Submitted By: Mike Spindell, Guest Blogger
When I awoke a short time ago my mind was in its usual morning fog that slowly dissipates as I go through my wake-up routine which includes laying out the 35 or so pills that I take to stay alive. That fog mentally is usually a jumble of wide ranging short thoughts that are later forgotten as the fog lifts after my first coffee. On the way to the bathroom for my morning ablutions I found myself thinking about the biggest news all week which had been the shutdown of the government and the crisis that ensued. Suddenly, as an idea arose that woke me from the fog. Political Theater, it is all political theater. The threatened shutdown by the Republican Congressman, led by John Boehner et. al. was merely a show whose purpose was to destroy the publicity that would have surrounded the inception of enrollment in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) dubbed by the conservative PR geniuses “Obamacare”. How obvious this was took my breath away and also gave me some chagrin that it took me so long to see this con job in the making, while I mulled over the ramifications of a government shutdown. As the President has said and as some Republican have opined the GOP’s great fear regarding “Obamacare” is that it will succeed. Since enrollment was scheduled to begin on October 1st, without the shutdown speculation dominating the news cycle there would have been much publicity on the beginning of people enrolling in the plan. There would have been actual discussion of the plan and not just the cacophony of misinformation deftly spread by well placed conservative rumor mongers, broadcast blaringly on FOX News and flacked by the innumerable leaders of the “Tea Party”. Our mainstream media would play their continuing game of false equivalence by blithely accepting all information as being equal and not bothering to supply context when lies are told in the service “informing” the public.
Instead we have a manufactured crisis that sends the ACA to the back pages of virtual news media and we have faux layoffs and service loss endlessly debated. Now in truth this thought make me even a little sad for those “Tea Party” congresspeople that haven’t been let in on the nature of the game, nor their role as pawns in the manipulations of some the wealthy elite in this country. As I explained awhile ago in these guest blogs: http://jonathanturley.org/2011/08/02/tea-party-and-the-myth-of-a-grassroots-movement/#more-38049 and http://jonathanturley.org/2013/02/16/tea-party-a-phony-movement-mantled-as-legitimate/ the so-called “Tea Party” is not a grassroots movement, but the creation of the Koch, via an organization known as “Freedomworks” which they fund. On the Bill Maher show last Friday night one of his panel guests was the President and CEO of “Freedomworks” Matt Kibbe. From my perspective he was debunked by the panel, particularly Congressman Alan Cranston. What caught my attention though, was that Kibbe was at one point railing about how big government was run by insider lobbyists. None on the panel, or Maher, were perceptive enough to call him out on this since he is the quintessential lobbyist for the Koch Brothers. To my mind there is nothing to see here folks, move along and allow yourselves to be distracted by yet another manufactured crisis, designed to prevent you from actually evaluating the health care plan that is now available to you without adequate health care, or who are paying far too much for what should be a basic right of citizenship, health care. The Affordable Care Act is not my ideal of what American health insurance should be about because I believe in the “single payer” system used in most civilized nations. However, it is far better than what we already have and because of that should be fairly evaluated by the public. Perhaps though that fair evaluation will never get a chance since there are those who consciously work to distract us through propaganda, mythology and political theater into supporting what is in our own worst interests.
After I had written and posted this to my surprise I discovered this article in The New York Times. “A Federal Budget Crisis Months in the Planning” http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/us/a-federal-budget-crisis-months-in-the-planning.html?hp&_r=0 . A short excerpt:
“WASHINGTON — Shortly after President Obama started his second term, a loose-knit coalition of conservative activists led by former Attorney General Edwin Meese III gathered in the capital to plot strategy. Their push to repeal Mr. Obama’s health care law was going nowhere, and they desperately needed a new plan.
Out of that session, held one morning in a location the members insist on keeping secret, came a little-noticed “blueprint to defunding Obamacare,” signed by Mr. Meese and leaders of more than three dozen conservative groups.
