July 2, 2011

ForProfit.edu: Wherein I Probably Offend Everyone, But No Matter

Filed under: Politics — PolitiCalypso @ 1:15 pm

It seems that there is a battle brewing over the new Department of Education guidelines on issuing student loans to people who intend to enroll at for-profit schools such as the University of Phoenix.  The whole business is, in my opinion, a perfect example of the cynical dishonesty that both sides of politics in the U.S. exude, and I am going to say—and provide evidence for the assertion—that the side that is opposed to these regulations is determinedly missing a significant point in this.  All I can figure is that, unless it is poor idealistic blindness to what’s going on with these schools and many of the people that enroll, this is one of the most cynical positions I have ever seen taken in politics.  I am perfectly aware that what I am about to say may come off as angry, cold-blooded, and heartless.  Maybe that is indeed the case.  I’ve considered it before.  However, there is not a false word in this account.  Sometimes the truth is ugly and people are not what you want to believe they are.  I assure you, when I first started witnessing what I am about to describe, it was a total shell-shock to my then-rather liberal sensibilities. But as a scientist, I do not ignore valid data.

For background, as soon as the Department of Education issued guidelines requiring that a certain percentage of students graduate and find gainful employment for a school to be eligible for federal loans (which come from taxpayers’ money), the Republican Party and the conservative pundit establishment started to cry foul. There have been a variety of attacks used against these regulations. One of them is the expected attack that it is an anti-business move, since for-profit schools were singled out. I’m not going to address this; it is nothing but speculation and is irrelevant to my forthcoming point. Another, which in my opinion is extraordinarily cynical, is the attack that it is a way to keep low-income people from learning useful skills that can help them to find good jobs that don’t require a four-year degree, thereby keeping them on the dole (and the implication is that people on the dole are more likely to vote for politicians that continue or expand the dole).

Okay, that is relevant, as we shall see. However, the federal dole is not relevant in the way that conservatives who have taken on this issue seem to want to think it is.

For over a year, I worked in a computer lab where I frequently found myself assisting people in filling out FAFSA forms and enrollment applications. Now, there are, locally, two community colleges within 40 miles. There are two public four-year universities within 40 miles. There are even more traditional options within an expanded distance. These schools all have online classes, non-degree programs, and the community colleges offer technical degrees (career degrees that don’t transfer to a four-year Bachelor’s program) and job training. The cost of attending one of these schools is significantly less than attending an online for-profit college.

Well, consider this: If you are already living full-time on the dole, you aren’t thinking long-term, you perhaps have a history of ignoring financial obligations, and word gets around that you can get an order of magnitude more “student loan” money by pretending to be a student in a for-profit online school than you would by enrolling in a local college, what do you do?

That’s not speculation. I saw this happen. Each term, it would be a different for-profit online college that was selected as the vehicle for, essentially, stealing taxpayer money. Each term, the same group of locals would come into this facility, fill out their paperwork for enrolling in the exact same online school, fill out their FAFSA for obtaining student loans, including the personal expense stipend, and then fill out the school’s form for releasing as much of that money as possible to their own pocketbooks. They would make the pretense of enrolling in classes, often the same set of classes, and then… they would not do any homework. They would ignore their assignments. If the school had a policy that actually allowed the instructors to fail students (and not all of these places do), then no matter, because the “students” would have another for-profit college selected for the following term.  As long as they maintain constant enrollment, you see, the loans don’t fall due, and they can keep the cash flow coming.  With that, the process would begin again.   (That said, some of them must default at some point, because I strongly believe that this is part of why there is a high default rate on loans for for-profits.  However, people with the mentality I have described probably don’t care all that much about bad credit.  The only people who really pay a price are taxpayers who subsidize this.)

There was not a solitary thing any of us employees could do about it, because we could not possibly prove the intention to defraud.  And I am sorry, but this is fraud under any definition of the word, even if it is impossible to prosecute as such. I don’t know how widespread it is on a national scale, but there is a very distinct possibility that the poor statistics for for-profit colleges are not entirely due to subpar teaching, but to “students” who are taking advantage of their very loose admission criteria to steal from taxpayers and have no intention of acquiring an education. Unfortunately for everyone, the dole is set up so that one pretty much can live off it indefinitely (deservedly or not), as long as the right boxes are checked on the application forms and every “i” is dotted and every “t” is crossed. There have been whistleblowers before who have called attention to the fact that people are, in some places, actually taught how to fill out government forms to maximize the amount they get.  It should come as no surprise that a scheme like I have described would spring up.

None of this should be construed to mean that this deceitful activity is all that I ever saw at this job. There were many students who enrolled in online programs, both at the local public colleges and even some at for-profit colleges, who actually were sincere in their intention to learn something. They came back to this public computer lab to do their homework online and were concerned with their grades. And it’s been long enough now since I had that job that I would not trust myself to identify anyone in particular by sight as either an honest student or a fraudster. I can say with certainty that the dishonest ones made up at least a third of the whole adult “student” group that used these computers for any purpose. However, this isn’t about accusing anyone by name; it is about blowing a whistle on a practice that I have not seen anyone in the political sphere touch on when they talk about this issue. There may indeed be villainy on the part of some people involved with these for-profit schools in recruiting honest students with dishonest marketing. However, there is definitely villainy on the part of some purported “students” who merely want to dishonestly get their hands on federal cash.

