their coverage and that there is no need for reform of this market. My partner's experiences following surgery have shown, to me, the facts are very different. Employer-paid insurance is in much the same state as private insurance, whether the premiums are lower or not. The public option, as it stands now, would not be available to anyone receiving employer-paid insurance.

In addition, liberals appear to believe that corporations can and should foot the bill instead of government. They advocate increasing employer's responsibility to provide insurance to their employees and punitively taxing those who do not. This may serve the needs of PayGo, but it is aggravating rather than solving problem #3.

None of this is intended to suggest that the insurance reform being discussed in Congress is not better than our current situation. It is. Nor is it meant to rally opposition to said insurance reform. If nothing else can pass, insurance reform needs to pass.

It is meant to put the problem in its proper context and to instill an understanding that this reform is not the 'end' of health care reform. It is a first, shaky step in the right direction. The issues of consumer costs and economic burden will remain to be addressed, and the left must not forget that. We must continue to raise and address these issues to affect future policy debate as much as possible.

To put it more simply, we need massive reform and even the 'liberals' in Congress are not approaching the problem from a sufficiently radical direction. We should support them, but we should keep pushing in the wake of their success.

Wall Street Journal Admits Support For Public Option Growing

Yes, that's right.

Citing their own poll, carried out jointly with NBC news, they note that support for a public health insurance plan is up to 48% from 43% during the astroturf attack on town-hall meetings.

I usually don't post a lot of polling data here, but I think this is illustrative. It suggests that conservative opposition to the public option (and health care reform in general) is starting to become counterproductive. While the Journal still claims that Americans are opposed to 'his health-care plan' (meaning President Obama's) 42%-38%, these numbers are far less important than the growing support for the public option.

Naturally, the Republicans don't think so. Per a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY):

Don Stewart, spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), said positive movement in favor of the public option is "meaningless" if Americans remain opposed to the broader legislation.

"They can talk about momentum all they want. The momentum is in the Senate Democratic cloakroom. It's not in Topeka, and it's not in Arcadia, Fla.," Mr. Stewart said, referring to the town Mr. Obama was visiting Tuesday.

While this is the kind of argument that is required from a political operative under the current circumstances, it is simply wrong. The reason for this is simple: 'his health-care plan' does not exist. There is no White House bill for those polled to approve or reject. Thus one must assume that opposition to 'his health-care plan' is really disapproval of the plans in Congress now. The plan receiving the most play in the media is the Senate Finance Committee bill. As quite a few writers have said, this is a bad bill. It falls well short of the 'liberal' goals of health care reform and its sops to conservatives are not sufficient to induce the right to support the very idea of health care reform. So it's only natural this bill would not have a very high approval rate the polls. Indeed, as the growth of support for the public plan shows, it is very likely the lack of a public plan in the Finance Committee bill is the reason for significant portion of public opposition to it.

Growing support for the public option means growing support for real health care reform of the kind not provided in the Finance Committee bill as currently written. Plenty of polls, from a plethora of sources, have shown strong support for robust health care reform. Those who do want robust reform will naturally be skeptical of too much moderation in the pursuit of virtue.

The Republican establishment has shot their wad on health care and they know it. While they have successfully created a climate of fear and uncertainty, which is something they do very well, this time it is not going to work to their benefit. It worked in 2004 because it was possible to portray President Bush as a folksy, comforting figure and as a tough guy who would protect the nation. Thus, despite his myriad flaws and incompetencies, they were able to offer fear in one hand and comfort in the other. The problem now is that the Republicans have no leaders to make Americans feel safe about the economy or health care. They can scare Americans about President Obama's reform efforts, but they have nothing to offer to comfort and reassure American voters in its place.

The fact is that, regardless of how the right attempts to portray polling data, Americans want to see the mess the health care industry has become cleaned up. They want to know they can see a doctor if they are hurt or fall ill, they want to know they can do it without going bankrupt, and the current situation is that they do not know either of those things. Republicans can talk about how great American health care is all they want. People who are being sued by their hospital know the real situation.

