The collapse of the repeal of Obamacare is still shockingly difficult to digest. It was a crazy idea–revamp the system responsible for 18% of US spending in 4 weeks to mark the anniversary of the passage of the Affordable Care Act. They had 8 years to develop comprehensive healthcare insurance legislation. This was the best they could do, a plan developed by HHS Secretary Tom Price while still in Congress. In fact, it had been incorporated into the GOP House “Better Way”, used in campaigning in 2016.
The American Health Care Plan was Ryan’s plan to dive right into two important stock GOP priorities, cuts to Medicaid and tax cuts for the wealthy. The decision to use the reconciliation device necessitated leaving much of the elements of Obamacare untouched; that proved advantageous in trying to convince Americans that popular advantages gained with Obamacare would continue. It seemed a reasonable strategy, but the public proved more savvy than anticipated and erupted. The horse trading frenzy ensued; remove subsidies, increase tax breaks. Moderates were alarmed that essentially the same number of people who had acquired insurance through Obamacare would lose it under Ryancare. The Freedom Caucus balked at any subsidies, the continuation of Medicaid expansion programs and so much more.
Let’s take a step back to see how the Republicans got into this mess. Recall that when Obamacare was first proposed, there was a groundswell of opposition to government intrusion into health care. There was conservative propaganda about death panels and rationing. There were charges of socialism and communism. The protest spawned the Tea Party. It took 14 months to pass the Affordable Healthcare Act.
Obamacare started shakily, hampered by states with Republican governors refusing to create state insurance exchanges, opting out of Medicaid expansion, and finally the dysfunctional ACA website. But Obamacare’s very existence began shifting the paradigm toward healthcare is a right, not a privilege. As more and more people who needed to get medical care joined the ranks of the insured, they felt the change that access to health care made in their lives.
But Republicans could not abandon their rallying cry. They drew support from healthy people who didn’t use the medical system, from young people and more libertarian elements who resented the mandate. And of course, politicians and elected officials listen more closely to each other than their constituents in order to maintain their rhetoric at a fever pitch. They didn’t notice as more and more people became comfortable with the idea of nonemployer healthcare insurance, particularly as more and more companies stopped offering health insurance as a benefit. Recovery from the Great Recession allowed employers to stop offering health benefits in a market with an oversupply of labor. Obamacare offered an alternative for growing numbers of part-time workers and contractors.
People not using the medical system had no a idea ho their insurance worked; lots of personal testimonials about people who opposed Obamacare until they got a life threatening illness emerged in the repeal debate. It was not just Obamacare, but their thinking about the principle of healthcare as a right that changed as they began to sense the societal need to maintain a healthy population. European countries realize this; healthy societies have healthy children that learn better and grow into healthy adults who are more productive. It’s pretty simple actually. But this is certainly not the niggardly Republican way. Every man for himself; if an individual doesn’t achieve in the free market, that’s on them.
It was only during the 2016 campaign that “Repeal Obamacare” evolved into “Repeal and Replace Obamacare” as the party tried to catch up with it’s supporters. And then there was the candidate, a populist pragmatist, promising essentially universal health care–the best healthcare for everyone at the lowest cost. Now, there were lots of supporters invigorated by The Celebrity Candidate who rallied to the Repeal and Replace anthem that didn’t understand that their insurance was Obamacare, not realizing that that was a nickname for the Affordable Care or that their insurance was Medicaid by another name, provided by Medicaid expansion programs. Trump was offering something even better.
The GOP had painted itself into a corner. The party does not subscribe to healthcare as a right; to the contrary, it is philosophically opposed to a role for government in the health insurance market at all. They believe free market forces can shape medical insurance costs and for that matter, medical costs in general. But this too is devoid of any connection with the reality of the healthcare industry. For a free market to function, transparency is paramount; consumers need information to make choices; companies advertise the merits of their products to attract customers. None of those conditions exist in the healthcare system or insurance industry. There hasn’t been a free market in health insurance for decades, certainly not since the advent of health maintenance organizations HMO. Truth be told, they care little about whether ordinary citizens are healthy or ill. It’s a shark tank; let the best man swim or sink.
Enter HHS Secretary Price’s “patient centered care” nonsense which supposedly puts medical choices back between the patient and their doctor”. Price, as a former physician, knows first hand the falseness of that claim; the most important entity in the care discussion is the insurance company. And insurance companies hold all the cards.
