Afghanistan and Health Care
I was urged yesterday to return my attention to the health care debate and stop spending so much time on the War in Afghanistan. But for me the two are linked. As long as National Defense continues to occupy such a large piece of our discretionary spending (above), we will never adequately address our domestic social needs. Martin Luther King, in one of his least quoted speeches, saw the relationship between war and domestic issues so clearly.
A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor — both black and white — through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such…
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.
Until we decide that we will no longer be the world’s unpaid cop, all of the issues that plague our democracy–education, health care, alternative energy–will get short shrift because of the “demonic destructive suction tube” called the defense budget. I am deeply worried that Obama has become a prisoner of the Establishment, and that just like every Democrat in the White House since JFK, he will do nothing to tame the voracious appetite of the Military Industrial Complex President Eisenhower warned us about. In closing his speech at Riverside Church, Dr. King spoke of the “fierce urgency of now” a line ironically quoted by President Obama, but without the lines that followed it that should be our current battle cry.
If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.
Amen.
Maybe we should stop showing a big undifferentiated Lump for National Security and begin showing some breakouts for things like Nation Building . . . . If the Pentagon and Congress were running a business, they would be expected to allocate costs to various profit centers — and if we are going to claim there is a real rationale for these NB expenses we should be willing to recognize thier “qualitative profits” as well as their costs. I can’t say that it would surprise me a lot if the slices for NB Transportation, NB Health and NB Social Services were larger than the domestic ones . . . .
Maybe we should stop showing a big undifferentiated Lump for National Security and begin showing some breakouts for things like Nation Building . . . . If the Pentagon and Congress were running a business, they would be expected to allocate costs to various profit centers — and if we are going to claim there is a real rationale for these NB expenses we should be willing to recognize thier “qualitative profits” as well as their costs. I can’t say that it would surprise me a lot if the slices for NB Transportation, NB Health and NB Social Services were larger than the domestic ones . . . .
Might want to take a look at the Left-Liberal Fact Correction Channel on the “Afghanistan” meme. Of course, Huffington is a dam’ furriner…
Might want to take a look at the Left-Liberal Fact Correction Channel on the “Afghanistan” meme. Of course, Huffington is a dam’ furriner…
And here’s a little experiment in html by this web-guage pre-literate, on the subject of how it’s now or at least in large part “all about the women and girls,” not including the ones that become scattered body parts we comfortably call “collateral damage” from our “stand-way-off” video-game war:
And here’s a little experiment in html by this web-guage pre-literate, on the subject of how it’s now or at least in large part “all about the women and girls,” not including the ones that become scattered body parts we comfortably call “collateral damage” from our “stand-way-off” video-game war:
Oh well. Here’s the video –
http://rethinkafghanistan.com/blog/?p=604
Oh well. Here’s the video –
http://rethinkafghanistan.com/blog/?p=604
And while I have a spare moment, may I ask that we henceforth call it what it is: the “War Department Money,” not that bullshit eyewash “national defense?” Or pick another more accurate epithet — just so it conveys the truth that this jet of arterial bleeding at home and abroad has nothing to do with “defense.” Or with anything that rationally could be called a “budget.”
And while I have a spare moment, may I ask that we henceforth call it what it is: the “War Department Money,” not that bullshit eyewash “national defense?” Or pick another more accurate epithet — just so it conveys the truth that this jet of arterial bleeding at home and abroad has nothing to do with “defense.” Or with anything that rationally could be called a “budget.”
I couldn,t agree with you more. Lets not buy any new “weapon systems” for a few years, health care paid for. Lets take half the money we’re spending in Afghanistan and use it to build roads, schools, help farmers. Health care paid for, war won. I am afraid you are right that Obama is not only a prisoner, he is one of them. Time to do away with two party system
I couldn,t agree with you more. Lets not buy any new “weapon systems” for a few years, health care paid for. Lets take half the money we’re spending in Afghanistan and use it to build roads, schools, help farmers. Health care paid for, war won. I am afraid you are right that Obama is not only a prisoner, he is one of them. Time to do away with two party system
I couldn,t agree with you more. Lets not buy any new “weapon systems” for a few years, health care paid for. Lets take half the money we’re spending in Afghanistan and use it to build roads, schools, help farmers. Health care paid for, war won. I am afraid you are right that Obama is not only a prisoner, he is one of them. Time to do away with two party system
Jon,
Obama signed on as a full-fledged member of the establishment the day after his meeting with David Rockefeller. His signature on the bottom-line was his vote the very next day for retro-immunity for the telecoms.
