It is amazing to me that I am so disturbed by my
apparent indifference to the political chatter. I seem to be caught in a web
that ensnarls me in a nightmare scenario, viz., I can't win. Specifics about
the agenda that the presidential candidates would propose for the next four
years are lacking. The generalities, often voiced in disturbing distortions, do
not help citizens understand the issues in any detail. One could observe that
“this is just politics”, and I could understand, even if I lament it.
Since I am a biased towards a progressive agenda, I
am a Democrat. Since I was a huge supporter of Barack Obama during the last
election, I became disappointed by his performance. Over the last four years, I
wrote a few times to the White House to express my concerns. Clearly, they made
no difference (as a point, few people ever really make any changes because of
my "concerns"!).
I am aware that Romney is never going to be a solid
"anything". He is always shifting to accommodate the winds of public
support. He will never meet my definition of a leader, i.e., one who takes
people where they never expected. (One great example is a past head of the
Veterans Administration Health Care System, Kenneth Kaizer. He came into office
and blew everyone away with a vision of changing the huge health care system
from primarily an inpatient system to one of outpatient clinics, many of which
would be located throughout various communities. It worked and people loved it!
And he delivered his promise that it would achieve the goal without additional costs.
Reduction of hospital costs would
offset expenses of expanded clinics. That is the best example of leadership I
know.)
I am one who identifies with the need of
significant change in various segments of our national agenda.
1. Health care costs are unsustainable. It has been
clear to me (as well as others) that there is a need for a national health
insurance, modeled after Germany with private insurers, or theoretically, by expanding
our Medicare system).
While Romney/Ryan agree that there is a problem,
the "plan" expressed by Ryan is not honest, i.e., it does not spell
out the consequences of their plan to provide an option for privatizing the
system nor explain how the costs of health care would be controlled. It focuses
only on the control of federal health care costs, not the costs of the
delivered health care. Limiting the federal costs will be at the expense of the
elderly.
Obama has accomplished a great deal by successfully
signing a major change in health care insurance. Expansion of the system to
include many more people is a major positive change. There is a sense of
security since people are. There are elements in the act that may
reduce costs, but I honestly do not believe that it will happen to any
significant degree.
As long as health care is a profit-driven industry,
there will be no way to control costs. This is the basic reason why I think
that we should have national health where costs would be controlled, i.e.,
physicians would be salaried (paid by health care systems providing care),
pharmaceuticals would be under contract, medical devices would also be under
contract.
Unless Obama is honest with the public regarding
the method of controlling health care costs, he is less than upfront with the
public and, from the point of view, is deceiving the public, as is Romney/Ryan. ACA has to be adjusted to accommodate
structural changes that result in a reduction of costs.
2. Defense issues are somewhat clearer. We know
that Romney plans on increasing the defense budget so that it will represent 4%
of GDP. He is not honest about how he is going to get the revenue for this
increase.
Obama is on the road to controlling defense costs,
but he has been involved in actions dealing with the "enemy" that are
of concern. Using drone planes to kill people without clear authority (the
administration claims that they have legal authority, but I am not convinced) to
do so is a major problem for me. In fact, I hate to think of the ramifications
of the use of drone planes, i.e., one only imagine what will happen with other
nations have access to this technology. President Obama has been doing
things that would have driven many like me crazy if they were done by President
Bush. Guantanamo is not closed, albeit through no fault of Obama. And, so, I have
some concerns with his defense policies.
3. Romney/Ryan's focus on jobs is a joke. I am
aware that there will be an increase in jobs during the next four years
regardless of who is elected, assuming that Euro and/or EuroZone do not collapse.
However, the claims of Romney/Ryan about their tax cutting and reduction in
regulations will trigger a huge number of jobs make no sense to me. Unless
people have money to spend, there is a problem. Jobs are now hard to come by
and, most often, jobs are paying less money.
There is an inherent problem with the nature of
jobs. Globalization is a factor, but I see the computerization of so many tasks
as an inherent problem to the economy. More and more jobs are being done by the
computer/robots resulting in increased productivity with a decreasing
workforce.
No one has focused on the point that we may never
get "full employment" in order to meet the consumer needs of world.
What then? How will our nation support an increased number of unemployed? I
think that there has to be a discussion on how our nation would deal with a
permanent unemployment rate of 6+%.
This brings me to ...
4. As portrayed by Romney and Ryan, I cringe at the
thought of the results of reducing taxes, as they want. It is incredible to me
that their vision of a rebounding economy resulting from the lower taxes will
work. The math seems out of line.
At the same time, I wish that Obama would be honest
and say that he was wrong to limit tax increases to those above $250,000. I
think that more people have to contribute higher taxes. I am not competent to
suggest where the line should be drawn, but we have to come up with more
revenue.
With all the problems with the commission and its results, Obama should
have accepted the Bowles/Simpson document as the starting point for legislative
action. If he had submitted the proposal to Congress and it was defeated, he
could then have had the authority to voice his moral weight that he was willing
to compromise for the sake of the nation and he was defeated. He could have
clearly made the case that the problem was the Republican dominated congress.
I started to write this blog before the NDC started. I admit becoming
enthused by various speakers. Michelle Obama was a tremendous speaker as was
President Clinton. In terms of pure political theater, I loved Jennifer Granholm.
I was hoping that she would have
been nominated to the Supreme Court when the last vacancy occurred. President
Obama was good, but he was a chicken! He could have been far more specific to
be sure that the public could weigh the implications of his agenda with the
vague plans of the Republican Party.
At any rate, we are getting closer to Election Day. The people will
decide and I surely hope that President Obama is re-elected, especially in
light of the alternative!
When it is all said and done, I do not see any major changes in how our government operates until the influence of money is reduced. We are losing our democracy. If people could feel that decisions were being made in their behalf, rather than those of special interests, I think that the government could be more successful in promoting the types of policies that will bring us forward into a better future.
9 September 2012
Steven Pearlstein wrote a column today that is most relevant to my attempt to discuss the current state of our candidates for president. While he surely zeroed in on Romney's many weaknesses, he made it clear that Obama has been too observant of political implications of his decisions rather than the merits of the issue at hand that requires hard leadership. I had the same problem with President Clinton with whom I shared a message (actually shared with DNC) regarding his extraordinary reliance on polls rather than the perceived needs of the nation that should be the focus of a president.
