Author: adriejan Published: March 25th, 2010
With the passage of health care reform, the present mood on the American progressive and moderate blogosphere is decidedly optimistic, if not congratulatory. It is, indeed, historic, the most sweeping social legislation enacted in decades. But the question is what this huge reform of the American public sector means in political and historical perspective.
Matthew Yglesias, as always, has an interesting take on the matter. The conventional wisdom is that the past four decades have been the era in which conservatism became a, if not the, dominant political current in the United States. To cite Mickletwaith and Wooldridge, the sound in the background of U.S. politics for the past forty years has been the ‘melancholy, long withdrawing roar of liberalism’. According to Yglesias, however, with the passage of health care reform American big government liberalism has actually, finally, completed its mission. The size and scope of the welfare state have been the subject of considerable argument in the past 65 years, but with Medicare, Medicaid and now near-universal health care, core progressive efforts have in the end been vindicated.
As one reader comments, this is quite a Fukuyama-esque take on the matter. Yglesias almost sounds like a 1960s north-western European social democrat when he writes that the welfare state is now basically complete, and in addition to medium-term issues such as financial regulatory reform and immigration reform, the focus now is on keeping and improving it that way: to deliver public services more efficiently, to balance social investment in children and the elderly, to boost economic growth.
And this is where the mood maybe gets a little bit too (self-) congratulatory.
First, even if I don’t think it’s likely, Republican efforts to somehow derail implementation might unexpectedly succeed. The Roberts Supreme Court could strike the present legislation down as unconstitutional. Who knows? Not that long ago, the prospect of enacting health care reform itself seemed incredible. Second, obviously, the present legislation is majorly flawed. Sixteen million people are still uninsured, and whether it’s really cost-effective and thus sustainable is questionable. Third, and this is historical experience from those countries in which the welfare state was ‘completed’ long ago, with the establishment of entitlements the public debate is not over. Not at all. From now on, progressives will forever be on the defence, as the welfare state will be under continuous attack for being too heavy and cost-ineffective. Moreover, an overly self-confident mere “tweaking” of welfare state arrangements will not make fundamental criticism disappear; as an example, I would like to point to the Dutch Purple administrations of 1994-2002. In the 1990s, the welfare state here seemed complete, and mere improvements in its efficiency were all that was needed. It unleashed a fundamental backlash, however, and a sobering down of the welfare state that continues until today. In the U.S., a privatization of social security somewhere in the future is not unimaginable, particularly if Republicans will also employ legislative tactics such as reconciliation bills. Anyway, my basic point is that victorious declarations by progressives about America entering the age of the welfare state might perhaps be a little too optimistic.
Tags: health care reform, welfare state
Category history, U.S. politics |
Author: maartenp Published: March 25th, 2010
Artisitic interpretations of celebrity tweets:
For more, go to Tweet Museum.
Tags: Jim Carrey, Lance Armstrong, Tweet Museum, Twitter
Category art / photography, random stuff |
Author: maartenp Published: March 25th, 2010
Phoenix has a new live album out and they are offering it as a free mp3 download!
Tags: indie, live album, Phoenix
Category random stuff |
Author: maartenp Published: March 25th, 2010
De gezamelijke strijd van de Volkskrant en Joop.nl tegen JP gaat onverminderd door. En niet zonder aanleiding, want dit keer is het de jongerenafdeling van het CDA die van zich laat horen. Zij zien het liefst Gerd Leers als lijsttrekker.
Joop.nl:
In een brief die rondgaat in de partij stellen de jongeren dat de oud-burgemeester van Maastricht de ideale kandidaat is. De brief is duidelijk over de kwaliteiten: ”Leers is charismatisch, nieuwerwets en verbindend”. Dat meldt de Volkskrant. De jongeren beschouwen Leers ook als de aangewezen persoon om met een ‘fatsoenlijk tegengeluid’ de strijd aan te gaan met Geert Wilders, de Limburgse leider van de PVV.
