Newsweek and Alter: Why Krugman is wrong and why Obama's approach to Health Care is not naive.

[elizm]

By Jonathan Alter
Newsweek Web Exclusive
Updated: 10:41 AM ET Dec 19, 2007
Paul Krugman is a brilliant Princeton economist and fine columnist for The New York Times who was far ahead of the pack in asserting that George W. Bush is a total disaster as president. His clarity in explaining what academics call "political economy" is without peer. But his attack on Barack Obama on December 17 was wrong on history, wrong on politics and wrong on what the future holds for Obama's "big table" idea.


http://www.newsweek.com/id/80882/output/print

[terisan]

1. Why I think Alter is wrong: Clinton's 1993 "victory" was swiftly followed by the Republican

takeover of Congress in 1994. A takeover from which we have not yet fully recovered. Clinton compromised, the right took what they could get, then swiftly de-muscled him and us.

Johnson's Civil Rights agenda, according to Johnson himself, was going to result in Democrats loss of the South (white South) for a generation. He did it because he believed it was the right thing to do.He leaned on Congress, he twisted arms, he intimidated. He took advantage of his moment of power after Kennedy's assassination. Johnson was bold and gave a clear message.

I noticed a few months ago that Alter did a debunking column on the future "NAFTA Highway." He basically said that there were no plans for such, and intimated that those who were concerned that it might be true were alarmists or conspiracy fanatics. Yet when I began to research the issue, it seemed to me that the alarmists were right and Alter was wrong. I think he is wrong on this also.

I think Gore was ahead of his time with his so-called populist message; I found it at the time to come over as a bit condescending. But the times have changed-in the direction gore was heading- and I think a bold clearcut message is needed.

I usually lean toward the "bring all parties to the table" approach. It is a solid community organization approach rather than a legal adversarial approach. It aims for a win-win outcome. However it works best when the parties to the conflict have equal power or when the more powerful have a vested interest in the less-powerful doing well. I think we need to build some power and clarity before heading to that table.

The US citizenry is no longer needed by large multinationals-we are small change on the world stage, and are being used right now to give tax money to the government which in turn hands it over to corporations to carry out enterprises that are against our interest. We are also being used-as in the case with the Medicare Drug program-to guarantee profits to pharmaceutical companies. (So much for the free market).

The other issue I see is that our current health system is horribly wasteful of people power. It needs to wither away;the people employed by it could be much more productive using their skills elsewhere in the economy.