Yesterday 44 appeared in a ceremony to sign an order rescinding the ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, in place since 43 stopped government money in 2001. It was the lead story on the CBS Evening News and on many local news shows as well.
As would be predictable from the emotional fervor that holds both sides of the debate, the proponents of funding embryonic stem cell research pulled out all the stops in cheer leading the move. In a non-scientific poll carried out in this blogger's household, the impression created by the coverage of the event was that 43 had, by executive order, blocked stem cell research from taking place in the United States.
The facts are these: embryonic stem cell research has never been banned in the United States. Research using pre-existing cell lines derived from embryonic stem cells has continued to receive federal funding. Nothing has prevented embryonic stem cell research from taking place in other countries or in privately funded labs in the United States. Federal funding using stem cells derived from other sources, like umbilical cord blood, has continued unchanged since 2001.
Why the hoopla? Why the rolling out of the proverbial kid in a wheelchair to herald the change? In part it seems to be a continuation of the desire of many of the previous administration's enemies to dance on its grave. It is also part of an odious tradition carried out by researches to tie their requests for basic science research to feelings of pity for those afflicted with diseases like Alzheimer's, diabetes, cystic fibrosis. The reality is that no clinically significant treatments have arisen from stem cell research, so to show a videotape of the actor Michael J. Fox writhing in distress with his Parkinsonian symptoms and imply that a cure was just around the corner had not 43 "banned" research, is disingenuous at best and cynically manipulative to boot.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Friday, March 6, 2009
Health Care "System" abuse
44 is not the first president to advocate reform of the health care "system" in the United States, nor will he be the last. This blogger feels an urge to explore what is meant by the phrase "health care system" as it relates to the practice of medicine. I fear that the term "health care system" (I'll call it HCS hereafter) is roundly abused by nearly all who use the term.
Definitions first: a system is defined in several ways: "A regularly interacting or interdependent group of items forming a unified whole (gravitational, thermodynamic for example)."
Or: "A group of devices or artificial objects or an organization forming a network, especially for distributing something or serving a common purpose."
Finally: "A form of social, economic or political organization or practice."
A HCS, I would argue, should consist of the elements listed in the above definitions. How about this: a group of organizations dedicated to the practice of medicine which form an integrated network to provide those services. There is no distinction in the definition between government and private involvement, nor is there any explicit reference to the financial aspects of such a system. Implicitly a financing mechanism ought to included in the explanation of how the system is sustained.
What other systems are comparable to the HCS and how were they developed and how are they organized? There is, of course, a system of government and laws that were established by the US constitution. Financing of the government is carried out through taxes raised by Congress, as provided in the constitution. The legal system outside of government, meaning the people who work in courts and law offices, contains both public and private elements. Courts, judges, bailiffs and others who work in and around the court system are paid salaries raised by taxes. Attorneys for all other matters, unless they are working pro bono, charge fees based on hours worked. The cost of a legal proceeding to an individual in a civil or criminal matter is born by the person hiring the attorney. The only exception is in criminal matters where the defendant can't afford an attorney and one is appointed. Many lawyers who represent clients seeking financial damages work on a contingency basis: if they win, they share the award. If they lose, they get nothing and do not pass on the costs of arguing the case to the client.
There have no been widespread calls for reform of the legal system, except that it works with extreme deliberation and not with what would be called speed. Lawyers' fees vary considerably from firm to firm and even within a particular firm. An experienced divorce lawyer might charge a client $300 per hour or higher whereas a neophyte or an associate might command half or less for the same unit of work, even though the results are the same. Except for attorneys taking cases on contingency, the end result does not dictate the fee.
Contrast that with people who work in health care. Many work for hourly wages, including physicians who work for institutions. Traditionally, doctors have been paid on a fee for service basis, with room for negotiation. But with the advent of major medical insurance, things started to change. Increasingly, the doctor dealt more with the insurance company rather than directly with the patient. When the US government became involved in a major way as a third party payer, in 1965 with the passage of Medicare by Congress. The doctors of the time signed on gladly, because at first they were guaranteed some payments rather than having to go out and collect on their own from patients. Looking a graph of health care cost inflation versus the overall cost of living, it's easy to see that the two lines were identical until 1965, when the slope of the health care inflation line increased dramatically. Now, 44 years later, the lines are as far apart as ever.