It articulated a take-no-prisoners legislative strategy that had long percolated in conservative circles: that Republicans could derail the health care overhaul if conservative lawmakers were willing to push fellow Republicans — including their cautious leaders — into cutting off financing for the entire federal government.”
Perhaps my subconscious was channelling, but it seems that my idea through the morning fog has some weight to it.
Submitted By: Mike Spindell, Guest Blogger
OS: Even more dangerous, I believe Obama could issue a proclamation declaring a state of economic emergency and fund the government anyway. He can cite a Constitutional crisis, and demand the Supreme Court weigh in on the principle that a passed law is inherently and implicitly funded by its passing, in perpetuity until it is repealed, and immune to budget constraints in the execution of its stated purpose. If he does not want to be held at gunpoint, Obama can take their gun away.
The Congress has no police force to prevent him from doing that and if Obama issues executive orders to start the checks flowing, they will flow. He is the chief executive over all agencies, able to summarily fire any agency employee for insubordination, and pardon them if they break a law by doing so. None of them will disobey the emperor, that is the new reality.
This stalemate continues only as long as Obama is willing to tolerate it; it is just theater and nothing more.
“…most people just parrot the information given to them by a corrupted media.”
********************************
Who is ‘most” and where did you arrive at that? Most is a statistic, a number meaning 51% or more. So how do you arrive at that figure?
If you have more accurate poll data that that generated by professional pollsters for the Washington Post/ABC news operation, let’s have it.
As for “parroting” and “corrupted media,” you have never been guilty of spouting the party line given to you by Fox, the propaganda outlet for the Republican party. 🙄
OS wrote: “you have never been guilty of spouting the party line given to you by Fox, the propaganda outlet for the Republican party.”
I have mentioned many times that I get my information from many sources. With respect to television news, I usually flip back and forth between CNN and Fox News while doing my cardio workout at the gym. Sometimes I look at NBC, but that network is almost unbearable because they skew what they present so much and pat each other on the back for how smart they are while repeating nonsense that it becomes a bit nauseating, which interferes with my workout.
Fox News is a great news channel for hearing different sides to an argument. They are not a propaganda outlet for the Republican party. They might appear that way to you because they are just about the only network that actually allows Republicans to present their viewpoint without wrinkling their nose and being patronizing. Probably half of Fox News staff embraces conservative and traditional perspective which characterizes Republicans and Libertarians in contrast to other news outlets that have just a token person or two. It was a treat to see CNN offer an interview with Ted Cruz yesterday, but stuff like that is more the exception than the rule, and Candy Crowley seemed to be holding her nose in distaste through the interview. Because the GOP is not sending memos or talking points to Fox News, telling them what to say, it would be improper to claim that they are a propaganda outlet for the Republican party.
I think I have mentioned before that Fox News actually led me to check out Professor Turley’s blog here. I have listened to Professor Turley’s news analysis many times on Fox News, and I have liked his perspective on many Constitutional issues. It is the ability of Fox News to engage people like Professor Turley that has made Fox News the most watched cable news channel in our nation. The ratings for Fox News often exceed CNN and MSNBC combined. You don’t get to be such a popular news outlet like Fox News by being an arm of the Republican party. The highest rated program on Fox News is Bill O’Reilly’s show, The O’Reilly Factor, and he is clearly not a Republican.
Give me a break. Read what John of Orange has said repeatedly. He wants to give the President two choices: defund the ACA completely, or delay it one year.
What the Orangeman has not said is that in one year, once again he has no intention of letting it go forward. It would be back to square one and everyone knows it. He says he does not have the votes to get the bill out of the House. If that is indeed so, he can prove he is not lying by bringing it to a vote of the full House. OK, Johnny, PROVE IT!!
