Velociworld

It's Showtime

A few weeks back commenter Daniel Mintosh engaged in single combat in my comments section with some of my more opinionated readers. The topic was Obama, of course, and leftism in general. Most memorably in my Tin Drum allegory There Once Was A Gullible People... and A Bad Man posts.

Now I appreciate someone doing battle outmanned and outgunned, even if I consider them outbrained as well, so I sent an e-mail to young Mintosh (Mentos, to me, because he freshmakes my comments section) and posited 8 questions to him. All eight questions I'll post below. He readily swallowed the bait agreed so long as he could reply to one question at a time. I agreed, and stipulated that I would reply to his response, and allow him a rebuttal to my reply. I also stated I would disable comments, because I truly would like to have a reasonable discussion with him, probe his anus mind, as it were, and see what makes a leftist tick.

If Daniel agrees, I will enable the comments after he reads this, or after his rebuttal. His call. I'd just like to avoid a degeneration of this discussion into name-calling, vitriol, ad hominem attacks, and all-purpose FUCK YOU's. You know, my normal style of discourse.

Here are my eight questions, and below the fold is Mentos's reply, with my rebuttal:

1. Obama campaigned as a centrist moderate. For example, he promised to pursue the Afghanistan war aggressively, cut spending, and shield the middle class from tax increases. Once in office he has pursued far more radical policies, such as mandated health care, cap and trade taxes, and unilateral nuclear disarmament.

Did you expect him to move so hard left once in office? If not, do you still approve of the policies he's pursuing?

2. The House and Senate versions of health care reform create a public option, and will effectively nationalize 1/6th of the U.S. economy. This is revolutionary by any standard of measurement. Yet polls consistently show Americans are not in favor of nationalized health care.

Do you feel the president and congress have the mandate to pass legislation a large majority of the citizens do not want or agree with? Do you feel public servants should be able to pass laws the vast majority of their constituents do not want?

3. Polls show a large majority of Americans are happy with their current health care, but would like to see some reform to bring costs down. The GOP has offered several options for containing costs that do not involve nationalizing health care, for instance eliminating laws that prevent people from purchasing health insurance across state lines, allowing individuals and small businesses to pool resources to leverage purchasing power, and enacting tort reform to limit malpractice awards.

Do you think implementing these incremental reforms would be preferable to an all-in total restructuring of health care in the United States? If not, why not?

4. Obama has promised to cut waste, fraud, and abuse from Medicare and Medicaid to lower costs. To date he has not attempted to do so. Obamacare is being modeled on Medicare and Medicaid, and these programs as currently structured are rife with waste, fraud, and abuse per the President.

Do you think we should reform Medicare and Medicaid before enacting national health care reform? If not, why not?

5. The House version of Health Care Reform stipulates aggressive fines and even imprisonment for failure to purchase government-mandated health insurance, or failure to pay the attendant penalty should one not purchase the mandated insurance.

Do you feel people should be fined and imprisoned for failing to buy health insurance? Do you feel this is constitutional? What judicial precedent would inform this opinion?

6. Obama promised to develop a new strategy on Afghanistan. He appointed a new theater commander in Stanley McChrystal, who submitted a recommendation for aditional troops last summer. Obama has not acted on this recommendation, and has only given McChrystal one twenty-minute meeting in the five months since his recommendation.

Do you believe the delay in implementation of the McChrystal strategy endangers troops? If not, why not?

7. Bush was famously lambasted by the mainstream media for the duration of his presidency. He chose not to address the attacks. Obama has personally and particularly attacked the few media entities to question him, including Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.

Do you feel it is appropriate for the President to personally attack his detractors? If so, why?

8. Many Republicans, conservatives, and independents voted for Obama despite policy differences because they felt he had a first-class temperament, and would heal racial divisions in the country.

Do you feel Obama has exhibited a first-class temperament since his election?

Do you feel Obama has been gracious to the opposition since his election?

Do you feel the nation has experienced improvement in racial tensions since Obama's election?

(For the below I shall use the following initials: for Daniel, M (Mentos). For me, G (Godhead).

Question 1:

G: Obama campaigned as a centrist moderate. For example, he promised to pursue the Afghanistan war aggressively, cut spending, and shield the middle class from tax increases. Once in office he has pursued far more radical policies, such as mandated health care, cap and trade taxes, and unilateral nuclear disarmament.

Did you expect him to move so hard left once in office? If not, do you still approve of the policies he's pursuing?

M:One problem with a democracy - is that in the election process one is tempted (well, more than tempted) to be all things to all people. Clinton ran back to Arkansas to affirm the execution or Ricky Ray Rector. George W. was the compassionate conservative. That some people saw a candidate in Obama that was more conservative than he turned out to be is not really much of a surprise in the larger context of election year politics.

However - I also simply don't see Obama as having moved to the left.

On mandated healthcare, I guess you are talking about the flop described here -- http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/jul/20/barack-obama/obama-flip-flops-requiring-people-buy-health-care/

As the article says - Obama does have a bit of wiggle-room against accusations of a flop in that he wants an "extreme hardship" exclusion. Lame as this is as an excuse - it is also the kind of political waffling that is ubiquitous in politics. Moreover - the plans currently before the house and senate are just that - house and senate plans, suggesting that waffling in this case amounts to nothing more than dealing realistically with the hand he is being dealt. Do I approve of the type of politics that makes things like this happen? Of course not. But it is the system we have.

I suspect that one reason you find the mandate as worrying as you do (and see a huge flip flop on Obama's part) relates to question 5, so I will go ahead and respond to that here:

5. The House version of Health Care Reform stipulates aggressive fines and even imprisonment for failure to purchase government-mandated health insurance, or failure to pay the attendant penalty should one not purchase the mandated insurance.

