--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "do.rflex" <do.rf...@...> wrote: > > More Vitriol Toward my Fellow Lefties > > by Sir Charles at COGITAMUS <snip> > I was ready to move on to the broader issue above, when I > read this piece > <http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/12/15/health-care-on-the-road-to\ > -neo-feudalism/> by Marcy Wheeler at Firedoglake and it > made me cringe anew. It's just filled with disinformation > and demagoguery and completely disconnected from reality.
So what does this dude do? Provide a response filled with disinformation and demogoguery and completely disconnected from reality. Nice work. His entire case rests on the blatantly false thesis that those who oppose the current Senate bill prefer *no reform at all* instead. That way he can make the bill look good, by comparing it to *nothing*. That's just stunningly dishonest. What progressives like Marcy Wheeler want is for the bill to be *redone* from the ground up, perhaps with some of the more controversial provisions passed via reconciliation, which doesn't require 60 votes. There *are* arguments to be made against this notion, but he doesn't bother to make them. > Wheeler (whose work during the Scooter Libby case I quite > liked) rips the Senate Health Care Bill for requiring the > American peasantry to pay feudal tribute to our insurance > company overlords. The offense -- a hypothetical family > of four with a total income of $66,150 would be expected > to pay $540 a month for insurance. > > Now, I am not minimizing the burden of this, but what the > fuck does Wheeler think said family is paying now for > insurance? Quite possibly nothing. One may think this is a bad idea, but it's an option if the family wants to take the chance. It won't be under the mandatory provision of the current bills, nor will there be a public option at more reasonable cost if the premium burden is too great. The mandatory provision works only if there's a public option. And of course he ignores Wheeler's most important point, about the precedent that has been set: "When this passes, it will become clear that Congress is no longer the sovereign of this nation. Rather, the corporations dictating the laws will be." And finally, he refers in passing to what he calls "the ludicrous notion of a possible netroots and tea party convergence." He says he's working on a major piece focusing on this. From the way he phrases it here, it sounds like it will reek of elitism and will be entirely empty of any kind of creative imagination. Make common cause with the riffraff? Pah! Absurd!