If Mr. Obama decides to negotiate, he can put his own demands on the table. Tell the Republicans he will veto every bill coming out of congress unless his own demands are met:
1. Make same sex marriage legal in every state.
2. Make abortions legal on demand in every state, and make the impediments thrown up by local politicians illegal.
3. Remove the annual cap on Social Security contributions.
4. Restore the Fairness Doctrine to broadcast media.
5. Restore all banking regulations that have been repealed in the past thirty five years.
6. Re-regulate the airline industry to pre-1980 rules.
7. Fully fund and staff all regulatory agencies.
DavidM:
I understand the containment devices around the monuments are called Barrackicades.
I am not sure how that fits in but it seems a bit of an indication as to whom is perceived to be in the wrong.
as far as I know, the congress is in charge of the checkbook and it is controled by republicans.
Bron wrote: “as far as I know, the congress is in charge of the checkbook and it is controled by republicans.”
No. The Republicans are not in charge of Congress or the checkbook. They only have a say in the matter. The Congress has two houses, the House of Representatives and the Senate. The Republicans are the majority in the House of Representatives, but the Democrats control the Senate. VP Biden and Democrat Senator Leahy preside over the Senate. Senate majority leader Harry Reid represents the Democrats in the Senate and sets the agenda for the Senate. President Obama has veto power over any legislation they produce. Without a two-thirds majority in both houses, Congress cannot override the President. That isn’t going to happen. The President also is responsible for presenting a budget for Congress to vote upon and approve. So for all effective purposes, President Obama controls the checkbook.
Right now, the Democrat Senate and the Democrat President are blocking the Continuing Resolutions passed by the Republicans in the House of Representatives. The reason is that their Continuing Resolutions do not address the funding required by Obamacare, which President Obama originally claimed would be revenue neutral and not cost a penny. Because of their rejection of the CR’s that do not address the Democrat pet project called Obamacare, about 17% of the federal government is not properly funded. However, they did accept Republican resolution to guarantee backpay to all furloughed workers. Therefore, 17% of the federal government are on paid vacation while we wait for President Obama and the Senate to accept the funding resolutions offered by the Republicans.
David, if you didn’t exist, we would have to invent you. The perfect foil.
Let’s see if I have this straight. A minority of a minority rump group holds the leader of their party in thrall. The leader is so scared of them and their billionaire backers he is afraid to bring legislation funding the government to a vote. If the vote is not held, it will trigger a new recession, and in all likelihood take the global world economy down with it. He says that in order for him to give in and allow a vote, the President must capitulate and scrap his premier achievement in office. He says that is the only way, and makes it clear that his version of “negotiating” is to give the President a choice of destroying his health care bill or destroying the economy. Sure sounds like hostage taking to me.
Back in October 2005, blogger John Rogers wrote that the lowest a political party could go in approval rating was 27%. At that time, the Republican Party had an approval rating of 37%. He thought the hard core base of completely nutso true believers was 27% and therefore polls could go no lower.
I see the Republican Party had new numbers in the Washington Post/ABC News poll just released: 24%
They set a new low and broke through the baseline. Now, they only have Basement Cat to keep them company.
Way to go David. Always ahead of the curve. Carry on.
OS wrote: “He says that in order for him to give in and allow a vote, the President must capitulate and scrap his premier achievement in office.”
You are misrepresenting the facts. The second bill simply asked for a one year delay, the same delay Obama had granted numerous corporations. They wanted the people to have the same benefit as the rich executives beholding to Obama.
Subsequent bills did not even ask for that. They just tried to pass numerous bills to provide funding to government without any strings at all attached to Obamacare. The ACA was not mentioned at all. These were clean CR’s.
So they are not asking Obama to scrap the legislation. I’m sure they would want to do that, but they are reasonable negotiators, willing to compromise their position.
OS wrote: “I see the Republican Party had new numbers in the Washington Post/ABC News poll just released: 24%”
Not surprising when most people just parrot the information given to them by a corrupted media. You do that right here in this post, requiring me to set the record straight for you based upon facts rather than emotional mischaracterizations.
