Voices from the Flats – Thom Hartmann (Poll)
16 12 2009I’ve been listening a lot to Howard Dean, Bernie Sanders, Ed Schultz and Thom Hartmann about the health care bill in the Senate. After we all took a mental breather from health care discussion, the time has come to focus attention back on this pressing issue. The following is by Thom Hartmann posted here in its entirety with permission from the author.
Healthcare: First They Came for the ‘Banksters’
by Thom Hartmann
With apologies to Pastor Niemöller:
First they came for the banksters, and showered them with money and put them in the Administration in a way that was not change we could believe in.
Then they came for the military industrial complex, and sent more and more of our children to die in faraway lands that had never attacked us in a way that was not change we could believe in.
And now they’ve sold out our hope for a national health care system not run by millionaire gangsters in suits. And who is left to speak for us?
President Obama is playing the Bill Clinton game of throwing people a bone and telling them it’s steak. Perhaps he’s doing it because he thinks it’s his only choice; perhaps it’s because he’s surrounded himself with Bill Clinton advisors (and Hillary as Secretary of State); whatever the reason, while it worked for Clinton, it won’t work for Obama.
It worked for Reagan, and for the first Bush, and even worked somewhat for George W. Bush.
But it won’t work anymore. Here’s why.
From 1929 until the 1980s, most Americans were “high information voters.” They were paying attention to politics. The Republican Great Depression of 1929-1938, World War II, the Korean War, Kennedy’s election, and the War in Vietnam were all Big Events that caused Americans to pay attention. Americans of that era needed to know what was up in Washington, DC, because they felt the consequences directly.
This is why in November of 1954, Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote a letter to his John Bircher brother Edgar, “Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.”
The voters knew. Even as late as 1977, when George W. Bush ran for Congress from Texas on a nearly singular platform of privatizing Social Security, he lost badly. The voters knew.
Then came Reagan. He seemed so nice. He talked friendly. At the very minute – to the second – that he put his hand on the bible to be sworn in, those nasty Iranians let go the hostages they’d been holding (a kidnapping that had so humiliated the Carter administration that Carter lost the election).
America was once again a “shining city on the hill” and even though there were a few small invasions, Panama and Grenada and all, and a small recession, and a few S&L bank failures, mostly people lost interest in politics. TV was going big, home entertainment was huge, blockbuster movies were coming onto the big screen, and America was prosperous. Americans partied on cheap debt. We went to sleep. It was the beginning of the era of the “low information voter.”
During the 1980s, the right wing was working hard. Reagan stopped enforcing the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, and most of the media Americans consumed was consolidated in the hands of about a dozen very conservative-leaning corporations. Top tax rates were cut from over 70 percent to around 30 percent, so salaries at the top exploded, including those of the stars on TV…including the “news” stars.
The newly-rich TV news people began to hang out with the becoming-fabulously-rich business people, never again criticizing them because they now worked and played together and were members of the same clubs and their kids went to the same best schools. Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous became our new religion, “greed is good” our new mantra.
Conservatives began a war on textbooks, stripping from them references to the labor movement, so that anybody who went to middle school or high school during or after the mid-1980s can’t today tell you why phrases like “Pullman Porter” or “Haymarket Square” or “Great Flint Sit Down” have any meaning.
Reagan, and then Clinton, serially deregulated the media so it came into fewer hands still, while right-wing voices exploded across the landscape. By the mid 1990s there was virtually no corner of America, not even the smallest town, where a person couldn’t hear Rush Limbaugh. After Rupert Murdoch lost $100 million a year for a half-decade, finally around Y2K Sean Hannity and Fox News began to turn a profit and became equally ubiquitous. They all made sure that voters were “low information” or “wrong information.” The labor sections of the newspapers had vanished; NPR and 60 Minutes no longer did corporate-expose investigative reporting.
Reagan used our collective somnambulance to cut taxes for his rich buddies and throw trillions their way in defense contracts. George HW did more of the same, albeit without the elegance of Reagan. Bill Clinton smiled nice and raised taxes a few tiny points – from 33 to 36 percent on the most wealthy – and just that was enough to balance the budget, and during all those years it seemed like peace and prosperity were here. Politically, people stayed asleep.
The attacks of 9/11 woke a lot of Americans up, but they didn’t know what to believe. Retired generals taking million-dollar payoffs from defense contractors were wall-to-wall on the corporate news, telling us we needed more wars and more contractors and more military toys. The two dissenting voices – Bill Maher and Phil Donahue – were immediately silenced. Keep the people asleep. Other than a few old lefties from the 60s who showed up for anti-Iraq-war protests, it mostly worked.