It is incredibly disingenuous of these conservatives to act as though the regulations are a diabolical plot on the part of the Obama Administration to keep impoverished people from learning anything so they’ll stay on welfare and vote Democratic. Excuse me, but that is far too idealistic a view of the motives of some of the “students”—unless it is, in fact, just a cynical political ploy to paint the opposition as villains even if it means going against one’s principles.  If it really is ignorant idealism about the “students” and the cynicism is about the administration, then I’m afraid I must burst their bubble, but I have facts on my side from personal observation: At least some percentage of these “students” have no intention of getting off the dole and regard student loans for for-profit colleges as yet another form of it! They select these places because they get the largest amount of money for it and don’t have any difficulty in getting admitted.  Tuition at some of them apparently compares to that of an Ivy League university. All that federal cash without the rejections in the application process. And I honestly wouldn’t put it past some of the online schools to be perfectly aware of this and to not really object to it, since they get a cut of the federal money too. Why else would they admit “students” who provide transcripts from six different online schools that contain nothing but Fs (because the “students” have not done anything)?

Since you cannot order schools to adjust their admission standards and definitely cannot police the motives and future intentions of people who apply for student loan money, the only real options to keep taxpayers from being defrauded are either to completely abolish the federal student loan program (which would make college unaffordable for huge numbers of students or throw them to the tender mercies of private loan companies) or to set standards for the schools if they want to receive federal money.  If the poor performance of for-profit schools is in significant part due to fraudulent activity on the part of “students,” then that is a motivation (not a mandate, mind) to these schools to stop admitting people that have highly suspicious records.  If this were all private, of course, it would be a moot point for the government, but the taxpayer has a stake in this.  If dishonest fake students are prevented from enrolling and making off like bandits with student loan money, because they cannot get admitted with their past history, then everyone wins—the schools, the honest students, and the taxpayers.

Lastly, in case anyone gets the idea that I’ve only penned this to defend a policy of a Democratic administration, I’d like to note two things.  One, I have had serious complaints with them.  Take a gander at some of my past blog posts about “Obamacare.”  My opinion on that has not changed, and I think the individual mandate is so bad that if that monstrosity is upheld by the Supreme Court, I would very likely vote for someone who promised to sign a repeal.  And two, this despicable student loan practice I have described so infuriated me as a taxpayer, an honest graduate student, and a person subsisting on a working-class income that it arguably killed off any vestige of… well, I can’t even think of any term for it other than “welfare-state liberalism.”  Whatever of that I once had is gone, and the rude awakening I had with this is why that happened. The fact that I’m using such an expression should tell just how much I have disowned that part of the philosophy.  I’m writing this piece because my conscience compels me to, not because of some partisan or ideological reason.

 

(blog claim: 5QUKZUA8U4TF)

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March 20, 2010

Nobody’s Pawn

Filed under: Politics — PolitiCalypso @ 5:41 pm

It was probably inevitable that this would happen, but let me go on record that, as we approach a likely final vote on the health insurance bill, I continue to stand firm in my stance that the bill should not pass, and if it does pass, it should be repealed. By continuing to hold this view even as most of my erstwhile allies fell in line to support a bill that they had, quite justly, likened to a pile of manure a few months ago, I have found myself in company with only a very select few who are ideologically similar to me. Most of those who oppose this thing are on the Republican side of the aisle. However, I’ve never been a fan of the sports team method of conducting politics. No, if the people who agree with me on the ultimate goal (even if they disagree on the reason for their stance) are mostly Republicans, well, so be it. I’m not picky. The enemy of my enemy may not be my friend, but it can be my ally for now. A vote is a vote.

And the fact that most of those same erstwhile allies consider this such an atrocious thing says a great deal about their true priorities. In my not-so-humble opinion, these people are liars to pretend they care about some 30 million without insurance, or people with existing medical conditions (of whom I am one), or a hypothetical 45,000 people who may die a few years earlier than they otherwise would have (yes, it sounds inhuman, but life can be cruel. Many of that figure will die because of cancer. Insured or not, the 10-year survival rates for internal cancers generally are not good). For starters, the bill is an insurance coverage bill and outside of some provisions for community clinic funding, it has nothing to do with health care administered by medical professionals. The typical deductible and co-pays of affordable individual coverage policies—to paraphrase Scarlett O’Hara—might as well be a million dollars if you don’t have that kind of money saved up, and most Americans, unfortunately, do not have that kind of money saved up. The bill doesn’t bring the individual market up to the standards of the group policy market in deductibles and co-pays, not even close.

Some of those lives could indeed be saved, but precious few of these activists are truly interested in saving lives. I can’t entirely fault them; it’s a known quirk of human nature that it is easier not to let death bother one if the numbers are high enough and the incident is remote or distributed enough. I see that 45,000 figure and I don’t even blink. Still, that’s not what I mean here. There are, undoubtedly, some long-term health care activists who see the world from an optimistic viewpoint and want to believe that this bill will help. I will not disdain them, though I think they are tragically mistaken, and nothing I say refers to them. However, most of the people yapping sanctimoniously about this on blogs, Facebook, and political mass e-mails are Johnny-come-latelys to the health care issue, and they are only on it right now because that is what their party and the president are on right now. These activists’ real agenda is only to maintain their partisan majority in Congress this year. They may use the 45,000 or 30 million as a loaded gun against their opponents, but if they get what they want, the devil take those human statistics. I have seen this disgusting little game played before; in 2006 many Democratic candidates invoked the Katrina response and the body count following it, but as I have complained about many a time and documented on this blog, most of them didn’t lift a finger to help those people after assuming office. I see no reason to believe it’ll be any different for the politicians or partisan activists when the true effects, or lack thereof, of their health insurance bill start to come out. Once this thing is over, they’ll move on to something else.

