Vorticity Advection

I’ve mentioned the hooliganism being shown towards Democratic representatives at their town hall meetings.  Some of the signs being hoisted by these rabble rousers equate Obama to Hitler, and the Democratic Party to the Nazi Party.

But which party is really closer to being “fascist?”

Historian Robert Paxton of Columbia University wrote a paper in 1998 titled “The Five Stages of Fascism” (pdf link).  I read it, and found it eerily descriptive of what’s going on in America right now.

First-stage fascism… is the emergence of new ways of looking at the world and diagnosing its ills.  In the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, thinkers and publicists discredited reigning liberal and democratic values, not in the name of either existing alternative – conservative or socialist – but in the name of something new that promised to transcend and join them:  a novel mixture of nationalism and syndicalism that had found little available space in a nineteenth-century political landscape compartmented into Left and Right (though retrospect may reveal a few maverick precedents).

One could argue that the Democrats want to practice syndicalism, turning over the running of businesses to trade unions and co-opts.  However that argument is specious at best.

What one should take note of is the nationalism currently being practiced by the “tea party” movement, and the re-discovery of the Constitution as a rallying point by most Republicans, despite pretty much ignoring it during the last 8 years.

Paxton again:

But it is further back in American history that one comes upon the earliest phenomenon that seems functionally related to fascism:  the Ku Klux Klan.  Just after the Civil War, some former Confederate officers, fearing the vote given to African Americans by the Radical Reconstructionists in 1867, set up a militia to restore an overturned social order.  The Klan constituted an alternate civic authority, parallel to the legal state, which, in its founders’ eyes, no longer defended their community’s legitimate interests.

A vocal and vociferous minority forms a group that believes a majority is no longer representative of their ideals.  Sound familiar?

But let’s move to the second phase of fascism:

The second stage – rooting, in which a fascist movement becomes a party capable of acting decisively on the political scene – happens relatively rarely.

The “Tea” party?  Don’t laugh until you read what Paxton says next:

Success depends on certain relatively precise conditions:  the weaknes of a liberal state, whose inadequacies seems to condemn the nation to disorder, decline, or humiliation; and political deadlock because the Right, the heir to power but unable to continue to wield it alone, refuses to accept a growing Left as a legitimate governing partner.

Republicans in the House and Senate are currently just saying “no” to anything the Democrats are proposing.  They are doing precisely what the bolded section above states.

But there’s more:

Some fascist leaders, in their turn, are willing to reposition their movements in alliances with these frightened conservatives, as step that plays handsomely in political power….

Republican Senator John Boehner, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, and Republican National Committee Chairman Micheal Steele have all laughed about and pretty much endorsed the hooliganism going on in the town hall meetings.  “Alliances with frightened conservatives?”  It’s happening now.

 We learn much more if we focus our gaze on the circumstances that favor the fascists – polarization within civil society and deadlocks within the political system….

Polarization:  Tea-baggers versus Progressives.  Deadlocks:  Republicans saying no and throwing up roadblocks when they can in order to stop Democratic legislation.

The processes to be examined in later stages include the breakdown of democratic regimes and the success of fascist movements in assembling new, broad catch-all parties that attract a mass following across classes and hence seem attractive allies to conservatives looking for ways to perpetuate their shaken rule.  At later stages, successful fascist parties also position themselves as the most effective barriers, by persuasion or force, to an advancing Left and prove adept at formation, maintenance, and domination of political coalitions with conservatives.

This was written in 1998.  It seems eerily prescient to today’s political climate.

Paxton continues:

But these political successes come at the cost of the first ideological programs.  Demonstrating their contempt for doctrine, successfully rooted fascist parties do not annul or amend their early programs.  They simply ignore them, while acting in ways quite contrary to them.

Remember the Republican “Contract with America?”

I could go on, but I won’t.  It’s pretty obvious to me which party is closer to being “fascist,” and it both frightens and saddens me greatly that this party is the one I’m currently registered with.

Please read Paxton’s work and judge for yourself.

I enjoy reading Politifact.  It’s run from the St. Petersburg Times in Florida and appears to take a completely non-partisan approach to fact-checking.

