Sebelius, DeParle will have their work cut out for them
posted 3-2-2008 7:46 p.m.

&nbspbr>The Obama Administration today announced the nominations of its top two health care officials. In appointing two different people for those positions, the administration wisely reversed itself. Each of the nominees will have more than enough to do, once they are approved.

Earlier today, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius(D) accepted the nomination for Secretary of Health and Human Services, replacing former senator Thomas A. Daschle, who withdrew from consideration last month after his tax problems and position as a lobbyist complicated matters for the Obama Administration. Also, Nancy-Ann DeParle was named director of the White House Office for Health Reform. DeParle headed the Health Care Financing Administration, which oversaw Medicare and Medicaid, during the Clinton Administration. She was also a Clinton era health care adviser at HHS and at the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Health insurance is a big deal, Mr. Obama, so take a little time to get it right
posted 2-24-2008 8:22 a.m.

 
The problem with most backroom deals in politics is that they’re completed in everything short of a vote before the public even knows about them. Average Americans like you and me have no opportunity to influence the result, yet often we’re the ones most affected – sometimes most adversely affected – by the result. Such a backroom deal on health insurance reform is afoot right now, led by none other than Ted Kennedy. And President Obama appears to have signed off on it. I'm betting it's what he presents tonight in his address to the nation.

Senator Kennedy has long wanted health care reform and championed that cause, even for a time favoring a single payor plan not unlike Medicare. That he should be talking to stakeholders is not the concern. He wants to accomplish something lasting on health care before he dies. But national health insurance, or even something close to it, is a far cry from what’s on the table now – and what is under discussion is more a full-employment plan for the insurance industry with you and me footing the bill than what most Americans want.

A workforce for today and tomorrow
posted 1-15-2009 3:03 a.m.

 
President Obama is saying all the right things about rebuilding not just the physical infrastructure of the nation, but also the workforce infrastructure, in that he thinks there's plenty of opportunity to create new jobs by encouraging the proliferation of newer, greener industries. He's right, as far as that goes — but who's going to be the innovators of those industries if not scientists and engineers, those folks we need but don't have enough of? Not only do we not respect those people we call geeks, we don't graduate enough of them for this future workforce.

Mr. Obama's got to do a lot of fast talking and faster planning to solve this situation before he can convince Congress — because Congress is way behind on this issue. And the Republicans don't even want to discuss it, because of what the funding consequences have to be in order to bring about the goal of more scientists and engineers. Better science and math education in grade and high schools is barely a start: it's college programs that really make the difference and will produce results sooner.

Barack, Hillary, supermajorities, and keeping up with the primaries
posted 2-21-2008
amended 2-28-2008

 
My, but things move quickly in primary politics these days; blame it on SuperTuesday. Unless Hillary pulls off a miracle in Texas and Ohio (I'm not betting on that), she likely won't be a significant factor anymore, even with that many delegates. Not even the most faithful of superdelegates wants to be associated with a perceived loser. So it may be moot for her by next week. We'll see.

There are those who say that Sen. Barack Obama is at least not promising much of anything, compared to other candidates, and therefore he’s somehow more realistic. It may also mean he has a dearth of ideas other than some vague notion of change. But these same partisans point out that he’s had less experience and less clout than Sen. Hillary Clinton and imply that he must be somehow more clever than she for him to be so much more ‘realistic’ in not making promises. Nonsense.

Things I noticed over a long weekend …
posted 2-4-2008 8:14 p.m.
amended 2-7-2008 5:55 p.m.

 
… while down with a cold and ignoring the Super Bowl:

• George W. Bush is still stubbornly hallucinating about what’s going on in the world.

The country is finally restless with the current regime (at last! How long did they have to wait?), that's clear enough. How many ways can you take a 71 percent disapproval rating other than to admit that 71 percent of the populace hates you? Thus the sullen monotone delivery of the State of the Union address. And yet, beneath that depressed and depressing delivery was still the old, blindly stubborn pugnaciousness that is the flip side of the thin, shallow nice-guy routine that got W. Bush close enough to a win the second time around to steal it (the first time, he had to rely on The Supremes to steal it for him and on Gore's sense of honor not to pursue the matter further; what a waste *that* was).

Read the text of last Monday's State of the Union address, or even listen carefully to the words, and you hear that determined, knee-jerk rewriting of history in light of his own fantasy that is Shrub's trademark. He thinks if he tells a lie often enough, most people will believe it. More to the point, if he lies to himself often enough that he believes it, he expects us to believe it, too. Some will, sure — but the evidence of his incompetence is simply too great, the economy too badgered and the needless deaths too many to allow that now.