So Ryan jumped into the breach with a plan that would masquerade as maintaining access to “healthcare” while jump starting transfer of more wealth to the already wealthy and hopefully, weaning the public from the health care as a right mindset over time. It is important to note that Republicans, particularly Tom Price, were careful to speak about access to “healthcare insurance”, not access to care, which they wanted the public to believe was no longer available to many because of rising premiums, deductibles, co-pays and co-insurance. But actual medical care for US citizens is not a party concern; that’s for the free market to settle.
Republicans couldn’t deliver on Trump’s promises because they didn’t want to. Their agenda is different. Trump masquerades as a populist, the party is not that. Apparently, during a mere 8 years out of power, they forgot how to govern. The party is fractured by unruly factions who want what they want and will accept nothing less. PresidentDealmaker failed them. If only some entity could point “You’re Fired!” and get him off the show. It does seem curious that Trump didn’t want his name on the American Health Care Plan. Obviously atypical for a man who puts his name on steaks, vodka and even patent applications for Chinese massage parlors. Could it be that even in his state of legislative naivete, he intuited the debacle and studiously avoided being associated with yet another failure– a healthcare plan that offered none of what he promised. This is the losing streak that defies “there’ll be so much winning” that people will get tired of it.
The party is moving on. Healthcare is a quagmire they need to escape from. In their minds, the opportunity lost was the foundation for their tax cuts and restructured tax code. They will concentrate on the former because the tax code is an enormous task for which their factions will need some practice in compromise. And quick results are the theme of the day, perhaps because Republicans are afraid their days are numbered after the repeal debacle.
They have a propaganda strategy in place, kicked off by the BullyPresident himself. One, it’s the Democrats fault; two, Obamacare will implode; the Democrats own the dissolution of the healthcare system. Their implementation will be to do whatever it takes to help it along, quietly through changes in HHS regulations and to Medicaid through CMS (Center for Medical Services), the agency that oversees Medicaid and Medicare, where Seema Verma, the new director, can alter federal requirements for the federal dollars that support state programs.
In the interim, will GOP legislators who are genuinely concerned about health care, even in the Republican sort of way, try to float their own bills? Will they reach across the aisle to Democrats? It remains unclear if 45 is capable of creating his own legislative agenda or will he allow Ryan to take the lead. Here is a kernel of criticism that applies to the Obama administration. If a reliance on the executive order was the result of obstructionist Republican tactics, one never had the sense that Obama envisioned a presidential role in the down and dirty sparring of the legislative process as opposed to the loftiness of diplomacy. The legislative agenda in the current administration is more likely the bailiwick of strategist Steve Bannon, with logistical planning through the Vice President.
Tax cuts is sure winner. If there’s anything that Republicans agree on, it’s tax cuts. The party insists that tax cuts increase economic growth, grounded in staunch allegiance to economic theory that defies history. A graphic look at economic growth tells the real story; economic growth increases following tax increases, and falls after tax cuts. When Bush 41 and Clinton increased taxes, growth soared. After two successive tax cuts by Bush 42, growth continued to fall and dropped off the precipice in the 2007 recession.
But party that has been focused on devastating the middle and working class to transfer wealth to the rich can easily accomplish that. Restructuring the tax code is far more complicated. When the dust clears from the debate, Congress will probably lop out a few deductions, add some tax credits and call it a day. But the fight will finally put 45 in the winner column, something he sorely needs.
Congressional Republicans seem not only to have lost touch with their constituents, but also with each other. Many conservatives, in a multiplicity of stripes, seem to believe that their constituents voted for every idea in their heads, not a few slogans and popular issues touched on in their speeches. There is an inherent narcissism in their self righteous commitment never to compromise. The legislative process is built on compromise; it is that very absence of compromise that delivered the do-nothing Congress.
In coming weeks, a parade of witnesses testifying in Congressional hearings are unlikely to produce any definitive conclusions. FBI director Comey could not have been clearer that the Obama tapping Trump lie is complete bullshit. We’ve already heard from multiple sources that there’s nothing to Trump’s accusations. Still he persists, much as the stupidity of birther persists even today. (Okay, it’s among dummies, racists and conspiratorialists, but it’s still out.) Nothing can be disproved when people refuse to listen. 