People do not think they understand HR 3200 or the Finance Committee bill and so they have a hard time supporting them. They understand, or think they understand, the public option and so they can get behind it. As support for the public option grows, it won't matter what Americans think of 'his health-care plan.' Support for the public option means support for robust health care reform and that means the Republicans have lost. Filibusters and bravado may stop legislation, but they won't help the Republican Party. As time goes on and the support for a public option continues to rise, even those who intend to vote against the bill will not want to be seen blocking it from reaching the floor.

Human Resources: The cult of management and why fixing the economy is not enough.

From a Privates Committee during the elections for delegates to the Pennsylvania State Constitutional Convention, quoted in A People's History of The United States (by Howard Zinn):

"An enormous proportion of property vested in a few individuals is dangerous to the rights, and destructive of the common happiness, of mankind; and therefore every free state hath a right by its laws to discourage the possession of such property."

Clearly, not all of revolutionary America was so unflinchingly capitalist as modern conservative authors would like us to believe. One can witness impulses toward socialism not only in the quote above, but also in the writings of Thomas Paine and in the class warfare of pre-revolutionary Boston. For the latter, Founding Father James Otis in 1762:

"I am forced to get my living by the labour of my hand; and the sweat of my brow, as most of you are and obliged to go thro' good report and evil report, for bitter bread, earned under the frowns of some who have no natural or divine right to be above me, and entirely owe their grandeur and honor to grinding the faces of the poor.. .."

Otis, of course, was defending the rights of the young professional and entrepreneurial class against the entrenched power of landed gentry. His words could serve equally as well today, however, as the indictment of that very professional class by the working class. Class prejudice and class struggle have changed very little since 1762 or 1776 even as many other facts of everyday life have become entirely different. The elite of the professional class look down on the middle and lower echelons of their own profession with the same frosty superiority in Scrooge's eyes when he looked down on Bob Cratchit. That hasn't changed since Dickens' time, even though Bob Cratchit V is better paid these days and Ebenezer Scrooge IV probably gives more money to charity. Yet even Bob is able to look down on the old lady who fries his morning breakfast or the kid taking his money at the register.

One of the most fundamental and least attractive facets of human nature is the need to look down on someone else as inferior in order to feel that we ourselves are superior. This hasn't changed as society has grown more technically advanced, it's merely taken new and stranger forms. Yet it also takes forms that would be very recognizable to the Pennsylvania Privates Committee of 1776, not new or strange at all.

One of those that I am most certain would be quickly understood is the concept of 'human resources.' This is the practice of treating those who work for a company as corporate assets rather than as individual human beings. This concept was pioneered during the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, as the first great American corporate powers were expanding too fast and too greatly for the classic negotiation between entrepreneur and employee. They turned to the ideas of Frederick Winslow Taylor, the pioneer of 'managed efficiency' and the inventor of the modern concept of 'scientific management.'

Taylor was not a sociologist but an engineer, and his approach to business was that of an engineer to a machine. Believing that there was 'one best way' to do everything and certain that all one had to do was find that way and then systematize it, Taylor developed four rules from which to run his system. For the purposes of our discussion, the fourth rule is the most important.

4. Divide work nearly equally between managers and workers, so that the managers apply scientific management principles to planning the work and the workers actually perform the tasks.

This was the birth of our modern concept of management and the beginning of the development of the modern concept of human resources as well. Since management was a science, the manager had to be right in their projections and any failure to meet those projections was obviously the fault of the workers. Where supervisors and managers had previously been drawn from the ranks of skilled workers who were promoted for their skills, everything changed. Now it was the understanding of the principles of scientific management that mattered and the manager only needed a broad understanding of the work to be done and not a detailed knowledge of the work itself. Since management was a science, the manager had to be right in their projections and any failure to meet those projections was obviously the fault of the workers.

