(Tom Toles via GoComics.com)
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The October issue of Esquire will include a significant encapsulization of the Massachusetts health care mandate, and probably the single best individual example of a Charles P. Pierce essay, “Life Under Romneycare“:
… [Economist] Jon Gruber is enthusiastically tucking into a salad at a restaurant west of Boston, and he’s even more enthusiastically talking about the very first meeting he ever had with Mitt Romney on the subject of health-care reform.
“I’d been hired to develop the [health-care] plan, and the meeting was to decide whether or not he’d go forward with it. The meeting was Romney fighting with his political advisors. They were saying, ‘Don’t do this,’ and Romney was saying that, no, it was the right thing to do. He was approaching it like an engineer, you know? He was saying, ‘How can we make this work?’ What was impressive was that he really wanted to solve a problem in the way that you’d hope a politician would try to solve a problem. He wanted to do the right thing, which is all I ever want from a politician. He was excited to do the right thing. I remember coming home and my wife, who was a big gay-marriage advocate, was saying how mad she was at Romney, and I told her, you may be, but he was pretty impressive on this.”
Romney’s mind was concentrated because, in 2005, with national ambitions percolating since his tenure running the Winter Olympics three years earlier, he really needed a win…
At the same time, the national Republican party was groping for some sort of conservative market-based alternative to the rising call for an honest-to-goodness single-payer health-care system. The issue had been crucial to electing Democrats over the previous decade, and even with the failure of the Clinton administration’s ambitious attempt to overhaul the system back in the early 1990s, it was plain that adherence to the status quo was not politically viable. These two dynamics came together in Massachusetts. In one of history’s king ironies, given the distortions that Romney has made this year of the president’s remarks about how no business is built all on its own, and given his tortured position that his health-care reform was really a triumph for states’ rights, Governor Romney saw an opportunity to reform health care and burnish his national profile through the judicious use of … federal money.
“Here was the deal,” Gruber recalls. “Ted Kennedy was delivering $400 million in federal slush funds to our safety-net hospitals, Boston City and Cambridge Hospitals. President George W. Bush said, ‘Why am I giving $400 million a year to Ted Kennedy? I’m taking that away.’ Romney, to his credit, went to Bush’s HHS and said, ‘Instead of taking this money away, why don’t we just use it to cover the uninsured?’ And Bush, to his credit, said sure.
“That was the money that made all this happen — federal money. It was delivered by Ted Kennedy and then rededicated at the front end to cover the uninsured.”…
Being aware of all Balloon Juice traditions, I know some of you will ignore this, but seriously: Read the whole thing. You will learn things you did not know. Read it now, thank me later.
***********
Apart from excellent stories, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
trollhattan
Example, the zillionth, of “I was for it before I was a-gin’ it.”
Can somebody please explain the meaning of “tragedy” to these idiots? The timing of their pronouncements could have been better, it being 9/11 and all.
Eleven killed, 70 injured, some gravely, a year ago. But the “tragedy” would be cancelling the races. Or even making them, uh, too safe to attract a crowd.
http://www.sacbee.com/2012/09/11/4807512/reno-air-races-many-fans-ready.html#storylink=cpy
Anibundel
The quote that comes to mind is one I saw on Twitter:
“One does not misrepresent Romney’s position so much as one loses track of what it is at any given moment.”
MikeJ
500 words is generally enough to get the flavour of the whole article. When those 500 words are as phenomenally stupid as that Paul Constant piece the other day there’s no point in wasting your time.
This one, on the other hand, looks like it’s worth checking out, and I’m not the Pierce fanboi that many are.
kindness
So Romney was less of a monster before he decided to be full on monster? Is that the gist?
LanceThruster
Kind of OT but here’s what it looks like when Red-staters venture out into the real world. What’s so troubling is that it’s a pretty good public radio college station site, and the comments are largely what you’d expect from Freepers. They infect everything they touch.
see: http://www.scpr.org/blogs/politics/2012/09/05/9737/antonio-villaraigosa-education-mayor-has-his-math-/
retr2327
Even the brief excerpt you provide makes an interesting point: I’ve always had some vague memory that the biggest difference between Romneycare and Obamacare was that Romneycare relied on Fed $ to make it work, whereas Obamacare pays its own way. Finally, some confirmation of that.
Why aren’t Dems beating that factoid like a drum?
General Stuck
Romney is a fool to square off with Obama in a real teevee debate. It would be like lighting a match to find your way in a gas tank. When the topic of debates comes up, the only sane response from Romney, is to run like motherfucker.
Brachiator
A little comedy relief.
Despite being mocked mercilessly on amazon, Bic has a TV spot for its “just for girls” bic pens.