It is the desire to reign in costs that has driven the movement to designate medicine as a system and further to claim that it is "broken." Looking at life expectancy, death rates from major diseases in all age groups, the health of the US has never been better. It is a vast improvement over life in the pre-WWII era, when infectious disease took a heavy toll among the very young and the elderly. One unintended consequence of the inflation of health care costs has been the artificial rise in charges because of discounts demanded by third party payers, both private and government. It works like this: a procedure is billed by a physician or hospital at $100. The third party payer negotiates a rate of 60% of usual charges and pays $60. The next time the provider of services organizes his charges, the price is raised to $120. 60% of that is $72, and so on. Eventually the charge reaches astronomical levels and the individual without insurance is asked to pay the full, non-discounted rate, which leads to an inability to pay bills. People start to forgo health care insurance because the premiums rise higher than the out of pocket costs. A vicious cycle is started.
To the welfare state oriented policy makers and politicians, the "obvious" solution is to turn medical care into a regulated utility like the power company, with rates that are set by commission, not market conditions. Hence their framing of the problem as a "system" that is broken. What is broken is the connection between the real consumer of health care and those who write the checks. True, the consumer pays the bill eventually, but the cost is often disguised as forgoing higher salaries in exchange for the employer buying group rate insurance for employees. By the end of the 20th century, even the deep pockets of employers had been emptied. Continued improvement in medical technology, application of that technology to individuals near the end of life and an insatiable pressure from consumers to be served without any delays with the very best combined to escalate costs. Highly visible spokesmen advocating universal health care coverage pointed to the alleged lower costs of health care in other countries while ignoring the mandatory rationing that delayed or denied care in those countries as well as the very different national demographics that produced higher than expected infant mortality in US urban areas. Comparing that to, for example, a homogeneous population in a north European country made it seem that the US system of financing health care was responsible for the higher mortality numbers.
Over time, by the act of repeating numerous myths in mass media outlets, the proponents of universal health care and a reform of the non-existent "system" for health care set the agenda for what is about to take place in Washington. One of the more pernicious myths that has a life of its own is that US health care is error ridden and causes 100,000 deaths annually because of preventable mistakes. The emphasis is on the alleged preventable nature of these mistakes. The origin of the myth is an observational study published in the venerable NewEngland Journal of Medicine in the mid-1970s. The researchers were attempting to get a handle on the scope of injuries and deaths in hospitals in New York State. They examined all hospital deaths and discharges from a select number of hospitals in the state and asked their investigators, who were all physicians, to flag any deaths that seemed to be related to the medical interventions being performed and any that occurred in patients whose true diagnoses had been delayed either in hospital or before admission. The physicians, being hyper critical of their fellows as is typical when this sort of exercise is carried out, produced a number of deaths deemed "preventable" from the standpoint of there possibly have been earlier intervention in a disease or a procedure carried out that may have caused or hastened a patient's death. This was irrespective of the actual diagnosis. In other words, if a patient was actively dying of an incurable disease and there occurred any complication that hastened the death, for example a catheter infection in a terminal cancer patient, the death was deemed due to medical error. Similarly, if a patient's cancer was diagnosed out of the hospital at any time after the symptoms, however vague, were reported to any physician, that death was counted as a medical error. So the design of the study had a systemic bias in the direction of over-reporting deaths as due to medical error. If a person on the street is asked the meaning of the 100,000 deaths per year statistic, he is likely to believe the deaths all occurred in healthy people who were admitted for elective procedures and died in the hospital. The 100,000 figure was derived by dividing the numbers of deaths per hospital discharge at the particular teaching hospital and multiplying the number by all hospital discharges in New York State. So the bias in hospital selection was added to the bias in case selection. A different study using similar methods but using hospitals in Colorado arrived at an estimate of annual fatalities due to medical errors half that of the first study.
Remember that these were estimates only, using a single teaching hospital in a large urban area. Remember as well that the reviewers were counting fatalities that in many cases would have occurred anyway, albeit a day or two later. In the world of real medicine, the state of Minnesota has been requiring for several years that all hospitals report adverse events, some fatal, some not fatal. The average number of deaths per year has been about 20. This may still be too high, but it is about 1% of the 100,000 nationwide deaths if the numbers are multiplied by 50 states. And what is even more interesting is that in spite of Minnesota hospitals spending large amounts of time and treasure on fixing the problem, the numbers have not gone down, and in some years have increased.
