Libertarian Leanings

Return to 1993

Joe Lieberman has promised to filibuster any health care reform plan that includes a public option.

Lieberman said that he’d vote against a public option plan “even with an opt-out because it still creates a whole new government entitlement program for which taxpayers will be on the line."

I have no doubt that Lieberman's is a principled stand.  Let me share a letter with you that I sent to both Senators Lieberman and Dodd.  By odd coincidence I noticed, while I was entering the letter into this post, that it was dated exactly sixteen years ago today.  Looking back at it after all this time, I have to say my positions have not changed.  What I said then, I stick by today.  Both senators' responses are linked below.

                                                                                October 28, 1993

Dear Senator Lieberman:

I am writing to you at this time to express my thoughts on the health care proposals under development by the administration. I am concerned because I do not believe that the ideas I have heard expressed thus far will accomplish the stated goals. I understand these goals to be the reduction of overall health care spending and the accessibility of health care to all people regardless of income level, while maintaining the level of medical excellence that we now enjoy. I am in agreement with the objectives. I question whether the plan, as it appears to unfold, will be successful.

My first concern is the apparent assumption that the cost of medical services to the consumer is related to the cost of their delivery. I has been my observation that the price of any service or product is tied to cost of its production only when there is competition. The President seems to believe the reducing administrative overhead will somehow bring down prices for the consumer. The service that we are ultimately attempting to provide is medicine. Insurance is the vehicle but it is not the service. The price that we would like to control is the price of medical service.

My father once told me a story about insurance and medicine. I occurred in 1955 when he was president of Little League in our town. A boy received a minor injury during a ballgame and was taken by his father to see the doctor. The doctor checked the boy, determined that he was OK, and charged five dollars for the office visit. The boy’s father felt that Little League should pay the bill and my father agreed. He asked the man to have his doctor bill Little League directly, and the league insurance would cover it. When the new bill was presented to Little League it was for ten dollars. Dad was outraged.

In defense of the doctor, it is possible that he had intended to give the boy and his father a break on the office visit, but didn’t feel that he needed to extend this break to the insurance company. Whatever the reason the result is the same. The client with the deep pockets is going to pay top dollar. If this client happens to be an insurance company, there are not likely to be loud complaints about it. Expanding coverage to people who can’t afford it will be wonderful, but I can’t for the life of me see how it will reduce overall spending on health care.

Of course there are always price caps. Even though the memory is fresh in my mind, I realize there are those who don’t remember the lines at the gas stations in the 70’s when we had price controls on oil. It was a perfect demonstration of the principles of Economics 101: a legal price set well below the market price resulting in artificially high demand, low production, and a shortage. Is this the plan for medicine? Please, say it ain’t so.

The issue of who pays for the insurance is also troubling. My understanding of the plan is that employers will pay the lion’s share, with small business employers receiving subsidies. This conjures up images of small employer groups having to devote energy lobbying to protect their subsidies. They become another special interest group. There will undoubtedly be exceptions. What information on what forms will small businesses have to provide to document eligibility for the subsidy? Is this what the president means by re-inventing government? It sounds like business as usual. And again, will we reduce health care spending by the choice of who will pay the insurance premiums? How can we mandate that employers pay for medical insurance and not expect it to have an impact on the job market?

I have a suggestion. I mentioned earlier the notion that the price of a product is tied to its production cost only when there is competition. What I implied there and state here is that I don’t believe there is much in the way of competition in certain segments of the health care industry. I say this first, because of a full page ad that I ran across some years ago in one of the news magazines. It was paid for by the A.M.A. and it said that doctor bills were high because there were too many doctors around. To support this argument the ad went on to point out that New York City had more doctors and higher doctor fees than anywhere else in the world. It crossed my mind that there may have been more doctors there because they thought they could make more money there. Anyway I didn’t buy the argument then, and I don’t now. I believe there could stand to be a little more in the way of competition in this area, and here’s the way I think it can be done.

President Clinton came up with a brilliant plan when he called for a program of national service. This program should be used to train a new generation of doctors, nurses, and technicians, who would each repay his of her medical school tuition by serving an appropriate internship in a military or V.A. hospital. After their internships are completed the trained medical people would be free to go into private practice. License to practice would of course be contingent upon completion of the internship. Rather than expanding insurance coverage, expand the network of military and V.A. hospitals and clinics. These hospitals and clinics would then provide the basic health care package for those people who can’t afford it on their own. Costs would be reduced because you cut out the middle man – the insurance company. Over the long haul costs would be further reduced because there would be an increase in the supply of medical services. More competition is what will reduce health care cost. Not competition among insurance companies, but competition among the people who actually deliver the service.

