Transnational Law Blog

A Capitalist Crisis?

Having born and brought up in a communist country as well as reading Marxism over the years in both social and economic disciplines, I can’t help asking myself the question: “How would Marx respond to this financial crisis?” The question lingered for weeks. Yesterday, I finally did a quick search on this subject. Unsurprisingly, there has been a revival of interest in Marx ever since the crisis started. Das Kapital, one of Marx’s most known analyses on the economy of capitalism have once again become the best seller all over the world. Last year, Phillip Collins of the UK Times published an article under “Karl Marx: did he get it all right?”. After a quick scan through Marx’s Ten Steps to Communism, the author gave Marx 3.5 over 10 for his assumed prophetic ability in predicting our financial crisis. Collin stated the obvious: Mark was right about the nature of crisis embodied in capitalism, but not much more.

I found the article a fun read with good review of Marxism, as well as was amused with Collins' British sense of humor. But it did not satisfy my curiosity. What is more? What do our American Marxists think about this issue? Robert Brenner, a Marxist and economic historian of UCLA, seems to offer a solid yet provocative perspective through his interview with Seoul’s economist, Jeong Seong-ji titled "A Way out of the Global Economic Crisis?"

Back in December 2007, Brenner was almost prophetic about the upcoming financial crisis while at least half of the world was still relatively optimistic about economic downturn. By late December 2008, Brenner once again stressed that the crisis is much more substantial than most people expected.

According to the Marxian professor: “The basic source of today’s crisis is the declining vitality of the advanced economies since 1973, and, especially, since 2000.” Brenner contends that capitalists solved the problem of slowing capital accumulation by calling forth to the ever greater levels of borrowing to sustain stability. Thus, our economic system requires the crisis that has so long been postponed since “it’s by way of crisis that, historically, capitalism has restored the rate of profit and established the necessary conditions for more dynamic capital accumulations” said the Marxian historian.

The interview covers controversy issues such as the role of the US’s hegemony in maintaining the world order, Keynes monetary policies as a solution for the crisis, the depth of the Chinese crisis and its role in financing the our debts over the past decades.

In addition, the professor also made a comparison between Obama’s future performance as with Roosevelt’s and how our country can only change the system under a class struggle namely revolving pressure from the workers and unions. He asserts: “like Roosevelt, Obama can be expected to take decisive action in defense of working people only if he is pushed by way of organized direct action from below.”

In responding to Jeong’s question on Korea, Brenner maintains that as deep and troublesome the Chinese crisis is revealing, China may be able to contain the crisis better than Korea due to its low-cost labor force and large domestic consumption. This is due to both Korea and China reliance on globalization for their growth, which turn out to be a weakness at the moment. “It’s not necessarily because Korea is doing the wrong thing,” the author continues, “it’s because I don’t think there’s going to be an easy way out for any part of what has become a truly global, interdependent capitalist system.”

For Brenner, the only way for countries to reestablish healthy capitalism appropriate for growth and further capital accumulation is through strengthening the movement of labor organization. The class struggle promises to balance the distribution of power necessary for readjustment.

“So, again, the top priority for progressives -- for any left activists -- where they should be active is in trying to revive the organizations of working people. Without the re-creation of working class power, little progress will be possible, and the only way to recreate that power is by way of mobilization for direct action. Only through working people taking action, collectively and en masse, will they be able to create the organization and amass the power necessary to provide the social basis, so to speak, for a transformation of their own consciousness, for political radicalization.”

I wonder if one could find a more Marxian solution to our financial crisis than what Brenner contends. On the other hand, this approach has never been so out of reach given the current feeble and fragmented state of our labor unions and the worker’s strength in taking the action necessary to protect their long-term interest.

Robert P. Brenner and Jeong Seong-jin. Photo provided by The Hankyoreh
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Below are a few additional quotes that I also found particularly thought-provoking.