🙂
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://media.wbur.org/wordpress/12/files/2012/05/homer_the_scream.jpg&imgrefurl=http://onpoint.wbur.org/2012/05/02/edvard-munchs-the-scream-up-for-auction&h=360&w=288&sz=32&tbnid=vapyJgVX55YsTM:&tbnh=124&tbnw=99&zoom=1&usg=__-jHZFcI7RUXfa5UhAjgaJyfD1m4=&docid=PoW9qWLV54MHeM&sa=X&ei=QudSUpafB6LCyQGHn4GQBA&ved=0CEYQ9QEwBQ
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://nyogalleristny.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/8850-munch-the-scream-e1336013995741.jpg&imgrefurl=http://galleristny.com/2012/05/sothebys-hauls-in-330-6-m-as-munch-scream-soars/&h=1981&w=2540&sz=1750&tbnid=uwo9yQL_LL-pgM:&tbnh=115&tbnw=147&zoom=1&usg=__O_AZ-v3QrM7d0Irdyl-BybskLAE=&docid=S7az7Ya1AMB_LM&sa=X&ei=QudSUpafB6LCyQGHn4GQBA&ved=0CEMQ9QEwBA
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-10-06/gravity
“An Open Letter “To Whom It May Concern” 🙂
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-10-07/open-letter-whom-it-may-concern
I hate WordPress.
Posted on Facebook by Matthew Rose:
Oct 2008: “You’ll never get elected and pass healthcare.”
Nov 2008: “We’ll never let you pass healthcare.”
Jan 2009: “We are going to shout you down every time you try to pass healthcare.”
July 2009: “We will fight to the death every attempt you make to pass healthcare.”
Dec 2009: “We will destroy you if you even consider passing healthcare.”
March 2010: “We can’t believe you just passed healthcare.”
April 2010: “We are going to overturn healthcare.”
Sept 2010: “We are going to repeal healthcare.”
Jan 2011: “We are going to destroy healthcare.”
Feb 2012: “We are going to elect a candidate who will immediately revoke healthcare.”
June 2012: “We will go to the Supreme Court, and they will overturn healthcare.”
Aug 2012: “The American people will never re-elect you, because they don’t want healthcare.”
Oct 2012: “We can’t wait to win the election and explode healthcare.”
Nov 2012: “We can’t believe you just got re-elected and that we can’t repeal healthcare.”
Feb 2013: “We’re still going to vote to obliterate healthcare.”
June 2013: “We can’t believe the Supreme Court just upheld healthcare.”
July 2013: “We’re going to vote like 35 more times to erase healthcare.”
Sept 2013: “We are going to leverage a government shutdown into defunding, destroying, obliterating, overturning, repealing, dismantling, erasing and ripping apart healthcare.”
Oct 2013: “WHY AREN’T YOU NEGOTIATING???”
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Post by Matthew Rose.
David,
You are a party hack…..certainly you have had your share of meetings….. or you got dropped on your head again…..no one can be this stupid…..or can they?
Far-Right Republicans Could Hit A Tipping Point As Support Falters
The Huffington Post
By Ashley Alman
Posted: 10/07/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/06/far-right-republicans_n_4055431.html
Excerpt:
Tension is brewing in the Republican Party as the federal government shutdown enters its seventh day and far-right members of the GOP show no sign of letting up.
The shutdown — which has already affected hundreds of thousands of federal employees and hit critical government programs — is bringing the Republican Party to a boiling point, angering GOP fundraisers and throwing a wrench in the works for the upcoming 2014 elections.
“People are totally annoyed,” one GOP fundraiser told the Washington Post.
Backers of American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS — two influential Republican fundraising groups — attended a conference in Washington D.C. over the weekend. According to the Post, many attendees had similar concerns: they wanted to see the end of Obamacare just as much as the next conservative, but not at the cost of a government shutdown.