This was not, strictly, Taylor's intent. It must be noted that his (utopian and probably unrealistic) goal was a partnership between management and labor designed to improve working conditions as much as productivity. The problem was human nature. The human need to feel superior, thus to see others as inferior, is just too powerful to be ignored. When one is responsible for planning and supervising and someone else is responsible for actually doing the work then one is going to feel important and powerful. One will then seek to exercise that power in a myriad collection of petty tyrannies in order to feed that feeling. A modern sociologist would have pointed this out to Taylor immediately, but the social sciences were still in their infancy in Taylor's day.

The results of the application of scientific management is that there are two separate professional classes today. The productive professional class (lawyers, doctors, accountants, salesmen, architects, designers, etc) who actually do something and the managerial class who take credit for a job when it is done. Whereas managers were once intimately acquainted with every aspect of the work being done because of their personal experience in the field, they are increasingly specialists in management without a detailed understanding of the actual work. This means that they are not necessarily truly qualified for their positions, they are simply applying formulae they are taught to believe work. 'Scientific management' has become religious management.

In many ways, it is a cult. Its members are indoctrinated with revealed truth and then warned of the risks of deviating from that truth. When facts or reality collide with the 'truth' they have been taught, their faith denies the real in favor of the 'true.'

Which brings us back to the issue of 'human resources.' Systems do not deal with people, they deal with components. Workers (and even many professionals) become parts in the corporate machine. Managers are charged with operating that machinery. Like many specialized technicians, they are so confident in their own ability that any failure is the fault of inferior tools. Therefore, a suspecialty of technicians is created to put the components of the machine together and make sure that they are functioning properly. The very nature of their job requires a combination of detatchment and understanding that is very nearly impossible to balance. Since it is easier to do the job by being too detatched than by being too understanding, the imbalance rarely works in the favor of the employees of a company.

This is so alien to the spirt of Enlightenment that you may ask why I believe the Pennsylvania Privates Committee of 1776 would recognize such a thing. Well, it was quite common in 17th and 18th century America. It simply was called by a different name.

Perhaps you think that, by comparing the modern attitude of corporate management to corporate employees to slavery, I am being so sensationalistic that this piece is unworthy of being taken seriously at all. Certainly today's workers are enjoying conditions far better than the slaves of antebellum America. Perhaps you believe that the contractual agreement between employer and employee gives employers the right to ask certain sacrifices from employees. I would not totally disagree with that.

The problem is that one cannot have a valid contract with a machine component. One cannot systematize contracts so that everyone is treated precisely the same according to a strict pattern; that is antithetical to the very concept of negotiation and of the contractual relationship. Nor can a one-sided agreement that places the employee at the employer's absolute whim until they choose to quit but offers no restriction on those whims be truly called a 'contract.' This is particularly true if one party can void the contract 'at will' but the other can only do so without penalty when specific conditions are met.

When employees are 'resources' and not human beings, then employers feel the entitlement of ownership. While there are practical questions that certainly make some infringement on the personal sphere of employees necessary, while they are working, there is also a moral line to be drawn between the genuine interests of the business and the infringement of basic human dignity for the bottom line.

As long as this does not change, then it really does not make a huge difference whether we are in recession or enjoying tremendous economic growth. Some people will enjoy vastly more of the American freedoms we take for granted than others. Those people will bear the bulk of the responsibility for the mistakes and failures of American society while the cogs in the machines they operate will bear the bulk of the burden of the consequences of those failures.

The people most responsible for economic downturn will bear the least risk of it actually harming them. As our own recent economic experience has shown.

Fox News for President?

With so much being said on the left and the right about the hostility between Fox News and the White House, it is perhaps only natural that some on the right are pushing for Fox News architect and Fox Studios boss Roger Ailes to run for president. Nor would the notion of a corporate CEO heading up the GOP ticket be entirely at odds with the neoconservative movement's 'government of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations' philosophy of economics and policy.

