President Obama Stumps in New Jersey for Governor Corzine

Thursday, July 18, 2009

PNC Arts Center

3:15 pm– Members of the press passing out in a massive, seemingly endless line into the center, and its not on the account of President Obama but the scorching heat. Audacity of Hope? More like the Audacity of Heat Stroke

3:20 pm– I just made it through the security check and I didn’t even have to take off my shoes…Yes we can!

3:24 pm– Finally made my way down to the press pool seating area. In retrospect, I probably would’ve have sat in the blogger section, but then I’d be on the side of the Garden State Parkway.

3:30 pm– Some state senator approaches the podium and addresses the throngs of exuberant Obamaniacs and their one Corzine fan. She touts and panegyrizes the achievements and accomplishments of Governor Corzine. Yeah, how’s about addressing the fact that New Jersey received more than 17 billion dollars in Federal Stimulus money and yet no free bottled water in sub-Saharan heat.

3:32 pm– Much to the pleasure of the ultra-partisan crowd, State Senator begins to equate Chris Christie, the Republican candidate for governor, to president Bush. Not surprisingly, the crowd erupted in a raucous of boos. I think Bush is about as popular with the general electorate as flesh eating bacteria.

3:36 pm– Oh my, there appears to be a full-scale chorus singing. The chorus sang mellifluously and were very impassioned, but I fear I was much too much to distracted by the plethora of awkward white guy dancing. Clearly the black part of Obama would be put to shame.

3:45 pm– Whose Congressman’s leg do you have to hump to get a martini around here!

3:46 pm– Still no Obama or that other guy whom one person came to see.

4:00 pm– NJ Governor Corzine just made his way up the stage and to the podium and announces that he’s a Gay American. But seriously, Governor Corzine begins to address the enthusiastic crowd. What, too hot for sweater vests?

4:02 pm– Oh my, this man really needs to touch Obama because he has the charisma of a week’s old meatloaf. If he isn’t the Art Garfunkel to Obama’s Paul Simon…

4:05 pm– The topic of health care–the wheezing 800 pound gorilla in the emergency room–was broached.

4:08 pm– Governor Corzine panders to his most ardent supporters by playing up his support for unions and working class New Jerseyians.

4:12 pm– Governor Corzine announces the arrival of his good friend, Hillary Clinton. But seriously, President Obama has arrived!

4:13 pm– I think I just lost 80 percent of my hearing.

4:14 pm– President Obama begins to address the sweltering but ebullient crowd of thousands.

4:15 pm– I don’t care one iota if President Obama has back peddled on some of his campaign promises, belied some of his most vehement campaign rhetoric, and sheepishly kowtowed to the banks because he is adorable! He’s like puppy’s breath and new car scent all put in one! But seriously, President Obama exudes confidence and is highly commanding.

4:16 pm– Oh no he didn’t! I believe President Obama just handed Corzine his coat jacket. I guess Corzine is doing his laundry now.

4:18 pm– President Obama wastes no time in emphatically declaring Governor Corzine a crucial ally who had helped develop the national economic recovery plan, saving countless jobs, while working wonders on education and health insurance and still cutting the size of state government.

4:20 pm– President Obama seems very ensnared in his presidential campaign rhetoric and almost forgets that he got the job back in November. His tone is just as fiery and forceful as it was on the stump. Clearly Obama feels more comfortable in this arena than he does in the oval office.

4:25 pm– Health Care reform is explained not just in terms of the nation as a whole but to the great many small business owners suffering from soaring costs here in New Jersey.

4:30pm– Enough with all of this trivial health care reform! I want to know why the president hates flies and yellow mustard!

4:36– After lauding Governor Corzine for his own efforts in fixing health care, President Obama took this golden opportunity to highlight his own prescription for a workable and affordable health plan. In fact, President Obama took off the gloves and confronted the most vociferous republican and conservative Democrat opponents of his health plan by loudly declaring “What’s your Plan?!” Kudos!

“What’s your Plan?!” ~ President Obama

4:40 PM– President Obama concludes his 25 minute speech by reaffirming his support for Governor Corzine and thanks the crowd.

On Electricity, Or, Can A Public Option Work?

Over the next few weeks there will continue to be great hub and bub about the “public option.” If there is a public option in the health care reforms that are being considered, it will be the end of all medicine in America, we are told. Some are positing that nobody will be able to get care because doctors will not accept the payment levels of the public option, and some believe that it will no longer be possible for private insurers to stay in business because they will be unable to compete with an enterprise operated by the government.

In today’s story that theory is tested—and it’s done by looking back in history, to a time when another government-owned business paradigm was introduced to the market. And if you guessed that comparing the health care market to the market for electricity in the Pacific Northwest would be the test…well, slap yourself on the back, ‘cause you’re the winner.