Incidentally, these partisan activists have revealed with their very own words just what they really think of the right of people with chronic medical conditions (like me) to have affordable health care, and it is not encouraging. Some proposals have been floated to initiate the pre-existing condition exclusions immediately but wait to implement any mandate. Such proposals would actually benefit the chronically ill (if they had all the loopholes plugged—keep reading!), you know. But whenever such an idea has been brought up, the partisan activist goons are on it like a pack of hyenas: “We can’t do that! We can’t have the pre-existing condition exclusions without an individual mandate! People might wait till they got sick to buy a policy and it would raise my premiums! Besides, there’s a high risk pool proposed for the interim!” (There are high risk pools already in place in many states. This does not make them affordable or useful for obtaining treatment for costly illnesses. If it did, we wouldn’t be discussing this.)

The proposals I refer to would affect a period of not quite four years, and even if people actually did drop their insurance en masse just because they could (which I do not believe would happen), the sky will not fall in four years, and health insurers could easily take the comparatively small losses out of their own profits rather than hiking everyone’s rates, if they were ordered to do so. Besides, even after the mandate would take place, people could still go naked as long as they paid the fine, which is much less costly than a policy, and these same people could still wait to get a policy… when they got sick. So much for that bogeyman. So no, this is not about fairness to the public at all. In the minds of partisan progressive activists, it’s more important to be “fair” to a parasitic industry that has killed its own customers by proxy than it is to provide health insurance to people who are sick. To them, I have no right to affordable health care; it is a privilege that depends on the behavior of other people. Concern for the chronically ill, my rear. I have so much contempt for the deceitful sanctimony of these people that I can barely express it, and though I do have chronic medical conditions and therefore would be among the people they pretend to care about, I will not be a pom-pom for their partisan cheerleading.

I have had the opinion for quite some time that the worst thing anyone could do, in the view of Democratic Party brass, is to display disloyalty to the party brand. There is no such thing to these people as ideological disloyalty. As I’ve lamented before, they discussed stripping Joe Lieberman of his chairmanship not because he thwarted an investigation into FEMA’s role in the Hurricane Katrina disaster, but because he campaigned for John McCain. Now, we have numerous reports that the White House threatened to make sure that any Democrat who voted against the health insurance package would not receive any party money for re-election. There were no repercussions or threats made when the stimulus act passed last year, nor have there been any such threats for any other piece of legislation that the president wanted. Absolutely none. But it was never implied that the failure of these bills might result in a party changeover in the fall. Now that some people in the pundit and political classes have formed this opinion about this particular bill, opposing it is tantamount to switching party allegiance in their minds.

But to return to topic, my opposition to the bill. It is not just unmitigated contempt for many of the proponents (and pity for the rest, who I think are in for a big disappointment) that is why my opinion is what it is. I also have good reason to believe that the bill can make things much harder for people like me. Right now, if I were to receive a denial letter that said “pre-existing conditions,” I can produce paperwork demonstrating in an open-and-shut case that I am entitled to the insurance claim. I’ve done it before. I can handle my own appeals at minimal cost and time as long as the insurers can still say “pre-existing conditions.” If the bill passed and the regulations took effect in 2014, they wouldn’t be able to say that any longer. But don’t worry; they have a backup plan: They still can send out letters to customers rescinding coverage altogether if they claim it is on the basis of fraud, and to fight a fraud claim, you’ll have to engage legal services. For many, you’ll have to hire a lawyer and fight these vermin in court while you are sick and getting medical treatment. The insurers do this already to customers whom they cannot get on pre-existing conditions but who develop a costly illness that they don’t want to pay for, and insurance company executives have even told members of Congress point-blank that they would continue to do this to customers if the bill passed. Great, just great. Though I’m sure the trial lawyers’ lobby is quite happy.

Incidentally, when this detail is pointed out to these progressive activists that I have been impugning, they get quite upset and insist that such things won’t really happen because it will depend on how regulations are written up and interpreted. (The memories of the Bush Administration deliberately ignoring and defying all manner of business regulations, let alone “legitimately” interpreting them in the most corporate-friendly way possible, seem to have slipped their minds.) The naivete would be truly amazing if I believed it really were naivete; as I have said, though, I think the simple answer is that they do not really care about the chronically ill. They are liars.

I will not be the pawn of a group of people who are interested in my life only as a tool to achieve partisan triumphs. I’ve watched it happen once before, and all I got in return was disappointment and betrayal. Say what you will about the Republican activists; at least they make it plain that they don’t care three straws about people like me. If they decide that they would use us left-wing opponents for their own goals and then discard us, it’s no different from what the progressive activists and politicians would do—except that we can also use them.