Leaving Fox News, and Ailes himself, aside for the moment it is still an item of trivia emblematic of our times. This year has seen corporate entities collude to block major labor reform, judges plead guilty to criminal charges related to judicial misconduct on behalf of private prison corporations, and military contractors bring massive pressure to bear on legislators to prevent the government from ceasing to grant contracts to corporations that cover up incidences of alleged rape. These are just three incidents of the most egregious corporate encroachment upon the public sphere. It doesn't take the little things that happen every day into account. When corporations have a such a deeply entitled sense of their ownership of the United States of America, the idea that a corporate CEO should run for president as the standard bearer of the corporate party is almost obvious.

Then throw Fox News back into the picture. The network has a documented history of misrepresenting the news in order to beat a neoconservative political drum. They have been conducting a non-stop offensive against Barack Obama since before he was even the official Democratic nominee. It has only intensified since he was actually elected. Combine this with the culture of corporate entitlement choking the oxygen from the collective brain of the Republican Party and the neoconservative establishment and the notion that the CEO of Fox would be an obvious presidential candidate becomes even more obvious.

Finally, there is Ailes himself. Before going into the media business during the Clinton presidency, Ailes was a political gunslinger for the Republican Party. He worked the 1984 and 1988 election campaigns of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. So he is not stranger to Republican presidential politics.

Ailes is a logical 'anti-Obama' candidate. The conditions are as primed for such an outside-the-box nomination now as they were when Wendell Wilkie captured the Republican nomination to campaign on behalf of corporations against 'socialism' during the Depression and New Deal. Ailes might not have Wilkie's corporate baggage in the way a bank CEO might; Wilkie was immediately tagged by many Americans as the kind of 'practical' businessman who had let the crash of 1929 happen. Ailes, a professional political propagandist, is likely free of that taint.

Despite the tone of some of the sources for the Politico article linked in the first paragraph, I'm not so sure this is a done thing. Professional propagandists don't always like to take the stage and make targets of themselves. Fox has a laundry list of dishonesties and bad associations with which Ailes could be tagged and I'm not sure he wants to expose himself to that. It might be interesting to see him run, however, just to see whether any of the other potential nominees would be interested in taking Fox on in hopes of winning.

That is probably the reason Ailes won't run. As long as Fox remains the media arm of the Republican Party, the GOP's presidential hopefuls will court it for their benefit. If it looks like Fox wants to take control of the Republican Party, all those who might want that control for themselves might suddenly become crusaders for ethical journalism. This could not only threaten Ailes' candidacy, but also threaten the monolithic power of Fox to make opinion and influence other conservative media and the larger conservative message.

Then we might wish to take the toxic corporate culture of our era into mind: A man like Roger Ailes almost certainly feels that, as a CEO, he is more powerful than any president and the job would only be a demotion.

Rapacious Capitalists in Defense of Rape: Why defense contractors want to protect their employees' right to rape one another

Whenever I have had the opportunity, I have always tried hard to draw attention to the inherent abuses inseparable from the current relationship between American business and American government. Well, the opportunity has presented itself once again. They've presented us a with a classic 'good news/bad news' scenario.

First, the good news:

Senator Al Franken (D - MN) added an amendment to a comprehensive defense appropriations bill that would prohibit defense contractors who proactively prevented employees raped by other employees from suing the corporation from receiving defense contracts. This is another bit of proof (the first being Franken's excellent bill to provide disabled veterans with service dogs, co-sponsored with Sen. Johnny Isakson ) that Franken is shaping up to be a very good senator who offers his constituents and the nation more than just another Democrat in the majority. With all due respect to Stuart Smalley, Franken is a much better political thinker, satirist and policy wonk than he is a mainstream comic. Since a gift for acid barbed satire can only lead to a better attitude from which to approach Washington D.C, the Senate is where he almost certainly belongs.

