Month: October 2011

In a city renowned for the quantity and quality of its political spectacles, the upcoming debt supercommittee hearings might be the most superficial waste of time in the history of Washington. I've said enough about why and the extent to which I do not care about this – the predetermined outcome, the mindless rhetoric, the heavy, ponderous chin-stroking in the media, and many other common features of our kabuki theater politics – and I hoped to leave it at that. But to underscore the "predetermined outcome" part, consider the initial proposal made by the Democratic members of the committee:

The new deficit-reduction plan from a majority of Democrats on the congressional Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (the “supercommittee”) marks a dramatic departure from traditional Democratic positions — and actually stands well to the right of plans by the co-chairs of the bipartisan Bowles-Simpson commission and the Senate’s “Gang of Six,” and even further to the right of the plan by the bipartisan Rivlin-Domenici commission. The Democratic plan contains substantially smaller revenue increases than those bipartisan proposals while, for example, containing significantly deeper cuts in Medicare and Medicaid than the Bowles-Simpson plan. The Democratic plan features a substantially higher ratio of spending cuts to revenue increases than any of the bipartisan plans.

The Democratic plan contains $92 billion more in Medicare and Medicaid cuts ($475 billion) than Bowles-Simpson ($383 billion), and the same or a greater amount of cuts in this area than the Gang of Six plan.

At the same time, the Democratic plan contains $800 to $900 billion less in revenue increases than the Bowles-Simpson and Gang of Six plans.

Remember, this is the initial proposal. The starting point. Whatever they finally pass will of course be far to the right of this. So what we'll end up with is a policy outcome to the right of a proposal that is to the right of the previous sham "bipartisan" committee's recommendations that were already to the right of center. Say what you will about the modern Democratic Party, but they sure know how to fire up their base.

For the life of me I cannot fathom their strategy here. It appears to be yet another round of "If we start negotiating by offering a thousand huge concessions up front, surely the GOP will negotiate in good faith." Yes, and surely Charlie Brown will kick that football this time. Of course the Republicans have already summarily rejected this proposal as Insufficiently Austere, thus we are assured of dozens more concessions in the next few weeks to produce a final bill that they will vote against anyway.

Once again the strategy, if any, being employed by the Democrats is a mystery to me. They continue to punt the talking point, "The GOP wanted to screw you and we opposed them," in favor of, "The GOP wanted to screw you and we proposed that they screw you slightly less, and then we settled on you getting screwed but with some lube and a Wendy's Frosty afterward." Who is the voter that they believe this approach will win over? Who do they envision responding positively to this inexorable march to the right, which not only eliminates the Democrats as a legitimate alternative to the GOP but also drives the already dangerously extreme GOP base even further rightward?

Obama and his party were successful in 2008. To repeat that in 2012, they're banking on the existence a few hundred million voters, contributors, and volunteers in the electorate who will get really fired up to support a Democratic Party so completely sold out to moneyed interests that its policy positions have outflanked the Republican Party of the 1980s on the right. For their sake I hope these voters exist, or else this very curious strategy is going to have to appeal to the same voters, contributors, and volunteers who put them over the top in 2008.

Good luck with that. But hey, I bet Jamie Dimon loves it. Isn't that what matters?

My name is Ed, and I am addicted to the A&E television series Intervention. For those of you unfamiliar with the show, it cynically exploits people at their lowest point – drunk, addicted to meth, often homeless or sponging off family, etc. – under the guise of a "documentary" about addiction and recovery. Since each episode devotes about 2 minutes to recovery and treatment, it's pretty clear that the show exists to let us all gawk at train wreck addicts at their lowest point.

Like everyone who watches it, I watch Intervention to feel better about myself.

To discuss every messed up aspect of this show (not to mention its popularity or mere existence) would take too long, but one thing really blows my mind regularly. Many of the addicted people have bathrooms full of prescription pill bottles the size of pop cans filled with opiates, stimulants, and other varieties of addictive narcotics. Yes, obviously some of the pills a drug addict consumes are going to be obtained illegally. But that doesn't account for all of it. Some of the show's subjects reveal how they get legitimate prescriptions for insane quantities of Oxycontin, Xanax, and so on. And my question is, who are these doctors writing out 30-day scrips for 150 maximum strength Oxycontin?

