Latest entry
- Justin Webb
- 6 Jan 09, 20:25 GMT
First: thanks so much to all who have left such kind messages.
I am deeply aware that our situation is hardly worth mentioning when compared with the suffering of other parents and other children. We brought our boy home from the hospital. And we can pay the bills.
Dave_h - for my money - hits the nail on the head with the simple fact that the US system is just so much more expensive, per capita, yet doesn't deliver commensurate results.
The challenge for Mr Obama is not to spend more but to spend more wisely and fairly.
I always thought his line about watching his mum haggle with the healthcare companies while she was dying of cancer was one of the more genuinely moving sections of his stump speech: it will be fascinating to see whether, in four years or eight, that situation is unthinkable here.
Meanwhile, the first really interesting and risky decision of the Obama presidency (alright - the second after HER) is the choice of Leon Panetta as the head of the CIA - a choice to be formally announced soon.
I remember meeting Mr Panetta some time ago and coming away with a sense of shock at how gentle and courtly he was - genial, relaxed, softly-spoken and solicitous in a manner that almost no senior public servant ever is (Andy Card would be the nearest, in my experience).
The case against him seems to be that he is not tough enough to take part in interrogations. Not of bad guys (though he would be a great "good cop"), but of CIA guys who apparently like to keep their business to themselves.
Perhaps this is a signal that they have to grow up.
I see the always sensible Sam Donaldson thinks Panetta will not make it through the confirmation process - but if Obama is really serious about imposing his will on the bureaucracy he may feel this is a battle he has to win.
I suspect this is a better take on the matter than Sam's.
This stuff about who checked with whom just does not matter, and Dianne Feinstein risks looking a bit behind the curve if she makes too much of a fuss...
UPDATE:
I see the Obama team are planning to get a TV doctor - albeit a well qualified one - to lead the nation's medical care.
Wow! My colleage Robert Peston for Chancellor of the Exchequer? Christiane Amanpour for Defense? Wolf Blitzer for transportation? (He could do those airport announcements: "Caution, the moving walkway is ending... ")
Recent entries
- Justin Webb
- 5 Jan 09, 07:28 GMT
Apologies for the long break in posts. My son fell ill over Christmas and has been diagnosed with type one diabetes.
He can still have a long and happy life but no longer a care-free one and nor can his parents!
So we find ourselves at the receiving end of the health service I have heard George Bush describe as the best in the world and Barack Obama describe as seriously flawed. Both are right of course.
I desperately want a cure to be found and I have every confidence that if it is found it will be found HERE - in a nation that creates the wealth, and fosters the humanity, necessary to do the job.
But to arrive back from the hospital - confused and, frankly, a bit heartbroken - to find a bill already in the letter box, that's tough. And we are insured so the next day a letter from the insurers arrives telling us they have reviewed the case and decided to pay (note the language - how kind of them!) but if we hadn't been insured or if the insurers had behaved differently .......
The amount by the way for a night's stay and associated treatment is nearly $3,000. Even the co-pay which I handed over in the pharmacy on Christmas Eve (for the kit which is now part of our life) set us back a couple of hundred.
Of course the Obama reforms would not necessarily change this - his plan is not for a European style national health service. But as a user of the current US system I have to say the bills feel cruel, particularly when they apply to sick children.
...
- Justin Webb
- 18 Dec 08, 20:53 GMT
President-elect Obama's biggest fan club has now been well and truly outed: it is not the pinko media, it is W's staff, stupid!
The W posse are fawning over the O team with the kind of attention a spaniel lavishes on another spaniel's bottom.
What could they be after - presidential pardons? (Only kidding)
This is the latest evidence and evidence as well of the fact that Dick Cheney has a future as a stand-up comic.
President Bush's former chief of staff Andy Card - also at that meeting - told me recently that this transition is the best ever!
Ever!
Too cosy already...
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- Justin Webb
- 17 Dec 08, 20:18 GMT
Back on the Blagojevich saga, I see gunsandreligion offers the captivating suggestion that Rahm Emanuel might become the new Oliver North.
Steady now. But I have to say I am beginning to detect - in spite of my claim that it all adds up to nothing - that the Obama team is running out of sympathy slightly faster than is wise on this issue.
Behind the scenes, he is keeping to the strategy of being the moderate can-do, work-with-anyone man, but in front of the cameras (and the men and women with the pens and notebooks) his refusal to open up is frustrating to some.
Seems to me that the oddest subject for him to duck is the special election for the senate seat which the Republicans want and the Democrats seem not to - out of fear presumably that they might lose.
It would cost the state quite a bit to put it on, but it would cost Mr Obama nothing to call for it - and genuinely to want it - as by far the most democratic and un-corrupt solution to the problem, a point noted by some of the local press.
The fact is, though, that they are frightened of Republican Congressman Mark Kirk getting his party's nomination and winning the seat.
Mr Kirk is a moderate with liberal social views (full disclosure - we were at college together) and would re-energise not only the Republicans of Ilinois but also, I suspect, the mainstream of the wider party who would see non-Palin routes to victory.
That is why the special election (by-elections we call them in the UK) is unlikely to happen.
- Justin Webb
- 16 Dec 08, 16:24 GMT
As I said the other day - and as a president said before me - the business of America is Business.
- Justin Webb
- 15 Dec 08, 22:49 GMT
I must say I have a hard time seeing what the fuss is about with Blago and Obo - even when set out ever so clearly as here.
