Michael Maiello's picture

    Thomas Friedman Almost Gets It Right!

    Yesterday, as I was riding in a taxicab through one of New York's Indian/Pakistani neighborhoods, next to its dreadful airports that are inferior to everything in China, the cab driver said something amazing to me.  "Every dog has his day," he said.  I thought about this.  I realize that it had something to do with dog racing.  And maybe even Thomas Friedman who, has a writer, generally makes a pretty good Greyhound.  Though, seriously, you should see the busses in Calcutta.  They don't just have Wi-Fi, they run on Wi-Fi, floating effortlessly above the pavement.

    This morning, Friedman writes about all of Obama's accomplishments that you don't know about because he hasn't told you.  I thought his take on healthcare was particularly spot on:

    "'Obamacare is socialized medicine,' says the Republican Party. No, no — excuse me — socialized medicine is what we have now! People without insurance can go to an emergency ward or throw themselves on the mercy of a doctor, and the cost of all this uncompensated care is shared by all those who have insurance, raising your rates and mine. That is socialized medicine and that is what Obamacare ends. Yet Obama — the champion of private insurance for all — has allowed himself to be painted as a health care socialist."

    This is, of course, what a lot of us hate about Obama's health care reform.  And, yes, Friedman is wrong to say that the system we have now is anything akin to socialized medicine.  But he's right to point out what any honest insurance company executive will tell you, which is that the Affordable Care Act, by design, preserves the role of private companies in health care and enhances their business by giving them a profitable way to expand coverage, partly through the use of smart government subsidies.  This is why health care executives like the idea a lot more than Republicans do.

    Friedman also points out that, as part of the auto bailout, Obama got the industry to concede to new efficiency standards.  This is not just the Chevy Volt.  It's for everything and it could do a lot to help us with foreign oil dependency and, of course, our environmental issues that Republicans refuse to face.

    Unfortunately, Friedman ends his column by calling Obama to, once again, embrace the Simpson-Bowles deficit plan, combined with some short-term infrastructure stimulus.  Dog days are not as long as human days, so one shouldn't expect Friedman to make it through a whole column without veering into bad advice.

    Simpson-Bowles cuts Social Security and Medicare.  The deal that Friedman is pushing (echoed by Matt Miller at The Washington Post) is that, if you're under 50, you get stimulus spending now, but you pay for it when you retire.

    This is pretty funny because, if you ask Alan Simpson, the reason the government borrowed from the Social Security trust fund in the first place was to build bridges and highways.  That we have a need for this new deal suggests that there's something wrong with that story.

    Friedman doesn't seem to have much to say about what will happen when Generation X and the Millenials, who are unlikely to have pensions and have had a hard time saving adequately through 401(k) programs, try to retire.  I suspect that the answer, which very few people want to say bluntly, is that these generations will not retire and will instead depend on some technology or other to keep working pretty much to the end, very often in low pay and low prestige roles.  Social Security is not enough to fund people's retirements as currently envisioned.  Cutting the rate of growth of benefits  (and then claiming it's not a cut, even as the value of those benefits fail to keep up with inflation) will make things much, much worse.

    But, Friedman's arguing politics here, not economics and he's not interested in what happens to Millenials when they push 70.  He thinks it's good politics for Obama to hand Romney the cudgel that Obama is going to cut Social Security.  Then, what will Obama say?  That's he's just cutting the rate of growth and, you know, just for the young people who make up his most enthusiastic supporters?  Sounds like a winner, Tom.

     

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    For a bit, I almost thought Friedman had written a good column. By the end, I was tearing out hair. First, Social Security simply isn't a problem - the small corrections can be done now or in 5 years, little difference. Mass unemployment is more of an issue for SS than normal pay-ins/pay-outs.

    But Simpson-Bowles simply isn't good policy, it's a hack. And the 2nd stimulus? Catering to the left? Hardly. Tom hits the mat yet again, TKO on himself.

    But he still has a point of Obama's lack of clarity in explaining himself or taking issues to the people. The question remains, why?


    WHAT? The primemost member of the Flat Earth Society can be right?

    hahahahahaha

    I think sometimes he gets money straight from his corporate sources to lie and deny and obfuscate.

    But you make a point!


