Roubini: Don’t Expect A US-China Strategic Alliance Anytime Soon
American and Chinese officials said all the right things during this summer's inaugural round of their Strategic and Economic Dialogue. President Barack Obama pledged to "forge a path to the future that we seek for our children." Chinese State Councilor Dai Bingguo wondered aloud whether America and China can "build better relations despite very different social systems, cultures and histories." He answered his own question, in English, with a "Yes we can."
Les Leopold: Obama’s Looming Health Care Disaster: Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places
"For the first time in American history, he wants to tax your health benefits. Apparently, Senator McCain doesn't think it's enough that your health premiums have doubled. He thinks you should have to pay taxes on them, too." -- Barack Obama, September, 2008
American working people desperately want President Obama to succeed. They certainly do not expect him to break his word on taxing worker health benefits. It's one thing to break a promise. It's quite another to increase taxes dramatically on the very people who most believed in your words, while at the same time letting the wealthy off the hook.
I've come across increasing disillusionment among workers like those at Verizon. They supported Obama in large part because they wanted to protect their excellent health care benefits, something they are very proud of. They should be. They have the kind of plan everyone should have -- full coverage, low deductibles, dental, prescription drugs, and mental health coverage. Their middle-class lives are not economically threatened by illnesses or accidents.
These benefits did not fall from the sky or from the generosity of their employer. Verizon workers won these benefits by uniting with each other and with their union, the Communications Workers of America. They fought a series of strikes over the past three decades (with Verizon and with the companies that preceded it) to secure their benefits and to hang onto them against stiff company assaults. They have no intention of giving them up.
These workers also provided rock solid support for Obama, including his call for health care reform so that all working people one day could enjoy similar coverage. In fact, for these workers one of the key distinguishing points between Obama and McCain centered on the taxing of health care benefits. They felt enormously threatened by McCain's health tax proposals, especially since the cost of many of their excellent plans can exceed $20,000 a year per active member and even more for retirees and their families. Counting those benefits as taxable income would amount to an enormous tax increase for these workers, and their union made sure they understood this point during the campaign. In fact, labor unions all over the country distributed millions of pieces of campaign literature and made tens of thousands of phone calls to drive this point home.
Now these workers are hearing that Obama is open to a tax on these benefits to help pay for health care reform. The very mention of this tax has already weakened support from these workers and sapped their enthusiasm to fight back against Obama's opponents.
Yet, team Obama led by Rahm Emanuel seems incredibly out of touch with this reality. In their desperate effort to find revenues for their national health care proposals, they are "pivoting" as they signal a willingness to consider taxes on the better, more expensive health insurance benefits. If the administration continues down that path, Obama will lose these workers, now and forever. They probably won't vote for the Republicans in the mid-term elections, but they might sit it out or fail to campaign vigorously for Democrats.
Because the administration has put its entire reputation on the line to get this bill passed, a version of this tax might slip in. And if it does, you wouldn't be paranoid to view it as a poison pill ploy by Republicans to undermine Obama for the rest of his presidency.
These workers have an intuitive understanding that they are being asked to pay precisely because Obama seems unable to tackle the wealthy and their Blue Dog Democratic defenders. These Democrats don't want to stop the sky-high salaries on Wall Street or to interfere with its windfall profits, even after these same profiteers crashed the system. Working people clearly see that we have bailed out Wall Street with more money than it will take to fund health care over the next ten years. Yet, the administration is unwilling to tap the wealthy to pay for it, even when there are several ways to do so. If Obama wants health care reform while maintaining the support of his staunchest working class supporters, he should consider the following:
1. Increases taxes on those who have adjustable gross incomes of over $1 million a year. According to 2007 tax documents, there were about 400,000 such returns. They paid an average of 22 percent of the gross adjustable income in taxes. If we put a 10 percent health-care surcharge on these wealthy taxpayers, (raising the effective rate to 32 percent) we would collect an additional $140 billion per year. And not one of these taxpayers would suffer any hardship since they would still be extremely rich by any reasonable standard. Also, it would be more than fair since most of these millionaires made a killing during the fantasy finance bubble and are making money again because we bailed out the financial sector.