The importance of the proposals now in development cannot be underestimated. We could do irreparable damage to the medical professions and the high level of care that we now enjoy if we attempt a major overhaul of this industry. We can permanently increase unemployment by forcing employers to shoulder the cost of health insurance. One of the president’s arguments in favor of universal coverage was that we all pay for the uninsured anyway in the form of higher medical bills. If this is so, why not just go ahead and pay for it directly, instead of trying to hide the cost in employee benefits? Our tax dollars can provide the care directly as I have, in very general terms, just described. Whatever the course we choose, I sincerely hope that we will proceed in this matter with great deliberation.

I thank you for your attention and hope to hear your views on this very important topic.

Sincerely,

                                                                            Thomas D. Bowler

Lieberman's reply is here.  Dodd's is here.  It's pretty obvious that Lieberman actually read my letter, since he added a hand written note to the second page of his reply.  You really can't tell whether Dodd read my letter or not, which leads me to think he did not. That's what staff is for.

So Barry, How Goes The War?

The War on FOX, that is.  According to Hot Air, not all that well. 

It’s a nine-percent bump in the two weeks since Anita Dunn’s whine heard ’round the world — in terms of overall audience. Among the coveted 25-54 demographic? A 14-percent bump. Good work, Barry. People keep telling me that this PR offensive by the White House benefits both sides but I don’t see how that’s true. If the goal is to contain Fox by framing the stories it breaks — Van Jones, ACORN, etc — as somehow illegitimate, then every tenth of a point that Fox’s ratings go up undermines that goal. There will come a point where other news nets will follow Fox’s lead simply for business reasons, ideology or no ideology; follow the link, eyeball the list of top 20 news shows, and ask yourself how far we are from that point, really. To put it in perspective: “Red Eye,” at 3 a.m., is beating Campbell Brown at 8 p.m. on CNN in the demo. (Worse, perhaps: Anderson Cooper is getting beat by … re-runs of Nancy Grace.)

In fact, CNN is now dead last in the prime time ratings.  Don Surber writes,

I have been reporting CNN’s bad numbers for some time and now it will be official when the October numbers are in, CNN is in last place behind MSNBC, HLN and you know who.

CNN’s numbers have dropped in half overall (52%) and 68% in prime time comparing October 2008 to 2009, TV by the Numbers reported.

In the 25-54 demographic, CNN dropped 62% overall and by 77% in prime time.

Even the mainstream press is now reporting it.

In the meantime Power Line takes note of the resurgent conservatives.

Conservatives are growing at the expense of both moderates and liberals. I suppose that's why the folks at CNN have so desperately tried to denigrate the tea party movement and town hall protesters.

This is, of course, the asymmetry of American politics: there are more conservatives than liberals, but more Democrats than Republicans. Hence the constant anxiety among Democrats that their party could crash and burn; hence, too, the frustration by conservatives that so many Republicans can't bring themselves to embrace conservative ideals.

Battle lines are currently drawn in New York, where a three-way race for an open seat in District 23 is in progress. Local Republicans nominated a liberal, Dede Scozzafava, to run against liberal Democrat Bill Owens in this historically Republican district. On its face this makes little sense: shouldn't a Republican-leaning district have ONE conservative on the ballot? Doug Hoffman obliged. Running on the Conservative Party line with support from the Club for Growth and other conservative organizations, Hoffman has quickly gone from spoiler to front-runner.

In the most recent Basswood Research poll for the Club for Growth, Hoffman has sprinted to a 31.3%-27% lead over Democrat Bill Owens. The liberal Republican, meanwhile, is sinking like a stone at 19.7%

Tom Maguire wonders if we could be looking forward to another 1994-like midterm election.

As an utterly unrelated thought, what was the lesson of the Clinton train wreck and Republican wave of 1994?  Was it "Don't run as a moderate and govern as a lefty", with gays in the military, the assault weapons bans, the vanishing middle class tax cut and the health care debacle as evidence? 

Or was it "Don't promise health care reform and then fail to deliver"?

Although it is rare to have a controlled experiment on this scale in the social sciences, it seems that Obama, Pelosi and Reid are poised to help answer that question.

I'm betting on option one.  Campaigning as centrists then governing as socialists is going to sink the democrats in 2010.  We're looking at the writing on the wall.

Blackfive's Open Letter

In his open letter to President Obama on the subject of his Afghan strategy, Deebow does not mince words.

Mr. President, deciding to do nothing is still a decision.

I demand, decency demands, Americans who believe in victory demand, and most importantly, the American families with family members in the fight, who certainly have the most invested and unquestionably the most to lose demand that the politics, excuse making and dithering end and that you give the necessary support to the men and women who are bearing the battle and taking the fight to our enemies. I am not asking, I am telling you to listen to those with the knowledge and skills that can turn the tide of this rapidly resurgent enemy we face and to give them the resources they ask for.

As an American, I demand that if the leaders that I freely elect are going to commit blood and treasure to the defeat of our enemies, then we do not go about it in vacillating half measures following incoherent policies that lead to indefinable outcomes spread over generations.