A fun recap here, Now Bic targets students with TV ad for its ‘sexist’ girls-only pen range
Some of the best comments:
E Bradley from New York writes: ‘I love BIC Cristal for Her! The delicate shape and pretty pastel colors make it perfect for writing recipe cards, checks to my psychologist (I’m seeing him for a case of the hysterics), and tracking my monthly cycle.
‘Ask your husband for some extra pocket money so you can buy one today!’
Meanwhile Madeleine B from Boulder, Colorado is less enthused with the product as ‘they dot every “i” with a little heart.’
‘They also won’t make periods at the ends of sentences; it’s a question mark or exclamation point every time, also dotted with hearts – SUPER annoying.’
Bay Area Guy added on Amazon.com: ‘My girlfriend had a pack of these laying out and, needing a pen, I picked one out and began using it. Now that I see its just “for her” I feel weird, deviant, and ashamed.
‘Does writing with a Bic For Her make me a crosswriter? Just hope I can afford the weeks of therapy I’m going to need to regain my manhood.
‘Well, that’s about it…time to do an Amazon search for a drum and a loincloth so I can head into the woods and feel manly again!’
The Bic Cristal is the most widely sold pen in the world and as of 2004 one hundred billion had been manufactured.
They are currently mass-produced and sold by Société Bic of Clichy, Hauts-de-Seine, France.
The pens have reached the UK market too, where one sarcastic Amazon.co.uk customer wrote: ‘Oh! I am not worthy of such a delicate, pastel-shaded lady-pen. I’m afraid you’ll give me the vote soon and all sorts of other ghastly manly things.
‘How will I be able to waft about in pink negligées and please my Master’s every whim in good conscience then? I don’t want my own mortgage or to be able to go on working if I fall pregnant. I don’t want to be allowed to drive a car or show my face in public.
‘How unsuitable and unladylike! How could Bic place such onerous responsibilities on such frail creatures? It’s a disgrace against nature!’
jl
Good piece. Sad transformaton of Mitt Romney into a disingenous void.
And even though Gruber said someplace in the article that he would not badmouth Romney, some back handed compliments get in, whether intentional or not.
Looked for some stats on Obomneycare Mark I and saw this:
” Before the law was passed, 67 percent of the businesses in the state offered health insurance to their employees. That number is up to 77 percent now. The program consistently polls at about 63 percent in its public approval. ”
That last number, over 60 percent approval scares the GOP out of their wits. Only about a third of US population approves of the current US health care system, lower than other countries like UK, Canada, Netherlands, etc. from Commonwealth Fund surveys.
jl
@General Stuck:
I didn’t understand the double reverse upside down horse race expectations jujitsu of that debate piece.
And, somebody called Obama, windy in the best of times, cloistered by four years of the presidency? Huh?
Romney may be a pretty good debator, but he is working with very bad GOP material, and will be censoring himself to avoid riling the wingnuts, to the extent that would give even a brilliant debator trouble. And I don’t think anyone has called Romney a brilliant debator.
Maybe the GOP puffery for Mitt is just gas from Mitt camp to keep the bucks flowing from the big contributors who will desert if Obama looks too likely to win, since they look at contributions strictly as bottom line financial investments.
The Moar You Know
@LanceThruster: My favorite quote ever, from a guy who runs a model rocketry blog, no less:
“Normal people find encounters with hard-core conservatives terrifying”
Brachiator
Very hard to reconcile the Romney who apparently fought for the Massachusetts health plan with the GOP presidential candidate furiously running away from his own record.
piratedan
in a way, it makes me sad. It truly exemplifies how the folks, whom many would have once been considered to be mainstream, moderate republicans have sold themselves in order to better appeal to the monster shouters. There will be no opposition party or even a two party system until the monster shouters are put back into their cages, either by force or shame. Those folks are simply broken, they have a thin veneer of civility about them but in times of trouble, they’re looking to hang the niggers, stone the sluts or burn the witches and the current Republican party has chosen to look the other way other than deal with these people and tell them that they are wrong.
trollhattan
@jl:
Willard more or less seemed like the adult in the room “debating” against his carnival sideshow Republican opponants, yet most of them still managed to get in their digs. Newt savaged him pretty well, if I recall (and wow, that seems like a long time ago).
I think as long as Obama doesn’t slide into little professor mode, he’ll wax and polish the dais with Willard while scarcely raising his pulse.
General Stuck
@jl:
Well, it’s the same old pandering problem across the political spectrum that Mitt has used to get his self where he is today. Sooner or later, the piper needs to be paid in a general election campaign, showing a clear presence of core beliefs on issues of the day. There are a number of venues he is going to be asked increasingly refined questions toward policy prescriptions he has on these issues. He can slither through those and maybe not completely be exposed for the ambitious chameleon huckster that he is. That is probly impossible to do in presidential debates, unless he can fit Karl Rove in his pants.
var
Also too Bibi Netanyahu meddling in US politics in favor of his BFF Romney. Cue Faux Fox outrage over not meeting with America’s only ally ever. Then more outrage when Obama caves and meets with him based on Bibis demand.