I've talked before about how American medicine is basically a big vending machine of prescription drugs. It goes without saying that the idea of actual patient care and accurate, thorough diagnosis is foreign to the American for-profit model of medicine. Doctors have every incentive to get patients out of the office as quickly as possible and with as few (expensive!) diagnostic tests as possible, and the easiest way to send the average patient on his or her way happily is with a prescription or five. I did assume, though, that if for no reason other than self interest, doctors wouldn't prescribe narcotics quite so casually. One would imagine, for example, that oversight by the DEA and state licensing authorities would make a doctor think twice and act conservatively when controlled substances are involved.

Is that hopelessly naive? I can't say I've ever tried it, but…is it really as easy as semi-reality TV makes it seem to walk into a doctor's office reeking of the symptoms of drug abuse and walk out with a Keith Richards sized allotment of mind altering drugs? My confusion on this point goes beyond reality TV. For instance, I regularly hear students telling tales of getting large prescriptions for Adderall and other stimulants at the slightest mention to a doctor of having "a hard time concentrating."

As a kid I remember our family pediatrician offering candy to patients who completed a visit without crying. This encouraged me to be brave, but in reality the good doctor was pretty liberal with the candy policy. In fact, no matter how I comported myself in her office I don't recall ever leaving without having been given candy. This seems like a good policy in hindsight; the kids would probably cry even more if they were denied candy in addition to being poked and prodded. This worked because the doctor figured that there is no real harm in one piece of candy, especially if it meant getting a child out of the office calmly and expediently. This same policy seems dubious when applied to addictive drugs, however. Is our system of assembly line, bottom line focused medicine really so broken that we're willing to hand out prescriptions for whatever the patient wants just to keep things moving along?

I think I already know the answer to that question, unfortunately.

One of the enjoyable things about politics is that it has the capacity to surprise us.
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Despite being largely predictable, occasionally something happens out of left field. Take the unexpected Republican support for the Occupy Wall Street protesters. John Boehner, House Whip Kevin McCarthy of California, and Floridian Steve Southerland joined the chorus in demanding to know why unemployment persists. Their message is simple: Where are the jobs?
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We all need a good answer to that question.

Wait.

I'm sorry, I'm mixed up. Boehner, McCarthy, and Southerland said that stuff 2 months ago, when they were trying to pin the bad economy on Obama. They were very insistent that an insufficient number of jobs exist to handle the current unemployment rolls. Now, of course, they're wondering why all these dirty hippie protesters won't grow up and get jobs. In an eight week span the GOP message has transitioned from "Where are the jobs, Mr. President?" to "Why don't you all go get jobs?" Only the American right could make sense of that.

The funny thing is that conservatives mirror a lot of the American public when they hold these two diametrically opposed viewpoints. The vast majority of us demand a more robust economy and realize that the banking/financial system is fundamentally flawed. Yet we also can't shake that ingrained Horatio Alger logic, the kind that leads us to conclude that any individual who fails to find gainful employment has only him/herself to blame. Thus we sound schizophrenic, as usual. The system is broken! More personal responsibility! The banks are screwing us! Pull up your own bootstraps!

Public opinion has always reflected a very strange attitude in this country toward movements – public protests, strikes, etc. – compared to other countries in which such displays of social-political displeasure are more common parts of public life. Even when Americans support protesters' goals, we still have all sorts of negative reactions to protesters themselves. This manifests itself in one of two different ways. One is calls for gradualism (i.
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e., the civil rights movement) and patience with the existing power structure.
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The other is outright hostility toward protesters, as we've seen during Vietnam, WTO/G7 type protests, and so on. We might want to see some change, but gosh we sure don't want to break any rules and we can't stand those dirty kids with their dreadlocks and bong smoke.

On the most basic level, this reflects a convincing victory for conservatism in the war for hearts and minds. We might realize that those Occupy Wall Street folks are right, but we're still more likely to be hostile than sympathetic. Why? Take a look at any of the "We are the 53%" crap and you'll see. It's a bunch of people with a consistent message: My life blows, so yours should too. I work two jobs, so I resent people who want to work one. I am grateful for the crumbs that fall to me in this system, so people who complain about it are assholes. I quietly and obediently accept whatever the system does to me, so why don't you?

It takes a special kind of self loathing to generate a reaction like this. Fortunately Americans have that in spades. So many of us have completely given up, surrendered, and chosen that life of quiet desperation that it's unsurprising when more anger is targeted at people who stray from the flock than at more appropriate targets. We're content to direct our anger at one another because we've been convinced that change is impossible and encouraged to blame ourselves for whatever problems we have. The biggest obstacle confronting social and political movements is neither social nor political, but psychological. The first and most difficult step is to silence the voice in people's heads that whispers, "Nothing will change, so stay home, keep quiet, and obey" when they see a few villagers taking to the streets with torches.