We fight to win, or we don’t fight at all.

If you are unwilling or you are unable to fulfill your role as Commander in Chief, then you should tender your resignation.

It's worth reading the whole thing, including the comments.

Subpoena For Countrywide Documents

The timing of this ought to be interesting.

On Friday night, House oversight committee chairman Edolphus Towns (D., N.Y.) and ranking member Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) reached an agreement to subpoena documents from the "Friends of Angelo" program. Named for former Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo, the program provided VIP mortgages to "friends" including Senators Chris Dodd and Kent Conrad.

Said Mr. Towns, "In line with the commitment to an ethical and accountable Congress, the subpoena to Countrywide covers records that could show special treatment for Members of Congress." This is significant, because a compromise plan floated last week would have authorized a subpoena covering—don't laugh—all federal officials except members of Congress.

Will Democrats be able to sweep this under the carpet far enough ahead of the 2010 elections?  Or maybe the committee report will be delayed until after elections are over.  

Historical Precedent to the War on FOX News

Voltaire famously declared, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."  But then, that was a long time ago and Voltaire was not a lefty.  In fact, lefties were not even invented then.  Nowadays we have lots of lefties who almost universally disapprove of what gets said on FOX News, and quite frankly they'd rather FOX not be allowed to say it.  So when the White House declared War on FOX, denizens of the internet Fever Swamps joined the fight offering up precedents and justifications. 

Here's one. The Bush administration War on NBC: 

Declaring War on NBC: White House senior strategist Ed Gillespie personally sent a letter to NBC News President Steve Capus in order to protest the way NBC was covering administration policies.  [Emphasis in the original]

A link is included, directing the reader to a 2008 post on Marc Ambinder's blog at The Atlantic where Mr. Ambinder published the full text of Ed Gillespie's letter with this introductory comment.  

White House senior strategist Ed Gillespie does not like the way that Richard Engel's interview with President Bush was edited to reflect the president's reflections on his remarks to the Knesset last Thursday.  [Emphasis added]

You may follow the link above for the full text of Mr. Gillespie's letter, but the shocking impact of the Bush administration War on NBC can be felt in the first paragraph.

Steve Capus
President, NBC News

30 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, N.Y. 10112

Mr. Capus:

This e-mail is to formally request that NBC Nightly News and The Today Show air for their viewers President Bush's actual answer to correspondent Richard Engel's question about Iran policy and "appeasement," rather than the deceptively edited version of the President's answer that was aired last night on the Nightly News and this morning on The Today Show.

Please air the president's entire response, Gillespie requested.  Lefties in the Fever Swamp were incensed over this blatant encroachment on NBC's freedom to expose the "real truth" through imaginative editing.  Air President Bush's actual answer?  What an outrage and an affront to journalism!   

That opening salvo in Gillespie's letter was followed by fourteen paragraphs disputing the accuracy of various NBC claims, and by this conclusion:

Mr. Capus, I'm sure you don't want people to conclude that there is really no distinction between the "news" as reported on NBC and the "opinion" as reported on MSNBC, despite the increasing blurring of those lines. I welcome your response to this letter, and hope it is one that reassures your broadcast network's viewers that blatantly partisan talk show hosts like Christopher Matthews and Keith Olbermann at MSNBC don't hold editorial sway over the NBC network news division.

Sincerely,

Ed Gillespie

Counselor to the President

That's the heart of it.  Obama's War is being fought over the right of progressive journalists from NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC and other friendly organizations to report their enlightened opinions as fact, free from rebuttal from anyone, particularly FOX News.  The White House attacks FOX with the claim that FOX News is not really a news organization. 

The Obama team may very well be thinking that if they keep working at it they can eventually exempt FOX from the first amendment and freedom of the press.  McCain-Feingold offers them some leverage:

In addition, the bill aimed to curtail ads by non-party organizations by banning the use of corporate or union money to pay for "electioneering communications," a term defined as broadcast advertising that identifies a federal candidate within 30 days of a primary or nominating convention, or 60 days of a general election. This provision of McCain-Feingold, sponsored by Maine Republican Olympia Snowe and Vermont Independent James Jeffords, as introduced applied only to for-profit corporations, but was extended to incorporate non-profit issue organizations, such as the Environmental Defense Fund or the National Rifle Association, as part of the "Wellstone Amendment," sponsored by Senator Paul Wellstone.

FOX is clearly a for-profit corporation.  Other mainstream media organizations would like to be, but they seem to be having a hard time with the profit part of it.  With FOX declared to be a for-profit, not-news organization we inch closer to a leftoid dream.  It's a stretch, but FOX could be conceivably be banned from identifying a federal candidate within 60 days of the general election.  What's left of our press would be free to adore Obama! 

Too bad there aren't any Voltaires in the Fever Swamp.  They just don't seem to be that bright, though.