Wasn’t anybody paying any attention to what that vote signified? Obama IS a part of the Establishment.
Jon,
Obama signed on as a full-fledged member of the establishment the day after his meeting with David Rockefeller. His signature on the bottom-line was his vote the very next day for retro-immunity for the telecoms.
Wasn’t anybody paying any attention to what that vote signified? Obama IS a part of the Establishment.
Jon,
Obama signed on as a full-fledged member of the establishment the day after his meeting with David Rockefeller. His signature on the bottom-line was his vote the very next day for retro-immunity for the telecoms.
Wasn’t anybody paying any attention to what that vote signified? Obama IS a part of the Establishment.
Wow,
Who knew McCain was right when he said Obama was an appeaser?
The irony being that Obama is trying to appease the Republicans.
And the Republicans are showing him exactly why appeasement never works.
Who knew that both Hillary and McCain were right when they said Obama lacks experience?
Here’s a guy who was elected on a platform of change, who turns out to be a business-as-usual politician.
So either he’s a very bad politician or else he doesn’t give a shit.
Afghanistan and health care probably are linked.
Guess who’s not going to change either?
Either cause he doesn’t really want to affect change, or else because he can’t.
I’m not really sure which is worse.
Wow,
Who knew McCain was right when he said Obama was an appeaser?
The irony being that Obama is trying to appease the Republicans.
And the Republicans are showing him exactly why appeasement never works.
Who knew that both Hillary and McCain were right when they said Obama lacks experience?
Here’s a guy who was elected on a platform of change, who turns out to be a business-as-usual politician.
So either he’s a very bad politician or else he doesn’t give a shit.
Afghanistan and health care probably are linked.
Guess who’s not going to change either?
Either cause he doesn’t really want to affect change, or else because he can’t.
I’m not really sure which is worse.
Wow,
Who knew McCain was right when he said Obama was an appeaser?
The irony being that Obama is trying to appease the Republicans.
And the Republicans are showing him exactly why appeasement never works.
Who knew that both Hillary and McCain were right when they said Obama lacks experience?
Here’s a guy who was elected on a platform of change, who turns out to be a business-as-usual politician.
So either he’s a very bad politician or else he doesn’t give a shit.
Afghanistan and health care probably are linked.
Guess who’s not going to change either?
Either cause he doesn’t really want to affect change, or else because he can’t.
I’m not really sure which is worse.
Oh, and as for America being the “unpaid cop” of the world – gimme a break!
America has been living large on the kickbacks its been taking while “walking the beat”.
A fat sheriff on the take would be a more apt metaphor.
The problem isn’t that America is not being paid. It’s being paid tons – pushing its weight on all the other nations of the world, taking what it pleases and turning a blind eye to its allies’ actions.
The real problem is that America is a modern day Sparta. Sure it also exports “culture” – unlike the original Sparta. But that’s only because it forces its copyright/IP system on the rest of the world. Making back its trade deficit by shoving Britney Spears and Hollywood shite like Transformers 2 down everybody else’s throats.
Man, I really hope the internet kills whatever’s left of the movie and music industries. Maybe then (and only then) you won’t have enough money for another war in Afghanistan.
Or you’d have to fire the corrupt Blackwater mercenaries.
Or you’d stop supporting your other military bulldog – the IDF – and we’d finally be forced to sit down with our neighbours and maybe get some peace in this tortured part of the world.
But if you still persist in thinking of the US as some poor unpaid cop (boo-hoo-hoo…), then let me tell you something – America 3.0 is still a long way off.
Oh, and as for America being the “unpaid cop” of the world – gimme a break!
America has been living large on the kickbacks its been taking while “walking the beat”.
A fat sheriff on the take would be a more apt metaphor.