This has gone somewhat far afield from the question of financing HCS, but it serves as a reminder that not all problems as defined by politicians, are problematical. Good statistics on medical errors are important: why, then, do the proponents of universal, government sponsored HCS continue to use statistics that are wildly inaccurate and out of date? A cynic would suggest that the erroneous numbers make a stronger case for changing what in fact does not meet criteria for needing change. The ideologues pushing for socialized medicine need to scare the population into accepting an alternative that will lead to rationing of care and higher overall taxes. So why not engage in some harmless exaggeration? It's worked so far for the climate change lobby in terms of convincing people that the planet is on its death bed, and therefore carbon taxes are the only solution.
44 is letting his policy wonks do the wet work of eliminating the opposition on this one. If enough people have been scared by the shibboleths of medical errors and money wasted by insurance companies, they may well win the day and clamp the manacles of over-regulation on what is now the best health care on the planet, system or not.
Definitions first: a system is defined in several ways: "A regularly interacting or interdependent group of items forming a unified whole (gravitational, thermodynamic for example)."
Or: "A group of devices or artificial objects or an organization forming a network, especially for distributing something or serving a common purpose."
Finally: "A form of social, economic or political organization or practice."
A HCS, I would argue, should consist of the elements listed in the above definitions. How about this: a group of organizations dedicated to the practice of medicine which form an integrated network to provide those services. There is no distinction in the definition between government and private involvement, nor is there any explicit reference to the financial aspects of such a system. Implicitly a financing mechanism ought to included in the explanation of how the system is sustained.
What other systems are comparable to the HCS and how were they developed and how are they organized? There is, of course, a system of government and laws that were established by the US constitution. Financing of the government is carried out through taxes raised by Congress, as provided in the constitution. The legal system outside of government, meaning the people who work in courts and law offices, contains both public and private elements. Courts, judges, bailiffs and others who work in and around the court system are paid salaries raised by taxes. Attorneys for all other matters, unless they are working pro bono, charge fees based on hours worked. The cost of a legal proceeding to an individual in a civil or criminal matter is born by the person hiring the attorney. The only exception is in criminal matters where the defendant can't afford an attorney and one is appointed. Many lawyers who represent clients seeking financial damages work on a contingency basis: if they win, they share the award. If they lose, they get nothing and do not pass on the costs of arguing the case to the client.
There have no been widespread calls for reform of the legal system, except that it works with extreme deliberation and not with what would be called speed. Lawyers' fees vary considerably from firm to firm and even within a particular firm. An experienced divorce lawyer might charge a client $300 per hour or higher whereas a neophyte or an associate might command half or less for the same unit of work, even though the results are the same. Except for attorneys taking cases on contingency, the end result does not dictate the fee.
Contrast that with people who work in health care. Many work for hourly wages, including physicians who work for institutions. Traditionally, doctors have been paid on a fee for service basis, with room for negotiation. But with the advent of major medical insurance, things started to change. Increasingly, the doctor dealt more with the insurance company rather than directly with the patient. When the US government became involved in a major way as a third party payer, in 1965 with the passage of Medicare by Congress. The doctors of the time signed on gladly, because at first they were guaranteed some payments rather than having to go out and collect on their own from patients. Looking a graph of health care cost inflation versus the overall cost of living, it's easy to see that the two lines were identical until 1965, when the slope of the health care inflation line increased dramatically. Now, 44 years later, the lines are as far apart as ever.
It is the desire to reign in costs that has driven the movement to designate medicine as a system and further to claim that it is "broken." Looking at life expectancy, death rates from major diseases in all age groups, the health of the US has never been better. It is a vast improvement over life in the pre-WWII era, when infectious disease took a heavy toll among the very young and the elderly. One unintended consequence of the inflation of health care costs has been the artificial rise in charges because of discounts demanded by third party payers, both private and government. It works like this: a procedure is billed by a physician or hospital at $100. The third party payer negotiates a rate of 60% of usual charges and pays $60. The next time the provider of services organizes his charges, the price is raised to $120. 60% of that is $72, and so on. Eventually the charge reaches astronomical levels and the individual without insurance is asked to pay the full, non-discounted rate, which leads to an inability to pay bills. People start to forgo health care insurance because the premiums rise higher than the out of pocket costs. A vicious cycle is started.