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February 15, 2010

The Tea Party and the Conspiracist Mind

Filed under: Politics — PolitiCalypso @ 11:34 pm

I’ve observed the Tea Party with a surprisingly high amount of apolitical fascination, considering my political past on the other side of the spectrum. There is something about the movement—at least, its libertarian-oriented 2009 incarnation—that kind of appealed even to me, and I had an idea that it might be possible to join with them in a bipartisan populist groundswell against the forces of Big Corrupt Business and Big Corrupt Government. However, the movement has subtly changed since its inception, and I don’t think this is possible any longer. The change has to do with the general perception of reality within the Tea Party ranks. The Tea Party movement is actively encouraging the mindset of a conspiracy theorist.

It comes as no real surprise to me that existing conspiracy theories such as birtherism and trutherism are commonly held by Tea Partiers. Clearly, birtherism—the idea that President Obama was born a citizen of the British Empire—is more common in a right-wing movement than trutherism, but both make plenty of appearances. Trutherism, I should note, is the idea that the attacks of 9/11/2001 were a controlled demolition or were perpetrated by some entity other than Al-Qaeda. (This is not the same thing as questioning whether the United States government did everything it could legally do to prevent the attacks from occurring.) Some flavors of trutherism are extremely anti-Semitic and invoke the New World Order conspiracy theory. However, when I speak of a “conspiracist mindset” within the Tea Party, I do not merely mean an unofficial embrace of pre-existing conspiracy theories. I mean that the movement itself is increasingly losing any semblance of what one could call a political ideology, and instead focusing on a version of reality that can only be called a conspiracy theory.

One of the hallmarks of a conspiracy theory is the idea that all sources of information except a select few are part of the conspiracy. Now, I have some experience with the media. Even for some completely innocuous feel-good stories about the local “whiz kid” in the National Spelling Bee, the media managed to grossly misquote me more than once. For one front-page article, they misspelled my name, ironically enough. If the media can mess up harmless, inoffensive stories like that, then of course anything they say should be viewed with a certain amount of suspicion as to detail. However, this is not the way the Tea Party sees it. It is not about incompetence or laziness to them. The media, to them, are not just avoiding the conspiracy point of view because they cannot substantiate it, nor are they doing it for a mercenary reason; they are actively involved in furthering the conspiracy because they support it. The Tea Party movement has adopted this notion, and among most of the Tea Partiers, there exist only a few “trustworthy” sources of information: Fox News, Rush Limbaugh’s radio show, certain right-wing blogs and websites, Sarah Palin’s palm… but I digress. The point is that any source of information other than the accepted ones is automatically suspect to the Tea Party.

Needless to say, this is deeply ironic for a movement that got started because of a staged on-screen rant made by a CNBC reporter. However, there actually is a method to the madness. The Tea Party accepts this view of the media because it purports to be a dissident revolutionary movement within an authoritarian country. They differ as to whether it is a fascist or communist dictatorship (or perhaps they don’t know the difference), but they are united in the view that we are under some form of authoritarianism. In dictatorships, “official” sources really can’t be trusted to report the truth, and real information has to come from the underground or outside the country. I am unsure how many Tea Partiers know that Rupert Murdoch is Australian, but even if a majority do, this probably does not bother them. In the 1990s, conservatives called Fox News “Radio Free America,” an homage to Radio Free Europe, which was funded by the American government and countered the Communist Party line in the days of the Soviet bloc. For those Tea Partiers who know that the owner of their favorite TV station is not American, they probably see it as a plus because it fits with their worldview in which American media are controlled by the government as part of the conspiracy. Presumably, the fact that Australia has a government censor on Internet Service Providers located there escapes them entirely.

But it’s not just a distrust of the media that powers the Tea Party conspiracy theory. One must keep in mind that, in their view, America has become a dictatorship. Once you understand that this view underlies everything they believe about the country we live in, it makes perfect sense within that framework.

Dictatorships always have players officially outside the government to keep order. To the Tea Party, a key player is ACORN, an organization that I had never even heard of until 2008. Many of the Tea Party adherents believe, or at least entertain the idea, that this nonprofit group “stole the election” for Barack Obama. They compare it to the idea that many on the left side of the spectrum had that voter suppression, ballot-box stuffing, and possible electronic machine fraud flipped the state of Ohio to George W. Bush in 2004. This ignores several pertinent facts about the 2004 election. This is a diversion, I’ll admit, but since I’ve seen this “defense” made by a lot of people, I’m going to head it off at the pass:

  1. In 2004, a credible means was proposed for the alleged fraud, as well as a credible scale on which it could possibly have taken place. Voter suppression has a long and sordid history in the U.S. and every election has it reported. Additionally, as a software engineer, I can assert that election security has been a professional concern for this community, not just a political one. The machines in question were deemed insecure and shockingly easy to tamper with, so much in fact that many states (including Florida of electoral infamy) ditched theirs after only a few elections.
  2. In 2004, eyewitness reports of young and minority voters being illegally turned away from the polls surfaced. In addition, the Secretary of State was known to have ordered thousands of new voter registrations to be rejected because the wrong weight of card stock was used for the registration forms.
  3. In 2004, a populous county in Ohio closed its doors to all observers when it counted its votes, citing a terrorist threat to the area. When the FBI was later questioned about it, agents said that there was no such threat issued by any agency.
  4. In 2004, seriously suspicious anomalies turned up. Some precincts reported more votes cast than there were registered voters. In some highly Republican counties in southern Ohio, a Democratic candidate for Chief Justice who had not advertised in the area received more votes than the Democratic presidential ticket. Even more suspiciously, in these same counties, there were many more votes against a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage than there were for the Democratic ticket. Nowhere else in the state did these bizarre patterns occur. The same county that lied about a “terrorist threat” is located in this region.
  5. The U.S. Senate, when presented with all the information, saw it as suspicious enough to warrant an objection to the Ohio slate of presidential electors and a hearing into the voter suppression aspects of the story.