To make the story work, let’s pretend that you are a consumer of electricity living in Seattle. So you purchase electricity from Seattle City Light, which is owned by the citizens of Seattle, and they purchase their power from both publicly-owned and private sources. Other consumers in the State, including yours truly, purchase power from private sources. (I’m a customer of Puget Sound Energy, which is a stockholder-owned operation.) Still others purchase from a variety of Public Utility Districts (PUDs).

(Fun Fact: Snohomish County PUD is famous for discovering those astonishing “Grandma Millie” phone calls while reviewing the Enron Tapes; in which it was proven that Enron’s energy traders habitually manipulated markets for their own gain.)

The generation side of the equation is also based on a mix of private and public sources. Seattle City Light owns two hydroelectric projects which provide roughly half of the City’s power. They also purchase from the spot market on occasion, and on occasion they sell surplus power to the market.

Puget Sound Energy also owns generation resources, and sells surplus power of its own into the market. Virtually everyone who sells power to retail customers in this region also purchases power from the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA). The US Army Corps of Engineers own and operate a series of 31 dams in the Columbia River basin; the BPA sells the hydroelectric power generated at those dams to both public and private utilities. (They also operate most of the region’s transmission and distribution resources.)

One of the stated goals of the organization is to provide power at cost, and consumers in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana are today paying about 1/3 less than the national average and roughly 1/2 the cost of electricity in New England.

So how is all this conversation about electricity relevant to health care? Some, like Georgia’s Congressman Phil Gingrey, believe that a public health insurance option means “turning the whole system over to the government to run like they do the DMV.”

But in this corner of the country, there are public options available for electricity consumers with private industry successfully operating alongside the public option. Further, the biggest recent shock to the system came from a private company that was caught manipulating the market for its own gain.

The presence of the public option has led to lower consumer costs compared to other regions of the country, suggesting that removing the profit motive from the business is indeed bringing benefit to consumers. And if you add customer satisfaction surveys to the overall picture, the “public option,” at least in the Pacific Northwest electricity market, equals happy customers who are saving significant amounts of money.

So the next time someone tells you a public option automatically equals The End Of The World…tell ‘em they should have a look at my power bill some time.

Pfizer Stimulates Economy with Free Viagra Offering

This podcast takes a look back at some of the issues that made news over the past two weeks.  First, it deals with economic issues and how they pertain to pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. Next, it looks at North Korea and the reaction from the international community to its latest nuclear activities. This podcast includes the headlines of the day, analysis, soundbites, and a song that either encapsulates the news of the day or something entirely random that I feel rocks. The purpose of these podcasts are to delve deeper into the issues and to report the things that the mainstream media often misses.  As usual, all of this will of course come from a place of humor, irony, and sarcasm:

Viagra Stimulus Podcast

If Republicans Won’t Play Along on Health Care, Who Cares?

The Republicans bluffed and lost in February when they complained that the stimulus bill wasn’t “bi-partisan” enough. Okay, so House and Senate Democrats acquiesced to some of their demands, including tax cuts for businesses and removing provisions for “family planning” (the euphemism that refers to things like abortion and contraception). The Republicans responded to these concessions by voting against the bill.

Not a single House or Senate Republican voted in favor of the stimulus bill. They apparently believed that this would demonstrate to the American people their opposition to wasteful spending and fiscal irresponsibility. Trouble is, the American people didn’t much care what the Republicans thought; they’re in the midst of a financial crisis, where hundreds of thousands of jobs are being lost each month. Hell, yes, they want a stimulus!

Republicans were using a two-pronged approach to sway the public: (1) tax cuts are superior to government spending when it comes to stimulating the economy; and (2) the government is spending way too much. I won’t go into the merits of the arguments here, but suffice it to say that those were the counter-arguments to the Democratic spending bill (yes, “stimulus” = “spending.” Recall President Obama’s statement: “What do you think a stimulus bill is?”).

The public doesn’t much care for tax cuts when those tax cuts would benefit only the top earners in the country. Now, what does look like a good idea is investment in public works projects that have been long-neglected by Reaganites who believe that the government shouldn’t spend any money on anything that isn’t national defense.

Those four paragraphs were a flashback.

Interior — White House, Present Day.

President Obama is meeting with GOP leaders, reminding them that when they clamored for “bi-partisanship,” they abandoned it just as much as they accused Democrats of abandoning it. Between 2003 and 2009, Republicans were used to getting their way every time. Sure, Democrats have controlled Congress since 2007, but for some reason, Democrats spent those two years perfecting the fine arts of cowering and acquiescing. Whenever Republicans talked about “bi-partisanship,” they meant, “Give us everything we want or we’ll call you names. We’ll say you’re soft on terrorism. We’ll say you’re engaging in pork-barrel spending. And if that doesn’t work, then we’ll call you socialists and say that you hate America and want the terrorists to win. So you’d better give us all the things we demand, and if you ever try to put your own agenda forward, we’ll slap you down so hard you’d think Mike Tyson had taken Trent Lott’s seat.”