So, keeping on the subject at hand, here’s Politifact’s check on a huge anti-health reform email that’s been circulating:

E-mail ‘analysis’ of health bill needs a check-up

It may be the longest chain e-mail we’ve ever received. A page-by-page analysis of the House health care bill argues that reform will end the health care system as we know it: “Page 29: Admission: your health care will be rationed! … Page 42: The ‘Health Choices Commissioner’ will decide health benefits for you. You will have no choice. … Page 50: All non-US citizens, illegal or not, will be provided with free health care services.”

Most of what the e-mail says is wrong. In fact, it’s a clearinghouse of bad information circulating around the Web about proposed health care changes, so we thought it would be helpful to address a bunch of its claims.

To check this e-mail, we read the health care bill ourselves. Yes, it’s over 1,000 pages long, but that’s not as long as you might think: The document has large margins, so the text only takes up about one third of each page.

We also read the bill’s legislative summary, a report published by the House that explains the bill in greater detail.

Finally, we consulted with Jennifer Tolbert, an independent health care analyst at the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan foundation that studies health care reform. Tolbert has read and analyzed all the major health proposals, including those of the Republicans, and the foundation provides point-by-point analyses of the plans on its Web site.

We’re hardened, battle-scarred fact-checkers, so false claims in e-mails don’t really surprise us anymore. But we sent Tolbert a copy of the latest from our in-box, and she was none too pleased.

“It’s awful,” she said. “It’s flat-out, blatant lies. It’s unbelievable to me how they can claim to reference the legislation and then make claims that are blatantly false.”

Please read the entire article.  Also, consult the Kaiser Family Foundation’s comparison page on the various proposals.  It’s quite helpful to see who is proposing what and comparing their differences.

I was recently sent a “viral” email referring to comments made by Betsy McCaughey (a paid shill for medical companies) on the Fred Thompson show.  Ms. McCaughey claimed that one proposal ” would make it mandatory — absolutely require — that every five years people in Medicare have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner.”

Politifact blows the lid off this outright lie.

Now we have unruly mobs disrupting town-hall meetings with democratic representatives.  Republicans claim these are “average, middle-class Americans who are expressing their outrage.”  Rachel Maddow investigated this claim:

First we get paid shills showing up on conservative media sites/shows spouting lies, then we get manufactured mobs practicing hooliganism at Democratic Representatives’ town-halls, effectively drowning out and/or intimidating anyone who is pro-health care reform.

Bill Moyers’ Journal on 7/10 was about Health Care Reform.  I don’t know what Mr. Moyers’ political leanings are, but he presented quite a case against the “status quo.”  His guest was former Cigna executive Wendell Potter, who helped spearhead the campaign against the 1993 health care reform efforts, and against the points laid out in Micheal Moore’s 2007 documentary about the failings of the American health care system, “Sicko.”  I’ve never seen the movie, but I want to see it now after reading what Mr. Potter said about it:

BILL MOYERS: Was it true? Did you think it contained a great truth?

WENDELL POTTER: Absolutely did.

BILL MOYERS: What was it?

WENDELL POTTER: That we shouldn’t fear government involvement in our health care system. That there is an appropriate role for government, and it’s been proven in the countries that were in that movie.

You know, we have more people who are uninsured in this country than the entire population of Canada. And that if you include the people who are underinsured, more people than in the United Kingdom. We have huge numbers of people who are also just a lay-off away from joining the ranks of the uninsured, or being purged by their insurance company, and winding up there.

And another thing is that the advocates of reform or the opponents of reform are those who are saying that we need to be careful about what we do here, because we don’t want the government to take away your choice of a health plan. It’s more likely that your employer and your insurer is going to switch you from a plan that you’re in now to one that you don’t want. You might be in the plan you like now.

But chances are, pretty soon, you’re going to be enrolled in one of these high deductible plans in which you’re going to find that much more of the cost is being shifted to you than you ever imagined.

That’s the real truth of the matter, and one that has affected me as a State of Oklahoma employee.  I am constantly seeing our health insurance change every two to three years as they get a new “lowest bidder.”  I keep seeing deductibles and co-pays rise, medicines re-categorized to a higher tier, and the base cost to me go from fully covered by my employer, to now having to pay a percentage out of my take-home pay.