Then came Barack Obama. People were sick of Bush, and Obama’s campaign for the presidency reminded the oldsters of what it meant to be politically active, while it taught the same lesson to the first generation to really involve itself in politics since the Vietnam War. Weeks before the election, the Bush crew had to admit that the phony-baloney Reaganonics games played by Reagan/Bush/Clinton/Bush while we were all asleep were collapsing. The economy was about to disintegrate. A wave of foreclosures, followed almost immediately by layoffs, swept the land.
People woke up, just like they had in 1929. They began to pay attention. And they had more than just Limbaugh and Fox to learn from; this new thing called the internet proliferated information without corporate control; Air America was birthed and liberal talk radio is now heard coast-to-coast; MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann caught fire (followed by Rachel Maddow); and even the normally cynical and innocuous Jack Cafferty at CNN began to go off on screeds worthy of the movie “Network.”
The Great Depression of 2008 – or what was billed as such – and the election of an African American president who used a ground-up instead of a top-down campaign caused high information voters to emerge again for the first time in 30 years.
Many, of course, were high with the wrong information. They showed up at tea parties and Palin rallies. But their passion is real, and their grievances are mostly legitimate. Thirty years of Reaganomics/Clintonomics has destroyed the labor movement, hollowed out our industrial sector, put us on a permanent war footing, wiped out the equity of the middle class, and created an entire generation of college-loan-indentured-servants. Who are now fully awake and seriously pissed.
We slept while Clinton’s boys Robert Rubin and Larry Summers and the whole gang, Republicans and Democrats together, signed us up for NAFTA and GATT; created the WTO; moved our jobs to China; sold off our airwaves; and “financialized” our economy (fully a quarter of all corporate profits in 2007 were from the “financial services industry” – an “industry” that creates nothing whatever that can be used or eaten or has any other real-wealth value). We slept through the explosion of the private prison industry and the wars in the Balkans (who knows where Kosovo is, anyway?). Seinfeld was far more interesting.
But now both the Vietnam oldsters and the Hip Hop youngsters are awake. Even the Reagan generation is awakening, but confused, as they’ve grown up on Limbaugh and Fox, and didn’t learn much in school about politics after Reagan’s guys stripped most classes of in-depth civics requirements. (It’s interesting – when Michael Medved and I debated in Chicago last year in front of 1000 people, 500 tickets sold by each of our radio stations, my side of the room was mostly people over 50 or under 30. His side of the room was almost entirely 30- and 40-somethings.)
And that’s why Obama is heading for a disaster.
He’s betting that he can do like Bill Clinton did to us with NAFTA and the World Trade Organization – hand us a turd and tell us it’s gonna blossom beautifully if we’ll just wait a year or three or five. Rahm’s betting that if he can “deliver health care reform” – even if the fundamental system of gangster corporations standing between us and our doctors while skimming 40 percent off the top for their mansions and private jets is intact – we’ll be all excited at his “victory” and elect more Democrats in 2010 and reelect Obama in 2012.
Ditto for cosmetic repairs of the banks, which is really just trickle-down Reaganomics on steroids. Rahm and his DLC buddies truly believe that this “change” brought to us by Bush’s man Tim Geithner or Clinton’s man Larry Summers is something we’ll “believe in.”
We don’t.
We oldsters of the Vietnam era, and the youngsters coming up who see how college loan banksters are screwing them as badly as their Clinton-era parents were screwed by the mortgage scammers, are all now fully awake.
President Obama, sir: Meet what is in large part your own creation – the High Information Voters of 2009/2010.
We’re awake, we’re mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it any more. Natalie Portman to Matt Taibbi to Arianna Huffington to Bill Moyers represent the span of our four awakened generations; generations who have figured out how the game is played. And don’t like it.
First Obama continued Bush’s policy of giving the banksters money, and we protested feebly.
Then he expanded Bush’s wars, and we protested more loudly.
Now he’s going to force us to give trillions to the gangsters who run the “health insurance” companies (while they promise to behave nicely in return) and thinks we’re going to go along with it and it’ll get him re-elected.
He’s wrong.
Please, President Obama, step up and lead. We’d like some that “change we can believe in” that’s actually the real thing.
Kill the bill.
Thom Hartmann (thom at thomhartmann.com) is a Project Censored Award-winning New York Times best-selling author, and host of a nationally syndicated daily progressive talk program The Thom Hartmann Show. www.thomhartmann.com His most recent books are “The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight,” “Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights,” “We The People: A Call To Take Back America,” “What Would Jefferson Do?,” “Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class and What We Can Do About It,” and “Cracking The Code: The Art and Science of Political Persuasion.” His newest book is Threshold: The Crisis of Western Culture.
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What do you think of the current Senate Health Care Bill?
- Kill the bill! (76%, 424 Votes)
- Save the bill! (24%, 135 Votes)
Total Voters: 559
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December 16th, 2009 at 8:22 PM
So many points of view and so much passion, this is truly a big issue one must admit.
But is it really about Obama?