“It appears that we’ve got a bunch of crazies running around — one from Texas and some from other places,” Al Hoffman Jr., former finance chairman for the Republican National Committee, told the Post. “I love the idea of defunding Obamacare. However, I don’t think it’s going to happen until we have a majority in the Senate and in the House.”
“I oppose Obamacare as much as anyone else does, but this is not the way to repeal it,” Bobbie Kilberg, a Republican operative who has worked for Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, said to the Post.
Members of the Republican party have voiced concerns over the “Ted Cruz wing of the party”: Tea party-backed members who have relentlessly pushed defunding Obamacare at the cost of a government shutdown. Now, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) and their colleagues are jeopardizing the party’s funding.
“There are a lot of major donors who feel that until the Republican Party can field people who have a vested opinion of what to do and to do it in a prompt and efficient way, we’re going to withhold giving money,” Hoffman told the Post, saying the freeze could affect “a lot of current far-right Republicans.”
Bobby Barrister, So I am selfish[I guess JFK wasn’t your guy], and now crazy. As I’ve said previously, people who know me, or merely read my words here w/o an agenda, know your personal attacks are amongst many things, simply wrong.
Mike,
We are being manipulated all the time. The manipulators have been successful. They have the common people warring with each other–red against blue…Democrats against Republicans…liberal against conservative…private sector workers against public sector workers, etc. And while we the common people are arguing with/fighting each other, the corporate and political manipulators are robbing us blind. Our tax dollars bail out millionaires and billionaires. The pension funds of both private sector and public sector workers are being plundered.
*****
Corporations Are Stealing Pension Funds – Dylan Ratigan Show – 9/15/2011
Dave says: People assume that health care is a right, why?
Because you have a right to life?
Dave says: Because you put a government gun to a doctors head and say do as I say?
Do you think that is necessary? If you believe in free markets, then why can’t we the people, through our government, hire doctors as employees to work in our hospitals? We can pay doctors whatever the market demands, some will choose to work for us and some will not. Exactly the same way we hire military doctors: We can send them to medical school and teach them to be a brain surgeon or GP or oncology doctor, in return for, say, a fifteen year commitment as an M.D. working in government run hospitals, for the same salary and benefits as, perhaps, a one-star general earns. When their commitment is up, around the age of 45, they can continue with promotions and a greater salary, or move on to the private sector, where they can easily work another 20 years and earn more money if they wish to do so. Many military doctors remain in the military for life despite their option to leave and practice privately at twice or three times the salary; I know one personally (an orthopedic surgeon) that served in the Army for 40 years before retiring.
Nobody has to hold a gun to their head. Some believe they are paid well enough to be more than comfortable, they feel like they are doing the country a necessary service and saving lives, and they like the work environment: Hours are better, and for many that take their Hippocratic Oath seriously, making life-altering medical decisions based upon whether individual patients can afford to survive is repellent.
Dave says: This type of thinking has lead to the explosion in health care costs in the US. What incentives do doctors have to charge patients the minimum cost? None!
You are mistaken, the doctors don’t decide what to charge, the insurance companies decide what they will pay. I worked in a Hospital for three years and have intimate knowledge of their billing procedures. For many thousands of defined procedures, pricing is out of the hands of the doctors and in the hands of insurance companies and hospitals.
Dave says: It’s a utopian idea to force people to care for you, bottom line, everything costs.
Your problem is extremism. Bottom line: It almost never makes sense. Is it a utopian idea to force people to care for their children? Is it a utopian idea to force people to not steal and murder? Is it a utopian idea to force somebody to adhere to a contract?
It is not. YOU are the one engaging in utopian idealism, in your extremist utopia apparently you are not obligated to contribute to the functioning of society in any way, but for some mysterious reason society still protects you from the predators that would steal your property and enslave you and your family to work their farms.