To the welfare state oriented policy makers and politicians, the "obvious" solution is to turn medical care into a regulated utility like the power company, with rates that are set by commission, not market conditions. Hence their framing of the problem as a "system" that is broken. What is broken is the connection between the real consumer of health care and those who write the checks. True, the consumer pays the bill eventually, but the cost is often disguised as forgoing higher salaries in exchange for the employer buying group rate insurance for employees. By the end of the 20th century, even the deep pockets of employers had been emptied. Continued improvement in medical technology, application of that technology to individuals near the end of life and an insatiable pressure from consumers to be served without any delays with the very best combined to escalate costs. Highly visible spokesmen advocating universal health care coverage pointed to the alleged lower costs of health care in other countries while ignoring the mandatory rationing that delayed or denied care in those countries as well as the very different national demographics that produced higher than expected infant mortality in US urban areas. Comparing that to, for example, a homogeneous population in a north European country made it seem that the US system of financing health care was responsible for the higher mortality numbers.
Over time, by the act of repeating numerous myths in mass media outlets, the proponents of universal health care and a reform of the non-existent "system" for health care set the agenda for what is about to take place in Washington. One of the more pernicious myths that has a life of its own is that US health care is error ridden and causes 100,000 deaths annually because of preventable mistakes. The emphasis is on the alleged preventable nature of these mistakes. The origin of the myth is an observational study published in the venerable NewEngland Journal of Medicine in the mid-1970s. The researchers were attempting to get a handle on the scope of injuries and deaths in hospitals in New York State. They examined all hospital deaths and discharges from a select number of hospitals in the state and asked their investigators, who were all physicians, to flag any deaths that seemed to be related to the medical interventions being performed and any that occurred in patients whose true diagnoses had been delayed either in hospital or before admission. The physicians, being hyper critical of their fellows as is typical when this sort of exercise is carried out, produced a number of deaths deemed "preventable" from the standpoint of there possibly have been earlier intervention in a disease or a procedure carried out that may have caused or hastened a patient's death. This was irrespective of the actual diagnosis. In other words, if a patient was actively dying of an incurable disease and there occurred any complication that hastened the death, for example a catheter infection in a terminal cancer patient, the death was deemed due to medical error. Similarly, if a patient's cancer was diagnosed out of the hospital at any time after the symptoms, however vague, were reported to any physician, that death was counted as a medical error. So the design of the study had a systemic bias in the direction of over-reporting deaths as due to medical error. If a person on the street is asked the meaning of the 100,000 deaths per year statistic, he is likely to believe the deaths all occurred in healthy people who were admitted for elective procedures and died in the hospital. The 100,000 figure was derived by dividing the numbers of deaths per hospital discharge at the particular teaching hospital and multiplying the number by all hospital discharges in New York State. So the bias in hospital selection was added to the bias in case selection. A different study using similar methods but using hospitals in Colorado arrived at an estimate of annual fatalities due to medical errors half that of the first study.
Remember that these were estimates only, using a single teaching hospital in a large urban area. Remember as well that the reviewers were counting fatalities that in many cases would have occurred anyway, albeit a day or two later. In the world of real medicine, the state of Minnesota has been requiring for several years that all hospitals report adverse events, some fatal, some not fatal. The average number of deaths per year has been about 20. This may still be too high, but it is about 1% of the 100,000 nationwide deaths if the numbers are multiplied by 50 states. And what is even more interesting is that in spite of Minnesota hospitals spending large amounts of time and treasure on fixing the problem, the numbers have not gone down, and in some years have increased.
This has gone somewhat far afield from the question of financing HCS, but it serves as a reminder that not all problems as defined by politicians, are problematical. Good statistics on medical errors are important: why, then, do the proponents of universal, government sponsored HCS continue to use statistics that are wildly inaccurate and out of date? A cynic would suggest that the erroneous numbers make a stronger case for changing what in fact does not meet criteria for needing change. The ideologues pushing for socialized medicine need to scare the population into accepting an alternative that will lead to rationing of care and higher overall taxes. So why not engage in some harmless exaggeration? It's worked so far for the climate change lobby in terms of convincing people that the planet is on its death bed, and therefore carbon taxes are the only solution.