I think not, I think it is about the systemic failure that has allowed the USA to decay to the point it has. Can Obama undo the bias of the corporate controlled media? I think not, he has to contend with their incessant belittlement. Let us face facts people, he is confronted with massive and totallly unscrupulous resistance.
What I see as the issue here is not him, but us. He is only doing the best he can while trying to maintain the long view of what might be accomplished if he can stay in the so called seatof power for a full eight years.
We are at the core of that failure if we do not remake our country in the next decade, we are the ones responsible for enforcing not just the rule of law but the rule of reason.
Our foes are clever and adept and have enormous resources. They can be defeated, but not without sacrifice and dedication. Abandoning ship is not dedication in my book.
Fight the nay sayers, do not fight obama, he is only trying to navigate the ship of state among the many icebergs he has inherited.
December 16th, 2009 at 10:09 PM
Kru at 49 I completely agree. It is not Obama’s function to write the law rather once Congress has written the law, his signature acknowledges that the Presidential/Administrative branch of government will put the new law into effect. I’m old enough to have had Civics in high school. It is a shame that it is now gone with the wind of conservatism.
Electing Obama was only the first step in righting the ship of state. He also needs a Congress that can write and pass good legislation. While 2008 was a step in the correct direction there is still much work to be done, especially in the Senate. With 6 years terms it may take a cycle or two to really clean house of the corporatists.
I voted to kill the bill but after reading so many comments I have changed my mind. A bill needs to get passed by the Senate which then goes for reconciliation with the House bill. This will be a whole, full bodied round of negotiation. At that point, it’s time for the really heavy guns to come out on anyone who is not on board.
One of the things I recall from some program when Ted Kennedy passed was hearing that his biggest regret was killing a health care bill because it wasn’t everything they wanted. In later years, he realized that it could have been a foundation to build upon. I think we should listen to that advice from the Lion of the Senate.
So in the meantime, let’s all look to places we can put our efforts to elect better Senators in 2010 and beyond. Let’s also keep reminding Obama what we elected him to do while reminding him that we have his back. We can be just a noisy as the corporate lobbyists. We also needs to keep reminding one another to push forward and not give up and let teabaggers reign.
December 16th, 2009 at 10:18 PM
I just watched Olberman’s rant to kill the bill… and, despite what I said in my earlier comment, I found myself agreeing with everything that he said. The bill has already been killed. Something else has taken its place. I’m not 100 percent ready to say kill the bill, not after all the effort I have made, all the letters that I have written, but…
I am close to the point.
It might be the thing to do.
But, if it is killed, I think that is it for now. Despite the talk of starting anew and going for reconciliation, there will be no reconciliation. The right will proclaim victory and with 2010 coming up, this will not come up again.
Health care reform will just flat out be dead.
But it will be capitulating, timid, Democrats who will be even more responsible then obstructionist, fear-mongering, lying… yes, lying… Republicans who will be to blame.
And it will be dead. It won’t come back anytime soon.
December 16th, 2009 at 10:24 PM
>Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.
There. Is. No. Baby.
This is going this way because it’s how Obama wants to play it. He never wanted a public option, he wants reelection in 2012, with the help of a grateful insurance industry. Sad, but true.
Except Mr Hartmann is right: Mr. Obama has made a gross miscalculation. The electorate that carried him to victory won’t be satisfied with crumbs. He needs to be schooled, well and soon, so that the rest of the promised agenda is delivered, or attempted, IN GOOD FAITH—instead of this phony pantomime of “change.”
December 17th, 2009 at 12:02 AM
Great discussion on this thread.
Just thought I’d throw that out there.
December 17th, 2009 at 12:04 AM
Markos at Daily Kos answers Nate Silver’s “20 Questions” pretty well.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/12/16/815402/-20-answers
December 17th, 2009 at 12:31 AM
Glen Greenwald went over this very same subject today over at Salon.com. Greenwald’s piece is worth a read:
White House as helpless victim on healthcare
December 17th, 2009 at 4:41 AM
I have poured over the sites trying to decide whether or not to kill this bill. I didn’t vote in the poll and I’m sorry to say, I didn’t read all of the comments here. But I’m mad as hell and I have to speak out about this bill.
This bill is not what we wanted. We need a public option, a medicare buy-in for those younger than 65 and protection from the mandatory purchase of insurance. People without jobs don’t have money to buy-in. They just want health care.
This is the insurance company’s dream bill and I will not support it in its current state. It’s a disaster.
But I know things that Americans may not know. I married a UK citizen whose taxes covered their health care and never a bill, never a copay (except for drugs) and never a worry about going bankrupt. No one in the UK loses their home or life savings when they get sick.