Disputing Keynes monetary policy in effectively changing the landscape of our crisis
"But there is reason to doubt that Keynesianism, in the sense of huge government deficits and easy credit to pump up demand, can have the impact that many expect. After all, during the past seven years, thanks to the borrowing and spending encouraged by the Federal Reserve’s housing bubble and the Bush administration’s budget deficits, we witnessed what was, in effect, probably the greatest Keynesian economic stimulus in peacetime history. Yet we got the weakest business cycle in the postwar epoch."

China and East Asia as the US’s largest creditors
"To have a significant effect on the economy, the Obama administration will likely have to contemplate a huge wave of direct or indirect government investment, in effect a form of state capitalism. To actually accomplish this, however, would require overcoming enormous political and economic obstacles. The U.S. political culture is enormously hostile to state enterprise. At the same time, the level of expenditure and state indebtedness that would be required could threaten the dollar. Until now, East Asian governments have been happy to fund U.S. external and government deficits, in order to sustain U.S. consumption and their own exports. But, with the crisis overtaking even China, these governments may lose the capacity to finance U.S. deficits, especially as they grow to unprecedented size. The truly terrifying prospect of a run on the dollar looms in the background."

The US hegemonic role in maintaining the world order
"I see the elites of the world, especially the elites of the capitalist core, broadly conceived as being very happy with U.S. hegemony, because what it means for them is that the U.S. assumes the role and the cost of world policeman."

Future possibility for the working class to influence our political environment
"The problem is that there is very little organization of working people, let alone any political expression. So, one can say there is this very big opportunity created by the change in the political environment, or the ideological climate, but that by itself is not going to provide a progressive outcome."

Following note: Just as Brenner stresses the capitalist exploitation of labor and social resources as well as insists on  importance of worker's union in order to improve our political and economic landscape. Look at what have just happened here (pdf).

A Response to the Hysteria about Modernizing American Health Care

Some commentators have been ringing the alarm bells about the health care provisions in the recently enacted American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (The Stimulus). As I discussed in a previous post, this started with an opinion piece in Bloomberg, which has since been discredited by CNN and others. Among other things, the author misquoted the language in the bill to make it look more "sinister" and she indicated that it was creating a new administrative body to make health decisions for patients when, in fact, that administrative body already existed and doesn't do that.  Now NBC News claims that there is a leaked letter sent from the author of the hit piece to the large drug companies, saying that she would help them shape public opinion for a fee, through the Big Pharma-funded Hudson Foundation.

This debunking has not stopped the manufactured controversy, however, as seen in a recent TLB post. To go along with the alarmist language like "Socialism!", there are some substantive points made in the post that I would like to respond to:

Assertion: 

President Obama has future plans to dictate what treatments patients can get.

Response:

 First of all, there seems to be a backing-off of the original claim that the provisions in the Stimulus Bill dealing with health care gave the government power to mandate that patients receive certain treatments. I assume that means that there is an acknowledgment that the Bloomberg article was either outright trying to mislead people or perhaps merely grossly negligent in their journalism. Instead, now the argument is moving to future dangers that are, of course, what the "sinister" lefties are certainly going to do. 

The problem with this is that we don't know what is going to be proposed. The previous post links to a vaguely-worded plan on the Obama campaign website, which says that health providers that participate in the plan will need to use "proven disease management programs." That is about as vague as it can be, but it certainly is a big jump from that to"the government will make tell a patient what treatment to get."

In fact, I'm not sure that the government deciding to disallow certain kinds of treatments would even be a big departure from how things are already done, since the government makes decisions about lots of health care issues. For instance, the government makes decisions and enforces things like sanitary conditions in hospitals and what medications are safe and legal (see, the FDA). I suppose that could also be considered governmental intervention into private choices, just like ANY regulation.

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Assertion:

It is coercion for the government to require health care facilities to provide records if they want to receive Federal funds.

Response:

Yes it is. In fact, there are two main ways the Federal Government gets states, private actors, or any other entity to do or to not do things. One is to directly mandating it, i.e. making it illegal to do something. The second, and less coercive way, is to tie federal money to compliance.