Obama's War On Fox News

Real Clear Politics carries dueling articles about the the White House war on Fox News.  According to Jim Rutenberg of the New York Times, this is just another news event and he reports it that way.  Just the facts.  His story is revealing as I suppose news stories ought to be.  Obama apparently held a strategy meeting for his War on Fox with a number of his allies. 

Speaking privately at the White House on Monday with a group of mostly liberal columnists and commentators, including Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann of MSNBC and Maureen Dowd, Frank Rich and Bob Herbert of The New York Times, Mr. Obama himself gave vent to sentiments about the network, according to people briefed on the conversation.

Then, in an interview with NBC News on Wednesday, the president went public. “What our advisers have simply said is that we are going to take media as it comes,” he said. “And if media is operating, basically, as a talk radio format, then that’s one thing. And if it’s operating as a news outlet, then that’s another.”

The collection of sycophants Obama invited to his strategy session includes the most heated and vitriolic Bush administration critics, who now apparently reap the reward of their partisan commentary.  Rutenberg said that the White House was happy to start this debate about Fox News, because, in the words of David Axelrod, “Our concern is other media not follow their lead.”  Not to worry, David.  The style of coverage they gave the Bush administration won't extend to this one.

I have to wonder about the wisdom of Obama's White House meeting with his lapdogs in the press.  He was, after all, was preaching to the choir.  Maybe he just wanted to ask them to hold still while he launched his attack on Fox, but even the mainstream media, cheerleaders for Obama that they are, are having a hard time with it.

In a sign of discomfort with the White House stance, Fox’s television news competitors refused to go along with a Treasury Department effort on Tuesday to exclude Fox from a round of interviews with the executive-pay czar Kenneth R. Feinberg that was to be conducted with a “pool” camera crew shared by all the networks. That followed a pointed question at a White House briefing this week by Jake Tapper, an ABC News correspondent, about the administration’s treatment of “one of our sister organizations.”

Give them time.  Obama hasn't shown them yet what he can do.  Not to worry.  Charles Krathammer is here to tell us.

White House communications director Anita Dunn said that Fox is "opinion journalism masquerading as news." Patting rival networks on the head for their authenticity (read: docility), senior adviser David Axelrod declared Fox "not really a news station." And Chief of Staff Emanuel told (warned?) the other networks not to "be led (by) and following Fox."

Meaning? If Fox runs a story critical of the administration -- from exposing White House czar Van Jones as a loony 9/11 "truther" to exhaustively examining the mathematical chicanery and hidden loopholes in proposed health care legislation -- the other news organizations should think twice before following the lead.

The signal to corporations is equally clear: You might have dealings with a federal behemoth that not only disburses more than $3 trillion every year but is extending its reach ever deeper into private industry -- finance, autos, soon health care and energy. Think twice before you run an ad on Fox.

You have to wonder, just how smart is it to pick a fight with the most popular cable news network in America?  In Krauthammer's view, and mine too, not very.  In fact Krauthammer believes it's surpassingly stupid.

Fox and its viewers (numbering more than CNN's and MSNBC's combined) need no defense. Defend Fox compared to whom? To CNN -- which recently unleashed its fact-checkers on a "Saturday Night Live" skit mildly critical of President Obama, but did no checking of a grotesquely racist remark CNN falsely attributed to Rush Limbaugh?

Defend Fox from whom? Fox's flagship 6 o'clock evening news out of Washington (hosted by Bret Baier, formerly by Brit Hume) is, to my mind, the best hour of news on television. (Definitive evidence: My mother watches it even on the odd night when I'm not on.) Defend Fox from the likes of Anita Dunn? She's been attacked for extolling Mao's political philosophy in a speech at a high school graduation. But the critics miss the surpassing stupidity of her larger point: She was invoking Mao as support and authority for her impassioned plea for individuality and trusting one's own choices. Mao as champion of individuality? Mao, the greatest imposer of mass uniformity in modern history, creator of a slave society of a near-billion worker bees wearing Mao suits and waving the Little Red Book?

Yet for some odd reason, the Obama White House is quite confident that this war on Fox is smart policy.  Confident enough that the kick off event for his attack on the independence of the press was a meeting with other members of the press.  Admittedly, these are the those same friendly journalists who pronounced him to be the smartest president ever.  Is it any wonder the mainstream media are losing money hand over fist?  Any wonder that Obama's approval rating is sinking like a stone?

The Wrong Guy Won

Back in March there was with a high degree of certainty in Obama's announcement that counterinsurgency and 21,000 more troops to execute it were the new strategy for Afghanistan.  Afghanistan was, after all, the real front in the war on terror.  But today the administration doesn't know what the right strategy is.  It may not be counterinsurgency after all.  And oh by the way, is there a war?

