Meritocracy in Action, Episode 5487

Yesterday I wrote that "people who make large amounts of money in business or finance often think, and are thought by some, to know how the government should be run, or even just the economy.  Aside from the huge business and fiscal disasters over which such people have presided, their public statements since the re-election of Barack Obama should have disabused most people that they're not even qualified to decide their own salaries: they routinely think they're worth a lot more than they are."

New examples keep turning up.  The other day, Whole Foods CEO John Mackey made headlines when he claimed that the Affordable Care Act was "like fascism," marking himself out as a blustering fool.  So of course he quickly attempted to rewrite the record, digging himself in even deeper, as public figures from Todd Akin to Barack Obama usually do when they try to make it all better.

Mackey conceded that the word "fascist" wasn't the most felicitous choice: "it's got so much baggage attached to it ... Of course, I was just using the standard dictionary definition."  It's hard to see how the ACA fits with the dictionary definition of fascism; maybe Mackey took "Obamacare" literally and thought that Obama just wrote the law himself and signed it without going through Congress?  There are all kinds of objections that have been made by rational people to the ACA, but it is not an example of a strong autocratic government led by a dictatorial leader, etc.

"We no longer have free-enterprise capitalism in health care," he said. "The government is directing it. So we need a new word for it."

Mackey defined it later on HuffPost Live. "I think I'm going to use the phrase government-controlled health care. That's where we're evolving to right now," he said.

 Of course this is raving, pure and simple.  Arguably we haven't had "free-enterprise capitalism" in health care since the insurance companies took it over a few decades ago.  Almost no doctors are independent small-business owners anymore, as many were when I was a kid; most now work for the HMOs.  Corporate capitalism is not free-enterprise capitalism, and the American health care system is not 'directed' by the government, it's directed by giant corporate entities.  Which, as been pointed out at tiresome length in the past few years, is why our health care system is so wasteful, inefficient, and overpriced, with poorer outcomes than other industrialized nations.

The very limited regulation of the insurance companies mandated by the ACA isn't "government-controlled healthcare", anymore than food inspection is "government-controlled food production."  If you're going to talk about government 'direction' of health care in the US, you could talk about state licensing of medical practitioners, or federal oversight of drug safety, or Medicare.  I think most Americans would agree that if Medicare is fascism, fascism isn't so bad after all, and we could use a good deal more of it.

Of course our neighbor to the north has what Mackey would probably also call "government-controlled healthcare", but few would call Canada fascist because of it.  England's National Health Service goes even further in that direction, but again, it isn't fascist.  (Mackey previously compared the ACA to socialism in a 2009 Wall Street Journal op-ed, according to the HuffPost article I've linked here.  But you can't blame a man for evolving; he was so much younger and less mature then.)  Most developed countries have government involvement in the health care system to keep costs down and manage outcomes, for that matter.  Our corporate-controlled system is the main reason why Americans' health is so much worse than citizens of other First World countries.  And don't forget, President Obama and his core supporters find it hilarious or outrageous that anyone should think Canada's system might be a good example for us.

Richard Dawkins has railed against clergy and theologians being allowed to participate in public discussions.  They couldn't be any worse, and often aren't, than our corporate elites.  Which doesn't mean I want business types to be silenced; better they should be allowed to remind us, as often as necessary, how dumb they really are.

In Whose Service Is Perfect Freedom

Speaking of free will, the Health Care Bill (is it Obama's? does anybody know?) passed the House yesterday. Whatever It Is I'm Against It quotes Planned Parenthood: "We regret that a pro-choice president of a pro-choice nation was forced to sign an Executive Order that further codifies the proposed anti-choice language in the health care reform bill", and comments, "When a president signs an executive order that codifies anti-choice language, maybe it’s time to stop referring to him as a pro-choice president." But that would be social constructionism. (Constructivism?) President Obama is essentially pro-choice. It's in his genes! At any rate, Galen Strawson would be happy to explain to you that it was all predetermined, from before the creation of the world.

All the DJs on our local community radio station were dedicating their playlists to the passage of the Health Care Bill, including the reggae program yesterday. How much you want to bet that those patriarchal, male-supremacist, often homophobic Jamaican males support women's control over their own bodies? I admit I'm ignorant about the Rastafarian position on reproductive freedom, but it was predetermined that I should write those words.

I Am Loathe to See This Phenomena Be Given Free Reign

Plenty of people have had nasty things to say about Obama's health care bill (it's his now, just as Afghanistan and Iraq are his wars), and I don't have anything to add to them. Obama loyalists are manning the barricades to cast dust in the people's eyes, but both sides are really irrelevant anyway, aren't they? Obama didn't have private meetings with critics of the bill, any more than he spends afternoons playing golf with them.

Though as Glenn Greenwald wrote yesterday, "the mere fact that the health insurance industry and the market generally sees this 'reform' bill as a huge boost to the industry's profitability does not prove, by itself, that this is a bad bill." No, it's "the corrupt, mandate-based strengthening of the private insurance industry, the major advancement of the corporatism model of government, the harm this is likely to do to some who are now covered and some who cannot afford the forced premiums, and the chances for a better bill if this one is defeated." (To be fair and balanced, I should add that Greenwald is probably far too optimistic on that last point, and that he sees some benefits in the bill as it stands.)