Well, the tables have certainly turned. And I’m pleased that Obama is prepared to shut Republicans out if they refuse to play ball. Hypocrisy? Not at all. I believe in universal health care. I think it’s absolutely necessary and I think it’s nothing but good. If Democrats are willing to embrace it and make it law, then I support them. When Republicans tried to stop SCHIP, I disagreed with them. It’s a matter of not only agreement and disagreement, but also of what’s good for this country. Quite honestly, the Republicans are not interested in governance. They’re interested in stalling until 2010. They want the wheels of government to grind to a halt so that they can then go back to their constituents in November, 2010 and say, “Look at what the Democrats have done for you! Nothing, that’s what! Aren’t you sorry that you voted them into office?”

And therein lies the fundamental difference: Democrats, including President Obama, are interested in doing something constructive. I will frequently disagree with the methods they use, but I largely agree with their philosophy that the government is going to need to spend money to improve the country. I agree that the wealthy should pay for the impoverished. And I agree that health care should be our right not only as citizens, but as human beings. I think the Democrats’ approach is superior to the Republicans’ approach, and that is why I believe that if Republicans are unwilling to reach an actual compromise with the Democrats, then they should be left behind. It is not the Democrats who should have to bend to appease the Republicans; the Democrats won, their ideas are better, and if the Republicans don’t want to go along with them, then it’s their own funeral. Congress doesn’t even need the Republicans.

I’m not the only one who believes this. The American people would rather the Democrats get on with their agenda instead of watering it down to please Republicans whose sanction they don’t need and whose contempt they will get in return for their efforts. In the New York Times/CBS poll referenced above, 56% of those surveyed said that they thought Democrats should stick to their policies, but 79% thought that it was Republicans who should be bi-partisan. That says a lot: not only do Americans want Democrats to do whatever it is Democrats want to do, but they simultaneously think that Republicans should do whatever it is the Democrats want to do.

Health care reform is way too important for Democrats to be chicken about. The last significant health care reform we had in this country was the prescription drug bill from 2005, which funneled a lot of money directly from the government into the hands of prescription drug companies. Sure, the bill could have included a provision for the government to use its significant bargaining power to get better deals on drugs — but then, that would hurt the drug companies’ revenue, wouldn’t it? At approximately the same time, Congress passed a bankruptcy bill that offered terrific terms for banks, credit card companies, and the very wealthy, but left middle- and low-income people in the dark.

The relationship between bankruptcy and health care is quite close; President Bush declared, in 2005, that we needed the bankruptcy bill so as to stop people from gaming the system and trying to get the rest of us to pay off their debts. To listen to him, you’d think Americans were going bankrupt after buying too many Faberge eggs. At the time he said that, though, fully half of bankruptcies in American were being caused not by frivolous over-spending, but by health-care spending. People were — and still are! — spending themselves into tremendous debt in order to stay healthy and alive. And since our health care system discourages regular check-ups, people are guaranteed to see a doctor only when the condition is serious, which means that it will cost more money to fix than it would have if a doctor had caught the condition earlier, during a regular check-up.

It shouldn’t be surprising that Republicans see health care as a political issue instead of a humanitarian one. In 1993, Bill Kristol wrote that Republicans couldn’t afford to let the Clinton health care plan survive; if it did, then the Republicans would be finished. Let me re-iterate that: to Bill Kristol, it was more important that heath care get defeated so the Democrats wouldn’t win re-election in 1994 than it was for people to have universal access to health care.

That’s what we’re up against. And that’s why I support the Democrats. And if Republicans don’t want to join, who cares? Let them explain to their constituents in 2010 about how they didn’t want those same constituents to have universal health care, all so that the free market could survive.

We Need You: A Case for a New Grand Old Party Agenda

Last week Mark Wilson articulated that the GOP’s “alternative” plan for economic recovery was really just more of the same tried and un-true tax-cut policies. On Sunday, Frank Rich went so far as to say that the Republicans’ “desperate” tactics (such as Bobby Jindal’s callow performance Tuesday night and GOP Party Chair Michael Steele’s assertion that the Republican party needs an “off-the-hook” hip-hop makeover) were close to “committing [political] suicide.” While the stakes are definitely high for Obama and the Democrats to pull off this economic recovery, the Republican Party’s future is in dire straits if they don’t come up with a (positive) message—and leaders—fast.