2. Place a 90 percent windfall tax on Wall Street profits and bonuses. Profits are returning to the "too big to fail" firms, starting with Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase. They are making money again because we bailed out the entire financial sector, guaranteed toxic assets, provided liquidity free of charge, changed the accounting standards, and got them repaid from AIG at par value. If people like Andrew J. Hall are permitted to receive $100 million in bonus payments from CitiGroup, a bank we basically own, then 90 percent should be taxed back to us. These firms and their stars owe us, big time. No worker will be able to understand why his or her health care is being taxed while the elites on Wall Street walk off with tens of millions in taxpayer dollars.
3. Install a very small tax on each and every financial transaction on Wall Street. Everyone else in America pays some kind of sales tax on their purchases, why not Wall Street? This kind of fee would generate at least $50 billion a year. This would also have the important benefits of stabilizing the economy in the long term, reducing the risk of future bursting bubbles, by slowing down speculation as well as moving money out of the bloated financial sector and into the real economy. (Of course this would need to be an international tax agreed upon by the G-20 nations to make sure countries don't game the tax.)
These three measures would generate more than enough revenue to pay for universal health care, while also generating enthusiastic support from the Verizon workers and the millions of others with decent health care benefits.
Like a good basketball player, President Obama knows how to pivot. Like a good politician he also should know when to pivot and in what direction. But if he pivots towards taxes on health care benefits, he'll find himself alone on the court with a bunch of blue dogs and bankers as teammates, while his working class fans walk away in disgust. Even more importantly, his real team needs to see him take on the big boys... and soon.
Les Leopold is the author of The Looting of America: How Wall Street's Game of Fantasy Finance destroyed our Jobs, Pensions and Prosperity, and What We Can Do About It, Chelsea Green Publishing, June 2009.
More on Health Care
Ed Martin: Daytime Emmys 2009: The Beginning of the End?
Watching the 36th annual Daytime Emmy Awards on The CW during the dog days of August confirmed what I already knew: These are dark days indeed for the daypart overall and for soap operas in particular.
It's not that the telecast was all bad: I actually prefer smaller venues for the Daytime Emmy celebration (the Orpheum Theater in Los Angeles for last night's show, ballrooms at the Marriott Marquis in Manhattan during the ceremony's glory years) and I always enjoy an entertaining opening number at any awards event. (Vanessa Williams' reworked-for-daytime rendition of Can't Take My Eyes Off of You was almost as much fun as Neil Patrick Harris' surprise closing song at this year's Tony Awards.) Best of all, in the soap categories the awards were spread over a number of different shows. Only As the World Turns went totally unrewarded during the telecast. (On Saturday it picked up a couple of Creative Arts Emmys, so no soap went home empty handed.)
In fact, I was pleased with most of the winners in the daytime drama categories, from the tie for Outstanding Supporting Actor between the long overdue Vincent Irizarry of All My Children and the very deserving Jeff Branson of Guiding Light to the surprise Outstanding Lead Actress win for Susan Haskell of One Life to Live. (Her portrayal of repeat rape victim Marty Singer in the year's most controversial soap story was consistently riveting.) Even though it would have been nice to see Days of Our Lives named Outstanding Drama Series for the first time in its more than 30 years it was equally exciting to watch The Bold and the Beautiful take the top honor. (Like Days, B&B had never won in this category.) Days at least took home two high-profile acting awards: Tamara Braun for Outstanding Supporting Actress and Darin Brooks for Outstanding Younger Actor. (Brooks stupidly saw fit to curse during his acceptance speech.)
But, damn, what a depressing experience overall for fans of daytime drama, those devout enthusiasts at whom the Daytime Emmy telecast is supposedly targeted. (Let's face it: Talk shows, news shows and children's programming basically come along for the ride. Viewers tune in to see soap stars.) The soaps are already contending with questionable audience measurement, ever-increasing media competition, industry executives who seem to be not particularly invested in ensuring their survival, threats of impending cancellation and, most egregiously, a pool of writing talent that can best be described as stagnant. (As my friend Michael Logan over at TV Guide likes to say, the main reason soaps are losing viewers these days is that they aren't fun to watch. That may sound deceptively simple, but it's true, as anyone fortunate enough to have watched virtually any soap opera during the Eighties will tell you. Where is the humor? Where are the eccentric characters? Where are the zany stories that brought millions of new young viewers to the show? Why are they all so effing dark and depressing?)
