“Still Not Fully American”: Republicans Keep Moving Obama To Europe
This is what progress looks like for a president named Barack Hussein Obama.
Not so long ago, many in conservative and Republican ranks were eager to paint him as an alien creature far removed from American life as most Americans understand it. A determined cadre insisted Obama was not even eligible to be president, claiming he was born outside the United States. Obama eventually put that to rest by making public his birth certificate, which proved he was born in Hawaii.
Fox News falsely reported that he had attended a “madrassa” during his childhood in Indonesia. (He actually went to a public, non-religious school.) And Newt Gingrich concluded that Obama exhibited “Kenyan anti-colonial behavior,” a strange description that’s hard to square with such Obama undertakings as ordering the killing of Osama bin Laden.
Obama’s adversaries have not thrown in the towel in their efforts to distance him from his own country. But they are bringing him closer and closer to home.
Thus did Mitt Romney’s victory speech after the New Hampshire primary link Obama to Europe not once or twice but three times. Obama, Romney said, “wants to turn America into a European-style entitlement society” and “takes his inspiration from the capitals of Europe” as opposed to “the cities and small towns of America.”
“I want you to remember when our White House reflected the best of who we are,” Romney declared, “not the worst of what Europe has become.”
So Obama is still not fully American, in Romney’s telling. But conservatives talk a great deal about defending and preserving Western civilization, which we share with our European friends. So moving Obama from Indonesia and Kenya to Europe seems like a big concession for their side. Who knows? In a few months, Obama might even be moved to some midpoint in the Atlantic.
The Europeanization of Obama is progress in another way. Not so long ago, it was common for the extreme right to accuse liberals of harboring a desire to turn the U.S. into a Soviet-style communist state. Now that the Soviet Union is dead — and China, which claims to be communist, is pioneering an anti-democratic capitalist model — that particular libel is passe. If the very worst the liberals are trying to do is mimic European social democracy, that sure beats creating gulags or imposing commissars.
The most benign reading of Romney’s speech is that he is suggesting Obama’s economic policies will send us into a crisis like the one that has engulfed the European Union. This charge is nonsense. Like it or not, the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve have been far more aggressive than their European counterparts in protecting our financial institutions from the sorts of problems that European banks face. And we have a strong federal government, which the European Union lacks. A crisis in Rhode Island would not threaten the nation the way a meltdown in Greece affects the E.U.
And the core premise of Romney’s claim is untrue. The notion that Obama wants to turn the United States into a “European-style entitlement society” is laughable. It’s not even a fair description of Europe, which boasts of some highly productive and innovative capitalist economies. As for Obama, he has bent over backward to strengthen market capitalism, sometimes to the consternation of his own supporters. Yes, Obama is trying to get more people health insurance. Is that a bad idea just because the Europeans have done a better job of this than we have?
But by far the biggest flaw in Romney’s Euro-Obama riff is the implication that there is something terribly wrong about learning from Europe. The genius of the American character is that we have always been willing to take lessons from any country that had something to teach us. We don’t turn away from good ideas just because they didn’t originate here. We refine them and adjust them to suit our needs and our tradition. Openness is an American strength.
Two fine historians, James Kloppenberg and Daniel Rodgers, have written illuminating books on how progressive ideas crisscrossed the Atlantic at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson were all happy to learn from Europe. Were they un-American? Then again, no one ever accused them of “Kenyan anti-colonial behavior.” Is it asking too much of Obama’s opponents to acknowledge once and for all that he is really and truly American?
By: E. J. Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, January 15, 2012
The Primary Primer: “Why Won’t These People Leave”?
I am feeling totally cheated. The New Hampshire primary is over, and none of the Republicans went away.
This is not how things are supposed to work in America. Every week, one contestant is supposed to be eliminated. That’s the way it is in politics — one day you’re in, the next day you’re out. Why won’t these people leave?
