The Moral Depravity of Senator Mitch McConnell

This is all quite mind-blowing. As you know, House and Senate Republicans voted overwhelmingly in favor of Representative Paul Ryan’s budget plan which “ends Medicare as we know it” – see my two previous posts for an explanation. Ryan’s plan has proved so politically toxic that it recently caused Republicans to lose a special election in New York’s 26th congressional district – a district in which Republicans won nearly 70% of the vote just eight short months ago! A district that has been consistently Republican for decades.

The first thing to notice is how crazy it was for the House Republican leadership to force their members to vote on such a politically risky budget that had absolutely no chance of passing the Senate or getting the President’s signature. The magnitude of this blunder becomes even greater when you recall that Republicans used “death panel” and “government takeover of health care” rhetoric to win the last election. Scaring seniors into thinking the Democrats wanted to cut Medicare to get elected, and then, when elected, actually voting in favor of a plan that would do away with Medicare as a social insurance program, is pretty stupid if you ask me.

It’s stupidity arising from a mix of ideological rigidity and arrogance.

But stupidity is tolerable. Loving your political party more than your country is not. And that’s the only way I can read Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s recent threat that he will prevent the senate from raising the nation’s debt ceiling, unless cuts to Medicare are part of the deal

For those of you unfamiliar with the debt ceiling issue, and how economically catastrophic it will be if Congress fails to raise the nation’s debt ceiling within the next few months, here is an excellent, accessible, and mercifully short discussion of the subject by conservative economist Bruce Bartlett. Suffice it to say it would be akin to financial Armageddon for the United State and, most likely, the rest of the world.

Senator McConnell knows this. Republican congressional leaders have themselves publically admitted this numerous times. But McConnell is desperate to save Republicans from the political consequences of voting for Ryan’s Medicare killing budget. And the only way he can do this is to implicate Democrats in cutting Medicare. Hence, he is threatening to do incomprehensible damage to the nation’s economy if the Democrats don’t implicate themselves in cutting Medicare and thereby give Republican’s cover on the Ryan vote.

Threatening to kill the economy to save your political party from its own stupidity? How despicable is that? How does this man remain in office?

Joe H.

Demagoguery Verses "Sounding the Alarm"

Republicans voted en masse for Paul Ryan’s budget. Ryan’s budget ends Medicare as we know it – as a government run guaranteed health insurance plan covering all senior citizens – and replaces it with government “subsidies” (a.k.a. “vouchers”) which seniors would use to purchase health insurance from private insurers.

Ryan’s plan is deeply unpopular. However, instead of defending the plan on its the merits, the vast majority of Republicans are complaining about Democratic “demagoguery” on the Medicare issue.

For the record, “demagoguery” occurs when a leader uses false (or misleading) and inflammatory rhetoric to secure popular support. Republican allegations that the Affordable Health Care Act contained “death panels” and constituted “a government takeover of heath care” were demagoguery - they were both false and inflammatory and were used to win an election. To the contrary, the Democrats’ allegation that Republicans voted to “end Medicare as we know it” is not demagoguery - it is a fair and accurate description of what Republicans did.

Of course, there is demagoguery on the issue. The commercial in which someone dumps a wheel-chair bound senior off a cliff could fairly be considered demagoguery by those who think Ryan’s policy will work. That is because the ad unfairly assigns a sinister motive to the policy’s supporters. But that is a far cry from Democrats pointing out that Republicans voted to “end Medicare as we know it.” That assertion is entirely true.

The key distinction between “demagoguery” on the one hand, and “sounding the alarm” on the other, is the truth or falsity of the speaker’s assertions. So, I’m sorry Republicans. If you’re going to vote for alarming policies, you should not object when your opponents sound the alarm.

Joe H.

Concrete verses Abstract

My optimism as a progressive rests on a single undeniable truth; progressive policies are popular. Conservative policies are unpopular.

I’m not talking about “conservatism” or “liberalism” as abstract philosophies of governance. In the abstract, far more Americans identify themselves as conservatives. But with respect to concrete domestic policies, except perhaps on law and order issues, Americans love liberal policies. They love Medicare, Social Security, and public education, each of which is deeply progressive, if not socialistic. Americans are pro-choice by a two to one margin. And a steadily growing majority of Americans now favor allowing same sex couples to marry.

Considered in the concrete, Americans favor liberal policies and reject conservative policies. Conservatives can sometimes win elections by effective rhetoric and demagoguery - “death panels,” “government takeover of health care” – both of which were lies. But when the truth comes out, Americans will embrace the Affordable Health Care Act’s regulations on health insurance companies and the individual mandate, both of which are, again, socialist in nature. These regulations will never be repealed.

This means that conservatives, for all their corporate money and religious right support, are always fighting at a disadvantage. They frequently win elections, but rarely get anything done. The one exception is tax cuts. But even here, most of their success is achieved by telling lies about who will benefit, or by championing fanciful (and demonstrably false) theories that tax cuts increase tax revenues.

When I say conservatives don’t get anything done, I mean things like privatizing Social Security and Medicare, or turning our public school system into a voucher system. Conservatives would love to do these things, but as soon as they are honest about their intentions, the public turns on them with a fury.

Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan is the perfect example. The basic fact is that Ryan’s plan would abolish Medicare as we know it – i.e., as a government run (collectivist) insurance program covering all seniors - and replace it with a government “subsidy” for seniors to purchase health insurance from private insurers. Ryan’s plan saves money by indexing the proposed subsidies to the rate of inflation - which is very low - instead of the rate of rising medical costs - which is very high. In other words, the plan holds down the rising costs of providing healthcare to seniors for the government – or for all working non-seniors - by shifting those costs onto seniors themselves. By design, the value of the subsidies would diminish over time, and Medicare would ultimately “wither on the vine.”

Ryan’s plan is the epitome of anti-socialist, free market policy making. It relies on individual responsibility and the free market. The vast majority of Americans identify themselves as strong advocates of individual responsibility and the free market system. These are deeply conservative virtues which are widely embraced in the abstract.

Yet Ryan’s concrete proposal is extremely unpopular.

Case in point.

Joe H.

The Nightmare of Undergraduate Prose

Here's the money quote from a college professor tired of reading undergraduate essays:

"I've stared at the black markings on the page until my vision blurred, chronicling and triaging the maneuvers I will need to teach them in 14 short weeks: how to make sure their sentences contain a subject and a verb, how to organize their paragraphs around a main idea, how to write a working thesis statement or any kind of thesis statement at all. They don't know how to outline or how to organize a paper before they begin. They don't know how to edit or proofread it once they've finished. They plagiarize, often inadvertently, and I find myself, at least for a moment, relieved by these sentence- or paragraph-long reprieves from their migraine-inducing, quasi-incomprehensible prose."

That's the experience of an undergraduate humanities professor in a nutshell. Trust me!

Joe H.