And now this! The genre's biggest night of the year, once a sparkling showcase for the hardest working people in entertainment television, compromised by a hurried, poorly directed show, telecast on a network that carries no daytime dramas during one of the lowest rated weekends of the year. Even the talent in the audience seemed to have been made uneasy by it all. In several decades of award-show watching I have never seen so many sloppy presenters and nervous winners. So many of them were so shaky it was uncomfortable to watch.
The biggest disgrace, though, was the rushed tribute to the soon-to-be-terminated Guiding Light, which has already completed production and will have its last telecast in two weeks. It's bad enough that this historic show, which has been broadcast almost every weekday since 1937 on radio and television, was unceremoniously put to death by its handlers at Procter & Gamble Productions and CBS. Couldn't the folks at the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences find it in their hearts to put together a longer, grander farewell to a show that can only be described as a national treasure, albeit one that has been inexcusably beaten down in recent years? The selection of another long-running television treasure, Betty White, to introduce the tribute was genius. ("I have been watching Guiding Light ever since it first went on the air in 1776," White quipped at the start. "As the saying goes, all good things must come to an end.") After a quick clip reel, the cast took the stage for a few bows, but nobody was allowed to speak, and The CW abruptly cut to a commercial while the actors were still receiving their last applause.
It all seemed so wrong. From the days of radio thru the digital era, and without ever ceasing production, GL brought compelling entertainment to its fans. It was there during the Great Depression, the Second World War, the Korean War, the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, the assassination of a president, years of riots in our cities and calamitous protests on our campuses, Watergate, the resignation of a president, multiple recessions and energy crises and natural disasters, the Gulf War, 9/11 and the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, among other national and international hardships and challenges. After that titanic trajectory, the circumstances under which GL was made to take its final bow were insulting to all of the people who ever worked on the show and all who ever listened to and/or watched it.
The other big bad of the night was the brush-off to The Bold and the Beautiful at night's end. For the first time in its 22-year history B&B was named Outstanding Daytime Drama, but as its cast and producers moved toward the stage the end credits began to roll and there was a jarring cut to a camera in the back of the balcony, where people were dashing from their seats to the exits hoping to bolt the theater before the crowd. As the credits continued there was finally a shift to a camera down by the stage, but instead of an acceptance speech all viewers got were shots of B&B actors congratulating each other. It was an undignified mess.
This may have been the first award show ever that did not run too long because of endless acceptance speeches. Rather, the excess was in the content: A second song from host Vanessa Williams at the 90-minute mark, which also included a brief turn with Dancing with the Stars stud Gilles Marini and had absolutely nothing to do with daytime; a frivolous fashion show that allowed many pretty young soap stars who were neither nominees or presenters to take the stage and shake their stuff; an over-long tribute to Sesame Street on the occasion of its 40th anniversary that was much more lovingly executed than the Guiding Light brush off. A segment honoring Feed the Children also took up a lot of time but I'm not going to complain about it. I think every entertainment industry awards show should take a few minutes to call attention to a deserving charity. There is always time for that.
Seriously, Williams' second song or the fashion show could have been cut and there wouldn't have been a squawk in the land. And that would have allowed plenty of time for a more fitting farewell for GL and a few words from B&B executive producer Bradley Bell, who deserves a moment in the spotlight for producing a first-class program. It is not for nothing that B&B remains the most popular soap opera in the world.
I like to think that the producers of the Daytime Emmys might learn from their mistakes and put on a better show next year. But at this dark time I wonder if there will even be a Daytime Emmy telecast in 2010. If they do endure, I think it's time to move them back to New York and back into the daypart they celebrate and promote. Still, that would involve the support of the Big Three. Is this really so insurmountable a challenge that CBS Corp., Disney and NBC Universal combined can't find a way to make it work?
Obama official disputes Cheney’s claims
Former Vice President Dick Cheney had his facts wrong when he blasted Attorney General Eric Holder last week for launching an investigation into past CIA interrogation techniques, an administration official asserted Monday.
Dr. Susan Corso: Healthcare Despair
Anybody else hit the despair wall on the health care front? I hadn't until I watched Bill Maher's Friday night in-depth interview of the resplendent Bill Moyers, journalist of journalists. Here's a piece of it on YouTube, if you're curious.