44 is letting his policy wonks do the wet work of eliminating the opposition on this one. If enough people have been scared by the shibboleths of medical errors and money wasted by insurance companies, they may well win the day and clamp the manacles of over-regulation on what is now the best health care on the planet, system or not.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
On the Road part II
As noted in the New York Times 44 has pledged to get out of Washington frequently. The article details his latest swing, the most recent stop in Arizona to announce a mortgage rescue plan. Whether or not his absences from Washington will draw any fire depends in part on the watchful eyes of his opposition and in part on the never sleeping news media. 43 was criticized for his absences, in particular when he went to his ranch in Crawford, Texas. The presumption was that he was "on vacation" and behaving much as the rest of us do on vacation by doing nothing that resembled the work for which we are paid to do.
This blog will informally track the whereabouts of 44 over the course of his term and produce an apples-to apples comparison with 43 at a later date.
This blog will informally track the whereabouts of 44 over the course of his term and produce an apples-to apples comparison with 43 at a later date.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Stimulation and then some
44 is off to Denver to publically sign his economic stimulus bill, which critics have labelled "porkulus" because of the many pet projects funded which seemingly have nothing to do with stimulating the economy, and everything to do with adding to the entitlement burden on taxpayers. As a sidelight, his choice of Denver as the site to sign the bill has some up in arms, recalling campaign promises by 44 to post bills on a website for 5 days before signing them.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
On the Road Again
Like Willie Nelson, 44 couldn't wait to get out of the house and off to a campaign stop, even if only for a day. He chose Elkhart, Indiana as the location for a town meeting style exchange with sympathetic citizens, and later referred to the city in his East Room prime time news conference. Elkhart indeed has fallen on hard times, suffering a 15.3% unemployment rate. 44 mentioned that Elkhart is the "RV capital of the US", an ironic distinction given his insistence elsewhere in his press conference remarks that the US had to advance further along in energy conservation measures, particularly when it comes to use of foreign petroleum. Maybe he intends for Elkhart's unemployed to work in factories that produce the fluorescent light bulbs that will be mandatory in a few years. He didn't say.
Nevertheless, it was an impressive display by 44 as he chided his Republican opponents for running the national debt to $1 trillion (that's $1,000,000,000,000) but being critical of his economic stimulus package. To the degree that the economy is in free fall, every day spent arguing about the means to recover is another day longer before things turn around. On the other hand, those brave enough to withstand the heat have to muster an argument that 44's plan will waste time doing exactly the wrong things to pull out of the recession. Among economists there is disagreement that cleaves along predictable fault lines. There is Paul Krugman, who thinks 44's plan doesn't do enough in terms of government spending. He unabashedly favors more, not less, government involvement in health care financing, for example. On the other end of the spectrum, a column in the Wall Street Journal by Nobel laureate Gary Becker presents a different take on the same problem.
So what are non-economists supposed to do? If 44 is the surgeon with a scalpel and the US economy is a sick patient, the obvious thing to do is let him operate. he made that plain in his remarks and in the question and answer period. He, as he so bluntly put it in a conversation with some Republicans, won the election and he gets to be in charge of the toys for the time being.
The press in attendance were respectful, not fawning as much as during the campaign, as if they were starting to wake up from their trance and remember to ask tough questions of the President. A couple of partisans, one from CNN and one from the Huffington Post, asked questions that would have painted 44 into a corner. One was about the prohibition of taking photographs of "flag-draped coffins" returning from Iraq, as if the question hadn't already been rendered moot by the recent reduction in numbers of coffins returning. The deaths that day of four US serviceman in an IED explosion equalled the combat deaths in Iraq in the entire month of January, a fact that 44 could have pointed out, but didn't. He merely deflected the question by saying that the policy was "under review", a polite way of saying "shut up." 43 would have risen and taken the bait, much to the delight of his many critics in the media. The other question was more argumentative, asking if 44 agreed with a proposal by Senator Leahy for a "truth commission" to investigate the administration of 43 for various alleged abuses. The questioner clearly hoped for just such a witch hunt and lynching party, but if he thought 44 was going to buy a ticket, he was sorely disappointed in 44's demurral from the festivities.
The most entertaining moment in the entire news conference when 44, after recognizing Helen Thomas of the AP and answering her question about Afghanistan, he brushed aside her attempt at a followup as if she were a whelp and not a dried up fossil occupying valuable space in the room.