The problem isn’t that America is not being paid. It’s being paid tons – pushing its weight on all the other nations of the world, taking what it pleases and turning a blind eye to its allies’ actions.
The real problem is that America is a modern day Sparta. Sure it also exports “culture” – unlike the original Sparta. But that’s only because it forces its copyright/IP system on the rest of the world. Making back its trade deficit by shoving Britney Spears and Hollywood shite like Transformers 2 down everybody else’s throats.
Man, I really hope the internet kills whatever’s left of the movie and music industries. Maybe then (and only then) you won’t have enough money for another war in Afghanistan.
Or you’d have to fire the corrupt Blackwater mercenaries.
Or you’d stop supporting your other military bulldog – the IDF – and we’d finally be forced to sit down with our neighbours and maybe get some peace in this tortured part of the world.
But if you still persist in thinking of the US as some poor unpaid cop (boo-hoo-hoo…), then let me tell you something – America 3.0 is still a long way off.
Thank you for that.
Thank you for that.
Assuming for a moment that this pie chart is roughly accurate, let’s acknowledge that it does not represent a fair portrait of the public spending priorities of Americans. At issue is our constitutional assignment and restriction of federal powers, and our corresponding reservation of certain powers to the states and their subdivisions.
To a great extent, the argument that the feds should spend more on butter flies in the face of our collective agreement, in constitutional form, on what the feds should and should not handle. I’m not sure–not sure at all–that the central government should take a larger role in health care, say, or in education. Rather, I’m excited about the prospect of the feds taking qualitatively different roles.
Let me give an example. I don’t mean this as a sop to our libertarian friends, but John Stewart Mill believed that were a central government to provide for education it should do so “only to hold the rest up to a certain standard”. For about a century that was the way Washington handled its interventions in public education–as a kind of FBI lab with, in the signal case of counter-integration, enforcement powers. So that’s one concept of an appropriate role for our collective, but enlarging that slice of the federal pie is an altogether different concept.
I don’t know whether their counterparts in health care ever are known by this name, but in education the federal expansionists are called “nationalists”, the ones who seek to nationalize. There are very strong arguments against further nationalization of education. The same may be the case in health care, but as that’s not my field I reserve judgment, and listen.
As it stands, it seems logical and constitutionally sound for the federal government to concern itself principally with the security of the nation as a whole. While I’d never presume to calculate whether 56% is too much, or 46% too little, I would argue that cost reduction, combined with improved effectiveness, on all fronts, always is desirable.
Therefore I can’t buy into a notion that the size of the overall pie is fixed, such that the debate consists in measuring the size of its slices. I’m rather uncomfortably in the camp of Jimmy Carter on this.
Assuming for a moment that this pie chart is roughly accurate, let’s acknowledge that it does not represent a fair portrait of the public spending priorities of Americans. At issue is our constitutional assignment and restriction of federal powers, and our corresponding reservation of certain powers to the states and their subdivisions.
To a great extent, the argument that the feds should spend more on butter flies in the face of our collective agreement, in constitutional form, on what the feds should and should not handle. I’m not sure–not sure at all–that the central government should take a larger role in health care, say, or in education. Rather, I’m excited about the prospect of the feds taking qualitatively different roles.
Let me give an example. I don’t mean this as a sop to our libertarian friends, but John Stewart Mill believed that were a central government to provide for education it should do so “only to hold the rest up to a certain standard”. For about a century that was the way Washington handled its interventions in public education–as a kind of FBI lab with, in the signal case of counter-integration, enforcement powers. So that’s one concept of an appropriate role for our collective, but enlarging that slice of the federal pie is an altogether different concept.
I don’t know whether their counterparts in health care ever are known by this name, but in education the federal expansionists are called “nationalists”, the ones who seek to nationalize. There are very strong arguments against further nationalization of education. The same may be the case in health care, but as that’s not my field I reserve judgment, and listen.
As it stands, it seems logical and constitutionally sound for the federal government to concern itself principally with the security of the nation as a whole. While I’d never presume to calculate whether 56% is too much, or 46% too little, I would argue that cost reduction, combined with improved effectiveness, on all fronts, always is desirable.