In today's Wall Street Journal Karl Rove advises President Obama that it is both vital and possible to build a bi-partisan coalition to support the war in Afghanistan.  Mr. Rove suggests that fear of losing his left wing base is driving Obama's sudden reluctance to follow through on the counterinsurgency strategy he announced last spring.   Rove may also have hit on another somewhat bizarre reasoning behind the administration's strange turnaround on it. 

After consultations with the Obama transition team, the Bush administration's strategic review was not released nor were its recommendations implemented. Instead, the review was handed over to the incoming president. Drawing on it, Mr. Obama announced a "comprehensive new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan" on March 27.

Emphasizing the need to destroy al Qaeda and defeat the Taliban as it attempted to regain control of the country, Mr. Obama supported his new Afghan strategy by dispatching 21,000 additional troops. In June he also named a new commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal.

On Aug. 30, Gen. McChrystal warned in an assessment sent to the Pentagon that the war could be lost unless the U.S. sent more combat troops to the country. Inexplicably, Mr. Obama did little about the general's assessment until it was leaked to the public. This led to a Sept. 30 situation-room meeting—the first of five on Gen. McChrystal's report.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration has made winning the war harder by mismanaging the U.S.'s relationship with the Afghan government. Mr. Obama refused to take a call from Afghan President Hamid Karzai after his recent disputed election, a confidante to Mr. Karzai told me. That same confidante also said that the Afghan president was dismayed when political strategist James Carville, who has close ties to both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Mr. Emanuel, became an adviser to Ashraf Ghani, who ran against Mr. Karzai. Mr. Karzai took that as a sign that Mr. Obama was encouraging opposition to him. And, finally, administration figures have raised doubts about the White House's confidence in Afghanistan's government. In his interview on CNN on Sunday, for example, Mr. Emanuel questioned "whether, in fact, there's an Afghan partner."

I can't imagine that Obama's new commander, General Stanley McChrystal, intended for his August request for more troops to be a "put up or shut up" challenge to his Commander-In-Chief, yet that seems to be what it's become.  Pundits immediately began comparing McChrystal to MacArthur. Generals should shut up and salute.  Reliably pro-Obama cheerleader Eugene Robinson wrote in this the Washington Post:

McChrystal's statements have come at a pivotal moment when the White House is engaged in a fundamental review of Afghanistan policy. Some officials, including Vice President Biden, have argued for a minimalist approach in terms of goals and resources. Obama has called Afghanistan a "war of necessity" but now must face the implications of an open-ended escalation.

McChrystal, in his public advocacy for more troops, seemed to be trying to limit Obama's options. But what we want to achieve in Afghanistan is a political question, and we don't pay our generals to do politics. That's the job of the president and Congress -- and whether our elected leaders decide to pull out tomorrow or stay for 100 years, the generals' job is to make it happen.

For the record, this would be my position even if McChrystal were arguing for an immediate pullout -- or even if George W. Bush, rather than Obama, were the president whose authority was being undermined. In October 2006, when the chief of staff of the British army said publicly that Britain should pull out of Iraq because the presence of foreign troops was fueling the insurgency -- a view I wholeheartedly shared -- I argued that he ought to be fired. I wrote that I didn't like "active-duty generals dabbling in politics, even if I agree with them." If military officers want to devise and implement geopolitical strategy, they should leave their jobs and run for office.

In a confidential report to the president -- leakedtwo weeks ago to Bob Woodward of The Post -- McChrystal arguedfor a counterinsurgency strategy that would basically involve protecting the people of Afghanistan from the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and thus winning the population's hearts and minds. To do this would require lots more than the 62,000 U.S. troops now in the country. So, logically, McChrystal wants more forces -- and wants them soon.

Curiously, Mr. Robinson was incurious on the question of why the general needed to argue in August for a strategy that the administration had committed itself to in March.  What changed so dramatically between March and August that a reassessment of the goals in Afghanistan is now in order?  Robinson is right about one thing.  There are political decisions to be made by the administration, and our military goals in Afghanistan are among them. 

However, in everything this administration does American electoral politics weigh heavily in the decision making.  A reasonable consideration has to be given to electoral politics, but when we're talking about foreign policy decisions, electoral politics should come into play to the extent that the administration offer its best case for its foreign policy decisions.  They should not dictate foreign policy decisions.

In the Obama administration, not only are American electoral politics prominent in policy decisions, it would seem that Afghan electoral politics weighs in as well.  As Rove mentioned in his column, James Carville hired himself out to Ashraf Ghani, one of Afghan President Hamid Karzai's political opponents.  This is the same James Carville who is tight enough with the Obama administration that he is reported to be included in Rahm Emanuel's weekly conference calls to discuss administration and Democratic party media strategy.

The war on Fox News.White House Communications Director Anita Dunn projected big-time last week by calling Fox News "an arm of the Republican party." Yet Mr. Obama's strategists have worked relentlessly to turn other networks into an arm of the Democratic Party. Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is reported to hold weekly conference calls with CNN's James Carville and Paul Begala and ABC News' George Stephanopoulos. As Miss Dunn boasted early this year, Team Obama was able to "control" the media.