On Wednesday, New York’s registered Independent mayor Michael Bloomberg met with local GOP leaders to ask for their support for his run for a third term as mayor. Although it’s understandable that they would be wary of his sincerity (he dropped the party back in 2007, and many think he only wants their endorsement because he’d be placed more visibly on the ballot), there are currently no clear Republican front-runners that could legitimately challenge Bloomberg when he runs later this year. And, while the party certainly reserves the right not to back him, they ironically need a candidate like him—someone who understands their commitment to balanced and fair economic incentives but also encourages public works projects and city-supported programs for the broader citizenry. In fact, if you look at New York as a political microcosm of the United States, Republicans can only remain relevant in this country if they promote candidates and leaders with Bloomberg-esque ideas; ones that offer innovative policies for their fiscal proposals along with new, bolder initiatives that support individual citizens.

Of course, Bloomberg isn’t perfect. However, the point is that if the Republican party wants to survive, it can’t only look to out-of-touch spokespersons such as Mark Sanford to deliver their fractured message. Although they seem to be avoiding it like the plague, Republicans are going to have to change their agenda, their ideas, and even their mission to go beyond the same old trickle-down, tax-cut, tax-credit mantra. Americans just aren’t buying it.

One possible reason the Republicans are having such a hard time promoting a new, appealing agenda is because while they’ve certainly evolved since their inception to favor the interests of an elite minority of the electorate, they’ve also clung to the image that they represent just the opposite. This stolid Party-of-No got its start by being a conflicted party of misfits: Disgruntled Democrats, frustrated Whigs, angry Know-Nothings, and other politically passionate individuals who really could only agree on their opposition to slavery. This team of outcasts banded together in Wisconsin in 1854 to form the party that only six years later would usher in its first and most famous president—Abraham Lincoln. As the party evolved from one that supported small businesses and individual rights to one that consistently favors corporate tax breaks and social conservatism, it has tried to hang on to its message and supporters by pretending to be Joe the Plumber when it’s really Joe the CEO. Granted, the Democrats are just as guilty of supporting big banks and big companies. However,  they lack the Achilles heel that the Republicans will not confront—denial. Republicans don’t want to change their image, but, ironically, they often misrepresent themselves and don’t embrace the interests of most Americans.

Despite all the best efforts of the Democrats, we need Republicans to challenge them, offer ideas, and approach our economic problems with a different, fresh perspective. We don’t need one party running the show in Washington. Unfortunately, the GOP is making this paradigm easy when congressional members stonewall Obama and his administration, GOP governors threaten to deny crucial funding for their constituents based on ideological disagreement, and Republican leaders and pundits cry “Socialism!” every time the Democrats offer forth a plan but at the same time fail to offer any constructive agenda of their own. (Sorry, the so-called “minority tyranny” that Senate filibustering provides does not constitute as a genuine effort either.)

In his speech on Tuesday night, Governor Jindal implored:

Democratic leaders in Washington, they place their hope in the federal government. We [Republicans] place our hope in you, the American people.

Of all the patronizing statements he made that night, this was the most striking. If the past election taught Americans anything, it was that they are their government and can certainly accomplish a lot if they stay motivated and involved. Jindal’s assertion corroborates the Republican “people v. government” attitude and fails to recognize that Americans want Washington to work for them—they don’t pay taxes for their representatives to sit on their hands. By suggesting that Americans have the power and know-how to overcome the hardships of the economy, health care, and education as individuals, Jindal minimizes the severity of the people’s problems and shirks the responsibility of the post in which he was elected.

Americans don’t expect government to solve all their problems. However, they do expect them to make their best and most qualified effort. If Republicans want to complain about how horrible and intrusive government is, then why are they involved in government at all? They can’t claim the title of watchdog, if they’re just going to bark and not bite.

Which brings us back to Bloomberg. Why exactly did this very popular Republican leader leave the ticket he ran on in two successful elections? In a speech at the University of Southern California in 2007 he explained:

The politics of partisanship and the resulting inaction and excuses have paralyzed decision-making, primarily at the federal level, and the big issues of the day are not being addressed, leaving our future in jeopardy.

This was pre-economic crisis, and yet his words still hold true today for the Grand Old Party. And if the Republicans can’t convince a Wall Street billionaire that they’re capable of instituting effective, industrious policies, whom can they convince? Hey, if Bloomberg wants you back, take him.

A Health Care Letter to the President

Mr. Barack Obama
President of the United States of America
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC  20001

Dear Mr. President:

I have a little problem.  My little problem, however, is part of a big problem – Health Care in America. It is a problem for all Americans.   I want to help you fix this problem. My individual experiences make me both passionate and uniquely qualified to help change health care in America to make our country a better place to live and work.