It’s been a while since I looked at this information, and there is probably more that I’ve forgotten. A Congressman, John Conyers, compiled everything into a concise book that hit the shelves of mainstream bookstores. However, the point is that the two situations—2004 and 2008—are not comparable. In 2004, the only allegation raised was that voter suppression and possible ballot stuffing or vote-switching may have illegitimately flipped the vote of one very closely contested state. No credible allegations were made about the national popular vote or multiple states, and those making the allegations about the state of Ohio came bearing evidence. On the flip side, the Tea Party embraces the idea (because so many of its members hold it) that the organization ACORN “stole the election” without, apparently, recognizing what it would actually imply if that were true. For ACORN to have stolen the election, they somehow had to have created 10 million fake voter names across the country that made it past the Secretaries of State or Departments of Elections, and they sent out 10 million people to vote fraudulently under those names on Election Day. Alternatively, they had the polls stacked with people who stuffed 10 million fake votes into ballot boxes.

This is not a rational idea. This is a conspiracy theory of the first order. However, it seems that in dictatorships such as Afghanistan and Iran, massive ballot-box stuffing does occur, as well as outright lying by the vote-tallying sources about who won. If one believes that the United States of America is a dictatorship, then of course such a notion is plausible. The idea of ACORN as the tyrannical government’s private ballot-box stuffer is so prevalent in Tea Party circles that Doug Hoffman, the candidate in the New York special election last year supported by Tea Partiers, blamed it for his loss, despite that the district he ran in is extremely rural and ACORN is pretty much exclusively an urban group. It didn’t even have an office close by.

Another common behavior of dictatorships, real and fictional, is to turn children against their parents and convince them that their family members are enemies of the state. George Orwell noted this and made it an important detail of his masterpiece 1984. Naturally, the Tea Party movement has taken this to a ridiculous extreme in their dictatorship conspiracy theory. Glenn Beck recently said on his program that Obama was “turning kids against their parents to get elected.” This is not just a dog-whistle to the conspiracy-minded who think we are living under a dictatorship. In a shout-out to the new 2010 vintage Tea Party, which is less Libertarian and more Religious Right, Beck goes on to say that this is against the Mosaic commandment to honor one’s parents. Seriously? These people worry about a dictatorship and yet think that young adults have no inherent right to vote differently from their parents or get their parents interested in casting a vote at all? Let alone the idea that voting a certain way is at all comparable to turning in family members for crimes against the state. In a deep, massive irony, during the Bush era, there was an official statement from the Department of Homeland Security that we should all keep an eye on our neighbors for signs of terrorist sympathies or suspicious behavior.

A year ago, the Tea Party movement was planning protests on Tax Day. These protests were purportedly about the bank bailouts and the failed “cramdown” mortgage restructuring attempt. I had issues with the concept of protesting the government’s attempts to help people avoid homelessness, but at least there was a coherent message to the Tea Party. The movement could say that it was about small government and keeping the government out of any form of bailout, and it would have some validity. It was a Libertarian populist movement, and you could take that or leave it. However, something happened to the group over the course of the year. They embraced the Religious Right, for one, and the New World Order conspiracy theory is a dusty old skeleton in this group’s closet that many do not want to acknowledge. Even those who do not accept the NWO theory often believe that there is a nebulous “secularist” conspiracy to ban the Bible (and presumably also to repeal the First Amendment, which is what it would take). It makes some sense that these people would bring their version of reality into the ranks and allow it to distort Tea Party views. But they also embraced groups that had heretofore been deemed fringe: the birthers and the militia movement, for starters. By taking these people into their ranks who did not all necessarily share the Libertarian economic viewpoint, or have it as their chief issue, the Tea Party had to find something to unify its adherents. The “secret dictatorship” conspiracy theory seems to have been what was used for this. It has come at a price, though. In times of economic distress, there is often great appeal in a populist movement, but the appeal becomes limited when that movement loses its touch with reality.

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October 7, 2009

An Opt-Out Public Option Lets Red States SENTENCE THEIR PEOPLE TO DEATH by Popular Vote

Filed under: Politics — PolitiCalypso @ 11:11 pm

As we approach the endgame of the health care reform debate in Congress, an idea has been floated recently that might be the worst one I have yet encountered.  Yes, in my book it tops out mandates without a public option, taxing health care policies, triggers, and co-operative plans.  The idea is to have a strong national public option but to allow state governments individually to opt out of allowing their residents to make use of it.  This idea has picked up steam in the “progressive netroots community” (bloggers), with a surge in support on flagship blog Daily Kos, among others.

It is a truly horrible idea, though, and it just goes to show that bad ideas do not only come from Blue Dog Democrats or Tea Party Republicans.  Self-described “progressives” can have them too.

“Progressive” Activists Betray the Legacy of the Civil War:  A United U. S. A.