But something small caught my bleary eye last night while I was surfing the Web. As a grammar neurotic, I couldn't help noticing that President Obama told the Washington Post (via), "Every single criteria for reform I put forward is in this bill." That should have been "every single criterion", of course: "criteria" is plural.

This doesn't affect my opinion of Obama; it's a common slip. But I was reminded of all the Democrats who've been exulting for the past year that we finally have a President who can speak proper English. Do they notice Obama's errors? Probably not: in contrast to "nukular," which is a regional variation associated with the supposedly backward South, ignorance of plural and singular forms of certain nouns is common among the Obamatariat -- "phenomena" also seems well on its way to joining "data" and "media" as a singular form. So are the inability to use apostrophes correctly, the confusion of "rein" and "reign", and so on. Such things wouldn't be worth noticing or mentioning if the people involved hadn't been so self-righteous about Obama's predecessor. I've often thought that what really upset so many liberals was not Bush's policies but his accent; their reaction when Obama continues his policies, their reluctance to speak out against his wars for example, tends to confirm my suspicion.

P.S. Here's another example (via) from Nashville Toys for Tots coordinator Staff Sgt. David Carrier, explaining why children of parents without Social Security cards will receive only coal in their stockings: " ... but we have set a criteria." Susie of Suburban Guerilla called it "a very un-Christian thing to do", which reminds me of a Bible story.

²⁴Jesus left that place and went to the vicinity of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know it; yet he could not keep his presence secret. ²⁵In fact, as soon as she heard about him, a woman whose little daughter was possessed by an evil spirit came and fell at his feet. ²⁶The woman was a Greek, born in Syrian Phoenicia. She begged Jesus to drive the demon out of her daughter.

²⁷"First let the children eat all they want," he told her, "for it is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs."

²⁸"Yes, Lord," she replied, "but even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs."

²⁹Then he told her, "For such a reply, you may go; the demon has left your daughter."

³⁰She went home and found her child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.

Jesus, to his limited credit, had a sense of shame. Luckily for her daughter, the Syrophoenician woman had her wits about her, even if she didn't have a Social Security card.

P.P.S. I'm reading Declining Grammar and Other Essays on the English Vocabulary by Dennis Baron, Professor of English and Linguistics at the University of Illinois-Urbana, originally published in 1989. In Chapter 10, "Academies of One: The Critics and English Usage," Baron discusses plurals and the confusion that surrounds them. Children, it turns out, is really a "double plural ... which shows an -en plural (as in oxen and brethren) to an obsolete plural in -er".

Double plurals are more common than we think. Quite a few of our singulars were once plural, including a number of French borrowings that developed new plurals once they came into English: apprentice is from the French apprentis (sg. apprenti), invoice from envois (sg. envoi) ... Tweezers comes from the French etuis (sg. etui), 'case,' and was originally (a pair of) twees. Native English breeches (from Old English singular broc, plural breech) is a double plural, as is bodices (bodice is actually bodies, plural of body).

Since criteria comes from Latin, it may not be surprising that even a Harvard man like President Obama is unclear that it's a plural. Certainly many Americans are, though it still seems weird to me -- is criterion so much rarer than criteria that they haven't heard of it? Language changes, though, and it may well be that in a generation or two, criteria will be a standard English singular, with a new double plural form added on.

Politics Is Whatever I Don't Agree With

I had a funny conversation yesterday with a co-worker from another department. It's probably a dangerous luxury to argue politics in the workplace, but since she began the exchange, I decided to indulge for once.

She overheard me and another worker talking about the state of health care in the US. I was showing him an article with another horror story about a person who'd been denied treatment by her insurance company. The other co-worker then intervened, asking us if we thought the government should take over healthcare. I said I thought so, and we were off. The trouble is, my interlocutor was either incredibly ignorant, or pretending to be: she claimed not to know -- in fact, she denied -- that Republicans have wanted to get rid of Social Security and Medicare since those programs' inception. I reminded her of Ronald Reagan, and she conceded and brushed aside the point in one dismissive wave: so did Clinton, she said. Right, I said, so he's going along with the Republicans -- but don't you want to get rid of Medicare and Social Security, which are government programs that let Washington run our lives? She brushed that aside too, saying that Medicare and Social Security are going broke, they don't work. Social Security is not going broke, I said, and if Medicare has problems it's because Republicans keep trying to get to get rid of it by whittling away at it. (Same with Social Security: if they can't get rid of it outright, they can at least cut benefits and raise the retirement age a little at a time.) She denied that too, which brought us full circle.

I mentioned that lots of Americans apparently don't know that Social Security and Medicare are government programs, which she also denied. (As Avedon Carol wrote at The Sideshow, "You actually hear people say with a straight face that they've never taken anything from the government and never will, they get by on Social Security and they have their Medicare. I can't help but wonder where they think it comes from."