The only way you earn a living is by using the fruits of tax-paid infrastructure; the roads and bridges, the sanitation systems, the police and courts and jails that prevent your victimization by thieves, frauds, and worse.
Dave says: There is either majority rule, screw all the minorities or there is protection of individual rights and liberty.
Except majority rule doesn’t screw the minorities, because in a Democracy the majority decides the law, filtered through the Constitution that protects the rights of minorities, and then the law applies to everybody. NOT just the minority, but the majority that voted for it as well.
Dave says: If you truly believe you have a right to dictate to doctors that they must do what you say, you’re an authoritarian nothing more.
Except, as I outlined, that is not a necessary condition to provide national health care. Nobody has to be enslaved. We have 612,000 MDs in this country; their average earnings are $190,000 per year. Which means, if we set a reasonable wage to hire them as civil servants at about $190K plus benefits, we will get enough takers to staff and run our hospitals.
How much would that cost us, if most of our doctors were voluntarily civil servants instead of private practitioners? NOTHING MORE, because the money they are earning is money we are already paying them!
In fact we could pay quite a bit less for our health care, because the insurance companies would not be skimming 20% or 30% off the top of our premiums before paying the doctors, and the hospitals would not be gouging us for Tylenol and tripling the cost of a hospital stay, because all the nurses, orderlies, and all the employees of the Hospital would also be civil servants, earning the same average wage they earn right now, but without anybody earning a fortune on the misery of patients.
Nationalizing health care does not have to abandon the principles of free choice in employment. We made our military all volunteer, nobody is forced to serve, yet we have soldiers that choose to serve, and are paid reasonable wages exclusively by the government, which must compete for their service in the marketplace. Our police forces are all volunteers, nobody forces anybody to be a cop (or firefighter or sewer worker or garbage collector, for that matter), the governmental entities that employ those people have to compete for them, pay-wise, with all other industries and occupations they might choose instead. Yet the jobs get filled; the fires get fought, the garbage gets collected.
What makes health care any different? If the government offered the jobs, at some level of pay well-qualified doctors, nurses and other medical technicians would voluntarily take the jobs for their own reasons, exactly the way the same jobs are filled by un-coerced volunteers in the military (and at significantly less pay than their civilian counterparts).
You don’t understand the issues, Dave, you are angry about something that would never happen. If we don’t draft soldiers, we certainly won’t draft doctors and nurses; it isn’t necessary in any way, shape or form. We don’t have to hold a gun to their head, they will apply in droves because they want to earn a comfortable salary working a simple 40 hour week and see their wife and kids in the evenings.
Rommel: Never, never, never underestimate your enemy
Understanding the Culture of White Right-Wing Rage That Produced the Govt. Shutdown
^http://www.alternet.org/media/understanding-culture-white-right-wing-rage-produced-govt-shutdown
Tea Party Radicalism Is Misunderstood: Meet the “Newest Right”
^http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/tea-party-radicalism-misunderstood-meet-newest-right
The Libertarian Billionaire Agenda Propelling the Tea Party Monster That Has Shut Down Congress
^http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/libertarian-billionaire-agenda-propelling-tea-party-monster-has-shut-down
What amazes me through this shutdown, as we coast towards default, is that the Tea Party members in the House are doing this in the name of “fiscal sanity”. If they bring us into default it would be the equivalent of refusing to pay the mortgage, make car payments and to destroy your credit rating all because your spouse overdrew on the credit card. When the credit card company was happy to raise your borrowing limit because of your exemplary payment record in the past.
THANK YOU MIKE S EXCELLENT ARTICLE. yes i yelled it. im hoarse right now so thanks to the cap key. i found out quite a few years back about how the corporation tends to create distractions so we the people do not see the real picture. and by the time we are no longer distracted the damage is done. so i immediately learned to look behind the distractions to see them for what they are and to find out what is really going. with the help of many of you here on this blog my education has grown dramatically. and for that i Thank You all..!!!