The bad news:

Apparently, major defense contractors do not believe that strong-arming their employees into not bringing suit against them for on-the-job rape by co-workers or superiors is an inappropriate corporate policy. So they are attempting to strong-arm Congress into dropping or weaking the amendment. Does it say more about them or about me that I am not terribly surprised? While I admit to a certain level of misanthropic cynicism about life in general, specifically when it regards corporate activity, I admit it could be the latter... but in this case I really think it says more about them.

Thirty Republicans in the Senate voted against including this amendment in the bill at all and it is very important for everyone suggesting that the GOP is somehow stronger on feminism than liberals to keep that in mind.

However, the Republicans who voted against the amendment (and lost) are less important than corporate pressure and one Democratic senator.

As noted in the link above, the primary target of corporate pressure to weaken or remove the amendment from the bill is Democratic Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii. He has received a fair amount of money from defense contractors and may be amenable to said pressure. If he is, and if he folds under said pressure and weakens or eliminates the amendment, he will be far more culpable an accessory to violent crime than any of the Republicans who voted against the amendment when it was offered. He will not only be joining them in becoming an accessory after the fact, but he will be betraying one of the most liberal constituencies in the nation for campaign donations.

The real point of this, however, is not how the Republicans are so in thrall to corporate power that they vote against denying business to companies that force rape victims to forfeit their legal rights. Nor is it that a Democratic senator from a 'liberal' state may be no better when the rubber hits the road. The real point is the question of what kind of corporation would pressure lawmakers to prevent an amendment being passed to deny business to corporations that effectively condone rape and make themselves accessories after the fact. What kind of corporation is so obsessed with protecting itself from 'liability' that it would feel the need to 'protect' itself by the means this amendment would deny companies defense contracts for using?

The fact that we have to ask these questions is the answer to them. American corporate culture is so obsessed with liability, so determined to defend the bottom line, that questions of decency and morality are meaningless in the face of money. More importantly, this is precisely what the corporate apologists on the right are telling us is moral and proper. The economic priveleges and powers of corporations are inherently of more value than the rights and basic dignity of their employees. This is volia at its most glaringly honest.

I have somewhat more faith that the amendment will not be either excised or emasculated despite the pressures of defense contractors and the rumors out of Washington. I prefer to think better of Senator Inouye until he proves me wrong. If and when that happens, he will have proven himself to be every bit as bad as the rapists who created the issue themselves.

I don't think that is a radical statement at all.

Who was trying to gut Medicare, again?

The number one insurance industry scare tactic related to health care reform as always been the threat that the government will ration your health care access if any sort of federal health care reform passes. The most recent Republican rallying cry against health care reform has been the notion that Democrats are going to cut Medicare. This trope has been kicking around right wing circles for sometime despite the fact that the only plan that would actually cut or ration Medicare services is a Republican plan whose own sponsor has now abandoned it. Yet the trope has gained a lot of traction in a lot of circles because of the skill of the right wing spin machine in exploiting basic human fears.

All this propaganda aside, Democrats recently tried to pass a bill (originally co-sponsored Republican Senator John Kyl of Arizona) to fix the deeply flawed system which Medicare uses to determine payment to physicians. Congress has, for several years now, been ignoring the system of payment with a series of delaying actions to keep the full damage from being done to the Medicare system. This has allowed 'fiscal conservatives' to claim that money is being saved when, in actuality, the system designed to reduce costs is not being implemented in order to prevent turning Medicare into the same kind of health care ghetto as Medicaid. This is a financial shell game that the Democratic leadership and the White House attempted to bring to and end by simply making the system actually in use the legal system of compensation.

Republicans were having none of that. All but one Senate Republican (Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse) voted against cloture, allowing the anti-reform crowd to filibuster the bill if they wish to do so. Eleven Democratic Senators , unfortunately, joined in them in blocking the bill. The fact that Virginia's two Democratic Senators Mark Warner and Jim Webb joined Tennessee's Republican clowns Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker in opposition to the bill was especially galling. I had thought much better of both men. Original co-sponsor John Kyl (see the Malkin link below) voted against cloture and even denied co-sponsoring the bill.