Nevertheless, it was an impressive display by 44 as he chided his Republican opponents for running the national debt to $1 trillion (that's $1,000,000,000,000) but being critical of his economic stimulus package. To the degree that the economy is in free fall, every day spent arguing about the means to recover is another day longer before things turn around. On the other hand, those brave enough to withstand the heat have to muster an argument that 44's plan will waste time doing exactly the wrong things to pull out of the recession. Among economists there is disagreement that cleaves along predictable fault lines. There is Paul Krugman, who thinks 44's plan doesn't do enough in terms of government spending. He unabashedly favors more, not less, government involvement in health care financing, for example. On the other end of the spectrum, a column in the Wall Street Journal by Nobel laureate Gary Becker presents a different take on the same problem.
So what are non-economists supposed to do? If 44 is the surgeon with a scalpel and the US economy is a sick patient, the obvious thing to do is let him operate. he made that plain in his remarks and in the question and answer period. He, as he so bluntly put it in a conversation with some Republicans, won the election and he gets to be in charge of the toys for the time being.
The press in attendance were respectful, not fawning as much as during the campaign, as if they were starting to wake up from their trance and remember to ask tough questions of the President. A couple of partisans, one from CNN and one from the Huffington Post, asked questions that would have painted 44 into a corner. One was about the prohibition of taking photographs of "flag-draped coffins" returning from Iraq, as if the question hadn't already been rendered moot by the recent reduction in numbers of coffins returning. The deaths that day of four US serviceman in an IED explosion equalled the combat deaths in Iraq in the entire month of January, a fact that 44 could have pointed out, but didn't. He merely deflected the question by saying that the policy was "under review", a polite way of saying "shut up." 43 would have risen and taken the bait, much to the delight of his many critics in the media. The other question was more argumentative, asking if 44 agreed with a proposal by Senator Leahy for a "truth commission" to investigate the administration of 43 for various alleged abuses. The questioner clearly hoped for just such a witch hunt and lynching party, but if he thought 44 was going to buy a ticket, he was sorely disappointed in 44's demurral from the festivities.
The most entertaining moment in the entire news conference when 44, after recognizing Helen Thomas of the AP and answering her question about Afghanistan, he brushed aside her attempt at a followup as if she were a whelp and not a dried up fossil occupying valuable space in the room.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
School for scandal
The latest of 44's picks for a high administration post has bitten the dust. Nancy Killefer, the "performance officer" at the White House, has withdrawn her name from consideration after news reports surfaced that she had failed to pay employment taxes on household help, among other indiscretions. Timothy Gaithner managed to be confirmed as Treasury Secretary despite serious omissions of information about income were uncovered. Former South Dakota Senator Tom Daschle led the pack of tax cheats with his failure to report over $140,000 in income, including a chauffeur driven auto. An old campaign spot has surfaced, depicting Senator Daschle driving his beater Pontiac around the capital city, demonstrating how committed he was to saving money. It is wet-your-pants funny.
All kidding aside, isn't it ironic that left wing pundits and bloggers love to rail about how the affluent members of society need to pay more taxes , and then the agent of change in Washington appoints individuals who aren't even paying what they owe under the current system.
All kidding aside, isn't it ironic that left wing pundits and bloggers love to rail about how the affluent members of society need to pay more taxes , and then the agent of change in Washington appoints individuals who aren't even paying what they owe under the current system.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Super Sunday
NBC, as part of its pre-Super Bowl hype, presented a brief interview of 44 by Today show host Matt Lauer. The video clip can be viewed here. Mr. Lauer would have the world believe that he is a serious journalist in the tradition of David Brinkley and Chet Huntley. For anyone still disposed to agree with that claim, watching a fawning Matt Lauer launch a powderpuff pitch at 44 with his opening question ought to dispel that notion.
But perhaps it is unfair to single out Matt Lauer for the practice of suspending journalistic standards that were enforced to the maximum degree during the eight years of the administration of 43. He is not alone in rushing to the front of the stage, desperate for recognition by the rock star president. In fact, he uses the term "rock star" to describe 44, who does nothing to discourage the comparison.