First, a short history of my little problem: I am a 49 year old American who moved to the UK ten years ago. I was a Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of an international health care company, and I accepted an assignment in Glasgow, Scotland for a 6-months stint that somehow turned into ten years. While staying true to my American roots, I have enjoyed my stay in the UK and enjoyed a successful career – except for one little glitch when in 2005, I was diagnosed with tonsil cancer. Six months of intensive treatment (surgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy) has been followed by three years of aftercare.  All of my care was provided efficiently and effectively by the wonderful, capable doctors and nurses working for the National Health Service (NHS) here in Scotland. In some ways, I consider myself fortunate that I was diagnosed with this terrible disease while in the UK where I had access to the NHS to provide care.

But, now my little problem: I would like to move back to the U.S., but cannot – because no insurance company will come near a cancer survivor like me.  So, every summer, I visit my family for two weeks, and every April 15th, I send the IRS a check for my U.S. taxes for the privilege of being a U.S. citizen. And I now wait until I am 65, when I will be covered by Medicare, to return to my home  – this, of course,  is fifteen years away.   This, Mr. President, is no way to run a country.

Ironically, since I have worked as a financial executive for various health care companies for over 20 years – I understand all too well why insurance and health care companies run the other way when they see me coming. As a cancer survivor, I am a big, fat financial liability waiting to happen.  I also know that there are ways I can “sneak” into the U.S. health care system by getting a job with an employer with an insurance plan or otherwise getting into a group plan and hoping that preexisting conditions do not trip me up sometime in the future.  But then again, I know those insurance underwriters are smart and vigilant (that is what they are paid to do); they are continually finding ways to exclude the high risk patients from their insured population. And even if I do get into an insurance plan, I would imagine the fine print of the policy would find a way to exclude me if I became a major liability.  So, is this really any way to live my life?  Is this really any way for anyone to live their life?  Is this any way to run the greatest country in the world?

So for now, I will remain here in the UK. I know the UK is not perfect, and it has its own health care issues. But I know one thing is certain – if I show up at the hospital in the UK diagnosed with cancer again, I will be treated, and I will not be financially ruined.  The peace of mind this gives me is more than enough reason for me to stay here in the UK until we solve our little health care problem in America.

As I said at the beginning, my little problem is really an American problem.  The real problem is that millions of other Americans who have similar or worse tales of woe and do not have a solution.  They come in all shapes and sizes. Someone gets ill and then loses his or her job and health insurance coverage, and someone’s illness is excluded from insurance because of the fine print in the policy, for example because of preexisting conditions that were either conveniently or inconveniently forgotten at the beginning of a policy. The circumstances are wide and varied.   Far too many people in America live in fear or ignorance of a health care event which can be catastrophic to themselves and their family.  The free market system of American health care has developed in to a multi-headed hydra which is designed more for making profits than for caring for the sick – or even keeping people from getting sick in the first place.

I am passionate about helping fix the problem.  I offer my services to you as cancer survivor, as an experienced financial executive, and as an American who wants to make the country a better place in which to live.  I will consider any role in your administration (or indeed anywhere in the U.S.) which will put me in a position to help fix health care in America.  I want to come home and help, but the irony is that I can’t come home until I get my health insurance sorted.

My compensation for providing such services is simple.  My compensation will be to once again live in a country where if I (or anyone) am diagnosed with cancer (or any major disease), I will be treated and I will not be financially ruined.  The peace of mind that comes with this end result will be more than enough reward for any service that I can provide.

Thank you for your consideration.

I remain a U.S. citizen, proud of America, and missing my home.

Warren McInteer

Glasgow

United Kingdom

P.S. I have written also written a two part series for Demockracy.com on the subject that goes into more detail regarding the problems and solutions of U.S. health care.  If you are so inclined, please look at these pieces and let us begin the work to fix American health care:

Health Care in America: A Time for Change

Health Care in America: A Way Forward

Slumdog Millionaire and What to Do About Global Poverty

I walked out of Seattle’s old Harvard Exit Theater on a cold Friday night in December. I had just seen the film Slumdog Millionaire and overheard two people talking. One was telling the other how she had seen Bollywood movies before and that all they contained were dance scenes and Jane Austen-like plots. She hesitated, “Actually, maybe what I’ve seen were spoofs of Bollywood movies and this was, like, a real Bollywood movie.” I smiled.