Well, here we are. All six alleged Republican presidential contenders are still with us and getting ready for the next primary in South Carolina, the Palmetto State.
You probably have some serious policy-based questions.
What is a palmetto?
Not really a good question, but it’s a tree. A palmetto bug is a large, flying cockroach, but that is definitely not on the state flag.
South Carolina is also known as “The Iodine State,” but that absolutely never comes up in political commentary.
What will the big issues be in the South Carolina primary?
When five of your six candidates could not be elected president if they were running against Millard Fillmore, I think you can presume there will not be much serious issue discussion.
However, there will undoubtedly be a great deal of talk about the threat of European socialism and whether or not Mitt Romney is a vulture. One of those venture capital vultures that, in the inimitable words of Rick Perry, are “sitting out there on a tree limb, waiting for the company to get sick, and then they sweep in, they eat the carcass, they leave with that, and they leave the skeleton.”
Also, whether Mitt Romney is an Obamacare-passing European socialist.
Has Romney figured out how to explain the nearly identical-to-Obama’s health care law that Massachusetts passed when he was governor?
Yes! This is all about each state finding its own, unique answer to its own special health care issue. Romneycare, Mitt explains, was right for Massachusetts because the state was faced with the choice of requiring everyone to have health insurance or continuing “to allow people without insurance to go to the hospital and get free care, paid for by the government, paid for by the taxpayers.”
This shows you how different the situation in each state is, since it is well known that in other parts of the country, sick and uninsured people do not go to hospitals but instead are encouraged to present themselves to the nearest local nail salon.
What do the Republicans have against Europe?
All the candidates in the Republican primaries seem obsessed with the idea that the United States is in danger of becoming like Europe, which would be the worst thing imaginable. (Rick Santorum: “They have nothing to fight for. They have nothing to live for.”) The Gingrich camp claimed that Mitt Romney was a fan of “European socialism” when he said something nice about the value-added tax.
However, it’s been Mitt that’s been sounding the most Europhobic. He’s been warning that the president “takes his inspiration from the capitals of Europe” and is attempting to turn the country into a “European-style social welfare state.” (Do you think he really means: Takes his orders from the capitals of Europe? Next stop: “Barack Obama, Brussels Puppet.”)
What do you think’s up with Mitt? Perhaps he’s afraid we’ll all start demanding free child care and fresh-baked bread. He did live in France for more than two years as a Mormon missionary and he didn’t make many converts. Also, he had harsh things to say about the toilets.
Why is Newt Gingrich still running for president? Aren’t voters fleeing from him as if he were a rabid palmetto bug?
To understand Newt Gingrich, you have to envision a mixture of “Kill Bill” and “Carrie,” after Sissy Spacek gets hit with the bucket of blood. His only mission in life is getting even with Mitt Romney and the rich minions who paid for all those anti-Newt ads in Iowa. He is exactly like Sweeney Todd mixed with Charles Bronson in “Death Wish.” And maybe a smidge of “Shogun Assassin.”
Now Gingrich has roped in a few rich minions of his own, and you should watch the video they’ve just put out. Romney looks worse than the evil banker in “It’s a Wonderful Life.” It’s full of heart-tugging former factory workers who used to have happy homes and wonderful Christmases until … Mitt Romney Came to Town. By the time it’s over, you will want to gather up the peasants and march on one of Romney’s mansions with flaming torches.
There is nothing Gingrich won’t do to get Mitt. At the end of the video, there’s a clip of Romney speaking French! And now Newt’s Web site has a video that basically asks whether America will elect a president who once drove to Canada with the family dog strapped to the roof of the car. Which is, of course, an excellent question.
By: Gail Collins, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, January 11, 2012
When Food Kills: A Threat To Public Health
The deaths of 31 peoplein Europe from a little-known strain of E. coli have raised alarms worldwide, but we shouldn’t be surprised. Our food often betrays us.