A lot of it seems to be the juicy thought that Rahm Emmanuel might have used bad words in a wire tapped call. So what?
All will be published at midnight on Christmas Eve in time-honoured tradition.
The press conference here in Chicago was mostly dominated by the issues the Obama team wanted to talk about!
That seems to suggest to me that interest is subsiding...
- Justin Webb
- 12 Dec 08, 23:23 GMT
"The business of America is business," said President Calvin Coolidge and every American - even those who have never heard of the 30th president - almost instinctively know that's true. Vast areas of America are set aside for nothing but buying and selling - strip malls they call them, though they are less exciting than they sound. Amongst this orgy of trade, noted by Coolidge but noted as well by almost everyone who has ever had anything to say about America, live the brands that America has made and sold to itself and to the world.
In a nation where trade is so important and so much a part of the psyche the great American brands really do stand as icons: smash them and you play with the mental health of generations who seek stability and meaning in the malls.
So this week has been doubly tough. It began with the news that the company that owns the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune - two of the great newspapers of record here - is filing for bankruptcy. the Tribune was the one Harry Truman held aloft when it announced - wrongly, but famously - Dewey Defeats Truman, in the 1948 election. The papers are not imminently in danger of closing but young reporters hoping for Woodward/Bernstein-like careers will probably be looking elsewhere. And that of course is what the papers' readers have been doing for sometime - the brands are still big, but the readership isn't.
The same is the case of the car giants. Ford and General Motors and Chrysler signs are everywhere -- you can walk around areas of the outer suburbs of some cities and wonder what would be left if they went - but the readers, as it were, the riders, have been deserting them for years.
This leads some to wonder at the crisis of the American brand. I must say I think such rumination is unnecessary. These are psychologically painful times for America. But who would bet against the brands of tomorrow being just as prominent here and just as homegrown? You don't even have to mention Google or Apple - they're old hat. The whole point of America is that stuff is popularised here - not created often, but crated and sold and branded. I saw a picture this week of a flexible paper like computer display - made entirely of plastic. It's tomorrow's technology and, perhaps, tomorrow's brand. And it's been made at the University of Arizona. American brands are dying this week - and being born .....
- Justin Webb
- 11 Dec 08, 21:28 GMT
The car deal is in trouble again and the United Auto Workers (UAW) union is being asked to commit hara-kiri in order to let it pass the Senate.
This line is from one of the Republican party talking points being circulated in Washington:
"This is the Democrats' first opportunity to pay off organised labour after the election. This is a precursor to card-check and other items. Republicans should stand firm and take their first shot against organised labour, instead of taking their first blow from it."
The memo avoids addressing the millions of jobs the UAW (and the companies) say will be lost if the money is not forthcoming - but the union is in the spotlight now and things are not going to be pretty.
Meanwhile, this is fascinating and just a bit depressing, surely?
And anyone wondering what the serious questions are would do well to consider this pointed, yet reasonable, piece.
- Justin Webb
- 10 Dec 08, 21:02 GMT
Is Obama damaged by the Blagojevich affair?
I suspect not - most Americans are not minded to think ill of a new president, particularly this president, particularly when there is no evidence of any kind suggesting that they should.
Efforts to link him with Mr Blagojevich will look cheap: the time is not right for Republican hopefuls to get any traction.
Though having said that, some sympathetic commentators were a little disappointed with Team Obama's initial handling of the news
This piece from earlier in the year is a nice overview of the President-elect's political life in Chicago.
A friend of mine told me once of being in a room with Mr Obama after he had done some business with some local wheeler-deelers and he joked that he wanted to wash his hands.
Looks to me that he did wash his hands rather thoroughly; and such an action - careful, forward thinking, unsentimental - would be in keeping with what we know to be his political character.
- Justin Webb
- 10 Dec 08, 03:03 GMT
This is going to be fun and not just for Republicans. One of the great weaknesses of the American system of government is the role of family connections and patronage: Clintons and Bushs and Doles hanging around Washington and governors having the right to appoint politicians. How can anyone seriously think that in this hugely democratic nation it is somehow OK for a governor to have the right to appoint a senator under any circumstances? That's the real scandal, that and the governor's haircut...
- Justin Webb
- 8 Dec 08, 21:08 GMT
Sorry to go on and on about infrastructure, but there is nothing more important - this piece cogently sets out the opposing view that the Obama New Deal will not work.
It seems to me that it misses the point though, which is that the spending he envisages will not just be spending for the sake of it, but will be investment in future productivity gains, and thus the abiilty of the US to pay itself (or the Chinese) back.
Paul Volker (who choked off the last big inflation in the early 80s) will be on hand to advise on how to damp things down when the time comes, but crucially when the time comes the bridges will not be falling down and broadband will be available everywhere and you will be able to get from Washington's main airport into town on a train, as you can at virtually every other industrial world capital city...
- Justin Webb
- 8 Dec 08, 03:20 GMT
This is the point. No-one else seems quite to get it. Obama's infrastructure plans - if they come off - are of Eisenhower proportions (he built the roads - well the big ones). They entail a new mindset that builds America and doesn't object to paying for it. It's a mindset that could lead to change American children can believe in. I am not suggesting that the jobs side of infrastructure improvement is unimportant - plainly it is hugely important. But the long term benefits could re-shape the nation.
- Justin Webb
- 5 Dec 08, 22:53 GMT
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