At the time, Slumdog Millionaire hadn’t yet won Best Picture at the Golden Globes. It hadn’t been nominated for the Best Picture Oscar (nor was it running as the heavy favorite to win Best Picture and Best Director), and director Danny Boyle and the movie’s two young lead actors – Dev Patel and Freida Pinto – hadn’t yet been hosted and gushed over by Oprah and Ellen. It was playing at a single, mostly empty theater in Seattle. Contrary to what many American viewers believe, Slumdog Millionaire is no Bollywood movie, but it is certainly a film with plenty of genuine Indian elements. It is based on the novel Q & A by Indian diplomat Vikas Swarup. Most of its music is by Bollywood super-composer AR Rahman, and it even contains a (relatively mediocre) song and dance routine. Lead roles are played by famous Indian actors Irrfan Khan and Anil Kapoor. It was filmed entirely in India and the child actors were all Indian – some of them slum dwellers themselves. There is plenty of melodrama and a love story. While Slumdog Millionaire clearly draws inspiration from Bollywood, it is directed by an Englishman and is mostly in English, leading many Indians to treat it as just another Hollywood movie.

By now you’ve probably heard of Slumdog Millionaire. It is the story of three street kids growing up in Mumbai. It is part rags-to-riches fairytale, part love story, and part horrifying look into the difficulties of street life. It has been scooping up awards and critical acclaim in the US and the UK while being dogged by more controversy than other Oscar-nominated films. Most of the debate centers around the poverty shown in the film, and whether a white British male (Boyle) has the right to present Indian society in such a way in a commercially successful feel-good (kind of) film. To tell an Indian story through the lives of impoverished street children embarrasses and enrages much of India’s upper-class who see the film as a stereotypically Western view of India as poor, chaotic, violent and dirty. They see Slumdog Millionaire as a “white man’s imagined India.” Some Hindu organizations accuse the film of denigrating Hindu gods. Some human rights groups in India have condemned the film for its use of the term ‘slumdog’ (a term not commonly used that recalls the days of British colonizers calling Indians ‘dogs’). Others see Boyle’s slick, colorful production of such impoverished settings as “poverty porn” – rendering Indian poverty visually appealing and exciting for a mostly white, Western audience. Finally, the compensation given to the film’s young actors is, with Slumdog Millionaire’s success, seen to be inadequate and a way of exploiting real life slum children. No matter how Slumdog Millionaire does at the Oscars, these controversies are unlikely to die down, even if they fall off the pages of US newspapers.

I do not intend to debate each of these controversies here, though I find some of the accusations frivolous while others have some validity. What is most interesting to me is the way in which Slumdog Millionaire has brought the issue of global poverty into the limelight (literally) and has exposed our collective squeamishness with having images of it thrown in our face by a film. If we middle-class Americans must see poverty, we like to see it portrayed in a particular way – most likely in a low-budget documentary that condemns it and that offers a way out. A movie like Born into Brothels does this very well. But Slumdog Millionaire treats poverty and those who live in poverty differently, not as faceless objects of pity, but as individuals – as a story must – with agency and the capacity to be happy and full of dreams in the midst of often horrifying surroundings. In this way Slumdog Millionaire resembles Rohinton Mistry’s impressive novel A Fine Balance – also set in India, that does not shy away from the poverty that is a given in many people’s lives, but something that need not rob people of their humanity, that need not reduce them to objects to be pitied by the world’s wealthy. With this perspective poverty need not limit the range of human experience and emotions. Those who are poor have a story like everyone else, and in fact, those who are poor make up a huge amount of the world’s population. Confronting middle-class Westerners (and Indians for that matter) with the horrors of poverty and the injustice of their own affluence, while avoiding defining the poor by this label alone is something few films do. Slumdog Millionaire does it well. And if it does well at the box office, all the better.

When discussing global poverty and the political and social attempts to alleviate it, it is easy to be overwhelmed by the numbers and to be numbed to the experiences of individuals who must live in such dire conditions. It is easy to feel guilty that you are not the one living in extreme poverty or to feel that those who are poor deserve it, that they just need to try harder. It is also easy to feel hopeless in the face of such a widespread and complex problem. How exactly should the global community address the problem of poverty? Should we place an emphasis on greater individual incomes and saving and buying power? Or should the emphasis be in developing societal infrastructure to improve quality of life by ensuring better health care, education, access to employment, etc.? Some put their faith in the free market to lift all boats, but then the free market seems to demand that many people remain poor, and it doesn’t provide any plan for improving societal shortcomings that contribute to poverty. Some believe government programs are the answer, but improving education, health care, job training programs and the like can be costly and complicated, and simple welfare schemes may perpetuate poverty. A host of non-governmental organizations and foundations play a growing part in addressing poverty, but can arbitrarily bestow charity that perpetuates cycles of economic dependence. The work of groups like the UN’s Development Program connects these participants and strategies offering a practical and promising way of addressing poverty on a global scale.