A new revelation has just emerged from the Republican chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunes. After calling for anyone to come forward with information pertinent to the wiretapping inquiry, he announced today that someone had provided him with de-identified transcripts of incidentally gathered communications of Trump transition team members. This information was likely gathered during routine monitoring of foreign officials; any American who interacts with a foreign citizen would fall under this routine surveillance, including journalists, business people or even Obama administration officials in the course of conducting business. As a likely complication of Trump’s attempt to “co-govern” before the inauguration while ducking daily security briefings, they may not have known, being government outsiders. 45 is likely to say at some point that this tidbit is the “something else that would emerge”, having learned since inauguration about routine surveillance and suspecting his associates could have been caught up. OK, it was probably Bannon who picked up on it in a security briefing while Trump was busy tweeting. 
Maybe it’s a certain lost lady. America has no First Lady. Melania Trump opted out, refusing to leave the security of her gold penthouse. Publically mute beyond a magazine interview, she’s usually seen flashing a brief model’s smile which quickly fades as she stands by the Donald’s side at Air Force One’s door on the way to Mar-a-lago. She almost always looks uncomfortable. She did say a prayer at one rally in Melbourne, more a campaigning spouse than a First Lady. She hasn’t yet appointed a social secretary. 
Melania is familiar enough with cyberbullying among adults, perhaps she’s gained expertise on youths from her son. She may have been a model, but seemingly, she has no wish to be a star. Stardom is a leap; she traded that option in when she married; there isn’t room for even a Tinkerbell sized star in her household. Certainly Melania is working from a handicap; she may be on the back burner because her halting foreign accented English projects the wrong image for the America First Nation State. 
She has graciously transferred management of her business interests; that is transferred but not divested. Ivanka’s position is similar in one respect to a First Lady, neither is salaried. A neat trick that keeps Ivanka immune from ethics rules since she is not part of the White House staff. But oohlala, the business opportunities abound, particularly in the international arena with access to national security foresight. 
The RealityPresident is clearly ill at ease with world leaders; notice the difficulty he has making small talk and his avoidance of shaking hands with dignitaries in press photo sessions. 
At HUD, this budget demonstrates exactly what candidate Trump taunted African Americans they had to lose, exposing 45’s rhetoric about being a president for everyone in the country and his false concern for the inner cities as just another Trumpian fake. Among programs eliminated by the 13% cut are Community Development Block Grants which help the elderly and handicapped through Meals on Wheels and support homeless shelters where temporarily displaced families, many veterans and the mentally handicapped are fed and periodically housed.
From the campaign trail, the elimination of the National Endowment for the Arts and National Public Radio was a given. For the most part, artists and performers have demonstrated an antipathy to the CelebrityPresident but beyond that Trumpophants have an innate antipathy to artist expression outside a narrow acceptable range of christian orthodoxy and view the NEA as a principal patron of the heretical. NPR, as far as they’ve been told because they ain’t listening to it, is a progressive front for anti-Trump propaganda, not “fair and balanced” coverage. (Forgive me for appropriating the old Fox News slogan from the cable news forerunner of fake news.)
It goes without saying that America First requires allocations for enhanced security. The distribution of the $54 billion or 10% increase for the Department of Defense is not clear; some will go for more warships and fighter jets and some nonspecific increases in the fight against ISIS. Homeland Security is in line for a $2.6 billion increase for border technology and infrastructure including the early stages of The Trump Wall. (What happened to Mexico footing the bill?) An additional $1.8 billion is earmarked for border patrol and ICE agents as well as detention and deportation of undocumented immigrants. In the Department of Energy, an additional $1.4 billion is tasked for upgrading and managing the national nuclear weapons arsenal.
As for the 10 million men in the US, one in six who are 25-54 years old who are unemployed or out of the workforce, they may have to abandon their government benefits and look more to community food pantries and church socials when they’re not playing video games at home. They’ll have to cut back on pizza while playing. If their cousin or brother or father has to lose their benefits, at least the freeloaders and line breakers will be “off the dole”; that is their sacrifice for a greater good. Progressives may be surprised by how little pushback comes from Trumpophants over budget issues, at least until they get down to the details that affect their lives. Republicans will do their damnedest to doublespeak, spin and obfuscate the true impact until it’s smacking those folks in the face.
Steve Bannon swears that he is not a white supremacist. If that is true, it makes him even more sinister. If he were, then at least he would be true to his principles. As it is, he is a cynical manipulator; he used Breitbart as a weapon. He built a media organization designed to spew hate and create chaos in the perceptions of the less well informed by blurring the edges of truth. The platform became a universe for many and within that universe, lies became facts. 
