I suppose the thinking goes, at least if we are taking our cues from Tea Party senator Ted Cruz, that if Russia's foreign minister Sergey Lavrov attended certainly Uncle Sam's John Kerry should have been there locking arms with Israel's Bibi Netanyahu and Mali's President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita. Attorney General Eric Holder was in Paris to attend a counterterrorism meeting but the administration blundered by not having him put in an appearance for the cameras at the rally.
Come to think of it, which I did this morning, what is the Obama administration but a frequently misfiring Fortune 500 corporation? What are Obama's legacy achievements?
While you are contemplating that, take a look at the part of Lambert Strether's Water Cooler post from yesterday where he quotes Thomas Frank's assessment of Beltway Democrats:
Thomas Frank fires a last salvo before taking time off to write a book [Salon]. It’s a nice takedown of Obot talking points. The peroration:
What I am suggesting, in other words, is that the financial crisis worked out the way it did in large part because Obama and his team wanted it to work out that way.
Back to the question of Obama's legacy achievements. At this point, in the fourth quarter of his administration, the GOP in firm control of both the House and the Senate, initiatives being floated (free community college tuition, immigration reform -- to name a few) to keep the Democratic Party from capsizing, the two things Obama will be remembered for will be 1) the Affordable Care Act (ACA), a.k.a., Obamacare and 2) the complete withdrawal of troops from Iraq.That is the simplest and most direct explanation.The notion that Democrats might have agency is shocking, I know, since it means they bear some responsibility for our unhappy situation. However, once you acknowledge that it might be true, it occurs to you that this simple and direct explanation might also be the key to all kinds of Democratic betrayals and failures over the years, from the embrace of NAFTA to the abandonment of the Employee Free Choice Act. Maybe these episodes weren’t failures at all. Maybe it’s time we confronted the possibility that these disasters unfolded the way they did because Democratic leaders wanted them to work out that way.
In terms of the first, Obamacare, it is becoming increasingly clear that it is a corporate-friendly ruse designed to shunt as many people as possible into a failed system. Workers who had blue-chip coverage through their employers, those plans are being degraded to match the new normal on offer through the Obamacare exchanges, and that new normal is some form of co-insurance, high deductibles and higher out-of-pocket caps.
Tara Siegel Barnard's story from last week, "Health Premiums Rise More Slowly, but Workers Shoulder More of Cost," says it all:
To contain costs, many large corporate employers are offering high-deductible plans, also known as consumer-directed plans. At about one-third of large companies, it is the only option available, according to the National Business Group on Health. The plans require employees to pay for a greater share of their medical costs upfront, before the plan starts making payments. The goal is to make employees comparison-shop for medical services, something not always easy to do, particularly in emergency situations.
“It’s quite shocking when you see the range of costs for the same services in a market,” said Brian Marcotte, president and chief executive of the National Business Group on Health. “But employers are also trying to get employees to play a greater role in managing their care.”
In 2013, 81 percent of workers were enrolled in a health plan with a deductible, according to Commonwealth Fund, compared with 52 percent in 2003. The average per-person deductible has more than doubled over that period, rising 146 percent on average. In 2013, the average per-person deductible exceeded $1,000 in most states, and exceeded $1,500, on average, in seven states.For an excellent report on workers coming to the realization that the post-Obamacare new normal is co-insurance and higher deductibles read Robert Pear's "Harvard Ideas on Health Care Hit Home, Hard," which also appeared last week.
Of course, the ACA's expansion of Medicaid -- for those 27 states and the District of Columbia that opted in -- must not to be dismissed. But Paul Ryan is till on the scene and the dust hasn't settled yet.
As for Obama legacy achievement numero dos, the Iraq withdrawal, we know now where that stands. U.S. troops are streaming steadily back into the country to re-occupy their old bases. Consult Tim Arango's "U.S. Forces, Returning to Iraq, Encounter the Things Their Comrades Carried":
CAMP TAJI, Iraq — The calendar on the wall reads November 2011.
