Waiting For Bi-Partisan Godot

Article Analysis Assignment

First, read a news story from the newspaper or the Internet.  Answer the following questions regarding your news story: 1) What is the main issue, who are the main actors being discussed;  Then, choose one of the assigned articles you read for this week.  Answer the following questions regarding the assigned article: 1) What are the basics of this article (who, what, when, how, why, etc.);  2) What is the overall main point the author is trying to convince you of?  3) Do you agree with the author’s argument?  Why?  Why not?   Finally, tie together your news story with what you learned from the assigned article, textbook readings, podcasts, videos, etc. for this week.  Type your answers in the box below using your own words, no outline or bullets, complete sentences and paragraphs, single-spaced, full-page. 

 

This week I chose the article “Ballot Battle Brews…” because of the Hybrid Democracy article we were assigned and the point the authors make re: the need for initiatives to have ‘bipartisan support.’ I want to be convinced, but I cannot be as of yet, and the ‘Ballot Battle Brews…’ article explains why. The main actors are the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the California Hospital Association, and the issue at hand is their disagreement over the Fair Healthcare Pricing Act (which would cap any hospitals’ ‘gross charges’ at ‘no more than 25% above the actual cost of providing care’). The fact that you can go to the emergency room, as I did recently because of a severe headache brought on by multiple severe concussions, and be charged $21 for an aspirin, etc., shouldn’t take ‘bi-partisan support to correct, and it should surprise no-one that the CHA is planning to spend more than 10 million dollars in a counter-advertising effort, through a group called…wait for it…Californians for Initiative Abuse. Because when these profiteers feel threatened, the best they can do is scream about how this is another scheme where the ‘Union’ is ‘just trying to increase their membership’ --as if that were a crime and $300 crutches weren’t. If Californians sat around waiting for a ‘bi-partisan’ bill that would fix this, we would be doing the same as praying for rain. Which is to say, wasting time. Not only do I disagree with the authors, I think the right amount of partisanship is necessary, particularly from groups that would fight against such clear exploitation of California’s neediest.

Source citation: http://www.buzzfeed.com/hunterschwarz/ballot-battle-brews-over-hospital-pricing-in-california Assigned reading (Hybrid Democracy)

    

And Today, The Concession Of A Vote Tomorrow...Timing, Soup, Timing...

This week I chose the article ‘GOP In Disagreement…’ because the debt ceiling does not authorize new debt, but instead clears the check, as it were, for the money that Congress has already appropriated. The GOP, the main actors in the article, seem to not remember this very basic bit of information, and in fact daily campaign on falsehoods, namely that raising the debt ceiling is somehow a ‘blank check’ for the Obama Administration. This is of course not the case. Kevin McCarthy, the Congressional House Republican whip, says he does not have the votes to send a ‘clean debt limit’ to the Senate or to the President.  This has happened before, the stonewalling by House Republicans, each time much to the detriment and not to the betterment of the welfare of our great nation. And they know this, or they should…regardless of ideology.
As it is, Modern Monetary Theorist and economics professor Stephanie Kelton points out in another article, ‘Why the US lost the War on Poverty’: “The simplest way (to end or prevent poverty, or, care for the general welfare) is to print more money…inflation is caused by too much money chasing too few goods…inflation occurs when the economy is producing to the limit,” says the good professor. Everyone knows this is not what is happening right now. That the deficit (the people’s money) has been cut so extraordinarily during the Obama Administration means that the people’s money is in the hands of the government and the private business, and not invested in the peoples future through the rebuilding of our national infrastructure, as mandated by the Constitution (see: post office, roads, schools, etc.) for the betterment of the general welfare of the general citizen.

This brings me to Madison’s Federalist 45. He argued that the federal government rightfully possesses certain powers over the states, and rights that the states do not. States have responsibilities to not only their sovereign citizens but to the federal government and the citizens of all other states as well. The rights to make treaties, declare war, etc., are all rightfully federal. But his most interesting point is the one that closes the essay, where he seems to scold the supporters of the Articles of Confederacy for refusing to admit that a federal AND a state government simply MUST tax to survive. 

As with today, the extreme of the right had taken over and begun RUINING the people’s government. The Constitution, as Madison put it, was not written to give the federal government new powers, but rather a more effective means of administering old powers. Foremost among these, in Madison’s eyes and mine, was the rightful authority of the Congress both federal and state, to ‘require indefinite supplies of money for the common defense and general welfare’ of the nation and her citizens.

I am tying these three articles together on the notion that old is new again, as the radical right prevents adequate and appropriate taxation though the Norquist ‘No-New-Taxes-Pledge.’

Source citation: http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/02/05/gop-disagreement-over-debt-ceiling-strategy-could-save-the-party-in-2014 http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865593975/Why-the-US-lost-the-war-on-poverty.html?pg=all

  Federalist 45

Article Analysis Assignment

First, read a news story from the newspaper or the Internet.  Answer the following questions regarding your news story: 1) What is the main issue, who are the main actors being discussed;  Then, choose one of the assigned articles you read for this week.  Answer the following questions regarding the assigned article: 1) What are the basics of this article (who, what, when, how, why, etc.);  2) What is the overall main point the author is trying to convince you of?  3) Do you agree with the author’s argument?  Why?  Why not?   Finally, tie together your news story with what you learned from the assigned article, textbook readings, podcasts, videos, etc. for this week.  Type your answers in the box below using your own words, no outline or bullets, complete sentences and paragraphs, single-spaced, full-page.