But uplifting the poor is not all that is needed. Our relatively new found awareness of the toll we inflict upon the environment requires that the discussion about alleviating poverty must include the using and distributing resources. Ending poverty through growing economies and enabling hundreds of millions of Indians and Chinese to drive gas-guzzling cars and to use energy as recklessly as we in the US do is no longer an environmentally viable option. And neither is telling people in poorer countries that they can’t have what we do, that they can’t live how we do. Rapidly developing countries need to do their part to make their growth politically and environmentally sustainable, no question. In a way, the more difficult task is ours however. If global economic growth continues (a given in most minds before the last six months of economic turbulence) most other people in the world will be increasing their consumption and use of resources. The Brazilian student may move up from a bike to a scooter, the Vietnamese family may upgrade to an oven from a cook top stove. In the US however, unless we plan on aggressively defending our unfair hoarding of resources from the global community, we will need to begin to reduce the amount of resources we use. Drastically. Even if free markets can lift all boats, it will mean environmental disaster. The middle class American lifestyle has never been sustainable. We are realizing this just as the world’s two largest countries are economically booming, and striving for that lifestyle. No longer will the United States – six percent of the world’s population – be able to consume 30% of the world’s resources. That’s a fact.

But, I suspect it is a fact that will go ignored or denied. Sure, we may use compact florescent bulbs instead of incandescents. We may recycle and compost. But most of us probably won’t give up our car (or even our second car). Most of us won’t give up our washer and dryer, or our oven, or our spacious homes. In the end, I suspect that we’re all just a bit too selfish and stuck in our ways to make large personal sacrifices for an abstract common good. We want to end poverty, but we don’t want to give up what we’ve been blessed with, and without this sacrifice on the part of the better-off, poverty will continue no matter how much effort is directed at alleviating it.

Like any movie, Slumdog Millionaire has its shortcomings. Its plot is somewhat thin and its characters are not very well-developed. It is a movie more about image than substance. Its details are easily refuted by Indian audiences. However, its vividly showing audiences who have not faced poverty and hardship the lives that many in this world are compelled to lead allows it to be more than just a film. It gives poverty a face and a story that will open most audiences’ eyes to something new – hopefully bringing tangible benefits to the world’s poor while eliciting an honest introspection about what people often must and can do without.

Metrics, Mistakes, and Opportunities for Growth

Overall, I am a big fan of metrics. I truly believe that you can’t manage what you can’t measure. Presidents are often measured on a 100-day metric, “The First 100 Days” as a phrase often chirped by the media. Questions have persisted recently about how realistic a metric this is. With President Obama, many believe that this amount of time will not be sufficient to even begin to make a dent in the serious deficits (both moral and economic) that were left behind by the previous President. Some have proposed that the end of 2009 might be a better metric. With most economists speculating that the current deep recession will not turn around under a best-case scenario until late 2009, this seems a bit fairer.

However, after less than 20 days, for many on the far left and far right, Obama’s honeymoon has already ended. No one expected his honeymoon with those on the far right to last long. However, the fact that the far left have in many cases already turned on Obama is disconcerting.  For example, check out some of the comments on this thread from OpenLeft.

Yes, Obama has made some blunders, but I do not believe that these mishaps have been anywhere near fatal errors. Instead of knee-jerk reactions, let’s take a look at two areas where I believe Obama actually has made a mistake, and more importantly, how I believe he can use this mistake as a learning experience. As a human being, everyone makes mistakes, even presidents. The question is not whether a mistake was made during the beginning days of a presidency, but rather whether action was taken to learn from that mistake. In general, this includes a root-cause analysis with corrective action going forward. For example, President Kennedy took the Bay of Pigs failure and used it as the impetus to change the decision-making process in his inner circle. This fundamental change helped get rid of the previous group think and helped avert a disaster in the Cuban missile crisis, which occurred the next year. Yes, the Bay of Pigs was unfortunate. However, if the Bay of Pigs mistake had not happened, the same disaster, at a billion times the magnitude (i.e., nuclear holocaust) could have occurred the following year. Working with the subject of patient safety in health care, I am exposed to this type of analysis all the time. Most errors are not the fault of one person, but rather the result of a misaligned organizational structure that does not catch errors or raise the proper questions.