Every single law or regulation enacted by the Federal Government uses one or both of those forms of coercion. As the government is using the less coercive of the two forms of regulation, I fail to see why this is an issue at all, unless one has the opinion that all regulations are bad or improper (a view that few people would agree with).

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Assertion:

The health care provisions were "hidden" in the Stimulus Bill, and when right-wing talk show hosts started talking about it, they were "hushed."

Response:

The provisions were in the many different iterations of the Stimulus Bill, and those different versions of the bill, such as the House and Senate bill were available on-line for weeks. That alone means that there has been MORE transparency about the bill than just about any other large spending bill to come out of Congress that I can think of, at least ones that are more than single-project bills. Yes, the bill is long, and yes, it contains many different subjects. However, there is no reason to think that the health care provisions were any more "hidden" than any other omnibus-type spending bill. It strikes me as a bit of selective outrage to single this one out despite the increased transparency compared to the normal process.

As for the right-wing talking heads being hushed, I would like to see some evidence for that, as I can find none. There has been fact-checking, but I don't agree that fact-checking counts as being "hushed." At the very least, Rush Limbaugh alone has 20 million listeners a day, and the falsehoods were also spread throughout other parts of the media such as Fox News and even CNN (before they actually went to the trouble of fact-checking it). So the falsehoods spread to plenty of people, hushed or not. 

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Assertion:

Not a single Republican voted for the bill in the House, and only three voted for it in the Senate, therefore it was a bad bill.

Response:

There is a simple alternative explanation to the Republicans not voting for it - they did so for political reasons.

As Nate Silver reasoned over at fiverthirtyeight, the Republicans had few tactical reasons for voting for it.

Then there is the fact that the Republican leadership issued a statement telling Republicans to vote against it right BEFORE meeting with Obama about it.

"House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) had told CNSNews.com on Tuesday: “Mr. Boehner and Mr. Cantor have already told their members to vote against it. They issued that before even discussing it with the president of the United States. They have taken a political stance: ‘Our party is going to oppose it.’  I think that’s unfortunate because it takes two groups to be bipartisan.”

Then there are the statements by Republican Senator Arlen Spector, one of the three Republican Senators to vote for it, saying that at least some of the other Republicans voted against it due to pressure from the Right-wing:

"When I came back to the cloak room after coming to the agreement a week ago today," said Specter, "one of my colleagues said, 'Arlen, I'm proud of you.' My Republican colleague said, 'Arlen, I'm proud of you.' I said, 'Are you going to vote with me?' And he said, 'No, I might have a primary.' And I said, 'Well, you know very well I'm going to have a primary.'"

"I think there are a lot of people in the Republican caucus who are glad to see this action taken without their fingerprints, without their participation," he said.

Specter was asked, How many of your colleagues?

"I think a sizable number," he said. "I think a good part of the caucus agrees with the person I quoted, but I wouldn't want to begin to speculate on numbers."

Listen to the audio

Then there is the fact that Republicans wanted tax cuts, so Obama included tax cuts. Then they wanted more tax cuts, so he included more tax cuts. Then they had an issue with money to fix up the National Mall, so that was taken out. Then they had problems with family planning money, so that was taken out. Then the Dem's made still more concessions during the senate negotiations, such as reducing the size of the spending, taking out money for schools and states like the Republicans wanted, and so on. None of those things changed a single Republican vote.

Add that all up, mix in mostly the exact same republicans voting for even larger and less-necessary things like the giant medicare-Big Pharma giveaway during Bush's term.

Or how about all 211 House Republicans voting for Bush's tax cut during less perilous times than the current situation that cost 70% more than this Stimulus ($1.35 Trillion)?

 It's pretty clear that some, if not many, Republicans voted against the Stimulus because they saw a political advantage to voting against it, NOT because they are opposed to deficits. 