Bannon used his platform to hitch a ride into the bosom of power by helping to engineer the election of Donald Trump, a narcissistic minor celebrity showman. The two lied so effectively that they fooled enough gullible voters casting ballots in the right locations to eke out victory. The 3 million popular vote margin for Hillary Clinton nags Trump so acutely because deep down, he understands that he did not score an overwhelming victory, no matter how many times he says he has. Trump has proven easily malleable to the demands of the Republican Party; the party hated him initially, but he brought them the golden trifecta-Congress, the vast majority of governorships and state legislatures. Now the Kochs and their friends can pursue their agenda with abandon- shrivel the federal government such that it can’t interfere with the further concentration of power and wealth in the hands of the 1% with the express consent of those being impoverished. 
Bannon is firmly anchored in the concept of the nation state; a concept that went out of fashion after WWII with the rise of international cooperation that evolved through the end of the Cold War to multinational economic cooperation. The rise of the nation state in the late 19th and early 20th century led to continuous warring between European nations that ended in the two world wars. Bannon’s nationalism is rooted in the idea that the natural state of the world is the clash of civilizations, embodied in national identities anchored in a core cultural identity. National sovereignty, then, is the defense of this core identity. It is this American sovereignty that must be protected through restriction of trade and immigration, as each dilute the “American brand”. He has said “The central core of what we believe, that…we are a nation with a culture and a reason for being.” Globalism is the enemy.
When he testified to the Senate committee, he said what he thought would lead to confirmation, e.g., that he would uphold “the law of the land”. He meant until he could change it.
developed. The Republicans want to believe and, maybe they honestly have been misled, that unfettering business from inclusion of environmental cost in their bottomline will lead to unfettered economic growth. The growth is for the top 1%, not the laborers that produce it. The decline in real wealth over the last 3 decades and the rise in income disparities stands witness. But if they roll back the clock, they won’t have to worry about their children bowed under the burden of federal deficit spending; their children will have drowned from rising sea levels or have died from cancer or respiratory disease. We have only to look at the air quality in India and China to see the places from which we came. Remember Pittsburgh skies circa 1980s.
Pruitt is just the latest to reveal himself. As the Russian web of intrigue extends to a widening number of Trump’s campaign aides and appointees, falsehoods are popping up like crabgrass. Flynn was the first domino to fall, not for memory loss about the true nature of the phone calls with the Russian ambassador, but for the oversight lie to Mike Pence. Next Sessions dropped with another memory lapse of his meetings with same said ambassador. His punishment is recusal from any investigations into Russian meddling. Al Franken is still trying to get him back before a Senate Committee hearing to get a clearer picture.
In fact there is much in the present scenario that recalls Nixonian Washington, when Nixon thought his White House was under siege. Similarly now, the lie has been elevated to the most likely utterance to issue from any CelebrityPresident staffer, spokesman or official. Alternative fact art has saturated the administrative canvas. It has further undermined waning trust in government. (I mean among more progressives because Trumpophants were already there) The country has acquired an eerie cloud of the unreal; we are struck with disbelief as we’re greeted by news of the morning presidential Tweet, just as you wake from a bad dream questioning if it happened. I’m sticking with the NYTimes, the Washington Post and The New Yorker for reality checks.
Africans were happy with the opportunities in their lives; many captives lost their futures completely in the First and Second passages before landing on these shores. There are no figures for the total number of Africans captured inland before they marched in shackles to slaving ports for shipping, but between 1525-1866, an estimated 10.7 million of the 12.5 million men, women and children shipped survived the Middle Passage. That is equal to the combined populations of Massachusetts and Arizona in the 2010 census. This is a very different narrative than the lofty vision Carson tried to present. 
America and it’s culture for white, protestants against the onslaught of the brown peoples of the world. Never mind that the white man came late to the continent, stole it from brown people and built the nation with the labor of Black people and financed by slavery associated bonds, securities, banking and manufacturing markets that spurred the Industrial Revolution. Isn’t possession nine-tenths of the law? To the winner goes the spoils. The two cronies are trying their damndest to stave off 2020 when whites are projected to be a minority in the country. (More to come in Jeff and Steve, Brothers in Arms post)
Has the madness of King George descended on the West Wing? It is fitting that the insane claim that President Obama wiretapped Trump Tower during the election dropped on Twitter. 140 characters gives no details, answers no questions. What should be social media fluff has been raised to a president’s right hand. It’s frightening that the RealityPresident is so besieged by the widening scandal of Russian influence in his campaign electoral victory that he has sought refuge in that most impressive accomplishment of his life on the con.
oleblacklady 