Therefore I can’t buy into a notion that the size of the overall pie is fixed, such that the debate consists in measuring the size of its slices. I’m rather uncomfortably in the camp of Jimmy Carter on this.
Assuming for a moment that this pie chart is roughly accurate, let’s acknowledge that it does not represent a fair portrait of the public spending priorities of Americans. At issue is our constitutional assignment and restriction of federal powers, and our corresponding reservation of certain powers to the states and their subdivisions.
To a great extent, the argument that the feds should spend more on butter flies in the face of our collective agreement, in constitutional form, on what the feds should and should not handle. I’m not sure–not sure at all–that the central government should take a larger role in health care, say, or in education. Rather, I’m excited about the prospect of the feds taking qualitatively different roles.
Let me give an example. I don’t mean this as a sop to our libertarian friends, but John Stewart Mill believed that were a central government to provide for education it should do so “only to hold the rest up to a certain standard”. For about a century that was the way Washington handled its interventions in public education–as a kind of FBI lab with, in the signal case of counter-integration, enforcement powers. So that’s one concept of an appropriate role for our collective, but enlarging that slice of the federal pie is an altogether different concept.
I don’t know whether their counterparts in health care ever are known by this name, but in education the federal expansionists are called “nationalists”, the ones who seek to nationalize. There are very strong arguments against further nationalization of education. The same may be the case in health care, but as that’s not my field I reserve judgment, and listen.
As it stands, it seems logical and constitutionally sound for the federal government to concern itself principally with the security of the nation as a whole. While I’d never presume to calculate whether 56% is too much, or 46% too little, I would argue that cost reduction, combined with improved effectiveness, on all fronts, always is desirable.
Therefore I can’t buy into a notion that the size of the overall pie is fixed, such that the debate consists in measuring the size of its slices. I’m rather uncomfortably in the camp of Jimmy Carter on this.
Showing graphs that leave out the “non-discretionary” spending on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security in the context of a healthcare debate is, well… intellectually questionable?
Mind you I totally agree with cutting WAY back on defense spending and withdrawing from the war nonsense. But we need to do that just to balance the budget, not to pile on more failed, inefficient unionized government bureaucracy.
Showing graphs that leave out the “non-discretionary” spending on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security in the context of a healthcare debate is, well… intellectually questionable?
Mind you I totally agree with cutting WAY back on defense spending and withdrawing from the war nonsense. But we need to do that just to balance the budget, not to pile on more failed, inefficient unionized government bureaucracy.
This chart lacks the dimension showing what the states do. Our collective expression is not federal only. In hard times such as these, governmentally responsibilities are indeed reapportioned, but the reapportionment is as much on the federal -> state plane as it is an apportionment of duties on the plane of the federal pie. Call these “chess pies”, if you will, but it’s a case of three-dimensional, not two-dimensional, chess.
This chart lacks the dimension showing what the states do. Our collective expression is not federal only. In hard times such as these, governmentally responsibilities are indeed reapportioned, but the reapportionment is as much on the federal -> state plane as it is an apportionment of duties on the plane of the federal pie. Call these “chess pies”, if you will, but it’s a case of three-dimensional, not two-dimensional, chess.
Two things about MLK on this subject:
1) He’d good reason to distrust the states and to look instead to DC for redress of grievances;
2) As Christopher Lasch pointed out, by the time this speech was given, the year prior to MLK’s death, Dr. King had become an unapologetic and energetic socialist.
Two things about MLK on this subject:
1) He’d good reason to distrust the states and to look instead to DC for redress of grievances;
2) As Christopher Lasch pointed out, by the time this speech was given, the year prior to MLK’s death, Dr. King had become an unapologetic and energetic socialist.
Two things about MLK on this subject:
1) He’d good reason to distrust the states and to look instead to DC for redress of grievances;
2) As Christopher Lasch pointed out, by the time this speech was given, the year prior to MLK’s death, Dr. King had become an unapologetic and energetic socialist.
Two things about MLK on this subject:
1) He’d good reason to distrust the states and to look instead to DC for redress of grievances;
2) As Christopher Lasch pointed out, by the time this speech was given, the year prior to MLK’s death, Dr. King had become an unapologetic and energetic socialist.