Three is Company: How Obama is Coming Between You and Your Doctor

Obama will sign the Stimulus Bill tomorrow and take his first small step toward socialized healthcare and one giant leap toward socializing America. A previous post on TLB warned against blindly listening to Right-Wing Talking Points, but it should be noted that the right-wing talking points are not off the mark in this instance. 445 pages of the 1500 page stimulus bill concern healthcare reform and it all starts with cost-effective monitoring of medical treatments.

Obama lays out his plan step-by-step (see the PDF here). First, the plan drops billions of dollars for electronic health information technology systems. This means no more paper records. If a health facility or provider wants federal money, it has to make its health records electronically available. It's true, as the previous TLB post says, the establishment of an electronic records system will give doctors complete, accurate information about their patients "to help guide medical decisions at the time and place of care." However, the previous TLB post did not address the next step of the Obama plan, viz., disease management programs. The stimulus bill introduces the framework for creating disease management programs by establishing the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research (FCCCER). 

According to the Obama plan (again, see the PDF): "Over seventy-five percent of total health care dollars are spent on patients with one or more chronic conditions, such as diabetes, heart disease, and high blood pressure. Many patients with chronic diseases benefit greatly from disease management programs, which help patients manage their condition and get the care they need. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will require that plans that participate in the new public plan, Medicare or the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) utilize proven disease management programs."

Well, that's a mouthful, but what does it mean? The previous TLB post said there is nothing in the healthcare provisions of the stimulus bill that would require doctors to do what the Federal government deems appropriate. That is, there is nothing in the bill that says, "Once we have access to all of the health records throughout the entire nation, the federal government will next assume a very paternalistic and omniscient power position between you and your doctor and decide what is the proper treatment." What it does say is that healthcare is expensive; it says healthcare costs can be reduced through comparative effectiveness research, which will analyze the soon-to-be-available electronic records to determine what is the most cost-effective way to treat illnesses. In other words, if a healthcare facility accepts federal funds, then it must provide its records through electronic technology and it must accept the federal government's determinations as to the most cost-effective way of treating an illness. That's how right-wing talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh or Betsy McCaughey come to the conclusion that Obama's healthcare plan, hidden within the stimulus bill, will put the federal government between you and your doctor (see here). 

But that is the funny thing about socialism: the government will only come between you and your doctor if your healthcare provider accepts federal funds. Do our healthcare providers need money from the federal government? Probably not. But maybe the corporation that owns your healthcare provider does. Do they have to accept money from the federal government? No, but they probably will. Unlike USSR communism, which is forced on the masses, people accept socialism out of fear and a reluctance to do something else. The reason the country is in this quagmire is government interference and control (see here), and the best answer we can come up with is more government control and interference? That's like a man dying of arsenic poisoning consuming more arsenic.

What bothers me about it? Why do I waste my time explicating the finer points of the healthcare aspect of the stimulus bill? Because what happened to the voice of the American people?! Obama pushed it through before there could be any debate about it. When the right-wing talk show hosts and bloggers started shouting about it before the Bill was passed, they were hushed. Now it's all over and suddenly NPR and the AP and the NY Times and the cowardly republicans are talking about it. Well, it's too late now! 

Didn't anyone think it was strange that not a single Republican voted for the Bill in the House and only three did in the Senate? The one thing I'll always agree with about Obama is he is VERY intelligent. Clinton's healthcare reforms failed because his administration took its time presenting its plan. Obama (and Tom Daschle) knew better than to wait and let controversy build. His first act in power was to pass his healthcare reforms! And he did it under the guise of a stimulus bill! And our representatives let him do it because we cowered when we heard the thunderclap of "economic crisis"! Using the fear of economic collapse to reform healthcare and socialize America is more abhorrent than the court-packing plan used by the great socialist reformer president, FDR. But what can we do now except broaden our minds and accept the fact that a visit with the doctor will now be a three-way with the federal government.   

