Repeal Health Care, Ha!!

The Republican initiative to repeal the health care legislation passed the House but it is just one more ill-advised, idiotic, move to hoodwink the public into an agenda that has no foundation in real need or intrinsic value to the American people. The strategic plan of the Republicans is so visible, while being devious, that any person with reasonable intelligence and objective mindset can clearly see that their objectives have nothing to do with helping people, but rather to try to discredit anything accomplished by the Democrats with the one objective of taking over power in Washington. They do this in spite of its cost to ordinary, middle class and low income, American people, short term or long term.

Their strategy was set early, before the election of Obama as President and before the passing HR 3590 "The Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act". First they carried out a monstrous PR and advertising campaign to convince the American public that the bill was terrible and something to be despised rather than embraced. This was meticulously planned and successfully executed to the extent that all the benefits and advantages to middle and low income Americans were overshadowed by ominous threats. This included "death panels", uncontrollable increases in insurance premiums, and vanishing doctors who would certainly exclude all medicare patients from their office appointments. All of which were not just exagerations, but blatant falsehoods.

That program engendered enough distrust of the Democrat agenda that the Republicans claimed a "people's mandate" to repeal the health care law, and the call for replacement of the Democratic Congress with Republicans who would do it. A mandate they fomented as a part of their strategic plan. It was all hype, no substance, but ingeniously crafted political manuvering. That was stage two of the strategy, "get the Congress". Fortunately for the American people they were only able to get half of it, The House of Representatives. There is still a body in Washington that can apply some rational and sane thinking to the health care legislation, and limit the Republican tide with the Senate under Democratic control.

Now that they have the majority in The House they can play with lip service to the Health Care Law repeal promise while manipulating the more significant agenda of recapturing the White House. This is stage three, but really it is the underlying priority that has driven the Republicans throughout the Obama term. It is astonishing that the reality of this being their #1 priority was explicitly presented to the American public by the Senate minority leader in a public address. The #1 priority of the Republicans in the Senate is not to legislate for the benefit of the American people, no, the #1 priority is to drive Obama out of office.

The Republican decision to use the Health Care legislative program as the vehicle for selling their mischieve will come home to roost, and will be their undoing. The first signs of this are already becoming evident. All the lies that discredited the law are now starting to be understood by the public as being lies. The statements of disengenuous intent to do something better in the area of health care reform are being exposed as just that, disengenuous, i.e. there is no intent to reform. There is an intent to maintain the status quo, i.e. a process that keeps the greater leverage on health care cost and service in the hands of the insurance industry.

As they scramble for the next great issue to use as a rallying call for public endorsement of their political agenda they will find that the public will be less inclined to buy the falsehoods. The old saw, "Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me" is very much engrained in the voting public. Extension of the so-called "Bush tax cuts" is an example of how the Republican double talk is so egregious. It is only their arrogant thick skin that allowed them to withstand the ridiculousness of their position and place the President in a "back to the wall" situation that led to the passing of this extension in the form they demanded. But that strategy will also come back to roost on them. There will be more to come.

But what about Health Care? The chance that the "Patient Affordable and Protection Health Care Act" will be fully repealed is as close to zero that any probability estimate can ever be forecasted. The Republican agenda for Health Care reform will be simply to let the law evolve through its various stages of implementation as written. All in all that is probably not a bad outcome.

Job, Jobs, Jobs

The daily rhetoric of columnists and bloggers that criticise President Obama as the obstacle to improvement in the employment rate in the USA misses a fundamental point of economic reality. Namely, it is Corporate America that hires workers and the mangers of those corporations that decide whether the citizens of this country or people elsewhere in the world will be the new workers. Barack Obama is not a hiring manager. Likewise, the government is in the catch 22 position of being criticised for increasing its payroll while it is the only entity dedicated to hiring Americans for its worker rosters.

The culprit in this travesty is Corporate America, not President Obama. It is not in the economic interest of Corporate America to hire people here, and unfortunately it is only an economic interest that drives corporate decisions, i.e. social justice interests are absent. It is only government that can introduce social justice to the equations.

Why should a profit motivated American industry hire a factory worker in the USA for $25 per hour (or more) when it can hire a worker elsewhere for $5 per hour and receive the same productivity, the same product quality, and even expand their market coverage by selling those products in the country where it has set up its manufacturing operations? If the foreign worker productivity were only half the American they could hire two and still be ahead. Indeed in this particular example they could hire five and still break even. Why should they hire an engineer or scientist for $80,000 a year here when they can hire one for $30,000 in China or India and get the same technical skills and productivity? Also, not to mention they can build and operate their labs and research facilities at half the cost of doing the investment here.

There are other factors at work in USA industry. Technological advancements have reduced the need for human labor in the operation of not only manufacturing facilities, but also in R&D and service based operations. Automation and optimized organizational structures have made the need for large numbers of workers a thing of the past. The decline in bargaining leverage of workers unions to protect jobs for employees gives unilateral decision authority to corporate management to reduce employee rosters. Indeed they are very willing and eager to use that as one of the easiest ways to show improvement in their bottom line accounting. Just look at the extraordinary increases in profitability of the Fortune 100 in the past few years as they implemented massive layoffs.

These questions are fundamental to the persistent unemployment situation in this country. Indeed it is very likely that the current unemployment rate is structual more so than a result of economic downturn in things like housing sales, or actions of the banking industry. Actually it may be the reverse process. Economic slowdown has come from the reduction in real worker income over the past 30 years rather than the changes in other economic drivers being quoted by pundits.

The root of the unfavorable employment situation is intrinsic to Corporate America and its managements. Corporate America does not have real economic need for more USA labor and no overarching incentive to build bigger employee rosters as a social benefit to the country. The traditional number for the percent unemployment that might be regarded as "full employment" may need to be adjusted upwards. Whereas in the past that number was around 5%, today 8% to 9% may be appropriate. I am not an economist, but it seems logical to me that such a situation is possible. An accurate number for this should be derived by impartial economists willing to "tell it like it is" and not pander to any particular political agenda.

If unemployment is actually fixed for the long term at those higher percentages then there is a need for paradigm change in how compensation is handled by companies to offset reduced family incomes. Presently it is well established that for a great many families two working members are essential to provide for their living expenses. If only one of them can have regular employment, the other must earn more to offset the lost income. If the working member's wages are fixed and low, the family cannot survive. Business must adjust their wage scales to compensate. If they do not do this on their own, organized labor must undertake measures that will force the adjustment. The alternative to this is very dire to contemplate. Further erosion of the quality of life for middle and low income families will certainly ensue. Government must enact regulations and processes that support the enforcment of appropriate increases in wages. They must do this to ensure that tax revenues are maintained as well as the reality of the social justice entailed in it. Government must also enact regulations and processes that mitigate the advantages of Corporate America's opportunistic activities in gloabalization to the detriment of home based activities in the USA.