This is far from the first time that “progressives” have advocated Balkanization of the United States and the breakdown of the federal government in favor of a loose alliance such as that proposed by the Articles of Confederation.  In the lead-up to the American Civil War, many Northern progressives said “Let the South go” rather than fighting militarily to bring seceded states back into the U.S.  These 1860s-era progressives did not really care about the human rights issue of slavery.  Many of them believed that slavery would collapse under its own weight and the South might voluntarily choose to return.  Obviously, history did not take this path, so we do not know how it would have turned out if President Lincoln had followed this advice and war had not broken out.  However, we do know one thing:  African Americans would have remained enslaved for far longer than they were.  Not just living under the iron heel of Jim Crow laws, but actually enslaved.  We also know that, though some aspects of Reconstruction were extremely broken, when that process ended by the “corrupt bargain” of the 1876 election, Jim Crow laws were immediately forced into effect.  That’s what happened when they “let the South go.”  Human and civil rights in the South were eroded.

The legacy of the Civil War was not just the abolition of slavery and the enshrining in the Constitution of voting rights to people (men, at the time) of any race.  Another part of the legacy was the principle that there are certain things individual states cannot do.  The War settled the question of secession and nullification.  If states are part of the U.S., they abide by the laws of the U.S. and cannot deny their residents the protections of the Constitution, the United States Code, and federal programs.

Of course, if a health care reform bill is signed and it allows states to opt out of a robust national public option, this would blow a hole right through that ideal.  Legally, of course; there is nothing in the Constitution that says Washington cannot enact laws with an opt-out clause for states.  But the very existence of this hypothetical opt-out would go against one of the legacies of the Civil War, just as surely as it would go against the legacy of abolition if the U.S. somehow overturned the Thirteenth Amendment through legal means.  For progressives to be advocating this idea is a monumental betrayal.

Death by Popular Vote

It’s not just a betrayal of E Pluribus Unum, either.  This idea is a betrayal of every person in a Republican-dominated state who is in favor of a public option.  It is saying to us that we don’t count.  Here is a direct quote from a popular Daily Kos diary in support of this idea:

(…) I really love the idea of an opt-out public option.

Not because it’s the best idea by any means. A robust single-payer plan would be the best idea. Not because tens of thousands of real Americans won’t die and go bankrupt in states with morally bankrupt legislators. They will.

Our lives are meaningless, then, to the “progressive netroots community” except as political pawns.  The message absolutely could not be clearer.

I know what the residents of my state would probably vote for.  I certainly know what my governor and Legislature would do.  And while I would indeed apportion blame to them if Mississippi denied its residents access to a national public option, I would apportion a great deal more to the ivory tower blue coast “progressives,” and any members of Congress who voted for such a thing, for making it possible and legal for them to do it.

People in the South and other Red areas will die because of this, if it passes, whereas they would not die in Blue states.  This means that a state’s populace would be allowed to sentence people to death, permanent indigence, or bankruptcy by a popular fiat.  Have we sunk so far?  There was massive outrage—MASSIVE, I say—about the idea behind California’s Proposition 8 and the fact that 50% + 1 could deny court-established civil rights to people.  Where did the outrage go?  Or was it only ever present because LGBT people are generally a liberal-oriented group and California was a blue state?

I am a former Democratic Senate staffer, actually, but I would NOT forget that it was the progressive community and Democrats in Congress who allowed townhallers, teabaggers, and insura-cons in my state to sentence people like me to death or bankruptcy.  Want my vote in the future?  Want the votes of any left-of-center Southerners in the future?  Too bad, suckers.  If this idea ends up passing, we will remember exactly who it was that sold us down the river.  We would expect no less from our troglodyte state governments, whom we do not vote for anyway, but we depend on Washington to keep their harmful ideologies somewhat in check.  This idea won’t turn the South blue.  All it will do is royally tick off Southern Democrats and liberal-inclined people.  (Yes, I am a civil libertarian oriented liberal, not that cowardly weasel-word “progressive.”)  It will send the message loud and clear that our lives, health, and finances do not matter because of where we live, that we are not worth fighting for, that we have no inherent value, but are only useful as a body count to make a political point.

I’ve suspected this for some time about the “progressive” community’s real opinion of Hurricane Katrina’s victims, and this idea does not do one thing to dispel this suspicion.  It only reinforces it, in fact.  Apparently, if you live outside of a Blue area, your only value to this part of the “netroots community” is as a part of a body count that they can use to advance a political agenda.  Even if it’s an agenda that you otherwise would agree with, nobody wants their entire worth to be dependent upon their being dead.

In truth, this whole scheme gives the impression of being revenge politics. If you are at all familiar with the left-wing blogosphere, you’ll know that there is a huge amount of resentment over the fact that the South gets more money from the federal government than it pays in. The people who hold this resentment ignore that the entire purpose of social programs and such is to assist the poor, and the South is the poorest region in the country. To them, no one in the South deserves anything because a majority of Southern voters would vote against their having it. They are no different from anti-tax Republicans in that they only want to see “their” tax money go to projects and places that they personally like, and they have a massive grudge against the Southeast. This opt-out idea looks very much to me like they simply love the idea of “getting back at the South” for the tax money that it “stole” from them.