Redshift
@trollhattan:
You must have been watching different Republican debates than I was. Romney came across as a thin-skinned, condescending dick most of the time. He was the most like an adult of any of the bunch except Huntsman, but that just means he won the “world’s tallest little person” contest, not that he seemed particularly polished or adult compared to normal humans.
Remember, he won by carpet-bombing the others with money, not by the power of his ideas or rhetoric.
Still, I hope that they keep pushing the idea that he’s a master debater and can turn this thing around, I’m sure the Obama campaign will be only too happy to cooperate in their failure at the expectations game.
Redshift
How sad that it’s not even surprising that Bush was openly saying “how can I use my office to screw people I don’t like?” with no thought of how it affected the country.
LanceThruster
@The Moar You Know:
Man, does that capture the essence of it.
I wrote back to the administrators at the Focus on the Family blog after they banned me for sticking up for atheism when they do some hatchet job on atheists (my reason for heading over there in the first place). I asked them to at least make note that I was banned as they had all these posters declaring victory in that I had not responded to their scary awesome challenges. They did not.
I wrote that atheists, in general, are more willing to discuss god and theism than theists, but theists are so insistent that they control the dialog, that their followers are generally in a state of arrested development.
I concluded that it was for this reason that I both pitied and feared them.
Never heard back.
I find the howler monkey aspects of the Reich Wing strikingly similar. A true believer is a true believer.
Brachiator
@var:
I doubt that Bibi gives two shits about Romney. Sheldon Adelson promised that Mittens would be pliable, gullible, and eager to prove he’s tough guy.
And it’s telling that Romney’s foreign policy team is the some bunch of dolts who led Dubya by the nose into the Iraq folly.
Triassic Sands
It’s no wonder Republicans are all insane. Imagine having to conform to expectations in which your single greatest achievement (holding office) was to provide essentially universal health care for the residents of your state and you have to lie constantly about everything regarding that accomplishment, instead of just taking credit for doing a positive thing.
kerFuFFler
Very interesting that the motivation for reform in MA was a desire to strip Kennedy of the accomplishment of securing federal monies for safety net healthcare in his state. I imagine Mitt was alarmed at the prospect of having that much funding stripped from his state during his governorship. Having lots of poor people dying in the streets would not have looked good on his resume so he sprang into action. And hey, why not? Mandates had started out as a conservative plan to begin with….
danimal
I might have like that previous version of Willard, or at least respected him. Unfortunately, he has run away from decency and into the arms of bigotry. For shame, Mr. Welfare Lies Romney, for shame.
burnspbesq
I’m mocking people who opposed the bailout of AIG. After today’s sale, the aggregate profit (not sales proceeds, profit) earned by Treasury and the New York Fed is right around $33 billion-with-a-B. And there’s more to come, as Treasury still owns almost 16 percent of the outstanding shares.
burnspbesq
@MikeJ:
Thank you for the reassurance. I was afraid I might be the only one whose takeaway after reading that was “what the fuck was that about.”
Just Some Fuckhead
That was awesome. Thank you.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Redshift:
It’s entirely possible, as there were approximately 150 Republican debates. However, in the first debate after Newt got to wear the First Place Crown, Romney absolutely eviscerated him, while looking him right in the eyes.
However, I think it’s important to point out the dynamic will be a different one in the Obama/Romney debate. Newt The Person is pretty much reviled, even by his supporters. Obama is likable and Romney runs a good chance of looking mean and unpresidential.
BarbCat
@kerFuFFler: Devastating: your observation that even at first, it came from no good place.
‘Dead-hearted indeed.’
Balboa
Mr. Pierce, Thank you for an informative article.
I do wonder if Mr. Romney would take back his signature piece of legislation – the one that well serves millions of Americans – if it eased his path to the White House? It is a substantive question to present during the Presidential debates.
Fingers crossed, but not holding my breath.
JC
Your link to Pierce starts at page 2, not at the beginning of the article.
FYI
SW
$400 million to the safety net hospitals is a slush fund? Only a fucking Republican can look at the only god damn place that the poor and indigent can receive medical care as the beneficiaries of a slush fund simply because the money was secured by Ted Kennedy.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
I will shamefacedly confess that I am part of the problem — I bought the two-pack of “For Her” pink and purple Atlantis mechanical pencils because (A) I like purple and (B) I’m really tired of my boss
stealing“borrowing” the pens and pencils off my desk and wanted a way to be able to retrieve my stuff.(Actually, I gave her the pink one. I’m not really a “pink” kinda girl.)
Just Some Fuckhead
I dunno why they have to market pastels to women. I love pastels.