If you ever hear someone say “government run health insurance puts a bureaucrat between you and your doctor,” please tell them it’s already happening.  Tell them how some insurance executive already makes these decisions, not in the best interest of their enrollees, but in the best interests of Wall Street investors.  I’m not talking mom and pop  with a few shares of Aetna, I’m talking big Goldman-Sachs style hedge funds that wield enormous financial power.   Mr. Potter again:

BILL MOYERS: You told Congress that the industry has hijacked our health care system and turned it into a giant ATM for Wall Street. You said, “I saw how they confuse their customers and dump the sick, all so they can satisfy their Wall Street investors.” How do they satisfy their Wall Street investors?

WENDELL POTTER: Well, there’s a measure of profitability that investors look to, and it’s called a medical loss ratio. And it’s unique to the health insurance industry. And by medical loss ratio, I mean that it’s a measure that tells investors or anyone else how much of a premium dollar is used by the insurance company to actually pay medical claims. And that has been shrinking, over the years, since the industry’s been dominated by, or become dominated by for-profit insurance companies. Back in the early ’90s, or back during the time that the Clinton plan was being debated, 95 cents out of every dollar was sent, you know, on average was used by the insurance companies to pay claims. Last year, it was down to just slightly above 80 percent.

So, investors want that to keep shrinking. And if they see that an insurance company has not done what they think meets their expectations with the medical loss ratio, they’ll punish them. Investors will start leaving in droves.

I’ve seen a company stock price fall 20 percent in a single day, when it did not meet Wall Street’s expectations with this medical loss ratio.

For example, if one company’s medical loss ratio was 77.9 percent, for example, in one quarter, and the next quarter, it was 78.2 percent. It seems like a small movement. But investors will think that’s ridiculous. And it’s horrible.

BILL MOYERS: That they’re spending more money for medical claims.

WENDELL POTTER: Yeah.

BILL MOYERS: And less money on profits?

WENDELL POTTER: Exactly.

Moyers and Potter continue on, so I advise you to read the whole thing.  It’s pretty stunning and revealing of how private insurance works.  Remember, this isn’t some lefty libtard whack job, this is a former executive at a big insurance conglomerate who used to actively fight against health care reform.  He’s now fighting for it.

Finally, Mr. Moyers addressed the Washington Post hosting a private dinner with alleged access to “insiders” of the health care reform process.   In other words, using their journalistic “integrity” to sell access to the highest bidder:

According to one poll after another, a majority of Americans not only want a public option in health care, they also think that growing inequality is bad for the country, that corporations have too much power over policy, that money in politics is the root of all evil, and that working families and poor communities need and deserve public support when the market fails to generate shared prosperity. But when the insiders in Washington finish tearing worthy intentions apart and devouring flesh from bone, none of these reforms happen. Oh, they say, “it’s all about compromise, all in the nature of the give-and-take of representative democracy.” That, people, is bull — the basic nutrient of Washington’s high and mighty.

To which he makes his final, salient, and most profound point:

It’s not about compromise. It’s not about what the public wants. It’s about money, the golden ticket to “the select few who actually get it done.” And nothing will change. Nothing. Until the money-lenders are tossed out of the temple, and we tear down the sign they’ve placed on government — the one that reads: “For sale.”

Please, read the entire transcript, and judge for yourself.

p. s. – Many I know will chastise me for writing this, but I don’t care.  Health care reform must happen.  The current health care system has screwed me over repeatedly, especially with a wife that has rheumatoid arthritis.  Even my son’s birth was not covered by insurance because it was a “pre-existing condition.”

The insurance person told me when I signed up full-time at my job that I could add “anyone, any time.”  Then when I went to add my wife before we conceived, they said “Oh, you can only add at the beginning of the fiscal year, or when there’s a ‘qualifying event.'”  I asked if becoming pregnant was such a thing, and was assured that it was.  Then when I went to add her when I suspected she was pregnant, they denied her outright, citing her rheumatoid as a factor and saying pregnancy was a “pre-existing condition.”  So, we payed for the whole nine months out of our own pockets, but not before looking over the hospital bill and finding $2,400 in unnecessary charges that they were most likely hoping to bilk some insurance company out of, then bilk me out of.

So I don’t have any reason not to say this: big health insurance companies and the current “system” can kiss my ass.