Back to the Same Starting Point

It is that time of my life once again, where I return to my root and start working on Vietnam's economic reform. Not that I have never attempted to escape from this subject to gain more breadth on other regions. Yet, this time I found myself coming back to that same initial starting point from my undergraduate years to look closer into Vietnam’s economic performance and its shortcomings. Why don't I want to work on China, India etc? Why Vietnam again?

In my senior year at UC Santa Cruz, I wrote a senior thesis on trade relationship between Vietnam and China and how these two trade regimes complement and compete with each other in the world market (US and Europe). Although this first experience with academic research was extremely influential and rewarding, I have never reread the paper since it was finished. For some seasons, it isn’t something that I feel particularly proud of other than the fact that I was the first student who ever wrote a senior thesis in the Economic Department at UCSC and was invited to give a lecture on the paper in the very class that I had sat on just a year before then. I guess part of the reason for such attitude is the fact that I further understand how complex and significant the problem is in understanding the reform structure and trade relationship that Vietnam sustains within the regional and global economy. My gaining knowledge made me become ever humble with the unknown and unlearned phenomenon of Vietnam’s developing process.

Some time last week, I decided to write my Master thesis on Vietnam's economic reform again. While searching for data and literature, I was bombarded with so much information that I hadn’t exposed to in quite a few years. There is this bittersweet flavor in digging through the economic literature of Vietnam's trade reform, WTO benefits, FDI and institutional framework of the country. It's sweet because I am working toward a set goal with challenging and applicable subject matter, but bitter from seeing how much more that the country needs to catch up and yet, the institutional and legal framework is too lacking to bridge any major economic gap in the near future. For now, here are a few issues:

1. What are the market failures and advancements created from government subsidies in major sectors?

Political economist, Mushtaq Khan, identifies four major market failures in Vietnamese economy: failures in capital markets, labor markets, land markets and knowledge (information) markets. Given our limited knowledge of how these limitations were addressed by Vietnamese government historically, it’s still the matter of further studies to prioritize and strategies how Vietnamese government should undertake these limitations. For instance, what makes the country’s state owned enterprises profitable- a paradoxical phenomenon for most emerging markets.

2. How Vietnam’s export led growth strategies prevents technological catch up necessary for industrialization? What are the roles of FDI and government subsidies in Vietnam long-term economic development?

It is unquestionable that FDI and trade agreements in the past two decades have driven the country's economic growth. Yet, there is one major concern within this growth format namely the existence of significant constraints in technological acquisition.  So far, major exporting sectors such as garments and agriculture not only require minimal skilled workers but also import limited technological transfer. The NICs (newly industrialized countries) all went through similar starting point but later managed to move up the ladders through technological advancement. Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong all are currently manufacturers of high-tech electronic and computer components. The Vietnamese government needs to focus its policies to reinvest and to lure FDI into industries that could provide higher skill training and importing technology, but that seems easier said than done.

3. Two years after Vietnam’s access to the WTO, what are the benefits and barriers to country’s development process?

Jan 11, 2007 marked a major hallmark in Vietnam's trade regime for its official access to the World Trade Organization (WTO). According to the STAR-Vietnam: “Overall exports to U.S. grew at about 20% in 2007. Exports of primary products declined by 4% largely due to a 33% decline in petroleum exports. Clothing exports posted a 28% growth – 10% increase from 2006’s.” The economy as a whole grew 8.4% in 2007 and approximately 7% in 2008.” Having said that, couple with high inflation (26.7 at its peak) in 2008, the real estate bubble and the global credit crisis later in the year, it is extremely complicated to single out how Vietnam’s access to the WTO enhances the country’s growth rate in 2008. One interesting aspect of these numbers is the correlation between WTO access and global demand for food, raw materials and cheap labor of the past two years. It is questionable if WTO’s access is in fact the main driver of Vietnam’s trade. In addition, WTO access may further create barriers for the government to effectively use subsidies and rents to further its industrialization process.