Michelle Malkin, always ready with something nasty to say in such situations, crowed at the failure of 'Obamacare's bribe to doctors.' I understand the GOP's commitment to the rhetoric of fiscal responsibility, but in this case true fiscal responsibility would be to tell the truth to one's selves and the American people about what one is going to spend on health care. A partisan propaganda machine so determined to convince Americans that health care reform is a threat to Medicare and to seniors should probably be supported by a policy machine willing to step up to the plate and do something to secure the stability of medical access for Medicare recipients. When it is not, it shows the truth: the Republican opponents of health care reform are liars who do not care about the cost of human life and economic drain our current system represents. When their actions prove their lies, it is time to stop taking anything they say seriously.

As a brief aside, I should note that there are those who believe the only possible reason the left might have to heap verbal abuse on Michelle Malkin is misogyny. I think it is far more accurate to say that she invites attack upon herself by proving herself to be a lying and unprincipled shill for a morally bankrupt political machine. When one crows about the defeat of a measure intended to clean up a dirty mess, one invites abuse.

Dr. Ron Chusid write a far more incisive analysis of the situation that those offended by Malkin's line of crap should take the time to read.

It should be noted that Republicans alone are not to blame. Democratic Senators Evan Bayh (IN), Robert Byrd (WV), Kent Conrad (ND), Byron Dorgan (NM), Russ Feingold (WI), Herb Kohl (WI), Claire McCaskill (MO), Bill Nelson (FL), Jon Tester (MT), Mark Warner and Jim Webb (VA), Ron Wyden (OR) were joined by Independent caucus-mate Joe Lieberman (CT) in backing the Republicans in this idiotic perpetuation of a corrupt lie. I can only speculate on their reasons. Nelson is the most surprising, as he represents a great many seniors in Florida and was said to be shaky on the Baucus bill because some of its features might look bad to Medicare recipients. So he is willing to vote against properly paying their doctors instead?

More surprising, perhaps, is that Republican-in-Democrat's-clothing Ben Nelson of Nebraska voted in favor of cloture.

Those of you happily polishing your Democratic Party tie tacks should keep this in mind. Not everyone you are voting for is on your side anymore than the Republicans you are voting against. Some of the people choosing to oppose this real fix to a broken payment system were people for whom I had a great deal of respect before seeing the list of votes. Those people have dropped several notches.

All of this goes to show just how deep the tendrils of the insurance companies are sunk into fighting health care reform at all costs. The people claiming to be defending seniors from health care reform stabbed those they claimed to be defending in the back and are crowing about their great accomplishments. Some of those who should have been committed to truly defending seniors from conservative daggers instead helped the right-wingers aim the knives.

What makes my teeth grind the most, however, is Robert Byrd voting against a Medicare fix. I realize he has the full benefits of the Congressional Health Plan at his own disposal, but you would think he'd have a little understanding and compassion for the elderly. All things considered.

A Brief Moment of Self-Expression

Thanks to the hat tip from Southern Beale a few days ago, I've been experiencing an increase in traffic lately. If my stat counter is to be believed, a small but significant number of new readers are checking me out. I have some new commentary being offered by people who've never commented before. All of this is great and makes me smile.

Since I have been getting this new attention, I thought I would take the time to blather on about myself and my blog for those who aren't quite sure what's up.

First, a brief autobiographical essay:

I was born in Southern California and grew up in the Greater Los Angeles metroplex. My parents have been registered Republicans all their lives, but don't let this fool you. My father, despite his fiscal conservatism, is very libertarian on social issues and a strong believer in an improved (as opposed to merely expanded) social safety net. My mother is, and always has been, a straight-up liberal Rockefeller Republican. Couple this with the communal and collectivist sociology of the Mennonite Church in which I received my religious education and you can see that it's only natural I ended up on the left, regardless of the political party to which my parents belonged on paper.