My husband had a motorcycle accident and spent a week in the hospital (many years ago) and never once worried about the costs. He never had to worry about selecting the ‘right’ doctor or worrying about what time of day he might need care. He never ever had to fight for the expense of his care. He just cannot fathom how Americans have been screwed for YEARS by the insurance companies. He cannot fathom the control of the lobbyists in this country.
We have to make our voices heard and end this mafia control of our health care system. It is broken and I’m not going to sit back and watch my fellow Americans die or not get treated because they fear losing their home or their life savings over health care. Don’t even ask me about illegal immigrants because my answer will be, they are humans and Jesus didn’t ask for their citizenship papers when he healed the sick.
My girlfriend in Phoenix works for a doctor and doesn’t have health care. That is just wrong on all fronts and we must get a bill that is worthy of the President’s signature. Until we do, I am going to be fitful and angry and will challenge anyone that supports the mafia insurance companies.
Stop this madness now and start with a bill that will cover every human in this country, no matter their status, their station in life or their ability to pay. Health care is not negotiable; it’s a right of all citizens to be treated for their issues because we’re all humans. We age, we get sick and we need health care. As Keith said last night, First do no harm. We must demand that they present a bill worthy of a signature.
Thanks for reading.
/rant over.
December 17th, 2009 at 5:24 AM
I must say, I am torn; to kill or not to kill.
Being one of those people on the edge of bankruptcy and ruined credit standing because of healthcare bills (and I have insurance) I had high hopes on getting a Bill passed that would actually HELP the American People.
The Bill currently on the Senate floor actually makes me want to cry. I am so disillusioned by what I see happening to our hopes that something resembling CHANGE for the benefit of the PEOPLE.
What happened to the cap on premiums and out of pocket expense?
What happened to the ban on pre-existing conditions?
What happened to the affordable public option?
I could go on and on and on but we all see what happened to the TEETH in this Bill. They were not ‘pulled’, they were literally KNOCKED OUT and time to save them is running out. All that is left are gaping holes that the will be filled with more $$$ going to the insurance companies.
This is not what WE wanted and the fact that our POTUS can stand there and state it has EVERYTHING he outlined is just another punch in the face of the American People.
December 17th, 2009 at 8:12 AM
http://thefastertimes.com/prowrestling/2009/12/17/democrats-its-time-to-drive-the-family-truckster-off-the-lot/
Perfect analogy. You have to see the picture. Plus, it lists the “benefits.”
I’m so depressed.
December 17th, 2009 at 8:49 AM
This is a very hard choice for me, since I am a strong advocate of Single Payer Healthcare, but the fact remains, we have to start somewhere, even if it is a very small crack in the door. Maybe later maybe we can get out foot in the door and keep pushing it open until it is all the way to Single Payer. I know that sounds like a pipe dream now, but we can’t just give up. If Obama loses ALL on this, we have all lost. We just can;’t let that happen, so I vote to keep the bill – any bill.
December 17th, 2009 at 9:13 AM
Kill it. Strip Lieberman of his posts, get the clownish Democrats to act like they’re a team and do the job they were elected to do. Or the Democrats need to be replaced.
The Republicans are completely crooked and the Democrats are their loyal opposition.
The politicians need to be replaced. Until we the people rid ourselves of these liars and thieves, we have no reason to even complain. We need to raise a giant stink and be sure they understand why we are running them out of town. Only then will it be possible to keep their replacement politicians in line.
December 17th, 2009 at 11:31 AM
Krubozumo Nyankoye @ 51, that is one of the most eloquent pieces I’ve read about the political process for a long time. Thank you.
And I agree, AKM, this is a great conversation. Thanks to everyone. I’m mostly a lurker here, feeling a bit like a tourist, a bit like a peeping Tom (or Tomasina!) because I’m not from Alaska.
But I am hungering for a place to talk about this with people who are thoughtful as we wrestle with this process and our hopes and frustrations about politics in the US in almost 2010. There are few places where an actual conversation CAN take place online — I am exhausted by the snipey snarky one liner battles that seem to take over most places.
A couple of quotes from the movie, An American President from the brilliant monologue at the end (where he does decide to scrap a bill but that’s fiction!)
:
“America isn’t easy. America is advanced citizenship. You’ve gotta want it bad, ’cause it’s gonna put up a fight.”
“We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things, and two things only: making you afraid of it, and telling you who’s to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections.”
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/MovieSpeeches/moviespeechtheamericanpresident.html
December 17th, 2009 at 2:13 PM
Kill The Bill.
I can’t get it out of my head,that was the slogan of the teabaggers.
That was their last protest they were going to invade the Senate and pretend to die.
That was their slogan Kill The Bill.
Sorry, I associate that saying with the teabaggers.
December 17th, 2009 at 10:55 PM
The threshold of health care reform must be crossed and in the next few days. This effort was started by Franklin Roosevelt when I was less than one. I hope the bride will not wiggle loose in the last few steps.