Source: Star-VN

4. What are the standing of Vietnam’s institutional reform in enhancing property rights and enforcing commercial contracts? Being far from the standard of other developed countries, what can be done to speed up institutional reform in Vietnam? Are there lessons from China’s legal reforms?

 The country's legal reform has seen itself drastically transformed since 2001. Yet, the country still needs to bridge a considerable gap to effectively offer a stable legal framework to lure foreign investors as well as to improve banking and financial sectors. The reform process was indeeded has been closely replicated China's given China started its economic reform 12 years ahead in 1978. However, policy makers should not forget there remains considerable difference between the two economies.

Hopefully, my research will paint a clearer picture than where it appears to be at the moment. For this reason, lots of entries on this topic are forthcoming.

Beware of Right-Wing Talking Points

While I fully support efforts to keep an eye on what is in the massive Stimulus Bill, there is a new lie coming out of the right-wing echo chamber about a electronic medical record-keeping provision that has made it into usually reliable news outlets like Bloomberg, as highlighted in a recent post on this blog.

Long-time health care reform critic Betsy McCaughey wrote an opinion piece in Bloomberg saying that there is a hidden provision in the Stimulus Bill that allows the Federal Government to set a broad range of regulations determining what medical care patients should receive.  In fact, the provision says the OPPOSITE. It says:

"(b) Purpose-- The National Coordinator shall perform the duties under subsection (c) in a manner consistent with the development of a nationwide health information technology infrastructure that allows for the electronic use and exchange of information and that--

"(4) provides appropriate information to help guide medical decisions at the time and place of care;

Nowhere (that I can find) in the Stimulus Bill is there any provision for the Federal Government to make the decisions, as the opinion piece in Bloomberg claims. Instead, it provides information for doctors to use at the hospital at the time of treatment. Note also  that the bill also has provisions about ensuring patient privacy.

Finally, Betsy McCaughey hinted that the Stimulus creates a new bureaucracy, but see this:

The National Coordinator of Health Information Technology is not a new bureaucracy created in the stimulus. Bush signed it into office in 2004. it has a web site, a director, and, presumably, a phone line, which could have been used by McCaughey or Bloomberg to check the next fact: That it will "monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective."

As it turns out, this is nothing new for McCaughey. She actually has a very long history of lying about attempts at health care reform, and helped to sink the Clinton attempts at fixing things in the 1990's.

So, how did such a falsehood get spread so far and wide?

From Media Matters:

"Limbaugh repeats health IT falsehood from Bloomberg "commentary" on House recovery bill

On February 9, Rush Limbaugh repeated a falsehood from a Bloomberg "commentary" by Betsy McCaughey, headlined "Ruin Your Health With the Obama Stimulus Plan." In the commentary, McCaughey falsely claimed that under provisions in the economic recovery bill passed by House Democrats, "[o]ne new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and 'guide' your doctor's decisions." In fact, the language in the House bill that McCaughey, a former lieutenant governor of New York, referenced does not establish authority to "monitor treatments" or restrict what "your doctor is doing" with regard to patient care, but rather addresses establishing an electronic records system such that doctors would have complete, accurate information about their patients "to help guide medical decisions at the time and place of care."

On the February 9 broadcast of Premiere Radio Networks' The Rush Limbaugh Show, Limbaugh repeated McCaughey's falsehood, saying:

LIMBAUGH: Betsy McCaughey has written a column at Bloomberg detailing some of the most onerous provisions in this stimulus bill on health care. And there's a new bureaucracy created, the national coordinator of health information technology. Now, listen to this. The national coordinator of health information technology will monitor treatments that your doctor gives you to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost-effective.

On the conservative blog Wizbang, Kim Priestap also referenced the commentary in a February 9 post:

Read all of Betsy's article and then pass it on to everyone you know. Rush has been all over this today to bring it to people's attention. Call your senators and representatives. Currently, phone calls to Capitol Hill are 100 to 1 against the bill. We need to do more. This is why Barack Obama is going all over the country scaring the American people into believing that our economy could collapse if the bill isn't passed. He wants this made into law before anyone knows that nationalized -- and rationed -- health care will be the result. If you have a loved one with a serious medical condition, this will be detrimental to his or her life. [Emphases in original.]

