If this was a pill, you’d do anything to get it
Important piece by Ezra Klein on an experimental program proven to both significantly improve outcomes and cut costs, and why Medicare is shutting it down anyway. You already know it’s about money and power protecting the status quo.
“[W]hat [Senator Rob] Portman is telling here is that on this one issue, his previous position was driven by a lack of compassion and empathy. Once he looked at the issue through his son’s eyes, he realized he was wrong. Shouldn’t that lead to some broader soul-searching? Is it just a coincidence that his son is gay, and also gay rights is the one issue on which a lack of empathy was leading his astray? That, it seems to me, would be a pretty remarkable coincidence. The great challenge for a Senator isn’t to go to Washington and represent the problems of his own family. It’s to try to obtain the intellectual and moral perspective necessary to represent the problems of the people who don’t have direct access to the corridors of power.”
“Orca had been conceived by two men—Romney’s Director of Voter Contact Dan Centinello and the campaign’s Political Director Rich Beeson. It was named in honor of the killer whale as an allusion to the Obama campaign’s own voter identification program, code-named Narwhal; orcas are the top predator of narwhals, Romney campaign staffers explained, and they were preparing to outshine the Democratic voter turnout effort.”
“NASA is serious about sending astronauts back to the moon’s neighborhood and will likely unveil its ambitious plans soon now that President Barack Obama has been re-elected, experts say. The space agency has apparently been thinking about setting up a manned outpost beyond the moon’s far side, both to establish a human presence in deep space and to build momentum toward a planned visit to an asteroid in 2025.”
“This graph shows Republicans shouldn’t campaign on a legitimate rape platform. Because we needed a graph to tell us that” -@gnat
Top Ten Wish List Progressives should Press on President Obama
Clearly, Obama does not have progressive instincts, and prefers to rule from the center. This impulse is wrong-headed, since the center didn’t man his campaign offices or make phone calls for him. Ruling from the center means taking his base for granted while reaching out to relatively conservative constituencies. This tactic is why we don’t have a single-payer health insurance plan. It is why Wall Street reform has consisted of half-measures. It is why we are imposing a financial blockade on Iran that could easily spiral into a war. When it comes to the arch-conservatives, for the most part, Obama has never learned to just say ‘no.’
It does not help that Obama will face virtually the same, obstructionist Tea Party House of Representatives that stymied him for the past two years. Instead of going to them and asking how he could make them happy, he has to threaten to make an all-out push to turn them out of office in 2014 if they continue to say ‘no’ to everything.
Progressives will have to push Obama to the left if we are to get what we want. This situation is nothing new– FDR’s New Deal would not have amounted to much if workers hadn’t engaged in widespread wildcat strikes and if people had not resorted to civil disobedience.