My co-worker was aware of the horror stories about the American system, but was sure that things would be worse under a government-run system -- just look at England! So what did she want, I asked. Well, if They would just set up more free clinics all over the country, then people could get treatment! Who's "They", I asked. The government, of course. But I thought she didn't want the government to take over healthcare, and it would be too expensive. But if They just set up free clinics ... I had to keep asking her who They were; I guess that such vagueness about who's doing what is inevitable when someone gets all her news from Fox, which she proudly declared she did.

Now, this woman is not what most Democrats and liberals would recognize right away as a redneck. I was stunned myself at just how narrow and ignorant she was, having exchanged pleasantries with her regularly during the past couple of years. But then, I myself am out of touch with most of America, since I avoid the corporate media generally in favor of alternatives, and most of my fellow Americans evidently think that Fox News is alternative media. The rest seem to think that President Obama's press releases and speeches are alternative media.

Lately, too, I've made the mistake of letting a friend get me onto Facebook. (One of my Korean friends, who'd posted photos there that he took during my recent trip to Korea.) Next thing I knew, I was hearing from people I'd gone to high school with forty years ago, and while most of them aren't bad people, they're mostly Republicans and conservative Christians. (Yeah, I know, so are most gay people, but that's why I don't hang around with most gay people.) The Republicans are appalling, ranting about how Obama is going against the will of most Americans. "Republican ... Democrat ... Independent .... Liberal .... why don't our elected Congressmen and Senators listen to us and do what we voted them to do," one wrote. "...... we want structured, accountable change, backed by meaningful fiscal responsibility ...... do we have to have an American Revolution to get our point across."

I teased him a bit, pointing out that most Americans want a single-payer system. (I have to balance this: If many Americans don't know that Medicare is a government program, they are probably just as vague about what a government-run health system would be like. On the other hand, the polls don't ask about "single-payer" -- they describe the program, and most Americans still want it, as they have for decades.) Most Americans voted for Obama, thinking he was, if not a socialist, then at least an extreme liberal. Most Americans still like Obama. While there's no reason why this guy has to agree with them, he should at least recognize that he's in the minority and has to start from there. Second, they have to account for their silence during the Bush years, when the deficit spiraled upwards almost from the day Clinton left office. I think that they only turned against Bush, if at all, for his bailout package last fall -- but Obama was on board for that. Did they care about Bush's wars? They've forgotten about them. Did they care about the Patriot Act? Of course not; it's only when government surveillance might affect them that they suddenly doubt the benevolence and wisdom of those who protect us against the terrorists. I mean, if they don't have something to hide, what are they worried about?

He'd also linked to the Facebook page of Representative John Boehner (R-OH), who'd opposed Obama's stimulus program too. Boehner in turn linked to something called "The Freedom Project." (Big Brother would approve -- it's not really fair to call such twisted usage Orwellian.) The Freedom Project blogger trumpeted that "Democratic Leaders Call Voters 'Un-American' for Expressing Opposition"!!! Now, Freedom Project didn't give any actual quotations to support this claim, all he really had was a quotation from Rep. Boehner, who "ripped his Democratic counterparts Monday for labeling those disrupting lawmaker town halls as 'un-American.'" The blogger might be telling the truth despite himself; but so what? All through the past several Republican administrations, Republican leaders have called voters "un-American" for expressing opposition to their policies and programs. It's stupid and dishonest, but it's one of the perks of being the party in power. If Democrats could survive the accusation, so can Republicans.

I don't mind the disruptions of the town hall meetings per se, and I certainly wouldn't call them un-American: what is more American, more down-home and traditional, than a lynch mob? The trouble lies in other areas. One, that those who are attacking Obama's health care program from the Right are lying themselves blue in the face, parroting Fox News / Limbaugh / Palin / Republican National Committee talking points without having the first idea what they're talking about. But that's nothing new. Those who are surprised by this behavior have (conveniently?) forgotten what the Right has been puking up like green pea soup ever since Obama became a viable candidate for President; those who dismissed the ranting as the last gasp of a bankrupt Republican party were fooling themselves. Sure, racist fury at the existence of a mulatto President underlies a lot of their rage; a lot also derives simply from the fact that the Republicans lost the election -- I remember similar hysteria after the inauguration of Bill Clinton ended twelve years of Republican control of the Oval Office. The fact that many of their accusations are sheer dementia doesn't make these people less dangerous.

Two, there are too many problems with Obama's program for health care reform. I wrote in February about his stimulus package that "It doesn't really matter if the bill is any good or not; if it fails to pass, Obama's credibility will take a hit, and the Republican media (by which I mean the corporate media) will swoop in like vultures to feed on his eyes while he is still alive." Obama's talking the same line now, trying to paint all opponents of his "reforms" (more Newspeak) as Republicans. One question I am grappling with now is how to deal with the Republican shock troops who see the conflict in the same either/or terms: either you support Obama, or you agree with them -- you're either for him or against him. Health care reform is just too damn important to let it turn into a football game, where you're cheering for one team or another. I oppose Obama's program, but I also oppose the frothing hordes of the Republican faithful. The enemy of my enemy is not my friend.