By 10:40 p.m. ET, the Drudge Report linked to McCaughey's commentary using the headline " 'National Coordinator of Health Information Technology' Slipped in to Stimulus...":

More from Washington Monthly

"So, the opinion piece Bloomberg ran was wrong. Ordinarily, that's hardly worth getting excited about; news outlets run misleading opinion pieces every day. But what's interesting about this particular story is they way in which it spread.

Step One: Rush Limbaugh told his minions audience on Monday about McCaughey's piece, insisting that a "national coordinator of health information technology will monitor treatments that your doctor gives you to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost-effective."

Step Two: By late Monday, Drudge was trumpeting McCaughey's mistake with this headline: "'National Coordinator of Health Information Technology' Slipped in to Stimulus..."

Step Three: Fox News and members of the Wall Street Journal editorial board got in on the act on Tuesday morning, arguing that the government will "essentially dictate treatments," thanks to the "secret" provisions in the stimulus bill. FNC's Megan Kelly said the non-existent language "sounds dangerously like socialized medicine," while FNC's Bill Hemmer said the recovery plan includes "new rules guiding decisions your doctor can make about your health care." All of this, of course, is patently and demonstrably false.

Step Four: Limbaugh took a bow yesterday, taking credit for the misinformation campaign, and telling listeners that his show "uncovered" all of this. "I found it," Limbaugh said. "I detailed it for you, and now it's all over mainstream media."

In other words, Beware of Right-Wing Talking Points, as they can infiltrate usually reliable segments of the mainstream media, like Bloomberg, and they can then spread all over the web, and even on cable news. 

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On a side note, is a national electronic system for medical records a good idea? I think so, with proper privacy protections, for the following reasons:

First, at a time when the US spends more per capita on medical care than other countries with advanced economies while having a large portion of the population lacking health insurance, and at a time when 54% of chronically ill Americans skip necessary medical care due to its high cost (Source, Commonwealth Fund), decreasing the costs of keeping records is a very important goal.

Second, only around 20% of Hospitals keep their own records, and it mostly outsourced already. 

Third, centralized, easily-available records WILL save lives. Say a person goes to an emergency room in a different area for something really bad. With centralized records, doctors could almost instantly see whether he is allergic to any medications, or have heart problems that conflict with some of the medications that could treat the current emergency situation, etc.

Obama is Bush in Sheep's Clothing - Do You See it Yet?

It wasn't GTMO or the promise to bring troops home from Iraq and send them right back to Afghanistan that made it clear. It was simply the Obama fear factor. The reason for rushing the stimulus package is "A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe." I've learned acting impetuously often invites unforeseen and unwanted consequences! And I think Camille Paglia said it best: "Surely common sense would dictate that when Congress is doling out fat dollops of taxpayers' money, due time should be delegated for sober consideration and debate. The administration's coercive rush toward instant action, accompanied by apocalyptic pronouncements of imminent catastrophe, has put its own credibility on the line."

Should we really be surprised to find hidden provisions in the stimulus package? Bloomberg posted a rather frightening account of the hidden Healthcare provisions in the Bill:

Tragically, no one from either party is objecting to the health provisions slipped in without discussion. These provisions reflect the handiwork of Tom Daschle, until recently the nominee to head the Health and Human Services Department.

  
Senators should read these provisions and vote against them because they are dangerous to your health. (Page numbers refer to H.R. 1 EH, pdf version). 

The bill’s health rules will affect “every individual in the United States” (445, 454, 479). Your medical treatments will be tracked electronically by a federal system. Having electronic medical records at your fingertips, easily transferred to a hospital, is beneficial. It will help avoid duplicate tests and errors. 