Another curious point is raised in a report by NPR back in July.  In its coverage of Carville's endeavors in Afghan internal politics NPR quoted him saying that his goal was to force a runoff.  

Many things people think about Afghanistan in the United States are "just wrong," he says, adding: "Just because it has a failed president doesn't mean that it has to be a failed country."

The president he is referring to is incumbent Hamid Karzai. Karzai's popularity is plummeting because of the growing Taliban insurgency and widespread allegations of corruption in his government. Yet a poll done in May had Karzai with more than a 20-point lead over his challengers.

Ghani, on the other hand, is in third place. He trails Abdullah Abdullah, an ophthalmologist and former commander in the Northern Alliance, which fought against the Taliban when it ruled the country.

Carville's goal is to try and force the presidential election into a second round. That will happen if no candidate gets a majority of the votes cast on Aug. 20.

He needed a little help from the UN, but Carville won his prize.  The runoff is scheduled for November 7th.  But why would the administration send Carville to Afghanistan to help Karzai's opposition?

Barack Obama said he intended to remake America, and he has taken some decisive steps in that direction.  It's become evident that he hopes to bring a socialist utopia to America, but we may not have guessed that Obama's massive ambition was to bring his dream to the entire world.  Unfortunately, Obama's utopia will never be realized as long a people have a choice. 

Building a utopia needs power and the will to use it.  Obama sides with those who will use power to impose their visions, and oddly enough it doesn't seem to matter what those visions might be.  So we watch him deliver snubs and sanctions against Honduras to assist a labor union minority who still hope to install Zelaya as dictator.  In the meantime he offered lip service to Iranian democrats while they are were being shot dead the streets of Tehran by thugs of the totalitarian mullahs.  A smile for Hugo Chavez, but a scowl for Benjamin Netanyahu.  It's a long list and one that I won't go through. 

But Hamid Karzai is not Obama's guy.  It leads me to wonder, if Obama doesn't like him how bad could he be?  But I digress.  Obama's hesitation over his once certain strategy for the war in Afghanistan may be strongly influenced by his frustration that the wrong guy won the election.  Could we be witnessing Chicago politics on an international stage?  It wouldn't surprise me if Obama were retaliating against the Afghans for refusing to pick his guy.  His guy, Ashraf Ghani, is out. 

Had Ghani won Obama would be under much greater pressure to support the Afghan democracy.  Is Abdullah Abdullah any prettier in Obama's eyes than Hamid Karzai?  Who knows?  But Obama seems to have his options.  Whoever wins the runoff, Obama is still free to abandon Afghanistan on the pretext of corruption in the Afghan government.  The Afghans didn't pick his guy.

Alinsky In Afghanistan

You would hardly guess it, but at one time Afghanistan was Obama's central front in the war on terror.  In the run up to the 2008 presidential election Obama campaigned on the premise that the war in Iraq was a mistake and a distraction from the real war on terror, and that he, Obama, would correct that mistake.  He would do it by fighting the war in Afghanistan.  It was a war we could not afford to lose, so he said. 

Or maybe we can.  General Stanley McChrystal, U.S commander in Afghanistan, has said he needs more troops in Afghanistan if we are to wage the successful counterinsurgency campaign that the administration decided upon when President Obama put him charge last spring.   But last spring's decision doesn't look that good right now, with health care reform sucking up congressional and presidential processing cycles. 

This fall, Obama is reconsidering his options in that light and looking for a way out of Afghanistan.  His new course of action is to publicly question the strategy he decided upon back in the spring.

The Afghan strategy doesn't matter.  Health care reform is the war Obama has decided he wants to win.  We're getting a first hand lesson in governance by the Alinsky method. 

Alinsky sneered at those who would accept defeat rather than break their principles: “It’s true I might have trouble getting to sleep because it takes time to tuck those big, angelic, moral wings under the covers.” He assured his students that no one would remember their flip-flops, scoffing, “The judgment of history leans heavily on the outcome of success or failure; it spells the difference between the traitor and the patriotic hero. There can be no such thing as a successful traitor, for if one succeeds he becomes a founding father.” If you win, no one really cares how you did it.

So the strategy for Afghanistan is of no interest beyond the political fallout that may come of Obama's abandonment of it.  Afghanistan is Iraq, a distraction. 

Obama seemed to adopt a policy of neglect towards Afghanistan.  It's an inevitability that support for the war would erode as time passed by.  He had only to procrastinate and public opinion would take care of itself.  But then Bob Woodward and blew his cover by publishing a secret Pentagon report that said his commanders would need thousands more troops for the deteriorating situation.  Sure enough, General McChrystal made his request, possibly confident in the misapprehension that his and Obama's views on the matter were identical. 

