Stephen Lendman

Obama Year One: Betrayal and Failure (Part I)

Part II concludes an account of Obama's betrayal, not promised change. Obamacare Plans to Ration Healthcare and Enrich Big Providers

After House passage in November, the Senate is now about to pass a stealth scheme to ration care and enrich insurers, the drug cartel, and large hospital chains, the way Washington always works.

It plans market-based solutions, featuring cost-containing measures, mostly affecting working Americans, the poor, elderly, and chronically ill to make a dysfunctional system worse, under the guise of reform, the most dangerous and deceptive word in the language to take cover from when announced.

Besides enriching providers, Obamacare will force millions to pay more, get less, with millions still uninsured and left out. Employers will be able to opt out of providing coverage, but since insurance for most will be mandated, those without it will have to buy it or face hundreds of dollars in penalties, whether or not they can afford it. Even with a public option, looking less likely, insurers will get to skim off the cream, charge what they wish, profit handsomely at low risk, and leave Washington stuck with ones industry doesn't want. For providers, it's a win-win under any version being considered.

Most disturbing are planned Medicare cuts, around $400 - $570 billion, depending on which numbers are most accurate, and these are for starters, a foot in the door if enacted, toward the long-term aim ending Medicare, then Medicaid and Social Security because, at $106 trillion in unfunded liabilities, budget constraints can't sustain them.

The Congressional Budget Office's June 2009 "Long-Term Budget Outlook" suggests a nation in decline, eventual hyperinflation, possible bankruptcy because of a greater national debt than during the Great Depression and near-surpassing WW II. The administration's solution - end entitlements over 100 million Americans rely on, but it still may be too little, too late given an overstretched budget, a weakening dollar, and foreign investors looking for safer returns on their capital, so are less willing to fund Washington's excesses.

In Obama's America, the least advantaged will carry the load, not privileged elites, but don't expect congressional opposition to stop him or news reports to explain it.

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David Walsh

“I hate a cinema that’s been taken over by special effects. I’ve given up going to almost all of the contemporary action movies. I still enjoy action movies, I like exciting films, but I don’t find the contemporary ones exciting. They’re just boring.” —Film critic Robin Wood (died December 18, 2009), in an interview with the WSWS, September 2000

In March 1998, filmmaker James Cameron received the Academy Award for “Achievement in directing” thanks to his work on the immensely successful Titanic, released the previous year. Over the better part of the next decade, Cameron directed several documentaries, a television special, and an episode of a television series, prior to working directly on Avatar, his newest film, which took some four years to put together.

In other words, after accepting the film industry’s highest official honor for feature film directing, Cameron turned his back on the activity, primarily devoting himself instead to the development of various film technologies. This seems entirely fitting.

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David Calleja

Kyaw Zaw Lwin (left), Khin Ohmar (middle) from The
Forum for Democracy in Burma and Tate Naing, Secretary
of the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners
(Burma). Photo: PRI's The World, courtesy of Wa Wa
Kyaw

There are growing fears for the health of Kyaw Zaw Lwin, a Burmese-born American democracy activist on hunger strike since December 4.

The concerns for his plight coincide with a letter from the U.S. Congress addressed to the leader of Burma’s military regime, Senior-General Than Shwe “urging in the strongest possible terms” for Zaw Lwin’s immediate unconditional release to fly back to the United States.

The letter, signed by a delegation of 53 members of the House of Representatives says that Kyaw Zaw Lwin’s imprisonment is a breach of Burmese and international law. The letters warns the Burmese military regime that “the detention of an American citizen raise serious doubts about your government’s willingness to improve relations with the United States.”

It comes more than one week after Senator Jim Webb, who successfully lobbied for John William Yettaw’s release on an unofficial visit to Burma in August, released a statement on December 11 calling for the Burmese regime to allow regular U.S. consular visits and “guarantee [Kyaw Zaw Lwin] full rights under international law.”

The case is a major test of the Obama administration’s policy of direct engagement with Burma’s military regime.

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S. Fred Singer

The following is adapted from a lecture delivered on the Hillsdale College campus on June 30, 2007, during a seminar entitled “Economics and the Environment,” sponsored by the Charles R. and Kathleen K. Hoogland Center for Teacher Excellence.

In the past few years there has been increasing concern about global climate change on the part of the media, politicians, and the public. It has been stimulated by the idea that human activities may influence global climate adversely and that therefore corrective action is required on the part of governments. Recent evidence suggests that this concern is misplaced. Human activities are not influencing the global climate in a perceptible way. Climate will continue to change, as it always has in the past, warming and cooling on different time scales and for different reasons, regardless of human action. I would also argue that—should it occur—a modest warming would be on the whole beneficial.

This is not to say that we don’t face a serious problem. But the problem is political. Because of the mistaken idea that governments can and must do something about climate, pressures are building that have the potential of distorting energy policies in a way that will severely damage national economies, decrease standards of living, and increase poverty. This misdi-rection of resources will adversely affect human health and welfare in industrialized nations, and even more in developing nations. Thus it could well lead to increased social tensions within nations and conflict between them.

If not for this economic and political damage, one might consider the present concern about climate change nothing more than just another environmentalist fad, like the Alar apple scare or the global cooling fears of the 1970s. Given that so much is at stake, how-ever, it is essential that people better understand the issue.

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