Just a few days ago, a 2-year-old girl in Dryden, Va., died in a hospital after suffering bloody diarrhea linked to another strain of E. coli. Her brother was also hospitalized but survived.
Every year in the United States, 325,000 people are hospitalized because of food-borne illnesses and 5,000 die, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s right: food kills one person every two hours.
Yet while the terrorist attacks of 2001 led us to transform the way we approach national security, the deaths of almost twice as many people annually have still not generated basic food-safety initiatives. We have an industrial farming system that is a marvel for producing cheap food, but its lobbyists block initiatives to make food safer.
Perhaps the most disgraceful aspect of our agricultural system — I say this as an Oregon farmboy who once raised sheep, cattle and hogs — is the way antibiotics are recklessly stuffed into healthy animals to make them grow faster.
The Food and Drug Administration reported recently that 80 percent of antibiotics in the United States go to livestock, not humans. And 90 percent of the livestock antibiotics are administered in their food or water, typically to healthy animals to keep them from getting sick when they are confined in squalid and crowded conditions.
The single state of North Carolina uses more antibiotics for livestock than the entire United States uses for humans.
This cavalier use of low-level antibiotics creates a perfect breeding ground for antibiotic-resistant pathogens. The upshot is that ailments can become pretty much untreatable.
The Infectious Diseases Society of America, a professional organization of doctors, cites the case of Josh Nahum, a 27-year-old skydiving instructor in Colorado. He developed a fever from bacteria that would not respond to medication. The infection spread and caused tremendous pressure in his skull.
Some of his brain was pushed into his spinal column, paralyzing him. He became a quadriplegic depending on a ventilator to breathe. Then, a couple of weeks later, he died.
There’s no reason to link Nahum’s case specifically to agricultural overuse, for antibiotic resistance has multiple causes that are difficult to unravel. Doctors overprescribe them. Patients misuse them. But looking at numbers, by far the biggest element of overuse is agriculture.
We would never think of trying to keep our children healthy by adding antibiotics to school water fountains, because we know this would breed antibiotic-resistant bacteria. It’s unconscionable that Big Ag does something similar for livestock.
Louise Slaughter, the only microbiologist in the United States House of Representatives, has been fighting a lonely battle to curb this practice — but industrial agricultural interests have always blocked her legislation.
“These statistics tell the tale of an industry that is rampantly misusing antibiotics in an attempt to cover up filthy, unsanitary living conditions among animals,” Slaughter said. “As they feed antibiotics to animals to keep them healthy, they are making our families sicker by spreading these deadly strains of bacteria.”
Vegetarians may think that they’re immune, but they’re not. E. coli originates in animals but can spill into water used to irrigate vegetables, contaminating them. The European E. coli outbreak apparently arose from bean sprouts grown on an organic farm in Germany.
One of the most common antibiotic-resistant pathogens is MRSA, which now kills more Americans annually than AIDS and adds hugely to America’s medical costs. MRSA has many variants, and one of the more benign forms now is widespread in hog barns and among people who deal with hogs. An article this year in a journal called Applied and Environmental Microbiology reported that MRSA was found in 70 percent of hogs on one farm.
Another scholarly journal reported that MRSA was found in 45 percent of employees working at hog farms. And the Centers for Disease Control reported this April that this strain of bacteria has now been found in a worker at a day care center in Iowa.
Other countries are moving to ban the feeding of antibiotics to livestock. But in the United States, the agribusiness lobby still has a hold on Congress.
The European outbreak should shake people up. “It points to the whole broken system,” notes Robert Martin of the Pew Environment Group.
We need more comprehensive inspections in the food system, more testing for additional strains of E. coli, and more public education (always wash your hands after touching raw meat, and don’t use the same cutting board for meat and vegetables). A great place to start reforms would be by banning the feeding of antibiotics to healthy livestock.