Despite where I ended up, as a teen I flirted with conservative and libertarian politics because of my belief in certain elements of common sense economic and constitutional principles. The problem is that those common sense principles, which conservatives and libertarians rhetorically espouse, had nothing to do with actual right-wing politics. As I learned more about economics and political science, I was drawn more and more to the left. I changed my registration to the Democratic Party in my very early twenties and now, like my parents, my party registration is largely on paper; I am significantly to the left of most mainstream Democrats.

It was also in my early twenties that I met my partner, whom I love very much. For reasons of economics, we moved from California to East Tennessee and I now live in the Tri-Cities roughly half-way between Kingsport and Bristol. In Tennessee, we have had our own experiences with poverty before our circumstances finally stabilized.

It's a lot easier to describe what I believe and oppose than to fit myself into an easy political niche. I believe in free will and reject any notion of predestination, which immediately separates me from the religious right on pretty much every social and moral issue. We enjoy the freedom of individual conscience as long as we respect the natural rights of our fellow human beings. This puts me at odds with libertarians and economic conservatives whose version of individual liberty is simply a lack of regulation that places no limitation on the rights of those with the money and power to do so to shamelessly violate the rights of others. Real individual freedom is impossible in a social and economic environment in which one's degree of liberty is increased by one's wealth and those with less wealth do not enjoy equality before the law with the rich. I would describe myself as 'libertarian' only so far as I believe in the importance of personal freedom. I do not place particular faith in the natural superiority of the 'free market.'

Indeed, it is the nature of the 'free market' where my real left-wing thinking begins. I have written, in the past, about the nature and varying definitions of freedom. It is a word with many shades and meanings that means different things to different people. When speaking about freedom in the political and economic sense, I find it most useful to abandon English and instead make use of the more clear distinctions between definitions of freedom in Russian.

There are two entirely different words for freedom in Russian and they mean two entirely different things. The first word, which represents the freedom advocated by many on the right wing and among the most active anti-statists, is volia. In English, the literal translation of volia would be less 'freedom' and more 'license.' It is the absolute negative freedom espoused by libertarians, the freedom from outside authority. One can do as one pleases and can only be stopped by force. One has the absolute right to respond with force in the face of such an attempt to restrain one's chosen activities. There are no limits to volia, no responsibility to respect any authority or law. It is the ideal freedom of bandits, buccaneers, corporations, Cossacks, and libertarians.

The are some obvious problems with this concept if one examines it closely. First and foremost, volia is not for everyone. It is a Nietzchean or Orwellian freedom for the favored few; the ubermensch is not bound by the same moral laws as the average man and some animals are more equal than others. This form of freedom is for those with the will and power to make it real and everyone else who tries to exercise it gets ground into the dust. When the right-wing in America talks about 'freedom', 'free markets', or 'individual rights' they mean volia. This is freedom for the 'special' people who 'deserve' it, something else I've written about.

The next time one reads a conservative writer going on about 'liberal elitism' or 'arrogance', I hope they keep all this in mind.

The second Russian word for 'freedom' is 'svoboda.' Where volia is absolute and unlimited in scope, and thus very specifically limited to those able to take it and hold it by force, svoboda is something in which everyone shares. No one person can possess svoboda alone, svoboda is the freedom shared by a social body aware of each other's rights and their own responsibilities to each other. It's the freedom that the Apostles talk about in the Bible, shared by the early Christian communities who practiced their own form of democratic socialism. It is the freedom that the tragic Russian Revolution was intended to bring to Russia and the freedom that we, as Americans, brag about but rarely appreciate or protect.

To put it simply, I am utterly opposed to volia and dedicated to the reality of svoboda and its expansion to include the entire American community. That is what this blog is about.