In the years of Republican domination, the Democrats took a lot of crap for occasionally blocking or slowing down a Republican measure or two. The Carpetbagger Report has an entry entitled The ‘Grand Obstructionist Party’ which states that there have been 13 cloture votes in the first half of the first session of the Democratically controlled Senate. In comparison, during the last two years of the Republican controlled Senate there were a total of four.

For literally years, Republicans, with a 55-seat majority, cried like young children if Dems even considered a procedural hurdle. They said voters would punish obstructionists. They said it was borderline unconstitutional. They said to stand in the way of majority rule was to undermine a basic principle of our democratic system.

And wouldn’t you know it; the shameless hypocrites didn’t mean a word of it.

Why hasn’t the Democratic Congress had greater success passing legislation in its first six months? Because 239 separate pieces of legislation have passed the House, only to find Senate Republicans “objecting to just about every major piece of legislation” that Harry Reid has tried to bring to the floor.

George W. Bush said that serving any jail time at all would be “too harsh” a punishment for Scooter Libby’s conviction of obstructing justice and committing perjury with respect to an investigation into the burning of a covert CIA Agent’s identity.

Meanwhile, our trading partners in the far east are taking a more aggressive approach to government accountability, at least in one case. Joseph Kahn, writing for the International Herald Tribune, has an article entitled China executes the former head of its food and drug agency.

China executed its former top food and drug regulator on Tuesday for taking bribes to approve untested medicine, as the Beijing leadership scrambled to show that it was serious about improving the safety of Chinese products. . . . China executed its former top food and drug regulator on Tuesday for taking bribes to approve untested medicine, as the Beijing leadership scrambled to show that it was serious about improving the safety of Chinese products.

The story goes on to note that, even by Chinese standards, the punishment was unusually harsh and unusually swift. Recent international publicity concerning unsafe Chinese products probably influenced the process. Recent incidents include tainted dog food, deaths in Panama from tainted cough syrup, and lead paint in Thomas the Tank Engine toys.

Victoria Colliver, writing a column for the San Francisco Chronicle has an article entitled We spend far more, but our health care is falling behind : Australia, Canada, Germany, Britain, New Zealand spend less, serve better. The column is critical of Michael Moore’s new movie, “Sicko” but essentially concedes that the central point is not in doubt. Which, as far as I’m concerned, is fine. Moore is an advocate, not a documentarian. Where he is wrong, advocates for other positions are free to point out the errors. More commonly, where he is incomplete, advocates for other positions are free to fill in the blanks.

But, Moore’s movie brings to mind an anecdote I’ve heard attributed to LBJ, telling his campaign manager to call his opponent a pig fucker. The campaign manager says, “you know that’s not true.” To which LBJ said, “yeah, I just want to make him deny it.” The problem with opponents of Sicko, or more accurately, proponents of the current health care system, there seems to be more than a hint of bestiality with the way things are running right now. The U.S. ranks 37th out of 190 nations in health care services. That puts us ahead of Slovenia but behind Costa Rica. We made our way to the vaunted 37th spot by spending a higher percentage of our gross domestic product on health than any other country. We spend an average of $6,102 per person in public and private funds compared with France, the leader in providing health care to its citizens, which spends only $3,159 per capita. Like I’ve said before, we’re paying for universal health care, we’re just not getting it.

We need to follow the money to see where our dollars are getting wasted. I suspect a large percentage goes to paying for insurance company bureaucracies where the profit motive has created an incentive to take in premium dollars and avoid paying out on claims.

So, folks should feel free to point out Michael Moore’s errors, but they should be prepared to explain why it’s a good idea for us to keep spending twice as much as France on health care and not get nearly the return on our investment.

[tags]health care[/tags]

Zach Wendling at, In the Agora, has a post entitled Why, Again. Mr. Wendling has found a way to explain the inexplicable. Why does the Bush administration do what it does?

They are a highly dedicated and creative troupe of improvisational Surrealist performance artists*. Rather than following some ideological agenda, every aspect of this White House seeks to top the previously held conceptions with ever more outlandish behaviour and policy decisions.

Let’s imagine how this works. The premise: a highly-unpopular President with no political capital is looking for a way to rescue some sort of legacy for his administration. There are many pedestrian themes one could play on to bring this scenario to resolution, but Team Bush came up with the most unexpected: go after the remaining 28% of his supporters and try his best to alienate them. Brilliant!

Bravo, Mr. Wendling. Bravo!

Sen. Dick Lugar gave a speech in which he said that the President’s Iraq strategy was not working.