On the ground is a half-filled can of Copenhagen smokeless tobacco. Scattered here and there are bottles of Gatorade, cans of Rip It energy drinks, poker chips, Monopoly money and razor blades.
Stenciled on a wall is a punchy soldier’s slogan: “I will always place the mission first. I will never accept defeat.” Taped on another is a note of encouragement from a Boy Scout troop back home: “You are our hero and your commitment to freedom is honorable.”
There is even a jar of salsa still in the fridge.So scratch that achievement off the Obama legacy list. The Noble Peace Prize POTUS, if anything, reinvigorated the U.S. commitment to empire by obscuring the history of the Bush occupation. Tim Arango's "U.S. Troops, Back in Iraq, Train a Force to Fight ISIS" is illuminating in this regard:
“They are already looking at us to provide food, water, everything to sustain them,” said a Marine major stationed at Al Asad Air Base, who asked that his name not be used because he is worried that identifying him could put his family back at home at risk of a so-called lone wolf attack by a sympathizer of the Islamic State. “That worries me.”
The major also said it was unclear what would happen if the air base, which is surrounded by the Islamic State, should come under attack. Should the Marines help defend the Iraqis, or flee?
The small Marine compound in the vast base is under constant attack by rockets and mortars, although there have been no casualties. Then there is the fear of attacks from the Iraqis themselves, the ones they are supposed to train.
“I always have those concerns,” said the major. “We are trained to watch each other’s backs.”
The six-week curriculum for the Iraqi soldiers was developed in recent months by the Americans and Iraqis, with a final sign-off by the office of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. In addition to basic infantry skills, the Americans are teaching the Iraqis map reading, intelligence collection, the laws of warfare and how to treat the civilian population so that it supports the government rather than the militants. Every Friday, there is a class on ethics.Al Asad Air Base is in Anbar Province, which is ground zero of Islamic State, down the road from Haditha, site of the 2005 Marine massacre of women and children, an event that probably had as much to do with the efflorescence of ISIS precursor Al Qaeda in Iraq as anything. For Tim Arango, an excellent, reliable reporter, to fail to mention the irony of Marines teaching ethics to a Iraqi soldiers down the road from Haditha is a true sign of the dramatic failure of Obama. Nothing has changed.
But something did change under Obama. We now have a New Cold War on our hands. Before saying goodbye this morning Neil MacFarquhar's latest iteration of his "Moscow Journal" must be mentioned. Constantly seeking to stokes the flames of Russophobia, the Gray Lady wants to remind us in MacFarquhar's "Conspiracy Theories Mix With Official Condolences" that Russia is not a place that celebrates free speech like France or the U.S. (where we put whistle-blowers in prison and summon journalists to court) because, remember, what happened to Pussy Riot:
Scores of Russians laid flowers and other expressions of sympathy at the French Embassy in Moscow, and more liberal voices in the Russian Orthodox Church responded that they were appalled by Mr. Tsorionov — often without naming him directly.
Some invoked the case of the punk band, the best-known free speech case in recent Russian history, when two young female musicians were sent to labor camps for two years after singing an anti-Putin song in the Russian Orthodox cathedral of the Moscow establishment in 2012.
Sergei Chapnin, a high-profile Orthodox commentator, wrote last week that he was “amazed most of all by the high level of sympathy for the killers, the readiness to justify them, based on a fear of ‘incitement of religious discord.'”
Then he linked it to the punk band’s case. “In the depths of our Russian soul, there still smolders dissatisfaction with the Pussy Riot verdict not being harsh enough,” he wrote. “For some, yesterday’s tragedy in Paris is something to fantasize about.”See, Russians are on the side of Kouachi brothers; Pussy Riot and the United States, the angels. Someone needs to send a memo to Dean Banquet that the New Cold War propaganda needs a do-over.
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