One alternative is to set up each big problem as a 1,000 Mile Journey. Focus on mileposts and processes:
-- HCR and Reid's "Starter Home" analogy; Nelson and Stupak and why pro-legal-abortion lost a big one; how Sanders is getting V.H.A.-model clinics for 25,000,000 people.
-- What changed out of Copenhagen; new international processes.
Not the usual approach for dkos and the internet.
At the same time, as an addition to the usual Axis II Personality Disorders, simple impatience has worked itself up into a well-defined dysfunctional mind set.
APA, be advised: "Are We There Yet" Syndrome.
Thankfully this is not the Bush/Cheney/NeoCons and their flavor of Malicious Narcissism spiked with lazy ignorance.
AWTYS is like a pair of energetic 10-year olds in the back seat of the family car on a drive down the shore. Are we there yet ! -- repeated insistently over and over -- ignoring the road signs.
Judge for yourself where "Are We There Yet" fails.
Examples and details BTF :::
To begin with, we go over to Confucius. Ask the Old Man what he thinks about all this. He says:
"The Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins with a Single Step."
Same for what happens when you get up every morning, along the way.
Setting up an analytical paradigm to match Confucius ??? People have done worse. Setting up no analytical system at all -- we see that too.
One thing, you know you're seeing a dysfunction pattern where basic facts get buried or twisted out of shape in the same ways, again and again.
This diary lays out the basic facts of the HCR and GW situations. This works out to be relatively straightforward, which is contrary to most MSM blithering and to the emotional knee-jerks that have predominated on the web.
HCR is through the preliminaries and the sparring rounds. The main event is the Senate bill, which was tailored to anticipate what is practical for reconciliation.
For GW, we had to go to Japan's Asahi Shimbun to find Copenhagen done right.
Set things up in terms of mileposts, you get a view that casts individual events to long-term developments. If the problem looks to be a "100 Mile" problem, then expect to see 100 mileposts. For health and global warming, looks for 1,000 miles and more.
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So, where are we on the Health Care Reform journey ???
Life, liberty and property go on forever. And they conflict. Even within this time frame, you see complicated interplays.
These 2009/2010 HCR Legislative Skirmishes split out to six phases:
- House of Representatives does a bill
- Senate does a bill
- Reconciliation drafts a Joint Resolution, gets language for the bill, and then passes the final bill
- President signs this Act of Congress into law
- Executive Branch implements the resulting modifications to law
- Judiciary Branch reviews suits related to constitutionality
Two down, soon enough, with four to go.
Plainly, reconciliation and implementation are key processes. Reconciliation usually rewrites the materials from the House and Senate bills -- giving preference to House budget items and the Senate on various forms of social grandstanding.
This time, though, the Senate has short-circuited reconciliation.
Senators Reid and Nelson have crafted a deal -- in the Managers' Amendment -- that embodies the heart of the Stupak Amendment from the House, while not forcing "Stupak" on pro-legal-abortion states. Nelson has been in contact with Stupak.
Senators Reid and Sanders have crafted a second deal. Same amendment. This deal meets every functional service parameter for a good single-payer system.
-- $10-billion is allocated to subsidize community clinics that will be operated on the model of the Veterans Health Administration clinics.
-- Drugs will be purchased and resold on the competitive VHA price schedule.
Effectively, 25,000,000 people will get single-payer service and a major chunk of change will go to attract additional primary care physicians for this system.
If you want to stay alive in America, this is good news.
As matters stand, we can expect the Senate version to pass both houses of Congress. The President will sign. Implementation-time and Judicial issues are beyond the scope of this diary.
So why all the complications over Stupak and Nelson ???
We do know a few things:
-- The House HCR bill won by 5 votes
-- Abortion is critical for the Blue Dogs. They plan to attract enough every-week-church-going-conservatives to win their elections in 2010
-- Stupak Amendment is typical for the House, not an aberration; at this series of mileposts, a pro-legal-abortion position is D.O.A. in the House
-- If you don't like "Stupak" or the Senate "Nelson" compromise, which is closer to Stupak than you might think from GOPer reaction, aim for a correction later at the implementation phase or by a Federal civil action
Abortion is a "100 Mile" problem at minimum. Left-center got pushed to the side again.
Abortion is a no-dollars item for the money sources that fuel our politicians. One result is that rural areas end up mailing their votes in against abortion. These areas are represented based as much as on the cultural issues as on budget-driven politics. We're talking a dozen states for swing elections
In 1996, the Promise Keepers organization adopted the motto: "A Child Is Not A Choice." Since then, church bulletin boards across the country have that phrase at the tops of sections that have pictures of fetuses/unborn_babies and newborns. Powerful campaign.
Leftie says: "Pro-Choice."
Rightie says: "A child is not a choice."
Leftie loses as church-going voter.
Depending on region and demographic, that's a pattern among "economic democrats" far too often.
Long-term tactical repairs to meet this "A Child Is Not A Choice" campaign ??? So far, nothing has been done.
Left-Center want the country to see "reproductive freedom" as being on the same level as the value of a fetus (a.k.a., an unborn child.) Good luck with that, particularly in rural America.
Left-Center keep going along with no long range response plan. The vast majority of the country favor legal abortion, but that is not the focus of pro-legal-abortion language.
"Are We There Yet" Syndrome ??? Whether or its that simple, doing nothing is a plan that continues to get its butt kicked.
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MSM coverage of Copenhagen did very little for mileposts and process.
Had to go to Asahi for the facts:
-- President Obama reported that the leaders of China, India, Brazil, and South Africa had confirmed the need to "keep the increase of global temperatures under 2 degrees."
-- $30 billion in the three years until 2012 and $100 billion by 2020 will go from developed countries to developing countries.
-- Concerning the mechanism for inspecting the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries that had been strongly demanded by the developed countries, the agreement includes language stating that the United Nations, in addition to listing the planned reductions for every country, will announce the status of the emissions once every two years.
-- ...the leader of the European Union, Swedish Prime Minister Reinfeldt, stated that "It is not a complete agreement. Even with the targets hammered out by each country the threat of global warming will continue. This is a start, and we are looking to complete it next year."
That sounds respectable. Near-200 countries got together and nobody declared war. That was a success.
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Thousand Mile Journey vs. "Are We There Yet !"
Your choice.