Passing a law with this in it would also send the message that health care is not a fundamental human or civil right in the United States.  If it were either, it would be the responsibility of the federal government to require every state to offer the same health care exchange across the borders.  With the exception of the death penalty, the federal government does not defer to states in the arena of human or civil rights (and it is truly a major problem with the DP that the same crime can get a different sentence not based on the judge and jury, but based on where it was committed).  By letting states opt out, this continues to send the message that health care is a privilege rather than a right.  This is not the message that we want to send!  That is the opposition’s message.

It will not turn the teabag crew in favor of the Democratic Party.  Their people are dying at the hands of insurance gangsters, too; it doesn’t seem to penetrate their skulls.  If anything, all it will do is cement their ideology.  “We don’t have socialism in this state!”

Denying—or letting governors and legislatures deny—people the right to use a social program is not going to turn anyone in favor of that program.  The only thing that will is to deploy it and let people see through experience, either their own or that of people they know, that it is not such a bad thing.  Every parent knows that sometimes they must force a stubborn child to do something, even if the child stamps his foot and DOESN’T WANT TO, because it is good for the child and the child will be grateful for it in the end.

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May 12, 2009

Crist Is Part of the Solution

Filed under: Politics — PolitiCalypso @ 2:57 pm

Though I’m not in Florida, I’m pleased that Gov. Charlie Crist is running for the Senate seat being vacated by Mel Martinez. This is a fine example of the kind of politics that I think will be necessary both to uplift the South from right-wing reactionary rule and to produce a viable and non-frightening opposition party for whenever the Democrats mess up.

I’ve written before about the need for moderate Southerners to run for political office in Republican primaries. Crist is already a Republican, of course, and a rather popular one at that; the question was about whether he would run for this office. He’s also pretty much indisputably a moderate (proving my point in the past two articles that it is possible for moderates to be well-liked in the South). I’m glad that he’s running. If he is the nominee, as is (I hope) likely, it should be an interesting race to watch, as there is not likely to be much difference between many of his views and the views of his Democratic opponent. Considering that, he may try to shore up the right flank in the general election. It wouldn’t surprise me either way. But as we know all too well, campaign rhetoric often doesn’t mean a whole lot.

As could perhaps be expected, the mainstream bloggers have this all wrong. Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com, which I linked to, is the only prominent person with a reasonable opinion on it. The luminaries at flagship blog Daily Kos are gleefully contemplating the likelihood of a primary between Crist and hard-right Club for Growth ideologue Marco Rubio. The belief is that Rubio is dead in the water as a general election candidate, as Pat Toomey now is in Pennsylvania, and that a Rubio nomination should be advocated and promoted. Wrong. (Read more…)

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April 28, 2009

Wherein I Reiterate Something I’ve Said

Filed under: Politics — PolitiCalypso @ 6:16 pm

I cannot say I’m too happy right now about Arlen Specter’s switch to the Democratic Party. Sure, I think it’s hilarious, but underneath that, there are implications that trouble me. Although I now consider myself an unaffiliated independent voter, my views are certainly to the left of the Southern majority, so I generally end up voting for Democrats at the national level and I take an interest in what direction the party is moving. As far as that goes, I really don’t mind that Specter is a moderate on certain issues, but I am troubled by his (current) refusal to switch his support in favor of the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill that would make it easier for employees to form a union and would give them the right to choose how they wanted to do that. I’ve come to believe that widespread unionization was a major driving force behind the boom period of the 1950s, in which household wealth (real wealth, not debt) skyrocketed and the country’s GDP grew. Unionization levels the playing field significantly in the private sector, taking away the near-absolute power that managers would otherwise have to determine salaries, benefits, and working conditions. EFCA is a good bill and it needs to become law.

Therefore it is my hope that, despite his statements that he will not switch to supporting this bill, Specter does come around. If this happens, I don’t think it would be a self-centered political move like this party switch indisputably is. Specter has a very long track record of supporting labor, which is why the unions in Pennsylvania have tended to support his election campaigns. If anything, his statement that he would oppose EFCA was a self-centered political move, a failed Hail Mary pass to try to get him through the Republican primary next year. He may very well decide to support it after all if that is where his true convictions (such as they are) lie. After all, he went on record as saying that he would not switch party affiliation, and look what happened.

In any case, whether Specter switches back on EFCA remains to be seen. I’d tentatively bet on it, but I think it would take time for him to announce that. There are other issues relating to this man’s switch, though, that are actually far more troublesome. (Read more…)

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February 24, 2009

Why Southern Moderates Should Run as GOP

Filed under: Politics — PolitiCalypso @ 7:01 pm

I’ve never been able to understand why everyone to the left of Pat Robertson chooses to run for office on the Democratic ticket in the Southeast region. It’s inadvisable in this region (except for those positions that are specifically for Democratic districts, like the absurdly gerrymandered Congress) as a personal electoral strategy, because—again, with that noted exception—the Southeast in general votes Republican by default. And it’s foolish as a long-term strategy for anyone who is troubled by the dominance of Religious Right theocratic politics in this region.

Let’s go ahead and get a few things out of the way. First, since this is unfortunately usually associated with Southern politics in some way, the recommendations I offer are not specific to any given race of people—but rather, to moderates of any ancestry. Secondly, I am not talking about voting. I’m talking about those with political ambitions. I’m talking about running for office. Third, I am not necessarily singling out moderates to the exclusion of others, but my advice is addressed to them because I have yet to meet a self-identified liberal who also would consider running on the Republican ticket. If you’re one of those endangered creatures, then you can take this advice too.