But the bill goes further. One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and “guide” your doctor’s decisions (442, 446). These provisions in the stimulus bill are virtually identical to what Daschle prescribed in his 2008 book, “Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis.” According to Daschle, doctors have to give up autonomy and “learn to operate less like solo practitioners.”

***

In his book, Daschle proposed an appointed body with vast powers to make the “tough” decisions elected politicians won’t make.

The stimulus bill does that, and calls it the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research (190-192). The goal, Daschle’s book explained, is to slow the development and use of new medications and technologies because they are driving up costs. He praises Europeans for being more willing to accept “hopeless diagnoses” and “forgo experimental treatments,” and he chastises Americans for expecting too much from the health-care system.

The Bloomberg article goes on to illustrate how the elderly will suffer more from this Bill than the young. The Healthcare agenda passed in this Bill simply concludes it will not be cost-effective to treat the elderly for illnesses that naturally occur as a result of growing old. Ironically, Arlen Specter is one of the three republicans in the Senate who helped passed the Bill. A post on Hot Air points out when Specter was asked why he would support a Bill that requires doctors to get federal approval before treating a patient, he said he never read it!

According to Bloomberg, the Bill is modeled after a UK health board described in Daschle's book. The Bloomberg article states a U.K. health board decreed in 2006 that elderly patients with macular degeneration had to wait until they went blind in one eye before they could get a costly new drug to save the other eye. It took almost three years of public protests before the board reversed its decision. And Specter, a senior citizen and recent cancer survivor, voted for it-- Call me a cynic, but I doubt he didn't know what was in it.

The truly sinister liberals I know-- and I lived in San Francisco for a number of years and so I know quite a few sinister liberals-- think Obama is just doing what needs to be done for the good of the nation and to counter right wing politics. But how are these tactics any different from the previous administration? When are we going to be done with the two-party double-talk and insist on something that can bring us some genuine hope?

Legal Barriers to Responding to the Global Economic Crisis

As the global economic slowdown worsens, the world’s major economic powers seem to agree that the key to fixing things (or lessen the damage) is massive spending. At the time of this post, at least thirty-four countries have announced ambitious stimulus plans. The plans vary in size and scope, and this is at least partially influenced by the differing legal constraints each country faces.

The European Union serves as a key example of how legal pressures can restrict or change the costs of using certain economic strategies, because of the complex agreements the EU countries have entered into regarding management of their respective economies. First and foremost, the EU countries face large penalties for running large budget deficits (defined as more than 3% GDP) under the Stability and Growth Pact. Some countries have been in trouble over this before, such as Portugal in 2002.

However, the EU is now wrestling with this issue because the world consensus is that massive spending is greatly needed in the current crises. The results so far are EU countries with stimulus packages that many economists think are too small, with most of them coming in at 1% - 2% of GDP. These spending packages are getting bigger by the day, however, at the same time that many of the EU countries are seeing their deficits rise above the magic 3% mark. In fact, there are currently sixteen EU countries that are in serious danger of large penalties for breaking the 3% rule, and disciplinary proceedings have already started against some, such as Ireland which is projecting its deficit to be at 11% and 13% for the next two years, respectively.

Compare this with China’s situation. The estimates of China’s stimulus package are upwards of 6% of their GDP, and there have been estimates that it will reach twice that before it is all over. Obviously, China has more legal freedom to spend more without being blocked by its own internal rules, and I find it unlikely to be a coincidence that the stimulus package is many times the size of the packages proposed by governments with less freedom to use the tools in their toolboxes. Yes, there are certainly other factors involved, such as China’s position as a net creditor nation instead of a net debtor. Still, the point is that China does not have the legal barriers to spending that some other countries have, should China find itself in a financial position to enact massive spending.

Finally, it will be interesting to see how countries respond to the legal infrastructure in place that gets in the way of responding to the crises. The EU has shown some signs of flexibility before, such as extending deadlines in 2002, for instance. We shall see whether the financial crises causes countries to bend rules, or actually break them.