My friends at Powerline have some sharp observations about the lack of interest displayed by 44 in the ice storm devastation which just occurred in the state of Kentucky, particularly as it was given minimal air time compared to the post Hurricane Katrina coverage. It seems to this amateur weather observer that the ice storm, although terrible, didn't match the top to bottom property devastation of Katrina. But the point is well taken that there was widespread loss of power, not insignificant in wintertime, and the Kentucky National Guard had to be mobilized. In fact, the response of the local authorities was appropriate and a concerted effort by the federal government was not necessary, as it should not have been necessary post Katrina were it not for the rank incompetence of the New Orleans and Louisiana governments. That was the real scandal of Katrina, but it was not the one called for by the mass media narrative that blamed 44 for everything, including the storm (global warming, according to Al Gore), the levee failures (the feds should have been proactively fixing them, even though it is the local government's responsibility by law) and the isolation of people at the New Orleans convention center (where they had been ordered to go by the city government).
The media coverage was appropriate for the level of damage from the storm, just as the Katrina coverage was over the top. To paraphrase Rahn Emanuel, 44's chief of staff, a disaster is a great opportunity. In the case of Katrina, it was the opportunity of a lifetime for faux journalists like Anderson (Gloria Vanderbilt's son) Cooper to make their bones at the expense of a sitting president. Had the levees held, there still would have been a heck of a mess to clean, but not the video opportunities to show families who ignored evacuation orders being plucked from rooftops by helicopters dispatched by the very government being maligned by the journalists. There also wouldn't have been the spectacle of the media trying to shoot fish in a barrel by relaying monstrous and false rumors of carnage, rape and starvation at the iconic convention center. When the light of day finally revealed the stories to be uniformly false, it was as if there had never been any reporting of babies being raped by sex offenders. Nothing was said, no retractions or apologies for lying on camera were offered.
43 took it all in stride, trying to be magnanimous and reach out to the legitimate storm victims and not engage in a vigorous defense of his government. Instead, the nay sayers commanded the high ground, and used it to their advantage. If 43 had a flaw (he had many, as do we all) it was not standing tall and outing those who lied about him. When the lies were repeated day after day, they achieved status as truths, part of the mythology about the deficiencies of 43's term.
But perhaps it is unfair to single out Matt Lauer for the practice of suspending journalistic standards that were enforced to the maximum degree during the eight years of the administration of 43. He is not alone in rushing to the front of the stage, desperate for recognition by the rock star president. In fact, he uses the term "rock star" to describe 44, who does nothing to discourage the comparison.
My friends at Powerline have some sharp observations about the lack of interest displayed by 44 in the ice storm devastation which just occurred in the state of Kentucky, particularly as it was given minimal air time compared to the post Hurricane Katrina coverage. It seems to this amateur weather observer that the ice storm, although terrible, didn't match the top to bottom property devastation of Katrina. But the point is well taken that there was widespread loss of power, not insignificant in wintertime, and the Kentucky National Guard had to be mobilized. In fact, the response of the local authorities was appropriate and a concerted effort by the federal government was not necessary, as it should not have been necessary post Katrina were it not for the rank incompetence of the New Orleans and Louisiana governments. That was the real scandal of Katrina, but it was not the one called for by the mass media narrative that blamed 44 for everything, including the storm (global warming, according to Al Gore), the levee failures (the feds should have been proactively fixing them, even though it is the local government's responsibility by law) and the isolation of people at the New Orleans convention center (where they had been ordered to go by the city government).
The media coverage was appropriate for the level of damage from the storm, just as the Katrina coverage was over the top. To paraphrase Rahn Emanuel, 44's chief of staff, a disaster is a great opportunity. In the case of Katrina, it was the opportunity of a lifetime for faux journalists like Anderson (Gloria Vanderbilt's son) Cooper to make their bones at the expense of a sitting president. Had the levees held, there still would have been a heck of a mess to clean, but not the video opportunities to show families who ignored evacuation orders being plucked from rooftops by helicopters dispatched by the very government being maligned by the journalists. There also wouldn't have been the spectacle of the media trying to shoot fish in a barrel by relaying monstrous and false rumors of carnage, rape and starvation at the iconic convention center. When the light of day finally revealed the stories to be uniformly false, it was as if there had never been any reporting of babies being raped by sex offenders. Nothing was said, no retractions or apologies for lying on camera were offered.
43 took it all in stride, trying to be magnanimous and reach out to the legitimate storm victims and not engage in a vigorous defense of his government. Instead, the nay sayers commanded the high ground, and used it to their advantage. If 43 had a flaw (he had many, as do we all) it was not standing tall and outing those who lied about him. When the lies were repeated day after day, they achieved status as truths, part of the mythology about the deficiencies of 43's term.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