I think that a major shift is needed in the way political candidates are recruited in the Southeast. Specifically, I think it is LONG past time for moderates to run in Republican primaries rather than Democratic ones. All too often, we end up with elected representatives who are utter embarrassments, because no one runs for GOP nominations except the Pat Robertson crowd (or hypocrites who pretend to be of that mold) and the South defaults Republican.

The theocratic ideology has no place in U.S. politics or law. I have always felt this way. I recall writing an essay for school at age 15 or 16 explaining why school-led prayer was unconstitutional. My reasons for it are more sophisticated in understanding now, but the views themselves have not changed.

The idealized purpose of law is to set out standards of morally acceptable behavior. Naturally, this ideal often becomes corrupted in practice, but in the exists-only-on-paper view, this is why we have laws. The idea is that moral behavior keeps a society stable. I think that part of the reason why so many Religious Right types don’t get it is that they don’t understand what the source of that morality must be. In the U.S., the moral basis for a law must be secular. Certainly there can be overlap between a religious basis of morality and a secular one, but a law (or potential law) is defensible only if it has a basis in secular morality. For instance, bans on murder and robbery can be defended on a non-religious basis. A ban on, say, same-sex marriage really can’t be defended on a moral basis unless you invoke religious dogma. (Yeah, I went there.) This is the problem with the Religious Right: It wants to have the church involved in governing. Don’t believe those who use the scare tactic that so-and-so wants to “ban religion.” No one with remotely mainstream political beliefs would consider it right to prevent churches from promoting their agenda through private venues. Let them speak on the media, let them use free speech and free assembly to push what they want, but keep their moral opinions out of government unless those moral opinions can be successfully defended without invoking holy texts. And, incidentally, it goes both ways: Keep the government out of the church too unless it breaks a law.

The governing philosophy of the Religious Right—the Religious Right as a political movement—is antithetical to the form of government that we have in the United States. The framers of the Constitution made it very clear. They did not put any restrictions on government interference in economic matters, but rather, left it up to future leaders and citizens to determine how much government involvement in the economy that they wanted. Libertarianism and liberalism are therefore both Constitutionally valid economic philosophies. But for moral matters—social policy and law—it is very clear that religion cannot be the sole basis. The Religious Right as a political movement is arguably dangerous to our form of government, and they have taken over a major political party.

With this point, I return to the original subject of this post. I’ll reiterate it: An antidemocratic ideology has taken over a major political party. In large part, this was caused by a massive recruitment drive in the 1980s and 1990s by Religious Right organizations. Those entities encouraged theocratically inclined people to run for office as Republicans, and over the years, they managed to change the makeup of that party. To reverse this damage will require a lot more than voting Republicans out of office. That is not a true reversal because it does not address the change that really happened, and it keeps that major political party in theocrat hands still. Moderate and non-theocratic Republicans were “primaried” out of office or gradually retired until only the theocrats were left. To undo the theocratic revolution, moderates must regain a voice within the GOP.

Since the South is the GOP stronghold of the nation, it makes sense that the change should begin here. Primaries in general, especially at local levels, have an uncanny tendency to be personal rather than ideological. They are decided quite often by who put out the most signs and advertisements, who has the best network, and who has the best get-out-the-vote operation. Since it usually is not about ideology, moderates stand a fighting chance at being nominated. And the Republican tilt of the Southeast gives them an automatic advantage in the general election. Certainly, some primaries would result in a theocratic person being nominated anyway, but a major change like this would take time to effect. However, the “everyone knows everyone” aspect of local primaries could also result in a weeding out of some of the Religious Right hypocrites who have skeletons in their closets. It’s a win-win.

It’s important to protect the political process from belief systems that are antithetical to our Constitutional government. This could require some people to take actions that they would see as very cynical and manipulative. Southerners who identify as something other than conservative (or even who do identify as conservative but not Religious Right—i.e., libertarians) may have psychological aversions to calling themselves GOP, but if they’re considering going into politics, they will have to deal with real-world strategy soon enough. Might as well begin immediately.

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August 5, 2007

The Cowardly 57

Filed under: Politics — PolitiCalypso @ 6:31 pm

There are no excuses to be made for the rollover of Congress, specifically 57 Democrats in the House and Senate, in codifying changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Changes that legalized the very behavior that a federal judge had ruled was a blatant violation of the act. It was an act of political cowardice and fundamental stupidity. Yes, I said stupidity.

The very purpose of FISA was to prevent the sort of egregious, unlawful behavior that the Bush administration was doing — wiretapping people without a warrant.

Y’see, in the general public, when someone breaks the law, they get punished. They don’t threaten the Legislature into altering that law.

I guess there is a different set of laws for those in the executive branch.

If these people don’t think that Bush’s goons are using the data to profile “troublesome” Americans, with no connection whatsoever to terrorists, then they are too delusional to occupy the offices that they hold. This man, his puppet master Cheney, and their goon Gonzales have proven time and time again that they cannot be trusted with a five dollar bill, let alone the private information of millions of Americans.

By rolling over, they have validated Bush’s “unitary executive” (i.e., king, or more appropriately, emperor) theory of government. He commands and they obey. He is not bound by the law; he is the law.

Shame on them. They deserve exactly what will be coming their way. America is no longer with Bush, and neither will it support those who aid and abet his lawbreaking.

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