    Suggestion for next headline: "Orangutan in Bomb Squad Almost Gets it Right"


    Well I cannot let this one go. hahahaha

    I hereby render unto Sleepin the Dayly Line of the Day Award for this Dagblog Site, given to all of him from all of me.

    hahahaah


    Thanks, DDay! I'm honored. It's been a while.


    IF I didn't q and others would be all over me. hahahahahaha

    Isn't it terrible. I mean I just hate Friedman. hahahaahha


    True. Twas a good award.  And well earned.


    I just googled "Orangutan in bomb squad." Seems that particular phrase has never been used on the Internet. Quick Sleepin', try to sell it to Friedman!

    Also, makes a nice poster.

    http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3ph2ti/

     


    Transfers of wealth from Friedman and to Sleepin' are always welcome.


    Uuuuuuh, Sleepin is on the road. I mean not to say that he is a hazard to our interstate or interstate commerce or anything but he is on the road even if he is not sleepin exactly...I mean sleepin is a trucker who keeps on keepin on without sleepin....I mean Sleepin is not really asleep for nothin cause he keeps takin little white pills and his eyes are opening wide...

     

    OH FORGET IT!

    DAMN I GET SO CONFUSED:


    I do park the damn thing on occasion. At least long enough to say "Happy Birthday, DDay!"

    Enjoy your day.


    That is just too goddamned hilarious, quinn. Thanks for a good laugh, worthy of today's  Dday award.


    I am so done with financially secure 'experts/blowhards' spewing the blather about how we must reduce the deficit by sacrificing social security, medicare and other programs that they won't be relying on to survive.  

    Just as doubtful that any politico will suffer any personal pain or losses from these type of 'sacrifices', is the notion 'they' or 'theirs' will give of themselves and their financial well being to provide for those who will greatly suffer from their arrogant actions.

    Proves the point that unless and until those who tout for such cuts will have  to endure the consequences too, they shouldn't be allowed to have any ability to  continue with their 'let them eat cake' approach in attempting to reduce the deficit they created.  

    (When it's their tax rate that is at risk, they sure 'belly on up to the bar' then to raise their full glasses in outrage as they toast their ability to vote down anything that reduces their personal income.)


    Seriously.  You should almost be banned from writing on Social Security and Medicare if you don't plan to use them.


    Oh, 'they' will use them no doubt - perhaps to purchase a trinket and to defray what their very good health insurance doesn't pick up....

    Or they will probably donate SS to those in need I'm sure. 

    Not only banned from writing about, but voting on legislation or even talking about to media.


    I understand what you are saying, but this is the crux of one of the problems we face in a democracy with the principle of free speech:

    People withouts kids or kids who have left home voting on school bonds

    People who are not homosexual talking about issues related to homosexuals

    People who can't get pregnant making decisions about what those who can get pregnant can and cannot do about that pregnancy

    People who only care about what happens to them and their immediate families (and who don't get the notion of interconnectedness) voting in local, state, and national elections.


    I think we're also both kind of joking.  If you only got to mouth off about things that affect you directly, the military would make all decisions about war and peace.


    Yeah I know it's all in jest - but it did make me think of the impulse which is too common, like when those in the military who want those bleeding heart liberals to mind their own business.


    Sorry, Trope.  If you don't agree with everything I say or thinking, I ban you from expressing yourself.  But, Happy Memorial Day!


    Hamlet, Act 5, Sc. 1:

    "HAMLET:  "Hear you, sir;
         What is the reason that you use me thus?
        I loved you ever: but it is no matter;
        Let Hercules himself do what he may,
        The cat will mew and dog will have his day."

    http://shakespeare.mit.edu/hamlet/hamlet.5.1.html

     

    But I think the colloquialism you're after is "even a broken clock is right twice a day."


    But Shakespeare got most of his best stuff from foreign cabdrivers ...


    "All the world's a flat."


    "My metre is a-running."


    "Off with his (flat) head!"


    I love the Internet!  Thanks for the phrase origin.  Though, there are some earlier examples:

    http://stuntdog.wordpress.com/2009/02/27/origin-of-the-saying-every-dog-...

    I still say it refers to dog racing, though.


    And once again, just to point out that not all broken clocks are right twice a day. 

     

     


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