Do you feel people should be fined and imprisoned for failing to buy health insurance? Do you feel this is constitutional? What judicial precedent would inform this opinion?

Now – the problem here is that it is simply not true that the bill stipulates “imprisonment” for failure to purchase health insurance, although it is theoretically possible that someone could be imprisoned as a result of nonpayment. See politifact, again: http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/sep/29/patients-first/conservative-group-says-youll-be-imprisoned-not-ha/

The confusion here – is that any fines levied as a result of not having health insurance would be added to the individual’s federal tax bill. And any consequent imprisonment would be for non-payment of federal taxes. So yes – somebody could be imprisoned as a consequence of refusing to purchase health insurance. But there is nothing fundamentally new or radical about this. According to the current tax system someone could also be jailed for nonpayment of taxes - who, perhaps, had withheld payment because he did not want to help pay for the military industrial complex or for federal farm subsidies. The tax code is a complex Leviathon, and none of us gets to pick and choose what government programs we wish to support and which ones we don’t. This of course opens up a whole new bucket of worms – but that really is my point. That bucket gets opened for various and sundry reasons by the left and by the right, and I really don’t see how Obama’s flop in this case is different than politics as usual.

Many of the other items you suggest as indicative of Obama having swerved to the left are also attached to other questions in your list – which I will address in turn – with perhaps the exception of the following:

Shielding the middle class from taxes – and cap and trade (which I take it as your example of something which will have consequences on the middle class). Of course, there is much disagreement about the financial impact of cap and trade – as politifact reminds us -- http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2009/jun/25/your-guide-cap-and-trade/. In any case, Obama campaigned on cap and trade ( http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/promise/465/use-revenue-from-cap-and-trade-to-support-clean-en/ ) so accusing him of veering to the left on this is a non-starter.

Cutting Spending – The economic collapse was the great game changer on this. We can disagree about whether Bush is at fault or not – and even disagree about whether the stimulus packages were good policy – but if you want to go the extra mile and say that the collapse was just a convenient excuse to do the type of spending leftists have wanted to do all along (which many on the right have implied) – this is verging on the conspiratorial. What – did Obama plan this all along? As one voice in Congress? With a republican president? The good faith (non conspiratorial) reading of the increased spending is that Obama is trying to make the best of a very bad situation. Holding Obama accountable for campaign talking points while ignoring the financial collapse - is quibbling with him in bad faith.

Now – please try and explain Bush’s spending to me? (and if you’re tired of politifact, here is the very conservative Cato institute - http://www.cato.org/pubs/tbb/tbb-0510-26.pdf )

G: First, Mentos makes the claim that politicans promise all things to all people to get elected. This is true, however it does not answer the question: did Obama veer leftward? Certainly Clinton ran back to Arkansas to put a retarded man to death to seal his tough-on-crime bona fides, but that was political theater during the campaign. George Bush ran as a compassionate conservative, and, to the dismay of many of us, the bastard proceeded to govern like one. Unlike most leftists, conservatives are willing to cry foul on policies their guy champions, such as the prescription drug benefit, the steel tariff, and the education bill of W's presidency. Leftists are all about the battle, not the principles involved, and do not ever criticize their guy publicly for his litmus-test shortcomings.

Mentos claims Obama has not moved to the left on health care, but until recently Obama was still braying "If you like your insurance you can keep it," all the while aggressively pursuing a single payer plan that would put the private options out of business. It was a campaign lie, pure and simple. Employers hate subsidizing health insurance, and whack wages to pay for it. A subsidized public option will have them bailing out of the health plan they provide employees as quickly as they can. If you like your current insurance, in other words, too fucking bad. Because it's going to go away.

Mentos calls the fines and imprisonment portion of Obamacare "simply not true" because the fines would be assessed against federal income taxes, so one's imprisonment would not be the direct result of not paying the fine, but rather one of not paying the taxes. Clever ruse, this, but it's three-card-monte to the rest of us. And no, it is not "politics as usual." Never in the history of this country has anyone been compelled to engage in an economic activity, to pay for something they may not want. Even car insurance: hell, if you feel that strongly about it, you can forego ownership of a car and ride the bus. No so with Obamacare: you WILL buy it, or you WILL pay the penalty, or you WILL go to prison. How's that wiggle-room working out, Mentos?

As for cap-and-trade, you are correct: Obama did campaign on that. In fact, he specifically said "Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket." The only trouble is, I don't believe he meant to let the cat out of that particular bag. But once a person is in love, they don't hear what the other party's saying. Ask Tiger.


As for the reckless spending, I don't think Obama and the Democrats are spending like drunken sailors because of the tanking economy: their spending isn't repairing a damned thing. They're spending like crazy in spite of the bad economy. Trillion dollar deficits don't right an economy, they wreck it. Ask FDR.

The only real question to ask is: is the administration so ignorant of macroeconomics they don't understand their deficit spending is making things much, much worse, and prolonging or destroying an economic recovery, or do they understand it, and consider it a feature, not a bug? The first is understandable idiocy, the second is sinister treason. And I do not consider anyone in this administration to be an idiot.

So, on question one, Mentos, I believe Obama has veered sharply left, and moreso than merely edging leftward from the honeyed center. And the question was not did love-struck voters read their own desires into Obama? That's a question for Tiger Beat. The disintegration of Obama's popularity with moderates tells me Obama's agenda is decidedly left of his promises. And his poll numbers overall have the high stink of failure, disillusionment, and indignation all over them.

Do I activate comments? I'll leave that up to Daniel.

Coming attractions: Question 2, and I paraphrase: are Pelosi and Reid fucking fascists, or what?