When you’ve lost MSM newspaper editorial boards…
I worked for the Seattle Times editorial board for several years as the lone conservative. It was a center-left paper then, and remains so today. The board took a few right-leaning positions (opposition to the death tax, for example), but is usually a reliable voice for the Democrat/statist establishment. The paper initially supported Obamacare, but this week, it dropped its support. Sign of the times, White House. Listen up:
This is a change of position for us. This page supported Barack Obama for president, enthusiastically. We have supported the health-care effort until now. We still support universal coverage as a social goal.
But the longer the fight goes on, the more it feels that the timing is all wrong. The economy is wounded. Employers are hurting. The time to think about loading employers with new burdens is when they are strong. Not now…
President Obama has promised that any health-care bill he signs will not add one dime to the deficit, which already has swelled beyond anything since World War II. The president has put himself in a position where he cannot keep that promise. He has let each house of Congress come up with its own health-care bills.
The result has been chaos: The public option is in then out; the Medicare buy-in for 55-year-olds is in, then out. When the congressional dance stops, the Senate may have 60 votes, but for what? It will satisfy neither Obama’s frugal promise nor progressives’ lavish hopes. Already the Democratic Party’s former chairman, Howard Dean, says the bill is not worth passing in this form.
You know he’s right when you hear statements that something has to be passed, for political reasons. This issue is too important for that. It should wait for a unified proposal and an economy on the mend.
The center-left New York Daily News is also urging Obama to pull the plug:
Health reform: Down the stretch it comes. President Obama has gone so far as to postpone an overseas trip in a last-ditch push to get a comprehensive reform bill to his desk.
He shouldn’t waste his energy.
Not with unemployment justifiably the nation’s top concern and the possibility of a double-dip recession still looming. Remember how Obama said, in his State of the Union reboot, “Jobs must be our No. 1 focus in 2010″? Well, apparently he doesn’t.
Not with the American people abandoning the President’s prescription in huge numbers. Just one in four voters supports the reform bill as written; half want Congress to start over. Compare that with the popular support other major pieces of social legislation enjoyed before passage, like welfare reform (68%), Medicare (63%) and civil rights (60%).
Not with health care costs having risen 73% over the last decade – with Medicaid growing at 21% a year – and showing no signs of coming down to Earth. Controlling costs is the absolute, unconditional, a-blind-man-could-see-it prerequisite for expanding coverage.
Not with American health care quality actually quite impressive in many respects, including world-leading rates for patients surviving cancer and among the shortest wait times for hard-to-find treatments and surgeries.
Not with a half-dozen accounting gimmicks built into the legislation – including the fact that federal budget projections are based on 10 years worth of tax collections and just six years of spending increases.
Not with the Senate, lacking even a single Republican vote, having to resort to reconciliation, a little-used parliamentary maneuver, to get it through. Sure, it’s been used before – but not on anything that has such limited public support.
Not after all the cynical back room deals – deals Obama has committed to removing – having frayed the public trust. With legislation of this magnitude, that is not a renewable resource.
The Cincinnati Enquirer editorial board blasts the Dems’ arrogance:
America’s robust discussion of health care reform during the past year has been beneficial in many ways, giving the public greater awareness and insight into this complex issue.
Unfortunately, the debate has been held pretty much on one-party terms as Democrats, controlling both houses of Congress and the White House, crafted the only plan allowed on
the table, and negotiated behind closed doors.Now, despite the deep reservations of a majority of Americans, congressional leaders plan to ram through their proposal this week – bypassing
normal congressional procedures.It is a distressing prospect. We hope that moderate House Democrats – among them Rep. Steve Driehaus of Cincinnati, who says he “will not bend on the principle of federal funding on abortion” but will be stuck in the middle of an elaborate charade to include that funding anyway – will put a stop to this sham.
Real debate has been sidestepped, while Democrats played a childish game of Catch-22 with health care legislation: Congressional leaders wouldn’t allow Republican proposals to be formally considered, then turned around and
accused them of not having alternatives. Among themselves, Democrats cut a series of backroom deals that in any other context would be considered criminal payoffs and bribery.
One more from the Washington Post editorial board:
WE UNDERSTAND the administration’s sense of urgency on health-care reform. But what is intended as a final sprint threatens to turn into something unseemly and, more important, contrary to Democrats’ promises of transparency and time for deliberation.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters Monday that she is leaning toward a parliamentary maneuver under which the House would vote on a package of changes to the Senate-approved reform bill, and the underlying Senate bill would then be “deemed” to have passed, even though the House had never voted on it. That may help some House members dodge a politically difficult decision, but it strikes us as a dodgy way to reform the health-care system. Democrats who vote for the package will be tagged with supporting the Senate bill in any event. Why not be straightforward about it?
More worrying is that Congress and the country have yet to see the changes, for which Democrats hope to win quick House approval and which they then hope to speed through the Senate under a procedure that would bar filibusters. These changes — the so-called reconciliation bill — are not all minor “fixes”; some could have far-reaching consequences. Such changes deserve to be fully understood and debated before they are voted on.