The gentlemen were discussing metaphor and Mr. Maher asked Mr. Moyers for a true metaphor for the unforgiving health care downslide we seem to be choosing. Mr. Moyers, in his genius, answered immediately, "We're all in the same boat." Simple. Clear. Elegant. Moyers said it is "a moral message." It is that, and it's the absolute truth as well.
We are all in the same boat, dear one. Every one of us. What I don't get is why we can't see that or won't see that or don't see that!
Until everyone has health care (and that is health care, not health insurance), none of us really do. Those of us with insurance are already paying for those who don't have health coverage in sky-rocketing costs for tests and procedures we don't need so that insurers can line their own and physicians' pockets.
Don't you get it?! How much plainer does it have to be?
The thing Mr. Moyers said that sent my sweetie and me even more toward the abyss of despair is that "we have two corporate political parties" and "a corporate president." Whoa. Do we? I'm afraid we do. President Obama has already given his word to Big Pharma that he won't allow folks to import less expensive drugs from Canada, and that's just the start of it.
Mr. Moyers: "I think if Obama fought rather than finessed so much ...."
I'm afraid I have to agree with Mr. Moyers. Oh, I like that Obama is cool, don't we all, but is that cool m.o. getting it done? I don't think so. When he gave the eulogy at Senator Edward Kennedy's funeral, there was no mention of the core issue of Senator Kennedy's career: healthcare.
Why? Because Team Obama argued it out and decided that politicizing a cause at the funeral was in poor taste. They're right, it would have been, and it smacks just a little too much of an eye toward reelection to sit well with me. My Jewish grandmother would say: "One mention would have killed him?"
Mr. Moyers says Mr. Obama ought to say, "We need this [universal healthcare] because we're a decent country."
It's shocking to me how the miniscule minority of the right has become the perpetually irritating squeaky wheel that's getting not the grease, but the news cycle. Stop! Enough already!
Bill Maher has been saying for months that Americans don't understand the healthcare debate enough to have an opinion about it. I agree with him, and I count myself among that number. If I had to, I'd even cop to the fact that I don't really want to understand it. I just want it done, so Team Obama can get us out of Iraq, into greening our economy, and a host of other things they promised if we'd elect them. Yes, we did, and so now, yes, they must.
Moyers says toward the end, "We are a very crippled giant, suffering from self-inflicted wounds that if we do not treat and heal will, in fact, bring us to our knees and, ultimately, to our doom."
Despair some? Oh yeah.
"We wait so long. ... We wait a long time, until, almost, the ship has sunk, and the rivets of the ship of state, I think, are in fragile shape right now. ... We're close to losing the moral, financial and economic muscle, and the wisdom that makes a huge nation a great nation, but it's never too late."
Despair much? Yep, but with a glint of hope.
Anne Lamott wrote a swell Op-Ed piece about healthcare and campaign promises to Mr. Obama in the Los Angeles Times recently. She finishes with this:
"Do it for Teddy Kennedy, boss. Do it for the other Kennedys too, for Dr. King, for Big Mama, for the poorest kids you met on the trail, the kids who go to emergency rooms for their health care, do it for their mothers and for Michelle. Just do it.
"Trusting you, Mr. Obama."
I'm with Anne Lamott.
Years ago, I wrote a little book called God's Dictionary, which uses what the reviewers called "folk etymology" to give deeper meanings to everyday words. One of the words in that book was despair. It comes from Latin roots meaning a reversal of hope.
C'mon, Team Obama, get crackin'.
For spiritual nourishment, go to www.susancorso.com.
Tortuous September Ahead for Obama
Analysis: Issues Over Health Care, Afghanistan, Iran and Libya Ready to Confront PresidentJohn F. Wasik: What Went Wrong
Like FDR, Obama proposed a lofty agenda that will concentrate on creating employment and eventually economic security for working Americans. As a president who has a deep sense of history -- it's evident in his speeches, writing, and policy proposals -- Obama stated in his Audacity of Hope that "today, the social compact that FDR helped construct is beginning to crumble." Obama was distressed that job, retirement, and health security had been dismantled because the painful excesses of free-market policies wouldn't protect the country in a global economy. European, Japanese, and Canadian workers don't have to worry about their pensions or health care. In a global marketplace, Americans simply can't compete with countries that have a better social safety net.