De jongeren leggen het uitdrukkelijke verzoek van de partijleiding om het leiderschap van Balkenende niet meer ter discussie te stellen naast zich neer.
“Het vooruitzicht om met Balkenende de verkiezingen in te gaan zodat we verliezen en hem daarna op een legale manier kunnen dumpen, is niet erg motiverend voor de leden om fanatiek campagne te gaan voeren. Maar het is nog niet te laat.”
De Volkskrant:
Maar woensdag waren het weer de jongerenafdelingen in Brabant en Limburg die lucht gaven aan hun twijfels over Balkenende. ‘Je kunt wel roepen dat je eensgezind moet zijn, maar als er niks is om eensgezind over te zijn heeft dat geen zin’, aldus voorzitter Weeterings van de afdeling Brabant.
Tegelijk wees een peiling van het EO-programma Dit is de Dag uit dat een flink deel van de CDA-raadsleden in de regio ook bedenkingen heeft. Van bijna 150 ondervraagde raadsleden en wethouders zei ruim eenderde een andere leider te prefereren. Herman Wijffels en oud-burgemeester van Maastricht Gerd Leers waren favoriet.
(…)
Net als in eerdere gevallen is de weerstand in katholieke delen van de CDA-achterban het grootst. Van de 38 ondervraagde CDA-politici in Brabant en Limburg zeiden 22 niet verder te willen met Balkenende.
Twee factoren spelen daarin mee. Bij de Europese verkiezingen van vorig jaar rukte de PVV van Geert Wilders op in het Zuiden. Er is twijfel of de huidige CDA-top wel in staat is de opmars van Wilders te stuiten.
Twee belangrijke wapens voor het CDA in die strijd zijn weggevallen. Limburger Camiel Eurlings vertrekt uit de landelijke politiek en zal niet op de lijst staan, net als de populaire Brabander Pieter van Geel. Een andere bekende katholieke Limburger, Maria van der Hoeven, keert evenmin terug.
Dat maakt de spoeling voor het CDA in die beide provincies dun. De huidige CDA-top wordt gedomineerd door protestanten. Hoewel die bloedgroepen minder een rol spelen binnen het CDA dan enkele jaren geleden, lijkt het weer zwaarder te gaan tellen nu het moeilijk wordt
Tags: Balkenende, CDJA, Gerd Leers, Joop, volkskrant
Category Dutch politics |
Author: maartenp Published: March 25th, 2010
From Salon:
I love the sound of Republicans whining in the morning. Boo-hoo-hoo. The GOP lost the presidency and a big congressional election back in 2008. With the passage of President Obama’s healthcare bill, they’ve now lost the most significant domestic political battle since the 1960s. So naturally the light of freedom has been extinguished, the U.S. Constitution voided, capitalism doomed and the nation fallen into a dark totalitarian nightmare.
Party leaders are increasingly solemn, diminishingly serious. The GOP’s entertainment wing, its crack team of right-wing radio/TV melodramatists, has been thrown into a competitive frenzy. For sheer entertainment value, this stuff is hard to top. Surely some dark beast shuffles toward Washington to be born. Rush Limbaugh predicts that the nation’s private insurance industry will be bankrupted. (Oddly, insurance company stocks continue to rise.)
A couple of weeks ago, Limbaugh even vowed to leave the United States and move to Costa Rica if healthcare reform passed. Evidently, nobody told him Costa Rica has a government-funded, single-payer healthcare system. He has since recanted.
Neither Limbaugh nor Chicken Little had anything on Fox News’ Glenn Beck, who actually compared the bill’s passage to Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor! Not to be outdone, Mark Steyn, writing in the formerly respectable National Review, envisions “fewer doctors, more bureaucracy, massive IRS expansion, explosive debt, the end of the Pax Americana, and global Armageddon.”
(…)
Conservative blogger Matthew Vadum tweets a different outcome: “Fascist House Democrats are preparing to euthanize America.”
Tags: Glenn Beck, health care reform, Matthew Vadum, Republican Party, Rush Limbaugh
Category U.S. politics |