When mainstream media newspaper editorial boards across the country are condemning your arrogance, culture of corruption, and subversion of the deliberative process, it is time to change course.
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very telling when the very biased and usually inept msm, is telling zero to stop his lying and stop pushing this shameful scam.
Does this sound like the ramblings of the insane to anyone else? If they are ‘for’ it, shouldn’t they always support it? No matter when it comes up?
Feckin’ eejits.
The Progressives do not even care what the MSM thinks. This is not legislation. It is a coup de tat.
They will sacrifice their mothers and their children if need be to gain control of Healthcare. If you control healthcare and you control the banks, ultimately everything else will fall under your control.
The fate of the America you grew up in, known and cherished is at stake.
It is all hands on deck, take no prisoners, “Bayonets and entrenching tools” time. This one is life and death.
They have no problem with “loading employers with new burdens,” just the timing thereof.
Still, I suppose it’s good that even left-leaning editorial boards can see the billboard-sized, flashing neon writing on the wall.
FWIW: here’s an editorial from my local paper, The Cincinnati Enquirer.
http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20100316/EDIT01/3160365/1192/EDIT/Arrogant+approach+to+health+care+
Emperor Barack I doesn’t need popular support. We lumpen proles must obey His Royal Jugearedness if we want to see the glory of Hopenchange in our time.
Yup, got that one, thanks!
Seattle Times- Listen to yourselves. You are admitting that social medicine will be a burden on employers. If you know that’s true, then admit it will be a burden in good times and bad. Extrapolate from there the impact of what you’re advocating.
I hate to sound as if I am defending anything remotely leftist…..but, I think they are saying they will support socialized health care when we can afford it….which will be never.
But It’s people like George Soros, and the Unions, that are leaning on the Progressives to pass this Mess.
Why doesn’t the MSM shine the light on the real culprits pull the curtain back? Nancy Pelosi – Louise Slaughter look happy to play the villains for their Masters – pulling the strings behind the scene.
Harry Reid – Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama are just the faces turned out to the public, they are not the people behind the scenes strong arming our Government this is a take over but no one is paying attention to what the faction is – trying to take us over.
If these people think the voters will ‘forget’ about their voting for this, GET another think! November we will get our memory back and vote against ALL who did this unconstitutional crud.
L
I don’t understand the term SOCIAL GOAL. Social goal for whom? If I don’t believe in something, but a group of other people force that belief upon me, how does that qualify as a social goal? Especially when it comes to the most signifigant aspect of a human beings life – their health.
I am not American, but doesn’t your Constitution talk about the right to Life, Liberty and Security or something to that effect. If the government controls your access to healthcare, doesn’t that contradict at least the first premise of Life?
so, BOB, isn’t it insane to say capitalism will spur socialism? LOL
But…but…but, we HAVE to pass this bill for the President! To hell with the American People! This is FOR.THE.PRESIDENT!
This is interesting from Track a Crat
Is the heavy influencing on our country coming from across the pond?
This isn’t an American piece of legislation otherwise it would have a lot more support from the center in this country…did the British forget what happened the last time they tried taking us on?
http://trackacrat.com/2010/03/05/umm-what/
Just wanted to provide an excerpt from Gastroenterology study regarding waiting times to see specialist in this field in Canada. As you can read from the study, the waiting times are excessive – i.e. screening colonoscopy (201 days) and servelliance of previous colon cancer or polyps (272 days). It also states that wait times have gotten worse over the period in study 2005 versus 2008 – 127 days in 2005 versus 155 days in 2008. Read the DEATH PANEL reference regarding what the government establishes at appropriate wait times at the bottom of page 1. I tried to copy and paste but it doesn’t allow me to. Here is the link:
http://www.cag-acg.org/uploads/sage.pdf
Count the Lowell Sun as bailing ship on Obamacare:
http://www.lowellsun.com/editorials/ci_14684021
From Brown (R-MA) Country…
The Chief
Unfortunately, the wonks at the Kansas City Star continue to drink the Kool-Aid.
Pelosi, Reid, Obama on Demcare: It’s not about helping America. It’s about power. And it most certainly succeeds at that.
(The MSM “not good for America” argument is irrelevant, since that was never what the legislation was about.)
Like I have said before, Obama is only worried about his legacy. He wants to be the first president to get a health care bill signed into law, be-damned what is in it, it’s effects on the American People, etc. whatever. Just as long as he gets into the history books as the first president to sign healthcare into law, only then will he be satisfied.
This is like the people who fell for it and got on Oblamers bandwagon.If they push this thru now they deserve what happens to them.
When Obama said that during the SOTU, many people actually believed him, and his Rasmussen poll “Strongly Approve” shot up, while the “Strongly Disapprove” dropped. His approval index got to -4, the best that it had been in more than 6 months.
Then people realized that it was just a head fake and that Obama was lying. His numbers have returned to where they were, and are getting even worse. His March monthly numbers will be the worst to-date.
You’d think that if Obama was as smart as liberals claim, he would drop “healthcare reform” and actually do something to help businesses and our economy.