Let’s take a look at two examples of what I believe have been mistakes and how the Obama administration could possibly learn from them going forward:

1. Tom Daschle Appointment

As a health care policy wonk, I found the developments with Tom Daschle the most disappointing developments to date. As I wrote here, I believed Tom Daschle would have been a perfect fit to get real health care reform through Congress. Granted, I write this before it is clear who Obama’s replacement choice may be, and this choice may surprise us all. However, when it came to the pure Washington knowledge needed to get something through, Daschle was the man. However, this greatest strength also came to be Mr. Daschle’s greatest weakness.  To me, the tax issue was an aside. The biggest problem was that Daschle became emblematic of the Washington insider’s sense of entitlement or the lobbyist rotating door cycle of greed that Obama campaigned against. When taking office, Obama seems to have caved on some of this campaign rhetoric in favor of practicality, with the reality that you must work within the system in order to get anything done.  Overall, this is unfortunate, but largely correct. However, there is a line to be passed; there is a needed sense of accountability and most importantly transparency in government. Tom Daschle crossed this line, and more importantly, did not disclose these transgressions. The fact that no one in the Obama transition raised questions about Daschle’s past lobbying or tax issues is very troubling. The dilemma is that in order to get anything accomplished, you must work within the system (even if you are independently working to change it). However, at the same time, if the system is broken, you cannot try to make lasting change with those who have become one with the system. Finding a cabinet secretary who can meet this requirement is easier said than done.

The solution here is perhaps to create two positions, one for a “health care czar” to handle the political issues and another for Secretary of HHS to handle the technical aspects and realities of health care reform. Ideally, there would also be an independent board appointed outside of the political realm to handle tough decisions related to such issues as cost effectiveness and reimbursement. Such tough decisions must be brought outside of the direct influence of lobbyists. Outside of being a health care expert, President Obama must make sure that he finds individual(s) with the complex mix of insider knowledge and outsider credibility, and most importantly, that any such person is properly vetted.

2. Stimulus Bill Negotiations

Although successful in the end, President Obama severely underestimated his opponents in the negotiations over this package. In a gesture of bipartisanship, Obama offered a large percentage of the bill as tax cuts in his first proposal to Congress, thinking that this would lead to widespread Republican support and easy passage of the bill. This was naïve at best, possibly political malpractice if repeated in the future. One of the big lessons out of this is that outside of a few Republican Senators, the Republican party is not a moderate party. The last two election cycles have defeated most Republican moderates in swing districts and turned the once great party of Abraham Lincoln into nothing but a regional party controlled by the Deep South. There is no incentive for most of these members, outside of people like Arlen Specter who are up for reelection in blue states, to be for a stimulus package. If the stimulus is a success, it doesn’t matter how they voted because the Democrats will get the credit. If the stimulus package fails, there will be a real opportunity for Republicans who voted against it to claim they were in the right. Therefore, a simple logic tree would have shown Obama and his political team that there was no incentive for the Republicans to compromise on this bill.

Hopefully, Obama’s political team will learn from this mistake in the same way that Kennedy’s team learned from the Bay of Pigs disaster. From now on they must give nothing without getting something in return. Bipartisanship only works if someone is willing to meet you in the middle.

Final Thoughts

Overall, the far right needs to be ignored, the far left needs to chill out, and the Obama administration needs to methodologically look at and learn from their early mistakes. If the Obama administration is to be successful, odds are that these early mistakes will be looked back at not as blunders, but rather as invaluable learning opportunities for a young presidency.

A Progressive Health Care Solution

In one of my earlier posts, I said that I hoped President Obama would be progressive. I further tried to offer a definition of progressive, to be contrasted with liberal and conservative. That didn’t go over too well. I’m trying again, this time by using the concrete example of health care. How would a progressive go about health care reform? This is the question that I answer in Demockracy’s first-ever podcast – take a listen:

Progressivism and Health Care

More Debate Reactions

Overall, I think Obama won this debate going away. Tonight it wasn’t simply about passing a threshold or appearing calmer than McCain. Sure, Obama certainly excelled there as well, polling two to one over McCain on likeability and the ability to express his beliefs on the issues in a clear manner. McCain’s cantankerous personality, combined with his constant hovering over audience members and pacing around the stage, made me about as nervous as the candidates. In addition, unlike the first debate, Obama won on debating points as well. While McCain surprisingly held his own in the domestic policy segment of the first debate by diverting the conversation to such arcane issues as earmarks, tonight he was forced to actually debate on real economic issues. In doing this, he failed miserably. He seemed about as out of touch as George H.W. Bush did in 1992 and did not even mention the middle class once. Although McCain probably won the last half hour once the debate turned to foreign policy, it was too little too late. Health care was the real zinger in my mind. “John McCain voted against children’s health care!” is the line I will most remember from tonight.

Kevin Van Dyke, Editor

I found it difficult to listen to the whole debate this evening because I became increasingly angry at McCain’s sanctimonious performance full of distorted and often blatantly incorrect facts and statements.

However, while I admired Obama’s calm and the presidential dignity that he maintained throughout the debate, I felt that he could have thrown a few more punches to alter the perception of Obama being on the defense this evening. (Obama, however, was excellent in pointing out that McCain chose to vote down SCHIP!) We definitely don’t want the bully that McCain is, but this is war, and a few more forensic volleys fired would be well
received.

Jessica McAfee, Guest Contributor privilege