“In my judgment, the costs and risks of continuing down the current path outweigh the potential benefits that might be achieved,” Lugar, R-Ind., said in a Senate floor speech. “Persisting indefinitely with the surge strategy will delay policy adjustments that have a better chance of protecting our vital interests over the long term.”

Lugar’s statement, in my estimation, is not a big deal. Sen. Lugar has often made accurate statements about Iraq and our policies there. Either shortly before or shortly after the war in Iraq started, he noted that we did not have a good plan for the occupation. However, the occasional critical words aside, I believe Sen. Lugar has given the Bush administration everything it has ever wanted for Iraq. He has given the administration the votes it has wanted and the money it has wanted.

However, [Lugar spokesman Andy] Fisher said the speech does not mean Lugar would switch his vote on the war or embrace Democratic measures setting a deadline for troop withdrawals.

In January, Lugar voted against a resolution opposing the troop buildup, contending that the nonbinding measure would have no practical effect. In spring, he voted against a Democratic bill that would have triggered troop withdrawals by Oct. 1 with the goal of completing the pull out in six months.

Words and persuasion mean nothing to the Bush administration. If you lack power or the will to use it, this administration simply is not going to listen.

All of these years, I’ve been taught that it was the sainted Ronald Reagan who single handedly brought the Russian Bear to his knees in spite of the Democratic Congress, communist sympathizers, one and all. Now I come across this article by Yegor Gaidar that suggests it was something more mundane: grain and oil.

Basically, Mr. Gaidar argues that grain production was stagnant due to limitations associated with forced collectivization of agriculture. The Soviets had to eat, so they had to import grain. Having no real industrial exports to offer, they relied on raw commodities, mainly oil and gas, to purchase their grain. When oil prices collapsed in the 80s, the Soviets were in a bind. They needed money to eat. The only money available was from Western governments. Their money came with strings attached. One string, for example, was a prohibition on crushing democratic initiatives in Socialist bloc countries. And, while there was no direct support of independence movements inside the Soviet Union, home grown ones were assisted by a realization that the Soviet Union would not get its grain loans if it used military force to crush such movements.

Of course, the West was still careful about directly supporting independence movements inside the Soviet Union. When the Lithuanian authorities approached the American embassy in Moscow to ask whether the United States would lend support to the independence of Lithuania, the immediate response was negative. When the Soviet Union tried to use force to reestablish control in Baltic states in January 1991, however, the reaction from the West–including from the United States–was fairly straightforward: “Do as you wish, this is your country. You can choose any solution, but please forget about the $100 billion credit.”

What were Gorbachev’s options at the time? He could not easily dissolve the Soviet empire; the conservative elements inside the Soviet leadership were strongly against this notion. Yet he could not prevent the dissolution of the empire without a massive use of force. But if force was employed, the Soviet state would not get the necessary funds from the West, without which Gorbachev had no chance of staying in power.

This conundrum was the source of Gorbachev’s dilemma, forcing him to strike a deal with both the military and Boris Yeltsin. Hardliners from the KGB and the army who perceived that Gorbachev was simply too weak of a leader staged a coup in August 1991 under the banner of the State Committee for a State of Emergency (GKChP).

Within three days it was clear, however, that the plot had failed because its leaders did not know how to deal with the situation. Even if they found one division able to crush all the people who demonstrated against the GKChP, would the grain appear? Where would they find the food necessary to feed the larger cities? Would the West rapidly give the $100 billion? Their case, like the Soviet state itself, was entirely lost.

On August 22, 1991, the story of the Soviet Union came to an end. A state that does not control its borders or military forces and has no revenue simply cannot exist. The document which effectively concluded the history of the Soviet Union was a letter from the Vneshekonombank in November 1991 to the Soviet leadership, informing them that the Soviet state had not a cent in its coffers.[11]

Tim Zank posted Newt Gingrich’s 10 step plan on immigration. One of them is:

Ensure that becoming an American citizen requires passing a test on American history in English and giving up the right to vote in any other country.

I think maybe I could get behind this if it was required of every would-be American, whether born in the country or out. There is also a provision about making everybody learn English. Again, there are plenty of native born Americans with abysmal knowledge of English. I think making people pass a basic American history test and a basic grammar test before they can vote would dramatically alter electoral politics in this country.

No time to comment, but check out Sylvia Smith’s article in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette entitled Disability-claim backlog painful. I come across these folks routinely in my collection business, and from my perspective the delay seems ridiculous. (On the other hand, some of the folks clogging up the system with claims seem a bit ridiculous as well — look at that, I guess I did have time to comment a little.)