Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/category/politics/the-economy/page/48/)
I have joined this blog because I want to encourage the development of an independent left. For that to happen, we need to get beyond Obama, and to do that we need to understand his limitations. I welcome comments and further discussion. Today I will take up health care. Universal health care has long been the central plank of a progressive or left platform, and at first glance it would appear that Obama is on the verge of achieving this.
During a meeting of the NYC Network of Spiritual Progressives group this week, the topic of discussion turned to economic reform. The original NSP “Covenant with America” dealt with this topic in a general way by promoting a new bottom line in our values system, and in a specific way by promoting the Social Responsibility Amendment for corporate behavior. The discussion at the meeting focused on our disappointment that very little has happened in terms of economic reforms as a result of this past year’s economic meltdown. In fact, some of us were wondering if this is a topic that we could legitimately express anger over. Fortunately, I’m beginning to see some indication that the momentum is finally starting to build for economic reform.
Will the “war on terror” never end? Back in 2001, just after September 11, my college classmates and I traveled to Washington to protest the impending invasion of Afghanistan. We all knew that military retaliation was around the corner, and we dreaded the years of violence and bloodshed to follow. We wanted to tell our government that launching a war was not the way to make us feel safe. And we wanted the United States to think twice before raining bombs on civilians and giving millions a new reason to hate us.
Amazing article in my local newspaper about a national phenomenon I had totally missed: a nonprofit out of Massachusetts called NACA (Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America) has been organizing massive mortgage restructuring events across the country. NACA’s Save the Dream tour has become a nationwide phenomenon, drawing more than 180,000 desperate people this summer to gigs in Cleveland, Chicago, St. Louis and Atlanta – where a 2-mile-long line of people waiting to get in wrapped twice around the Georgia Dome. The pitch: a mobile loan-servicing operation where struggling homeowners can arrive with their paperwork and leave with a more affordable mortgage. …
Some days I really don’t want to read my newspaper. Today was one of them. It wasn’t the hydrogen peroxide bomb or Obama’s waffling on the Patriot Act. It wasn’t the Palestinians and the Israelis, who still aren’t negotiating. And it wasn’t the ongoing court battle over a new Wisconsin law granting some rights to domestic partners.
President Obama told Congress he would not sign a health care bill that added any amount to the national debt — a criterion he does not use when considering escalating war in Afghanistan or bailouts to banks. In a recent article for Tikkun, Dr. Arnold Relman argues that there is no way to meet that criterion unless health care reform includes eliminating the profit motive from medicine, including licensing doctors so that they get a fixed salary each year rather than, as now, making profits from prescribing more tests, procedures and visits that increase their incomes. He writes:
There are two interrelated critical issues in health reform right now: how to extend and improve insurance coverage, and how to control the unsustainable rise in health care expenditures. Virtually all of the current legislative attention is focused on the first issue but, notwithstanding claims to the contrary, none of the proposals now on the table offers any credible solution for the control of rising costs. Without control of health cost inflation, the present system will not be viable much longer.
At The Immanent Frame, Nathan Schneider interviews Terry Eagleton, author of Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate, on the inextricability of religion and politics, and the possibility of constructing an iteration of Christianity relevant to contemporary radicals and humanists.
We usually think of environmental justice when we refer to how the disadvantaged suffer from pollution and other toxic chemicals more than those of us belonging to the middle or upper classes: siting of waste facilities, home location near highways or poison-spewing factories are just some of those issues. But when I spoke with my sister Amy, she brought up another form of environmental inequality — lack of access to wilderness and nature. You could call this a form of nature-deficit disorder imposed by poverty and class, not by the decisions of middle-class parents or their kids. (You can see the third part of my talk with Amy at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qj8LIWpVw_0&feature=channel_page). This issue has interested me for a long time.
Media analyses of President Obama’s health care speech were divided on whether he had indicated serious support for a public option or had, instead, cleverly tossed a bone of “recognition” to the progressives while simultaneously demanding that they drop their insistence that the health care reform undercut insurance company profits. The confusion, for once, is not with the media but with the incoherence of a centrist politics. Obama wishes to relieve the suffering of Americans, but he does not wish to challenge the profit-uber-alles old “Bottom Line” of the competitive marketplace. Unfortunately for him and for most Americans, he can’t have it both ways. FDR recognized that — and so was willing to stand up to the vested interests of the class from which he emerged, not only rhetorically, as Obama is willing to do at some rare moments like his Health Care speech, but in the actual policies he promoted.
This moment will be looked back upon as giving a signal of encouragement to some of the most fascistic elements in the American political Right. I signed the same statement on 9/11 that Van Jones signed, and there was nothing immoderate about it. It didn’t say what the Right claimed it said (and the mainstream media chimed in without investigation). I’ll explain below. Jones’s resignation is bad for the country and for the Obama administration.