"If the guiding philosophy behind the traditional system of social insurance could be described as 'We're all in it together,'" he continues in Audacity, "the philosophy behind the Ownership Society seems to be 'You're on your own.'"
What had been sold as a panacea during the 1990s and the first decade of the twenty-first century, the market economy, blew up with the triple explosions of the dot-com, housing, and credit bubbles. Wall Street and bankers sold the myth that stocks and homes were guaranteed ways to wealth. Over the past thirty years, they convinced employers to dump hundreds of thousands of guaranteed, defined-benefit retirement plans for 401(k)-like plans, which subjected employees to unchecked market risk.
Homeowners wanting to participate in the American Dream by building home equity succumbed to the promise that adjustable-rate mortgages -- which actually subjected them to the perils of credit markets -- would create solid nest eggs. Entrepreneurs and, increasingly, corporate employees were hawked the idea of fending for themselves for health insurance, where they were effectively punished in the form of unaffordable rates for any preexisting conditions. Such was the big lie of the ownership society. It was the obverse of the New Deal philosophy. It was a raw deal.
Coupled with the myth that ordinary consumers could somehow make rational, informed decisions in an unpoliced market economy was the Nero-like fallacy during the Bush years that nothing was wrong with our energy infrastructure or climate. The surge in oil (to $147 a barrel) and gasoline ($4-plus per gallon) prices in the middle of 2008 showed how utterly senseless this policy had been. The popularity of former Vice President Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, which won him both an Academy Award (for the movie version of his book) and a Nobel Prize for Peace, illuminated the folly of the Bush regime's anti-environment policies. Hurricanes, cyclones, and precipitation cycles have become more intense. Drought and forest and wildfires ravage densely populated regions, causing famine, dislocation, and war.
The Bush administration's criminal inattention to the victims of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was emblematic of his disconnect from human reality (New Orleans is still a shell of its former self). It was pathological neglect like this that spurred much of the Obama Green Deal. Obama links a need for a new social compact with employment, education, and environmental concerns.
If most of his programs survive the contentious legislative process, Obama will have succeeded in reviving social capitalism, a blend of humanistic service, pragmatic government supervision, and some free-market principles. Better yet, if his initiatives excel in launching private-sector investments -- and broad-based employment from inner cities to Silicon Valley -- in clean energy, infrastructure, broad-band expansion, and exportable technologies, he may even be seen as a social or compassionate capitalist.
The Green Deal is the spiritual heir of the New Deal, only much more focused on creating an economy specifically rebuilt for the twenty-first century. After all, FDR never believed capitalism was dead, he only sought to build new institutions and preserve old ones that failed because of an over reliance on unfettered market forces. Although a stern critic of market forces, Obama is attempting to frame humanistic economics in a different light: government can work to create a stronger private sector while creating jobs, educating everyone, rebuilding our infrastructure, addressing climate change, and helping the poor.
The above is an excerpt from the book The Audacity of Help: Obama's Economic Plan and the Remaking of America by John F. Wasik. The above excerpt is a digitally scanned reproduction of text from print. Although this excerpt has been proofread, occasional errors may appear due to the scanning process. Please refer to the finished book for accuracy.
Copyright © 2009 John F. Wasik, author of The Audacity of Help: Obama's Economic Plan and the Remaking of America
Author Bio
John F. Wasik, author of The Audacity of Help: Obama's Economic Plan and the Remaking of America, is the author of twelve books, including The Cul-de-Sac Syndrome and The Merchant of Power. He speaks widely and writes a weekly Bloomberg News column that reaches readers of five continents and which earned him the 2009 Peter Lisagor award for journalism. He lives in Chicago.
For more information please visit www.audacityofhelp.net
Palin to Give Speech in Asia Next Month
Address in Hong Kong Will Be Her First Paid Speaking Engagement, Also Her First Trip to AsiaCheney lashes out at Obama administration
The former vice president says he is offended by the Justice Department’s decision to investigate the CIA’s interrogation methods.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney lashed out at President Obama on Sunday, saying the Justice Department’s decision to investigate whether CIA operatives broke the law while interrogating terrorism suspects was politically motivated and dangerous to national security.
Cheney: Interrogation probe is political
Former Vice President Dick Cheney said in an interview broadcast Sunday that the Justice Department’s decision to review waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques is politically motivated.