By: Nicholas D. Kristof, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, June 11, 2011
Spending Cuts, Jobs, Growth: The GOP Austerity Delusion
Portugal’s government has just fallen in a dispute over austerity proposals. Irish bond yields have topped 10 percent for the first time. And the British government has just marked its economic forecast down and its deficit forecast up.
What do these events have in common? They’re all evidence that slashing spending in the face of high unemployment is a mistake. Austerity advocates predicted that spending cuts would bring quick dividends in the form of rising confidence, and that there would be few, if any, adverse effects on growth and jobs; but they were wrong.
It’s too bad, then, that these days you’re not considered serious in Washington unless you profess allegiance to the same doctrine that’s failing so dismally in Europe.
It was not always thus. Two years ago, faced with soaring unemployment and large budget deficits — both the consequences of a severe financial crisis — most advanced-country leaders seemingly understood that the problems had to be tackled in sequence, with an immediate focus on creating jobs combined with a long-run strategy of deficit reduction.
Why not slash deficits immediately? Because tax increases and cuts in government spending would depress economies further, worsening unemployment. And cutting spending in a deeply depressed economy is largely self-defeating even in purely fiscal terms: any savings achieved at the front end are partly offset by lower revenue, as the economy shrinks.
So jobs now, deficits later was and is the right strategy. Unfortunately, it’s a strategy that has been abandoned in the face of phantom risks and delusional hopes. On one side, we’re constantly told that if we don’t slash spending immediately we’ll end up just like Greece, unable to borrow except at exorbitant interest rates. On the other, we’re told not to worry about the impact of spending cuts on jobs because fiscal austerity will actually create jobs by raising confidence.
How’s that story working out so far?
Self-styled deficit hawks have been crying wolf over U.S. interest rates more or less continuously since the financial crisis began to ease, taking every uptick in rates as a sign that markets were turning on America. But the truth is that rates have fluctuated, not with debt fears, but with rising and falling hope for economic recovery. And with full recovery still seeming very distant, rates are lower now than they were two years ago.
But couldn’t America still end up like Greece? Yes, of course. If investors decide that we’re a banana republic whose politicians can’t or won’t come to grips with long-term problems, they will indeed stop buying our debt. But that’s not a prospect that hinges, one way or another, on whether we punish ourselves with short-run spending cuts.
Just ask the Irish, whose government — having taken on an unsustainable debt burden by trying to bail out runaway banks — tried to reassure markets by imposing savage austerity measures on ordinary citizens. The same people urging spending cuts on America cheered. “Ireland offers an admirable lesson in fiscal responsibility,” declared Alan Reynolds of the Cato Institute, who said that the spending cuts had removed fears over Irish solvency and predicted rapid economic recovery.
That was in June 2009. Since then, the interest rate on Irish debt has doubled; Ireland’s unemployment rate now stands at 13.5 percent.
And then there’s the British experience. Like America, Britain is still perceived as solvent by financial markets, giving it room to pursue a strategy of jobs first, deficits later. But the government of Prime Minister David Cameron chose instead to move to immediate, unforced austerity, in the belief that private spending would more than make up for the government’s pullback. As I like to put it, the Cameron plan was based on belief that the confidence fairy would make everything all right.
But she hasn’t: British growth has stalled, and the government has marked up its deficit projections as a result.
Which brings me back to what passes for budget debate in Washington these days.
A serious fiscal plan for America would address the long-run drivers of spending, above all health care costs, and it would almost certainly include some kind of tax increase. But we’re not serious: any talk of using Medicare funds effectively is met with shrieks of “death panels,” and the official G.O.P. position — barely challenged by Democrats — appears to be that nobody should ever pay higher taxes. Instead, all the talk is about short-run spending cuts.
In short, we have a political climate in which self-styled deficit hawks want to punish the unemployed even as they oppose any action that would address our long-run budget problems. And here’s what we know from experience abroad: The confidence fairy won’t save us from the consequences of our folly.
By: Paul Krugman, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, March 24, 2011
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