That seems not to have been the case.  Whether it is or it isn't, procrastination is no longer a good option for Obama.  His next best choice is deliberation, or the pretense of it.

But now, after nearly a month of deliberations by Mr. Obama over whether to send more American troops to Afghanistan, frustrations and anxiety are on the rise within the military.

A number of active duty and retired senior officers say there is concern that the president is moving too slowly, is revisiting a war strategy he announced in March and is unduly influenced by political advisers in the Situation Room.

It's my guess that after careful consideration Obama likely will send a few more troops, but probably not enough to make a difference.  He will send enough to make it look like he's trying real hard, but not enough to bring security to the Afghans.  And then when we revisit this whole Afghan question some months down the road, maybe enough time will have passed for Americans to become fed up and demand a pullout.  Or so Obama can hope.

The foundation has been laid.  What we're getting is almost a replay of the Iraq argument.  Back when Obama and the rest of the Democrats were trying to lose that war, they all declared that it was up to the Iraqis to stand up.  Surprise!  Now we need good government in Afghanistan.  Otherwise there is no point in being there.

In comes the U.N.-backed panel to say there should be a runoff between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and top challenger Abdullah Abdullah.  The Electoral Complaints Commission responded to allegations of ballot-stuffing and intimidation and threw out enough of Hamid Karzai's votes that his total fell below 50 percent.  Afghans weren't too happy about it, but it's perfect for Obama.

Hundreds of Karzai supporters protested in the south over the weekend, calling for the electoral commission to release results quickly and saying they will reject a second round.

They gathered in the main street of the southeastern city of Spin Boldak on Sunday, shouting, "We want the result!" and "Karzai is our leader!"

Ali Shah Khan, a tribal leader from the area, said the protesters believed the August vote was fair and that foreigners were delaying the results to unseat Karzai.

"We know they don't want President Karzai because he is a strong leader and he is working only for the people of Afghanistan," Khan said. "The foreign countries want a weak leader for Afghanistan. After that they can do whatever they want."

The White House says President Barack Obama will not send more U.S. troops until a credible government is in place.

Under pressure from the U.S. Hamid Karzai has agreed to the runoff election against Abdullah Abdullah.  Senator John "Lord" Kerry of Massachusetts made a special trip to help him to the decision.  Obama now believes he has a good excuse to delay any and all action on Afghanistan. 

Two of President Obama's top advisers on Afghanistan – Sen. John Kerry and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel – said Sunday that the United States should not commit more troops to Afghanistan until Afghans sort through their political crisis.

But Obama can only delay for the moment.  Americans are losing faith in his handling of the war.  The "surge" in Iraq demonstrated that an effective counterinsurgency strategy with enough troops to execute it works.  Publicly doubting the wisdom of using this strategy in Afghanistan presents a great political risk for Obama and the Democrats in the face of this evidence.  John Nagl, who wrote the Army & Marines Counterinsurgency Field Manual for General David Petraeus, and Richard Fontaine, a foreign policy advisor to John McCain, write today that the counterinsurgency remains the best option in Afghanistan.   

Electoral fraud will render our task in Afghanistan more difficult, but it does not make counterinsurgency impossible. On the contrary, a counterinsurgency approach - and not a narrowly tailored mission focused solely on killing or capturing enemies - remains the best path to success in Afghanistan.

To understand why, consider the analogous case of Iraq over the last three years. In January 2007, the "surge" of combat forces began as part of a new counterinsurgency strategy that emphasized clearing areas of fighters, holding that territory and building the infrastructure and institutions that had been so badly lacking - just as Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal has proposed for Afghanistan.

At the time, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Shiite-led government was widely viewed as weak and sectarian. An overwhelming number of Sunni Arabs - who formed the center of gravity of the insurgency - rejected its legitimacy and had boycotted the December 2005 elections that brought it to power. The al-Maliki government had done little to allay these feelings; on the contrary, elements of its security forces participated in sectarian violence against Sunnis through 2006. As Sunnis became further alienated from the central government, the cycle of violence began to spiral out of control.

Army Gen. David Petraeus's counterinsurgency strategy aimed to arrest this process by using American troops to protect the population - predicting, correctly, that until basic security was restored in key neighborhoods and communities, extremists on both sides of the sectarian divide would continue to inflame the situation. With U.S. forces clearing and holding territory and demonstrating to the Sunnis that they had a reasonable alternative to al-Qaida and its sectarian warfare, the extremists were sidelined. Security began to improve, and the political space necessary for reconciliation began to open.

Prospects for such an outcome in Afghanistan actually look better now than they did in Iraq in early 2007.

Unfortunately, Afghanistan is the distraction as far as the Obama administration is concerned.  Afghanistan has become Iraq.  It's the wrong war.  The right war for Obama is the pacification of America through health care reform.

Honduras Is Not Without Allies

Give the Hondurans their due for sticking to their principles.  Rumors persist that an agreement between ousted Manuel Zelaya and interim President Roberto Micheletti is near, but some points are apparently not negotiable.