He ain’t that smart…
On March 16th, 2010 at 11:26 am, prendad said:
Close, but not exactly.
Obama has spent his entire life associating with Communists. He is a Communist revolutionary, and his goal is to push as much Marxism, as hard as he can, while he has the power to do so.
He’s finding out that a Democratic majority is not necessarily a Marxist majority. While the “leadership” are with him, many “rank and file” Democrats are not.
The time to think about loading new burdens on employers is not now, not ever, NEVER. Reagan jump started the Carter stagflated economy by removing burdens and providing incentives to small businesses to expand and hire.
“Big government is not the solution to the problem, big government is the problem.”
Reform of the public school system is the first priority in curing our tioxic society. The irresponsible bent of our leaders is a direct result of this incessant propaganda barrage of Marxian Socialism that has attacked our kids for the last 60 years.
If you want to fix healthcare, identify specific problems, break them into managable pieces, then design appropriate legislation. What you don’t do is concoct a scary strawman and stampede the people into giving one-sixth of their country to statist political ideologues seeking totalitarian control of the country. Even average Americans are waking up to this fraud now.
If we escape this latest attack we must: Implement a fair tax and restructure the IRS, mandate a balanced budget, and limit the size of the Federal Government to 15% of GDP. This will cripple the Marxian Statists and their ability to seize power in the future. If they cannot buy influence with public money they are neutered.
Conservatives are leaders. Democrats are rulers. There’s a big difference in the kind of governance you get from each.
Once again, Democrats are realizing that while a socialist society might sound nice in theory, when you get right down to the point where you might actually have to live with it, it ain’t that appealing.
The first item dismissed in order to have a liberal/progressive mind is reason or logic.
The challenge that the media (whom think of themselves as mainstream) always has is making the unbelievable-believable.
Most of them do not have the talent of Stephen King and end up revealing their discombobulated “thinking!”
Still it is good for them to realize that the gig is up and try and signal their dunderhead counterparts in DC the gravity of the problem.
Yup….Congress now answers to the President, not the people of America. This whole health care sham is nothing but power grabbing. We will remember in November.
So, what they are saying is, “Let things improve and THEN we’ll beat those evil capitalists back down again!”
I can’t believe that idiot promised his “audience” that their employer’s health insurance premiums would drop “by 3000%” if the bill passes. This guy sounds stupider every time I hear him.
RedDog: Exactly — leaders have skin in the game. Rulers use the game to skin you.
One reason why the MSM is changing its tune is that they realize that – wait for it – this thing is going to affect OUR HEALTH CARE, TOO! It’s not just the little people that will be coerced into this scheme; news editors will have to suck it up as well.
Hope-a-Dope and his lap-dogs Nancy-n-Harry are in “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!” mode now. They’re not about to start paying attention to the “Nervous Nellies” on their own side, any more than they’re paying heed to what their opponents (a.k.a., the American People) have to say.
It’s playing out like a movie formula: at some point, even some of the evil bad guy’s followers will begin to realize that he’s gone too far, and try to warn him, but too late…
Staff officer: “We’ve analyzed their tactics, and there is a danger. Shall I have your personal shuttle ready?”
Grand Moff Tarkin: “What? Flee, in our moment of triumph?!? I think you over-estimate their chances!”
They’ve just realized that the bridge is out and the accelerator pedel on their Toyota is stuck.
Even leftist editorial writers can see that “deeming” into law a socialist policy like gov’t healthcare is a disaster seeking victims. They don’t want to be on the victim list.
Emphasis mine. I used to harp on this, and idiots would show up to claim that no, really we were substandard…
Dumb a$$es – guess why this is all so?
Well Gee, its about freakin time. Finally, the newspapers have figured out what the liberal dems cannot comprehend.
Once they break health care, they own the responsibility for every bad thing that happens in regards to health care for decades to come.
Though they have been enabled by media to shift the blame for the economy, with all the negs, lies, kickbacks, payoffs, bribes, etc.. that have come to light, media will not be able to protect them on health care. The public already knows too much.
Hopefully, a few more congress & senate people wake up to this fact, doing it alone means taking responsibility alone.
You broke it, you bought it.
Have a great day all
Don’t know much about these newspapers other than WAPO but I don’t trust them anyway. Covering their butts if these slop passes.
I hear you, I’ve told him a bazillion times not to exaggerate!
What say you, New York Times?
What say you, Washington Post?
It is time for the big boys to come to the party. This is a bad bill and bad politics. A blind man could see it with his cane. It is time to abandon this flawed process and start over.
Wow, and from the Lame Stream Media at that.
Who are these imposters and what have they done with the real liberal lapdogs that work at these rags?
On March 16th, 2010 at 11:46 am, RedDog said:
Implement a Fair Tax and
restructureELIMINATE the IRS.Apparently Obama never learned at Columbia that Hitler’s “The bigger the lie; the more people will believe it.” — doesn’t work so well when you make the lies obvious.
The far left will just claim that this is proof that we need the fairness doctorine.