The State Department's latest reading of the situation in Honduras is that the two sides are extremely close to an agreement, but stuck on the issue of the role Zelaya would play if a deal is signed.

"It's a really fluid situation that seems to be changing minute by minute," said the official. Zelaya is still hiding out in the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa.

Almost all of the provisions of the San Jose Accord are said to be part of the new agreement, but Article 6, which states that all government posts should return to their status before the coup began, is a sticking point with the Micheletti camp, which is said to adamantly oppose Zelaya retaking his presidential position.

Republican Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina went on a fact finding trip to Honduras and found that most Hondurans are not in favor of returning Zelaya to power after his attempt to force a change to the Honduran constitution, an act which is illegal under Honduran law. 

Indeed, the desire to move beyond the Zelaya era was almost universal in our meetings. Almost.

In a day packed with meetings, we met only one person in Honduras who opposed Mr. Zelaya's ouster, who wishes his return, and who mystifyingly rejects the legitimacy of the November elections: U.S. Ambassador Hugo Llorens.

When I asked Ambassador Llorens why the U.S. government insists on labeling what appears to the entire country to be the constitutional removal of Mr. Zelaya a "coup," he urged me to read the legal opinion drafted by the State Department's top lawyer, Harold Koh. As it happens, I have asked to see Mr. Koh's report before and since my trip, but all requests to publicly disclose it have been denied.

Thomas Shannon, the outgoing assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, has been nominated to become Obama's ambassador to Brazil.  Throwing his considerable Senatorial weight around, DeMint has put a hold on that nomination. 

Jim DeMint, who is holding up Shannon's nomination to become ambassador to Brazil and Arturo Valenzuela's nomination to take over Shannon's job.

DeMint has been hugely critical of the administration's Honduras policy and took a delegation there to meet with Micheletti against the State Department's wishes. There is speculation that if the situation in Tegucigalpa gets resolved, DeMint would release his holds, but neither of those things has happened just yet.

In the meantime Zelaya has set a deadline that Micheletti has ignored, saying that Manual Zelaya can't be reinstated.

Built In, Guaranteed Shortage

If the Baucus bill goes into law as written, all those promises about never having to ration health care services are going to come back to haunt the congress that passes it.  There is a built in, guaranteed shortage in that bill.

Then there are $400 billion in benefit cuts that are frightening seniors. Jeffrey A. Anderson of the Pacific Research Institute has pointed out that the Baucus bill cuts Medicare payments to physicians by 25% within two years and keeps payments at that level forever, without adjusting for inflation. If this becomes law, doctors who take Medicare patients will see their real income decline each year.

There's no mystery here.  This cut in Medicare payments will have the same effect as any other price control.  Price ceilings inevitably causes shortages.  Let me quote myself here.  It's from a post of a couple of years ago when I up on the soap box preaching the benefit of a good course in microeconomics to a proper understanding of history.

Having gotten a flavor of microeconomic theory in college in the mid 1960s, I had the great good fortune to be treated to a demonstration of this, played out in real life and on the nightly news with the oil crisis of the 1970s.  Wisdom from Washington had it that gasoline prices should be kept low so there could be a plentiful supply of it at an affordable price.  They made a law setting a maximum price for gasoline.  Nowadays there is a greater awareness of what this does because we could see what happened then.

Producers looking at a low return had to rethink how much in resources they could afford to devote to supplying gasoline.  It's quite possible they would have reached the point where they wouldn't be able to produce any.  For consumers the picture was quite different.  Gasoline was very affordable because the price was low.  With demand high and incentive to supply low, a classic shortage occurred.  Gas stations ran out of gas.  Cars lined up for miles to fill up.  Politicians castigated the evil greedy oil companies.  There were stories of conspiracies.  Tankers were said to be waiting off shore for prices to go up again, while people fought with each other in the gas lines.  There was even the brief appearance of a gasoline black market.

The part about the black market is important.  In Medicare terms we're talking fraud.  Consider the doctor who is confronted with a patient in dire need of a particular treatment which, unfortunately, is reimbursable at a rate so low that it's going to cost money instead of make money to provide it.  You can expect a high number of doctors to simply start phasing out that business.  How cruel and unpatriotic.

But before they give it up, you might find some doctors willing to try submitting their bills to Medicare using other billing codes for which they will get a higher reimbursement.  That's fraud.  But it's fraud committed in the interests of their patients.  The doctor gets paid, the patient gets treatment, and everybody's happy till the feds find out. 

The below market reimbursement rate hurts everybody except congress.  Patients can't get care.  Doctor's can't get paid.  And congressmen?  Well, they get to rail at the injustice of it all, and then go off and propose legislation that will make it worse.  Naturally there will be lots of lobbyists looking to influence the legislation on behalf of their clients, and they'll have lots of money to spend.